(21) Marketing Lessons from the CMO of G2, Salesloft & Drata - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1YS1yGLlJg

Transcript: (00:00) You've been in B2B SAS marketing leadership roles for almost 30 years. >> In April of 2025, we surveyed about 2,000 people and we said, "Where do you start your research?" 29% said that they started on some kind of AI chatbot. By August, that changed to 50%. Building your brand in these areas that get cited is the 2026 playbook. (00:26) when it comes to marketing, marketing practices, how to do marketing, can you separate a little bit what's genuinely new in 2026 in the post AI era and which principles and basics still hold true just as much as 20 years ago? >> This impacts every single human on the planet with and the rapid pace of which it's adopted. All right, before we dive in, you're listening to the executive brand podcast with me, your host, Finn Thommeer. (00:59) Each week, I sit down with top B2B CEOs, executive, and founders to break down their playbooks. If you've not yet, it would really help if you subscribe or follow the show because it helps us get on better guests and create better content for you guys. All right, let's dive in. I'm here with Sydney Sloan, the CMO adviser at G2, an executive in residence at Scale Venture Partners. (01:22) Until very recently, she served as CMO at uh G2. Previously, she was CMO at Drada and at Salesforce and had a 16-year tenure at Adobe in a variety of different marketing leadership roles. Uh so, thank you for joining, Sydney, and let me know if you want to change or amend anything in that intro. >> Um I actually worked at Sales Loft, not Salesforce. (01:44) So you if you want >> Oh my god, I have it in my Of course I have it in my notes. >> I know people say that all the time. So it's not the first time that's happened. Yeah. >> Yes. >> I wish that would have been great. >> Although I did love Salesoft was one of my favorite runs, so I can't say that true. Truly. >> Cool. (02:02) Now you've been in B2B SAS marketing leadership roles for almost 30 years. I'm curious, is this the most drastic change in how marketing is changing that you've seen in your career? >> Yeah, I mean to me SAS started in like 2010 2011. So I was, you know, 20 years in at that point, but I I I tr I chose to go into SAS and left Adobe at that time uh because I could see how that would change the way that we needed to communicate with buyers. (02:32) And so that that's when I when I was leaving Adobe, I'm like I want to go work for SAS because and I wanted to go work in customer experience for SAS because that was the change then was you know when they were onrem perpetual license you know that it it was hard to switch and and SAS you know this lightweight cloud-based thing allowed customers to be able to to switch more easily and so that that postale relationship was more important than ever and And I and I do think that that was one big shift was the whole digital (03:06) transformation era. Um I I've seen a few I also saw like the you know the rise of paper to digital at the very beginning days of of Adobe you know in in the the when people weren't around yet like you know the year 2000 was a big deal like is everything going to crash and not you know continue to work on Y2K and we had all these Y2K initiatives. (03:29) Um but you know so so yes I've I've lived and worked through many of these transformations 100% this is the biggest without a doubt like it and it's it's for two reasons. One is um the you know the opportunity that AI is bringing to every single individual. This is not one department or another it versus nonIT like this impacts every single human on the planet which and the rapid pace of which it's adopted like that speed. (04:03) We've never seen that radical transformation of how buyers are changing the way they research. Like for me like that's the thing that I've been talking about the most this last year. like of course how we're transforming our teams, infusing AI into the way that we work daytoday um and really having to lead from the front. (04:26) I think um as you know executives this is one of those examples too where we have to adopt and use it to to lead the transformation for our teams. It's not a project we can assign to somebody. >> Um so I think all those things have come in into play but 100% a thousand% >> yes this is the biggest transformation. I interviewed Jack Newton last week, the founder and CEO of Cleo, one of the biggest legal tech companies, and and he started the company in 2008. (04:51) And the big question back then was, will lawyers ever trust the cloud? Um, and he talked about the question, will lawyers ever trust AI is kind of relevant, but the and and this is to your point that the the the rate of change is so much more drastic. that question played out over 5 to 10 years where now it feels like to him it's being played out over months um the AI transformation. Now I'm curious. (05:17) >> It is because because it's and it's felt by every individual as well. >> Like once you dip your toe into it, you see the power and so it's not like same thing like did people really know that you know the difference between onrem and cloud? Yeah. Sure. You have to log into octa and you know to access your apps and you know like there was a little bit of of you know impact on personal but not the same kind that we see now. Yeah. (05:41) >> Yeah. Now I'm curious, do you feel like having gone through other big transformations, there were any lessons from from the the cloud from the on-prem to cloud period that you were able to apply in this transformation that gave you some advantage or was it just so new, so different that you had to relearn everything from scratch? >> I think it's interesting. (06:05) It's a great question and so it's kind of funny. I I think this is a little bit of throwback of pre-SAS to be honest >> where um you know we were building bespoke applications. We were looking at workflows and how to automate those and it was in the lead at that point to be able to assess the current workflow, make recommendations of what the the future could be, what can we automate using technology. (06:35) Um and and so there is a little bit of history there and and I laugh a little bit around okay is it back in control? Are they not? Like is it switching to revops for go to market teams? But what we're doing is we're talking about fundamental redesign of the way that we work and infusing automation this time it's AI automation into those processes. (06:56) Now the power of what it can do, how it can learn, um is is different, right? A lot of times before you design the workflow and it was a little bit more of a set it and forget it where now that has to be managed. The AI has to be managed. If you're building agents, this is not a set it and forget it. This is this is, you know, a managed and and >> human in the loop. (07:18) >> Human in the loop or my favorite term currently, human in the lead, >> right? So, if you really work yourself out of in the loop to in the lead and you're managing it in a different way, there's a there's a difference of that. And I have to shout shout out uh my friend Chandar for that that term um that I that I've now taken. (07:35) So, >> love it. when it comes to marketing, marketing practices, how to do marketing, can you separate a little bit what's genuinely new in 2026 in the post AI era and which principles and basics still hold true just as much as 20 years ago? Yeah, this is a great thing about being a executive and residence advisor because you get to work with, you know, startups that haven't built anything yet. (08:08) So, some of the first questions I ask, I'm like, "Okay, so what's your tech stack?" And I just was talking to this guy this other day and he's like, "Oh, we have this HubSpot." I'm like, "Fantastic. We get to build from scratch and it's going to be a completely different tech stack than we would have built three years ago. Completely different. (08:26) um I don't think you need marketing automation anymore and the way that we used it before and really the future is signals to agentic workflows. Mhm. >> Um and so how do we go and find those signals? And so companies like Clay and Common Room, but also the the infrastructure, you know, the the the infrastructure companies like HubSpot is doing some really cool things with their data studio. (08:52) Um uh Zoom Info is doing some interesting things like, you know, and G2 is at the center of that because our signals are so strong >> and and so that's where it starts now. Um, yes, you still have to do your your address your ICP and and build your target accounts, know what customers you're looking for, so you know what signals to look for. (09:13) And it's no longer the the old playbook of like, let's dump all this in a database. Let's, you know, flood the market with with ads and kind of see who's in market. It's it's very much more tuned now. And depending on the type of signal is the agent response you design it for. And so that quote unquote first touch the response time speed is what matters. (09:36) >> Speed is what matters now. And that AI gives us speed. So we can make that connection between the buyer interest the and the next step that that we wanted to throw an SDR at before or a a you know standard nurture out of a marketing automation system. We don't have to do that. It can be smarter. It can be faster. (10:00) Um so by the time it gets to a human which it still will the the customer is more um uh more educated and that context and this is really important the context of all those interactions are also being passed to the human so they know where to pick up the conversation >> you have to do that step too >> um and so yes the whole the whole buying cycle workflow is is different >> I'd love to so so You mentioned you mentioned HubSpot. (10:31) Okay, let's there's more potentially kind of the way that you framed it. You mentioned common room, you mentioned Clay. Is is the fundamental change when you look at what tax deck they use versus what you might recommend. Is it based on you need to be able to build and spin up and run agents very quickly? And that is what you're optimizing your tech stack for now where maybe the old guard of the software they have their automatic workflows but you can't natively build your agentic workflows and that's why you're recommending different tools two three (11:06) years ago. >> So um what's different what's the same um so let me go back to the same first and we'll get to that question Finn because I think it's a good one. You know what what is the same is the importance of building brand. It's actually more important than it has been the last five years when we, you know, marketers could go out and kind of buy demand, you know, using our PPC and optimizing for SEO and and it was a good strategy, but that's blown up. (11:35) Right now, uh, G2 just did a survey and we're about to do our next one. Um, in April of 2025, we surveyed about 2,000 people and we said, "Where do you start your research?" 29% said that they started on some kind of AI chatbot >> by August, April to August, what is that? Five months, four months, >> four months >> that changed to 50%. (12:02) 71% increase between in four months. This is that speed we're talking about. So, we know that that buyers have changed and we can't go buy that demand anymore. So, we have to reimagine how we're building our brand and building our brand on on these LLM is part of the equation. It's very important. (12:20) Um, we can we can go down that that thread in a minute. Um, the second thing which I haven't been talking about as much and I've been bringing up more in our kind of CMO networks is the other thing that hasn't changed is marketing still needs to own the entire customer experience and customer journey. we need to remap that out and and that's how we then design the workflows. (12:43) You have to start with the customer first. And I think sometimes people forget that, right? Like they're just optimizing channels and it's like no, we need to go back and reimagine >> what is the customer's process that they're going through? Where are they going to research? What are they looking for? That time frame is massively consolidated. (13:01) And how they actually evaluate software is changing too. They're they're not going to five vendors to short lists anymore. they're going to three vendors, sometimes two, sometimes even one. And and we see this in our buyer behavior research. And so that ability to influence the buyer early in their journey and make that connection first matters now more than ever. (13:26) So that's why that whole idea of like finding those suing the signal and having that response time be seconds. We used to say go from days to minutes. Now it's like minutes to seconds. Mhm. >> Who gets there first matters and your ability to influence that buyer as they're doing their evaluation and more and more of that is done on the LLMs. (13:48) >> There's so many there's like 50 different threads I want to pull on. So, I'm going to So, I'm going to try a couple here. You you mentioned that people going to an LLM first to figure out which vendor to talk to went from 29 to 50% in four months. That to me sounds different a little bit different to brand. (14:11) So that I mean I guess people call that AEO or AI visibility. >> That's AEO. >> Brand plays brand plays into that. I'm I I want to see how do you contrast that to one of the other things I've seen a lot of people talk about is basically buyers this day zero list where they the through community through LinkedIn the content they consume the podcast they listen to by the time that they need a vendor for a certain problem they actually already have their top three vendors in mind and they're just going to their website to compare rather than give me the whole (14:47) spectrum of what's out there in the market. Are they the same to you? Do you how do you contrast those two points of view? >> Okay. So, uh what what a lot of people used to call the dark funnel and now I think we're calling zero click. >> Um and uh and so yes, that is where brand plays. (15:06) That is what brand does when you're being talked about when you're not in the room. >> Right. >> Right. and and how do you then curate that to happen in the communities with the influencers, you know, and being, you know, the the the hot product in the market and these markets are spinning up so quickly. >> Funny story in AEO, which is a very hot market because this is one of the the things that we have to all invest in. (15:33) That same April time frame when we launched it, we we started talking about GEO and AEO. By the way, AEO stands for answer engine optimization. That's when people ask a question, you do an answer. GEO is generative engine optimization. People are still mixing the two. That's when you say, "Generate me something, make a slide, create code. (15:53) " So, they're different. We're we're talking about AEO. When someone goes to a website and says, "What is the best >> solution for this problem I have?" That is AEO. That's what we're optimizing for. There were seven vendors on G2 in April of 2025. Mhm. >> By October there were 150. Talk about a market exploding, right? And so what's the importance of being a leader, right? How do you separate yourself when there's so much competition? And it's really gotten so much easier to enter a market. Like it's it's a great time to (16:22) be an entrepreneur um and a startup, but like the markets are crowded. So you really and they don't want to they don't aren't thinking, oh, I need to build my brand, right? We we talk about founder brand and that's part of it, but you also need to associate your product >> with the problems your buyers are having and and my recommendation here super tact tactically is who is your buyer and who is your user and really understanding those two pillars. (16:52) Sometimes they're the same, sometimes they're different. >> And for those two, not the 10, pick the two or the one if you can. most important really understanding the their jobs to be done and build an agent of that persona that is your representation of your customer. And you can do this in a way that's like not just a persona, but it's it's always on. (17:16) It's always listening and learning. It's an agent. And so it's it's out there continuing to look at what's happening in communities, who are the influencers, what are the conversations that are being had, and that then informs your content strategy for what you should be creating, publishing, and where you should be showing up at these events, talking to these influencers, understanding who who are the who and what are the citation sources that are answering the questions of the personas you're trying to reach. (17:46) And that's kind of like top of the funnel activity in my mind. >> Um, and AEO is a big part of that because you need AEO in order to be able to understand what are the questions that are being asked and what are those citation sources and and where am I showing up and and this is truly why G2 is having this renaissance right now because LLMs love user generated content. (18:09) >> Yeah, >> G2 is a trusted and verified authority. Um, we syndicate our reviews everywhere. So we when they're looking for consensus, they see those reviews in all these different places and um and so that's you know it's a big part of the equation and getting ensuring where you where your customers are going and making sure you're showing up there. (18:29) >> When you say build an agent for your user and your buyer that >> your persona user where do you do that? Is that a clay table? Is that a >> uh >> we were doing it in GPT um and and Gemini. So we first built our personas in Gemini and then we're moving to GPT. I'm actually >> feed them. Hey, here's customer interviews. (18:54) >> Yes. Yes. >> They're synthe synthetic um evidence I think. >> Evanza. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they're a little bit on the pricier side, but um you know, how how do you kind of replicate that on your own? And and it's like >> you know, you can do it. you can you can build something and then you test all your content against it too. (19:15) Like I'm like nothing gets published unless the persona gives it the thumb, you know, our agent persona gives it the thumbs up. You name them like you would your personas in the past. Um and I I think that's a a a starting point for it. It's because you're not just creating your content for your solution. You're creating your content for all the jobs to be done. (19:38) So that's part of the brand building. Mhm. >> Because you want to be the answer for every question they have, not just the question about the problem you solve. That's the difference. >> I think people are getting around to brand matters. Um, but obviously it's kind of like not everyone can have a brand, right? Only one or two or three pe companies can have the number one slot in that category. (20:04) So, it's very competitive. People's attention is limited. What are the things that you see in 2026 in terms of channels, campaigns, ideas, tactics, what what is working in 2026 to build brand and actually stand out when everyone tries to stand out. >> Yeah. I would say that in my last three tours as CMO when when we've been building our plan being the leader has always been our number one objective right I want to I want to showcase leadership for our company in the markets we want to own and if those are established then great um and if they're (20:48) not then we have to establish them which is harder but also great >> and so let's say that um like in my case when I was working at a company held alresco, >> you know, there was this enterprise content management category had been around for 25 years and we were selling to enterprises. (21:06) And so the strategy then which would still is still what I recommend today is like if if you're in an existing category, which incumbent are you going to displace? Not all 10 of them, right? Not all 10 leaders. Pick one >> and be the best at displacing that incumbent. Like go steal their market share. make it easiest to switch. (21:26) Create all your case studies and customer stories of why people went from that product to your product to get the momentum going. Then then you can go after more competitors in that leadership space if you want. But I think keeping that the the the focus narrow so you're known for something like even in the legal category, right? Like they've exploded in AI >> and so you know what what are you displacing if it's an existing category? If not, like if you're an AI first startup, like creating a new category, you know, then then the strategy always (21:59) ran, which is why I was at G2, is like how do I establish the category? How do I get users talking about it? You know, and and you know, the the playbook for leadership on G2 is very clear. You you generate reviews. You do it consistently. The best way to get that done is to put the review capture in your product. (22:22) Only 5% of companies do this. They're fearful that product product team is too busy. I'm like, go talk to your head of product. Let me talk to your CEO. If leaders, if being a leader is the most important thing for your company, which it should be, that shows product market fit and your users are getting value and they're taking enough time to put that out on a public forum. That is gold. (22:43) And then you get to mine that those reviews and everything to then repurpose. But but that's how that's how you establish leadership in emerging categories. And I don't know if I knew another way I'd tell you. That is the way that I did it at Salesoft. I did it at Drada. Um you know we were in highly competitive fast growing hyperrowth emerging categories and our goal was to be the top leader there. (23:08) There's another piece on the G2 um uh model that's really important that is the best of it just closed. It's it's an annual report and that's the LLM actually go to the best of list before they come to G2. found out from our product teams. >> And so being, you know, a top 100, if you're on the cloud 100 or if you're on G2's best of list, again, that's what the LLMs are going to look for is like, well, let me, you know, you say, I want the best of, they go to the sources that are the best of and and so those are important. Um, and so, you know, (23:40) building your brand in these areas that get cited is is is the 2026 playbook. and and I do an hourlong session with companies and I'm happy if you have a listener that wants to do it have them DM me like you know I I love doing it because it's a brand plus AEO strategy and and those two things go hand in hand >> now I think at scale ventures you work with a lot of early stage startups and and founder and you advise them now early stage startups they obviously have very limited resources so they c can only do one or two or three things (24:15) besides It's hey get every single person who's using your product to write a review and put and put that up on G2 so that the LLMs can find it. What do you find yourself most often advising in terms of first go to market steps post on LinkedIn host events you know buy a booth at a conference like where do you see still some edge? >> Yeah. (24:43) Um good founder branding and it takes an investment on the founder. they have to put time aside. Founder brand is still a a very viable strategy. Found a brand on LinkedIn or X depending on what kind of product you have. If you're AI, then you're X first, right? If you're go to market, then you're LinkedIn first. >> Um and um and so taking the time to do that, what whatever model works best for for that founder. (25:09) If they need a a partner in crime to like help co-create and publish, that's great. um if if they set aside time on their own um and just really understanding LinkedIn the algorithm and and and how that works. I think that that's number one usually. And then this the second um is uh and I got this advice, you know, everything we learn we learn from sharing. (25:32) And so I I got this advice from two CMOs that I really respected when I was going into the security market. I'd never I'd never done security before. And so I talked to the former CMO of Octa. I talked to the CMO at Sneak and you know I was like how how did you guys do it? >> And they said show up bigger than you are >> and so you know I'm a big fan of being bold. (25:56) You know don't show up at 15 events in the small booth in the back corner because that's all you could afford, right? >> Pick one and just own it, right? Go all in. like you if your goal is and this was my goal at Drada is like I want to be the company they're talking about when they're getting back on the plane leaving like you know who did who really stood out and so how do I take my you know limited funds and like try and and and a lot of times doing it with partners is a really good avenue too if you have other partners you can do that (26:25) 1 plus 1 equals 5 like pull it together where you know you're solving a problem together um but like you know find that event I was talking to somebody uh last week who was like, "We market to CIOS in these different industries." And I'm like, "Well, where is the place that most CIS go? CIOS go. (26:43) " Maybe it's the Gartner CIO Summit. It's still a really strong one, right? If you're in security, they're going to RSA, they're going to Black Hat. Like, find that show and then have that be your anchor event for the year. Go to the other shows as an attendee. Walk the floor, hand out cards, right? learn there. (27:02) Go to the the sessions, but find that one event that you're like, that is going to be my launch event. That's where I'm going big and for whatever budget you have, like your goal is to be remembered, >> right? And and and I I see actually, this is just just a comment on my side, those two combining. What I see a lot of people do is let's say you you do something like buy a billboard in Times Square or buy a bill billboard on some roadside in San Francisco or um you're featured in I don't know Techrunch, is that itself still worth the money that (27:39) you pay for it if you're an early stage startup? Maybe not. But if you then create content around that and you take pictures and then you have your founder post on LinkedIn how they're standing in front of that billboard in Time Square. Now that LinkedIn post might get 100,000 impressions just because it's cool and that makes the whole investment worth it and it makes you feel seem bigger than you are. (28:02) >> That is exactly it. That is exactly it. and fun funny um that that was when I was at sales loft our first time we bought a billboard on the 101 >> uh which is the the road between San Jose and San Francisco uh and was um it was all our G2 badges funny enough like we did one that we tried to be creative that was my fault and then we just put G2 badges on it took that picture same thing like it had hundreds of thousands of views um and so you you nailed it right like if it's not just a one and done. It's that if that is your big (28:36) investment. Hey, we're gonna we're gonna get a really good provocative I mean Vanta did this. >> This was Vanta's win and they're still milking that win. They did one billboard during SAS that said uh com what was it? Sock uh compliance that doesn't suck too much. >> I remember I remember I was working at Salesoft. (29:02) I took a picture of it and sent it to my head of security cuz I laughed, >> right? >> And it was such a great slogan. I mean, it was and and like there there's >> now you might actually post it on >> years later. Yeah, totally. Like and and I did that for Snowflake uh for Denise. Like she's got a billboard and I used went and used her agency because it was just such creative copywriting and she's she's kept that billboard for 10 years. (29:25) It is the snowflake billboard there, you know, and they keep, you know, that it's just great copywriting. So, you can't buy the billboard and put something blah on there. You ha, it has to be memorable. Um, and so that that, you know, that is a a I still think a viable strategy if you know your customers are there. (29:48) So, same thing. If if if you can't afford the big booth um at the big event, can you afford a provocative billboard somewhere between the airport and the venue? Um and and get creative there and then do, you know, like have people not don't hide. Oh, this is my least favorite thing. Sorry, I'm going to rant for a second, Finn. (30:07) >> I love it. But when you hire these like companies that like wear your t-shirts and walk around at Dreamforce like but all they do is like sit down and you know it's the worst branding is that right like you h it has to be you and your company and like get your STRs dressed up you know let them go pitch be creative um and and so it still needs to be connected to to you um if you're going to be doing kind of those stunt tactics um uh to to build to build the brand. (30:39) >> A lot of this these things come down to taste and creativity. I think Tom Wentworth CMO incident said marketing success or something like that is AI skill times taste squared. Um how do you how do you hire for taste? How do you develop taste? What is taste? Do you have any thoughts on that? So my colleague Tim Sanders, I love Tom, but my colleague Tim Sanders um also has a point of view on this that I have uh adopted which is called the Rick Rubin economy. (31:18) And so Rick Rubin is this famous producer who doesn't know how to play music, you know, never doesn't have an instrument or anything like that. He just has good taste. Yeah. >> And so, you know, that's a that's a unique thing to try and hire for. Um, and I think that's the difference where you hear today people like, "Oh, AI can do that. (31:37) You can just hire young people." I'm like, "No, you need experience. You need people with context." Um, so they do have that good taste and judgment that they can bring to the table. Maybe it's a fractional if you can't afford like an experienced CMO at your earlier stages. Um but but they have that context so they do know what will work and what won't work or or you find those influencers and I'm a big fan of like early stage build that core group of advisors give them advisor shares those are your your favorite customers your solid users maybe some of (32:14) your influencers and how do you bring them together >> to be an adviser an advisory group for you um they have taste they know what resonates and That's not something I don't think you can do like AI prompting. I think it has to be a conversation like what do you think about this? What do you think about that? What how does it make you feel? That's what brand is, right? Does it make you laugh? Does it make you think? Does it make you cry? Whatever you're going for. (32:39) Um >> and so I think you know >> that judgment and taste I'm 100% aligned with Tom on. Um because that's the creativity >> Yeah. that AI cannot deliver >> right do you have any favorite examples and you cannot mention G2 of can be early stage or late stage companies who are in your opinion in this new world doing a really really great job building their brand >> yeah I mean I think that's how Clay became Clay >> they this was what two years ago Finn if you can remember I'd never heard of them and they'd been around for like eight (33:16) years >> and they went and hired hired every single influencer. I think I I I thought it was just like five and then I learned later like no they hired like 70. Um and you know anybody that they could hire they did and they all were talking about clay. I'm like what what is this? I see it everywhere. Right. (33:35) And um and I think they nailed it right they got the right people who had built trust in the community to start talking about them and then the product delivered. >> Both those things have to be true. >> Yeah. Uh, which is why I think that advisory group is so important. They need to tell you you're you're ready to go, right? If you don't have a hundred customers or 20 customers that that you're ready to go, like is it the right time to like go all in on that or not is a question I would ask a a founder. (34:04) Like what is the right amount of customers using the product to get product market fit? So you you do do the brand investment in the big way like are you ready? like if you were to if all of a sudden we do this and a hundred customers come to us next quarter, can we handle it, right? >> Um and um and so you know that's a good question to ask like and and there many times too where it's not uncommon for the board to say if you're like in a hyperrowth company like I've been in you know if I was my least favorite question (34:34) if I were to give you a a million dollars what would you do with it? Mhm. >> And it's like it's like, well, if the product market fit is not there yet, if I haven't proven that I actually have an engine that can handle it, I don't want it. And I've actually said that before. They're like, they had money. (34:50) We'll give it to you. And I'm like, I I don't want it. We're not ready. I need to know that I can predictably scale my inbound motion and that the reps can handle all the leads that are going to come if we're going to spend a million dollars. I'll tell you when I'm ready, which I did at Salesoft and we did. We did a giant rebrand and we invested a million dollars in ads and we like quadrupled our our our lead flow, but we were ready for it, >> right? >> Um, and so that those two things have to be true. (35:17) >> Yeah. I guess the the the the problem with taste is also that you not only need to have to have it, you then also need a company that actually allows people to run with their ideas, right? >> Because part of what makes it taste it's not perfectly attributable. It's not perfectly provable that this will 100% result in something. (35:42) And it feels to me that a lot of the companies like Clay, to me, Post Hawk comes to mind, which is more in the developer space. They just have fun when they market. Like they >> lovable. We could use lovable too, right? >> My friend Carrie Lou advised for them and I talked to her and she's like, you know, they owned X. (36:01) They hired the influencers to build lovable apps and talk about it. The guy was on the the cover of Forbes and that wasn't the biggest thing, right? The biggest thing was the buzz that was happening in the community. >> Um and that was what was important to them. And like I love their hackathon ideas, giving away the product for a weekend and a weekend. (36:20) >> Yeah. >> Who does that? Yeah. >> Right. That's total brand play. Get your hands on the product and you'll love it. Great brand, too, right? Um, and and so you're 100% correct in that we don't really know, I'm going to say it right, the CMOs, we don't really know how to justify the investment in brand because it's not attributable. (36:40) That's our problem. Mhm. >> And and and all we're being asked to do is deliver pipeline. And we how you show well this investment that I'm going to make in brand today is going to help us a year from now capture more market at a lower price, >> right? >> And and so, you know, it's it's really hard to do if you if you've if you have a a partner in your CRO that's been from a big brand company, like maybe they can help. The same thing with the CFO. (37:11) Um, but that's not how we're being measured. And so it's hard, >> right? >> And you can start with founder branding. The other thing I do is I make sure that the board and the Calele suite is on all my brand campaigns, right? We put a we put a billboard outside the CEO's window at Salesoft. (37:32) He loved it, right? It was in his back. You know, the power of that was like, okay, now we're going to do more, you know, and and there was no way that we were going to let our competitor go by that billboard because it became part of like the recruiting process, too. Like, oh, they have a billboard. They must be a big company. (37:44) You know, we were trying to hire as fast as we could. Um, >> but making sure like for me it's only been three people need to tell that CEO that they saw the billboard and and and even if you manufacture it like you know I I think doing it at a where you're at an event and a lot of people are going to see it is great because then they're like oh I saw your billboard or I saw your billboard like at Drada we we took over uh like the >> two square blocks from Moscone every single kiosk had a draw a draa ad on it. (38:16) We did a whole buyout of that area. There was no way you could get to Mosone without seeing Drada, you know, and then they just had to say like, "Oh my god, I see you everywhere." That's brand. >> Yeah. Yeah. Now, this is going to apply more to the bigger companies like G2 and Sales Loft. (38:34) How do you see AI changing the marketing or >> um I think there's two camps. There's the evolution. Um and so I think not I think what what is discussed in my c circles is last year was really about getting people comfortable with prompting teaching people you know how to use AI in their day-to-day work >> and and experimenting with tools and the year we're going into now is okay we're not we're done experimenting called it the playground and now how do we get to the playbook what is our build or buy strate strategy where and in partnership with revops I think (39:14) revops has to lead it >> um and I think there's a role called everybody's talking about the go to market engineer I think there's actually a role called the go to market architect >> think you need to architect it before you engineer it just like any product >> so the architect needs to say here's here's our our you know our strategy here's the types of tools we'll use this is how we make the decision if we use an agent from an existing platform or if we buy uh a a bespoke agent builder category or if we build it using GPT or (39:47) whatever platform they've chosen like that's the role of the architect and then the engineer builds it and manages it right um and so those are the decisions that need to be made now >> I think like the picking your platform of choice going all in putting your list of of your you know top 15 20 um workflows that you want to identify and I think that's the phase we're in now. (40:11) Yes, early adopters are already passed it, but for the majority, this is the stage of that we're in right now. And so I I think you start first there. Um looking at those workflows across the go to market and within your teams and so early adopters like the content teams, they're, you know, they're building things out. (40:30) They've been tools for a long time like Jasper and Writer have been around forever. Um and so really identifying where those are at. So that is that is the evolution. the more common and maybe there's a few roles like we talked about the go to market engineer I think the role of the product marketer is changing quite a bit so rewriting those roles um because of how they can use AI and their research and strategic thinking um and then I have a little bit more of a radical idea >> which is redesigning for outcomes and merging the teams we already see it (41:04) there's a lot of companies where the CRO is promoted to the president marketing tucks into them go CO kind of is already there. Why are we not rearchitecting our gotom market teams around outcomes? There is one team that is all about awareness and I want to take them all the way to meeting. Maybe this is the new marketing or right where we combine thought leadership, the influencer, all of that. (41:30) But we make them own all the way to the meeting. It doesn't switch between thought leadership and demand capture. Demand genet and demand capture are not two different teams. or one team. And so it's this mix of digital and content and thought leadership and like that piece of it. The second piece of it I think is relationship and this is where the humans come in and it's not just to the win. (41:56) It's the entire journey of the customer. This team owns the customer relationship, the personas maybe even they are your customers, right? Like if you you hire people and their their job is to really make that meaningful connection with the human as they come into engaging with your company, whether they're customers or not. (42:18) >> That's what they own. They own that community of personas. And um and so it could be a mix of the SDR team, customer marketing, maybe a little bit of education. >> That's you know, and they develop programs that are holistic because the content is the same. You're educating, you're building relationships and educating regardless of what stage the customer is at. (42:39) You're educating them on why they should buy once they buy. So it's it's very I think user centric as well. >> Um and so they they own that holistic engagement and they're they're gold on things like the amount of engagement, the number of of personas per account, uh especially on their strategic ones, how many how engaged are they? And so they're constantly looking for ways and programs to keep those people and users connected with your company and your product. (43:10) And then the last one is I call product love. And it's it's inspired out of PLG. It's probably where product marketing fits but very close to to even if you're doing an e-commerce or like the product teams and it's more about the in thinking about marketing from the inproduct experience. Why not have that always? I a very often I hear founders go I want PLG and go up market and see and I laugh. (43:38) I'm like those are two different things two completely different motions you know what is PLG you know can they onboard is it viral all these things but there is value in saying I want to build the onboarding experience of my product so well that they don't have to talk to a human in order to be able to use it and get value. Okay, I'll take that. (43:58) And if it's enterprise or developer, those are all great things. Um, but that is really thinking holistically about the product experience and how you discover and uncover those value points, how people learn about new innovations that you're doing. And so, you know, how what is the strategy around making sure that the users love your product and are getting value? And and I think that's like a great partnership between the product teams and marketing. (44:28) >> On the first approach, the the less radical approach you talked about the GTM architect, are you literally suggesting companies should hire GTM architects? Should it be the CMO who takes on that role? Should it be the head of RevOps who takes on that role? Where would they sit >> in the >> um Yeah. (44:52) So, um I I think this could be one of two areas depending on the size of the company as well. Um the role of the AI architect, >> GTM architect. So, it could be either one. >> If it's an AI architect, they're actually sitting in it. >> Um and they're looking at that holistically for the company. >> So, that could be in a smaller company, there's like what is our AI strategy holistically for the company? and and then the the go to market engineer could sit in revops and dotted line to the IT architect. (45:21) If you're big enough then you could have a go-to market architect you know so it depends on how you know if your go to market team has 50 to 100 products like it's worth it's worth having an AI architect to like really understand all those products what capabil agentic capabilities they have how do those fit in to your strategy and what are those most um important workflows to automate and then assigning the engineers which are within each of the different teams so I see the engineers being within marketing within sales within SDR, all those they they (45:53) have that >> um that dotted line >> up to the architect that is still keeping >> control, right? Because all this experimentation is just creating chaos. >> Yeah. >> And so you need to bring control back. By the way, that's how it used to work. it owned all technology, all those decisions and we had an IT person that was designated to our teams that represented marketing in the IT organization and that's who we worked through to get the stuff built that we needed to get built. (46:26) So, it's a little bit of a nod back to the past. Now, if you could call yourself up the night before you took your first legit Seale CMO role, which I guess was also um what advice would you give yourself? >> Uh the advice that I would give myself and that I now give people is to spend the most time with your peers in a seauite. (46:54) >> Get to know them first and deeply. Um, don't overindex on going in all your attention on marketing, fixing all the things that need to be done. Your most important relationships are your peers and let your let your leaders know that like, hey, I'm going to go invest here because by having those relationships and clarity with my peers, I'm going to be able to help us run marketing even more efficiently. (47:22) when those things are disconnected and I've made that mistake then and you're just like running down the marketing path, you're not doing it in conjunction with the rest of the company and you you need to be a leader first. You need to understand what it is to be a sea level executive. (47:39) Um if you can get a coach, get a coach if it's your first time. If you um if it is your first time, I also like and people are going for their first time CM like I want to be a CMO. I say lean into an industry you already know >> because then you've got the market experience and intelligence and you're learning more about being a an executive than you are about learning your market. (47:58) And by the way, the best marketers are market leaders, not marketing. >> To be strategic, you really need to know and understand the market and your customer and the role that you play in their life. And so that's that's super helpful to come be able to come into the seauite with the market expertise and that that positioning where you can talk confidently to analysts and and know that the the content that you're generating like you know that makes it a lot easier and that that made it easy for me at Alresco because I had been in (48:31) the collaboration and content space for so many years that I that I that I could come in confidently talking about the product, the market and the role we played. >> Love it. Now, as the last question, I want to come back to a way earlier thread that I noted down that's been just nagging in my head. (48:51) You mentioned that one of the things you see changing that's new in marketing is that marketers should own the entire customer journey. I think you said >> where today do you see the biggest gaps where we're where we should be focusing on that we're completely neglecting or just disproportionately neglecting anything come to mind there >> I think it's hard right I I when I was this is back in 2020 2008 like we were talking about customer experience at Adobe and CX has become a thing and that was you know even before the chief (49:29) customer officer and it's varied at the different companies companies that I've worked with or worked at where you know who owns the customer experience is it the chief customer officer is it marketing is it you know who somebody's got to take ownership and when you don't you see the broken >> sure >> the broken customer path and and we don't look holistically we don't think customer first we're talking about all this AI and what can it do for us and like we're here we're back to internal speak how do we run this process how (49:58) like how can AI best serve our customers should be the question and what can we build that makes it easier for prospects and customers to get value in working with us should be the question. >> And so um you know I I think always starting there maybe revisiting that because the buyer >> the buyers have changed the buyer journey has changed the their expectations have changed and so if you haven't gone back and updated your customer journey it's a great time to do that. (50:29) Um, and then figuring out what workflows and processes do we want to automate for each stage of that customer journey to really own that moment of truth. These are all jargon terms in customer journey mapping. Um, to own that moment of truth where we can truly delight the customer. What is the one thing that they're looking for at that stage that we can do better than anybody else? and and what in and how do we map that across everything and and bring the teams together, which is why I like the the bold idea of the new go to market org structure. Um be because the (51:01) ownership of the customer is shared in a different way versus this team versus that team. Now it's like holistically. Um so I I don't know. I think it's easier to do if you're a small company than than a big company. The radical change is as they're building out their teams. Um so I'm curious to see. (51:19) I love it. That's a great note to end on. And if want people want to obviously check you out, want to check out G2 Scale Venture Partners, uh all of those things will be in the show notes below. And Sydney, thank you so much for taking the time. >> Thanks, Finn. It was really enjoyable. I do a lot of these. (51:36) I really, really enjoyed our conversation. >> Thank you. All right. This podcast is brought to you by Project 33. Project 33 is the leading executive thought leadership agency for LinkedIn. If you're looking to activate your founder, your CEO, your executives, or any of your internal subject matter experts and create thought leadership content for them to build trust and credibility for your brand, reach out at project33.io.