September 29, 2025 • 49 mins
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In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, we’re joined by Jon Russo, founder of B2B Fusion and former CMO of high-tech companies across Silicon Valley, New York City, and Luxembourg.
Jon shares his insights on why Marketing Operations professionals often struggle to communicate their impact to the C-suite and how AI, cleaner data, and strategic thinking are changing the game.
Jon dives into the importance of translating complex marketing data into business language, earning trust with senior leadership, and the evolving role of MOPs in driving revenue and AI-enabled pipeline initiatives.
He also offers guidance on career growth, helping MOps professionals expand influence and demonstrate measurable impact.
In this episode, you’ll learn
- Why first-party data and clean systems are critical for AI and pipeline success
- How MOPs can effectively “translate” marketing operations insights for executives
- What builds trust between junior MOps professionals and seasoned leadership
- Career strategies for expanding influence and taking a more strategic role
This episode is perfect for marketing operations, demand generation, and RevOps professionals seeking practical advice to increase visibility, build trust, and position themselves as strategic leaders in the organization.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:01):
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
MarketingOps.com, powered by allthe MoPros out there.
I'm your host, Michael Hartman,Flying Solo Today.
Today, I'll be tackling withour guest a challenge near
nearly every Mops Pro runs intois how to make your work matter
to the C-suite.
So my guest today is JohnRusso, currently the founder of
B2B Fusion.
(00:22):
He is also a former CMO forhigh-tech public and private
companies for 10 years prior tohis agency, having led companies
in Silicon Valley, New YorkCity, and Luxembourg.
He's got a passion formarketing operations as a
nine-year former board member ofMocha, which we were just
talking about.
Marketing Operations CrossCompany Alliance, which was the
first offline community formarketing operations
(00:43):
professionals.
More recently, his agency helpsother marketers with their
go-to-market strategy andjourney to more confidently
execute on their pipeline goals.
He and his team optimize ABXplatforms like Sixth and
DemandBase with AI to get thatpipeline destination.
Today we're going to explorewhy so many smart teams struggle
to speak the language ofbusiness, how AI and cleaner
(01:03):
data are changing the game, whatit really takes to earn trust
from senior leadership, and howmops can best prepare
career-wise in this challengingenvironment.
Lots to cover, John.
Thanks for joining.
Welcome to the show.
Jon Russo (01:13):
Michael, I am super excited to have a conversation
with you and uh grateful to getengaged with the mops community.
Uh we'll we'll talk deeplyabout mops, but it's my it's the
number one function in theentire marketing organization
and my 20 plus years ofexperience.
I can't wait to dig in.
So thanks for having me.
Michael Hartmann (01:33):
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, and we uh we'll have tosave our the the topic of the
history of mops and communitymaybe for another time.
Uh as you've explained it,Mocha to me, and it talks about
my experience.
Like my experience at somepoint, I say I was in mops
before it was mops because I'dhad e-marketing was a title I
had at some point.
So all right, but let's startwith the big picture on in the
(01:54):
market before we get intotechnology trends and finish off
with career advice.
So why don't you give us somebackground on some of the common
business issues you are seeingin the industry right now and
how AI might be playing intothat, maybe even either
exacerbating it or helping solveit?
Jon Russo (02:11):
Yeah, it's uh a thoughtful big picture question
there.
Um, first of all, as anoperator, it's probably the most
challenging time I've seen in20 plus years of operating.
There's a heck of a lot ofpressure right now on top line.
Every team member that I talkwith, prospect or customer, is
(02:32):
feeling pressure from seniorleadership.
So it's very, very challenging.
So, you know, gone are the dayswhere you could just walk in
and get tools.
Um I do think there's there's abit of that, but the enthusiasm
to buy things has certainlysettled down significantly in
the last two or three years, andthe sales cycle is just
(02:54):
extended.
Um, it makes it really, reallychallenging right now for
somebody in a mop's role becauseon one hand, um, you know, you
you've got a lot of potentiallylegacy data that's accumulated
over time.
You've got these impossibleexpectations coming out of the
C-suite that just say do AI ordo better.
(03:16):
And oh, by the way, don't spendany more money uh getting from
point A to point B.
Um and you're kind of seeing onLinkedIn every day, we're all
getting bludgeoned by did yousee this feature, did you see
that feature?
So it's kind of a hurricaneright now to be an operator.
Um, not an easy time, uh, but Ido start, I'm starting to see
(03:37):
some green shoots.
Uh so you know, I'm hopeful,particularly around AI.
To your second part of thequestion about how AI might be
playing into it, um I thinkthat's a mixed bag, too.
On one hand, you've got uh alot of tools that are coming
out, a lot of overlap.
So the big question that I'mhearing right now is can we do
(03:57):
this better?
Uh meaning, can we deploy ourMartex stack better, more
effectively, differently thanwhat's currently being done
today, and shrink our cost uhinfrastructure.
So that's where I see AI reallycoming into the picture.
Michael Hartmann (04:13):
Something that I saw today just triggered a
question for me.
So I'm throwing this at youmaybe out of the blue.
But like what how do you thinkthat's playing into maybe two
components, right?
One, the sort of the roadmapfor some of the existing
technology, but maybe moreinteresting is the idea like the
decision now between kind ofbig applications, marketing
(04:37):
automation platforms orwhatever, versus um best in
class and specific things,right?
That maybe AI enabled uh or youknow, built on AI first kind of
models.
Like, how does you think that'splaying out in terms of
decision making on that?
Jon Russo (04:52):
Yeah, it's really interesting.
And it'd be interesting to hearthe answer, depending on how
this audience would respondversus, say, a C-suite.
On one hand, you could sayplatforms are out the window,
we're just gonna get a bunch oftools, but everybody that's
listening to this, I wouldthink, would have an
appreciation that each tool islike picking up a foreign
(05:14):
language, that to reallyunderstand the integration, the
communication, the expertise andthe use case, you really have
to get proficient at thosetools.
So uh there's some limit ofbringing tools on to an
organization, whether you've gota robust mops function or maybe
you've got a nascent mopsfunction, there's there's
(05:35):
probably some limit to bringingthose tools in.
But the C-suite doesn't see itthat way.
All they see is hey, Marketo'scosting me a lot of money right
now.
They're not budging on price.
My ABX platform is costing mehundreds of thousands of
dollars, they're not budging onprice.
What do I do?
So I do think the question'scoming up, and there's going to
be more appetite to move awayfrom the platforms, uh, more so
(06:00):
than ever before, but I thinkthere'll be a limit to how much
you could actually absorb onthat.
Michael Hartmann (06:05):
Yeah.
No, I think that that makes alot of sense, what I would
expect to.
So kind of in that same vein,so what are some of the
solutions you're seeing in themarket now or in the pipeline
for pipeline headcount problemsthat maybe leverage AI and that
the MOPS community might beinvolved with?
Anything interesting, likeexamples, use cases that you
(06:27):
could share?
Jon Russo (06:28):
Yeah, you know, a couple come to mind.
Actually, three come toimmediately to mind, and they're
a byproduct of this environmentright now, where um I could
think of companies notnecessarily getting headcount or
they're not investing more intheir Martex stack.
Uh, two of these three usecases came up as a result of
that.
Um one use case, and we'reearly on, by the way, as is a
(06:49):
lot of companies with AI,contrary to what you read on
LinkedIn.
Yeah, absolutely.
Um there's a lot of challengesof adopting AI, but let's put
that for later in theconversation.
Um, the two that that kind ofresonate, first, we have had a
situation where we replacedmarketing automation with an AI
agent and a couple SDRs, um, anet $70,000 a year savings.
(07:12):
Now, it was a process to get tothat point, and that was more
of a transactional sale, so notABM.
It would not be something I'drecommend for ABM, which is
really where we've spent a lotof time recently in the last
couple years uh perfecting ABM.
Um we've also seen a use casewhere we had another client
(07:32):
that, oh, by the way, I shouldalso mention the the reason that
came up was the marketingautomation platform was trying
to jam us on price.
Okay.
They weren't being flexible atall.
And the CEO of the companysaid, I'm not paying a dime more
for that platform.
You better go figure somethingout, and pointed to our internal
(07:53):
champion and who pointed to us,and it was a process to get you
know to do that replacement.
The other situation, uh, thiscompany had been trying, client
had been trying to hireheadcount for the better part of
a year, um, a Marketo expert,and we were kind of like the
tier two and tier three support.
(08:14):
Okay.
The challenge with them wasthey didn't want to pay the
salary for that marketingoperations leader.
And it was a very sophisticateduh deployment, too.
So you couldn't just drop ajunior person into that and
expect that they would succeed.
So, long story short, they hadbudget cuts, and we had proposed
an agent to um, I wouldn't sayreplace a campaigns manager, but
(08:40):
to do the routine configurationwithin Marketo, setting up the
programs, um uh in a way thateither our internal champion or
ourselves could easily monitoras a part part-time off the side
of your desk kind of thing.
So it's not a one-for-onereplacement.
(09:01):
Um, and you know, Adobe'srolled out some some
capabilities there too, uh, Marybeing one of them, I think they
call it.
Um so you know, we've seenthose two use cases as a direct
result of kind of thistightening of budget.
A third use case that uh Ishared with a pavilion group
recently is a free tool calledNotebook LM.
(09:23):
And uh Notebook LM, if a lot ofpeople are familiar with it and
they've probably dabbled withit, but where we see a great
value add, and you know, it'shard to ascribe an exact dollar
amount to this, but it's reallya time savings, particularly for
ABM with sales.
Uh Notebook LM, you can drop abunch of different or disparate
(09:44):
transcripts or call recordingsor uh emails into one area
that's secure, and it doesn't goout to the greater AI.
It's uh called a rag in termsof an AI capability.
And uh what it does is you canquery the information that you
put in it.
So imagine if you're goingafter accounts, like for
(10:06):
example, if I was selling intoTexas Instruments and I wanted
to get my sales team up tospeed, or maybe executives that
are not familiar with Texasinstruments, I share them the
link and they can query thedatabase to ask their own
questions.
It's like natural languagekinds of queries.
Yes.
Michael Hartmann (10:25):
Okay.
I mean, that sounds like a kindof thing that would work well
for like a knowledge base, too,right?
Where you could put in a lot ofunstructured stuff and and
query that for solutions.
Jon Russo (10:36):
Yeah.
And there there are moresophisticated solutions out
there that that uh you know thatare more robust and enterprise
grade.
But uh for for that situation,it has worked swimmingly well.
So probably like a small tomid-size, like a mid-sized
company would get a lot of valueout of that.
And the other thing is it umit's something you can do a
(10:58):
little bit more local.
Like you don't have totypically involve a lot of
people.
Now, of course, you'd want tocheck your IT, you know, make
sure you have IT authoritybefore you start dropping
information like that outside ofuh your your existing systems.
But for the companies andclients that have used it,
they've got a lot of utility, itreally takes a lot of pressure
off the sales enablement.
So it's not necessarily a mops,like the other two are directly
(11:21):
mops, but that third use caseis coming up more and more.
Michael Hartmann (11:24):
So yeah, kind of uh enabling either like I
will almost sit inside sales andage myself, but you know, BDRs
and salespeople on prepping forfollow-up and calls.
Yeah.
Um, it's interesting that firstuse case you talked about.
My first thought was I Isuspect that a lot more people
(11:45):
who are listening are going tobe going through that same kind
of pressure of, hey, ourvendors, pick whichever kind, is
putting pressure on us to torecommit and to spend more
because their pricing ischanging.
Um and what I've seen a lot ofplaces is that people like one
of the first things I alwayswant to do, if it's unclear when
(12:05):
I land someplace, is to get aninventory of what the platforms
are, what the currentcontractual terms are, how much
we're spending, when do we haveto because if you miss that
window of opportunity, right?
So you need to be thinkingabout that sooner rather than
later, especially if you feellike your leadership team is
going to put pressure on likewe're not spending more money,
or we have to cut, you know,reduce the amounts we spend.
(12:25):
That's like that's something tostart thinking about now.
I think so.
We're recording this inmid-September.
Like I would expect that a lotof people have contracts to go
through the end of the year andare probably coming up on that
timeline when you have to makechanges, right?
Jon Russo (12:39):
Yeah, I think you're you're exactly right.
And and I will say, in that,you know, that one use case that
I mentioned, there's also thiselement of a leap of faith.
Because none of us have reallynone of us have ever been in
this environment before,contrary to what you read on
LinkedIn and all the experts ofdo this, do that on AI.
And none of us have ever beenthrough this era.
So there is a bit of uh uh youalmost have to go in it with a
(13:03):
shared leap of faith that okay,we're replacing marketing
automation, which all of us onthis listening know that it was
great back in 2004, uh 2005, oryou know, 2007.
It's not designed for today.
Um so it's not it it it it'slogical to make the change, but
(13:24):
you have to take that leap ofthat first step is a scary step.
Michael Hartmann (13:28):
So yeah, and I think the idea of I mean, one
of the benefits of having athird-party sort of
all-encompassing solution foreven keep it to relatively small
to say like automating email,right, and that kind of stuff is
if you're to go build that fromscratch with tools, right?
I am sure people are gonna begoing, like, oh, we can do vibe
coding and knock something outquickly, yada yada, but like
(13:50):
it's not like the amount ofstuff that goes into security
and compliance and all that kindof stuff that you know we'd
have to think about is not it'snot trivial.
Right.
So um it's it's gonna be it's avery interesting time for sure.
So it so let's talk about AI alittle more.
(14:11):
So one of the things that youand I talked about before is
that we think like the best AItools work best, or maybe
sometimes only when theunderlying data that they have
is solid, which I I I want topoke at a little bit um once you
go through this, but like Imean, data feels like it's
always been a top of the thing.
Like, and I don't know anybodywho says our data's in great
(14:32):
shape, right?
Um, from a marketing salesstandpoint.
Like why why is why do youthink it's such a critical issue
now?
Because like one of the I letme give you my sort of pushback
a little bit, or at leasthopeful pushback, is that I have
been hopeful that AI toolscould help solve some of the
data quality problems, right?
Too.
So I get that they can't theywork best with quality data.
(14:56):
That I think I get.
It's just like, but to get tothe quality data, can we use AI
to help get there?
So I don't know.
What's your take on all that?
Jon Russo (15:03):
Yeah, I I think it's both actually.
So I think your pushback isabsolutely correct.
Um, you know, you you take atool, for example, like Clay,
and we've deployed this with a anumber of clients, and Clay is
super successful at what'scalled their waterfall
capability of kind of doing adata validation, uh, of getting
the right information throughmultiple sources before it
(15:26):
presents, okay, here's acomplete record.
Um Clay didn't exist really.
I mean, they were around evenlike five, seven years ago, but
they weren't as well known asthey are now.
Now they've like caught on likewildfire.
Yeah, and I think one of thereasons they've caught on is in
this environment with AI, youreally have to uh think about
(15:50):
your first party data, itsquality, and how you're gonna
segment and target somebody.
So um what Clay can do is witha level of confidence, validate
information that in yesteryearyou had to use a combination of
demand tools, CRM fusion,validity, whatever they're
(16:13):
calling themselves, validityacquired my old company, which
is why I know as much as I knowabout this.
Sure.
Uh ring lead, like you youyou'd have to you'd go down that
path.
But in today's model with AI,to your point, um clay, if you
want to call it AI typecapability, and it's workflow,
(16:34):
if you harness it correctly, itis an extremely powerful tool
beyond just a contactrepository.
A lot of people think of clayis just oh, a zoom info
replacement.
And flat, in fact, it's got alot of workflow capability, uh
validation capability, it doeshave some tie to AI as well.
Uh in combination, it canreally improve your quality of
(16:59):
data.
And then you can do the righttargeting with other AI tools.
So whether you have an SDR toolthat might be doing outreach,
um if you have uh a chat botthat you you're you're having
somebody enter in information,it can match back to the
information in your database,that becomes more critical.
(17:20):
Uh in every organization, thedata sucks.
Um it's a journey.
If you can get it cleaner,that's probably the best you're
gonna do.
But your productivity, if youthink about data, your sales
productivity, your marketingproductivity, your marketing
tool investment, because you'repaying on a typically on a per
(17:43):
contact basis, yeah.
Um, if you're B2B, you know,all of this is driven by the
quality of your data.
So really being thoughtfulabout that, I think, becomes
extremely important um for anycompany right now as they they
look toward this AI world.
Michael Hartmann (18:00):
Yeah, it's interesting because I like it's
you you it feels like you'restruggling to describe what clay
is vis-a-vis AI, and it feelslike it is one of maybe many
automation tools that are sortof a wrapper around AI
components.
Um and it and in their case, itfeels like I but I haven't used
(18:23):
it a huge amount, but a littlebit.
It feels like they've um madeit easier to to leverage some of
the AI tools and some of theexternal sources of data and
things like that than maybe a amore generic uh automation
platform that can do some of thesame things.
Jon Russo (18:38):
I think you're saying it better.
Yeah, you're you're saying morethey're not a pure AI play, um
like some of the other tools,but I would consider them kind
of AI-ish.
Michael Hartmann (18:48):
Yeah.
I mean, I mean I I think I seelike like and this is not like
like Zapier saying they're an A,you know, an app uh AI kind of
tool.
And I yeah, I see that they'vegot connectors to AI things,
right?
But at the heart, like they'rea connector to me.
I don't think of them as andthey have workflow too.
(19:09):
Um but then I see other thingslike N8N, right?
Right.
Jon Russo (19:15):
Hardcore AI.
Michael Hartmann (19:16):
Yeah, yeah.
And well, not even hardcore AI,but hardcore uh automation,
right?
Where you can do it's like yougot more flexibility, but that
means comes with more complexityin terms of like you have to
have more expertise to use it.
Jon Russo (19:30):
You have to have more expertise to use it, and and
then uh you know it all comesback to like who are you
targeting, how are you targetingthem.
Yeah.
If if you don't have the rightbaseline information, um and
there are there are lots of waysyou can do it.
I'm just using as one example,Clay.
Uh we've seen companiesaggregate like in a snowflake
database and and kind ofreconcile data.
(19:51):
And you can old school it too.
CRM Fusion, Demand Tools, ZoomInfo.
Um there are other ways, but Ido think that um if I were to
invest right now, I'd invest inimproving the data quality,
particularly on an account-basedmotion where you've got a very
defined set of accounts orpeople you're going after.
(20:14):
Yeah, maybe I'd start therebefore I boil the ocean of the
whole database.
Michael Hartmann (20:19):
So yeah, I mean you could prioritize um
where you focus that.
And it feels like improvingdata is a very, again, very
generic term.
And I was like, what is it?
I always want to know when Iget that kind of question or get
the opportunity to actually dosomething on that.
Is like, are we looking toimprove the consistency and
(20:39):
completeness of data on ourrecords, or are we trying to
expand the number of records,say an ABM kind of motion,
right?
Are we trying to make sure thatwe have all the right people
that we need to be um goingcommunicating to or targeting
for whatever motion we're using?
I mean, those are two verydifferent things, right?
Jon Russo (20:59):
Yes.
Yeah, two very differentthings.
I'd start with the first one.
If if you don't have the rightquality of outreach, it doesn't
matter adding other people on.
Um and but you're you'reabsolutely right.
There is that second part ofadding that the full buyers
committee, uh, that would behelpful as well.
Michael Hartmann (21:21):
Yeah.
I mean, the the idea, and Ican't remember if this was a
planning call I had for anupcoming episode or one of our
recent episodes, it's been oneof those kind of couple of
months, but there was somebody Italked to recently had the term
like minimal viable record,right?
Which I liked, right?
It's like, what are the what isit we need to do?
And I've been at one place inmy career where actually we made
(21:45):
progress on answering thequestion, what is a customer?
Right.
And it was that kind of wedidn't use the term minimal
viable record, but that was kindof what we were trying to do,
right?
So for a what's the minimum weneed to represent a person?
What's the minimum we need torepresent um a I don't even want
to say in a business entity,right?
Like uh other word, a company,account, whatever you want to
(22:08):
call it.
And um that was pretty like Iwas sort of like floored that I
hadn't seen that more in otherplaces.
Jon Russo (22:16):
That's a great idea.
So yeah, I think you'reabsolutely right.
You do need that minimum, youneed that minimum, and it it has
to be damn good.
Otherwise, you're wasting a lotof time, energy, and effort.
Um, you know, we've seen someamazing things that the sales
teams do when their quality isnot correct.
The amount of time that theylose with swivel systems, with
(22:38):
uh meaning moving from onescreen to another or not even
working in Salesforce.
Uh we've had I hate to evenadmit that, but uh, we had one
client when we started, they'relike, we just work in Zoom info.
I'm like, what?
Michael Hartmann (22:53):
Yeah.
Well, I so I it's a theknowledge base thing is
interesting to me because Iyears ago I did a worked on a
project to try to um improve acustomer support function at a
big global company to try toreduce the amount of growth and
headcount for support, you know,as revenue grew.
And one of the solutions was aknowledge base, but the leaders
(23:13):
of the support teams were notreally believing that there we
it was needed because everythingwas unique.
And what it turned out is whenwe started talking to the actual
reps, like they all had aknowledge base, but they were
not shared, right?
They had a document on theirdesktop somewhere, and whenever
a customer would call, I mean,that was where their go-to.
A few of them shared adocument, like on a shared
(23:35):
server, but that was like andit's just like that kind of
stuff always like this idea likethat things are so unique, and
we have like I just I'm likethat's not the way it is.
People figure out how to getdone what they need to get done,
right?
So um so let's maybe switchgears a little bit.
(23:56):
So you've been you as wementioned in intro, you've been
a CMO of public companies,private companies, taking some
public um through acquisitions,things like that.
So and you scale them.
So when you look back, yeah, Iknow you mentioned this sort of
at the top too, that um the kindof what you think about
marketing operations, but likehow did you view it earlier in
your career and how has itchanged to what your current
(24:19):
view of marketing ops is?
Jon Russo (24:23):
Yeah, that's a a thoughtful question.
And um you know, I think thethe value of marketing
operations has just gone up intime from in my eyes.
Now, whether all executives seethat or understand that,
different question, differentissue.
But um the reason being is thenumber I mean I mean you think
(24:46):
back maybe 10, 20 years ago,Salesforce was just coming onto
the scene.
So there wasn't much technicaldebt, there wasn't tool sprawl,
there wasn't AI, um there wasn'tbad data.
There was bad data, but itwasn't fully understood, and the
bad data has just gone worsewith time.
(25:07):
Tool sprawl has gotten worsewith time.
AI has proliferated, and youknow, you got execs saying, Go
make something happen.
Go, you know, they're they'respeaking in broad terms that
mops can't understand.
Uh, like, you know, do AI andfix the business with AI, and
(25:28):
that doesn't translate well toto to a mop.
Michael Hartmann (25:30):
What design what designers have to deal with
when they say make that imagepop.
Jon Russo (25:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Same same thing.
So, you know, I think 10 or 20years ago, I knew it was
important, um, which is why Itook a role on Mocha, Mark
Marketing Operations CrossCompany Alliance, um, and it was
passionate to me.
And the reason it waspassionate to me is because with
mops, you have the ability toascribe value to marketing, and
(25:59):
you're only gonna run as fast asa CMO, as fast as your mops
person can enable you to run.
So that relationship betweenmops and CMO in my eyes is
critical.
Um and also I think demand genis, you know, it's like a
one-two punch.
Like those would be the twoareas as a CMO I would place
(26:22):
heavy bets on.
Brand to me, especially in thisenvironment where there's so
much, you know, I hear a lot ofpeople talking about brand.
I want to get behind brand.
I'm not a brand guy from a CMOperspective.
I'm more of the mops, demandgen.
Like, let's figure out howwe're gonna get this chip moving
in the right direction.
(26:42):
Um, so I think it's in toanswer your question, like what
has where has the value shiftedover the years?
I think it's only increasedover time.
Um, and I've been, you know, Iprobably have a lot more gray
hair than a lot of your otherguests, but um, I've been a huge
believer of mops for, you know,like I said, nine years at
(27:03):
Mocha prior to to the mopscommunity being formed by you
guys.
Um I've been a long timebeliever that mops is really uh
critical.
I I should also throw one otherstatement in, too.
There was a um there's a couplepeople that I think the world
of in the industry um that alsoechoed this.
(27:25):
And I think it was about it waswithin the year, maybe about
eight or nine months ago, that Iheard both from uh Lotney Conan
and Scott Brinker, who I've gotall sorts of time for.
I think we're all gonna beworking for Lotney at one point
in time in our life.
Uh she is phenomenal.
And she even said, Hey, uh,without you, like I can only go
(27:48):
as quick as my mops person cango.
And Scott Brinker, it'ssomewhere on my LinkedIn post,
maybe I can get afford you thelink afterward if you want in
the show notes or whatever.
But Scott Brinker said theexact same thing.
He said, Look, this is the timefor mops to shine because
there's going to be a lot ofintegrations with all this AI
coming onto the scene.
Now, reality is probably a lotdifferent for your listeners,
(28:12):
where they're probably pushingthe boulder up the hill.
But when those two beacons saythat, hey, this is a really
valuable function, if not themost valuable function, that was
good validation for me.
Like, okay, I'm I'm heading inthe right direction, and
potentially good validation foryour audience members as well.
Michael Hartmann (28:31):
Yeah.
Well, Latin is a force forsure.
And Scott is well, what do wesay earlier?
He's his grandfather ofMartech.
So I don't think he'd beoffended by that.
It's interesting because whenyou were describing that like
the the one-two punch ofmarketing ops and demand gen,
and that you're not a brand guy,one of the things that occurred
to me, and I think um is is umsomething that I think I've
(28:54):
thought of before, which is ifyou're a marketing leader and
you do believe in brand, right?
You have to you you can't goright to brand, probably, unless
you happen to have an unusualCEO or whatever, because what
you have to do is prove that youcan deliver you can deliver and
execute on demand gen, really,and marketing ops is the enabler
there.
(29:14):
But if you can do that, youwill be able to open up the
opportunity to do brand-relatedthings, right?
Things that don't require orcan't really be measured and
things like that.
And I think um I think the bestmarketing leaders I see and
hear talk about, right, theydon't discount the importance of
marketing being heldaccountable for revenue pipeline
(29:38):
results, right?
Um, but they do that in aneffort to also enable, they also
don't discount brand, right?
And that it's for the longterm, that's still needed.
Jon Russo (29:48):
Yeah, I think you you're saying it far more
eloquently than I just did.
Um Just lucky.
No, and if I were if I wereinterviewing for a job, I would
totally steal what you justsaid.
You're right.
Because the demand The demandand mops side open up the
opportunity to invest in brand.
I think, you know, we may talkabout this a little bit later on
about the career side.
(30:09):
The risk, I think, of leadingwith brand is it's too nebulous.
Whereas mops, like I can,you're measuring.
You should know, um, generallyspeaking, not exact, but hey, I
make this kind of investmenteither in uh a channel, and I I
define channel as a big chann,big capital C.
(30:30):
So my SDRs, my partners weremarketing.
And then there's the middlecapital C.
Is it the web, the webinar, theevent?
Um, like we as mops leaders andprofessionals should be able to
directionally say what'sworking and what's not.
Yeah.
Um, and you can't do that withbrand, in my opinion.
(30:52):
But to your point, if you dothat capital C and lower C and
know the direction of that, itenables you to have the
conversation internally to theninvest in brand.
That I could see as is a path.
Michael Hartmann (31:05):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think this leads rightinto this whole question that we
were talking about.
Like, yeah, I think I think youused like the term, like we a
lot of people in mops inparticular, and therefore
probably their marketing leaderswho maybe don't have the
details right, talk in bits andbytes when it comes to
describing things.
But it feels like to get thattrust to be able to do some of
(31:28):
those other things that are notas measurable, you need to be
able to speak in the languagethat the senior leaders,
executives, board, whatever,whichever it is for your
particular organization, or likewhy why do you think it's so
hard to make that like changethat frame of reference and talk
about things in a differentway?
Jon Russo (31:46):
Yeah, and and I think in our our pre-show, we were
talking about like uh that thetranslation process can be um
either misunderstood orpotentially missed.
And I should probably caveat itby saying not every mops person
needs to be able to translate,but if you want to succeed
(32:07):
organizationally and groworganizationally, this
translation is very, verymeaningful.
And I should also caveat it bysaying I've made this mistake
even as a CMO when we we get sowrapped up in our language, and
it took me um an experience ortwo that was not positive to
(32:27):
figure this one out, um, youknow, to bring it into 3D.
I'm talking about MQLs andleads, and I got a CEO saying,
What's a lead?
And I'm like, What, wait, what?
Uh yeah, you know, and so I'mtalking in my language and
comfortable in my language.
It was not a language that theCEO who was an engineer um knew
(32:53):
or understood.
And after that, like I was socomfortable in my language, I
realized, oh, I'm not speaking,I'm not sharing my experience in
something he understands.
Michael Hartmann (33:06):
Yeah.
Jon Russo (33:06):
Um, so that would be no different from mops.
So you might be the greatesttechnician in the world at
Marketo, at Sixth Sense, atDemand Base, XYZ platform,
HubSpot, you name it.
If you're unable to have thatconversation with how your boss
is thinking about things, yourability to progress in that
(33:29):
organization is going to bedramatically slowed down.
So I think there's the bossaspect of that translation.
And, you know, I've got anunfair advantage.
I was a finance undergrad.
I'm probably like one of threepeople in marketing that have a
finance undergrad that didmarketing.
So I'm more quantifiable thanmost, which is probably why I
(33:50):
like mops and why I like DemandGen, is because it's
quantifiable.
Yep.
But I I do think there's anopportunity for um mops to learn
the language of the businessfrom a CFO perspective.
Michael Hartmann (34:06):
And I was just thinking of that myself.
Like the like we we actuallyhad a guest on a a few episodes
ago who said, which it came outas to me very provocative, and I
was like, that he said like thebest CFOs are often better
storytellers than the CMOswithin their organization.
Um and I was just thinking,like, like that's where you
(34:26):
should go.
Like, if you want to learn howto tell the story that the rest
of the executive team goes, thisthe finance team is where to
go.
Jon Russo (34:32):
Yeah, and you have to earn the right, too.
Like you it if you can investin a course on cash flow, um,
understanding cash flow, netincome statement.
And here's why you want to dothis, by the way.
It's funny you mentioned thisbecause I was thinking about it
before we got on the call.
When I was a CMO, I would timemy asks around a couple
(34:54):
different things, my investmentasks.
Yeah, if we got new funding,that's an opportunity to come
in.
If we outperformed top line orbottom line and had unexpected
cash, that you know, some of theinvestors want minimal cash
(35:15):
flow.
Uh, they want to be net cashflow positive, meaning as close
to zero as possible.
So, hey, I can help with thatproblem because I've got a
platform that I want to goinvest in.
Um, not every CFO or everybusiness is going to share that
information.
That's the challenge.
Michael Hartmann (35:33):
Yeah.
Jon Russo (35:34):
But picking up on those signals and reading the
room, that's when you canoptimize those asks.
Well, yeah, I was on anothercall earlier today, and there
was um a mops professional whosaid, Hey, now's the time to be
asking for uh headcount, uh,because mops is the most
(35:55):
important.
Okay, it is important.
I get that.
And you got to read the room.
If you're not reading thatfinancial room and you're making
those asks, you're gonna bevoted off the island.
Um they just they won'ttolerate that.
Uh in this environment, they'llvote you off the island.
It has nothing to do with howimportant the function is, it
(36:16):
has everything to do with thebusiness and the business
direction.
So you gotta really um mycounsel would be to tune into
that to the best of yourability.
And if you do, you you yourodds of of advancing go up by an
order of magnitude orconvincing somebody that you
need that platform or you needthat headcount.
Um if you go in uh any otherway, I think you're at high risk
(36:39):
in this environment.
Michael Hartmann (36:40):
Yeah, and I would say like the you know, if
you are in the position of abudget manager within as a mops
leader, the more you can showthat you're a good steward of
the budget, right?
Whether that means um you closethe you close your time, you
you're you meet what your theexpectations are month after
month after month, and know whatyou can be predictable.
(37:04):
Uh and you are prepared whenthey come and say, uh, if you if
you're lucky enough, they comeand say like to your point,
like, hey, we've got you canspend fifty thousand dollars
more, where would you do it?
Right, be ready to answer thatquestion and be confident about
it, or be prepared to answer themore often asked question,
which is if we have to cut 20%or whatever the number is, it
is.
(37:24):
And can I go back to a storywhere like just I'll I'll let
you go in a second, but I had aat a end of the year at a large
organization and my financepartner, I was like uh it was
coming, it was December, theyclosed, they basically wanted
everything in by mid-December.
And I said, I can get us to beuh under budget by X dollars, or
I can get us we can be overbudget by this another Y
(37:45):
dollars.
So which do you prefer?
Because I can make either onehappen, you just tell me which
one was, and I did, right?
I so like that's builds trust.
Jon Russo (37:54):
It it's it's a great uh approach to offer a choice
too.
I like how you you approachthat.
Um I was gonna add one otherleading indicator that I mean
this is hard, right?
Mops, it it's such a hardfunction because you've got to
know so much.
You're responsible, you're likethe catch-all for a lot of the
technical elements.
You got a CEO saying do morewith less and make AI happen,
(38:18):
speaking nebulous terms.
Yeah, you got users that arenot happy, like it's a hard
time.
And oh, by the way, John justsaid learn finance.
Uh so it's it's really hard.
Um another, though, leadingindicator is watching the full
life cycle.
Like if a mops person canunderstand the full life cycle,
(38:39):
so if retention is spiking up,that means you don't have to
work as hard on the net new logoside.
That too opens up a window forinvestment.
If an acquisition happens,there's an opportunity to do uh
what's called with some CFOs, uhlike a below-the-line
(39:00):
write-off, which helps um cashflow.
We've had clients financeprojects of us or even like
website improvements where theycan write off the cost because
of an acquisition.
Like being tuned into thosesituations, that's where it
(39:20):
opens up the conversation withthe finance team.
Because that's how the financeteam's thinking.
They're like, okay, I've gotI've got this money, where do I
invest it?
Um, so those are those would besome other areas to kind of
think through.
Michael Hartmann (39:34):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's those are all
like uh we've said it before onthis on the podcast, right?
If you don't know how yourcompany makes money, to your
point about retention versusacquisition, like you should
learn that because then you canhave informed input on where you
should invest.
Jon Russo (39:53):
100%.
100%.
Michael Hartmann (39:56):
Uh and it's hard because like your point,
like mops people tend to knowhow the sausage is made, right?
They know about how difficultit is to maintain these systems,
yada yada, but no one cares,right?
Like well, they care about it.
No executive cares.
Jon Russo (40:08):
And they care they do.
They they they what what theythey don't appreciate is how I
think how hard mops has to workto pull like reports together,
you know, the burn all weekendto answer one simple question.
People don't understand theglacier of mops, they understand
the top level.
Michael Hartmann (40:26):
Yeah.
Jon Russo (40:27):
Um so but you're right, they don't care about the
details, they just want theoutcome.
Michael Hartmann (40:31):
Uh yeah, absolutely.
Um so we've got, I mean,there's so much more we could go
down on that path, but I'm justso we talked a little bit like
the understanding finance, likewhat other what other skills
would you recommend that MOPSprofessionals pursue?
(40:51):
Um, assuming they want to likehave some some goals to either,
if they're an individualcontributor, become a leader or
to move into other roles withinan organization.
What what would you advise themto do in terms of skills and
experience they should go after?
Jon Russo (41:06):
Yeah, and it's a tricky time right now.
Of course, the band-aid answeris AI skill, anything AI
related.
Michael Hartmann (41:12):
Yeah, the challenge That almost feels like
table stakes right now, right?
Jon Russo (41:16):
Right, right.
And the trickiness might behey, my company doesn't allow
it.
You know, the security's lockeddown, or uh I, you know, I I
don't have the budget.
Or to the extent you can evendabble personally in your
personal time around AI, I havedone all sorts of things.
(41:36):
Um, you know, uh losing weight,uh, I've got a bike training
regiment, um, I'm planning atrip.
You know, there are all sortsof things.
Michael Hartmann (41:47):
I did one for my son to warm up for his
800-meter races.
Jon Russo (41:51):
Right.
Exactly.
Like AI is so powerful thatI've I've learned a lot
personally that I can then takeover to my business should that
opportunity present itself.
Yeah.
Um, I tell you, that's how Ilearned Notebook LM, quite
frankly.
I had uh I was dabbling aroundwith Notebook LM playing with
it, and then I had a client,CMO, that called me up and said,
(42:14):
You've been talking us, talkingwith us for 60 days.
I need to know tomorrow what'severybody saying and to net it
out.
Well, I dropped my eightconversations into Notebook LM
and boom, in 30 seconds, whatwould have taken me three days
to kind of leaf through andconnect hours of conversations
(42:36):
across multiple people andmultiple constituents.
In notebook LM I did in 30seconds because I was dabbling
with it personally.
So I think you know AI would bethe you know one area to to
kind of experiment with.
Your community or any communitywhere you can learn together on
AI would be um you know really,really helpful.
(43:00):
Uh trying to think of any otherthings that would help from the
marketability perspective.
I guess the other thing wouldbe the integrations.
If you can understand theimpact of introducing these
tools and the impact that'llhave integration-wise, will it
make other tools better?
Will it replace tools?
Um, developing that skill setcould be really, really
(43:23):
valuable.
Uh how can we do it better?
That's the number one questionthat we're being asked right
now.
And that's a question that youknow you could be developing
skills toward is how can we bedoing what we're doing better uh
with AI?
Michael Hartmann (43:39):
Yeah, I think I I totally agree.
I think I mean I would love tolike I think any organization
that you can if you can get theorganization to believe that you
can try stuff with AI AI withwithin the limits and
constraints about privacy andstuff like that, right?
It is really, really powerfulto be able to just try stuff
(44:04):
without like a lot of risk, andfrom what I can tell, right?
Um and you can learn along theway, and it's it's huge.
I'm doing I'm kind of like you.
I mean, I'm doing things bothpersonally and professionally
using you know LLMs mostly.
And I've been I have oneautomation thing that I'm doing
that actually helps with thepodcasts.
(44:24):
So um and it's a small thing,but it's it's a nice thing that
I just don't have to think aboutanymore.
So um John, I wish we had moretime.
Like we could like we we couldgo on and just you know
reminisce about the old days ofmarketing apps before it was
called marketing apps.
(44:44):
But um so if folks want toconnect with you or learn more
about what you're doing, what'sthe best way for them to do
that?
Jon Russo (44:51):
Yeah, uh a couple different options.
First, if anybody ever needsadvice, if they're still
listening to this, uh freeadvice, trash or treasure, uh,
you know, it's free for areason.
Uh feel free to ping me.
Uh you know, I'm full ofadvice.
Uh but I you know I I feel foroperators right now.
So if you do have a situationand you need a counsel, happy to
do that.
Um, LinkedIn is probably thebest way to follow or connect
(45:14):
with me.
If you do connect, justreference that you heard me on
this podcast.
That would be helpful to hear.
And then we've got a YouTubechannel.
In fact, um our YouTubechannel's got go to market best
practices.
And Mike is good, Mike Rizzo isgonna be our guest on Friday,
uh, this Friday.
Now, by the time this getspublished, it may be difference
(45:35):
in time.
But 300 plus people that we'veinterviewed.
Um, I run it with uh the formerhead of research at Serious
Decisions, Meg Hewer.
She was a CMO as well.
Um, so and we've had all sortsof guests, uh you know, of mops
as well as non-mops, uh in andaround go to market and how to
do it better and best practices.
(45:55):
So those would be a couple waysthat you could reach out.
Michael Hartmann (45:59):
It's under the is it B2B Fusion YouTube
channel or is it calledsomething else?
Jon Russo (46:03):
B2B Fusion YouTube channel, yep, exactly.
Michael Hartmann (46:05):
Okay, perfect.
All right, sounds good.
Well, John, thank you again forthe time insights.
Um, it was a lot of fun.
So uh appreciate it.
And as always, thanks to ourlisteners and now viewers.
Um, we appreciate your support.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
as always, reach out to Naomi,Mike, or me.
Thanks, everyone.
(46:25):
Bye.
Thank you.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
MarketingOps.com, powered by allthe MoPros out there.
I'm your host, Michael Hartman,Flying Solo Today.
Today, I'll be tackling withour guest a challenge near
nearly every Mops Pro runs intois how to make your work matter
to the C-suite.
So my guest today is JohnRusso, currently the founder of
B2B Fusion.
(00:22):
He is also a former CMO forhigh-tech public and private
companies for 10 years prior tohis agency, having led companies
in Silicon Valley, New YorkCity, and Luxembourg.
He's got a passion formarketing operations as a
nine-year former board member ofMocha, which we were just
talking about.
Marketing Operations CrossCompany Alliance, which was the
first offline community formarketing operations
(00:43):
professionals.
More recently, his agency helpsother marketers with their
go-to-market strategy andjourney to more confidently
execute on their pipeline goals.
He and his team optimize ABXplatforms like Sixth and
DemandBase with AI to get thatpipeline destination.
Today we're going to explorewhy so many smart teams struggle
to speak the language ofbusiness, how AI and cleaner
(01:03):
data are changing the game, whatit really takes to earn trust
from senior leadership, and howmops can best prepare
career-wise in this challengingenvironment.
Lots to cover, John.
Thanks for joining.
Welcome to the show.
Jon Russo (01:13):
Michael, I am super excited to have a conversation
with you and uh grateful to getengaged with the mops community.
Uh we'll we'll talk deeplyabout mops, but it's my it's the
number one function in theentire marketing organization
and my 20 plus years ofexperience.
I can't wait to dig in.
So thanks for having me.
Michael Hartmann (01:33):
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, and we uh we'll have tosave our the the topic of the
history of mops and communitymaybe for another time.
Uh as you've explained it,Mocha to me, and it talks about
my experience.
Like my experience at somepoint, I say I was in mops
before it was mops because I'dhad e-marketing was a title I
had at some point.
So all right, but let's startwith the big picture on in the
(01:54):
market before we get intotechnology trends and finish off
with career advice.
So why don't you give us somebackground on some of the common
business issues you are seeingin the industry right now and
how AI might be playing intothat, maybe even either
exacerbating it or helping solveit?
Jon Russo (02:11):
Yeah, it's uh a thoughtful big picture question
there.
Um, first of all, as anoperator, it's probably the most
challenging time I've seen in20 plus years of operating.
There's a heck of a lot ofpressure right now on top line.
Every team member that I talkwith, prospect or customer, is
(02:32):
feeling pressure from seniorleadership.
So it's very, very challenging.
So, you know, gone are the dayswhere you could just walk in
and get tools.
Um I do think there's there's abit of that, but the enthusiasm
to buy things has certainlysettled down significantly in
the last two or three years, andthe sales cycle is just
(02:54):
extended.
Um, it makes it really, reallychallenging right now for
somebody in a mop's role becauseon one hand, um, you know, you
you've got a lot of potentiallylegacy data that's accumulated
over time.
You've got these impossibleexpectations coming out of the
C-suite that just say do AI ordo better.
(03:16):
And oh, by the way, don't spendany more money uh getting from
point A to point B.
Um and you're kind of seeing onLinkedIn every day, we're all
getting bludgeoned by did yousee this feature, did you see
that feature?
So it's kind of a hurricaneright now to be an operator.
Um, not an easy time, uh, but Ido start, I'm starting to see
(03:37):
some green shoots.
Uh so you know, I'm hopeful,particularly around AI.
To your second part of thequestion about how AI might be
playing into it, um I thinkthat's a mixed bag, too.
On one hand, you've got uh alot of tools that are coming
out, a lot of overlap.
So the big question that I'mhearing right now is can we do
(03:57):
this better?
Uh meaning, can we deploy ourMartex stack better, more
effectively, differently thanwhat's currently being done
today, and shrink our cost uhinfrastructure.
So that's where I see AI reallycoming into the picture.
Michael Hartmann (04:13):
Something that I saw today just triggered a
question for me.
So I'm throwing this at youmaybe out of the blue.
But like what how do you thinkthat's playing into maybe two
components, right?
One, the sort of the roadmapfor some of the existing
technology, but maybe moreinteresting is the idea like the
decision now between kind ofbig applications, marketing
(04:37):
automation platforms orwhatever, versus um best in
class and specific things,right?
That maybe AI enabled uh or youknow, built on AI first kind of
models.
Like, how does you think that'splaying out in terms of
decision making on that?
Jon Russo (04:52):
Yeah, it's really interesting.
And it'd be interesting to hearthe answer, depending on how
this audience would respondversus, say, a C-suite.
On one hand, you could sayplatforms are out the window,
we're just gonna get a bunch oftools, but everybody that's
listening to this, I wouldthink, would have an
appreciation that each tool islike picking up a foreign
(05:14):
language, that to reallyunderstand the integration, the
communication, the expertise andthe use case, you really have
to get proficient at thosetools.
So uh there's some limit ofbringing tools on to an
organization, whether you've gota robust mops function or maybe
you've got a nascent mopsfunction, there's there's
(05:35):
probably some limit to bringingthose tools in.
But the C-suite doesn't see itthat way.
All they see is hey, Marketo'scosting me a lot of money right
now.
They're not budging on price.
My ABX platform is costing mehundreds of thousands of
dollars, they're not budging onprice.
What do I do?
So I do think the question'scoming up, and there's going to
be more appetite to move awayfrom the platforms, uh, more so
(06:00):
than ever before, but I thinkthere'll be a limit to how much
you could actually absorb onthat.
Michael Hartmann (06:05):
Yeah.
No, I think that that makes alot of sense, what I would
expect to.
So kind of in that same vein,so what are some of the
solutions you're seeing in themarket now or in the pipeline
for pipeline headcount problemsthat maybe leverage AI and that
the MOPS community might beinvolved with?
Anything interesting, likeexamples, use cases that you
(06:27):
could share?
Jon Russo (06:28):
Yeah, you know, a couple come to mind.
Actually, three come toimmediately to mind, and they're
a byproduct of this environmentright now, where um I could
think of companies notnecessarily getting headcount or
they're not investing more intheir Martex stack.
Uh, two of these three usecases came up as a result of
that.
Um one use case, and we'reearly on, by the way, as is a
(06:49):
lot of companies with AI,contrary to what you read on
LinkedIn.
Yeah, absolutely.
Um there's a lot of challengesof adopting AI, but let's put
that for later in theconversation.
Um, the two that that kind ofresonate, first, we have had a
situation where we replacedmarketing automation with an AI
agent and a couple SDRs, um, anet $70,000 a year savings.
(07:12):
Now, it was a process to get tothat point, and that was more
of a transactional sale, so notABM.
It would not be something I'drecommend for ABM, which is
really where we've spent a lotof time recently in the last
couple years uh perfecting ABM.
Um we've also seen a use casewhere we had another client
(07:32):
that, oh, by the way, I shouldalso mention the the reason that
came up was the marketingautomation platform was trying
to jam us on price.
Okay.
They weren't being flexible atall.
And the CEO of the companysaid, I'm not paying a dime more
for that platform.
You better go figure somethingout, and pointed to our internal
(07:53):
champion and who pointed to us,and it was a process to get you
know to do that replacement.
The other situation, uh, thiscompany had been trying, client
had been trying to hireheadcount for the better part of
a year, um, a Marketo expert,and we were kind of like the
tier two and tier three support.
(08:14):
Okay.
The challenge with them wasthey didn't want to pay the
salary for that marketingoperations leader.
And it was a very sophisticateduh deployment, too.
So you couldn't just drop ajunior person into that and
expect that they would succeed.
So, long story short, they hadbudget cuts, and we had proposed
an agent to um, I wouldn't sayreplace a campaigns manager, but
(08:40):
to do the routine configurationwithin Marketo, setting up the
programs, um uh in a way thateither our internal champion or
ourselves could easily monitoras a part part-time off the side
of your desk kind of thing.
So it's not a one-for-onereplacement.
(09:01):
Um, and you know, Adobe'srolled out some some
capabilities there too, uh, Marybeing one of them, I think they
call it.
Um so you know, we've seenthose two use cases as a direct
result of kind of thistightening of budget.
A third use case that uh Ishared with a pavilion group
recently is a free tool calledNotebook LM.
(09:23):
And uh Notebook LM, if a lot ofpeople are familiar with it and
they've probably dabbled withit, but where we see a great
value add, and you know, it'shard to ascribe an exact dollar
amount to this, but it's reallya time savings, particularly for
ABM with sales.
Uh Notebook LM, you can drop abunch of different or disparate
(09:44):
transcripts or call recordingsor uh emails into one area
that's secure, and it doesn't goout to the greater AI.
It's uh called a rag in termsof an AI capability.
And uh what it does is you canquery the information that you
put in it.
So imagine if you're goingafter accounts, like for
(10:06):
example, if I was selling intoTexas Instruments and I wanted
to get my sales team up tospeed, or maybe executives that
are not familiar with Texasinstruments, I share them the
link and they can query thedatabase to ask their own
questions.
It's like natural languagekinds of queries.
Yes.
Michael Hartmann (10:25):
Okay.
I mean, that sounds like a kindof thing that would work well
for like a knowledge base, too,right?
Where you could put in a lot ofunstructured stuff and and
query that for solutions.
Jon Russo (10:36):
Yeah.
And there there are moresophisticated solutions out
there that that uh you know thatare more robust and enterprise
grade.
But uh for for that situation,it has worked swimmingly well.
So probably like a small tomid-size, like a mid-sized
company would get a lot of valueout of that.
And the other thing is it umit's something you can do a
(10:58):
little bit more local.
Like you don't have totypically involve a lot of
people.
Now, of course, you'd want tocheck your IT, you know, make
sure you have IT authoritybefore you start dropping
information like that outside ofuh your your existing systems.
But for the companies andclients that have used it,
they've got a lot of utility, itreally takes a lot of pressure
off the sales enablement.
So it's not necessarily a mops,like the other two are directly
(11:21):
mops, but that third use caseis coming up more and more.
Michael Hartmann (11:24):
So yeah, kind of uh enabling either like I
will almost sit inside sales andage myself, but you know, BDRs
and salespeople on prepping forfollow-up and calls.
Yeah.
Um, it's interesting that firstuse case you talked about.
My first thought was I Isuspect that a lot more people
(11:45):
who are listening are going tobe going through that same kind
of pressure of, hey, ourvendors, pick whichever kind, is
putting pressure on us to torecommit and to spend more
because their pricing ischanging.
Um and what I've seen a lot ofplaces is that people like one
of the first things I alwayswant to do, if it's unclear when
(12:05):
I land someplace, is to get aninventory of what the platforms
are, what the currentcontractual terms are, how much
we're spending, when do we haveto because if you miss that
window of opportunity, right?
So you need to be thinkingabout that sooner rather than
later, especially if you feellike your leadership team is
going to put pressure on likewe're not spending more money,
or we have to cut, you know,reduce the amounts we spend.
(12:25):
That's like that's something tostart thinking about now.
I think so.
We're recording this inmid-September.
Like I would expect that a lotof people have contracts to go
through the end of the year andare probably coming up on that
timeline when you have to makechanges, right?
Jon Russo (12:39):
Yeah, I think you're you're exactly right.
And and I will say, in that,you know, that one use case that
I mentioned, there's also thiselement of a leap of faith.
Because none of us have reallynone of us have ever been in
this environment before,contrary to what you read on
LinkedIn and all the experts ofdo this, do that on AI.
And none of us have ever beenthrough this era.
So there is a bit of uh uh youalmost have to go in it with a
(13:03):
shared leap of faith that okay,we're replacing marketing
automation, which all of us onthis listening know that it was
great back in 2004, uh 2005, oryou know, 2007.
It's not designed for today.
Um so it's not it it it it'slogical to make the change, but
(13:24):
you have to take that leap ofthat first step is a scary step.
Michael Hartmann (13:28):
So yeah, and I think the idea of I mean, one
of the benefits of having athird-party sort of
all-encompassing solution foreven keep it to relatively small
to say like automating email,right, and that kind of stuff is
if you're to go build that fromscratch with tools, right?
I am sure people are gonna begoing, like, oh, we can do vibe
coding and knock something outquickly, yada yada, but like
(13:50):
it's not like the amount ofstuff that goes into security
and compliance and all that kindof stuff that you know we'd
have to think about is not it'snot trivial.
Right.
So um it's it's gonna be it's avery interesting time for sure.
So it so let's talk about AI alittle more.
(14:11):
So one of the things that youand I talked about before is
that we think like the best AItools work best, or maybe
sometimes only when theunderlying data that they have
is solid, which I I I want topoke at a little bit um once you
go through this, but like Imean, data feels like it's
always been a top of the thing.
Like, and I don't know anybodywho says our data's in great
(14:32):
shape, right?
Um, from a marketing salesstandpoint.
Like why why is why do youthink it's such a critical issue
now?
Because like one of the I letme give you my sort of pushback
a little bit, or at leasthopeful pushback, is that I have
been hopeful that AI toolscould help solve some of the
data quality problems, right?
Too.
So I get that they can't theywork best with quality data.
(14:56):
That I think I get.
It's just like, but to get tothe quality data, can we use AI
to help get there?
So I don't know.
What's your take on all that?
Jon Russo (15:03):
Yeah, I I think it's both actually.
So I think your pushback isabsolutely correct.
Um, you know, you you take atool, for example, like Clay,
and we've deployed this with a anumber of clients, and Clay is
super successful at what'scalled their waterfall
capability of kind of doing adata validation, uh, of getting
the right information throughmultiple sources before it
(15:26):
presents, okay, here's acomplete record.
Um Clay didn't exist really.
I mean, they were around evenlike five, seven years ago, but
they weren't as well known asthey are now.
Now they've like caught on likewildfire.
Yeah, and I think one of thereasons they've caught on is in
this environment with AI, youreally have to uh think about
(15:50):
your first party data, itsquality, and how you're gonna
segment and target somebody.
So um what Clay can do is witha level of confidence, validate
information that in yesteryearyou had to use a combination of
demand tools, CRM fusion,validity, whatever they're
(16:13):
calling themselves, validityacquired my old company, which
is why I know as much as I knowabout this.
Sure.
Uh ring lead, like you youyou'd have to you'd go down that
path.
But in today's model with AI,to your point, um clay, if you
want to call it AI typecapability, and it's workflow,
(16:34):
if you harness it correctly, itis an extremely powerful tool
beyond just a contactrepository.
A lot of people think of clayis just oh, a zoom info
replacement.
And flat, in fact, it's got alot of workflow capability, uh
validation capability, it doeshave some tie to AI as well.
Uh in combination, it canreally improve your quality of
(16:59):
data.
And then you can do the righttargeting with other AI tools.
So whether you have an SDR toolthat might be doing outreach,
um if you have uh a chat botthat you you're you're having
somebody enter in information,it can match back to the
information in your database,that becomes more critical.
(17:20):
Uh in every organization, thedata sucks.
Um it's a journey.
If you can get it cleaner,that's probably the best you're
gonna do.
But your productivity, if youthink about data, your sales
productivity, your marketingproductivity, your marketing
tool investment, because you'repaying on a typically on a per
(17:43):
contact basis, yeah.
Um, if you're B2B, you know,all of this is driven by the
quality of your data.
So really being thoughtfulabout that, I think, becomes
extremely important um for anycompany right now as they they
look toward this AI world.
Michael Hartmann (18:00):
Yeah, it's interesting because I like it's
you you it feels like you'restruggling to describe what clay
is vis-a-vis AI, and it feelslike it is one of maybe many
automation tools that are sortof a wrapper around AI
components.
Um and it and in their case, itfeels like I but I haven't used
(18:23):
it a huge amount, but a littlebit.
It feels like they've um madeit easier to to leverage some of
the AI tools and some of theexternal sources of data and
things like that than maybe a amore generic uh automation
platform that can do some of thesame things.
Jon Russo (18:38):
I think you're saying it better.
Yeah, you're you're saying morethey're not a pure AI play, um
like some of the other tools,but I would consider them kind
of AI-ish.
Michael Hartmann (18:48):
Yeah.
I mean, I mean I I think I seelike like and this is not like
like Zapier saying they're an A,you know, an app uh AI kind of
tool.
And I yeah, I see that they'vegot connectors to AI things,
right?
But at the heart, like they'rea connector to me.
I don't think of them as andthey have workflow too.
(19:09):
Um but then I see other thingslike N8N, right?
Right.
Jon Russo (19:15):
Hardcore AI.
Michael Hartmann (19:16):
Yeah, yeah.
And well, not even hardcore AI,but hardcore uh automation,
right?
Where you can do it's like yougot more flexibility, but that
means comes with more complexityin terms of like you have to
have more expertise to use it.
Jon Russo (19:30):
You have to have more expertise to use it, and and
then uh you know it all comesback to like who are you
targeting, how are you targetingthem.
Yeah.
If if you don't have the rightbaseline information, um and
there are there are lots of waysyou can do it.
I'm just using as one example,Clay.
Uh we've seen companiesaggregate like in a snowflake
database and and kind ofreconcile data.
(19:51):
And you can old school it too.
CRM Fusion, Demand Tools, ZoomInfo.
Um there are other ways, but Ido think that um if I were to
invest right now, I'd invest inimproving the data quality,
particularly on an account-basedmotion where you've got a very
defined set of accounts orpeople you're going after.
(20:14):
Yeah, maybe I'd start therebefore I boil the ocean of the
whole database.
Michael Hartmann (20:19):
So yeah, I mean you could prioritize um
where you focus that.
And it feels like improvingdata is a very, again, very
generic term.
And I was like, what is it?
I always want to know when Iget that kind of question or get
the opportunity to actually dosomething on that.
Is like, are we looking toimprove the consistency and
(20:39):
completeness of data on ourrecords, or are we trying to
expand the number of records,say an ABM kind of motion,
right?
Are we trying to make sure thatwe have all the right people
that we need to be um goingcommunicating to or targeting
for whatever motion we're using?
I mean, those are two verydifferent things, right?
Jon Russo (20:59):
Yes.
Yeah, two very differentthings.
I'd start with the first one.
If if you don't have the rightquality of outreach, it doesn't
matter adding other people on.
Um and but you're you'reabsolutely right.
There is that second part ofadding that the full buyers
committee, uh, that would behelpful as well.
Michael Hartmann (21:21):
Yeah.
I mean, the the idea, and Ican't remember if this was a
planning call I had for anupcoming episode or one of our
recent episodes, it's been oneof those kind of couple of
months, but there was somebody Italked to recently had the term
like minimal viable record,right?
Which I liked, right?
It's like, what are the what isit we need to do?
And I've been at one place inmy career where actually we made
(21:45):
progress on answering thequestion, what is a customer?
Right.
And it was that kind of wedidn't use the term minimal
viable record, but that was kindof what we were trying to do,
right?
So for a what's the minimum weneed to represent a person?
What's the minimum we need torepresent um a I don't even want
to say in a business entity,right?
Like uh other word, a company,account, whatever you want to
(22:08):
call it.
And um that was pretty like Iwas sort of like floored that I
hadn't seen that more in otherplaces.
Jon Russo (22:16):
That's a great idea.
So yeah, I think you'reabsolutely right.
You do need that minimum, youneed that minimum, and it it has
to be damn good.
Otherwise, you're wasting a lotof time, energy, and effort.
Um, you know, we've seen someamazing things that the sales
teams do when their quality isnot correct.
The amount of time that theylose with swivel systems, with
(22:38):
uh meaning moving from onescreen to another or not even
working in Salesforce.
Uh we've had I hate to evenadmit that, but uh, we had one
client when we started, they'relike, we just work in Zoom info.
I'm like, what?
Michael Hartmann (22:53):
Yeah.
Well, I so I it's a theknowledge base thing is
interesting to me because Iyears ago I did a worked on a
project to try to um improve acustomer support function at a
big global company to try toreduce the amount of growth and
headcount for support, you know,as revenue grew.
And one of the solutions was aknowledge base, but the leaders
(23:13):
of the support teams were notreally believing that there we
it was needed because everythingwas unique.
And what it turned out is whenwe started talking to the actual
reps, like they all had aknowledge base, but they were
not shared, right?
They had a document on theirdesktop somewhere, and whenever
a customer would call, I mean,that was where their go-to.
A few of them shared adocument, like on a shared
(23:35):
server, but that was like andit's just like that kind of
stuff always like this idea likethat things are so unique, and
we have like I just I'm likethat's not the way it is.
People figure out how to getdone what they need to get done,
right?
So um so let's maybe switchgears a little bit.
(23:56):
So you've been you as wementioned in intro, you've been
a CMO of public companies,private companies, taking some
public um through acquisitions,things like that.
So and you scale them.
So when you look back, yeah, Iknow you mentioned this sort of
at the top too, that um the kindof what you think about
marketing operations, but likehow did you view it earlier in
your career and how has itchanged to what your current
(24:19):
view of marketing ops is?
Jon Russo (24:23):
Yeah, that's a a thoughtful question.
And um you know, I think thethe value of marketing
operations has just gone up intime from in my eyes.
Now, whether all executives seethat or understand that,
different question, differentissue.
But um the reason being is thenumber I mean I mean you think
(24:46):
back maybe 10, 20 years ago,Salesforce was just coming onto
the scene.
So there wasn't much technicaldebt, there wasn't tool sprawl,
there wasn't AI, um there wasn'tbad data.
There was bad data, but itwasn't fully understood, and the
bad data has just gone worsewith time.
(25:07):
Tool sprawl has gotten worsewith time.
AI has proliferated, and youknow, you got execs saying, Go
make something happen.
Go, you know, they're they'respeaking in broad terms that
mops can't understand.
Uh, like, you know, do AI andfix the business with AI, and
(25:28):
that doesn't translate well toto to a mop.
Michael Hartmann (25:30):
What design what designers have to deal with
when they say make that imagepop.
Jon Russo (25:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Same same thing.
So, you know, I think 10 or 20years ago, I knew it was
important, um, which is why Itook a role on Mocha, Mark
Marketing Operations CrossCompany Alliance, um, and it was
passionate to me.
And the reason it waspassionate to me is because with
mops, you have the ability toascribe value to marketing, and
(25:59):
you're only gonna run as fast asa CMO, as fast as your mops
person can enable you to run.
So that relationship betweenmops and CMO in my eyes is
critical.
Um and also I think demand genis, you know, it's like a
one-two punch.
Like those would be the twoareas as a CMO I would place
(26:22):
heavy bets on.
Brand to me, especially in thisenvironment where there's so
much, you know, I hear a lot ofpeople talking about brand.
I want to get behind brand.
I'm not a brand guy from a CMOperspective.
I'm more of the mops, demandgen.
Like, let's figure out howwe're gonna get this chip moving
in the right direction.
(26:42):
Um, so I think it's in toanswer your question, like what
has where has the value shiftedover the years?
I think it's only increasedover time.
Um, and I've been, you know, Iprobably have a lot more gray
hair than a lot of your otherguests, but um, I've been a huge
believer of mops for, you know,like I said, nine years at
(27:03):
Mocha prior to to the mopscommunity being formed by you
guys.
Um I've been a long timebeliever that mops is really uh
critical.
I I should also throw one otherstatement in, too.
There was a um there's a couplepeople that I think the world
of in the industry um that alsoechoed this.
(27:25):
And I think it was about it waswithin the year, maybe about
eight or nine months ago, that Iheard both from uh Lotney Conan
and Scott Brinker, who I've gotall sorts of time for.
I think we're all gonna beworking for Lotney at one point
in time in our life.
Uh she is phenomenal.
And she even said, Hey, uh,without you, like I can only go
(27:48):
as quick as my mops person cango.
And Scott Brinker, it'ssomewhere on my LinkedIn post,
maybe I can get afford you thelink afterward if you want in
the show notes or whatever.
But Scott Brinker said theexact same thing.
He said, Look, this is the timefor mops to shine because
there's going to be a lot ofintegrations with all this AI
coming onto the scene.
Now, reality is probably a lotdifferent for your listeners,
(28:12):
where they're probably pushingthe boulder up the hill.
But when those two beacons saythat, hey, this is a really
valuable function, if not themost valuable function, that was
good validation for me.
Like, okay, I'm I'm heading inthe right direction, and
potentially good validation foryour audience members as well.
Michael Hartmann (28:31):
Yeah.
Well, Latin is a force forsure.
And Scott is well, what do wesay earlier?
He's his grandfather ofMartech.
So I don't think he'd beoffended by that.
It's interesting because whenyou were describing that like
the the one-two punch ofmarketing ops and demand gen,
and that you're not a brand guy,one of the things that occurred
to me, and I think um is is umsomething that I think I've
(28:54):
thought of before, which is ifyou're a marketing leader and
you do believe in brand, right?
You have to you you can't goright to brand, probably, unless
you happen to have an unusualCEO or whatever, because what
you have to do is prove that youcan deliver you can deliver and
execute on demand gen, really,and marketing ops is the enabler
there.
(29:14):
But if you can do that, youwill be able to open up the
opportunity to do brand-relatedthings, right?
Things that don't require orcan't really be measured and
things like that.
And I think um I think the bestmarketing leaders I see and
hear talk about, right, theydon't discount the importance of
marketing being heldaccountable for revenue pipeline
(29:38):
results, right?
Um, but they do that in aneffort to also enable, they also
don't discount brand, right?
And that it's for the longterm, that's still needed.
Jon Russo (29:48):
Yeah, I think you you're saying it far more
eloquently than I just did.
Um Just lucky.
No, and if I were if I wereinterviewing for a job, I would
totally steal what you justsaid.
You're right.
Because the demand The demandand mops side open up the
opportunity to invest in brand.
I think, you know, we may talkabout this a little bit later on
about the career side.
(30:09):
The risk, I think, of leadingwith brand is it's too nebulous.
Whereas mops, like I can,you're measuring.
You should know, um, generallyspeaking, not exact, but hey, I
make this kind of investmenteither in uh a channel, and I I
define channel as a big chann,big capital C.
(30:30):
So my SDRs, my partners weremarketing.
And then there's the middlecapital C.
Is it the web, the webinar, theevent?
Um, like we as mops leaders andprofessionals should be able to
directionally say what'sworking and what's not.
Yeah.
Um, and you can't do that withbrand, in my opinion.
(30:52):
But to your point, if you dothat capital C and lower C and
know the direction of that, itenables you to have the
conversation internally to theninvest in brand.
That I could see as is a path.
Michael Hartmann (31:05):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think this leads rightinto this whole question that we
were talking about.
Like, yeah, I think I think youused like the term, like we a
lot of people in mops inparticular, and therefore
probably their marketing leaderswho maybe don't have the
details right, talk in bits andbytes when it comes to
describing things.
But it feels like to get thattrust to be able to do some of
(31:28):
those other things that are notas measurable, you need to be
able to speak in the languagethat the senior leaders,
executives, board, whatever,whichever it is for your
particular organization, or likewhy why do you think it's so
hard to make that like changethat frame of reference and talk
about things in a differentway?
Jon Russo (31:46):
Yeah, and and I think in our our pre-show, we were
talking about like uh that thetranslation process can be um
either misunderstood orpotentially missed.
And I should probably caveat itby saying not every mops person
needs to be able to translate,but if you want to succeed
(32:07):
organizationally and groworganizationally, this
translation is very, verymeaningful.
And I should also caveat it bysaying I've made this mistake
even as a CMO when we we get sowrapped up in our language, and
it took me um an experience ortwo that was not positive to
(32:27):
figure this one out, um, youknow, to bring it into 3D.
I'm talking about MQLs andleads, and I got a CEO saying,
What's a lead?
And I'm like, What, wait, what?
Uh yeah, you know, and so I'mtalking in my language and
comfortable in my language.
It was not a language that theCEO who was an engineer um knew
(32:53):
or understood.
And after that, like I was socomfortable in my language, I
realized, oh, I'm not speaking,I'm not sharing my experience in
something he understands.
Michael Hartmann (33:06):
Yeah.
Jon Russo (33:06):
Um, so that would be no different from mops.
So you might be the greatesttechnician in the world at
Marketo, at Sixth Sense, atDemand Base, XYZ platform,
HubSpot, you name it.
If you're unable to have thatconversation with how your boss
is thinking about things, yourability to progress in that
(33:29):
organization is going to bedramatically slowed down.
So I think there's the bossaspect of that translation.
And, you know, I've got anunfair advantage.
I was a finance undergrad.
I'm probably like one of threepeople in marketing that have a
finance undergrad that didmarketing.
So I'm more quantifiable thanmost, which is probably why I
(33:50):
like mops and why I like DemandGen, is because it's
quantifiable.
Yep.
But I I do think there's anopportunity for um mops to learn
the language of the businessfrom a CFO perspective.
Michael Hartmann (34:06):
And I was just thinking of that myself.
Like the like we we actuallyhad a guest on a a few episodes
ago who said, which it came outas to me very provocative, and I
was like, that he said like thebest CFOs are often better
storytellers than the CMOswithin their organization.
Um and I was just thinking,like, like that's where you
(34:26):
should go.
Like, if you want to learn howto tell the story that the rest
of the executive team goes, thisthe finance team is where to
go.
Jon Russo (34:32):
Yeah, and you have to earn the right, too.
Like you it if you can investin a course on cash flow, um,
understanding cash flow, netincome statement.
And here's why you want to dothis, by the way.
It's funny you mentioned thisbecause I was thinking about it
before we got on the call.
When I was a CMO, I would timemy asks around a couple
(34:54):
different things, my investmentasks.
Yeah, if we got new funding,that's an opportunity to come
in.
If we outperformed top line orbottom line and had unexpected
cash, that you know, some of theinvestors want minimal cash
(35:15):
flow.
Uh, they want to be net cashflow positive, meaning as close
to zero as possible.
So, hey, I can help with thatproblem because I've got a
platform that I want to goinvest in.
Um, not every CFO or everybusiness is going to share that
information.
That's the challenge.
Michael Hartmann (35:33):
Yeah.
Jon Russo (35:34):
But picking up on those signals and reading the
room, that's when you canoptimize those asks.
Well, yeah, I was on anothercall earlier today, and there
was um a mops professional whosaid, Hey, now's the time to be
asking for uh headcount, uh,because mops is the most
(35:55):
important.
Okay, it is important.
I get that.
And you got to read the room.
If you're not reading thatfinancial room and you're making
those asks, you're gonna bevoted off the island.
Um they just they won'ttolerate that.
Uh in this environment, they'llvote you off the island.
It has nothing to do with howimportant the function is, it
(36:16):
has everything to do with thebusiness and the business
direction.
So you gotta really um mycounsel would be to tune into
that to the best of yourability.
And if you do, you you yourodds of of advancing go up by an
order of magnitude orconvincing somebody that you
need that platform or you needthat headcount.
Um if you go in uh any otherway, I think you're at high risk
(36:39):
in this environment.
Michael Hartmann (36:40):
Yeah, and I would say like the you know, if
you are in the position of abudget manager within as a mops
leader, the more you can showthat you're a good steward of
the budget, right?
Whether that means um you closethe you close your time, you
you're you meet what your theexpectations are month after
month after month, and know whatyou can be predictable.
(37:04):
Uh and you are prepared whenthey come and say, uh, if you if
you're lucky enough, they comeand say like to your point,
like, hey, we've got you canspend fifty thousand dollars
more, where would you do it?
Right, be ready to answer thatquestion and be confident about
it, or be prepared to answer themore often asked question,
which is if we have to cut 20%or whatever the number is, it
is.
(37:24):
And can I go back to a storywhere like just I'll I'll let
you go in a second, but I had aat a end of the year at a large
organization and my financepartner, I was like uh it was
coming, it was December, theyclosed, they basically wanted
everything in by mid-December.
And I said, I can get us to beuh under budget by X dollars, or
I can get us we can be overbudget by this another Y
(37:45):
dollars.
So which do you prefer?
Because I can make either onehappen, you just tell me which
one was, and I did, right?
I so like that's builds trust.
Jon Russo (37:54):
It it's it's a great uh approach to offer a choice
too.
I like how you you approachthat.
Um I was gonna add one otherleading indicator that I mean
this is hard, right?
Mops, it it's such a hardfunction because you've got to
know so much.
You're responsible, you're likethe catch-all for a lot of the
technical elements.
You got a CEO saying do morewith less and make AI happen,
(38:18):
speaking nebulous terms.
Yeah, you got users that arenot happy, like it's a hard
time.
And oh, by the way, John justsaid learn finance.
Uh so it's it's really hard.
Um another, though, leadingindicator is watching the full
life cycle.
Like if a mops person canunderstand the full life cycle,
(38:39):
so if retention is spiking up,that means you don't have to
work as hard on the net new logoside.
That too opens up a window forinvestment.
If an acquisition happens,there's an opportunity to do uh
what's called with some CFOs, uhlike a below-the-line
(39:00):
write-off, which helps um cashflow.
We've had clients financeprojects of us or even like
website improvements where theycan write off the cost because
of an acquisition.
Like being tuned into thosesituations, that's where it
(39:20):
opens up the conversation withthe finance team.
Because that's how the financeteam's thinking.
They're like, okay, I've gotI've got this money, where do I
invest it?
Um, so those are those would besome other areas to kind of
think through.
Michael Hartmann (39:34):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's those are all
like uh we've said it before onthis on the podcast, right?
If you don't know how yourcompany makes money, to your
point about retention versusacquisition, like you should
learn that because then you canhave informed input on where you
should invest.
Jon Russo (39:53):
100%.
100%.
Michael Hartmann (39:56):
Uh and it's hard because like your point,
like mops people tend to knowhow the sausage is made, right?
They know about how difficultit is to maintain these systems,
yada yada, but no one cares,right?
Like well, they care about it.
No executive cares.
Jon Russo (40:08):
And they care they do.
They they they what what theythey don't appreciate is how I
think how hard mops has to workto pull like reports together,
you know, the burn all weekendto answer one simple question.
People don't understand theglacier of mops, they understand
the top level.
Michael Hartmann (40:26):
Yeah.
Jon Russo (40:27):
Um so but you're right, they don't care about the
details, they just want theoutcome.
Michael Hartmann (40:31):
Uh yeah, absolutely.
Um so we've got, I mean,there's so much more we could go
down on that path, but I'm justso we talked a little bit like
the understanding finance, likewhat other what other skills
would you recommend that MOPSprofessionals pursue?
(40:51):
Um, assuming they want to likehave some some goals to either,
if they're an individualcontributor, become a leader or
to move into other roles withinan organization.
What what would you advise themto do in terms of skills and
experience they should go after?
Jon Russo (41:06):
Yeah, and it's a tricky time right now.
Of course, the band-aid answeris AI skill, anything AI
related.
Michael Hartmann (41:12):
Yeah, the challenge That almost feels like
table stakes right now, right?
Jon Russo (41:16):
Right, right.
And the trickiness might behey, my company doesn't allow
it.
You know, the security's lockeddown, or uh I, you know, I I
don't have the budget.
Or to the extent you can evendabble personally in your
personal time around AI, I havedone all sorts of things.
(41:36):
Um, you know, uh losing weight,uh, I've got a bike training
regiment, um, I'm planning atrip.
You know, there are all sortsof things.
Michael Hartmann (41:47):
I did one for my son to warm up for his
800-meter races.
Jon Russo (41:51):
Right.
Exactly.
Like AI is so powerful thatI've I've learned a lot
personally that I can then takeover to my business should that
opportunity present itself.
Yeah.
Um, I tell you, that's how Ilearned Notebook LM, quite
frankly.
I had uh I was dabbling aroundwith Notebook LM playing with
it, and then I had a client,CMO, that called me up and said,
(42:14):
You've been talking us, talkingwith us for 60 days.
I need to know tomorrow what'severybody saying and to net it
out.
Well, I dropped my eightconversations into Notebook LM
and boom, in 30 seconds, whatwould have taken me three days
to kind of leaf through andconnect hours of conversations
(42:36):
across multiple people andmultiple constituents.
In notebook LM I did in 30seconds because I was dabbling
with it personally.
So I think you know AI would bethe you know one area to to
kind of experiment with.
Your community or any communitywhere you can learn together on
AI would be um you know really,really helpful.
(43:00):
Uh trying to think of any otherthings that would help from the
marketability perspective.
I guess the other thing wouldbe the integrations.
If you can understand theimpact of introducing these
tools and the impact that'llhave integration-wise, will it
make other tools better?
Will it replace tools?
Um, developing that skill setcould be really, really
(43:23):
valuable.
Uh how can we do it better?
That's the number one questionthat we're being asked right
now.
And that's a question that youknow you could be developing
skills toward is how can we bedoing what we're doing better uh
with AI?
Michael Hartmann (43:39):
Yeah, I think I I totally agree.
I think I mean I would love tolike I think any organization
that you can if you can get theorganization to believe that you
can try stuff with AI AI withwithin the limits and
constraints about privacy andstuff like that, right?
It is really, really powerfulto be able to just try stuff
(44:04):
without like a lot of risk, andfrom what I can tell, right?
Um and you can learn along theway, and it's it's huge.
I'm doing I'm kind of like you.
I mean, I'm doing things bothpersonally and professionally
using you know LLMs mostly.
And I've been I have oneautomation thing that I'm doing
that actually helps with thepodcasts.
(44:24):
So um and it's a small thing,but it's it's a nice thing that
I just don't have to think aboutanymore.
So um John, I wish we had moretime.
Like we could like we we couldgo on and just you know
reminisce about the old days ofmarketing apps before it was
called marketing apps.
(44:44):
But um so if folks want toconnect with you or learn more
about what you're doing, what'sthe best way for them to do
that?
Jon Russo (44:51):
Yeah, uh a couple different options.
First, if anybody ever needsadvice, if they're still
listening to this, uh freeadvice, trash or treasure, uh,
you know, it's free for areason.
Uh feel free to ping me.
Uh you know, I'm full ofadvice.
Uh but I you know I I feel foroperators right now.
So if you do have a situationand you need a counsel, happy to
do that.
Um, LinkedIn is probably thebest way to follow or connect
(45:14):
with me.
If you do connect, justreference that you heard me on
this podcast.
That would be helpful to hear.
And then we've got a YouTubechannel.
In fact, um our YouTubechannel's got go to market best
practices.
And Mike is good, Mike Rizzo isgonna be our guest on Friday,
uh, this Friday.
Now, by the time this getspublished, it may be difference
(45:35):
in time.
But 300 plus people that we'veinterviewed.
Um, I run it with uh the formerhead of research at Serious
Decisions, Meg Hewer.
She was a CMO as well.
Um, so and we've had all sortsof guests, uh you know, of mops
as well as non-mops, uh in andaround go to market and how to
do it better and best practices.
(45:55):
So those would be a couple waysthat you could reach out.
Michael Hartmann (45:59):
It's under the is it B2B Fusion YouTube
channel or is it calledsomething else?
Jon Russo (46:03):
B2B Fusion YouTube channel, yep, exactly.
Michael Hartmann (46:05):
Okay, perfect.
All right, sounds good.
Well, John, thank you again forthe time insights.
Um, it was a lot of fun.
So uh appreciate it.
And as always, thanks to ourlisteners and now viewers.
Um, we appreciate your support.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
as always, reach out to Naomi,Mike, or me.
Thanks, everyone.
(46:25):
Bye.
Thank you.
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