CXO Roundtable — Leveraging Agents to Align Your GTM Teams With Your Buyer

510
01:31:44.540 –> 01:32:04.200
Julia Nimchinski: Glad to host you, and welcome to the show, one and only Seth Barr, so excited to host you, our favorite analyst, peeling from Forrester, now CSO at Sendler, and he will lead today’s panel. It’s been a year that we are waiting for this moment, Seth. Welcome to the show.

511
01:32:04.610 –> 01:32:11.880
SethMarrs: Yeah, thank you. Finally be able to come back after a hiatus. So, thanks for the opportunity. Really been looking forward to this.

512
01:32:12.500 –> 01:32:14.220
SethMarrs: So I’m ready to jump in?

513
01:32:14.360 –> 01:32:15.000
Julia Nimchinski: Yep.

514
01:32:15.860 –> 01:32:23.970
SethMarrs: All right, okay, so the… the… when we look at buyers today, and, and, like, when…

515
01:32:24.010 –> 01:32:37.329
SethMarrs: Julia, when we were talking about this, the area that I’m focusing on heavily, even though I’m on the sales side, the marketing and customer success elements are really one of the biggest challenges, to be able to effectively

516
01:32:37.470 –> 01:32:49.730
SethMarrs: help buyers and engage buyers in a way that gives you a chance to actually win. And in a lot of cases, you see companies that are doing things that are more around the, how do I put people together, or how do I make you…

517
01:32:49.960 –> 01:33:03.930
SethMarrs: work together so you’re friends, or that you’re happy with each other, and the reality is, is a lot of this is… I would argue, almost all of this is your technology and data infrastructure. It’s just not set up to make it happen.

518
01:33:04.270 –> 01:33:20.349
SethMarrs: And one of the big questions that came up when we talked about doing this was just, how do companies take all the interactions, all the engagements that are happening with a buyer, through a buying process, all the different buying group members, all the different revenue members, selling group members.

519
01:33:20.510 –> 01:33:25.299
SethMarrs: And then pull those together and be able to work to maximize your chances of winning.

520
01:33:25.660 –> 01:33:40.119
SethMarrs: nobody can really do that right now, and actually no person can really do it, and the… the thing that’s gonna make it happen is really agents, and that’s what I get the good fortune of discussing today with this distinguished panel.

521
01:33:40.240 –> 01:33:47.740
SethMarrs: Before we jump in, I want to do just a quick round of introductions for the group, so if I could have… if I could have each of you just…

522
01:33:47.910 –> 01:33:54.940
SethMarrs: Say, 30 seconds, who you are, where you work, and what you do, that would be great, and then we’ll jump in.

523
01:33:56.330 –> 01:33:58.340
SethMarrs: So, I’ll start with… with Alex.

524
01:33:58.690 –> 01:34:13.059
Alex Gay: All right, I’ll jump in. Thanks, Seth. Great to see everyone. I’m Alaska, I lead marketing at Grammarly. I’ve been with Grammarly for the last 8 months, was previously with, with Adobe, running their Document Cloud business, and excited to be here.

525
01:34:13.970 –> 01:34:15.620
SethMarrs: Alright, Gonzales.

526
01:34:16.100 –> 01:34:18.190
SethMarrs: Gillette, did I pronounce that right?

527
01:34:18.650 –> 01:34:20.090
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Jolly. Yeah.

528
01:34:20.090 –> 01:34:21.400
SethMarrs: Hi. Bye.

529
01:34:21.620 –> 01:34:30.810
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Hi, I’m Jale Rezai. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Mutiny. We help companies break into their target accounts with personalized marketing.

530
01:34:31.800 –> 01:34:33.060
SethMarrs: Fantastic.

531
01:34:33.350 –> 01:34:34.150
SethMarrs: Breathe.

532
01:34:34.570 –> 01:34:35.770
SethMarrs: And then Jordan.

533
01:34:36.990 –> 01:34:48.599
Jordan Greaser: I’m Jordan, I’m the owner of Agreedzer Consulting. I’ve been in the sales execution, sales engagement space for a decade now, which always blows me away to say anymore.

534
01:34:48.640 –> 01:34:57.830
Jordan Greaser: We specifically work with, like, sales tools, sales technology, sales engagement, sales execution for the implementation, optimization.

535
01:34:57.860 –> 01:35:09.189
Jordan Greaser: strategy related to it. And we work with clients, big, small, and everything in between. Basically, if it sells execution, that’s our world.

536
01:35:10.460 –> 01:35:12.790
SethMarrs: Awesome. Okay, so…

537
01:35:13.010 –> 01:35:24.369
SethMarrs: Each panelist has kind of a unique experience on Grow2Market, so I’m going to start things off by just doing a specific question for each of you, and Jordan, I’m going to start with you.

538
01:35:24.670 –> 01:35:27.859
SethMarrs: You’re an expert in making outreach work for companies.

539
01:35:28.060 –> 01:35:33.710
SethMarrs: Can you talk a little bit around how outreach is using agents to improve revenue outcomes for their customers?

540
01:35:34.210 –> 01:35:41.040
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, which, you know, I just gave the decade comment. I remember when I first started in the outreach space.

541
01:35:41.130 –> 01:35:52.790
Jordan Greaser: there was this tool that could put a couple emails together in, like, in some series of events, and wow, this thing’s amazing! And it just blows my mind, today.

542
01:35:52.790 –> 01:36:04.939
Jordan Greaser: with all the AI that’s integrated. I mean, you have, like, assist-related features, things that are gonna surface when a deal’s going sideways, what your next step needs to be, here’s what you should say on a call.

543
01:36:04.940 –> 01:36:23.940
Jordan Greaser: all the way up to, hey, here’s a batch of accounts that it finds for you, it gets prospects for you, it sends messaging for you, it curates the messaging for you. So yeah, it’s just… it’s been a dramatic change, and then certainly accelerated over the last year versus what

544
01:36:23.940 –> 01:36:29.589
Jordan Greaser: All things the reps had to find, to now what just sort of happens automatically and efficiently.

545
01:36:30.130 –> 01:36:36.019
SethMarrs: This isn’t your, your modern, your old-school 10-step sequence anymore, is it?

546
01:36:36.020 –> 01:36:46.559
Jordan Greaser: No, I mean, there’s all kind of amazing things going on, and it’s been a… I mean, I just… I look at this stuff now, and I think about 10 years ago, whenever I was an SDR, and I’m like, I can’t…

547
01:36:46.720 –> 01:36:55.940
Jordan Greaser: let alone finding information, now what to do with it, and now it does it for you, it’s… it’s a little bit wild for me to… to even stop and think about.

548
01:36:55.940 –> 01:36:58.170
SethMarrs: That’s fantastic, fantastic.

549
01:36:58.380 –> 01:37:14.059
SethMarrs: All right, Jelly, I… I’ve been waiting to ask you this question. So a while back, you posted that ABM is like teenage sex of the last decade. Everyone’s talking about it, you are actually doing it, and nobody’s good at it.

550
01:37:14.220 –> 01:37:27.710
SethMarrs: This is a fantastic quote, it’s one that I’d agree with. Can you talk a little bit more around how agents can solve this? And also, if you’ve seen any progress on ABM understanding since you made that post? Because I think that was early in the year, right?

551
01:37:30.800 –> 01:37:36.169
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): one of my spicier, spicier LinkedIn hot takes.

552
01:37:36.610 –> 01:37:54.580
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): What I was really referring to there is that if you think about the promise of ABM, what companies want when they implement ABM is for marketing to be in the trenches with the sales team, focused on breaking into every single account, and fundamentally, that is

553
01:37:54.580 –> 01:38:09.769
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): has not been possible before AI and agents. There is at least 10 times as many sellers as there’s marketers. Marketing has to work in a scaled way. They can’t just go super deep on every account and execute at that local level.

554
01:38:09.770 –> 01:38:24.059
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): But with agents, you change the game, right? It’s not just about targeting accounts with, you know, with an ad. You can now… marketers can now access all of the call contacts that a rep has, instead of

555
01:38:24.060 –> 01:38:39.670
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): begging reps for context on what happened, what are this account’s pain points, where are they in the process. Agents can now access that context automatically, and they can access it across accounts as well. And then they can translate all of that

556
01:38:39.670 –> 01:38:48.429
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): You know, research and knowledge into really personalized one-to-one marketing, all within minutes, as opposed to a world where those types of things took

557
01:38:48.430 –> 01:38:57.780
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): you know, took months to create. So on average, that type of one-to-one ABM, requires one marketer for every 10 accounts.

558
01:38:57.780 –> 01:39:11.100
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Now, with agents, you can do this at at least 100x that, that volume and velocity. So I think we’re at the beginning of really being able to see marketing go into the trenches at the account level with sellers.

559
01:39:11.730 –> 01:39:24.540
SethMarrs: So, in working alongside agents, you actually can be… because that was always one of the challenges, right? And I’d have conversations on the sales side. It’s like, how marketing can’t really work with you, because there’s one of them and 200 of you, like, but…

560
01:39:24.660 –> 01:39:33.610
SethMarrs: Setting up and structuring it with agents would enable that to allow that one marketer to handle those 200 sellers and be able to work with them all the way through the pipeline.

561
01:39:34.080 –> 01:39:34.640
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Exactly.

562
01:39:34.640 –> 01:39:35.190
SethMarrs: So…

563
01:39:36.670 –> 01:39:49.430
SethMarrs: Right, Alex, so you come from a really strong marketing background, currently at Grammarly, you did work… you worked at Adobe for many years. How are you seeing agents helping to break through and better align with sales?

564
01:39:50.100 –> 01:39:58.940
Alex Gay: And actually, I’m a seller by origin, so I kind of took the sales path to marketing, so all of this feels very, very real.

565
01:39:58.940 –> 01:39:59.440
SethMarrs: with.

566
01:39:59.750 –> 01:40:03.830
Alex Gay: What’s wrong with me? Yeah, I wanted to help at scale. So…

567
01:40:03.830 –> 01:40:04.220
SethMarrs: Wow.

568
01:40:05.040 –> 01:40:16.210
Alex Gay: But no, it’s a hugely exciting time. Like, where we’ve started to see the opportunity of not just agents, but a lot of the AI platforming that we’re bringing in.

569
01:40:16.260 –> 01:40:17.920
Alex Gay: It’s really just about

570
01:40:17.920 –> 01:40:42.639
Alex Gay: being able to understand the customer at a much deeper level. So, you know, both at Adobe and Grammarly, we brought in really strong propensity models where we could look at, you know, every signal that was available to us to try and understand, really, at as granular a level as possible, what people really cared about. And so that was incredible intelligence to be able to have across the customer base to enable SDRs to target better.

571
01:40:42.640 –> 01:40:49.820
Alex Gay: To enable sellers to focus conversations better, to enable marketing, to, to, to target better, too.

572
01:40:49.960 –> 01:41:14.350
Alex Gay: But actioning against that is where it starts to become challenging, and, you know, we were just touching on it before, but now being able to feed all of those insights into agents to be able to create dynamic content that the seller knows is going to be valuable to that particular customer, really focused, really personalized, really anchored to what we understand.

573
01:41:14.350 –> 01:41:39.260
Alex Gay: going to accelerate the sales process significantly. So I think for… so that’s been a real opportunity that we’ve seen on personalizing all the content that we have to the individual. But I think more broadly, when I think about the pulls on a seller’s time, agents have this opportunity to accelerate a lot of the preparation to set sellers up for success.

574
01:41:39.260 –> 01:41:47.680
Alex Gay: think about, you know, you wake up in the morning, and you’ve got a list of customers that you’re trying to connect with over the course of the day, some briefings attached to it.

575
01:41:48.170 –> 01:42:00.560
Alex Gay: Agents are set up to be able to set you up for success, where they can understand everything about the prior conversations that you’ve had, dynamically create customer briefing documents for you.

576
01:42:00.560 –> 01:42:23.590
Alex Gay: create the presentations that you’ll need, that are anchored to, what you understand already, and what you know will provide value from what we have to present, and accelerate that path that a seller’s had to having a really high-impact conversation. So those are some of the ways that we’re starting to see the technology permeate into the sales process right now, and I still think we’re just scratching the surface.

577
01:42:24.150 –> 01:42:38.749
SethMarrs: Really interesting. I mean, what I was thinking of when you were talking about that is, is it kind of lets a marketer do what they need to do, lets a seller do what they need to do, and the agents are removing the frequent… the friction between how they would work together to do it.

578
01:42:38.960 –> 01:43:03.150
Alex Gay: I think I would look at it, I’d flip it around a little bit, which is, like, we are able to action much better on what a customer needs from us. So, through all of the channels that we have, we can understand that customer, that customer’s pain point much, much better. And through, then, sales, through marketing, through every customer, even CX, through all of these touchpoints.

579
01:43:03.180 –> 01:43:20.129
Alex Gay: be able to personalize the communication that we’re having with that customer based on what they care about. So I think it’s a bit about how all of the signals that we get from the customer can get translated into the work that we do, and get really focused into what they care about the most.

580
01:43:20.350 –> 01:43:25.510
SethMarrs: Yeah, so beyond just, here’s the standard pitch deck, it’s here’s the pitch deck that’s perfect for you.

581
01:43:25.510 –> 01:43:30.450
Alex Gay: For you, as an individual, with this pain point at this organization, yeah.

582
01:43:30.900 –> 01:43:33.320
SethMarrs: Yeah, that’s exciting. Super exciting.

583
01:43:33.590 –> 01:43:42.940
SethMarrs: Okay, so now let’s go into some just defined questions, and I’m gonna back up a little bit, just because what I’ve seen with a lot of people is when you say agent.

584
01:43:43.350 –> 01:44:04.690
SethMarrs: That means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I want to run through this fairly quickly, but just… can you guys give the context of when you def… of how you define an agent? 30 seconds, this is what my definition of an agent… because I’ve heard anything from an agent runs my entire business to an agent is a single-task automation tool, so it’d be good to have the context, so when we go into some of the deeper questions.

585
01:44:04.780 –> 01:44:06.409
SethMarrs: We know where you guys stand.

586
01:44:08.110 –> 01:44:08.900
SethMarrs: So…

587
01:44:09.230 –> 01:44:11.350
Alex Gay: Well, I’ll give it a snap first, if that’s alright.

588
01:44:11.730 –> 01:44:12.279
SethMarrs: Yeah, yeah.

589
01:44:12.280 –> 01:44:20.600
Alex Gay: So I… so for me, an agent has to, know what you need it to know to get your work done.

590
01:44:20.700 –> 01:44:32.770
Alex Gay: It has to be there, where you need it, to be able to take action. It needs to be proactive and boundaryless, so it can’t be restricted to just a single platform.

591
01:44:33.410 –> 01:44:42.460
Alex Gay: that, for me, are kind of three fundamental pieces, I think, that don’t fall into some of those categories. I think has started to become an assistant versus an agent.

592
01:44:42.870 –> 01:44:46.709
SethMarrs: So, your version and how you think about it is pretty mature.

593
01:44:47.520 –> 01:44:54.389
Alex Gay: Yeah, I think it has to be connected to data, it has to be integrated, and it has to be, borderless.

594
01:44:55.380 –> 01:44:56.720
SethMarrs: Got it, okay.

595
01:44:57.530 –> 01:44:58.960
SethMarrs: Jordan, how about you?

596
01:44:59.790 –> 01:45:17.829
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, I’m not sure if I’m so much of a stickler on it’s not, you know, dependent on one platform or not, but for me, it’s basically, can it make decisions on its own? So anytime we’re in a situation where it serves up information, but then we kind of say, go, don’t go, change this.

597
01:45:18.080 –> 01:45:28.670
Jordan Greaser: I think that’s what a lot of people say is an agentic AI, but that’s like an assistant. Agentic AI, to me, is you tell it what you need, and it doesn’t.

598
01:45:29.000 –> 01:45:34.340
Jordan Greaser: and you’re sort of out of the equation. You could monitor it, you can stop it if you need to, we hope.

599
01:45:34.340 –> 01:45:39.429
SethMarrs: Right? But the point is, it can make those decisions for you and act on it.

600
01:45:40.770 –> 01:45:41.570
SethMarrs: Okay.

601
01:45:42.090 –> 01:45:43.220
SethMarrs: How about you, Jolly?

602
01:45:43.980 –> 01:46:07.519
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): I agree with, with these definitions, but maybe a slightly different way of looking at it is, I think we are temporarily using the word agents a lot to delineate between old AI and new AI. And the way I describe old AI is kind of this micro-tasking, right? You have one very small task, you write a really good prompt, and AI does that.

603
01:46:07.640 –> 01:46:31.529
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): And you just kind of do that hundreds of times. Whereas with agents, you can operate at a higher abstraction layer, describing an outcome, you know, like Jordan and Alex mentioned, and then the AI will execute a multi-step process for you to be able to get that done, and it can reflect and optimize and all of those things that you would expect from a system that’s operating at a higher abstraction layer.

604
01:46:32.280 –> 01:46:33.960
SethMarrs: Great, that’s a great perspective.

605
01:46:34.230 –> 01:46:34.780
SethMarrs: Okay, I’m gonna.

606
01:46:34.780 –> 01:46:35.290
Alex Gay: Mimic it.

607
01:46:35.290 –> 01:46:36.559
SethMarrs: Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

608
01:46:36.560 –> 01:47:01.539
Alex Gay: I was gonna say, like, it’s really hard for teams just now, because I think there are, like, as every application that you’re working within is bringing agentic value to it, like, the burden that’s put on teams to understand, like, number one, how to use each of the individual agents within those applications, understands how those agents can work together. Like, there was an MIT

609
01:47:01.540 –> 01:47:18.679
Alex Gay: study just a couple of weeks ago that talked about the frequency with which GenAI applications and integrations are failing, and it’s in large part because we’re putting so much cognitive weight on team members to understand how to use all of these capabilities, because I think, like, in my mind, as

610
01:47:18.680 –> 01:47:23.610
Alex Gay: platforms are bringing agentic value to the market. They really need to think about, how do I

611
01:47:23.610 –> 01:47:39.090
Alex Gay: simplify as much as possible the user experience to be able to drive simple adoption of the tools and be able to get value fast. And like that, I think, is the fundamental challenge that we’ve got on driving the right adoption of agents across teams at the moment.

612
01:47:39.790 –> 01:47:49.860
SethMarrs: I mean, the thing that I see working with clients around that is, like, there’s two things, right? What’s the best? Because every single customer, every single customer will have 8 or 9

613
01:47:49.860 –> 01:48:02.810
SethMarrs: Like, if you want a tool to write an email for you, or to help you work through things, there’s tons of opportunities, so it’s which is the best one to use, and then the counterbalance to that is what’s the best in the flow of work.

614
01:48:02.820 –> 01:48:11.260
SethMarrs: And trying to figure that… you’re putting a lot of pressure on people to figure that stuff out that have never had to deal with that stuff before, so it’s so true.

615
01:48:11.340 –> 01:48:26.930
Jordan Greaser: So, yeah, just to jump in, and a little bit light-hearted here, but I was working with a team that, oh my goodness, the amount of information that they could gather via AI and just give a brief, I mean, it was just astronomical. It was amazing.

616
01:48:26.980 –> 01:48:31.599
Jordan Greaser: But they could get it for each account, which started to become a problem.

617
01:48:31.650 –> 01:48:43.909
Jordan Greaser: Because it’s like you need a Neuralink in order to process the information in a meaningful way, and to know what to do with it. So just sort of piggybacking on Alex here is like, we can get all this information now.

618
01:48:43.910 –> 01:48:52.040
Jordan Greaser: But now that’s becoming a problem, right? It’s like, I can’t process fast enough to keep up with it. Maybe you all can, but I’m not there yet, right?

619
01:48:52.550 –> 01:48:58.050
SethMarrs: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a different type of world, right? Different… you have to look at things a little bit differently, so… so true.

620
01:48:59.230 –> 01:49:03.779
SethMarrs: Jolly, I’m gonna go back to you, just onto the next question that we have.

621
01:49:04.030 –> 01:49:16.650
SethMarrs: what do you… because all of you guys have seen things differently. I’d be interested in what the coolest use case that you’ve seen so far, one that you’re… that you really think is valuable that people should take a look at or experiment with.

622
01:49:17.460 –> 01:49:19.090
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Yeah,

623
01:49:19.220 –> 01:49:39.939
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): I mean, inside of our organization, we… we take a lot of lessons from coding tools. I think they tend to be at the leading edge, developers building for themselves, right? And there’s just a lot of things in code that lends itself really well to agentic development, so Cloud Code is the one that we use here a lot.

624
01:49:39.940 –> 01:49:43.559
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): You know, with our own product, we’ve done

625
01:49:43.560 –> 01:49:49.670
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): We’ve moved pretty aggressively into… into Agentic, right? So, like, if you…

626
01:49:49.670 –> 01:50:06.449
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): look at old versions of Mutiny, you could create a full campaign, but you would write prompts for change this headline, you know, create this ad, you know, make all of these changes. Now, the stuff that we are kind of working on and shipping now is

627
01:50:06.470 –> 01:50:26.170
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): you can work with an agent to create an entire campaign for you based on a core concept that you have for that campaign, from the landing page, to the ad, to all of the assets, to the brief, to the distribution. So it’s, it’s getting really exciting. I think, we’re just at the beginning with agents,

628
01:50:26.170 –> 01:50:49.919
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): there’s… I look at every agent that comes out and go-to-market. I haven’t seen a lot. There’s a couple that we are right now evaluating on the sales side. There’s one called Momentum that looks pretty… pretty interesting and compelling. But I don’t think that there is really big deployments of agents, or that there’s been a lot of clear winners, but they are starting to pop up

629
01:50:49.920 –> 01:50:59.949
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): you know, every… every week. So, I think the next 6 months is going to be all about finding really good agents that can execute at a much broader scope.

630
01:51:00.900 –> 01:51:11.310
SethMarrs: Yeah, you kind of look back, and it doesn’t… it’s changed a lot, just in the last year. A lot of what we’re doing today, we weren’t even thinking about a year ago. It’s fascinating.

631
01:51:12.170 –> 01:51:12.780
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Yeah.

632
01:51:13.100 –> 01:51:15.369
SethMarrs: Jordan, for you, what’s the…

633
01:51:15.500 –> 01:51:22.529
SethMarrs: What’s the biggest use case that… that… or the use case that you think is most viable right now?

634
01:51:22.530 –> 01:51:31.400
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, I’m gonna go sideways on this answer. Believe it or not, I actually think the ability for each team member

635
01:51:31.420 –> 01:51:36.009
Jordan Greaser: to have some type of version of access to AI, even just to talk to.

636
01:51:36.020 –> 01:51:50.359
Jordan Greaser: in their day-to-day has been massive. And so, what I don’t mean by that, I know there’s a lot of go-to-market tools, and that’s the focus of this whole conference, and I think that’s fantastic. To Jelay’s point, I mean, I think right now there’s still a lot of hype.

637
01:51:50.360 –> 01:52:05.429
Jordan Greaser: And we’re still trying to figure out exact deliverability, but what’s amazing to me is I can have an entire team where I give them Grok or OpenAI or something to just kind of beat on, and the solutions that they come up with

638
01:52:05.620 –> 01:52:17.180
Jordan Greaser: like, on their own has actually been incredibly fascinating. I mean, we’ve had some guys do, like, AI songs that actually worked with prospects. I mean.

639
01:52:17.180 –> 01:52:37.150
Jordan Greaser: It’s a simple thing, but that was something that, you know, instead of them spending hours trying to come up with something, they could type something in, put it out, and it actually worked. Folks that are thinking through, well, what should this pitch deck be like, and I’m a horrible graphic designer, and them just to be able to go in, give some ideas, and it does something beautiful for them.

640
01:52:37.150 –> 01:52:38.870
Jordan Greaser: And so, you know…

641
01:52:39.130 –> 01:52:46.759
Jordan Greaser: Believe it or not, to me, the most fascinating thing with all of this is actually the creativity that it’s unlocked for people.

642
01:52:46.830 –> 01:52:58.859
Jordan Greaser: Sort of independently. Now, to be clear, I know there’s gonna be, and there are enterprise-grade solutions that are fascinating and great, but I’ve loved seeing my own team

643
01:52:58.860 –> 01:53:08.489
Jordan Greaser: like, use different things, unlock their creativity, just in the day-to-day, and how that has sped them up. So, a little bit more of a decentralized answer.

644
01:53:08.670 –> 01:53:10.979
SethMarrs: Like a thought partner that you’d have with you.

645
01:53:10.980 –> 01:53:11.890
Jordan Greaser: Exactly.

646
01:53:12.070 –> 01:53:17.069
SethMarrs: I can’t wait to get my BDR email with a song in it. It’s… it’s coming, isn’t it?

647
01:53:17.070 –> 01:53:18.930
Jordan Greaser: Well, probably, just wait.

648
01:53:18.930 –> 01:53:25.529
SethMarrs: Cool. Alright, Alex, to you. What’s your, your, the coolest use case you’ve seen?

649
01:53:26.080 –> 01:53:37.900
Alex Gay: Well, I think, so there, there’s one which I think is most prevalent, and there’s one which I most acutely feel. The most prevalent one, like, we’re seeing, obviously, the rapid adoption of people

650
01:53:37.900 –> 01:54:02.650
Alex Gay: leveraging, meeting assistance. I think that’s been the primary, adopted use case, certainly for us, and I think more broadly. But I’m… I’m excited for when that transitions from not just transcription, but to action-taking. So, I, you know, we’re starting to see some of that lean in, but, like, it should absolutely be the case that your meeting agent is, is taking the appropriate actions, from the meeting as well to help speed you up.

651
01:54:02.960 –> 01:54:24.999
Alex Gay: But I think, for me personally, one of the things that I, love, and I’m sure there are many people who can, who can sympathize with this, I wake up in the morning, and I’ve got a bunch of slacks, a bunch of emails, that, like, I start my day, by just checking all the communication that happened overnight, and I, bringing in an agent

652
01:54:25.100 –> 01:54:48.930
Alex Gay: we ended up… we purchased, Superhuman, the platform, which, like, was this great unlock for me personally, where all of the emails I get overnight can now be, categorized and auto, like, responses drafted for me, so instead of having to go one by one, I can know, like, there’s actually three things I should care about that came in last night. And here’s, an auto…

653
01:54:48.930 –> 01:54:56.000
Alex Gay: drafted response, and my tone of voice that I can then just, like, send off. Like, for me, that’s just shaved off

654
01:54:56.010 –> 01:55:05.889
Alex Gay: like, 30 minutes of my morning routine that I can now just focus on making sure my kids get to school on time. And so, like, personally, that’s my massive unlock.

655
01:55:06.770 –> 01:55:24.179
SethMarrs: That… it’s so interesting the way you guys… the way you guys talk to it. So we’ve got an agent that could work with you to do a job, right? Creating a campaign and seeing that all the way through, and then you guys both talked about one on the far end of how do I become a thought partner, and then one on the other end on how do I become more efficient.

656
01:55:24.690 –> 01:55:28.219
SethMarrs: Wow, the span on this thing is kind of… kind of big, isn’t it?

657
01:55:29.190 –> 01:55:54.189
Alex Gay: It’s interesting hearing, Jordan. Actually, my team right now is running a hackathon, which has traditionally just been the product and engineering teams, but we started building out a bunch of marketing issues that we have, that our product and engineering teams are helping kind of lean in on, and look at ways that we can build our buy-in tooling to help us look at ways to accelerate our processes.

658
01:55:54.190 –> 01:56:04.820
Alex Gay: even further. So I think it’s a great way of… Jordan, you talked about the experimentation that the teams can have, and I think you can architect those opportunities for the teams to just go away and try and figure out some problems to see what’s out there.

659
01:56:05.940 –> 01:56:17.630
SethMarrs: Interesting. Great. Okay, so we just got through talking about some of the really crazy things that you can do with AI, so I’m going to move us on to the next question, and it’s somewhat related, and…

660
01:56:18.050 –> 01:56:30.660
SethMarrs: in that, like, because of these use cases being so big, it’s really hard to sift through things. So, with all these claims, all these different things that are being pushed at go-to-market leaders.

661
01:56:31.230 –> 01:56:43.810
SethMarrs: what guidance would you give to help a buyer who’s looking to purchase this stuff sift through all of this and find a solution that could actually add… add value to them? And, Jordan, I’ll start with you.

662
01:56:45.170 –> 01:56:54.359
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, I’ll say two things. The first thing that runs through my mind all the time is, just because I could, doesn’t mean I should.

663
01:56:54.360 –> 01:56:56.240
SethMarrs: So…

664
01:56:56.990 –> 01:57:00.859
Jordan Greaser: I’m not gonna name names or anything like that, but you’ve seen, like.

665
01:57:01.060 –> 01:57:19.900
Jordan Greaser: post about the AI SDR, and I’m sure that, like, some of them are starting to figure it out, but you’ve also heard of teams that turn it on and turned it off immediately thereafter. Like, I think they’ll figure it out, by the way. I think they’ll get there. But, like, just because you could, doesn’t mean you should. So I could turn on my entire…

666
01:57:19.910 –> 01:57:28.229
Jordan Greaser: database, and probably in about 2 weeks, I could reach it. I could hit all the touchpoints. I might even have my biggest 2 months ever!

667
01:57:28.320 –> 01:57:30.129
Jordan Greaser: But then what happens after that?

668
01:57:30.380 –> 01:57:34.890
Jordan Greaser: Right? Is there anything left? Is there any more juice in that squeeze?

669
01:57:34.950 –> 01:57:51.619
Jordan Greaser: So that’s just, like, a fundamental question to ask of what’s the downstream effect, what’s the long term? I know this will speed me up, I know it’ll make me more efficient, but in 6 months, what’s it mean that I just did this? In 12 months, what does it mean that I just did this?

670
01:57:51.620 –> 01:58:00.290
Jordan Greaser: So that’s a big question. And then, I mean, obviously, and I’ll just call this out, I’m incredibly biased on this one. We do implementations, managed services.

671
01:58:00.300 –> 01:58:11.549
Jordan Greaser: But the fact that this is what I eat, sleep, and breathe every day tells me that when teams say, just turn it on and go! Whoa! Especially when you’re dealing with things this powerful.

672
01:58:11.690 –> 01:58:29.380
Jordan Greaser: I would absolutely want to ask the question every single time, what’s it take to set this up well, intelligently? What’s the time span? What’s the work involved? There’s still going to be a human in there somewhere that’s thinking about how we turn this thing on well.

673
01:58:29.380 –> 01:58:32.899
Jordan Greaser: So, in terms of, like, where do you start, again.

674
01:58:32.900 –> 01:58:47.540
Jordan Greaser: what’s it look like 6 to 12 months later? Just because I could doesn’t mean I should. And also, what’s it look like to get this set up? Are the fundamental questions that I’m asking every single time before you even tell me how great this thing is.

675
01:58:48.340 –> 01:59:02.460
SethMarrs: Gotcha, so practically looking at where it’s going to go, not today, tomorrow, don’t make a knee-jerk reaction. Get rid of all your BDR. It’s always funny to see the notice around, I’ve gotten rid of all the BDRs, and then 3 or… a month or two later, you see job postings for that same.

676
01:59:02.460 –> 01:59:08.329
Jordan Greaser: Very quietly. Very quietly. We’re hiring and expanding in Austin!

677
01:59:08.330 –> 01:59:12.919
SethMarrs: We renamed them. They’re, Sales Associate something or others.

678
01:59:12.920 –> 01:59:15.799
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, AI intelligent workers, you know?

679
01:59:15.800 –> 01:59:16.640
SethMarrs: Other… there you go.

680
01:59:16.640 –> 01:59:17.510
Jordan Greaser: There you go.

681
01:59:17.510 –> 01:59:26.419
SethMarrs: Makes sense, yeah, focus on that, the long-term piece. All right, Alex, how about you? What advice would you give to someone that’s trying to navigate to the right solution?

682
01:59:26.800 –> 01:59:30.509
Alex Gay: I love Jordan’s advice. I, I…

683
01:59:30.510 –> 01:59:53.880
Alex Gay: I think coming back to that point of why a lot of the AI implementations fail, I think really understanding what’s the change management that is going to be required for this to be successful. So, as you’re bringing in tooling, how do I make sure that teams are set up for success? Like, how much of a transition is it from the way that they’re working today, from the way that they’ll work tomorrow?

684
01:59:53.880 –> 01:59:59.639
Alex Gay: And how comfortable are you going to make that, that journey for them? Like, I…

685
01:59:59.640 –> 02:00:22.419
Alex Gay: even from the early days of Copilot being deployed, I think still people didn’t really understand how their work was going to change, and it was only when you started looking at Copilot coming where the work was happening. So again, meeting assistant being their number one use case is because it’s right there. It’s doing it for you, proactively. So I would start… I would really think about that experience side of things. How can you make

686
02:00:22.420 –> 02:00:30.310
Alex Gay: that tooling, integrate into the way that people are working to today? Because that’ll drive your adoption, your comfort level, and

687
02:00:30.580 –> 02:00:50.319
Alex Gay: people are in this early stage right now of trust on having the AI tooling do the work on their behalf, and that trust is going to rapidly grow as people kind of see it within the flow of the work that they’re doing, when it feels like an extension of them and their work. So.

688
02:00:50.740 –> 02:01:04.749
Alex Gay: I would just anchor on that, like, that experience, the change management that is going to be required of the user, and just make sure that you’re being realistic in your expectation of the teams, and giving them the fastest path to value.

689
02:01:05.220 –> 02:01:12.979
SethMarrs: Yeah, so it’s… if you have an expectation you’re just gonna buy it, turn it on, and it’s gonna work for you, that’s probably a bad… and that’s been brought up a couple times.

690
02:01:12.980 –> 02:01:13.430
Alex Gay: Yeah.

691
02:01:13.700 –> 02:01:18.880
SethMarrs: by the solution, you have to understand what you want it to do, and then.

692
02:01:18.880 –> 02:01:19.480
Alex Gay: Yeah.

693
02:01:19.480 –> 02:01:21.589
SethMarrs: implement it. There’s still people involved.

694
02:01:22.320 –> 02:01:23.260
SethMarrs: Alright.

695
02:01:23.490 –> 02:01:25.199
SethMarrs: Delay, how about you?

696
02:01:26.390 –> 02:01:42.600
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): So when I used to lead go-to-market teams before starting Mutiny, my advice on buying software to my team was always make sure that we understand the problem that it is solving for us, and that that problem is a Tier 1 problem.

697
02:01:42.600 –> 02:02:07.479
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): I think with AI, it’s extra tricky, because you… it’s an emergent technology, you learn what it can do through experimenting with it, so it’s extra hard, and I do think it’s important that people are open-minded, they’re out there, they’re exploring, they’re learning, but then I would say have a pretty strict regimen of coming back and making sure that you can attach it to a

698
02:02:08.150 –> 02:02:18.629
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): a top priority for you. An exercise that I do with my team is, you know, let’s say you own Pipeline, whatever your goal is, I would ask yourself, how can we 3X that?

699
02:02:18.630 –> 02:02:35.460
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): And then from there, what is the set of problems? Stack rank them. If… if this particular AI or product doesn’t solve your top three, you probably… this is not the time to invest in it, and instead, you should go look for things that can help with those top three problems.

700
02:02:36.730 –> 02:03:00.709
SethMarrs: That… I mean, yeah, the Tier 1 piece is the one that stood out to me. Don’t just go try to look for this for… to solve any problem, look for the biggest problem that it can solve, the one that it can make the biggest difference. And you see that missed a lot, because you… I mean, if you’re buying it to try to create emails for you, if you’re buying it to try… those are not Tier 1 problems. You’ve got to under… that makes… makes a ton of sense.

701
02:03:01.810 –> 02:03:09.910
SethMarrs: All right, so let’s… let’s move to the next one, and Alex, I’m going to start with you, because you kind of started down the change management track.

702
02:03:10.160 –> 02:03:30.099
SethMarrs: Can you talk through some of the best practices that companies… that you’ve been a part of, that you’ve seen, are going through to handle that change management? Because it isn’t as simple as, like, we talked about earlier, I’m going to take a BDR out, and I’m going to put an agent in, and job done, they’ll just do… they’ll do that work. It isn’t how things are today.

703
02:03:30.100 –> 02:03:55.070
Alex Gay: Yeah, yeah, I think you’ve got to map out, like, the full workflow, of this. How are things going to work from a people and an application standpoint, to get to that right level of outcome? You’ve got to have your internal champions that are helping drive the change for you. It can’t be mandated. So, the example of the AI SDRs, like, transparently.

704
02:03:55.070 –> 02:04:16.050
Alex Gay: we’re bringing some of that right now, not as a replacement, but as a complement. We see the opportunity where we’re getting a ton of signals that are coming in, but we see AI SDRs as being able to drive engagement with prospects to the point where they’re nurtured sufficiently that an SDR will have a really valuable… a human SDR will have a really valuable conversation.

705
02:04:17.030 –> 02:04:39.019
Alex Gay: But that took us partnering with the SDR team to really figure out, like, what are the challenges that you have just now, and how could some of this tooling help you? So they championed the use, which was tremendous. You know, they didn’t see this as job replacement, they saw it as job enhancement. And as such, that’s going to be setting us up for success on driving that change.

706
02:04:39.020 –> 02:04:42.080
Alex Gay: So, I… I think,

707
02:04:42.080 –> 02:04:54.340
Alex Gay: understand the workflow, find your champions to be able to help scale it, and then just set realistic expectations. Like, there’s an interesting framing that was in a Microsoft study about the

708
02:04:54.340 –> 02:05:17.959
Alex Gay: the difference between expectations of executives bringing in AI for the impact it’s going to have, and then the, how realistic the employees think they are going to be able to achieve that, that improvement. There’s a massive disconnect, that happens right now. So, I think be, be realistic in the expectations that you have, and test, learn, in the same way that you build products, like, test, learn, iterate.

709
02:05:17.960 –> 02:05:19.230
Alex Gay: And get better.

710
02:05:19.800 –> 02:05:38.870
SethMarrs: Yeah, I mean, that foundational stuff hasn’t really changed, has it? Like, that’s just kind of the way these products still work. Now, they go faster and can do different things, but yeah, the foundations are there. It’s interesting, because I think, like, we’ve talked a few different times around BDRs and eliminating BDRs, and I think it sounds like everyone is kind of of a similar opinion. That’s not a good idea.

711
02:05:39.100 –> 02:05:54.530
SethMarrs: But, being able to implement AI to help do research for a BDR? Hugely valuable. To do top-of-funnel, customized email, huge, like, there’s tons of value within the workflow to be able to do it, so… and you should implement there, but not as a replacement.

712
02:05:55.360 –> 02:06:09.800
Alex Gay: Yeah, one thing that I like to remind people of is look at AI not as a cost saving, but as an outcome driver. So think about the output that you’re getting and how that’s going to grow versus the cost saving that AI will drive, because I think

713
02:06:09.800 –> 02:06:19.880
Alex Gay: That’s ultimately what’ll drive you to make the right decisions for implementation. I think using it as just a pure cost-saving measure, you’re chasing the wrong objective, in my mind.

714
02:06:20.270 –> 02:06:21.500
SethMarrs: Great advice.

715
02:06:22.230 –> 02:06:23.980
SethMarrs: Jalay, how about, how about you?

716
02:06:25.090 –> 02:06:37.689
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): I really like the point Jordan made, a little while ago around enabling creativity, and speed in… in go-to-market organizations, and I think,

717
02:06:38.380 –> 02:06:44.509
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): one of the really exciting things about AI right now is that,

718
02:06:44.860 –> 02:06:57.269
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): It can solve one of the biggest challenges in go-to-market, which is essentially that you have lots of people, everyone’s siloed, everyone can do 10% of a job, and then it takes months and 10 handoffs.

719
02:06:57.270 –> 02:07:15.920
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): And the promise of AI is that every individual can now operate in a much more full-stack way, because, agents have a wide range of skills, and they can access a wide range of contexts, which, you know, if you’re working with AI, you can then be a lot more powerful and get a lot more done a lot faster.

720
02:07:15.920 –> 02:07:18.349
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): And… and I think that…

721
02:07:18.350 –> 02:07:41.920
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): we need to design the organization to be able to actually take advantage of that promise. I was talking with an enterprise team a couple weeks ago, where, you know, the head of the team was like, we don’t need any more approvals and handoffs, just go, you know, and then there’s the teams doing the work, like, well, we, you know, we had all of these checkpoints and all of these approval points.

722
02:07:41.920 –> 02:07:49.029
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): And we need to make sure product marketing does this, and we need to make sure every single asset, you know, sales reviews it, and design reviews it.

723
02:07:49.130 –> 02:08:04.219
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): And I think neither of those two ends is good for an org, and I think a lot of those traditional workflows are being challenged with AI, where if you insert all of those checkpoints, that doesn’t make any sense.

724
02:08:04.220 –> 02:08:12.430
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): So a lot of what I see, what I see things evolving to is upfront, when you invest in a product.

725
02:08:12.430 –> 02:08:22.409
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): you bring in the right stakeholders, and you make sure that you inject the right organizational knowledge and guardrails into the product, and really good AI products

726
02:08:22.410 –> 02:08:45.609
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): You know, to Alex’s point around, like, making sure that, you know, that the setup is right, allow you to do that. You can… you can set your brand, you can create a bunch of guardrails that is approved by that wider range of team, which then allows you to be able to move at the speed of your ideas and not have to go through all of those workflows and approvals.

727
02:08:46.720 –> 02:08:59.519
SethMarrs: I think you bring up a really good point around this, because that… the reason those checkpoints and all that stuff are in place is because you’re trying to maintain a brand. Like, there’s a… it’s not like people made those up just for fun, like, those are in place for real reasons.

728
02:08:59.520 –> 02:09:19.449
SethMarrs: And if I think I understand it right, what you’re saying is, like, in a lot of respects, those agents and AI can be the checkpoints that free up friction and allow for alignment without all the hard work of, let me make sure I take you through X, Y, and Z. I just put that in place, and it runs through it and does those checkpoints for me without the friction

729
02:09:20.690 –> 02:09:21.900
SethMarrs: Very interesting.

730
02:09:22.100 –> 02:09:22.920
SethMarrs: Right?

731
02:09:23.260 –> 02:09:24.719
SethMarrs: Jordan, how about you?

732
02:09:25.410 –> 02:09:31.689
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, two comments on this, and I’m gonna be just really tactical on the first part,

733
02:09:31.920 –> 02:09:42.240
Jordan Greaser: To me, the great irony of all adoption is that it typically lays with your most junior managers, and those are your frontline managers.

734
02:09:42.500 –> 02:10:02.370
Jordan Greaser: We forget. Your frontline manager is the person who’s talking to the reps that this is happening to. Whether gleefully or not, it’s your frontline manager that’s gonna handle the conversation, that they’re gonna take the intake of whether someone likes it, doesn’t like it, this is different, this is odd.

735
02:10:02.530 –> 02:10:04.429
Jordan Greaser: And, I mean.

736
02:10:04.480 –> 02:10:20.490
Jordan Greaser: I’ve… we’ve done, at this point, I think, thousands of implementations, and it’s usually a surprise for the frontline manager to be like, wait a minute, why am I here? Like, because they don’t usually get involved. It usually just happens to them, and then they handle the damage control.

737
02:10:20.490 –> 02:10:29.779
Jordan Greaser: And so I think that probably the most pragmatic and practical way to have a good change management of anything

738
02:10:29.830 –> 02:10:33.800
Jordan Greaser: Is to go and enable your frontline managers first.

739
02:10:33.820 –> 02:10:52.889
Jordan Greaser: Get them ready. Let them know what conversations are coming. Help them understand the why, and the how, and what we’re planning to do, and equip that frontline manager to go, sort of, with the reps along for the journey. And again, like I said, the great irony is the folks that sort of

740
02:10:53.060 –> 02:11:05.019
Jordan Greaser: cause a good change or not are usually your most junior people, which are usually your frontline managers. So, that’s my first piece, engage the frontline manager. And second.

741
02:11:05.220 –> 02:11:07.360
Jordan Greaser: Really simple. Don’t lie.

742
02:11:07.430 –> 02:11:25.660
Jordan Greaser: Listen, AI, we don’t all know what exactly is happening, okay? The whole conversation of, hey, this is coming in, but don’t worry, don’t whatever, you gotta let people know your job’s gonna shift a little bit, at a minimum. You used to do this, you’re probably not gonna do this anymore.

743
02:11:25.800 –> 02:11:42.390
Jordan Greaser: But, as an organization, I think we do have a duty to not just be like, oh, we have AI, now it replaces something, see you later. How do we steward our people really well, and how do we make sure we help them in this transition and actually do something meaningful for their next step?

744
02:11:42.390 –> 02:11:53.250
Jordan Greaser: And so, when I say don’t lie, I’m not saying, don’t lie, you know it’s gonna take your job. I am saying, though, if you know that’s coming, don’t lie, and help equip your team for the next thing.

745
02:11:53.250 –> 02:11:55.629
Jordan Greaser: But I do think…

746
02:11:55.750 –> 02:12:01.969
Jordan Greaser: even though that is the grid, like, the big fear, I do think, I think as Alex and Jale were saying, that

747
02:12:02.080 –> 02:12:15.379
Jordan Greaser: It’s sort of assisting the human, at least for now, is what I’ve seen as, like, the greatest use case. And so I think that’s how organizations should be gearing it, but not all are, so don’t lie.

748
02:12:16.100 –> 02:12:34.240
SethMarrs: Got it. So, I mean, the thing that was going through my head as you were saying that is, like, you may sell… you may buy the product, or convince your executives to buy the product top-down, because they’re interested in buying it, you sell it top-down, but when you implement, all of that stuff has to come bottoms-up, because it’s going to implement workflow, it’s going to implement how you do things.

749
02:12:34.240 –> 02:12:38.840
SethMarrs: So you’ve got to focus on the people that are doing the work, not on some…

750
02:12:38.840 –> 02:12:42.199
SethMarrs: High-level person coming, putting it in place, and saying, just figure it out.

751
02:12:42.480 –> 02:12:49.040
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, and all that’s, like, all that matters, you know, the checklist, the enablement, the plan, it all matters.

752
02:12:49.270 –> 02:13:05.520
Jordan Greaser: But if you figure that all out, and then you don’t enable your frontline managers for what’s coming, I think you miss the mark. I mean, we did… you asked me an outreach question way earlier. So early on, I was one of the, like, first people trying to figure out how do you train clients on outreach?

753
02:13:05.730 –> 02:13:22.800
Jordan Greaser: And adoption was abysmal at that point, and we couldn’t figure out why. Well, it’s because we were working with the VPs, somebody in enablement, and then we would show up and train. And then the frontline managers were standing there going, well, that doesn’t work, because… well, we can’t do that, because…

754
02:13:22.800 –> 02:13:31.570
Jordan Greaser: Your frontline managers are intimately knowledgeable of what’s going on with your team, their psyche, their mind, but also the workflows and how they’re doing things.

755
02:13:31.600 –> 02:13:40.540
Jordan Greaser: And so, once we caught on to, if you win the frontline manager, you win adoption, that’s when change management got way easier.

756
02:13:41.370 –> 02:13:50.870
SethMarrs: Got it. Great. Okay, so I’m gonna do one more question, and I think we have… we could do a little bit of… of Q&A. So, just…

757
02:13:51.580 –> 02:13:57.359
SethMarrs: as we go through all this, there’s all sorts of stuff happening. There’s tons of opportunity.

758
02:13:57.820 –> 02:13:59.700
SethMarrs: From your guys’ perspective.

759
02:13:59.700 –> 02:14:18.330
SethMarrs: where… where should someone start? And I’m going to do it in a two-step process for you guys. Do you start in sales, marketing, customer success? And if you do, where do you start? What would be… where would you start in that different group? So, which of the three, and then where would you start? So…

760
02:14:19.180 –> 02:14:21.800
Seth Marrs: Jelly, are you okay to start us off?

761
02:14:23.830 –> 02:14:37.609
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): I mean, I don’t know if I would have a wholesale answer as to which department. I would… I would say you want the best overlap of important problem and really effective solution. So, like, for example.

762
02:14:37.850 –> 02:14:45.640
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): in customer service, Finn is an amazing product, for automatically addressing

763
02:14:45.640 –> 02:15:01.909
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): questions and closing out tickets. The performance is fantastic. I really don’t see a reason why you are not investing in that. And then, you know, I think in both sales and marketing, there’s some really amazing use cases, and there’s some really big problems.

764
02:15:01.910 –> 02:15:04.040
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): So…

765
02:15:04.300 –> 02:15:11.479
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): you know, as long as something is a CEO-level problem, I would say go for it. You should invest in it now.

766
02:15:12.100 –> 02:15:19.330
SethMarrs: So you see that there’s enough solutions in each one of those three areas that you can identify the biggest problem and use AI to fix it.

767
02:15:19.510 –> 02:15:21.270
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Yeah, absolutely.

768
02:15:21.640 –> 02:15:22.980
SethMarrs: Graduate. Okay.

769
02:15:24.260 –> 02:15:25.539
SethMarrs: Jordan, how about you?

770
02:15:26.180 –> 02:15:45.889
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, so I’m gonna vomit my mouth a little bit when I say this, because I’m a true sales guy. True sales guy, and I don’t want to cede any control, and it pains me here, but I think it starts with marketing. Just like marketing sort of thinks about the whole customer journey from beginning to end.

771
02:15:46.070 –> 02:15:51.550
Jordan Greaser: And again, I hate to say this, but I think they set the pace for the organization.

772
02:15:51.600 –> 02:16:11.449
Jordan Greaser: Even historically, they’re the ones that have held all the budget. I say that a little bit bitterly, but they do, they hold the budget, and so I think they have to be thinking about this first. Now, what was said earlier, of course, you know, if you have a chatbot or something that you can answer questions easily and it just makes sense, great.

773
02:16:11.690 –> 02:16:20.650
Jordan Greaser: But marketing really does own what’s our brand, what’s our customer voice, like, how do we interact with the market and why.

774
02:16:20.650 –> 02:16:35.080
Jordan Greaser: And so, anything that’s going to be agentic that’s going to touch a customer, I think marketing has to at least be thinking about it, and involved in some type of decision. Again, I don’t like that answer, but I think it’s the right one.

775
02:16:35.559 –> 02:16:44.469
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): To piggyback off of that, I talked to a bunch of CROs, about what are their top problems, and

776
02:16:44.699 –> 02:16:47.479
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): the way I would paraphrase their answer was that

777
02:16:47.729 –> 02:17:04.059
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): in sales, like, okay, my sellers spend 30% of their time selling, 70% of their time prepping for those… for those meetings, and yes, I would like them to be more efficient, but that has a… that has a ceiling on it. The problem… the thing that can help me

778
02:17:04.179 –> 02:17:10.289
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): double my growth rate is all related to pipeline. The more pipeline I have.

779
02:17:10.289 –> 02:17:32.519
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): you know, the faster we can grow and scale, and so anything that can help us, you know, on the marketing side and generate more pipeline for the sales team is ultimately going to be the most important thing for the company to invest in. So yeah, I think if you haven’t figured out the pipeline and you’re not pedal to the metal on how to use agents to be more creative, more efficient.

780
02:17:32.519 –> 02:17:35.919
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): And double your results, that’s probably a good place to start.

781
02:17:36.790 –> 02:17:42.470
SethMarrs: Interesting. Makes… makes sense. Alright, I’m going to temper my response, because I want to hear what Alex has to say.

782
02:17:43.170 –> 02:18:06.750
Alex Gay: I’d actually go back to what Jale said in one of the previous questions, which is, like, what are the top three things that are going to drive your business performance? If you’ve got a CSAT problem that you think improving, that would accelerate your business fastest, that’s where you look to try and solve for. If you’ve got a pipeline problem, that’s where you try and solve for. So, I think just, like, break it down as to, like, where you think the biggest unlock

783
02:18:06.790 –> 02:18:14.919
Alex Gay: from the businesses as a whole, and that’ll guide you to whether that’s a sales, a marketing, a CS, or somewhere else problem.

784
02:18:15.770 –> 02:18:24.080
SethMarrs: Got it. Yeah, it’s interesting. I was waiting for you to take the sales side, because Jordan took the marketing side, and we would have had it all worked out.

785
02:18:24.080 –> 02:18:26.370
Jordan Greaser: I’m still a little bitter. Still a little bitter.

786
02:18:27.799 –> 02:18:41.999
SethMarrs: Me, personally, I think a lot of it has to… I think the opportunity, because one of the core things of Gen AI is the ability to take and find insights from unstructured information, and everything a seller does

787
02:18:41.999 –> 02:18:47.869
SethMarrs: Or the majority of what a seller does is having conversations, so trying to mine insights from unstructured data.

788
02:18:48.699 –> 02:19:04.529
SethMarrs: when I looked at it, that’s a real opportunity that’s never been done before. But I mean, the logic around pipeline, if you get more in, it’s the biggest problem everybody’s trying to solve, right? How do I get more prospects? How do I get more people into the pipeline to win?

789
02:19:04.940 –> 02:19:26.019
Alex Gay: Yeah, I’ll be, like, my, my product marketing team are, really digging into how we can unlock all of the data that comes from the customer conversations, like, how… how can… everything’s in Gong, how can we leverage that at scale and use that for competitive intelligence, product roadmapping, everything? So, we haven’t implemented that yet, but that’s…

790
02:19:26.020 –> 02:19:29.719
Alex Gay: Definitely, gonna help this cycle significantly.

791
02:19:30.080 –> 02:19:34.960
SethMarrs: Yeah, you’re actually gonna know, really, like, honestly, what’s happening with the deal.

792
02:19:35.059 –> 02:19:39.679
SethMarrs: Yeah. Which will also cycle back into helping marketing understand where to invest, right?

793
02:19:39.680 –> 02:19:44.940
Alex Gay: I’m thinking less at the deal level, and I’m thinking in aggregate. Like, what is happening across the hundreds of conversations.

794
02:19:44.940 –> 02:19:45.569
SethMarrs: that are happening.

795
02:19:45.570 –> 02:20:01.990
Alex Gay: every single day, so we can start to identify the themes and the trends that help us get ahead of things from a positioning standpoint, from a competitive standpoint, and really get to those scaled pain points. So that’s, I think, going to be a big unlock for us.

796
02:20:02.010 –> 02:20:18.880
SethMarrs: Fantastic. Cool. All right, so what I want to do now, thank you, thank you all very much for taking the time to do this. What I want to do now is just open it up for questions from the audience, if there are any. I saw one came through, or two came through, so I’ll go through those right now, and I think we have…

797
02:20:18.880 –> 02:20:22.020
SethMarrs: 5 minutes or so to go through that. So…

798
02:20:23.320 –> 02:20:38.459
SethMarrs: here’s the first one that came in. So, can you speak more to how a sales agent can effectively integrate into the sales process? I understand the value of the agent on paper, but integrating into a traditional sales process on a daily basis is challenging.

799
02:20:38.470 –> 02:20:50.690
SethMarrs: This is really a question about change management. So we talked about this, I’m not sure if this came in before we discussed change management, but who wants to take a shot at that? Jordan, this one seems, like, right down your alley.

800
02:20:51.320 –> 02:20:59.170
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, like, in terms of how can it integrate, starting from simple to more complex.

801
02:20:59.330 –> 02:21:05.310
Jordan Greaser: You know, you can be running sales calls today, and you’re on Zoom running calls.

802
02:21:05.310 –> 02:21:21.399
Jordan Greaser: you can bring in some type of conversational intelligence, you know, Kaya or Gong or something like that, and then it can start to tell you, hey, you’re doing this, you’re doing that, change this, say this over. It’s one of the fastest ways, by the way, it’s the most straightforward, simplest ways.

803
02:21:21.400 –> 02:21:40.800
Jordan Greaser: for you to see real effective change for a rep, that they see their talk time difference, they see what they said and what they should have said. There’s an example. There’s now, like, deal health scoring everywhere inside of these platforms, where, instead of you just having your Excel sheet, even though it should be in your CRM, right, of all your different deals.

804
02:21:40.800 –> 02:21:56.920
Jordan Greaser: It’s gonna tell you, hey, this one’s at risk. Like, deals that we typically win, they look like this. We’d tend to send an email shortly after, and then we follow up if we don’t hear in 3 days. This type of information, as Alex said, in the aggregate, you can start to get and then coach your team to.

805
02:21:56.920 –> 02:22:21.530
Jordan Greaser: You can plug in, for example, Explorium into outreach, and then you’ve got this great data to run your agents on. These are the types of accounts I want. It finds them for you. It pulls in contacts for you. Like, you don’t have to have those days where you’re going back and you’re, okay, let me find the persona in this system, and then you do all these, like, fancy search criteria. You can just say, here’s my target, who’s here I win deals with?

806
02:22:21.530 –> 02:22:26.639
Jordan Greaser: go find me more of these people. And as we talked about, you can gate this where

807
02:22:26.640 –> 02:22:36.869
Jordan Greaser: you can just release this thing, and it starts curating content and sending, or you can say, okay, it’s got me the information, now how do I want to work from there? And that’s really…

808
02:22:36.870 –> 02:22:49.419
Jordan Greaser: part of this whole process, even in terms of implementation, is what’s your risk tolerance? Like, are you… are you want to be, like, cutting edge, we’re just going to go for it? Do you want to be measured and have more gates along in the process?

809
02:22:49.420 –> 02:23:02.699
Jordan Greaser: The really simple and short answer, though, is think about everything you’ve done as a seller from, like, a digital standpoint. There’s bits of AI in all these tools that can do those things for you, or help you, or assist you along the way.

810
02:23:03.570 –> 02:23:16.610
SethMarrs: Fantastic, fantastic. Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes back to what you said around, I mean, that approach, you gotta start with the person doing the work, and apply it, and let them help you apply it into their… take all of these different opportunities and apply it in.

811
02:23:16.610 –> 02:23:22.959
Jordan Greaser: Well, I think there was a comment there on change management. Again, get the frontline managers involved, but even more so.

812
02:23:23.140 –> 02:23:40.489
Jordan Greaser: this stuff, as soon as you get success, champion it. Go crazy. Preach it in the streets, scream it from the rooftops. Bobby Joe was successful when he did, Amy Jo was successful when she did, and just let the reps socialize it. I mean.

813
02:23:40.490 –> 02:23:52.069
Jordan Greaser: that’s one of the fastest ways you get buy-in, is just rep socializing what works. Every once in a while, though, you’ll get a couple of dodgy reps that are doing really well, and they won’t dare tell anybody why.

814
02:23:52.450 –> 02:23:53.919
Jordan Greaser: It’s the name of the game.

815
02:23:54.270 –> 02:24:09.130
SethMarrs: Yeah, cool. Alright, so Alex, this one came for you. It said that you mentioned using agents and AI to pull highly specific prospect information, like ICP, sales stage, etc, and the dynamic content for custom sales presentations.

816
02:24:09.450 –> 02:24:26.189
SethMarrs: could you walk us through how this was architected and which tools your teams rely on? Also, how involved is marketing in the orchestrating… in orchestrating this process? At a high level, because I think that’s probably a 20-minute review to do it, but if you could provide, like, a high level of that in a couple minutes.

817
02:24:26.370 –> 02:24:27.870
Alex Gay: Yeah, we were…

818
02:24:27.870 –> 02:24:49.800
Alex Gay: Yeah, we were quite lucky in the sense that, that we were using most of our own stuff for this. So, when we acquired CODA, Coda had a series of data integrations that we were able to leverage, so we were able to plug into Salesforce, outreach, other platforms, to be able to both pull and also inform

819
02:24:49.800 –> 02:25:12.419
Alex Gay: generative AI capabilities. So we brought that in, and then we used the style guides that you have in Grammarly to make sure that everything that was created was based on templates that marketing has created, so everything from voice to the value prop, etc. So, that was really our starting point, for it, is using a lot of what we’d already been

820
02:25:12.420 –> 02:25:26.020
Alex Gay: like, building ourselves, and so, like, happy to go into more detail later, but at the genesis, we thought, well, if we can… if we can benefit from it, maybe we’ve got something we can sell to customers, and thankfully, it works.

821
02:25:26.380 –> 02:25:33.680
SethMarrs: Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, I’m going to do one more, and what I want to do, this is on a scale of 1 to 10.

822
02:25:34.000 –> 02:25:43.369
SethMarrs: So, for each of you, how far do we actually think the AISDR is from being able to pass the Turing test?

823
02:25:43.480 –> 02:25:46.630
SethMarrs: So, touring test meaning you can pass as a person.

824
02:25:48.410 –> 02:25:54.210
SethMarrs: So… delay. How… where do you think… where do you think we are? 1 to 10.

825
02:25:55.350 –> 02:25:58.470
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): I don’t know if Jordan took himself off the mic, I feel like you’re coming.

826
02:25:58.470 –> 02:26:00.380
Jordan Greaser: Oh, no, no, no, you go ahead.

827
02:26:01.540 –> 02:26:10.760
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): You know, I… the thing… so human nature is we evaluate something and we learn from that, right? Like, if we don’t like

828
02:26:10.850 –> 02:26:23.440
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): if something doesn’t have good information, or it’s not useful, we label it as such, and we move on. I think with AI, we have to fundamentally change that, that nature, in ourselves.

829
02:26:23.440 –> 02:26:35.690
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): every 3 months, if you want to be at the leading edge, at the latest, I would say every 6 months, everything needs to be re-evaluated for quality. So yes, I think there was this huge shift towards

830
02:26:35.690 –> 02:26:52.190
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): AI SDRs, and they failed, but I would not be surprised if, with the next big model change and some really smart entrepreneurs that have figured out the right guardrails, you’re going to start to see that work. So,

831
02:26:52.440 –> 02:26:59.500
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): you know, I think we’re very likely to be able to have a lot more automation in SDRs than we do today.

832
02:27:00.050 –> 02:27:02.749
SethMarrs: How would you score it today? 1 to 10.

833
02:27:03.260 –> 02:27:03.850
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Alright.

834
02:27:03.870 –> 02:27:05.409
SethMarrs: Right now, as we stand.

835
02:27:05.810 –> 02:27:10.260
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): as we stand, how… where is it today versus… Yeah, where it can go.

836
02:27:10.260 –> 02:27:12.760
SethMarrs: We all know it, I think we all believe it’ll get there.

837
02:27:12.760 –> 02:27:33.719
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): I would say, I mean, we did extensive testing with this. Today, I would say it’s at a 2. If you look at real automation and being able to replace a human. For the most part, a lot of the stuff that people do is they automate the signals, but not the content that’s being… that’s being written. We’re starting to see a bit more

838
02:27:33.720 –> 02:27:51.300
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): wholesale automation of content without human review, especially as agents are starting to review the content on behalf of the human, but I would still give it a 2 or 3 today. But I would say very likely that that number is going to move up quite rapidly over the course of the next 12 months.

839
02:27:51.560 –> 02:27:53.840
SethMarrs: It’ll never be worse than it is today, right?

840
02:27:53.840 –> 02:27:54.520
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Yes.

841
02:27:55.240 –> 02:27:57.889
SethMarrs: Alright, we got 2 minutes, we got 1 minute left.

842
02:27:58.010 –> 02:28:00.359
SethMarrs: Jordan, how about you? How would you rate it?

843
02:28:01.030 –> 02:28:01.860
Jordan Greaser: Yeah.

844
02:28:02.010 –> 02:28:21.810
Jordan Greaser: I think, you know, somewhere around 4 or 5 is a good answer to me. Shameless plug here, I’ve got an AI interview prep tool that we use, and we’re tricking teenagers. They don’t know that it’s not a person talking to them, but anyone that’s been around the block knows, like, pretty quickly. But to Jelay’s point, like.

845
02:28:21.940 –> 02:28:30.129
Jordan Greaser: It doesn’t matter if it’s a 1 right now, the iteration is so quick, it’s gonna be double whatever it is today, very quickly.

846
02:28:30.460 –> 02:28:32.139
SethMarrs: Yeah. Alex, how about you?

847
02:28:32.290 –> 02:28:39.160
Alex Gay: Yeah, I think it’s… I think it’s early days. I think it’s good assistive technology just now, and it will rapidly become

848
02:28:39.160 –> 02:28:53.859
Alex Gay: as self-sufficient, but, I think then the question is, like, just because it can work autonomously, and, should it, like, how much do you want to invest in the relationships versus the efficiency?

849
02:28:54.310 –> 02:28:55.730
SethMarrs: Alright, where would you rank it?

850
02:28:56.620 –> 02:28:59.680
Alex Gay: I’d say it’s at the low end of the scale just now, 2-3.

851
02:29:00.190 –> 02:29:10.870
SethMarrs: Yeah, I feel the same. Alright, thank you guys very much. Really enjoyed getting the chance to talk to you. I just learned so much on these calls, and I hope the audience did as well.

852
02:29:10.980 –> 02:29:12.800
SethMarrs: Julie, I’ll turn it back to you.

853
02:29:12.800 –> 02:29:20.530
Julia Nimchinski: What an amazing panel. Our, community just started to compile AI songs in the Slack chat.

854
02:29:21.290 –> 02:29:30.760
Julia Nimchinski: as a… to your panel, but thank you again, Alex, Jordan, Angela. Seth, can help but ask you, what kind of M&A are you predicting?

855
02:29:33.600 –> 02:29:34.769
Julia Nimchinski: You’re on mute.

856
02:29:35.670 –> 02:29:37.729
Jordan Greaser: Boy, leave us on the cliff here, Seth.

857
02:29:37.730 –> 02:29:38.380
Julia Nimchinski: Yeah.

858
02:29:38.380 –> 02:29:43.709
SethMarrs: M&A? I mean, aren’t you seeing it all happen? I mean, there’s lots of,

859
02:29:44.420 –> 02:29:54.639
SethMarrs: The stuff I thought would happen, I’m still waiting for enablement and orchestration to come together. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t, except for egos. So… that… that’s one I’m waiting on.

860
02:29:55.740 –> 02:30:01.500
Julia Nimchinski: Cool, and what’s the best way to support you? We’ll just do a quick round and, wrap it up.

861
02:30:01.970 –> 02:30:03.510
Julia Nimchinski: Seth, let’s start with you.

862
02:30:05.430 –> 02:30:13.929
SethMarrs: here to support you. If you ever need anything around… around the work we’re doing at Sandler, around sales, marketing, and customer success, don’t hesitate to hit me up on LinkedIn.

863
02:30:15.020 –> 02:30:15.830
Julia Nimchinski: Alex.

864
02:30:16.750 –> 02:30:29.920
Alex Gay: I think, understanding the problems that you’re facing, so please, like, be open and exploratory in ways that we can try and pull together innovative solutions to help.

865
02:30:30.860 –> 02:30:31.710
Julia Nimchinski: Delay.

866
02:30:32.440 –> 02:30:37.840
Jaleh Rezaei (Mutiny): Check out Mutiny, give us feedback, help us build the future with you.

867
02:30:39.120 –> 02:30:40.080
Julia Nimchinski: Enjoy it.

868
02:30:40.080 –> 02:30:49.700
Jordan Greaser: Yeah, email me at jordan at greaserconsulting.com, or find me on LinkedIn, and let me do all of your services. That would be a great support.