June 16, 2025 • 39 mins
I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
Marketing is undergoing a revolutionary transformation, and Qualified's CMO Maura Rivera is leading the charge with their groundbreaking AI SDR agent named Piper. This fascinating conversation reveals how Qualified has completely reimagined the traditional marketing funnel, replacing the conventional lead generation approach with autonomous pipeline generation at scale.
What makes Qualified's story particularly compelling is their methodical implementation of this technology within their own organization. They've fully redeployed their human inbound SDRs to higher-value outbound roles while Piper handles all inbound inquiries—a transition Maura admits initially made her nervous. "I was accountable for the pipeline number to our company, to the board," she shares. Yet the results have been undeniable, with over 500 companies now "hiring" Piper and seeing significant pipeline increases.
The conversation dives deep into the practical application of AI agents, introducing the "crawl, walk, run" approach that companies follow when deploying this technology. Starting with handling after-hours inquiries, progressing to working alongside humans, and ultimately managing the entire inbound function, this gradual implementation builds confidence and delivers measurable results. As Maura explains, "Piper can run circles around human SDRs, not because humans aren't great, but they can't work 24/7."
Beyond the operational aspects, Maura shares fascinating insights about their approach to anthropomorphizing AI, their content production strategies, and her vision for how websites will evolve into conversational interfaces that mirror the ChatGPT experience. She also addresses the future of marketing teams, emphasizing that while AI will transform roles, subject matter experts will remain essential—they'll just need to become adept at leveraging AI tools.
Whether you're a marketing leader curious about implementing AI agents, a technology professional interested in the evolution of customer experiences, or simply fascinated by how AI is reshaping business operations, this conversation offers invaluable perspectives on navigating the agentic revolution that's just beginning to unfold.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin Kerner (00:00):
Hey, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech Marketing
Rewired.
In this episode, I sat downwith Maura Rivera, who's the CMO
of Qualified, a leading agenticmarketing platform that helps
companies rethink how AI andhumans work together across the
sales motion.
Maura and I had a greatconversation about the rise of
AI agents in marketing,especially in the sales funnel.
We walked through theirplatform, including Piper, their
(00:21):
AI SDR agent, and how they'vetransitioned much of their
inbound activity from human-ledreps to AI, all while
redeploying those team membersinto newer, higher leverage
sales roles.
We also dug into how she'smanaging AI messaging in a very
crowded market, how AI isreshaping the structure of
marketing teams, what websiteswill look like in an AI-first
(00:42):
future and why orchestrationbetween agents, not just
automation, may be the nextfrontier in go-to-market.
This is really a great one.
Maura was a lot of fun to talkto.
Let's get to it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired,All right?
Well, hi, this is Kevin Kerner,and welcome back to Tech
(01:04):
Marketing Rewired.
Today we're talking to MauraRivera, who's the CMO of
Qualified, and they're doingsome amazing things in agentic
marketing.
Maura's been at Qualified forwhat?
(01:25):
Five years or so and has beenhelping lead the company from an
emerging startup to what Ithink is one of the most
recognized names in the RevTechspace.
Before that, she spent time inproduct marketing at GetFeedback
, was in customer marketing atCampaign Monitor and started her
career in marketing atSalesforce.
A great seasoned leader In ourshort time, knowing each other's
sharp mind for, I think,go-to-market strategy and
driving growth, and if you lookat the stuff that they've done
at Qualified, it's really animpressive marketing effort.
(01:45):
So, Mara, thanks for joining usand I am so happy that you're
here.
Maura Rivera (01:50):
Thanks for having me, kevin, and thank you for the
warm introduction.
I appreciate it.
Kevin Kerner (01:54):
Yeah, my pleasure.
You know I have a lot offriends and customers that use
Qualified and they can't.
You know all of them say greatthings about it.
There might be a few peoplewatching this that don't know
who you guys are, so maybe youcould start with just a quick
overview of Qualified and thenwe'll get into some more fun
questions.
Maura Rivera (02:12):
AISDR agent and she's designed to help marketers
generate more pipeline and doit at scale.
So what we're really focused onis helping marketers kind of
leave the traditional funnelwhere they're doing all of this
stuff to generate leads.
(02:33):
They're relying on humans towork those leads and they're
hoping pipeline comes out.
On the other end we have thisagent named Piper who can
generate pipeline for youautonomously and at scale, and
it's been pretty exciting.
We launched her as a product ayear ago and we've had over 500
companies hire her and kind ofadopt this new way to generate
pipeline.
So it's been a really fun ridebecause it feels like we're at
(02:55):
the forefront of just somemassive transformation that's
happening in the workplace rightnow with agents and we get to
sell to marketers and being amarketer that's really fun.
We get to kind of help, youknow, work hand in hand with
them and where it's all going.
So it's pretty fun.
Kevin Kerner (03:10):
That's a tough bunch to sell to too.
Maura Rivera (03:12):
It is yes, they're critical.
Kevin Kerner (03:14):
Yeah, they're a little skeptical at times.
I think it's really cool whatyou've done with, I guess,
anthropomorphizing the AI, whichwe're talking a lot more about.
Like a lot more people aredoing that and I want to get
into that because I think it's akey part of your go-to-market
message and brand.
But I want to like first startdigging in into this.
They qualified.
(03:35):
I originally thought of it itwas just a chat bot, but now
it's handling a huge chunk ofwhat an SDR used to do and,
being a former SDR, I just findit fascinating, like some of the
stuff that you're able to, howfar you've taken it.
So where do you see, just at acore level, where do you see AI
replacing right now the SDR roletoday?
(03:56):
Like, what tasks or motions aregetting absorbed first?
Maura Rivera (03:59):
Yeah, we're really focused on the inbound funnel.
So that's why we focus onmarketers.
You're doing all this stuff,you're driving traffic to your
website, you're doing events,you're generating content, and
when you have hand raisers whowant to get in touch with your
sales team, that's what we seeas a really great opportunity to
automate that function.
So when we look at the AISDRrole, we kind of see outbound,
(04:20):
which is contact, enrichment andprospecting and looking to
break into net new accounts.
That's definitely there's anart to that.
And then we look at the inbound,and that's where we're focused,
which is, if folks are showingintent, if they're showing
interest, how do you get them toa meeting as quickly as
possible?
And that's where we think anagent is really ripe to kind of
take over that function.
(04:42):
So that's where we're focused,that's where we see it going.
And when we build our AISDRagent, we want her to be able to
do everything an inbound SDRwould be able to do from knowing
everything about your buyer toengaging with them across all
your channels email and websiteand, most importantly, like
working towards conversion andpipe gen and getting a meeting
on the books with qualifiedbuyers.
(05:02):
So inbound is our thought is,why wouldn't you automate that
function?
If you have hand raisers whowant to talk to you, why would
you send them away?
Why would you give them theopportunity to go explore your
competition or another vendor?
Get them into a meeting as soonas possible, and agents are
perfect for that.
Kevin Kerner (05:20):
Yeah, it's really an amazing opportunity if you
think about it, because theyused to talk to us about, like
the time to time to connect.
You know if you had some callin or you had to get a human and
if you're not getting back tothem within a certain amount of
time or a form or something, youneed to get back to them
immediately.
So it kind of shrinks that timeto conversion at the really
critical point where, ok,something's going to happen here
(05:41):
, let's get the person into theright.
So it's an obvious and, I'msure, technically challenging
thing to do.
Is it too early, is it toohuman dependent to fully hand
off at this point any of theinbound motions?
I'm curious to see yourperspective on how far can it go
(06:01):
and when will we get tocompletely like?
If it doesn't go all the waylike, when will we get to
completely human out of the way?
Maura Rivera (06:08):
Yeah, I mean, I think agents are perfect for
that early qualification, thatearly engagement, the meeting
scheduling.
Those are all tasks you canautomate anyways.
I'm curious to see what happenskind of beyond stage one,
pipegen, like will an agent beable to take over the selling
motion, the demoing motion, thepricing conversations?
(06:30):
I don't know.
I think a lot of those stillrequire the human element and
like the emotional intelligenceand being able to understand how
to run a sales cycle properly.
I think that's where co-pilotscome in, where they can lean on
an agent to help guide them andgive them insights and next best
actions.
But I think kind of that stageone to close still requires some
(06:50):
of that human element yeah,yeah, and you would know you've
been.
Kevin Kerner (06:54):
When we're talking kind of the pre stuff, you were
telling me that you'veimplemented it in your own
company, like you use in yourown company.
How did your sales team reactto it?
Like what's the?
Maura Rivera (07:10):
did you get any resistance to like making this
move?
Yeah, you know what our salesteam loves it because inbound
pipeline never been higher.
But that took some time to gettheir confidence in it.
And, to be honest, kevin, I wasnervous at the beginning Also.
We launched Piper, our AISDRagent, in April 2024.
We knew we needed to drink herown champagne, eat her own dog
food, whatever the phrase is.
We knew we needed to use herfor our inbound motion and I was
(07:32):
a little nervous.
I was like this is our brand onthe line.
If somebody comes to ourwebsite and wants to talk and
she doesn't do a good job or shedoesn't get that meeting booked
, like I'm accountable for thepipeline number to our company,
to the board, etc.
So I was a little bit nervousat the beginning and one thing
that we've seen now I can sayconfidently is like Piper can
(07:52):
run circles around human SDRs,not because humans aren't great,
but they can't work 24 seven.
They don't work nights andweekends.
They don't always have theability to answer intelligently
right away if they're a new rep.
So my mindset has shifted, butI needed to get myself there.
What we're seeing a lot with ourcustomers is they crawl, walk,
(08:15):
run with deploying an agent intheir pipe gen motion.
So what that means is a lot offolks will say, okay, we're
interested in how we can kind ofinfuse an AISDR agent like
Piper into our inbound motion,but I don't want to change it
overnight because that's scaryand you don't want to mess
anything up.
So we see a lot of customerswho will start with an agent
kind of crawling, which willmean she'll work weekends and
(08:38):
she'll work nighttime and if shecan work all the leads that
maybe your human SDRs wouldn'thave time to work anyways, like
top of funnel event follow-up orcontent nurture.
And then when they walk, that'swhen they have the agent work
24-7, kind of on the front linesbut still ready to hand
somebody off to a human ifsomebody says they want to talk
(08:59):
to a human, and then they run,which means they just have an
AISDR agent handling all oftheir inbound.
We're in the run phase rightnow.
We've actually redeployed all ofour inbound SDRs to prospecting
and outbounding and Piper isthe AISDR agent who works for me
as the CMO.
She works actually for a guy onmy team and he's a GTM AI
(09:21):
manager, so he's overseeing theagents that work on our team and
so that's also been coolbecause these new jobs have
arrived and kind of come to be,which is managing the agents,
and we're seeing a lot of ourcustomers follow that same trend
, which is let me crawl, walk,run.
We have a lot of customers whonow proudly say we don't have
(09:42):
inbound human SDRs anymore,we've redeployed those calories
and they just have Piper and itgives them scale, it gives them
autonomous pipe gen and if thenumbers didn't prove that at
work, they wouldn't do it.
So they have the results toshow them it's possible.
Quantum Metric was just acustomer of ours we were just
talking to, and they have anAISDR agent powered by Qualified
(10:04):
who's working all of their MQLs, their entire inbound funnel,
and the results are fantasticbecause they're just getting
more juice, because they havethe capacity to work all of them
.
So it's been cool to see.
But you can't expect to getthere overnight and I think, as
a vendor, it's our job to leadpeople on this journey and give
them best practices and buildtheir confidence in an agent so
(10:25):
that they can go to their bossand say, okay, we're ready to to
like, get this really ingrainedin our workflow.
Kevin Kerner (10:30):
It's amazing.
You know people talk about likeAI taking jobs, but I think
you've just proven that you hadall these people that were
handling the inbound.
Well, those people youtransitioned to outbound because
probably, I would guess, youhave more leads going into the
outbound funnel.
So you got more stuff cominginto outbound.
You redeployed those and thenyou created a job to manage the
agent.
So I don't think no, I don'tknow if we know where we're
(10:53):
headed with how this is going towork out with employment and
people taking people's jobs.
That's a pretty good use case,for actually, in this case, it
really didn't affect, it reallydidn't drive the jobs down, it
just changed them.
Maura Rivera (11:06):
Totally, and you know SDRs, it's a revolving door
you have to get the good onesget promoted.
The ones who aren't great, theyleave the organization.
So as a SDR manager, you'realways trying to backfill,
you're always recruiting andhiring, and so that's where a
(11:26):
lot of our customers will go, isthey don't?
They don't like redeploy thosecalories right out the gate.
But if somebody leaves, ifsomebody gets promoted, they'll
backfill them with the agent andthey can use that headcount,
those headcount dollars alsolike put them back into the
marketing part of the businessdeploy new campaigns.
Maybe there's like a digitalcampaign you didn't have funds
for anymore, but you can usethat headcount cost for, have
funds for anymore, but you canuse that headcount cost for.
(11:47):
So I think one thing we talkabout a lot is like that's a job
that maybe those folks didn'twant to do anyways, and maybe
there is new opportunity in thebusiness.
And there's like all of thesejobs you know, you look at
lamplighters or data entryspecialists and over time
they've evolved into like thosepeople can do other things too
within the organization, andthat's okay.
Like those people can do otherthings too within the
organization, and that's OK.
But when we launched Piper,there was a little bit of
(12:08):
resistance and I think nowmarketers are like OK, I can see
how we can do this, the rightway for our company and the
right way for our people too.
That every it's kind of a winwin.
Kevin Kerner (12:18):
That's an awesome thought.
I've never actually thought ofthat before, that there are jobs
that just you know maybe no onewants to do and you're actually
like, let the AI do it.
Piper can handle it.
Piper's got thick skin, she'lljust go off and do this stuff.
So that's a really cool thought.
I hadn't thought of that before.
What do you think?
You've implemented this on yourwebsite and other customers
have done it.
I wonder what you think about.
(12:39):
You know it was alwaystraditional web form and then it
got to be chat and now you'vegot this agentic thing that's on
your site.
What do you think about theevolution of the website
experience when you have this AIfirst go to market motion?
Like, how does the web userexperience change, or does it
change at all?
Maura Rivera (12:58):
I mean, I think it's absolutely going to change.
I think that if you look overthe last two decades of website
production, we have hierarchiesand folks really have to do a
lot of work to find what they'relooking for.
But buyers today are trained inthis chat GPT era where they
have a question, they want itanswered, they have a follow-up
(13:19):
question, they want it answered,they want what they're looking
for surfaced to them immediatelyand I think agents now have
this ability to really have thebuyer lead the experience that
they see on the website.
I see a future who knows whenthis will happen where like
websites are really like chatGPT, where you're asking
questions, you're interactingwith them, you're finding what
(13:41):
you want.
And I think agents are kind ofthe stepping stone to that, like
Piper, the AISDR agent.
If you arrived on the site,kevin, we'd be like okay, we
know you're in our pipeline,she's going to surface this
offer for you, she's going to bethere to answer a question.
If you leave, she'll follow upwith you over email and ask
about this product you wereshowing interest, so she can
help kind of get you what you'relooking for and then also guide
(14:04):
you down this buying journey.
And I do wonder also, just withthe rise of generative engine
optimization and all of thiswork we used to do on the
website, how relevant is itanymore?
A lot of what we created wasfor us as marketers, to get that
SEO juice.
So I think the website willtransform to get the buyer what
(14:25):
they need as quickly as possible, based on their how they like
to consume information in thischat GPT era.
And then also we're going tofigure out like maybe we don't
need all that long form SEOcontent, we just need to answer
questions for people in a reallysuccinct way.
So I'm curious to see like whatthe B2B website looks like in a
few years.
Kevin Kerner (14:44):
Yeah, that's mind blowing.
Did you see the NL Webannouncement that Microsoft did?
It was about they're creating aweb.
I guess it's a structure of awebsite that's entirely
optimized to be read by agentsand so.
Maura Rivera (14:57):
Oh, interesting.
Kevin Kerner (14:59):
The next step of that thought process, that
thought experiment.
Think about, like you have anagent that's talking to a human,
(15:28):
but have you thought about theagent actually talking to
another agent?
Maura Rivera (15:31):
Yeah, I think that's the next big wave, which
is like agent orchestration,because if you have agents
deployed throughout your entireorganization like we have Piper,
who's our inbound agent, but wealso have an outbound agent
we're using this companyrelevance and they're doing
prospecting for us, and we havean agent who's inspecting all of
our in-pipeline deals andgiving us summaries of what's
(15:53):
happening there.
Those agents need to be able totalk to each other, just like
humans would be able to talk toeach other.
So that agent orchestration isparamount.
I think a lot of folks let'sfast forward to the end of the
year they'll have bought allthis software, but if it's not
working together, what's thepoint?
Just like if your humansweren't working together, that
(16:13):
doesn't work, your businessbreaks.
So I think that's the future,which is like the agent to agent
, collaboration andorchestration.
Kevin Kerner (16:21):
Yeah, composability and getting things
to talk together.
It's the key.
It's like it's what's opened upall this stuff, really the
ability to have these thingstalk together.
Okay, so I've been dying to askthis question because you've
done I mean, I think yourcompany's done this masterfully,
because I, like, I went throughall the Piper Fest stuff and
it's just, and then you know, Ididn't really know Piper that
well before.
So and you call her, you knowyou're calling her a she and
(16:50):
it's a person and you'remanaging it and I, you know you
gave the AI an identity.
You know personality and, inthe event, what inspired the
creation of what drove you toactually name her.
You know Piper, the brand.
Maura Rivera (16:56):
Yeah.
Kevin Kerner (16:57):
And why Piper?
I'm just curious why Piper too.
Maura Rivera (17:00):
Yeah, I mean it was.
It was really intentional.
You know, back in 2024, when welaunched her, there were a sea
of AI launches and I was sayingevery website went into dark
mode.
Every website had wands and,like chat, gpt type, every
website said AI powered this, aipowered that.
And you're like what does itall mean?
(17:20):
Did you just slap that on yourwebsite and make it, you know,
and make it seem like it's AI?
And so we had a lot ofdiscussions, when we were going
to launch this product, of an AISDR agent that she needed to
operate like our best SDR.
So actually, when we were inlike the product development
phase, we kept referencing thiswoman, blake.
She was our first ever SDR andshe was the best.
(17:43):
Everybody who came to ourwebsite.
She installed theirgo-to-market data.
She knew if we had a close lossopportunity with them.
She knew where they werelocated, where they were in the
funnel.
She was so friendly andapproachable and contextual in
her messaging.
She was my dream SDR.
And so when we were buildingthis product, we kept being like
well, this agent needs to belike Blake.
(18:05):
They need to like, be onmessage, they need to do the
research, they need to worktowards pipeline and conversion,
just like Blake.
Would Blake's now this, likethis leader at our team.
She leads a big sales function,but when she started in her
career here six years ago, shewas the best and we kept saying
it needs to be like Blake, andwe kept.
We had this feeling of like.
(18:25):
We want folks to feel like theycan hire this agent onto their
team, they can hold heraccountable to hitting her
targets, they can have insightinto the work that she's doing,
like it wasn't just an AI tool.
We were building a teammate.
We were building this AIteammate, this agent who worked
for us.
So if you see the picture ofPiper, it's actually the AI
(18:46):
version of Blake, which is funny.
So Blake like that faith.
If you see her, you'll see theresemblance and Blake is one of
my brother's good friends,actually and folks will be like
did I just see Blake on the 101on that billboard?
And I'm like no, it's Piper,but inspired by Blake.
And then we named her Piperbecause she generates pipeline.
That's the goal she's workingtowards 24 seven.
(19:07):
She's not just a Q&A agent.
She's not just there to like toanswer questions.
She's trying to book a meetingwith the account executive.
She's trying to work towardspipeline goals.
We even have Piper on ourleaderboard, like we can see how
our outbound SDRs are doing,like we can see how our outbound
SDRs are doing, and then wePiper's listed and if Piper's
not doing her job, we've got totalk to her and figure out what
(19:28):
we can roll out.
So it was really important to us.
But we had a lot ofconversations before that of
like is this weird?
Will people, how will peoplereceive this?
And I've been blown away at thereception.
And the cool thing is, kevin,some of our customers have hired
Piper and they call her Piper,like Asana.
If you go to their website,it's Piper.
But then we also have a lot ofcustomers who've made their
(19:50):
agent their own.
So like Ox named their agentBella and Greenhouse named their
agent Daisy, and we have, like,this whole sea of agents out
there powered by qualifiedsbecause we want them to
represent.
Like Brex named there's Brexton, like we want them to represent
their brand.
So it started this coolmovement of folks feeling like
they really have this additionto their team yeah, well, it's
(20:12):
genius because, um, it's anagent and this it's interacting
with people.
Kevin Kerner (20:16):
A lot of agents are just in the background like
doing their thing.
When I taught, when I did talkto Chris of Growth Loop Chris,
the CEO Growth Loop last week,they have the same thing and
they talk about their agents aspeople, but they haven't named
them yet.
I think the naming thing isreally interesting.
Has Blake asked for royaltiesyet?
Maura Rivera (20:38):
We'll make sure she gets proper recognition
because it is you know, it's herbrand also and it's cool
because she's been with us sinceso early on.
So, I think she's like.
She's like.
I'm flattered, but she was partof the decision to make sure
that she was cool with itbecause it is, you know, yeah,
leveraging her brand.
Kevin Kerner (20:55):
It's great to have a model SDR like that.
You know they're like gold forsure.
No-transcript.
(21:25):
How did you pull that off?
There were just so many peoplethat were raving about the
product.
Maura Rivera (21:30):
Yeah, it was definitely intentional.
I think that right now there'sso much AI hype and for us to
have customers with a real agentin production who've seen
results is something reallyspecial.
Real agent in production who'veseen results is something
really special and I think thatinspires other customers to feel
like, okay, this is real and Ican do the same for myself.
So I think in my backgrounds incustomer marketing, there's no
(21:52):
better megaphone than you cangive than to giving it to your
customers If they can talk abouttheir use cases and their
success stories and theirlearnings and their findings and
what they iterated on.
I think that that's key andit's been cool because we did a
Piper Fest last September, aboutsix months after we launched,
and we had a lot of customersthere and they were talking more
(22:14):
to the vision.
I'm excited about hiring anagent.
I'm excited about where thiscan go and then fast forward to
the Piper Fest.
That was one year afterlaunching this agent, and then
fast forward to the Piper Fest.
That was one year afterlaunching this agent.
It was really fun to watch allof these folks talk about real
results.
Asana was talking about 22%increase of pipelines since
launching Piper.
We had dozens of customerstalking about with solid pipe
(22:37):
gen numbers.
So that's a fun place to be andI think as marketers you want
to feel like you're investing intechnology that's going to not
just be shelfware but move theneedle in your business, and so
to have that is really fun.
It makes me really proud thatwe have all of these happy
customers and I think it's atestament to our product.
It's a testament we have areally hands-on customer success
(22:57):
organization who are reallyinvolved in making folks
successful.
So it's all kind of workingtogether.
Kevin Kerner (23:03):
Yeah, that's awesome.
I would imagine in the AI world, events and face-to-face
communication are going to bereally valued now because
everything is going to be.
Everything is so cold andimpersonal with AI can be, I
should say, but in terms of youroverall launch strategies or
marketing strategy, event is apiece of it.
How do events do events, othertypes of events or what's the
(23:25):
other strategy that you use tosort of get the word out about
this, about Piper and hercapabilities, like where you put
events with other stuff thatyou're doing?
Maura Rivera (23:32):
yeah, I would say like since we launched Piper,
we've gone a lot bigger on brandadvertising.
There was a feeling when welaunched her of, like folks are
excited about this idea ofagentic marketing and hiring an
AISDR agent.
So when we launched her we didbillboards for the first time.
We did a commercial for thefirst time.
We did podcast advertising forthe first time.
It opened up this confidence indoing bigger brand plays
(23:58):
because we felt like we had areally exciting story to tell.
So those are kind of like thatbrand awareness bar.
From a paid perspective, we'rereally focused on owning the
AISDR category.
A lot of LinkedIn advertisingto our target accounts.
Events just help us with thatrelevancy.
We're, of course, doingthird-party events, but also
(24:18):
owned virtual events.
Those have become part of ourplaybook, which is a big
quarterly virtual event.
That's not like Piper Fest isvery customer centric, but we'll
host like an AISDR summit orbig events just to bring
together marketers to talk aboutwhere it's all going.
And then we're always focusedon product launches, showing
(24:39):
innovation with Piper andeverything leads up to Piper as
like she's getting stronger andsmarter and more capable.
So, yeah, that's kind of that'skind of our playbook.
And then content content's abig part of it, like just a lot
of video content, a lot ofpodcasts, just to kind of stay
top of mind for folks.
Kevin Kerner (24:54):
Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, the event side is
going to be, I think, as I think, in the space.
Particularly if you're amarketer, you want to talk to
other people about this stuff,because, no one really is the
expert at this point.
So it's kind of fun to talkaround it and just see what
other people are doing.
It's very much like when socialfirst launched, when no one
really knew what it was andeveryone was trying to like
(25:14):
figure it out.
There was no expert.
So communities like this, likeour conversation that we're
having and other ones, arereally important because there's
a lot of innovation happeningand it's happening so fast,
faster than ever.
Being able to talk to othermarketers about this stuff is
super, super important and I wasreally glad to see you guys did
that with Piper Fest.
You have more of the communitystuff going on.
(25:35):
From a content perspective, Ithink I mentioned when we talked
before.
I was just so amazed how muchcontent you guys put out.
This is a lot of it Tons ofresources, helpful resources,
the events and all theinformation you put out.
Just generally about the AIagent space, I'm just curious
what your content operationslooks like, like.
How do you, how do you make itwork like that?
(25:57):
How do you get that volume?
Would you be interested in whatyou're doing?
Yeah, I think we realized earlyon in this agentic movement
like we've got to be.
How do you get that volume?
I'd just be interested in whatyou're doing to get that done.
Maura Rivera (26:04):
Yeah, I think we realized early on in this
agentic movement like we've gotto be out there with a point of
view, we've got to help guide toyour point, kevin.
It's really leveled the playingfield, which is a good thing,
but everybody is looking overtheir shoulder and researching
and I feel like it's lit thisfire under marketers.
There's so much newness outthere how this fire under
(26:28):
marketers of like I got to.
There's so much newness outthere how do I navigate it?
And we wanted to be positionedas subject matter experts on how
to think about bringing agentsinto the fold for marketers.
In our team we do everythingin-house and that's allowed us
to move really quickly.
We have a stellar marketingteam.
A lot of us have been aroundfor a long time, so I feel like
there's just a everybody worksreally well together and
everything kind of goes throughthe through the machine.
We have a great program manager.
We manage everything in Asana.
(26:49):
We're doing everything fromlanding pages to eBooks, to
video content, to these virtualevents, and we are really
focused on speed, because thingsare changing so fast that if we
wait a quarter to publishsomething, it's not relevant
anymore.
So, how can we like keep thisdrumbeat?
One cool thing that we did afew years ago was we actually
(27:10):
built a studio in our SanFrancisco office.
So if we have a demo we want tocapture or a keynote to capture
, we go into our office and wehave this like big cool studio
and we have a guy on our teamwho captures and edits the
footage and we can turn contentaround in a day.
So that's also just allowed usto move quickly and not be
reliant on agencies or waitingor because it's like you can't
(27:34):
wait, you got to get the storyout there.
Kevin Kerner (27:36):
No doubt.
Maura Rivera (27:38):
And our CEO used to be a CMO and he's like a big
believer in just high qualitycontent and that's kind of been
part of our DNA since we firststarted was like you just got it
.
You got to keep that both theproduction high, but also just
like you need to pump it outquickly but keep the quality
high.
And that's always the balance.
Which is, how do you keep bothof those things?
Kevin Kerner (27:56):
Yeah, for sure, are you?
Have you baked AI into yourcontent operations or do you use
it in the marketing?
Maura Rivera (28:04):
How do you use it in the marketing?
How do you use it?
I'm just curious.
Yeah, I mean a lot of differentthings.
We have, like, our video teams,definitely using a lot of AI
functionality, even for littlethings like podcast sound
editing or for doing a firstpass at a social clip that we
can push out.
Our writer, our head of content, pr she's probably one of our
most AI savvy folks.
She's using Notebook LM to pulltogether a bunch of podcast
(28:27):
interviews and surface greatsoundbites for our executive
team, for executive thoughtleadership.
I feel like the list goes onand on, really, of how we can
use it and that's what allowedus to be more efficient, kind of
how we produce everything.
We even have one of our ACDs orcreative directors right now.
Associate creative directorslike toying around with some
(28:47):
totally AI generated brandvideos.
That's all AI generated andwe're seeing if we can get one
of those into the market.
So it's.
I think it's fun because it'sopened up this creative outlet
to see what we can get.
Kevin Kerner (29:00):
It's so fun.
Well, I'll race you morebecause we're doing the, because
we're doing the same thing withthe brand video, with VO.
Maura Rivera (29:05):
Okay, what do you?
Kevin Kerner (29:06):
think, because when I saw that, I was like
there's no reason you couldn'tcreate some sort of short brand
video, whether it's, you know,just something funny or
surrealistic, but still fits thebrand, and you can do it.
And once you get good at it,you can do it in, you know,
maybe an hour, a couple hours orso.
Maura Rivera (29:22):
You might need to put it into After Effects and
add some stuff or Premiere A fewthings here or there, but the
opportunity for VO3 for shortform video is just incredible,
just incredible the opportunityit creates, Because a long time
ago I was on the video team atSalesforce and Salesforce does
(29:45):
the most beautiful videos in theworld, but we would put a lot
of time and a lot of money and aflyer whole team out and do all
this B-roll footage and it justmakes me wonder, hmm, how would
?
How would you create a videolike that today, in 2025?
Because there was so much blood, sweat and tears?
Yeah, I think it's.
It's changing everything, everyaspect of marketing.
I think it's fun.
Kevin Kerner (30:02):
Yeah, it really is fun.
It's a great time ofexperimentation.
It's awesome In terms of themarketing structure of your team
.
Maybe in this AI world, how doyou see the marketing team
changing or the roles changing?
I always ask the question toget perspective on how you see,
from a skill set perspective ora structure perspective, how the
(30:24):
marketing organization mightchange.
Maura Rivera (30:26):
I mean, I just think the way the candidates
we're looking for are gonnacontinue to evolve, like I think
we will always need subjectmatter experts a really great
product marketer who understandsthe ins and outs of positioning
.
A really great content marketerwho understands like big picture
storytelling.
A great creative who has avision for brand and look and
(30:46):
feel.
So I think we're still going toneed those subject matter
experts, but we're going to needto bring folks onto our team
who understand how can theyleverage AI to move faster, how
they can push us to maybeabandon the old way of doing
things and embrace newtechnology.
And so I think it's just aboutthe folks we're looking for,
making sure that they're forwardthinking and they want to
(31:08):
embrace change.
But then I think some of thoseskills that are really niche
skills, those will still serve alot of value for folks.
I don't think those go away.
I don't think every marketerbecomes a generalist who has an
AI assistant.
I think you're going to havesubject matter experts who can
intelligently use AI to kind ofget you know to the front of the
(31:29):
pack.
Kevin Kerner (31:30):
So, and the folks?
Maura Rivera (31:31):
on my team who are vocal about we should try this,
or have you used this Like?
That's such a delight becausethey're bringing new ideas and
innovation every single day.
Kevin Kerner (31:40):
Yeah, so tools first mentality, like I wonder
how I could do this with a tool,but it is.
For me.
It's been hard with our teamsto get them to make that shift.
We're starting, we're justabout ready to start some
hackathons where we do I think Isaw someone who posted this
they had done the same thing,maybe it was Clay does it where
they do their marketing team ortheir teams do hackathons where
(32:02):
they give them a challenge andsay, hey, here's the tools you
can use.
We'll separate into fivedifferent teams and go build
something and you give them allthe AI tools to do it.
You give them Gamma and yougive them Jatch, ept and you
might give them like a relay appfor agents and stuff.
And you say go build something,and we're about ready to start
that, and I hope that what thatdoes is begin to unlock things
(32:24):
for people.
There's a certain amount offear, I think, that some people
have they're going to breaksomething or it's.
You know, they're not technical, but it really is super
accessible at this point.
Maura Rivera (32:35):
Yeah, it probably was Clay.
I mean, I'm sure a lot ofpeople are doing it, but I just
went to a event with G2 and withClay and us and Sixth Sense
sponsored it, and they weretalking about those hackathons,
because Clay especially seemslike tech that the sky's the
limit.
I was asking our ops guy.
I was like, oh, if I wanted to,based on LinkedIn job change,
do this and sync that data inand then fire off this campaign.
(32:58):
He's like, oh, yeah, we could,we could build that.
Like there's this new opennessto building.
Like, yeah, we could figurethat out.
I feel like years ago it waslike no, that's not possible.
Kevin Kerner (33:08):
Need a full stack developer.
Can't do that.
How do I get to the data?
It's impossible.
Maura Rivera (33:12):
Yeah, but it's good, kevin, that you're
encouraging your teams, like youknow, with us.
You know our eng team is usingCursor and every it's like if
there's an agent that can helpyou move faster, do it.
But I think that needs to comeyou know that needs to be part
of the culture of the companythat you're encouraging that
shift?
Kevin Kerner (33:31):
Cool, I have one more question and then I'm going
to.
I want to ask you a lot agenerated question here.
But what's the?
What's the one on unlock?
You're still chasing for yourteam Like what's the next step
for what you're trying to do?
Maura Rivera (33:43):
I'm still curious about how this agentic movement
is going to change analytics formarketers.
That's like the one unlock.
That's my dream, that I have anagent that I can go to, just
like I go to my head ofmarketing operations and say
build me a dashboard for this,show me the trends in our pipe
(34:03):
gen, show me which campaigns areworking and aren't working, and
do it in a way that's notpre-built dashboards that they
have to go edit, but just likegenerative analytics, and I
think that's where we're going.
So I'm curious I feel like somany of the like the front end
things have changed, but I'mcurious about marketing
operations and analytics, howthat's all going to just put
(34:24):
more data in the hands of ourmarketing leaders to make
smarter decisions and be lesspainful to try and build for
marketing ops professionals.
So that's the unlock I'mlooking for.
I think it's coming.
Kevin Kerner (34:36):
Yeah, less painful .
Not replace them, but justbecome less painful.
I really like what like asnowflake's doing with their AI
inside of the CDP.
It's really we're just at thevery beginning of it.
But the fact that they'remaking it so conversational with
the CDP and then you can getmore data than ever into the CDP
, it's just we're right at thebeginning of that.
(34:56):
I don't think we're far awayfrom that, mara.
I think that's you know that'sgoing to happen where you can
have conversations with the dataand it just creates not just
the text output, but it createsdashboards and all kinds of ways
to yeah, and the insights andto yeah, that's right.
Maura Rivera (35:11):
Or recommendations like maybe you should be doing
more of this based on this.
Kevin Kerner (35:14):
Yes, yeah.
Maura Rivera (35:15):
Like acting like a teammate with you know it's a
strategist in addition to kindof that like data scientist.
Kevin Kerner (35:21):
Yeah, and then maybe that emphasizes good
management skills at that pointby the individual.
Like we'll all need better, theability to manage the agents
better, or the AI better itbecomes.
You know you have got to managepeople today.
Yeah, you know, and you're just, you're just going to have to
manage a really, really smartfast thing Totally.
(35:42):
In the right way, because youcan set it off in the wrong
direction.
Or you can you know you can, sothat that critical, critical
thinking still has to be thereor you can really go really fast
in the wrong direction.
Maura Rivera (35:53):
Yeah, you need those guardrails, you need that
ownership, you need somebodywho's managing the agent.
It's not just set it and forgetit, at least at this point.
But it is a whole differentskill set and I think for folks
who go to interview for theirnext job, if they can say you
(36:22):
know, yeah, I manage this agentand this agent.
Kevin Kerner (36:22):
Like that's awesome to have that skill set.
These new jobs are beingcreated like who are probably
light years ahead of folks whoare 10,?
20 years older than them.
Like he's working for the TexasParks and Wildlife and in
herpetology there's no one'susing AI yet, and so I'm telling
Luke you got to just go full on, be the guy that does the.
AI thing for herpetology.
So think of all the otherindustries out there where
that's going to change.
The people that adopt it andbecome good managers of it are
(36:44):
going to be very valuable.
Maura Rivera (36:48):
Yeah, I think that's great advice.
He can be the mover and shakerat that company.
Kevin Kerner (36:52):
Okay, so I do a thing at the end of these.
I warned you about this.
Maura Rivera (36:56):
I know.
Kevin Kerner (36:58):
And you still showed up.
So it's pretty simple.
I load a question into aperplexity and then I hit send
and it's basically just give mea provocative and spicy but
respectful AI roulette questionbased on your LinkedIn profile
and then the questions that wehave.
So I'm going to hit send hereand see what it gives me.
Rexy's real fast.
Maura Rivera (37:18):
This is a first Kevin I've never had this, oh
really, oh, that's good.
Kevin Kerner (37:22):
Okay, mara, you built Piper an AI SDR agent with
its own brand personality, andeven a festival.
If Piper suddenly gained fullsentience and demanded a seat at
your executive table, what'sthe first marketing campaign
you'd assign it and what's theone thing you'd be terrified?
It would do better than you.
Oh, oh, my gosh.
Maura Rivera (37:44):
Well, the thing I'd be terrified she'd do better
than me is like answer aquestion that I got about our
product or integrations orsomething really complex,
because an agent's trained onyour whole website and all your
messaging so she's couldprobably answer most questions
about our product better than me.
And then what was the otherpart?
What's the first thing?
Kevin Kerner (38:04):
I would have her do?
Maura Rivera (38:05):
She could do everything.
Kevin Kerner (38:05):
What's the first marketing campaign you'd assign
it?
Maura Rivera (38:11):
what's the first thing I would have to do?
If you could do everything,what's the first marketing
campaign you'd assign it?
I mean, this is like such a bigquestion.
I mean I really we're trying togo bigger from a brand
perspective and get our storyout there.
So I would see what Piper coulddo to make sure that every one
of our target accounts knew thatwe had a great offering for an
AISDR agent and could get thosefolks nurtured and into our
funnel.
So that's a big that's a bigproduct.
Kevin Kerner (38:33):
That's probably the only prompt.
That's probably the only promptyou'd need to give a fully
sentient AISDR agent.
Just go get me all these people.
Maura Rivera (38:43):
Go figure it out.
Piper, I don't care how you doit, just come on, well, we have
had a few things where we usedto prep our inbound SDRs when we
were launching a campaign Headsup, we're going to see a spike
in website traffic.
Be prepared with the messaging.
And we had this one Slackconversation once that someone
was like hey, should I let ourSDRs know?
And somebody replied like noneed, piper's got it covered.
(39:04):
And we were like we shouldscreenshot that and make that
into a billboard because that'sthe future.
Kevin Kerner (39:08):
Yeah, that's it right there, right.
Well, Maura, this has beensuper fun.
I'm really thankful that youspent the time here.
If people want to get a hold ofyou or want to learn more about
Piper and Qualified like, howshould they go about it?
Maura Rivera (39:20):
Yeah, go to qualifiedcom and you can chat
with Piper and have aconversation and see her in
action, and then Maura Rivera onLinkedIn.
Kevin Kerner (39:29):
So we'd love to connect.
Maura Rivera (39:30):
Thank you, Kevin, for having me.
This is really fun.
Kevin Kerner (39:32):
Yeah, yeah, great, great job and good luck with
everything agentic in the future.
Maura Rivera (39:36):
Here it's going to be a fun one, you too.
Kevin Kerner (39:39):
All right, thanks a lot.
Maura Rivera (39:40):
Thank you.
Hey, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech Marketing
Rewired.
In this episode, I sat downwith Maura Rivera, who's the CMO
of Qualified, a leading agenticmarketing platform that helps
companies rethink how AI andhumans work together across the
sales motion.
Maura and I had a greatconversation about the rise of
AI agents in marketing,especially in the sales funnel.
We walked through theirplatform, including Piper, their
(00:21):
AI SDR agent, and how they'vetransitioned much of their
inbound activity from human-ledreps to AI, all while
redeploying those team membersinto newer, higher leverage
sales roles.
We also dug into how she'smanaging AI messaging in a very
crowded market, how AI isreshaping the structure of
marketing teams, what websiteswill look like in an AI-first
(00:42):
future and why orchestrationbetween agents, not just
automation, may be the nextfrontier in go-to-market.
This is really a great one.
Maura was a lot of fun to talkto.
Let's get to it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired,All right?
Well, hi, this is Kevin Kerner,and welcome back to Tech
(01:04):
Marketing Rewired.
Today we're talking to MauraRivera, who's the CMO of
Qualified, and they're doingsome amazing things in agentic
marketing.
Maura's been at Qualified forwhat?
(01:25):
Five years or so and has beenhelping lead the company from an
emerging startup to what Ithink is one of the most
recognized names in the RevTechspace.
Before that, she spent time inproduct marketing at GetFeedback
, was in customer marketing atCampaign Monitor and started her
career in marketing atSalesforce.
A great seasoned leader In ourshort time, knowing each other's
sharp mind for, I think,go-to-market strategy and
driving growth, and if you lookat the stuff that they've done
at Qualified, it's really animpressive marketing effort.
(01:45):
So, Mara, thanks for joining usand I am so happy that you're
here.
Maura Rivera (01:50):
Thanks for having me, kevin, and thank you for the
warm introduction.
I appreciate it.
Kevin Kerner (01:54):
Yeah, my pleasure.
You know I have a lot offriends and customers that use
Qualified and they can't.
You know all of them say greatthings about it.
There might be a few peoplewatching this that don't know
who you guys are, so maybe youcould start with just a quick
overview of Qualified and thenwe'll get into some more fun
questions.
Maura Rivera (02:12):
AISDR agent and she's designed to help marketers
generate more pipeline and doit at scale.
So what we're really focused onis helping marketers kind of
leave the traditional funnelwhere they're doing all of this
stuff to generate leads.
(02:33):
They're relying on humans towork those leads and they're
hoping pipeline comes out.
On the other end we have thisagent named Piper who can
generate pipeline for youautonomously and at scale, and
it's been pretty exciting.
We launched her as a product ayear ago and we've had over 500
companies hire her and kind ofadopt this new way to generate
pipeline.
So it's been a really fun ridebecause it feels like we're at
(02:55):
the forefront of just somemassive transformation that's
happening in the workplace rightnow with agents and we get to
sell to marketers and being amarketer that's really fun.
We get to kind of help, youknow, work hand in hand with
them and where it's all going.
So it's pretty fun.
Kevin Kerner (03:10):
That's a tough bunch to sell to too.
Maura Rivera (03:12):
It is yes, they're critical.
Kevin Kerner (03:14):
Yeah, they're a little skeptical at times.
I think it's really cool whatyou've done with, I guess,
anthropomorphizing the AI, whichwe're talking a lot more about.
Like a lot more people aredoing that and I want to get
into that because I think it's akey part of your go-to-market
message and brand.
But I want to like first startdigging in into this.
They qualified.
(03:35):
I originally thought of it itwas just a chat bot, but now
it's handling a huge chunk ofwhat an SDR used to do and,
being a former SDR, I just findit fascinating, like some of the
stuff that you're able to, howfar you've taken it.
So where do you see, just at acore level, where do you see AI
replacing right now the SDR roletoday?
(03:56):
Like, what tasks or motions aregetting absorbed first?
Maura Rivera (03:59):
Yeah, we're really focused on the inbound funnel.
So that's why we focus onmarketers.
You're doing all this stuff,you're driving traffic to your
website, you're doing events,you're generating content, and
when you have hand raisers whowant to get in touch with your
sales team, that's what we seeas a really great opportunity to
automate that function.
So when we look at the AISDRrole, we kind of see outbound,
(04:20):
which is contact, enrichment andprospecting and looking to
break into net new accounts.
That's definitely there's anart to that.
And then we look at the inbound,and that's where we're focused,
which is, if folks are showingintent, if they're showing
interest, how do you get them toa meeting as quickly as
possible?
And that's where we think anagent is really ripe to kind of
take over that function.
(04:42):
So that's where we're focused,that's where we see it going.
And when we build our AISDRagent, we want her to be able to
do everything an inbound SDRwould be able to do from knowing
everything about your buyer toengaging with them across all
your channels email and websiteand, most importantly, like
working towards conversion andpipe gen and getting a meeting
on the books with qualifiedbuyers.
(05:02):
So inbound is our thought is,why wouldn't you automate that
function?
If you have hand raisers whowant to talk to you, why would
you send them away?
Why would you give them theopportunity to go explore your
competition or another vendor?
Get them into a meeting as soonas possible, and agents are
perfect for that.
Kevin Kerner (05:20):
Yeah, it's really an amazing opportunity if you
think about it, because theyused to talk to us about, like
the time to time to connect.
You know if you had some callin or you had to get a human and
if you're not getting back tothem within a certain amount of
time or a form or something, youneed to get back to them
immediately.
So it kind of shrinks that timeto conversion at the really
critical point where, ok,something's going to happen here
(05:41):
, let's get the person into theright.
So it's an obvious and, I'msure, technically challenging
thing to do.
Is it too early, is it toohuman dependent to fully hand
off at this point any of theinbound motions?
I'm curious to see yourperspective on how far can it go
(06:01):
and when will we get tocompletely like?
If it doesn't go all the waylike, when will we get to
completely human out of the way?
Maura Rivera (06:08):
Yeah, I mean, I think agents are perfect for
that early qualification, thatearly engagement, the meeting
scheduling.
Those are all tasks you canautomate anyways.
I'm curious to see what happenskind of beyond stage one,
pipegen, like will an agent beable to take over the selling
motion, the demoing motion, thepricing conversations?
(06:30):
I don't know.
I think a lot of those stillrequire the human element and
like the emotional intelligenceand being able to understand how
to run a sales cycle properly.
I think that's where co-pilotscome in, where they can lean on
an agent to help guide them andgive them insights and next best
actions.
But I think kind of that stageone to close still requires some
(06:50):
of that human element yeah,yeah, and you would know you've
been.
Kevin Kerner (06:54):
When we're talking kind of the pre stuff, you were
telling me that you'veimplemented it in your own
company, like you use in yourown company.
How did your sales team reactto it?
Like what's the?
Maura Rivera (07:10):
did you get any resistance to like making this
move?
Yeah, you know what our salesteam loves it because inbound
pipeline never been higher.
But that took some time to gettheir confidence in it.
And, to be honest, kevin, I wasnervous at the beginning Also.
We launched Piper, our AISDRagent, in April 2024.
We knew we needed to drink herown champagne, eat her own dog
food, whatever the phrase is.
We knew we needed to use herfor our inbound motion and I was
(07:32):
a little nervous.
I was like this is our brand onthe line.
If somebody comes to ourwebsite and wants to talk and
she doesn't do a good job or shedoesn't get that meeting booked
, like I'm accountable for thepipeline number to our company,
to the board, etc.
So I was a little bit nervousat the beginning and one thing
that we've seen now I can sayconfidently is like Piper can
(07:52):
run circles around human SDRs,not because humans aren't great,
but they can't work 24 seven.
They don't work nights andweekends.
They don't always have theability to answer intelligently
right away if they're a new rep.
So my mindset has shifted, butI needed to get myself there.
What we're seeing a lot with ourcustomers is they crawl, walk,
(08:15):
run with deploying an agent intheir pipe gen motion.
So what that means is a lot offolks will say, okay, we're
interested in how we can kind ofinfuse an AISDR agent like
Piper into our inbound motion,but I don't want to change it
overnight because that's scaryand you don't want to mess
anything up.
So we see a lot of customerswho will start with an agent
kind of crawling, which willmean she'll work weekends and
(08:38):
she'll work nighttime and if shecan work all the leads that
maybe your human SDRs wouldn'thave time to work anyways, like
top of funnel event follow-up orcontent nurture.
And then when they walk, that'swhen they have the agent work
24-7, kind of on the front linesbut still ready to hand
somebody off to a human ifsomebody says they want to talk
(08:59):
to a human, and then they run,which means they just have an
AISDR agent handling all oftheir inbound.
We're in the run phase rightnow.
We've actually redeployed all ofour inbound SDRs to prospecting
and outbounding and Piper isthe AISDR agent who works for me
as the CMO.
She works actually for a guy onmy team and he's a GTM AI
(09:21):
manager, so he's overseeing theagents that work on our team and
so that's also been coolbecause these new jobs have
arrived and kind of come to be,which is managing the agents,
and we're seeing a lot of ourcustomers follow that same trend
, which is let me crawl, walk,run.
We have a lot of customers whonow proudly say we don't have
(09:42):
inbound human SDRs anymore,we've redeployed those calories
and they just have Piper and itgives them scale, it gives them
autonomous pipe gen and if thenumbers didn't prove that at
work, they wouldn't do it.
So they have the results toshow them it's possible.
Quantum Metric was just acustomer of ours we were just
talking to, and they have anAISDR agent powered by Qualified
(10:04):
who's working all of their MQLs, their entire inbound funnel,
and the results are fantasticbecause they're just getting
more juice, because they havethe capacity to work all of them
.
So it's been cool to see.
But you can't expect to getthere overnight and I think, as
a vendor, it's our job to leadpeople on this journey and give
them best practices and buildtheir confidence in an agent so
(10:25):
that they can go to their bossand say, okay, we're ready to to
like, get this really ingrainedin our workflow.
Kevin Kerner (10:30):
It's amazing.
You know people talk about likeAI taking jobs, but I think
you've just proven that you hadall these people that were
handling the inbound.
Well, those people youtransitioned to outbound because
probably, I would guess, youhave more leads going into the
outbound funnel.
So you got more stuff cominginto outbound.
You redeployed those and thenyou created a job to manage the
agent.
So I don't think no, I don'tknow if we know where we're
(10:53):
headed with how this is going towork out with employment and
people taking people's jobs.
That's a pretty good use case,for actually, in this case, it
really didn't affect, it reallydidn't drive the jobs down, it
just changed them.
Maura Rivera (11:06):
Totally, and you know SDRs, it's a revolving door
you have to get the good onesget promoted.
The ones who aren't great, theyleave the organization.
So as a SDR manager, you'realways trying to backfill,
you're always recruiting andhiring, and so that's where a
(11:26):
lot of our customers will go, isthey don't?
They don't like redeploy thosecalories right out the gate.
But if somebody leaves, ifsomebody gets promoted, they'll
backfill them with the agent andthey can use that headcount,
those headcount dollars alsolike put them back into the
marketing part of the businessdeploy new campaigns.
Maybe there's like a digitalcampaign you didn't have funds
for anymore, but you can usethat headcount cost for, have
funds for anymore, but you canuse that headcount cost for.
(11:47):
So I think one thing we talkabout a lot is like that's a job
that maybe those folks didn'twant to do anyways, and maybe
there is new opportunity in thebusiness.
And there's like all of thesejobs you know, you look at
lamplighters or data entryspecialists and over time
they've evolved into like thosepeople can do other things too
within the organization, andthat's okay.
Like those people can do otherthings too within the
organization, and that's OK.
But when we launched Piper,there was a little bit of
(12:08):
resistance and I think nowmarketers are like OK, I can see
how we can do this, the rightway for our company and the
right way for our people too.
That every it's kind of a winwin.
Kevin Kerner (12:18):
That's an awesome thought.
I've never actually thought ofthat before, that there are jobs
that just you know maybe no onewants to do and you're actually
like, let the AI do it.
Piper can handle it.
Piper's got thick skin, she'lljust go off and do this stuff.
So that's a really cool thought.
I hadn't thought of that before.
What do you think?
You've implemented this on yourwebsite and other customers
have done it.
I wonder what you think about.
(12:39):
You know it was alwaystraditional web form and then it
got to be chat and now you'vegot this agentic thing that's on
your site.
What do you think about theevolution of the website
experience when you have this AIfirst go to market motion?
Like, how does the web userexperience change, or does it
change at all?
Maura Rivera (12:58):
I mean, I think it's absolutely going to change.
I think that if you look overthe last two decades of website
production, we have hierarchiesand folks really have to do a
lot of work to find what they'relooking for.
But buyers today are trained inthis chat GPT era where they
have a question, they want itanswered, they have a follow-up
(13:19):
question, they want it answered,they want what they're looking
for surfaced to them immediatelyand I think agents now have
this ability to really have thebuyer lead the experience that
they see on the website.
I see a future who knows whenthis will happen where like
websites are really like chatGPT, where you're asking
questions, you're interactingwith them, you're finding what
(13:41):
you want.
And I think agents are kind ofthe stepping stone to that, like
Piper, the AISDR agent.
If you arrived on the site,kevin, we'd be like okay, we
know you're in our pipeline,she's going to surface this
offer for you, she's going to bethere to answer a question.
If you leave, she'll follow upwith you over email and ask
about this product you wereshowing interest, so she can
help kind of get you what you'relooking for and then also guide
(14:04):
you down this buying journey.
And I do wonder also, just withthe rise of generative engine
optimization and all of thiswork we used to do on the
website, how relevant is itanymore?
A lot of what we created wasfor us as marketers, to get that
SEO juice.
So I think the website willtransform to get the buyer what
(14:25):
they need as quickly as possible, based on their how they like
to consume information in thischat GPT era.
And then also we're going tofigure out like maybe we don't
need all that long form SEOcontent, we just need to answer
questions for people in a reallysuccinct way.
So I'm curious to see like whatthe B2B website looks like in a
few years.
Kevin Kerner (14:44):
Yeah, that's mind blowing.
Did you see the NL Webannouncement that Microsoft did?
It was about they're creating aweb.
I guess it's a structure of awebsite that's entirely
optimized to be read by agentsand so.
Maura Rivera (14:57):
Oh, interesting.
Kevin Kerner (14:59):
The next step of that thought process, that
thought experiment.
Think about, like you have anagent that's talking to a human,
(15:28):
but have you thought about theagent actually talking to
another agent?
Maura Rivera (15:31):
Yeah, I think that's the next big wave, which
is like agent orchestration,because if you have agents
deployed throughout your entireorganization like we have Piper,
who's our inbound agent, but wealso have an outbound agent
we're using this companyrelevance and they're doing
prospecting for us, and we havean agent who's inspecting all of
our in-pipeline deals andgiving us summaries of what's
(15:53):
happening there.
Those agents need to be able totalk to each other, just like
humans would be able to talk toeach other.
So that agent orchestration isparamount.
I think a lot of folks let'sfast forward to the end of the
year they'll have bought allthis software, but if it's not
working together, what's thepoint?
Just like if your humansweren't working together, that
(16:13):
doesn't work, your businessbreaks.
So I think that's the future,which is like the agent to agent
, collaboration andorchestration.
Kevin Kerner (16:21):
Yeah, composability and getting things
to talk together.
It's the key.
It's like it's what's opened upall this stuff, really the
ability to have these thingstalk together.
Okay, so I've been dying to askthis question because you've
done I mean, I think yourcompany's done this masterfully,
because I, like, I went throughall the Piper Fest stuff and
it's just, and then you know, Ididn't really know Piper that
well before.
So and you call her, you knowyou're calling her a she and
(16:50):
it's a person and you'remanaging it and I, you know you
gave the AI an identity.
You know personality and, inthe event, what inspired the
creation of what drove you toactually name her.
You know Piper, the brand.
Maura Rivera (16:56):
Yeah.
Kevin Kerner (16:57):
And why Piper?
I'm just curious why Piper too.
Maura Rivera (17:00):
Yeah, I mean it was.
It was really intentional.
You know, back in 2024, when welaunched her, there were a sea
of AI launches and I was sayingevery website went into dark
mode.
Every website had wands and,like chat, gpt type, every
website said AI powered this, aipowered that.
And you're like what does itall mean?
(17:20):
Did you just slap that on yourwebsite and make it, you know,
and make it seem like it's AI?
And so we had a lot ofdiscussions, when we were going
to launch this product, of an AISDR agent that she needed to
operate like our best SDR.
So actually, when we were inlike the product development
phase, we kept referencing thiswoman, blake.
She was our first ever SDR andshe was the best.
(17:43):
Everybody who came to ourwebsite.
She installed theirgo-to-market data.
She knew if we had a close lossopportunity with them.
She knew where they werelocated, where they were in the
funnel.
She was so friendly andapproachable and contextual in
her messaging.
She was my dream SDR.
And so when we were buildingthis product, we kept being like
well, this agent needs to belike Blake.
(18:05):
They need to like, be onmessage, they need to do the
research, they need to worktowards pipeline and conversion,
just like Blake.
Would Blake's now this, likethis leader at our team.
She leads a big sales function,but when she started in her
career here six years ago, shewas the best and we kept saying
it needs to be like Blake, andwe kept.
We had this feeling of like.
(18:25):
We want folks to feel like theycan hire this agent onto their
team, they can hold heraccountable to hitting her
targets, they can have insightinto the work that she's doing,
like it wasn't just an AI tool.
We were building a teammate.
We were building this AIteammate, this agent who worked
for us.
So if you see the picture ofPiper, it's actually the AI
(18:46):
version of Blake, which is funny.
So Blake like that faith.
If you see her, you'll see theresemblance and Blake is one of
my brother's good friends,actually and folks will be like
did I just see Blake on the 101on that billboard?
And I'm like no, it's Piper,but inspired by Blake.
And then we named her Piperbecause she generates pipeline.
That's the goal she's workingtowards 24 seven.
(19:07):
She's not just a Q&A agent.
She's not just there to like toanswer questions.
She's trying to book a meetingwith the account executive.
She's trying to work towardspipeline goals.
We even have Piper on ourleaderboard, like we can see how
our outbound SDRs are doing,like we can see how our outbound
SDRs are doing, and then wePiper's listed and if Piper's
not doing her job, we've got totalk to her and figure out what
(19:28):
we can roll out.
So it was really important to us.
But we had a lot ofconversations before that of
like is this weird?
Will people, how will peoplereceive this?
And I've been blown away at thereception.
And the cool thing is, kevin,some of our customers have hired
Piper and they call her Piper,like Asana.
If you go to their website,it's Piper.
But then we also have a lot ofcustomers who've made their
(19:50):
agent their own.
So like Ox named their agentBella and Greenhouse named their
agent Daisy, and we have, like,this whole sea of agents out
there powered by qualifiedsbecause we want them to
represent.
Like Brex named there's Brexton, like we want them to represent
their brand.
So it started this coolmovement of folks feeling like
they really have this additionto their team yeah, well, it's
(20:12):
genius because, um, it's anagent and this it's interacting
with people.
Kevin Kerner (20:16):
A lot of agents are just in the background like
doing their thing.
When I taught, when I did talkto Chris of Growth Loop Chris,
the CEO Growth Loop last week,they have the same thing and
they talk about their agents aspeople, but they haven't named
them yet.
I think the naming thing isreally interesting.
Has Blake asked for royaltiesyet?
Maura Rivera (20:38):
We'll make sure she gets proper recognition
because it is you know, it's herbrand also and it's cool
because she's been with us sinceso early on.
So, I think she's like.
She's like.
I'm flattered, but she was partof the decision to make sure
that she was cool with itbecause it is, you know, yeah,
leveraging her brand.
Kevin Kerner (20:55):
It's great to have a model SDR like that.
You know they're like gold forsure.
No-transcript.
(21:25):
How did you pull that off?
There were just so many peoplethat were raving about the
product.
Maura Rivera (21:30):
Yeah, it was definitely intentional.
I think that right now there'sso much AI hype and for us to
have customers with a real agentin production who've seen
results is something reallyspecial.
Real agent in production who'veseen results is something
really special and I think thatinspires other customers to feel
like, okay, this is real and Ican do the same for myself.
So I think in my backgrounds incustomer marketing, there's no
(21:52):
better megaphone than you cangive than to giving it to your
customers If they can talk abouttheir use cases and their
success stories and theirlearnings and their findings and
what they iterated on.
I think that that's key andit's been cool because we did a
Piper Fest last September, aboutsix months after we launched,
and we had a lot of customersthere and they were talking more
(22:14):
to the vision.
I'm excited about hiring anagent.
I'm excited about where thiscan go and then fast forward to
the Piper Fest.
That was one year afterlaunching this agent, and then
fast forward to the Piper Fest.
That was one year afterlaunching this agent.
It was really fun to watch allof these folks talk about real
results.
Asana was talking about 22%increase of pipelines since
launching Piper.
We had dozens of customerstalking about with solid pipe
(22:37):
gen numbers.
So that's a fun place to be andI think as marketers you want
to feel like you're investing intechnology that's going to not
just be shelfware but move theneedle in your business, and so
to have that is really fun.
It makes me really proud thatwe have all of these happy
customers and I think it's atestament to our product.
It's a testament we have areally hands-on customer success
(22:57):
organization who are reallyinvolved in making folks
successful.
So it's all kind of workingtogether.
Kevin Kerner (23:03):
Yeah, that's awesome.
I would imagine in the AI world, events and face-to-face
communication are going to bereally valued now because
everything is going to be.
Everything is so cold andimpersonal with AI can be, I
should say, but in terms of youroverall launch strategies or
marketing strategy, event is apiece of it.
How do events do events, othertypes of events or what's the
(23:25):
other strategy that you use tosort of get the word out about
this, about Piper and hercapabilities, like where you put
events with other stuff thatyou're doing?
Maura Rivera (23:32):
yeah, I would say like since we launched Piper,
we've gone a lot bigger on brandadvertising.
There was a feeling when welaunched her of, like folks are
excited about this idea ofagentic marketing and hiring an
AISDR agent.
So when we launched her we didbillboards for the first time.
We did a commercial for thefirst time.
We did podcast advertising forthe first time.
It opened up this confidence indoing bigger brand plays
(23:58):
because we felt like we had areally exciting story to tell.
So those are kind of like thatbrand awareness bar.
From a paid perspective, we'rereally focused on owning the
AISDR category.
A lot of LinkedIn advertisingto our target accounts.
Events just help us with thatrelevancy.
We're, of course, doingthird-party events, but also
(24:18):
owned virtual events.
Those have become part of ourplaybook, which is a big
quarterly virtual event.
That's not like Piper Fest isvery customer centric, but we'll
host like an AISDR summit orbig events just to bring
together marketers to talk aboutwhere it's all going.
And then we're always focusedon product launches, showing
(24:39):
innovation with Piper andeverything leads up to Piper as
like she's getting stronger andsmarter and more capable.
So, yeah, that's kind of that'skind of our playbook.
And then content content's abig part of it, like just a lot
of video content, a lot ofpodcasts, just to kind of stay
top of mind for folks.
Kevin Kerner (24:54):
Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, the event side is
going to be, I think, as I think, in the space.
Particularly if you're amarketer, you want to talk to
other people about this stuff,because, no one really is the
expert at this point.
So it's kind of fun to talkaround it and just see what
other people are doing.
It's very much like when socialfirst launched, when no one
really knew what it was andeveryone was trying to like
(25:14):
figure it out.
There was no expert.
So communities like this, likeour conversation that we're
having and other ones, arereally important because there's
a lot of innovation happeningand it's happening so fast,
faster than ever.
Being able to talk to othermarketers about this stuff is
super, super important and I wasreally glad to see you guys did
that with Piper Fest.
You have more of the communitystuff going on.
(25:35):
From a content perspective, Ithink I mentioned when we talked
before.
I was just so amazed how muchcontent you guys put out.
This is a lot of it Tons ofresources, helpful resources,
the events and all theinformation you put out.
Just generally about the AIagent space, I'm just curious
what your content operationslooks like, like.
How do you, how do you make itwork like that?
(25:57):
How do you get that volume?
Would you be interested in whatyou're doing?
Yeah, I think we realized earlyon in this agentic movement
like we've got to be.
How do you get that volume?
I'd just be interested in whatyou're doing to get that done.
Maura Rivera (26:04):
Yeah, I think we realized early on in this
agentic movement like we've gotto be out there with a point of
view, we've got to help guide toyour point, kevin.
It's really leveled the playingfield, which is a good thing,
but everybody is looking overtheir shoulder and researching
and I feel like it's lit thisfire under marketers.
There's so much newness outthere how this fire under
(26:28):
marketers of like I got to.
There's so much newness outthere how do I navigate it?
And we wanted to be positionedas subject matter experts on how
to think about bringing agentsinto the fold for marketers.
In our team we do everythingin-house and that's allowed us
to move really quickly.
We have a stellar marketingteam.
A lot of us have been aroundfor a long time, so I feel like
there's just a everybody worksreally well together and
everything kind of goes throughthe through the machine.
We have a great program manager.
We manage everything in Asana.
(26:49):
We're doing everything fromlanding pages to eBooks, to
video content, to these virtualevents, and we are really
focused on speed, because thingsare changing so fast that if we
wait a quarter to publishsomething, it's not relevant
anymore.
So, how can we like keep thisdrumbeat?
One cool thing that we did afew years ago was we actually
(27:10):
built a studio in our SanFrancisco office.
So if we have a demo we want tocapture or a keynote to capture
, we go into our office and wehave this like big cool studio
and we have a guy on our teamwho captures and edits the
footage and we can turn contentaround in a day.
So that's also just allowed usto move quickly and not be
reliant on agencies or waitingor because it's like you can't
(27:34):
wait, you got to get the storyout there.
Kevin Kerner (27:36):
No doubt.
Maura Rivera (27:38):
And our CEO used to be a CMO and he's like a big
believer in just high qualitycontent and that's kind of been
part of our DNA since we firststarted was like you just got it
.
You got to keep that both theproduction high, but also just
like you need to pump it outquickly but keep the quality
high.
And that's always the balance.
Which is, how do you keep bothof those things?
Kevin Kerner (27:56):
Yeah, for sure, are you?
Have you baked AI into yourcontent operations or do you use
it in the marketing?
Maura Rivera (28:04):
How do you use it in the marketing?
How do you use it?
I'm just curious.
Yeah, I mean a lot of differentthings.
We have, like, our video teams,definitely using a lot of AI
functionality, even for littlethings like podcast sound
editing or for doing a firstpass at a social clip that we
can push out.
Our writer, our head of content, pr she's probably one of our
most AI savvy folks.
She's using Notebook LM to pulltogether a bunch of podcast
(28:27):
interviews and surface greatsoundbites for our executive
team, for executive thoughtleadership.
I feel like the list goes onand on, really, of how we can
use it and that's what allowedus to be more efficient, kind of
how we produce everything.
We even have one of our ACDs orcreative directors right now.
Associate creative directorslike toying around with some
(28:47):
totally AI generated brandvideos.
That's all AI generated andwe're seeing if we can get one
of those into the market.
So it's.
I think it's fun because it'sopened up this creative outlet
to see what we can get.
Kevin Kerner (29:00):
It's so fun.
Well, I'll race you morebecause we're doing the, because
we're doing the same thing withthe brand video, with VO.
Maura Rivera (29:05):
Okay, what do you?
Kevin Kerner (29:06):
think, because when I saw that, I was like
there's no reason you couldn'tcreate some sort of short brand
video, whether it's, you know,just something funny or
surrealistic, but still fits thebrand, and you can do it.
And once you get good at it,you can do it in, you know,
maybe an hour, a couple hours orso.
Maura Rivera (29:22):
You might need to put it into After Effects and
add some stuff or Premiere A fewthings here or there, but the
opportunity for VO3 for shortform video is just incredible,
just incredible the opportunityit creates, Because a long time
ago I was on the video team atSalesforce and Salesforce does
(29:45):
the most beautiful videos in theworld, but we would put a lot
of time and a lot of money and aflyer whole team out and do all
this B-roll footage and it justmakes me wonder, hmm, how would
?
How would you create a videolike that today, in 2025?
Because there was so much blood, sweat and tears?
Yeah, I think it's.
It's changing everything, everyaspect of marketing.
I think it's fun.
Kevin Kerner (30:02):
Yeah, it really is fun.
It's a great time ofexperimentation.
It's awesome In terms of themarketing structure of your team
.
Maybe in this AI world, how doyou see the marketing team
changing or the roles changing?
I always ask the question toget perspective on how you see,
from a skill set perspective ora structure perspective, how the
(30:24):
marketing organization mightchange.
Maura Rivera (30:26):
I mean, I just think the way the candidates
we're looking for are gonnacontinue to evolve, like I think
we will always need subjectmatter experts a really great
product marketer who understandsthe ins and outs of positioning
.
A really great content marketerwho understands like big picture
storytelling.
A great creative who has avision for brand and look and
(30:46):
feel.
So I think we're still going toneed those subject matter
experts, but we're going to needto bring folks onto our team
who understand how can theyleverage AI to move faster, how
they can push us to maybeabandon the old way of doing
things and embrace newtechnology.
And so I think it's just aboutthe folks we're looking for,
making sure that they're forwardthinking and they want to
(31:08):
embrace change.
But then I think some of thoseskills that are really niche
skills, those will still serve alot of value for folks.
I don't think those go away.
I don't think every marketerbecomes a generalist who has an
AI assistant.
I think you're going to havesubject matter experts who can
intelligently use AI to kind ofget you know to the front of the
(31:29):
pack.
Kevin Kerner (31:30):
So, and the folks?
Maura Rivera (31:31):
on my team who are vocal about we should try this,
or have you used this Like?
That's such a delight becausethey're bringing new ideas and
innovation every single day.
Kevin Kerner (31:40):
Yeah, so tools first mentality, like I wonder
how I could do this with a tool,but it is.
For me.
It's been hard with our teamsto get them to make that shift.
We're starting, we're justabout ready to start some
hackathons where we do I think Isaw someone who posted this
they had done the same thing,maybe it was Clay does it where
they do their marketing team ortheir teams do hackathons where
(32:02):
they give them a challenge andsay, hey, here's the tools you
can use.
We'll separate into fivedifferent teams and go build
something and you give them allthe AI tools to do it.
You give them Gamma and yougive them Jatch, ept and you
might give them like a relay appfor agents and stuff.
And you say go build something,and we're about ready to start
that, and I hope that what thatdoes is begin to unlock things
(32:24):
for people.
There's a certain amount offear, I think, that some people
have they're going to breaksomething or it's.
You know, they're not technical, but it really is super
accessible at this point.
Maura Rivera (32:35):
Yeah, it probably was Clay.
I mean, I'm sure a lot ofpeople are doing it, but I just
went to a event with G2 and withClay and us and Sixth Sense
sponsored it, and they weretalking about those hackathons,
because Clay especially seemslike tech that the sky's the
limit.
I was asking our ops guy.
I was like, oh, if I wanted to,based on LinkedIn job change,
do this and sync that data inand then fire off this campaign.
(32:58):
He's like, oh, yeah, we could,we could build that.
Like there's this new opennessto building.
Like, yeah, we could figurethat out.
I feel like years ago it waslike no, that's not possible.
Kevin Kerner (33:08):
Need a full stack developer.
Can't do that.
How do I get to the data?
It's impossible.
Maura Rivera (33:12):
Yeah, but it's good, kevin, that you're
encouraging your teams, like youknow, with us.
You know our eng team is usingCursor and every it's like if
there's an agent that can helpyou move faster, do it.
But I think that needs to comeyou know that needs to be part
of the culture of the companythat you're encouraging that
shift?
Kevin Kerner (33:31):
Cool, I have one more question and then I'm going
to.
I want to ask you a lot agenerated question here.
But what's the?
What's the one on unlock?
You're still chasing for yourteam Like what's the next step
for what you're trying to do?
Maura Rivera (33:43):
I'm still curious about how this agentic movement
is going to change analytics formarketers.
That's like the one unlock.
That's my dream, that I have anagent that I can go to, just
like I go to my head ofmarketing operations and say
build me a dashboard for this,show me the trends in our pipe
(34:03):
gen, show me which campaigns areworking and aren't working, and
do it in a way that's notpre-built dashboards that they
have to go edit, but just likegenerative analytics, and I
think that's where we're going.
So I'm curious I feel like somany of the like the front end
things have changed, but I'mcurious about marketing
operations and analytics, howthat's all going to just put
(34:24):
more data in the hands of ourmarketing leaders to make
smarter decisions and be lesspainful to try and build for
marketing ops professionals.
So that's the unlock I'mlooking for.
I think it's coming.
Kevin Kerner (34:36):
Yeah, less painful .
Not replace them, but justbecome less painful.
I really like what like asnowflake's doing with their AI
inside of the CDP.
It's really we're just at thevery beginning of it.
But the fact that they'remaking it so conversational with
the CDP and then you can getmore data than ever into the CDP
, it's just we're right at thebeginning of that.
(34:56):
I don't think we're far awayfrom that, mara.
I think that's you know that'sgoing to happen where you can
have conversations with the dataand it just creates not just
the text output, but it createsdashboards and all kinds of ways
to yeah, and the insights andto yeah, that's right.
Maura Rivera (35:11):
Or recommendations like maybe you should be doing
more of this based on this.
Kevin Kerner (35:14):
Yes, yeah.
Maura Rivera (35:15):
Like acting like a teammate with you know it's a
strategist in addition to kindof that like data scientist.
Kevin Kerner (35:21):
Yeah, and then maybe that emphasizes good
management skills at that pointby the individual.
Like we'll all need better, theability to manage the agents
better, or the AI better itbecomes.
You know you have got to managepeople today.
Yeah, you know, and you're just, you're just going to have to
manage a really, really smartfast thing Totally.
(35:42):
In the right way, because youcan set it off in the wrong
direction.
Or you can you know you can, sothat that critical, critical
thinking still has to be thereor you can really go really fast
in the wrong direction.
Maura Rivera (35:53):
Yeah, you need those guardrails, you need that
ownership, you need somebodywho's managing the agent.
It's not just set it and forgetit, at least at this point.
But it is a whole differentskill set and I think for folks
who go to interview for theirnext job, if they can say you
(36:22):
know, yeah, I manage this agentand this agent.
Kevin Kerner (36:22):
Like that's awesome to have that skill set.
These new jobs are beingcreated like who are probably
light years ahead of folks whoare 10,?
20 years older than them.
Like he's working for the TexasParks and Wildlife and in
herpetology there's no one'susing AI yet, and so I'm telling
Luke you got to just go full on, be the guy that does the.
AI thing for herpetology.
So think of all the otherindustries out there where
that's going to change.
The people that adopt it andbecome good managers of it are
(36:44):
going to be very valuable.
Maura Rivera (36:48):
Yeah, I think that's great advice.
He can be the mover and shakerat that company.
Kevin Kerner (36:52):
Okay, so I do a thing at the end of these.
I warned you about this.
Maura Rivera (36:56):
I know.
Kevin Kerner (36:58):
And you still showed up.
So it's pretty simple.
I load a question into aperplexity and then I hit send
and it's basically just give mea provocative and spicy but
respectful AI roulette questionbased on your LinkedIn profile
and then the questions that wehave.
So I'm going to hit send hereand see what it gives me.
Rexy's real fast.
Maura Rivera (37:18):
This is a first Kevin I've never had this, oh
really, oh, that's good.
Kevin Kerner (37:22):
Okay, mara, you built Piper an AI SDR agent with
its own brand personality, andeven a festival.
If Piper suddenly gained fullsentience and demanded a seat at
your executive table, what'sthe first marketing campaign
you'd assign it and what's theone thing you'd be terrified?
It would do better than you.
Oh, oh, my gosh.
Maura Rivera (37:44):
Well, the thing I'd be terrified she'd do better
than me is like answer aquestion that I got about our
product or integrations orsomething really complex,
because an agent's trained onyour whole website and all your
messaging so she's couldprobably answer most questions
about our product better than me.
And then what was the otherpart?
What's the first thing?
Kevin Kerner (38:04):
I would have her do?
Maura Rivera (38:05):
She could do everything.
Kevin Kerner (38:05):
What's the first marketing campaign you'd assign
it?
Maura Rivera (38:11):
what's the first thing I would have to do?
If you could do everything,what's the first marketing
campaign you'd assign it?
I mean, this is like such a bigquestion.
I mean I really we're trying togo bigger from a brand
perspective and get our storyout there.
So I would see what Piper coulddo to make sure that every one
of our target accounts knew thatwe had a great offering for an
AISDR agent and could get thosefolks nurtured and into our
funnel.
So that's a big that's a bigproduct.
Kevin Kerner (38:33):
That's probably the only prompt.
That's probably the only promptyou'd need to give a fully
sentient AISDR agent.
Just go get me all these people.
Maura Rivera (38:43):
Go figure it out.
Piper, I don't care how you doit, just come on, well, we have
had a few things where we usedto prep our inbound SDRs when we
were launching a campaign Headsup, we're going to see a spike
in website traffic.
Be prepared with the messaging.
And we had this one Slackconversation once that someone
was like hey, should I let ourSDRs know?
And somebody replied like noneed, piper's got it covered.
(39:04):
And we were like we shouldscreenshot that and make that
into a billboard because that'sthe future.
Kevin Kerner (39:08):
Yeah, that's it right there, right.
Well, Maura, this has beensuper fun.
I'm really thankful that youspent the time here.
If people want to get a hold ofyou or want to learn more about
Piper and Qualified like, howshould they go about it?
Maura Rivera (39:20):
Yeah, go to qualifiedcom and you can chat
with Piper and have aconversation and see her in
action, and then Maura Rivera onLinkedIn.
Kevin Kerner (39:29):
So we'd love to connect.
Maura Rivera (39:30):
Thank you, Kevin, for having me.
This is really fun.
Kevin Kerner (39:32):
Yeah, yeah, great, great job and good luck with
everything agentic in the future.
Maura Rivera (39:36):
Here it's going to be a fun one, you too.
Kevin Kerner (39:39):
All right, thanks a lot.
Maura Rivera (39:40):
Thank you.
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