I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
Ever find yourself staring at a mountain of marketing data and still wondering, "Where did this deal actually come from?" You're not alone. Dennis Behrman, CMO at Agility Recovery, brings a refreshingly honest perspective to one of marketing's biggest headaches: attribution.
Dennis pulls back the curtain on what many CMOs think but few admit – that despite our sophisticated tools and tracking systems, figuring out which marketing efforts truly drive results often feels more like educated guesswork than precise science. "We have all this data, tons of records and events, and yet we still had to have a discussion about where we thought this deal came from," he shares, capturing the frustration many marketers experience.
What makes this conversation particularly valuable is Dennis's contrarian approach to solving the problem. Rather than getting lost in the complexity of multi-touch attribution models, he advocates for simplicity, suggesting that the last activity before conversion often tells you what actually worked. "It's really that simple," he explains. This perspective challenges the industry's obsession with tracking every touchpoint throughout lengthy B2B buyer journeys, much of which Dennis suspects might be noise rather than signal.
Beyond attribution, we explore Dennis's innovative approach to AI in marketing. Instead of just using AI for content creation, his team at Agility Recovery is building interconnected GPT agents that identify potential leads based on real-world disasters and outages. One agent tracks weather events, another matches these events with businesses in affected areas, while a third crafts personalized outreach. It's a fascinating glimpse into how AI can transform lead generation by connecting real-time data with targeted marketing.
Ready to rethink your attribution strategy and explore AI beyond content creation? Listen now and discover why sometimes the simplest approach to measurement might be the most effective.
🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.
New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin Kerner (00:00):
Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner, and you're
listening to Tech MarketingRewired, a show where I talk to
marketing leaders who arerethinking how growth really
happens in tech.
In this episode, I sat downwith Dennis Bierman.
He's the CMO at AgilityRecovery and we unpacked
something every marketerwrestles with attribution.
You know we've got all thesetools and all the data, like
Salesforce and UTMs anddashboards galore, and somehow
(00:22):
you're still asking where didthis deal actually come from?
Dennis has been in that roommore times than he can count.
We talked about why attributionoften feels more like guesswork
than science, why last touchmight be the only thing that
really matters, and how he'susing GPT agents and stacking
them to generate leads forreal-world events like weather
and power outages.
(00:42):
You know it's one of thoseconversations that makes you
stop and rethink how much ofyour data is actually useful.
So I'm really excited aboutthis one.
Let's get into it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
Hello everyone, and welcomeback to Tech Marketing Rewired.
I'm your host, kevin Kerner,and I'm really excited to have a
(01:04):
good friend with me today,dennis Bierman.
Dennis, great for you to joinus.
Dennis Berhman (01:08):
Great Thanks for having me, Kevin.
Good to talk to you.
Kevin Kerner (01:10):
Yeah, yeah, Super psyched.
Anytime I get a chance to talkto you is a good thing.
Why don't we?
Dennis Berhman (01:15):
before we get into stuff.
Kevin Kerner (01:16):
Let's.
I know we're going to talktoday a lot about you.
Dennis Berhman (01:28):
Know your experience in, I guess,
marketing measurement, which isa big topic a lot of people are
interested in right now.
But why don't you go ahead andgive us a quick overview of your
background, because it'simpressive?
Thanks, kevin.
Yeah, I started my career inbanking.
It kind of came out when Y2Kwas a thing, so I cut my teeth
on some systems work for acouple of years.
I went on to become a productmanager at a bunch of software
companies and spent some goodtime with product managers and
engineers and kind of justlearning how to do that job.
(01:50):
And that brought me tomarketing, kind of accidentally,
about midway through my career.
So for the past I guess 15years or so I've just been doing
a lot of different marketingexperiences, primarily at
private equity, backed softwarestartups and primarily B2B
marketing.
Kevin Kerner (02:09):
Yeah, interesting, and now you're CMO at actually
a really interesting company,agility Recovery, which is an
industry that I have not workedin before for me too.
Dennis Berhman (02:26):
But it's so funny too.
You spend long enough insoftware and you live that life
where there's seven alternativesto your product and it's just a
game about saying we're thebest at it because and now I'm
in a business where there is nopeer right these are kind of
real world problems.
So the big case study for uswas last year when the
hurricanes kind of whippedthrough the Carolinas.
You know that was a disastersituation.
(02:48):
Businesses were knocked out,power, connectivity, everything,
buildings, flooding and youknow Agility Recovery was able
to get in there and getbusinesses back up and running.
You know, in a matter of daysand sometimes even hours.
So it's real world stuff.
Right, it's real world businessservices and I'm absolutely
thrilled to be working.
Kevin Kerner (03:09):
Yeah, it's really cool guy it's.
For those of you don't know,it's a I call it a disaster
recovery services.
So it's kind of part technology, part service.
And what a mission, though.
I mean you show up when peopleneed you.
And I guess, even like from amarketing perspective, you got
(03:30):
to show up when you got to havethem know, you like, you got to
be on the list for this type ofstuff, or when they're searching
.
You got to show up Right Causeit, it, it.
People may not look fordisaster recovery until it
happens, right, that's right.
Dennis Berhman (03:38):
Yeah, I mean awareness is is the first, is
the first ingredient tomarketing success, right?
They have to know thatsomething like this is out there
and our product fits the bill,right?
There's just not a lot ofbusiness owners that would know
how to connect a two kilowattgenerator to a building to
provide backup power, so it's-.
Kevin Kerner (03:56):
You'd hope they wouldn't have to.
A lot of them are like.
I hope I don't ever have to dothis.
Absolutely so yeah, it's acritical service and the fact
that we can offer it on amembership basis so you don't
have to worry about managing allthose assets and all that
(04:18):
overhead, that's the real valueadd.
You know all different types ofowned companies public, private
, private equity you know you'vehad to probably defend the
marketing position a lot and ofcourse that's how you measure
has changed a ton over the last,let's say, 10 years.
So you have this perspective.
I thought I'd.
(04:40):
One of the things I wanted Iknow we wanted to dig into was
attribution and sort of thatwhole topic of how do you track
the success of any marketingchannel or sales channel and
there might be some peoplelistening that don't really have
the experience.
You have an attribution, so whynot?
Could you just define, fromyour perspective, just maybe
broadly, marketing measurementand the marketing attribution,
and then we'll get into some ofthe challenges that you're
seeing now is how, how it'schanged yeah, so I'm not an
(05:03):
academic at this, I'm a hack,right, I had to learn this on
the job.
Dennis Berhman (05:07):
But, yeah, you know.
So you know, the golden rule inmarketing is you have to be
able to measure it to manage it.
So you know, over the years, asdigital marketing and the
internet has exploded, there'sjust been this proliferation of
tools, data analysis techniquesand methods that marketing and
businesses have used to figureout hey, how are we getting this
(05:29):
business, how are we fillingour funnel, where are these
leads coming from, and whatmarketing activities did we do
to get these leads and generatethis pipeline?
So marketing measurement turnedinto a science called
attribution, and attributionsounds like a very scientific
term, but you know, the reasonthat I kind of pitched being on
(05:50):
your podcast is because I feltover the years I got this
nagging suspicion that it'sactually not as scientific as
people think it is.
I do think it's technologydriven and I think it's data
driven.
But even recently I was in adiscussion with my executive
team here at Agility about wheredid this deal come from.
(06:11):
We have all this data, tons andtons of data and records in the
database and leads and eventsand yet we still had to have a
discussion about where wethought this deal came from.
So it was a very contradictorytype of conclusion it was, it
was, it was.
It was a very contradictorytype of conclusion I had, which
is you know, all of this data,all these tools, all this
(06:32):
technology, and yet we're stillhaving individual human
conversations about where didthis deal come from?
Yeah, so it does.
It does seem a little bit oddand I thought that would be a
great topic for your podcast.
Kevin Kerner (06:44):
That's crazy.
Yeah, because you would think,with all the propaganda around,
oh, these tools are so easy andthey can track everything.
It's really not.
It's really much more complex.
Break down for me why you thinkit's particularly challenging
in B2B.
Well, let's just talk about B2B, because that's the world we're
in.
Why is it particularlychallenging now, in 2025?
Dennis Berhman (07:04):
Yeah, great question.
So one of the things that'sgoing out there is, you know,
the notion of the buyer journey.
I think probably everyone wholistens to your podcast and has
had a career in marketing hasdug in and spent some time in
the buyer journey, theindividual steps that a buyer
takes on that path, fromawareness, you know, being
(07:26):
convinced and being sold andconverting into a lead and
converting into a book ofbusiness.
And I think we've, as marketers, we've been taught and almost
indoctrinated by our vendors ortechnology vendors to say you
know, you have to track everysingle event that happens to
that lead along the way tobecoming a lead.
And that starts with anonymousactivity in your website.
(07:48):
Before they even fill out aform and give you an email
address and give you a name,they're on your website and
they've been cookied and they'rean anonymous visitor with
anonymous sessions and we'retracking all those clicks all
the way and then at the very endof it, they do something.
All the way and then at thevery end of it, they do
something.
The visitor on your website doessomething, fills out a form,
(08:09):
becomes a lead and maybe becomesa customer, and now you have
revenue.
And now we start askingourselves the question how do we
get this revenue?
So then we do this big lookback, right, we look back at
tons and tons of data and tonsand tons of clicks and tons and
tons of events on our websiteand we start playing the chip
trading game.
Oh well, that click on thatasset was influential and oh,
(08:31):
they downloaded that checklistand therefore that contributed
to it.
And I just think those arelargely internal discussions.
I have this nagging suspicionthat if you were to go back and
actually most of these leadsprobably don't remember
everything they did in yourwebsite over the period of
months or perhaps even years.
But I think, I suspect I havethis nagging suspicion that if
(08:54):
we were looking at truth ratherthan just data, we would realize
that a lot of this activity onour websites is random,
arbitrary and not terriblyinfluential at all.
Websites is random, arbitraryand not terribly influential at
all, and I do suspect that itcan be different for every
website visitor, but typicallyit's one thing or one or two
recent things that causes aperson to convert into a lead
(09:17):
and ultimately seek yourproducts and services.
Kevin Kerner (09:21):
Who's asking the question of attribution?
In your experience, I'm sureit's executive team sales.
But what's the catalyst for thequestion and that question?
Where did this come from?
Where are you going to defendit?
Dennis Berhman (09:34):
Yeah.
So there are several partnersand peers around the business
who have interest in this stuff.
So you mentioned sales.
So certainly your sellers wantto know what activities you're
doing that's leading to thesethings becoming leads.
And they're asking for a coupleof interesting reasons.
Number one they obviously wantto know you know what piqued the
(09:56):
lead's interest, like what,what are the topics, what's the?
You know what, what's the,what's the value prop, what's
resonating, what should theyemulate when they get in touch
with that lead?
And that's great.
The other thing is, sometimessales has their own biases about
what the value prop is, whatworks, what message resonates
with leads in our target markets.
(10:17):
So sometimes they actually wantto disprove the activities that
you're doing in marketing andsay no, no, don't do that, do
this instead and that willgenerate more.
So sales is one contingent.
Certainly executive leadershipand boards a lot of marketing.
I think in the last four rolesthat I've been in, marketing is
(10:39):
either the largest or the secondlargest cost center of the
business.
So these companies, theseinvestors and these owners and
executive teams are dumping tonsand tons of resources into
marketing and they rightfullywant to know, like, what's
working, what's not working.
Should we do this?
Should we stop doing that?
So you know that contingency,the, you know the exec team,
(11:02):
your board, your ownership, youknow they're the ones who are
putting their necks on the lineand they're you know they're
shelling out a lot of money togenerate this business and this
growth and they have a right tounderstand what's working,
what's not working.
Why do we do this?
Why didn't we do that?
How do I, how do I evaluatetrade-offs in a in a constraint
(11:23):
driven world?
So certainly there's that.
And then, thirdly, you havemarketers themselves, right, and
, kevin, I don't know if you'veever felt yourself in this type
of a situation, but we have tojustify our own existence
somehow, right.
We have to prove to the worldthat we are valuable, we do have
merit, we deserve our seat atthe table to determine what goes
(11:43):
on in the marketing program.
You know those are the threebig constituencies when it comes
to marketing attributiondiscussions and their own
objectives and goals and biasesand prejudices kind of infect a
lot of these discussions alongthe way.
I swear to goodness, if I'vehad it at one shop, I've had it
at a dozen.
It doesn't change.
Kevin Kerner (12:04):
Totally.
You know it was superinteresting.
What you just said is, like youwould think, attribution.
I mean, I know you got to dothe defense thing and even as a
marketer you know you have theseconstituencies.
But what was interesting is itwasn't.
(12:26):
It didn't sound like to youthat it was overly helpful to
actually figure out what wasworking and or maybe truthfully,
what is working, and maybe youjust didn't say that.
But when you look at itinternally, like in the
marketing department, is ithelpful at all and in what ways
is it helpful?
Or maybe it's just at the pointwhere, like, it's really not
that helpful anymore.
It's more of a feel or a guessif you took all the external
factors out of it.
Dennis Berhman (12:45):
Yeah, I'll tell you what I wish there was a
technology out there that couldidentify signal versus noise in
the behavior right Right.
Sometimes I feel that only 10%of it is true signal and 90% of
that data is a lot of noise.
So wouldn't it be great if youhad a filter on your analytics
package that said filter out thenoise?
So yeah, if inspiringentrepreneurs out there, tech
(13:06):
entrepreneurs, come a with anoise filter platform and I'll
be your pilot.
Kevin Kerner (13:10):
Yeah, that's crazy because there's a whole
industry built aroundattribution like a whole, like
there's platforms, it's insideof platforms and now there's AI
stuff that's going on to try tofigure it out.
And as a CMO like a tenured CMOhas been in a bunch of places
it's super interesting to hear.
What I hear you saying is likeI don't know if we can trust
this stuff.
(13:30):
I don't know if it's actuallyuseful data.
If you had to pull out ausefulness in it, is there any
data that's particularly usefulcoming out of it and, if so,
what do you find most useful?
Dennis Berhman (13:44):
Certainly the last activity before they
convert to a lead, right, I mean, almost always.
That's for me, the mostreliable thing.
And if I was to tell anymarketer what to do and what
activities to invest in, it'sinvest in the ones that are
directly generating leads.
And I do think that there'ssomething to be appreciated
(14:05):
about the difference between B2Bmarketing and B2C marketing,
appreciated about the differencebetween you know B2B marketing
and B2C marketing, right, ifyou're?
If you're Nike, you know, or,or Walmart, or you know Amazon.
I mean B2C is a different worldbecause you really I mean you
want to know what colors ofwidgets they're interested in so
(14:26):
that you can put that color ofa widget offer in front of them
for their next product.
Like all of that, all of thatattribution data and past data
that exists in B2C, I think isfar more useful than that stuff
would be in a B2B world.
So you know, for me, I think,like the answer is always the
simplest one or the most elegantone, which is go with what you
(14:47):
know, not a hunch, not what yoususpect, what you can actually
see and prove Right, and that's,for example, this most recent
QBR that we were in thatinvolved me going through all of
our several hundred inboundMQLs for the quarter and looking
at all the click history andwhen I look at it, just you know
, with a perfectly honest, youknow, truthful perspective, not
(15:11):
seeking an agenda, almost alwaysI can just look at the last
activity before conversion.
What did they show up at thesite for?
Where did they fill out theform?
What did the page say?
That's what worked, it's.
It's really that simple.
Kevin Kerner (15:24):
Are you running MTA now, though?
Do you have the ability to runmulti-touch?
Dennis Berhman (15:28):
We are yeah, so we have an interesting situation
where we're a 35-year-oldbusiness, right?
So our business was started asa division of GE 35 years ago
and has morphed and adapted andchanged over those three decades
, so a lot of this attributioninformation has been built up
(15:52):
over the past few years and nowI feel like it's a lot of data
debt and technical debt thatneeds to be paid off in order to
kind of just get a very clearview of the signal.
So, yeah, we're doing.
We have multi-touch attribution.
Salesforce has multi-touchattribution models baked in.
Interestingly enough, I saw thatwe're using both first touch
(16:16):
and last touch together.
You can have both models activein Salesforce and I guess
Salesforce will tell you whatworked.
But you know that and that wasanother thing that leading up to
me reaching out to you aboutthis episode I thought was very
interesting.
It's like so now we're lettingSalesforce tell us where our
deals came from, and I supposethat's great if you understand
why Salesforce is making thedetermination that it is, but if
(16:39):
you don't, you probablystruggle to explain some of this
stuff sometimes to yourpartners around the business
around the business.
Kevin Kerner (16:53):
What about the effect of brand just overarching
brand on the ability forsomeone to be interested in you
and interested in you and thento to to get to click on
something that comes to you?
Can't really measure that aseasy, can you?
I mean, what's your perspectiveas a CMO on the importance of
brand, and that's might besomething that you really can't
measure as directly.
Dennis Berhman (17:10):
Yeah, interesting question.
So, gosh, I guess I'm going toconfess to being a rogue or
renegade marketer, but I'vealways sought out opportunities
where you didn't need a brand tobe successful in marketing.
Again, coming back to I was aproduct manager early in the day
.
Just where my heart is is Iwant to win on the strength of
(17:34):
our product.
I want to win on the strengthof our value prop and I don't
want to win on how far and widewe can spend to get the brand
out there.
And then, coupled with that, Ithink a lot of fellow marketers
are out there.
Probably a lot of the people youknow as well are in niche.
You know, in niche verticals,right, where you're targeting
(17:54):
very, very discrete segments ofthe market.
Right, you're targetingspecific functions of the
business HR or finance.
You're targeting specific rolesin that a risk and compliance
person or a facilities opsperson, right?
So you don't need this massivehousehold brand right to be
(18:16):
successful in those spaces, andthat's liberating to me.
I actually find that to be veryliberating.
I'm an organizer and a tinkererby nature.
So I, like you know, simplicityis, is is my nirvana and I
don't.
I want to eliminate as manyfactors to success as possible.
I don't.
(18:36):
I don't want to have toincorporate a new factor and a
new factor and a new factor allthe time.
I think that kind of leads tojust madness.
Right, and I want to be.
I'm already an energetic guy.
I want to be, be, you know, Iwant to be calm at work okay, I
want to.
Kevin Kerner (18:51):
I know you're, I know you are about ready to redo
some of the properties there,since you're, you know CMO and
have taken a look at sort ofunder the hood of everything,
with the website being one ofthem.
How does the measurement, howdoes this measurement discussion
affect how you approach web,especially the web rebuild or
redesign or re-messaging?
Does it affect?
(19:12):
It at all Does it affect yourthinking?
Dennis Berhman (19:14):
Yeah, it does in a couple of very interesting
ways too.
I think one of the first waysand we were chatting about this
in the warm-up session to theshoot here is I'm a privacy guy,
so I love privacy mindedsolutions as much as anyone.
But I think if you were to takea poll of global website users,
I think universally everyonewould conclude that that whole
(19:37):
GDPR cookie banner accept allcookies thing is just the
biggest pain in the butt in thewhole world.
I don't know anyone that likesthat thing.
Kevin Kerner (19:46):
Right and we all have.
Dennis Berhman (19:48):
We're all surfing the web every day and I
think, like every one of us, isannoyed by it.
I don't know anyone that likesthat thing right?
I agree, we're all surfing theweb every day and I think, like
every one of us, is annoyed byit.
I don't think anyone thinksthat's worth the privacy
trade-off or even understands,frankly, what the privacy
trade-off is.
So how it affects measurementand analytics, is there's an
opportunity to deployprivacy-minded analytics?
Google's going to hate me forthis.
(20:10):
Google Analytics is notprivacy-minded analytics.
It's the opposite ofprivacy-minded analytics.
And if you use Google Analyticson your site, you have to and
you do any sort of business inthe?
U you have to do that GDPR,privacy or cookie disclosure.
So I think you know one of theexciting things that we get to
do here is we get to figure outhow to be a little bit more user
(20:30):
friendly, right, a little bitmore privacy friendly, while
still getting the basic, normal,effective marketing,
attribution and analytics thatwe expect and that we need to do
our jobs.
So that's one interesting thingthat I get to play around with
as part of the site work thatwe're doing.
I think the second thing is,you know this is still very much
(20:52):
a niche business that I'm in.
So, you know, in terms ofre-architecting our message and
how we position the solutionsand position the products to the
world, I think there's anopportunity to do so smartly,
right In a very smart kind ofcommon sense, human oriented way
, and not let us do this endlesshand wringing about should we
(21:16):
say this or that, this or that,how about this, how about that?
Right, I think this is a goodchance to just get down to
basics, back to basics, and say,very, very matter of factly,
what is this business about?
What do we do for our customers?
What is the value of being amember of agility?
You know what do you get whenyou become a member of agility?
(21:38):
And just that, that plainspoken value prop.
You don't have to be supersophisticated.
Use, you know, you know 50 centwords all over your website.
Just tell them what you do,tell them why you're in it, tell
them why you do it.
So I'm excited about this thingbecause, again, I love the
whole.
Back to basics, right.
(21:59):
Just let's get back to signaland try to eliminate all that
noise.
Kevin Kerner (22:03):
Your.
Your comment about the cookiething is so dead on.
I hate this.
I wonder if anyone even looksat the dumb thing when you hit
the accept or reject.
What I try to do is I try tofigure out which one I can go
like.
What can I click the button onfaster?
Does it?
Do I do this one or this one?
It doesn't matter to me, butI'm probably the edge case from
a privacy perspective.
Do you know if there's?
(22:23):
Do you know what the workaroundis to that?
I mean, I did.
I didn't know it was tied to gaeither.
I know you can.
Dennis Berhman (22:35):
I know we have to build it into our google tag
manager?
Kevin Kerner (22:36):
yeah, but is there ?
Are there workarounds of nothaving the cookie?
Dennis Berhman (22:40):
okay, so simpler not a lawyer, right, not not an
attorney.
Um, I did use chat gpt thismorning, but apparently the
explicit cookie banner is a GDPRrequirement that affects EU and
anyone who is within the scopeof EU, so that can be people who
are French citizens living inthe US, for example.
(23:02):
Right, the scope is justmassive.
I think everyone remembers whenGDPR was rolled out how much
you know how big of a deal thatwas.
Kevin Kerner (23:09):
A lot of companies made a lot of money off it too.
Dennis Berhman (23:11):
GDPR, you know.
But I think number one, youknow, agility recovery doesn't,
doesn't have a book of businessin Europe, we don't deliver our
services there.
So that that's kind of whatstarted me on.
You know, can I just figure outa way to get around?
Not get around, but just to notbe in scope for GDPR in the
first place?
(23:31):
So you know.
So I think I think you know,figure out where your scope,
where your coverage and yourscope of GDPR lies, and you know
you're probably onto somethingif you don't seek to get
business in Europe.
Yeah, that's the starting point.
Yeah, that's the starting point.
And then the second thing that Ilearned in this journey is that
a lot of those behavioralanalytics that are in scope for
(23:54):
GDPR are, you know, is whatGoogle's using.
So you know GA is taking.
That's what's consideredsharing.
When you take traffic data fromyour website and you hand it
over to GA, that's considereddata sharing.
That's in scope for thatregulation.
So the question I then askmyself is do I need GA?
And sure enough, there'sactually analytics packages out
(24:17):
there that are either local sidehosted analytics packages that
are single session right andthey don't capture all of those
non-essential cookies that's,you know so prevalent in in the
in the google analytics platform.
So, you know, caution, everyone,like you know, ask the
questions you need to ask right.
(24:38):
Like you know, bring, bring inyour experts.
But you know, I I think thereis a way forward where, if you
just you know, if you want to be, if you want basic analytics
that do the trick, that tell youwhat's working and what's not
working on your website, and youcan figure out your scope and
exposure to some of these thingsand do it easily.
(24:59):
I think you're in a big, youknow, you're in a big kind of
de-scoping mode of your tech andyou can shed all of this, all
of this data and tech debt thatwe have, shed all of this, all
of this data and tech debt thatwe have.
You know, we've all joinedplaces where you fire up Google
tag manager and you know there'sthere's 50 or 70 tags set up on
your website and I don't thinkmany people know what they even
(25:19):
do, right?
So that's an argument for justslimming everything down, just
focusing on what you need andand eliminating everything that
you don't.
Kevin Kerner (25:27):
Oh, that's fascinating.
I never even it, never evenentered into my brain not to
have tag manager.
That's why you're, that's whywho you are and who I am,
because you would be the guyknowing you to say I wonder if
we need this thing.
I wonder if there's somethingelse that's so awesome.
I am seeing two camps of liketech overhead.
(25:48):
It's like it's like eithereither everyone wants to put the
sink, have the single platformthey're looking for the single
platform that solves everything.
They get a HubSpot route andthey do everything through
HubSpot or you're seeing allthese micro solutions, little
solutions that talk to eachother really easy and, um, I
don't know which one's simpler.
I mean, I think there's a casewe made that going one stack
(26:10):
easy, consolidated stack is easy, but then you lose that on the
functionality.
There's another case to makethat if you're keeping your
options open with a bunch ofdifferent platforms, smaller
platforms, let's say, more agilestuff you're not as beholden to
any of the technology providers.
It's really an interesting time.
Dennis Berhman (26:27):
Yeah, and I've used both In my last two roles.
I've done both of theseapproaches.
One was single stack on HubSpot, which I loved.
I think HubSpot does a greatjob as a single stack right,
it's easy, it's intuitive, it'sreliable, it works.
But then you come into a shopthat isn't a HubSpot shop and,
rather than do a big HubSpotdeployment, you sit there and
(26:49):
you look at your tool set andyou say what do I need to do?
And if you have a contrarianmindset, right, if you just
think of, well, what's the otherway, what's the other option,
and you just keep asking thosequestions and you keep finding
answers, this is okay, this isactually possible.
This is exciting.
I can do my job with about 25%of the tech stock I thought I
(27:09):
needed to be able to do.
It's absolutely fascinating.
Kevin Kerner (27:12):
Yeah, you're the best at that too.
You're the master of being likewhat.
Why do we need to do it thisway?
And you just go off there andusually make it work.
Before I let you go, I'mcurious because you're a CMO and
I'm interested to ask thisquestion what do you think of
what's been the benefit of AI inyour marketing effort there at
Agility, like what?
Just give me your generalthoughts on how you're using it,
(27:34):
with the good and the bad.
What do you think?
Dennis Berhman (27:36):
Yeah, ai, I tell , I tell everyone that you know
AI changed our jobs overnight,right?
So, beyond the obvious, whichis, you know, using AI to kind
of like, do a lot of your, yourwriting, right?
It's a large language model, soit's great at writing words.
Where I've been using itrecently, and where we're
getting to with agility, isusing a more agentic AI approach
(27:58):
for lead gen.
So we're building a series ofAI GPTs or bots that are going
out and doing some websitescraping and finding external
kind of like macro events anddeducing which potential
businesses would be exposed tothose events and then targeting
(28:18):
those businesses based on thatconclusion.
So, for example, there's anumber of websites out there
that track weather-relatedactivity.
Some of them are commercial,some of them are open-sourced.
But if you know that afive-mile radius around a
particular town's floodinghappened and you can pull that
data in by using a GPT webscraper tool and then you can
(28:42):
cross-reference that with yourdatabase, external data,
business data and so on, you'reactually in a position to go to
affected targets in the marketand say, hey, we understand that
you just had some catastrophicflooding in your area.
Whether or not your businesswas disrupted isn't now the time
you should look into businesscontinuity tools.
(29:03):
Or another thing is a popularthing is hey, it looks like over
the past 12 months, you know,the area that your business is
located in has had a grand totalof 27 hours of power outages
over the past year.
That's extremely effectiveinformation if you're targeting
businesses to offer them backuppower on demand.
(29:26):
So these GPTs are starting totalk to each other, right.
One GPT's job is to go find theevents out, the weather events
out in the world.
Another is to associate themwith businesses, look those
businesses up.
And yet a third is to look atthat business, the affected
business, and what businessthey're in.
Look at the event that happenedout in the world and craft an
(29:49):
ideal pitch and say you know,here's a pitch because there's
just a lot of power outages inyour area.
Here's a pitch because therewas, you know, a hurricane risk
and you're in a FEMA flood zoneand you know, and you're in a,
for example, a pharmaceuticalstorage business where you can't
have more than you know 25minutes at a time of power
(30:09):
outage.
So that kind of use of AI andparticularly an agentic approach
building purpose-specific GPTsand having them actually talk to
each other in order to generatethe outcome is truly
fascinating stuff.
I hope every marketer islooking into this stuff, and the
tools are prolific, right?
I don't need to mention any ofthe names, but there's just tons
(30:31):
of tools out there.
So dig in, go for it.
It's exciting stuff.
It's going to make your job alot easier.
Kevin Kerner (30:37):
Yeah, the whole GPT stacking idea is so cool, I
mean that's so, I mean we do it,but I'd never really connected
the way you connected it.
And then the data platform thatyou talk about, like connected
it and that the um, the dataplatform that you talk about,
like I used to work at hearthanks and we would.
We had all these really complexepsilon does this to really
complex models that would lookat weather and then if there was
a weather event, they would goto home depot and say these
(31:00):
stores need to show, you know,the umbrella ads or whatever the
, whatever the product was.
Now you can just do it by justa gpt.
That's unbelievable, reallygood use case.
That's crazy impressive stuffokay, so I wanted to.
I want to take you through.
This has been awesome.
I want to take you through alittle thing we do here on tech
marketing where this is going tobe a little scary for you, but
(31:23):
I'm gonna uh.
So I go into perplexity.
I ask it, I tell it.
Hey, here, I I want a.
I want to do an ai roulettequestion with my next podcast
guest.
I want it to be unexpected andprovocative for him at the end
of the podcast based on hisexperience that I load in your
LinkedIn profile.
So I'm going to hit send hereand let's see what it gives me.
Okay, just based on yourLinkedIn profile.
(31:44):
Here's a provocative,unexpected question.
If you could implant a singleunfiltered AI generated thought
into the mind of every executivein your industry, what would it
be and what chaos ortransformation do you think it
would unleash?
I guess you can pick yourindustry.
Is it in the marketing industry?
Is it in the disaster recoveryindustry?
Dennis Berhman (32:05):
That's an interesting so I have to inject
a thought into.
Kevin Kerner (32:12):
Yeah, every executive in your industry.
And what would you hope itwould?
What chaos or transformation doyou think it would unleash?
Dennis Berhman (32:17):
no, I'm going to take the easy way out, because
I've I've said this before.
I think ai is accelerating this, but I think I think marketers
are endangered species and and Iwould, and I would honestly say
like if if a marketer comes toyou and says they have the
answers, don't trust it.
We don't have the answers.
We're searching for the truth,just like everyone else, and I
(32:38):
think the temptation is thathaving a lot of data and having
a lot of data analytics meansthat you know the truth.
I don't think it does.
So, yeah, and for that reason,marketers are an endangered
species.
Kevin Kerner (32:51):
We will not exist in this life form, in another
tenor don't like think about all, the, all the stuff and I
(33:12):
totally agree with you.
I think jacob bank was on one ofthe podcasts so far and he was.
He had a really good way ofputting the perfect marketer in
the future at least for the, forthe foreseeable future, where
we wanted people that had a realtools first mentality.
Like they were like thinking,if I'm a mark and you're really
good at this, like you're this.
Strangely, I don't know, maybebecause we have all this context
and background, we're like this, but it's someone who, if you
give them a problem or solution,the first thing they think
(33:33):
about is what is there a toolthat can solve this?
And with agents and AI and allthis technology and stuff
getting easier and moreaccessible, I think that is a.
I think that's where things areheaded.
We need those type of people inmarketing, more of those types
of people.
Dennis Berhman (33:46):
Totally agree.
Yeah, if there's got to be atool to solve it, and I think
what that means for us as aspecies, kevin, like doesn't
that mean that we're we're goingto become more operators of
technology, and it's, it'sreally about the tool selection.
So our success will be aboutthe tool selection and not
necessarily our understanding ofthe market or, you know, our
(34:08):
mastery of the subject matter.
Right, it's really just it'sgoing to be about, you know, are
we good operators of the tools?
Kevin Kerner (34:14):
Yeah, and have a good knowledge set of them, such
that we can build a communityaround you.
Know how do you harness thisstuff, which will be awesome.
And you would be awesome inthat community because you know,
you know you're.
You're a person I go to whenI'm trying to broaden my
perspective on this stuff, soit's awesome.
Dennis Berhman (34:31):
Well, Dennis, I really appreciate it.
Don't oversell me, all right.
Kevin Kerner (34:36):
No, you're great.
So I wanted people to get ahold of you.
How would they get a hold ofAgility or you?
What's the best way to contactyou if they want to talk more
about this stuff?
Dennis Berhm (34:47):
AgilityRecoverycom great website, and also on
LinkedIn.
We love LinkedIn, sharing greatinformation there Me personally
also.
On LinkedIn, dennis Biermaneasy to find and if you ever
need to email me it's justDennis at DennisBiermancom.
Kevin Kerner (34:59):
Love it.
Dennis, thank you so much.
I was so glad you reached outto me and you know we'll do this
again as you, as you get moreprovocative ideas in that head
of yours.
Dennis Berhman (35:08):
Absolutely.
Yeah, thanks for having me, andI'll be your guy for anything
controversial.
I love the controversial topics, of course.
Kevin Kerner (35:14):
Okay, man, we'll see you.
Dennis Berhman (35:15):
See you, take care.
Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner, and you're
listening to Tech MarketingRewired, a show where I talk to
marketing leaders who arerethinking how growth really
happens in tech.
In this episode, I sat downwith Dennis Bierman.
He's the CMO at AgilityRecovery and we unpacked
something every marketerwrestles with attribution.
You know we've got all thesetools and all the data, like
Salesforce and UTMs anddashboards galore, and somehow
(00:22):
you're still asking where didthis deal actually come from?
Dennis has been in that roommore times than he can count.
We talked about why attributionoften feels more like guesswork
than science, why last touchmight be the only thing that
really matters, and how he'susing GPT agents and stacking
them to generate leads forreal-world events like weather
and power outages.
(00:42):
You know it's one of thoseconversations that makes you
stop and rethink how much ofyour data is actually useful.
So I'm really excited aboutthis one.
Let's get into it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
Hello everyone, and welcomeback to Tech Marketing Rewired.
I'm your host, kevin Kerner,and I'm really excited to have a
(01:04):
good friend with me today,dennis Bierman.
Dennis, great for you to joinus.
Dennis Berhman (01:08):
Great Thanks for having me, Kevin.
Good to talk to you.
Kevin Kerner (01:10):
Yeah, yeah, Super psyched.
Anytime I get a chance to talkto you is a good thing.
Why don't we?
Dennis Berhman (01:15):
before we get into stuff.
Kevin Kerner (01:16):
Let's.
I know we're going to talktoday a lot about you.
Dennis Berhman (01:28):
Know your experience in, I guess,
marketing measurement, which isa big topic a lot of people are
interested in right now.
But why don't you go ahead andgive us a quick overview of your
background, because it'simpressive?
Thanks, kevin.
Yeah, I started my career inbanking.
It kind of came out when Y2Kwas a thing, so I cut my teeth
on some systems work for acouple of years.
I went on to become a productmanager at a bunch of software
companies and spent some goodtime with product managers and
engineers and kind of justlearning how to do that job.
(01:50):
And that brought me tomarketing, kind of accidentally,
about midway through my career.
So for the past I guess 15years or so I've just been doing
a lot of different marketingexperiences, primarily at
private equity, backed softwarestartups and primarily B2B
marketing.
Kevin Kerner (02:09):
Yeah, interesting, and now you're CMO at actually
a really interesting company,agility Recovery, which is an
industry that I have not workedin before for me too.
Dennis Berhman (02:26):
But it's so funny too.
You spend long enough insoftware and you live that life
where there's seven alternativesto your product and it's just a
game about saying we're thebest at it because and now I'm
in a business where there is nopeer right these are kind of
real world problems.
So the big case study for uswas last year when the
hurricanes kind of whippedthrough the Carolinas.
You know that was a disastersituation.
(02:48):
Businesses were knocked out,power, connectivity, everything,
buildings, flooding and youknow Agility Recovery was able
to get in there and getbusinesses back up and running.
You know, in a matter of daysand sometimes even hours.
So it's real world stuff.
Right, it's real world businessservices and I'm absolutely
thrilled to be working.
Kevin Kerner (03:09):
Yeah, it's really cool guy it's.
For those of you don't know,it's a I call it a disaster
recovery services.
So it's kind of part technology, part service.
And what a mission, though.
I mean you show up when peopleneed you.
And I guess, even like from amarketing perspective, you got
(03:30):
to show up when you got to havethem know, you like, you got to
be on the list for this type ofstuff, or when they're searching
.
You got to show up Right Causeit, it, it.
People may not look fordisaster recovery until it
happens, right, that's right.
Dennis Berhman (03:38):
Yeah, I mean awareness is is the first, is
the first ingredient tomarketing success, right?
They have to know thatsomething like this is out there
and our product fits the bill,right?
There's just not a lot ofbusiness owners that would know
how to connect a two kilowattgenerator to a building to
provide backup power, so it's-.
Kevin Kerner (03:56):
You'd hope they wouldn't have to.
A lot of them are like.
I hope I don't ever have to dothis.
Absolutely so yeah, it's acritical service and the fact
that we can offer it on amembership basis so you don't
have to worry about managing allthose assets and all that
(04:18):
overhead, that's the real valueadd.
You know all different types ofowned companies public, private
, private equity you know you'vehad to probably defend the
marketing position a lot and ofcourse that's how you measure
has changed a ton over the last,let's say, 10 years.
So you have this perspective.
I thought I'd.
(04:40):
One of the things I wanted Iknow we wanted to dig into was
attribution and sort of thatwhole topic of how do you track
the success of any marketingchannel or sales channel and
there might be some peoplelistening that don't really have
the experience.
You have an attribution, so whynot?
Could you just define, fromyour perspective, just maybe
broadly, marketing measurementand the marketing attribution,
and then we'll get into some ofthe challenges that you're
seeing now is how, how it'schanged yeah, so I'm not an
(05:03):
academic at this, I'm a hack,right, I had to learn this on
the job.
Dennis Berhman (05:07):
But, yeah, you know.
So you know, the golden rule inmarketing is you have to be
able to measure it to manage it.
So you know, over the years, asdigital marketing and the
internet has exploded, there'sjust been this proliferation of
tools, data analysis techniquesand methods that marketing and
businesses have used to figureout hey, how are we getting this
(05:29):
business, how are we fillingour funnel, where are these
leads coming from, and whatmarketing activities did we do
to get these leads and generatethis pipeline?
So marketing measurement turnedinto a science called
attribution, and attributionsounds like a very scientific
term, but you know, the reasonthat I kind of pitched being on
(05:50):
your podcast is because I feltover the years I got this
nagging suspicion that it'sactually not as scientific as
people think it is.
I do think it's technologydriven and I think it's data
driven.
But even recently I was in adiscussion with my executive
team here at Agility about wheredid this deal come from.
(06:11):
We have all this data, tons andtons of data and records in the
database and leads and eventsand yet we still had to have a
discussion about where wethought this deal came from.
So it was a very contradictorytype of conclusion it was, it
was, it was.
It was a very contradictorytype of conclusion I had, which
is you know, all of this data,all these tools, all this
(06:32):
technology, and yet we're stillhaving individual human
conversations about where didthis deal come from?
Yeah, so it does.
It does seem a little bit oddand I thought that would be a
great topic for your podcast.
Kevin Kerner (06:44):
That's crazy.
Yeah, because you would think,with all the propaganda around,
oh, these tools are so easy andthey can track everything.
It's really not.
It's really much more complex.
Break down for me why you thinkit's particularly challenging
in B2B.
Well, let's just talk about B2B, because that's the world we're
in.
Why is it particularlychallenging now, in 2025?
Dennis Berhman (07:04):
Yeah, great question.
So one of the things that'sgoing out there is, you know,
the notion of the buyer journey.
I think probably everyone wholistens to your podcast and has
had a career in marketing hasdug in and spent some time in
the buyer journey, theindividual steps that a buyer
takes on that path, fromawareness, you know, being
(07:26):
convinced and being sold andconverting into a lead and
converting into a book ofbusiness.
And I think we've, as marketers, we've been taught and almost
indoctrinated by our vendors ortechnology vendors to say you
know, you have to track everysingle event that happens to
that lead along the way tobecoming a lead.
And that starts with anonymousactivity in your website.
(07:48):
Before they even fill out aform and give you an email
address and give you a name,they're on your website and
they've been cookied and they'rean anonymous visitor with
anonymous sessions and we'retracking all those clicks all
the way and then at the very endof it, they do something.
All the way and then at thevery end of it, they do
something.
The visitor on your website doessomething, fills out a form,
(08:09):
becomes a lead and maybe becomesa customer, and now you have
revenue.
And now we start askingourselves the question how do we
get this revenue?
So then we do this big lookback, right, we look back at
tons and tons of data and tonsand tons of clicks and tons and
tons of events on our websiteand we start playing the chip
trading game.
Oh well, that click on thatasset was influential and oh,
(08:31):
they downloaded that checklistand therefore that contributed
to it.
And I just think those arelargely internal discussions.
I have this nagging suspicionthat if you were to go back and
actually most of these leadsprobably don't remember
everything they did in yourwebsite over the period of
months or perhaps even years.
But I think, I suspect I havethis nagging suspicion that if
(08:54):
we were looking at truth ratherthan just data, we would realize
that a lot of this activity onour websites is random,
arbitrary and not terriblyinfluential at all.
Websites is random, arbitraryand not terribly influential at
all, and I do suspect that itcan be different for every
website visitor, but typicallyit's one thing or one or two
recent things that causes aperson to convert into a lead
(09:17):
and ultimately seek yourproducts and services.
Kevin Kerner (09:21):
Who's asking the question of attribution?
In your experience, I'm sureit's executive team sales.
But what's the catalyst for thequestion and that question?
Where did this come from?
Where are you going to defendit?
Dennis Berhman (09:34):
Yeah.
So there are several partnersand peers around the business
who have interest in this stuff.
So you mentioned sales.
So certainly your sellers wantto know what activities you're
doing that's leading to thesethings becoming leads.
And they're asking for a coupleof interesting reasons.
Number one they obviously wantto know you know what piqued the
(09:56):
lead's interest, like what,what are the topics, what's the?
You know what, what's the,what's the value prop, what's
resonating, what should theyemulate when they get in touch
with that lead?
And that's great.
The other thing is, sometimessales has their own biases about
what the value prop is, whatworks, what message resonates
with leads in our target markets.
(10:17):
So sometimes they actually wantto disprove the activities that
you're doing in marketing andsay no, no, don't do that, do
this instead and that willgenerate more.
So sales is one contingent.
Certainly executive leadershipand boards a lot of marketing.
I think in the last four rolesthat I've been in, marketing is
(10:39):
either the largest or the secondlargest cost center of the
business.
So these companies, theseinvestors and these owners and
executive teams are dumping tonsand tons of resources into
marketing and they rightfullywant to know, like, what's
working, what's not working.
Should we do this?
Should we stop doing that?
So you know that contingency,the, you know the exec team,
(11:02):
your board, your ownership, youknow they're the ones who are
putting their necks on the lineand they're you know they're
shelling out a lot of money togenerate this business and this
growth and they have a right tounderstand what's working,
what's not working.
Why do we do this?
Why didn't we do that?
How do I, how do I evaluatetrade-offs in a in a constraint
(11:23):
driven world?
So certainly there's that.
And then, thirdly, you havemarketers themselves, right, and
, kevin, I don't know if you'veever felt yourself in this type
of a situation, but we have tojustify our own existence
somehow, right.
We have to prove to the worldthat we are valuable, we do have
merit, we deserve our seat atthe table to determine what goes
(11:43):
on in the marketing program.
You know those are the threebig constituencies when it comes
to marketing attributiondiscussions and their own
objectives and goals and biasesand prejudices kind of infect a
lot of these discussions alongthe way.
I swear to goodness, if I'vehad it at one shop, I've had it
at a dozen.
It doesn't change.
Kevin Kerner (12:04):
Totally.
You know it was superinteresting.
What you just said is, like youwould think, attribution.
I mean, I know you got to dothe defense thing and even as a
marketer you know you have theseconstituencies.
But what was interesting is itwasn't.
(12:26):
It didn't sound like to youthat it was overly helpful to
actually figure out what wasworking and or maybe truthfully,
what is working, and maybe youjust didn't say that.
But when you look at itinternally, like in the
marketing department, is ithelpful at all and in what ways
is it helpful?
Or maybe it's just at the pointwhere, like, it's really not
that helpful anymore.
It's more of a feel or a guessif you took all the external
factors out of it.
Dennis Berhman (12:45):
Yeah, I'll tell you what I wish there was a
technology out there that couldidentify signal versus noise in
the behavior right Right.
Sometimes I feel that only 10%of it is true signal and 90% of
that data is a lot of noise.
So wouldn't it be great if youhad a filter on your analytics
package that said filter out thenoise?
So yeah, if inspiringentrepreneurs out there, tech
(13:06):
entrepreneurs, come a with anoise filter platform and I'll
be your pilot.
Kevin Kerner (13:10):
Yeah, that's crazy because there's a whole
industry built aroundattribution like a whole, like
there's platforms, it's insideof platforms and now there's AI
stuff that's going on to try tofigure it out.
And as a CMO like a tenured CMOhas been in a bunch of places
it's super interesting to hear.
What I hear you saying is likeI don't know if we can trust
this stuff.
(13:30):
I don't know if it's actuallyuseful data.
If you had to pull out ausefulness in it, is there any
data that's particularly usefulcoming out of it and, if so,
what do you find most useful?
Dennis Berhman (13:44):
Certainly the last activity before they
convert to a lead, right, I mean, almost always.
That's for me, the mostreliable thing.
And if I was to tell anymarketer what to do and what
activities to invest in, it'sinvest in the ones that are
directly generating leads.
And I do think that there'ssomething to be appreciated
(14:05):
about the difference between B2Bmarketing and B2C marketing,
appreciated about the differencebetween you know B2B marketing
and B2C marketing, right, ifyou're?
If you're Nike, you know, or,or Walmart, or you know Amazon.
I mean B2C is a different worldbecause you really I mean you
want to know what colors ofwidgets they're interested in so
(14:26):
that you can put that color ofa widget offer in front of them
for their next product.
Like all of that, all of thatattribution data and past data
that exists in B2C, I think isfar more useful than that stuff
would be in a B2B world.
So you know, for me, I think,like the answer is always the
simplest one or the most elegantone, which is go with what you
(14:47):
know, not a hunch, not what yoususpect, what you can actually
see and prove Right, and that's,for example, this most recent
QBR that we were in thatinvolved me going through all of
our several hundred inboundMQLs for the quarter and looking
at all the click history andwhen I look at it, just you know
, with a perfectly honest, youknow, truthful perspective, not
(15:11):
seeking an agenda, almost alwaysI can just look at the last
activity before conversion.
What did they show up at thesite for?
Where did they fill out theform?
What did the page say?
That's what worked, it's.
It's really that simple.
Kevin Kerner (15:24):
Are you running MTA now, though?
Do you have the ability to runmulti-touch?
Dennis Berhman (15:28):
We are yeah, so we have an interesting situation
where we're a 35-year-oldbusiness, right?
So our business was started asa division of GE 35 years ago
and has morphed and adapted andchanged over those three decades
, so a lot of this attributioninformation has been built up
(15:52):
over the past few years and nowI feel like it's a lot of data
debt and technical debt thatneeds to be paid off in order to
kind of just get a very clearview of the signal.
So, yeah, we're doing.
We have multi-touch attribution.
Salesforce has multi-touchattribution models baked in.
Interestingly enough, I saw thatwe're using both first touch
(16:16):
and last touch together.
You can have both models activein Salesforce and I guess
Salesforce will tell you whatworked.
But you know that and that wasanother thing that leading up to
me reaching out to you aboutthis episode I thought was very
interesting.
It's like so now we're lettingSalesforce tell us where our
deals came from, and I supposethat's great if you understand
why Salesforce is making thedetermination that it is, but if
(16:39):
you don't, you probablystruggle to explain some of this
stuff sometimes to yourpartners around the business
around the business.
Kevin Kerner (16:53):
What about the effect of brand just overarching
brand on the ability forsomeone to be interested in you
and interested in you and thento to to get to click on
something that comes to you?
Can't really measure that aseasy, can you?
I mean, what's your perspectiveas a CMO on the importance of
brand, and that's might besomething that you really can't
measure as directly.
Dennis Berhman (17:10):
Yeah, interesting question.
So, gosh, I guess I'm going toconfess to being a rogue or
renegade marketer, but I'vealways sought out opportunities
where you didn't need a brand tobe successful in marketing.
Again, coming back to I was aproduct manager early in the day
.
Just where my heart is is Iwant to win on the strength of
(17:34):
our product.
I want to win on the strengthof our value prop and I don't
want to win on how far and widewe can spend to get the brand
out there.
And then, coupled with that, Ithink a lot of fellow marketers
are out there.
Probably a lot of the people youknow as well are in niche.
You know, in niche verticals,right, where you're targeting
(17:54):
very, very discrete segments ofthe market.
Right, you're targetingspecific functions of the
business HR or finance.
You're targeting specific rolesin that a risk and compliance
person or a facilities opsperson, right?
So you don't need this massivehousehold brand right to be
(18:16):
successful in those spaces, andthat's liberating to me.
I actually find that to be veryliberating.
I'm an organizer and a tinkererby nature.
So I, like you know, simplicityis, is is my nirvana and I
don't.
I want to eliminate as manyfactors to success as possible.
I don't.
(18:36):
I don't want to have toincorporate a new factor and a
new factor and a new factor allthe time.
I think that kind of leads tojust madness.
Right, and I want to be.
I'm already an energetic guy.
I want to be, be, you know, Iwant to be calm at work okay, I
want to.
Kevin Kerner (18:51):
I know you're, I know you are about ready to redo
some of the properties there,since you're, you know CMO and
have taken a look at sort ofunder the hood of everything,
with the website being one ofthem.
How does the measurement, howdoes this measurement discussion
affect how you approach web,especially the web rebuild or
redesign or re-messaging?
Does it affect?
(19:12):
It at all Does it affect yourthinking?
Dennis Berhman (19:14):
Yeah, it does in a couple of very interesting
ways too.
I think one of the first waysand we were chatting about this
in the warm-up session to theshoot here is I'm a privacy guy,
so I love privacy mindedsolutions as much as anyone.
But I think if you were to takea poll of global website users,
I think universally everyonewould conclude that that whole
(19:37):
GDPR cookie banner accept allcookies thing is just the
biggest pain in the butt in thewhole world.
I don't know anyone that likesthat thing.
Kevin Kerner (19:46):
Right and we all have.
Dennis Berhman (19:48):
We're all surfing the web every day and I
think, like every one of us, isannoyed by it.
I don't know anyone that likesthat thing right?
I agree, we're all surfing theweb every day and I think, like
every one of us, is annoyed byit.
I don't think anyone thinksthat's worth the privacy
trade-off or even understands,frankly, what the privacy
trade-off is.
So how it affects measurementand analytics, is there's an
opportunity to deployprivacy-minded analytics?
Google's going to hate me forthis.
(20:10):
Google Analytics is notprivacy-minded analytics.
It's the opposite ofprivacy-minded analytics.
And if you use Google Analyticson your site, you have to and
you do any sort of business inthe?
U you have to do that GDPR,privacy or cookie disclosure.
So I think you know one of theexciting things that we get to
do here is we get to figure outhow to be a little bit more user
(20:30):
friendly, right, a little bitmore privacy friendly, while
still getting the basic, normal,effective marketing,
attribution and analytics thatwe expect and that we need to do
our jobs.
So that's one interesting thingthat I get to play around with
as part of the site work thatwe're doing.
I think the second thing is,you know this is still very much
(20:52):
a niche business that I'm in.
So, you know, in terms ofre-architecting our message and
how we position the solutionsand position the products to the
world, I think there's anopportunity to do so smartly,
right In a very smart kind ofcommon sense, human oriented way
, and not let us do this endlesshand wringing about should we
(21:16):
say this or that, this or that,how about this, how about that?
Right, I think this is a goodchance to just get down to
basics, back to basics, and say,very, very matter of factly,
what is this business about?
What do we do for our customers?
What is the value of being amember of agility?
You know what do you get whenyou become a member of agility?
(21:38):
And just that, that plainspoken value prop.
You don't have to be supersophisticated.
Use, you know, you know 50 centwords all over your website.
Just tell them what you do,tell them why you're in it, tell
them why you do it.
So I'm excited about this thingbecause, again, I love the
whole.
Back to basics, right.
(21:59):
Just let's get back to signaland try to eliminate all that
noise.
Kevin Kerner (22:03):
Your.
Your comment about the cookiething is so dead on.
I hate this.
I wonder if anyone even looksat the dumb thing when you hit
the accept or reject.
What I try to do is I try tofigure out which one I can go
like.
What can I click the button onfaster?
Does it?
Do I do this one or this one?
It doesn't matter to me, butI'm probably the edge case from
a privacy perspective.
Do you know if there's?
(22:23):
Do you know what the workaroundis to that?
I mean, I did.
I didn't know it was tied to gaeither.
I know you can.
Dennis Berhman (22:35):
I know we have to build it into our google tag
manager?
Kevin Kerner (22:36):
yeah, but is there ?
Are there workarounds of nothaving the cookie?
Dennis Berhman (22:40):
okay, so simpler not a lawyer, right, not not an
attorney.
Um, I did use chat gpt thismorning, but apparently the
explicit cookie banner is a GDPRrequirement that affects EU and
anyone who is within the scopeof EU, so that can be people who
are French citizens living inthe US, for example.
(23:02):
Right, the scope is justmassive.
I think everyone remembers whenGDPR was rolled out how much
you know how big of a deal thatwas.
Kevin Kerner (23:09):
A lot of companies made a lot of money off it too.
Dennis Berhman (23:11):
GDPR, you know.
But I think number one, youknow, agility recovery doesn't,
doesn't have a book of businessin Europe, we don't deliver our
services there.
So that that's kind of whatstarted me on.
You know, can I just figure outa way to get around?
Not get around, but just to notbe in scope for GDPR in the
first place?
(23:31):
So you know.
So I think I think you know,figure out where your scope,
where your coverage and yourscope of GDPR lies, and you know
you're probably onto somethingif you don't seek to get
business in Europe.
Yeah, that's the starting point.
Yeah, that's the starting point.
And then the second thing that Ilearned in this journey is that
a lot of those behavioralanalytics that are in scope for
(23:54):
GDPR are, you know, is whatGoogle's using.
So you know GA is taking.
That's what's consideredsharing.
When you take traffic data fromyour website and you hand it
over to GA, that's considereddata sharing.
That's in scope for thatregulation.
So the question I then askmyself is do I need GA?
And sure enough, there'sactually analytics packages out
(24:17):
there that are either local sidehosted analytics packages that
are single session right andthey don't capture all of those
non-essential cookies that's,you know so prevalent in in the
in the google analytics platform.
So, you know, caution, everyone,like you know, ask the
questions you need to ask right.
(24:38):
Like you know, bring, bring inyour experts.
But you know, I I think thereis a way forward where, if you
just you know, if you want to be, if you want basic analytics
that do the trick, that tell youwhat's working and what's not
working on your website, and youcan figure out your scope and
exposure to some of these thingsand do it easily.
(24:59):
I think you're in a big, youknow, you're in a big kind of
de-scoping mode of your tech andyou can shed all of this, all
of this data and tech debt thatwe have, shed all of this, all
of this data and tech debt thatwe have.
You know, we've all joinedplaces where you fire up Google
tag manager and you know there'sthere's 50 or 70 tags set up on
your website and I don't thinkmany people know what they even
(25:19):
do, right?
So that's an argument for justslimming everything down, just
focusing on what you need andand eliminating everything that
you don't.
Kevin Kerner (25:27):
Oh, that's fascinating.
I never even it, never evenentered into my brain not to
have tag manager.
That's why you're, that's whywho you are and who I am,
because you would be the guyknowing you to say I wonder if
we need this thing.
I wonder if there's somethingelse that's so awesome.
I am seeing two camps of liketech overhead.
(25:48):
It's like it's like eithereither everyone wants to put the
sink, have the single platformthey're looking for the single
platform that solves everything.
They get a HubSpot route andthey do everything through
HubSpot or you're seeing allthese micro solutions, little
solutions that talk to eachother really easy and, um, I
don't know which one's simpler.
I mean, I think there's a casewe made that going one stack
(26:10):
easy, consolidated stack is easy, but then you lose that on the
functionality.
There's another case to makethat if you're keeping your
options open with a bunch ofdifferent platforms, smaller
platforms, let's say, more agilestuff you're not as beholden to
any of the technology providers.
It's really an interesting time.
Dennis Berhman (26:27):
Yeah, and I've used both In my last two roles.
I've done both of theseapproaches.
One was single stack on HubSpot, which I loved.
I think HubSpot does a greatjob as a single stack right,
it's easy, it's intuitive, it'sreliable, it works.
But then you come into a shopthat isn't a HubSpot shop and,
rather than do a big HubSpotdeployment, you sit there and
(26:49):
you look at your tool set andyou say what do I need to do?
And if you have a contrarianmindset, right, if you just
think of, well, what's the otherway, what's the other option,
and you just keep asking thosequestions and you keep finding
answers, this is okay, this isactually possible.
This is exciting.
I can do my job with about 25%of the tech stock I thought I
(27:09):
needed to be able to do.
It's absolutely fascinating.
Kevin Kerner (27:12):
Yeah, you're the best at that too.
You're the master of being likewhat.
Why do we need to do it thisway?
And you just go off there andusually make it work.
Before I let you go, I'mcurious because you're a CMO and
I'm interested to ask thisquestion what do you think of
what's been the benefit of AI inyour marketing effort there at
Agility, like what?
Just give me your generalthoughts on how you're using it,
(27:34):
with the good and the bad.
What do you think?
Dennis Berhman (27:36):
Yeah, ai, I tell , I tell everyone that you know
AI changed our jobs overnight,right?
So, beyond the obvious, whichis, you know, using AI to kind
of like, do a lot of your, yourwriting, right?
It's a large language model, soit's great at writing words.
Where I've been using itrecently, and where we're
getting to with agility, isusing a more agentic AI approach
(27:58):
for lead gen.
So we're building a series ofAI GPTs or bots that are going
out and doing some websitescraping and finding external
kind of like macro events anddeducing which potential
businesses would be exposed tothose events and then targeting
(28:18):
those businesses based on thatconclusion.
So, for example, there's anumber of websites out there
that track weather-relatedactivity.
Some of them are commercial,some of them are open-sourced.
But if you know that afive-mile radius around a
particular town's floodinghappened and you can pull that
data in by using a GPT webscraper tool and then you can
(28:42):
cross-reference that with yourdatabase, external data,
business data and so on, you'reactually in a position to go to
affected targets in the marketand say, hey, we understand that
you just had some catastrophicflooding in your area.
Whether or not your businesswas disrupted isn't now the time
you should look into businesscontinuity tools.
(29:03):
Or another thing is a popularthing is hey, it looks like over
the past 12 months, you know,the area that your business is
located in has had a grand totalof 27 hours of power outages
over the past year.
That's extremely effectiveinformation if you're targeting
businesses to offer them backuppower on demand.
(29:26):
So these GPTs are starting totalk to each other, right.
One GPT's job is to go find theevents out, the weather events
out in the world.
Another is to associate themwith businesses, look those
businesses up.
And yet a third is to look atthat business, the affected
business, and what businessthey're in.
Look at the event that happenedout in the world and craft an
(29:49):
ideal pitch and say you know,here's a pitch because there's
just a lot of power outages inyour area.
Here's a pitch because therewas, you know, a hurricane risk
and you're in a FEMA flood zoneand you know, and you're in a,
for example, a pharmaceuticalstorage business where you can't
have more than you know 25minutes at a time of power
(30:09):
outage.
So that kind of use of AI andparticularly an agentic approach
building purpose-specific GPTsand having them actually talk to
each other in order to generatethe outcome is truly
fascinating stuff.
I hope every marketer islooking into this stuff, and the
tools are prolific, right?
I don't need to mention any ofthe names, but there's just tons
(30:31):
of tools out there.
So dig in, go for it.
It's exciting stuff.
It's going to make your job alot easier.
Kevin Kerner (30:37):
Yeah, the whole GPT stacking idea is so cool, I
mean that's so, I mean we do it,but I'd never really connected
the way you connected it.
And then the data platform thatyou talk about, like connected
it and that the um, the dataplatform that you talk about,
like I used to work at hearthanks and we would.
We had all these really complexepsilon does this to really
complex models that would lookat weather and then if there was
a weather event, they would goto home depot and say these
(31:00):
stores need to show, you know,the umbrella ads or whatever the
, whatever the product was.
Now you can just do it by justa gpt.
That's unbelievable, reallygood use case.
That's crazy impressive stuffokay, so I wanted to.
I want to take you through.
This has been awesome.
I want to take you through alittle thing we do here on tech
marketing where this is going tobe a little scary for you, but
(31:23):
I'm gonna uh.
So I go into perplexity.
I ask it, I tell it.
Hey, here, I I want a.
I want to do an ai roulettequestion with my next podcast
guest.
I want it to be unexpected andprovocative for him at the end
of the podcast based on hisexperience that I load in your
LinkedIn profile.
So I'm going to hit send hereand let's see what it gives me.
Okay, just based on yourLinkedIn profile.
(31:44):
Here's a provocative,unexpected question.
If you could implant a singleunfiltered AI generated thought
into the mind of every executivein your industry, what would it
be and what chaos ortransformation do you think it
would unleash?
I guess you can pick yourindustry.
Is it in the marketing industry?
Is it in the disaster recoveryindustry?
Dennis Berhman (32:05):
That's an interesting so I have to inject
a thought into.
Kevin Kerner (32:12):
Yeah, every executive in your industry.
And what would you hope itwould?
What chaos or transformation doyou think it would unleash?
Dennis Berhman (32:17):
no, I'm going to take the easy way out, because
I've I've said this before.
I think ai is accelerating this, but I think I think marketers
are endangered species and and Iwould, and I would honestly say
like if if a marketer comes toyou and says they have the
answers, don't trust it.
We don't have the answers.
We're searching for the truth,just like everyone else, and I
(32:38):
think the temptation is thathaving a lot of data and having
a lot of data analytics meansthat you know the truth.
I don't think it does.
So, yeah, and for that reason,marketers are an endangered
species.
Kevin Kerner (32:51):
We will not exist in this life form, in another
tenor don't like think about all, the, all the stuff and I
(33:12):
totally agree with you.
I think jacob bank was on one ofthe podcasts so far and he was.
He had a really good way ofputting the perfect marketer in
the future at least for the, forthe foreseeable future, where
we wanted people that had a realtools first mentality.
Like they were like thinking,if I'm a mark and you're really
good at this, like you're this.
Strangely, I don't know, maybebecause we have all this context
and background, we're like this, but it's someone who, if you
give them a problem or solution,the first thing they think
(33:33):
about is what is there a toolthat can solve this?
And with agents and AI and allthis technology and stuff
getting easier and moreaccessible, I think that is a.
I think that's where things areheaded.
We need those type of people inmarketing, more of those types
of people.
Dennis Berhman (33:46):
Totally agree.
Yeah, if there's got to be atool to solve it, and I think
what that means for us as aspecies, kevin, like doesn't
that mean that we're we're goingto become more operators of
technology, and it's, it'sreally about the tool selection.
So our success will be aboutthe tool selection and not
necessarily our understanding ofthe market or, you know, our
(34:08):
mastery of the subject matter.
Right, it's really just it'sgoing to be about, you know, are
we good operators of the tools?
Kevin Kerner (34:14):
Yeah, and have a good knowledge set of them, such
that we can build a communityaround you.
Know how do you harness thisstuff, which will be awesome.
And you would be awesome inthat community because you know,
you know you're.
You're a person I go to whenI'm trying to broaden my
perspective on this stuff, soit's awesome.
Dennis Berhman (34:31):
Well, Dennis, I really appreciate it.
Don't oversell me, all right.
Kevin Kerner (34:36):
No, you're great.
So I wanted people to get ahold of you.
How would they get a hold ofAgility or you?
What's the best way to contactyou if they want to talk more
about this stuff?
Dennis Berhm (34:47):
AgilityRecoverycom great website, and also on
LinkedIn.
We love LinkedIn, sharing greatinformation there Me personally
also.
On LinkedIn, dennis Biermaneasy to find and if you ever
need to email me it's justDennis at DennisBiermancom.
Kevin Kerner (34:59):
Love it.
Dennis, thank you so much.
I was so glad you reached outto me and you know we'll do this
again as you, as you get moreprovocative ideas in that head
of yours.
Dennis Berhman (35:08):
Absolutely.
Yeah, thanks for having me, andI'll be your guy for anything
controversial.
I love the controversial topics, of course.
Kevin Kerner (35:14):
Okay, man, we'll see you.
Dennis Berhman (35:15):
See you, take care.
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