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How AI Can Improve Your Marketing Investment Decision-Making · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  All right.
• 0:16
  Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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  I'm your host, Matt Heinz very excited to have you here.
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  We've got a great guest today.
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  Great topic.
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  Lots to talk about.
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  If you are joining us live in the middle of your work day, the
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  middle of your work week, thank you so much for being part of this.
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  If you are watching and listening on demand, thank you so much for continuing
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  to listen, subscribe, download.
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  We are 373 episodes in, Chris, and closing in on a quarter of a million downloads.
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  So thank you everyone who continues to listen and check this out every
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  episode Sales Pipeline Radio is always available past, present and future at
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  www.salespipelineradio.com With us today.
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  I consider you a friend, Chris, we've known each other for a long time.
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  Founder, CEO of Demandbase been in the B2B marketing space for a long time.
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  Currently founder and CEO of Channel99, Chris Golec.
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  How you doing, man?
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  Great.
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  Thanks for having me.
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  Glad to be here.
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  Why do you keep coming back?
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  You know, starting any company, let alone a tech company, let alone a SaaS company.
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  I've had people describe it to me as chewing glass.
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  And as a founder in a different business that resonates sometimes,
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  what is it about entrepreneurship?
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  What is it about startups that keeps you coming back?
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  Yeah, it's just a passion for innovation and building and making a difference.
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  I started my career at DuPont and went on to GE and then it was at GE where I
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  met a couple of guys that we started a supply chain software company back in 1995
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  when everybody was on dial up internet.
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  So I've been doing this for 30 years and I seek out opportunities
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  where something's just fundamentally broken and where technology can make
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  a big impact it's exciting to me.
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  Watching from a little bit of distance I think one of the commonalities I
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  notice about the companies you build the teams you run It's just the
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  quality of the people like you have good people at the companies that you
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  run, I imagine that is a priority.
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  Can you talk a little about people and culture and why that's important.
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  Yeah, and thanks for recognizing that is important to me.
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  You know a software company the asset is the people And, you hire
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  great people, you'll find the opportunity to make the products and
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  keep customers happy and growing.
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  But it was early at, Demandbase, we're probably 25 people.
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  And I had this like slide in this mission to hire, world
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  class talent and retain talent.
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  And it takes more than a slide, right?
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  You got to really invest in it.
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  And we did that at Demandbase and it's not about the free snacks.
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  It's about transparency inclusion.
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  It's about having a diverse workforce and really listening to people and sharing.
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  And we were ranked, I think in the top 20 places to work in San
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  Francisco for 10 years in a row.
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  I think in 2016, we were in the top 10 on glass door out of 500, 000 companies.
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  So pretty awesome stuff.
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  And it's an accolade to the company.
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  not necessarily to me because it's all the employees that make
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  it a great place to work as well.
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  And, still today, like even though people have moved on to different
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  roles and opportunities, I still stay pretty connected to a lot of
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  the Demandbased crew, so to speak.
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  Yeah, no, I bet.
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  That's awesome.
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  you mentioned, always wanting to look for things that are broken.
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  And I feel like any conversation we have in B2B marketing, no matter
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  what the topic, ends up coming back to measurement and attribution.
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  It's hard and it's getting harder as the go to market motions
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  we're running get more complex.
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  Of all the problems that do exist out there in B2B and there are many, why
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  was measurement the focus area for you that you dug into with Channel99?
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  Yeah, I think measurement is the starting point.
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  And I've, to be totally honest.
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  I've always been a little bit of a attribution hater because I've
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  always thought it was incomplete.
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  The data's not right.
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  It's ignoring a lot of the signal that's out there.
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  And to me, in 2022, when I started this company, it was like,
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  now we have the opportunity to solve these data problems first.
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  And then let's layer in AI to not just measure marketing,
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  but how do we improve it?
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  Like, how do we make a big difference and really leverage machine learning and AI
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  to do much more predictive type modeling and be able to ask natural questions?
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  Like, how do I improve my LinkedIn campaign?
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  and have it come back with the right recommendations and then monitor the
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  results and get smarter and smarter.
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  I often talk about the volume of data that exists, but our inability
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  to really leverage it, right?
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  This massive library of insights, but like all the books are on the floor, right?
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  And even if you were to put them back on the shelves.
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  You need books to talk to each other and that's where the metaphor dies.
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  But I think about even 370 episodes of Sales Pipeline Radio There's a lot
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  of people that have listened to this.
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  Like what impact does that have on pipeline?
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  What impact has that had directly on people following us and getting to know
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  us and then eventually maybe calling us or telling a friend about us and
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  they call us All those connections are-- the data's there but like, how
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  do we actually make those connections?
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  This is where I'm hoping that AI and better technology will eventually
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  just be able to do that for us.
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  am I smoking?
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  Is this where we're going?
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  You're exactly right.
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  Like in marketing, people are using AI to write blogs that are mediocre, right?
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  They're using AI to create videos and PowerPoints that
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  aren't as good as a designer.
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  And the biggest opportunity is really leveraging AI to sit on top of the data
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  and make recommendations, understand performance opportunities, and always on
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  world's smartest marketing ops person.
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  And that opportunity is now, however, when I talk about the data, you got to
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  solve some of the data problems because the AI is only as good as the data
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  it sits on top of, and I know every marketing ops person that's listening to
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  this is probably shaking their head yes, because there are a lot of challenges
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  and a lot of the legacy attribution tools out there haven't addressed them.
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  They, frankly, they have ignored them.
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  I was literally having this conversation with another CMO yesterday about this
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  data problem, the fact that like we expect AI to do all this stuff, yet
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  the data continues to be broken.
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  Like you just contact information, right?
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  The fact that like we get emailed for a job that we had four jobs
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  ago or 20 years ago, and people think that's the way it works.
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  Crazy.
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  You can go to LinkedIn, you can see where I work now.
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  You would think that it's not private information, some of that.
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  So the fact that we haven't even made that, I think it has kept a lot of
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  people pessimistic about the idea that we're actually going to improve
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  all that to help the AI do what we think it should be able to do.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And I think a big part of this, Matt, too, that people don't recognize on the
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  surface is that a lot of these things of, what's working, what's not, it all depends
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  on who you're marketing or selling to.
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  So if we have a customer that's using, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, maybe
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  an ABM technology, LinkedIn, and they say, what's the most effective?
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  I'm like, for which audience?
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  Because you'll get totally different answers whether you put in, medium
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  sized hospitals versus, large enterprise software companies.
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  And they're all effective in different ways.
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  And so you really have to peel these things apart.
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  And I just find with our business, we're training these AI models
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  on how to do B2B marketing.
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  And how do you find out and make changes to make the dollar efficiency
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  higher, to make the pipeline generated per dollar invested higher
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  and all those types of outcomes.
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  And, so it's a journey, right?
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  And, but it's really exciting because, we want to make a difference.
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  To me, nobody wants another dashboard.
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  It's measurement.
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  I didn't start this third company just to do measurement.
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  Cause that's just not that interesting on its own.
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  Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
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  We're talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Chris Golec.
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  He's the founder of Demandbase.
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  He's a MarTech OG basically, and now has founded and is CEO of Channel99.
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  Is it possible that we have, or could over rotate on measurement?
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  Cause I joke about like this podcast, like how much pipeline did it generate?
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  Is that really the measure of an effective podcast?
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  Is that really the role of a podcast?
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  Are there some things that we don't need to, or shouldn't minutely measure?
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  I legit don't know the answer to this question.
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  I'm curious what you think.
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  This whole trend around measuring people and paying people on MQLs--
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  I just think that's been very short sighted versus pipeline.
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  And the reason we all know my pipeline is important.
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  Any salesperson knows that, but the other reason to get it right is that
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  typically, at least in the software world, 50 percent of your customer acquisition
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  cost is pipeline and it's fascinating to me that a lot of companies don't
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  really dive in and understand that what percentage is this fixed expense versus
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  variable and, a big part of its pipeline.
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  So if you can get more efficient and drive down your customer acquisition cost,
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  you're increasing the value of the company by a lot, because especially as companies
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  get bigger, the later stage investors are looking at lifetime value over CAC and
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  all these different KPIs and marketing has a ton of influence over that.
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  Sometimes I don't think they realize it.
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  Don't realize it or just as as some of this gets more complex, it seems
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  like you have to understand it to be able to interpret and communicate it.
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  and I think about this a lot in terms of the role of a to not only lead the
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  strategy and lead the team and lead the company with their leadership
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  peers, how deep into the weeds does an effective CMO need to be today in
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  terms of understanding how AI works and understanding how the data works
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  and how the data flows together?
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  On one hand, I'm like, you can't possibly have the bandwidth to do all this.
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  You have to have good people to do it.
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  But also there's a level of understanding some of this that wasn't taught in any
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  MBA program that I was part of, because it's all brand new then if you don't
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  understand it, how can you manage it?
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  Where do you find that balance point?
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  I always find that great CMOs kind of recognize what they're really good at.
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  And they fill the gaps, right?
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  And I I put marketers or CMOs and they either come up through
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  brand and are really good at brand position, message, the softer side.
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  And then you have the CMOs that come up through like operations are
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  very numbers, pipeline oriented.
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  Both are really important.
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  And so if the CMO is inherently more on the ops side, they really need
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  to have an exec that knows brand.
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  But the self awareness is the most important part, because as you
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  know, marketing is a organization of specialization, versus sales
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  is an organization of scale, the same kind of skill sets.
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  And I think understanding that as a CMO and filling those gaps
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  is the most important thing.
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  I think you can say that for any role, right?
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  yeah.
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  And I see this in job descriptions for CMOs sometimes.
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  It's you're looking for a unicorn, right?
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  And it's saying, I'm looking for a full service agency.
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  That doesn't exist.
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  agencies are good at one or two things and then want to get paid for everything.
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  And sometimes it's better to say, here's what I'm good at, right?
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  And I'm going to backfill with people on my team.
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  And I'm going to also recognize where my blind spots might be.
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  I think it actually is a strength and a point of courage.
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  When someone could stand up and say, I don't know everything, and things I'm
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  not good at, and I'm going to bring in the right people to be able to do that.
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  At some point maybe you bring in the right robot, Chris, to do that.
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  And I think we were in this phase where we're imagining where AI is taking us.
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  And in some cases I've seen people say, I don't need to hire
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  sales and marketing anymore.
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  I'm just going to have a go to market engineer do it all through robots.
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  That march will continue if we're sitting here in five years.
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  What do you think the balance between human and robots is
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  and go to market functions?
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  Oh, gosh.
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  I think there's a dramatic improvement in efficiency, but the creative, the
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  differentiation, all those things are still, are unique to a person's skill set.
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  but a lot of the repetitive activities that are still prevalent
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  in SDR roles and things like that absolutely can be automated.
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  But I think it just elevates everybody's job to be more strategic.
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  A lot of the things that we're solving for right now, marketing ops
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  owns and or digital marketing owns.
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  And it's taken the grunt work and making it just much faster and more accurate.
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  So I don't think anybody in marketing ops fears their job.
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  I think it's finally I can get to work on things that are more exciting.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And I think the complexity of the go to market motion is required to
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  actually predictably drive results it's going to continue to outpace
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  what the technology can allow.
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  The technology is getting better, but the complexity is growing faster.
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  And we need smart people to help orchestrate that,
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  internally and externally.
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  Externally, so that there's a cohesive set of programs that have some connective
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  tissue in the eyes of the buyer, but also the seller motions, just people
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  getting things done inside of companies is getting more and more complex.
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  Like we desperately need better technology.
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  We desperately need AI to be able to fill some of those gaps, either to do things
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  that we don't need to be doing manually by people anymore, but also things that
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  have not been possible in the past.
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  They can unlock some of that creativity and potential inherent
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  in humans that I think is uniquely human as part of the process.
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  That's right.
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  What do you think that implies for leadership?
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  Cause I think we are going to move to a world where we are starting to think
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  of AI and agents as a part of the team.
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  Does that make a difference?
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  Does that change things in terms of how you think about like
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  an effective leadership style?
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  I think it's on leadership to really help your organization educate
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  themselves and learn how to adapt and adopt AI to make their jobs
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  more effective and more efficient.
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  There's a lot unfolding as far as self education.
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  Sometimes it's the younger folks in an organization might just be more
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  curious and savvy and take it upon themselves to learn, but others in
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  the organization, you're doing them a favor by encouraging them to take a
• 14:26
  class or education or get certified.
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  And I think every organization should be doing that for also the careers
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  and benefit of the people in the org.
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  Yeah, I agree.
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  This has been great, Chris.
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  Thank you so much for doing this.
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  There's a lot of characters in our industry and you've always been one
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  of my favorites just because I think you're a great, straightforward
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  guy and you do it the right way.
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  And just the teams you build and the cultures you build.
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  Not only was great for those moments, but the ripple effect when people that
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  learn from that and appreciate that and then go somewhere else and recreate that.
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  Like I think about, Peter Isaacson and others from back old school
• 15:01
  days, just always makes me smile.
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  So thank you for being who you are.
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  it's important.
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  I have, two guys in the next room that were at Demandbase years ago.
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  Love it.
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  Love it.
• 15:09
  Hey, if people want to learn more about you, hear more from you, learn more
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  about Channel99, where should they go?
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  Just go to Channel99.Com and reach out to me on LinkedIn and we'll connect and
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  I can share more about what we're doing.
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  Awesome.
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  Thank you much for being here.
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  Thanks everyone for listening, watching both live and on demand.
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  We'll be back next week.
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  More great guests, more great content.
• 15:29
  That's it for today's Sales Pipe Radio.
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  We'll see you next week.
• 15:32
  Take care.
• 15:33
  Thanks Matt.