October 7, 2025 • 17 mins
This week's show is entitled, "Building Sales Relationships in the Age of AI" and my guest is Sarika Garg, GM and VP of Product for Commerce Hub at HubSpot.
Tune in to...
- Learn how AI tools can automate repetitive tasks like customer research and proposal creation, giving sellers more time to build relationships and focus on strategy.
- Discover how AI simplifies complex buyer journeys and helps close deals more efficiently through data-driven insights and automation.
- Explore the shift from traditional sales processes to AI-driven systems that enhance productivity, decision-making, and overall sales effectiveness.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Heinz (00:16):
All right.
Welcome to another episodeof Sales Pipeline Radio.
I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
So excited to have you allhere, for another episode as we
record this today, it is now Q4.
There's good news and bad news, Sarika.
The good news is you're back to zero.
The bad news is you're back to zeroand you gotta sort of build from here.
But, we're here to help you.
(00:36):
So, if you are joining us live onSales Pipeline Radio today, if you're
joining us live on LinkedIn or YouTube,thank you so much, for making us part
of your workday and your work week.
If you've got a comment, ifyou've got a question for our
guest, if you've got a rebuttal.
Those are all valid.
You throw those in andwe're gonna see those.
We can respond to those, we canbring those up on screen and, make
you part of the show if you'relistening or watching on demand.
Thank you so much.
(00:57):
Over 250,000 people aredownloading Sales Pipeline Radio.
So, so excited to have you joiningin that group and every episode
past, present, and future availableat Sales Pipeline Radio dot com.
Really excited to have ourguest today, Sarika Garg.
She is the GM at HubSpot.
And, I missed you a couple weeks ago atInbound and I feel really bad about that.
(01:17):
I wasn't there for the entireconference, but boy, there was a buzz
at Moscone Center for a good three days.
Maybe just as we, as we kick off,just talk a little bit about sort
of your reflections on Inbound 25.
Sarika Garg (01:31):
So, Matt, I am so sorry to have missed you too.
Inbound was amazing and it wasamazing for me for two reasons.
One is, it was my first Inbound.
Okay.
So, I can maybe tell youa little bit about that.
And then I'd love to maybereflect on, on Inbound as well.
So it was my first Inboundbecause I actually joined HubSpot
(01:51):
nine months ago through theacquisition of my company Cashflow.
And, and so, in the last 11 months, allwe did was put our heads down and build
a product and launch it at Inbound.
So Inbound was amazing because welaunched a net new product, which is
a CPQ product For HubSpot, it was alsoreally special because, I think it was,
(02:14):
it was really like, you know, HubSpotcoming into its own on the AI story, on
how AI can actually help businesses andhaving products to show that, right?
So there was a smart CRM, whichis sort of like the baseline.
There is a data hub, which allows you tobring all your data in because AI only
(02:35):
works well when it has context and data.
And then all the wonderful, agentsand the AI enabled hubs that we have.
Matt Heinz (02:45):
Yeah, it was
Sarika Garg (02:46):
fabulous.
Matt Heinz (02:47):
You know, and, and another thing I like about, you know, about
Inbound is, you know, there's, there's alot of user conferences that feel like a
product showcase and there was plenty ofHubSpot showcased, but I feel like Inbound
has, has always been and continues to bejust a great event for marketers, right?
Yeah.
Even if you don't, even if you didn'tattend the sessions, the networking,
the quality of the people there, thelearnings that you get in line for
(03:11):
lunch, the learnings you get just waitingto get into a packed breakout room.
I love that.
And so congrats on, on anamazing, on an amazing show.
I wanna talk about relationship buildingand sales relationships in the age
of AI, because I think we're seeinga lot more AI generated messages.
We're seeing a lot more automation.
There's pros and cons to that, but I'mcurious for you, like, how do you define
(03:35):
a real sales relationship in 2025?
Like what are some of the signalsand best practices to make sure
that as we're selling, we'restill bringing the human into it?
Sarika Garg (03:46):
So I think we are gonna see a lot of bad usage of AI, but
actually AI can really make thingsso much better for our relationships.
And specifically, I love the sortof message that we have as HubSpot,
which is, it is all about hybrid teams.
Right?
AI is actually your team memberthat's helping you to become better
(04:09):
and, and so you know, whether it islike helping you to go do research on
a customer or whether it's to reachto, to reach out mass, it actually
should enable you to then free you upfrom all the sort of busy work that.
Both marketers and sellers have to dotoday to actually do meaningful work.
That's what really excites me.
(04:31):
And you know, in the CPQ launch thatwe did, we really focused on that too.
Matt Heinz (04:37):
Yeah, I mean, I think about all the way, all the things that you
have to do as a seller to be successful.
And I think, I can't remember who did ita couple years ago, it might have been
Google, it might have been Salesforce.
Someone did the math and said thetypical seller spends about 25% of
their day actually selling, right?
So literally two, the three quarters oftheir time is spent getting ready to sell.
(05:00):
It's writing proposal, it's researchingprospects, it's figuring out
what, who to call and what to say.
And there's so much of that work that nowwith the right rules and governance can be
automated and being done for the sellers.
And I think it's gonna, it's gonna createthe opportunity for us to be more human,
more valuable in the process, and allowthe sellers to be more successful as well.
Sarika Garg (05:22):
So, Matt, as a business owner, I actually had to market myself.
I had to sell myself.
I had to do everything.
So I sort of like very inherentlyunderstand the pain of being, especially
a seller, is really, really hardbecause so much of what you do is, is
the sort of 75% of the manual tasks.
(05:43):
And actually things arebecoming also tougher, right?
And maybe, you know,I know you like stats.
So here's one stat, whichis really interesting.
72% of B2B deals.
B2B sellers say that the buyerjourney is becoming more complex.
That means there are more people on thebuyer side that they need to convince.
There are more gates thatthey need to overcome.
(06:05):
And half the time the seller becomes aproject manager, who's just trying to
manage all these strings of conversationsand, and I think, I like to think of
this as we are living in this weirdparadox world where in some areas
we have seen this being overcome.
So, I mean, you were in SanFrancisco, you probably rode a
(06:26):
Waymo and we have self-driving carsnow and it works and it's amazing.
And yet when it, when you're buyingsome piece of software, it's
all this email back and forth.
And sometimes you are using PDFs,and PDFs is not, automation.
PDFs is not agentic in any way.
And so you get these PDFs thatgo out of sync because you have
(06:48):
so many people on the other side.
I actually spent a lot of my timesitting in back rooms talking
to customers and partners.
I had this one customer, theypulled out, they said, do you
wanna see what our codes look like?
And they opened up an Excel sheetand that line item, item line item.
And basically the seller literallyuses that to share with the customer.
(07:09):
And, and it was, it was really, reallydifficult to watch some of this.
Yeah,
Matt Heinz (07:13):
It was a surprisingly short number of years ago, it, and this is, was
in a sort of a mining and manufacturingcompany, when the head of sales said,
would you like to see my, my database?
And I said, sure.
He went and brought me a shoebox.
So I mean, that, that's, I mean, so that'sworse than what you just talked about,
but I think like when we think about thesystems we need to support us as sellers.
(07:34):
Like you gave that great stataround sort of how complex
the buying journey has become.
I hear a lot of sellers talk about thecomplexity of their own selling process,
the project management they have to dointernally to get a proposal review, to
get legal involved in procurement andall the things it takes to orchestrate
the seller and the buyer side.
It just speaks to how importantit is to have the systems that
understand that complexity andcan make it more powerful for the
(07:58):
sellers to do what they need to do.
Sarika Garg (08:00):
True.
We need smarter systems, right?
So one of our thoughts is, youmentioned that sellers spend so
much time writing a proposal.
Well, every seller I've ever met, they'renot really great at creating proposals.
They're actually great at buildingrelationships or solving for the customer.
So why?
Why do we expect themto create that proposal?
(08:20):
Why couldn't we actually, listento, or, you know, have their call
recordings, like unstructured dataor data that's been exchanged between
the seller and the buyer in emailsactually help generate that proposal.
With AI, you can actually do that.
And, and so that's sort of one of thethings that we, we talked about is
we actually have means now and thetechnology to shortcut a lot of the work.
(08:45):
The really difficult workthat a seller has to do.
The second one is approvals, of course.
Right?
Like, how many times have you met aseller who is just, actually just
chasing internal approvals versuslike being able to focus on the, on
the buyer and, and their problem.
And I think there are ways thatwe can actually be much smarter.
I think AI can make it much,much smarter by actually bubbling
(09:09):
up insights, to do better.
Matt Heinz (09:13):
Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Sarika Garg.
She is the GM and VPof Commerce Hub at HubSpot.
Talk a little bit about Inbound, talkingabout systems and needing smarter
systems, and I do feel like we're this,I've had a couple CMOs tell me this,
that they feel like there's, we're in abit of this trough of disillusionment.
(09:33):
AI adoption, and it'sno fault of the tools.
It's just the fact that thetools are moving very quickly.
We've gone from, well, let's experimentwith AIs to random acts of AI, to some
people using it, some people not using it.
So there's this gap we needreally need to help people with.
That goes from the opportunity toreal, repeatable, sticky use of AI.
(09:54):
And this isn't to me use, I mean, Ithink you gotta stop thinking about
AI as a tool and start thinkingabout it as infrastructure that
mostly is working on your behalfto help you decide what to do next.
Are you seeing any evidenceof that gap as well?
And sort of what are some of your bestpractices and advice for companies
and leaders to sort of bridge thatand to better leverage the tools?
Sarika Garg (10:15):
I think it's very difficult right now to be, a seller or a marketer
or even, even like, even any human beingbecause things are changing so fast and
it's really hard to keep up with it.
And I think what we are trying to dois make sure we can be really good
partners in explaining how to leverageAI to be your partner, to be better.
(10:37):
Right.
And there are parts whereit's more of an assistant.
There are parts where it canactually take over whole jobs.
Right.
And, if I really take the exampleof, of the context that I live in, you
know, I talked about this creation of aproposal without you having to have a cold
start problem of starting from scratch.
(10:58):
Right.
Or actually being able to manipulate thatproposal with an assistant on the side.
That's a typical example of anassistant, but we also build something
which was much more agentic in nature,which is basically like freeform.
It can sort of work on its own and isalmost doing the job of a, of like a mini
helper, or a person that can work for you.
(11:20):
And the example of that that I cangive you is when, when we share
the proposal or the code with thecustomer, we actually have an agent
that's attached to that, to that code.
So, every customer hasmany, many questions, right?
Some of these questions are, how are youa best fit for my, problem that I have?
But then there are otherquestions like, what are the
(11:42):
terms, what is the renewal terms?
What are, you know, what isyour, your payment policies.
These are what are, what is, give mesome more descriptions of your product.
These are very repeatable questions.
Which oftentimes the seller actuallyis not very good at because they
actually are not experts in that.
And, and this is where, I feel this is avery good example of where AI can actually
(12:04):
help to answer some of those questions.
Right.
And, and it can actually work 24 hours,which the seller does not work 24 hours.
Right.
So, to me that this is a way to thinkabout AI, how can it help you on things
that you are not actually the best at.
Right.
Matt Heinz (12:21):
Well, when I think about how much time it takes to coordinate
a seller, having that technicalconversation, finding a sales engineer,
getting them involved in the conversationto answer those technical questions.
I mean, I think about the role ofagents in that, where you talked
about procurement, you talked aboutlegal review, you talked about sort
of the, we talked about the technicalquestions in the sales engineer side.
I mean, these are allopportunities to have agents.
(12:43):
Those are, to your point, that are 24 7.
That are at the prospectsand the seller's disposal.
And that gets to be apretty exciting thing.
Like I think, I think we're pretty faraway in enterprise from having robots sell
to robots, but having robots intimatelyinvolved in parts of the process to
give greater confidence to the buyerand the seller feels, feels not only
(13:04):
achievable, but feels like that couldbe a sooner versus later opportunity.
Sarika Garg (13:08):
Yeah.
So, you know, in my role I tryto spend as much time as I can
with sellers and sales leaders.
So I was actually talking to Matt Stone,who actually runs our whole mid-market,
sales team, and I asked him, do youthink we could actually have an agent for
smaller deals as well as larger deals?
Like, think of like a million dollardeal, a $500k, $100k deal, $30k deal,
(13:33):
or you know, a thousand dollars.
And he said, there is no reasonfor the seller to not have an
agent that can actually help answerrepeatable questions that actually
are in some knowledge base, right.
Or is in terms or something like that.
So we are seeing this sort of a pull nowfrom sellers saying, Hey, we actually
(13:55):
could use these tools because it willhelp us to focus on the relationship
and the on the problem solving.
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (14:02):
All right.
So we're getting close outta time.
I've got two lightning roundquestions I wanna throw at you here.
Have a little fun.
The first one is around sales metrics.
What is an overrated metric andwhat is an underrated metric?
Sarika Garg (14:17):
I'll give you my personal take.
I love the, I love thecode to close metric.
Which I, I think is totally underrated.
And I think it is actually really, reallyimportant because I can see how this is
where deals stall and for no particularreason, you know, like my whole thing
(14:37):
is time kills deals, move fast, right?
Matt Heinz (14:39):
Yep.
Yep.
Sarika Garg (14:40):
Overrated.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
What's yours?
Matt Heinz (14:44):
Mine is, mine is the marketing qualified lead.
I mean, especially like in thetraditional sort of lead based model.
I mean, I think there's a lot ofvalue in defining a consistent, like
what is a qualified lead that's likethe right person, right company.
I just think it's become a vanitymetric for so many companies, right?
They just want it to be up until the nightand it beco(mes), up until the right,
and it becomes just not valuable at all.
(15:05):
And so just beginning, you end up with,you know, you take those into a board
meeting, it becomes success, theater,jazz, hands, look what we're doing.
And it's not tied to revenue.
So that's, I can get on, I canon a high horse on that one.
Okay.
Last question for you then.
We've been talking a lot aboutsort of AI's role in helping
sellers build relationships.
What's something like, it's the beginningof Q4, what's one process improvement
(15:27):
or experiment that teams could try thisquarter to start to make some progress?
Sarika Garg (15:33):
I think to me, doing something like cust-, using AI
for customer research, yeah.
This just such an obvious one forme and it's so, it's such a hard
one, which takes so much time.
And, and AI is so muchbetter at this, right?
To me, I would say every sellergo and like, try doing that.
You can just use deepresearch initially, right?
(15:53):
Like just use deep research or thenuse whatever your company is using.
But to me, like it's, you know, I think.
Learning something newcomes from experimenting.
Matt Heinz (16:04):
Absolutely.
Sarika Garg (16:04):
So go experiment something small, right?
Matt Heinz (16:06):
Yeah,
I completely agree with that.
I've got, we've, our team has gone throughsome sort of AI agent building workshops
and, the gal we had to come in and helpwith that, she, she started by saying
like, do something for your personal life.
Like, do something that you are gonna bepassionate about outside of work and it's
not gonna help you at work right away,but it's gonna break the seal, right?
(16:26):
It's gonna let you start to seethe art of the possible, right?
So that meal planning tool or that,you know, plant that gardening
guide with remind whatever it is,you're like, wow, that's amazing.
Like, then you start tothink about it in context.
Sarika Garg (16:40):
Matt, I'm doing a whole house renovation using, because of ChatGPT.
So yes,
Matt Heinz (16:45):
I love it.
Sarika Garg (16:45):
Very, very helpful.
Matt Heinz (16:47):
I love it.
Well, I know you're superbusy and you gotta go.
Thank you so much for being part of this,and sharing your insights and, yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks for joining us today.
Sarika Garg (16:57):
Thank you for inviting me.
Matt Heinz (16:58):
Awesome.
And, thank you to the HubSpotteam, Mackenzie and everyone on the
backend for making all this possible.
Appreciate y'all very much.
Thanks everyone for joining anotherepisode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
We'll be back next weekwith another great guest.
Until then, have agreat rest of your week.
We'll see you soon.
Take care.
All right.
Welcome to another episodeof Sales Pipeline Radio.
I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
So excited to have you allhere, for another episode as we
record this today, it is now Q4.
There's good news and bad news, Sarika.
The good news is you're back to zero.
The bad news is you're back to zeroand you gotta sort of build from here.
But, we're here to help you.
(00:36):
So, if you are joining us live onSales Pipeline Radio today, if you're
joining us live on LinkedIn or YouTube,thank you so much, for making us part
of your workday and your work week.
If you've got a comment, ifyou've got a question for our
guest, if you've got a rebuttal.
Those are all valid.
You throw those in andwe're gonna see those.
We can respond to those, we canbring those up on screen and, make
you part of the show if you'relistening or watching on demand.
Thank you so much.
(00:57):
Over 250,000 people aredownloading Sales Pipeline Radio.
So, so excited to have you joiningin that group and every episode
past, present, and future availableat Sales Pipeline Radio dot com.
Really excited to have ourguest today, Sarika Garg.
She is the GM at HubSpot.
And, I missed you a couple weeks ago atInbound and I feel really bad about that.
(01:17):
I wasn't there for the entireconference, but boy, there was a buzz
at Moscone Center for a good three days.
Maybe just as we, as we kick off,just talk a little bit about sort
of your reflections on Inbound 25.
Sarika Garg (01:31):
So, Matt, I am so sorry to have missed you too.
Inbound was amazing and it wasamazing for me for two reasons.
One is, it was my first Inbound.
Okay.
So, I can maybe tell youa little bit about that.
And then I'd love to maybereflect on, on Inbound as well.
So it was my first Inboundbecause I actually joined HubSpot
(01:51):
nine months ago through theacquisition of my company Cashflow.
And, and so, in the last 11 months, allwe did was put our heads down and build
a product and launch it at Inbound.
So Inbound was amazing because welaunched a net new product, which is
a CPQ product For HubSpot, it was alsoreally special because, I think it was,
(02:14):
it was really like, you know, HubSpotcoming into its own on the AI story, on
how AI can actually help businesses andhaving products to show that, right?
So there was a smart CRM, whichis sort of like the baseline.
There is a data hub, which allows you tobring all your data in because AI only
(02:35):
works well when it has context and data.
And then all the wonderful, agentsand the AI enabled hubs that we have.
Matt Heinz (02:45):
Yeah, it was
Sarika Garg (02:46):
fabulous.
Matt Heinz (02:47):
You know, and, and another thing I like about, you know, about
Inbound is, you know, there's, there's alot of user conferences that feel like a
product showcase and there was plenty ofHubSpot showcased, but I feel like Inbound
has, has always been and continues to bejust a great event for marketers, right?
Yeah.
Even if you don't, even if you didn'tattend the sessions, the networking,
the quality of the people there, thelearnings that you get in line for
(03:11):
lunch, the learnings you get just waitingto get into a packed breakout room.
I love that.
And so congrats on, on anamazing, on an amazing show.
I wanna talk about relationship buildingand sales relationships in the age
of AI, because I think we're seeinga lot more AI generated messages.
We're seeing a lot more automation.
There's pros and cons to that, but I'mcurious for you, like, how do you define
(03:35):
a real sales relationship in 2025?
Like what are some of the signalsand best practices to make sure
that as we're selling, we'restill bringing the human into it?
Sarika Garg (03:46):
So I think we are gonna see a lot of bad usage of AI, but
actually AI can really make thingsso much better for our relationships.
And specifically, I love the sortof message that we have as HubSpot,
which is, it is all about hybrid teams.
Right?
AI is actually your team memberthat's helping you to become better
(04:09):
and, and so you know, whether it islike helping you to go do research on
a customer or whether it's to reachto, to reach out mass, it actually
should enable you to then free you upfrom all the sort of busy work that.
Both marketers and sellers have to dotoday to actually do meaningful work.
That's what really excites me.
(04:31):
And you know, in the CPQ launch thatwe did, we really focused on that too.
Matt Heinz (04:37):
Yeah, I mean, I think about all the way, all the things that you
have to do as a seller to be successful.
And I think, I can't remember who did ita couple years ago, it might have been
Google, it might have been Salesforce.
Someone did the math and said thetypical seller spends about 25% of
their day actually selling, right?
So literally two, the three quarters oftheir time is spent getting ready to sell.
(05:00):
It's writing proposal, it's researchingprospects, it's figuring out
what, who to call and what to say.
And there's so much of that work that nowwith the right rules and governance can be
automated and being done for the sellers.
And I think it's gonna, it's gonna createthe opportunity for us to be more human,
more valuable in the process, and allowthe sellers to be more successful as well.
Sarika Garg (05:22):
So, Matt, as a business owner, I actually had to market myself.
I had to sell myself.
I had to do everything.
So I sort of like very inherentlyunderstand the pain of being, especially
a seller, is really, really hardbecause so much of what you do is, is
the sort of 75% of the manual tasks.
(05:43):
And actually things arebecoming also tougher, right?
And maybe, you know,I know you like stats.
So here's one stat, whichis really interesting.
72% of B2B deals.
B2B sellers say that the buyerjourney is becoming more complex.
That means there are more people on thebuyer side that they need to convince.
There are more gates thatthey need to overcome.
(06:05):
And half the time the seller becomes aproject manager, who's just trying to
manage all these strings of conversationsand, and I think, I like to think of
this as we are living in this weirdparadox world where in some areas
we have seen this being overcome.
So, I mean, you were in SanFrancisco, you probably rode a
(06:26):
Waymo and we have self-driving carsnow and it works and it's amazing.
And yet when it, when you're buyingsome piece of software, it's
all this email back and forth.
And sometimes you are using PDFs,and PDFs is not, automation.
PDFs is not agentic in any way.
And so you get these PDFs thatgo out of sync because you have
(06:48):
so many people on the other side.
I actually spent a lot of my timesitting in back rooms talking
to customers and partners.
I had this one customer, theypulled out, they said, do you
wanna see what our codes look like?
And they opened up an Excel sheetand that line item, item line item.
And basically the seller literallyuses that to share with the customer.
(07:09):
And, and it was, it was really, reallydifficult to watch some of this.
Yeah,
Matt Heinz (07:13):
It was a surprisingly short number of years ago, it, and this is, was
in a sort of a mining and manufacturingcompany, when the head of sales said,
would you like to see my, my database?
And I said, sure.
He went and brought me a shoebox.
So I mean, that, that's, I mean, so that'sworse than what you just talked about,
but I think like when we think about thesystems we need to support us as sellers.
(07:34):
Like you gave that great stataround sort of how complex
the buying journey has become.
I hear a lot of sellers talk about thecomplexity of their own selling process,
the project management they have to dointernally to get a proposal review, to
get legal involved in procurement andall the things it takes to orchestrate
the seller and the buyer side.
It just speaks to how importantit is to have the systems that
understand that complexity andcan make it more powerful for the
(07:58):
sellers to do what they need to do.
Sarika Garg (08:00):
True.
We need smarter systems, right?
So one of our thoughts is, youmentioned that sellers spend so
much time writing a proposal.
Well, every seller I've ever met, they'renot really great at creating proposals.
They're actually great at buildingrelationships or solving for the customer.
So why?
Why do we expect themto create that proposal?
(08:20):
Why couldn't we actually, listento, or, you know, have their call
recordings, like unstructured dataor data that's been exchanged between
the seller and the buyer in emailsactually help generate that proposal.
With AI, you can actually do that.
And, and so that's sort of one of thethings that we, we talked about is
we actually have means now and thetechnology to shortcut a lot of the work.
(08:45):
The really difficult workthat a seller has to do.
The second one is approvals, of course.
Right?
Like, how many times have you met aseller who is just, actually just
chasing internal approvals versuslike being able to focus on the, on
the buyer and, and their problem.
And I think there are ways thatwe can actually be much smarter.
I think AI can make it much,much smarter by actually bubbling
(09:09):
up insights, to do better.
Matt Heinz (09:13):
Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Sarika Garg.
She is the GM and VPof Commerce Hub at HubSpot.
Talk a little bit about Inbound, talkingabout systems and needing smarter
systems, and I do feel like we're this,I've had a couple CMOs tell me this,
that they feel like there's, we're in abit of this trough of disillusionment.
(09:33):
AI adoption, and it'sno fault of the tools.
It's just the fact that thetools are moving very quickly.
We've gone from, well, let's experimentwith AIs to random acts of AI, to some
people using it, some people not using it.
So there's this gap we needreally need to help people with.
That goes from the opportunity toreal, repeatable, sticky use of AI.
(09:54):
And this isn't to me use, I mean, Ithink you gotta stop thinking about
AI as a tool and start thinkingabout it as infrastructure that
mostly is working on your behalfto help you decide what to do next.
Are you seeing any evidenceof that gap as well?
And sort of what are some of your bestpractices and advice for companies
and leaders to sort of bridge thatand to better leverage the tools?
Sarika Garg (10:15):
I think it's very difficult right now to be, a seller or a marketer
or even, even like, even any human beingbecause things are changing so fast and
it's really hard to keep up with it.
And I think what we are trying to dois make sure we can be really good
partners in explaining how to leverageAI to be your partner, to be better.
(10:37):
Right.
And there are parts whereit's more of an assistant.
There are parts where it canactually take over whole jobs.
Right.
And, if I really take the exampleof, of the context that I live in, you
know, I talked about this creation of aproposal without you having to have a cold
start problem of starting from scratch.
(10:58):
Right.
Or actually being able to manipulate thatproposal with an assistant on the side.
That's a typical example of anassistant, but we also build something
which was much more agentic in nature,which is basically like freeform.
It can sort of work on its own and isalmost doing the job of a, of like a mini
helper, or a person that can work for you.
(11:20):
And the example of that that I cangive you is when, when we share
the proposal or the code with thecustomer, we actually have an agent
that's attached to that, to that code.
So, every customer hasmany, many questions, right?
Some of these questions are, how are youa best fit for my, problem that I have?
But then there are otherquestions like, what are the
(11:42):
terms, what is the renewal terms?
What are, you know, what isyour, your payment policies.
These are what are, what is, give mesome more descriptions of your product.
These are very repeatable questions.
Which oftentimes the seller actuallyis not very good at because they
actually are not experts in that.
And, and this is where, I feel this is avery good example of where AI can actually
(12:04):
help to answer some of those questions.
Right.
And, and it can actually work 24 hours,which the seller does not work 24 hours.
Right.
So, to me that this is a way to thinkabout AI, how can it help you on things
that you are not actually the best at.
Right.
Matt Heinz (12:21):
Well, when I think about how much time it takes to coordinate
a seller, having that technicalconversation, finding a sales engineer,
getting them involved in the conversationto answer those technical questions.
I mean, I think about the role ofagents in that, where you talked
about procurement, you talked aboutlegal review, you talked about sort
of the, we talked about the technicalquestions in the sales engineer side.
I mean, these are allopportunities to have agents.
(12:43):
Those are, to your point, that are 24 7.
That are at the prospectsand the seller's disposal.
And that gets to be apretty exciting thing.
Like I think, I think we're pretty faraway in enterprise from having robots sell
to robots, but having robots intimatelyinvolved in parts of the process to
give greater confidence to the buyerand the seller feels, feels not only
(13:04):
achievable, but feels like that couldbe a sooner versus later opportunity.
Sarika Garg (13:08):
Yeah.
So, you know, in my role I tryto spend as much time as I can
with sellers and sales leaders.
So I was actually talking to Matt Stone,who actually runs our whole mid-market,
sales team, and I asked him, do youthink we could actually have an agent for
smaller deals as well as larger deals?
Like, think of like a million dollardeal, a $500k, $100k deal, $30k deal,
(13:33):
or you know, a thousand dollars.
And he said, there is no reasonfor the seller to not have an
agent that can actually help answerrepeatable questions that actually
are in some knowledge base, right.
Or is in terms or something like that.
So we are seeing this sort of a pull nowfrom sellers saying, Hey, we actually
(13:55):
could use these tools because it willhelp us to focus on the relationship
and the on the problem solving.
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (14:02):
All right.
So we're getting close outta time.
I've got two lightning roundquestions I wanna throw at you here.
Have a little fun.
The first one is around sales metrics.
What is an overrated metric andwhat is an underrated metric?
Sarika Garg (14:17):
I'll give you my personal take.
I love the, I love thecode to close metric.
Which I, I think is totally underrated.
And I think it is actually really, reallyimportant because I can see how this is
where deals stall and for no particularreason, you know, like my whole thing
(14:37):
is time kills deals, move fast, right?
Matt Heinz (14:39):
Yep.
Yep.
Sarika Garg (14:40):
Overrated.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
What's yours?
Matt Heinz (14:44):
Mine is, mine is the marketing qualified lead.
I mean, especially like in thetraditional sort of lead based model.
I mean, I think there's a lot ofvalue in defining a consistent, like
what is a qualified lead that's likethe right person, right company.
I just think it's become a vanitymetric for so many companies, right?
They just want it to be up until the nightand it beco(mes), up until the right,
and it becomes just not valuable at all.
(15:05):
And so just beginning, you end up with,you know, you take those into a board
meeting, it becomes success, theater,jazz, hands, look what we're doing.
And it's not tied to revenue.
So that's, I can get on, I canon a high horse on that one.
Okay.
Last question for you then.
We've been talking a lot aboutsort of AI's role in helping
sellers build relationships.
What's something like, it's the beginningof Q4, what's one process improvement
(15:27):
or experiment that teams could try thisquarter to start to make some progress?
Sarika Garg (15:33):
I think to me, doing something like cust-, using AI
for customer research, yeah.
This just such an obvious one forme and it's so, it's such a hard
one, which takes so much time.
And, and AI is so muchbetter at this, right?
To me, I would say every sellergo and like, try doing that.
You can just use deepresearch initially, right?
(15:53):
Like just use deep research or thenuse whatever your company is using.
But to me, like it's, you know, I think.
Learning something newcomes from experimenting.
Matt Heinz (16:04):
Absolutely.
Sarika Garg (16:04):
So go experiment something small, right?
Matt Heinz (16:06):
Yeah,
I completely agree with that.
I've got, we've, our team has gone throughsome sort of AI agent building workshops
and, the gal we had to come in and helpwith that, she, she started by saying
like, do something for your personal life.
Like, do something that you are gonna bepassionate about outside of work and it's
not gonna help you at work right away,but it's gonna break the seal, right?
(16:26):
It's gonna let you start to seethe art of the possible, right?
So that meal planning tool or that,you know, plant that gardening
guide with remind whatever it is,you're like, wow, that's amazing.
Like, then you start tothink about it in context.
Sarika Garg (16:40):
Matt, I'm doing a whole house renovation using, because of ChatGPT.
So yes,
Matt Heinz (16:45):
I love it.
Sarika Garg (16:45):
Very, very helpful.
Matt Heinz (16:47):
I love it.
Well, I know you're superbusy and you gotta go.
Thank you so much for being part of this,and sharing your insights and, yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks for joining us today.
Sarika Garg (16:57):
Thank you for inviting me.
Matt Heinz (16:58):
Awesome.
And, thank you to the HubSpotteam, Mackenzie and everyone on the
backend for making all this possible.
Appreciate y'all very much.
Thanks everyone for joining anotherepisode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
We'll be back next weekwith another great guest.
Until then, have agreat rest of your week.
We'll see you soon.
Take care.
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