Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Welcome to Software Sales simplified Move to Success, your
weekly podcast for the for software sales professionals who
want to sell better. Whether you're brand new to the
industry or a seasoned veteran like Matt and I make Software
Sales simplified your go to resource for the latest
developments on the world of enterprise software sales.
I'm Kevin Donville. I'm one of your hosts today and
(00:29):
I'm joined by my good friend andcolleague Matt Long and together
Matt and I have over 50 years experience in software selling
and implementation. Please join us here every week
as we talk with industry experts, share opinions, and
become better sellers together. With that in mind, we ask that
you take a moment like, follow, subscribe, and comment on our
podcast on whatever platform it is that you're listening to us
(00:50):
on today and stay abreast of thelatest and greatest episodes
that we publish. Matt, how are you doing today,
Sir? Good to see you.
I am fantastic. I've been on calls already today
so I'm all caffeinated and readyto go.
Oh. Yeah, yeah, caffeine is an
important ingredient in softwaresales success.
Definitely, it is a must have. Today we're going to be talking
(01:12):
about authenticity in the world of selling and how if you ever
bought something and found out that the sizzle was more than
the steak at the end of the day,and talking about what that
means with respect to product marketing and with AI.
Interesting topic. And so today to have that
conversation, we're going to be talking with industry expert
Dave Anderson. Dave, how are you doing, Sir?
(01:34):
It's great to have you here on the show.
Thank you for joining us. Great to see you again Kevin and
Matt. Very cough caffeinated as well
with my Australia Australian accent.
Being natively from Melbourne, Australia, we like to think
we've got the best coffee in theworld, so there's some sizzle
and hype for you. Definitely.
Well having spent about 5 monthsin Australia right on Bondi
(01:55):
Beach in Sydney with a marvellous coffee shop right
underneath my my window, I can guarantee you, you guys have
amazing coffee. You can feel your hair growing
after you've had coffee in Australia.
But it's great that you were able to join us.
I know you're a super popular, very, very busy guy these days.
If you wouldn't mind, take a moment, take the floor and kind
(02:16):
of share a little bit about who you are, your background with
our audience for people who maybe aren't familiar with you.
Yeah, Thanks, guys. Thank you for having me on the
podcast. Been working in software for
longer than I care to admit likeyou guys and it's funny because
I only reflected recently and thought I used to be the young
guy in the team and now I'm likeI've got all this experience and
(02:37):
yet this industry keeps changingso it's always keeping us on our
toes. A quick history background
lesson maybe or or super fast background for me.
I'm a I'm a dad of 2 girls. I am Australian, I've worked
globally, I worked in Australia,the USA.
Large part of my career was working at Hewlett Packard where
I watched them fundamentally miss the cloud and sat around a
(03:00):
table and heard them discuss whythey weren't going to be able to
achieve it, which was an incredible learning experience
as a 30 year old. Spent a lot of time at Dynatrace
7 or 8 years where I grew to be the CMO at the company and help
take that company public, including some really strong
positioning. My first exposure to AI was in
2017 with Dynatrace. Incredible disruptive product
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where they brought a new productto market and essentially
disrupted themselves. Fantastic story and unbelievably
part of it. And now I'm at Content Square
where we're doing the same thing.
We're trying to bring AI into analytics and disrupt how people
analyze to save them time and, and bring the whole domain of
experience analytics together tohelp deliver better experiences
for people on mobiles and websites and apps.
(03:44):
And you guys would know all about content square because
you've been there and and heard it all before.
So I don't want to do the sales pitch, but that gives you the
background and, and actually just to close the the loop on
it, I'm a brand communications type guy.
I have a podcast called tech seeking human, which is why I
have podcast background. It's what I do instead of just
going to the pub with friends, Ilike to actually debate what's
happening with the latest AI tools and keep my learning about
(04:06):
me. And I'm currently now really
focused on product marketing. So I like being closer to the
product and thinking about product strategy and how you get
value to the customers for they want because product teams are
essential these days for delivering that value.
Yeah. And it's it is true though that
and you've seen it happens though that misalignment.
You talked a great example. You were just talking about a
moment ago about your experienceat HP at the product marketing
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can kind of sometimes get misaligned and really not
understand what's happening. So in today's market, what can
product marketing and sales, howdo you think they're all
engaging customers to try to avoid that misalignment from
happening? In my history of like nearly any
every organization, there's always like silos of insight.
They're always like teams that they feel like they're pulling
(04:51):
one way and another team feels like they're pulling another
way. I think really understanding,
like why are you in business? What makes you differentiated
and, and making sure and, and also like are you delivering the
value to the customer for what they really need?
Like a lot of people are marketing things that they're
like, what is that the analogy about the hammer and the nail?
I can't even remember. I don't even know why I even
(05:12):
bother to try doing it. But the point is.
The Japanese proverb. That's the nail that stands up
as the one that gets the hammer.No, I was trying to think of 1
of like people just trying to people just trying to insert.
All you have is a hammer. The whole world begins to
resemble a nail. Yeah, that's it.
Yeah. So it's like we have this
solution, therefore we're just going, this is what's going to
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solve the problem. It's like that, No, like does a
customer really need that? And and I'm big on like really
understanding what the customer wants and helping them to, to to
deliver on it. And I think that's just part of
a company culture that you have to extract.
Yeah, like product marketing is a just like product marketing
team. Sometimes they, we feel like
it's like product marketing being anonymous.
(05:56):
We'll come together to, to talk about like our challenges.
Because you sit at this corner of everything of like how
support is working, how the marketing team is trying to go
to market, how sales are trying to sell, how the product team,
what they're trying to do with the road map.
And then you're trying to position all of this and make
sense of it. And so I think it's, it's really
important that companies kind ofcome back to the glue of like,
(06:17):
why do you exist and what problem are you solving?
And that's hard. Absolutely, definitely so.
And when you're looking at that,how do you come up if you want
to have product LED growth, how can you position both product
LED growth and enterprise growthsimultaneously?
Sounds like they're going to be at like cross purposes.
(06:38):
This is a good one. This is a good one.
It's not easy. Let's put it this way.
What most SAS playbooks tell youto do is to identify your key
target audience and deliver to that audience.
And that could be industry, it could be category and and really
narrow it down what PLG product LED growth versus an enterprise
approach is. With an enterprise sales LED
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approach, you've got a lot more control.
So you have the ability to control the message of how you
are delivering to that end customer.
But the shift 10 years ago with HubSpot and all these other
brands where it's like just, I just want to try the product
means the first touch someone gets.
And the expectation of nearly every software category is that
you can try this software. And I'm, I'm doing that.
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I tried more software that I care to admit even yesterday.
I'm trying all the new AI e-mailtools that are available just to
see which one's the right one. And I'm not giving it enough
time or a sales Rep to help influence me.
And a lot of people are like that these days.
So the challenge now is like some people push towards product
LED growth, but the product isn't ready and therefore they
give a bad experience to to thatend customer or they try and
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make the customer think through who they are before they get to
the product. So they don't identify as like a
ACTO at the end of the day, could also be a consumer.
So they want to touch and feel it.
A good example again of like what does work is depending on
the product fit. Like if you are just a product
LED company and, and you really have the right niche and the
right fit and it's perfect for the trial and you want to do
(08:04):
product LED growth and you do itand it's easier to scale with
product LED growth because you don't have the resources.
You push things through the product.
You have to have a very keen eyeon like how your competitors are
doing it and how easy it is for people to adopt that software.
But if it's not an easy experience, you got to be
careful. My good example, I guess is like
at Dynatrace, we shifted to doing a free trial from a sales
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LED growth motion and we opened up the product to allow people
to access it. Now we didn't do it until we
knew that what they were doing with that product was so
revolutionary different that no competitor could do what we
would do and what they would doing is deploying an agent.
It automatically captured everything and gave value
out-of-the-box as an enterprise solution that was differentiated
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against everyone else in the competition.
It's the easiest sell in the world.
It's the easiest product marketing position.
Customer immediately sees the value and goes wow, OK, I'm in
and I'm ready. And then we just knew how to
follow up. Now assuming that product LED
growth means SMB is not true. Product LED growth is the
initiative of how you are going to market.
(09:11):
SMB is SMB. The way Dynatrace was
positioning product LED growth under SMB was if you want to do
this via AWS and you're a small business, do it that way.
Like we're not equipped to support you as a business
because we're focused on the Fortune 5000 whatever big
companies and that's how our sales will go to market.
That's how we support and that'show we prioritize.
(09:31):
So it's, it's gave you a long answer.
It's, it's something I'm living through because the company I
work for content Square acquiredHot Jar a couple of years ago.
Hot Jar is a the mind in a freemium category.
And PLG, they've been pioneers of how to get people to convert.
And we're living through that scenario of integrating
platforms together and thinking about like, okay, what's the
(09:53):
experience that that customer gets?
And as a company that's focused on customer experience, there's
a little bit of pressure. We'll get, yeah, we'll get,
we'll get through it. It's difficult to integrate to
products, but there's some smartpeople in the company and we're
really like, we're really mindful of that approach and and
we know that that's the right way of doing it.
I think probably growth it has to be done.
It's like, it just feels like everyone does it now.
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So it's like you just have to get to that point.
It's an expectation now. I can't tell you how many logins
I have to all these systems thatI've probably gone in once or
twice, right, which is the problem with product LED growth.
I think it's compounded you know, both Kevin and I obviously
being a content square and otherkind of complex solutions that
are that are cast as it's reallyeasy to use drop it in etcetera.
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But the the bottom line it's not.
So I think what you're saying about finding one key element
that just clicks and if you can get that in, that's worthwhile.
But that was the debate we always had was like, you can't
just give them access to our main platform because they
wouldn't know what to do, right?So there's, there's a, a fine
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line there between how you introduce people to it, what
their first impression is, and then do they actually come back
and use it again, right. So what, what can you say about
making sure that people, you know, even if they do like it,
then keep engaging with it? How do you do that without
having a, a, a coach? Is that what where AI can come
in? Yeah, it's a well, it's the
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bread and butter of product analytics, which is one of the
categories that we sell, which is like really understanding the
user journey. So when they sign up, what
functionality were they using and what functionality leads to
increased engagement and eventually adoption?
And does the e-mail nurture or an SMS and or a type of feature
that you have lead to that adoption?
(11:39):
So it's using those sort of tools to understand it.
I don't want to do a sales pitchlike you can obviously overlay
AI over analytics like that. That would then help you
understand because if there are 10,000 users that are signing up
for a platform, everyone goes invarious different directions.
So you need to summarize edge your bets, which is the best way
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of doing it in order to prioritize the right
functionality that will lead ultimately to the most amount of
engagements. And, and is it at the scale yet
of when you can have 10,000 variations of your app
personalized specifically for that person?
That sounds like a wonderful marketing dream, but that's not
the reality of what's happening yet.
So you still need to take a kindof a, a cohort and really
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understand your best chances of converting those customers and
then just being relentless aboutit.
They should just be team that isconstantly looking constantly
changing cops constantly optimizing to to hit that
ultimate goal of like, what do we need to do?
There was that famous Facebook. What did they say?
They said for when someone adopts Facebook, they know that
they're hooked and they've actually adopted when they've
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gone onto the platform and they have joined with seven friends
and they've invited 7 friends into the platform and that's
when they knew. So then they just prioritized
getting 7 friends into the frontand they did do sneaky things
like automatically send emails out to anyone that you you
added. So I got access to your e-mail
at the early days. They did this very, very clever,
but they knew like this is how to get people adopted with the
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software. So.
Yeah, I remember they sucked in my all my contacts with my
phone. Yeah.
That's not without my permission.
I was like, what is going on? Yeah, but that's that's a little
bit of side there. I think what you said though
about, you know, looking at the customer journey, what are the
customers and people actually doing?
And, and there's a bit of a gap there between trying to push a
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vision in the market, but also what your customers are doing
and kind of bringing those yet leading them along this path.
But you have to be in the place where your customer is, right?
One of the things I have a problem with AI when I've seen
it deployed for this purpose is that you don't always get the
same results with AI. I mean, in fact, the next
question you asked could give you a completely different
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result set. So if you're trying to guide
people through it, you can't be guaranteed that it is absolutely
the best path for them, right? If maybe maybe a path, maybe
it's a good path, but maybe it'snot the best path.
And that's where I think that really studying your customers
and how they're using it is critical.
Yeah, you can't. You can't apply AI until you've
laid the foundation of the data capture and accuracy of what
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you're capturing. And if that's trusted enough,
because otherwise you're just amplifying junk and you just,
you don't want that, you need toreally make sure that what
you've captured is correct. What you're analyzing is the
right behaviors and the metrics are accurate and the insights
that you're gathering are accurate.
And then you can allow an AI to basically run the analysis for
(14:40):
you. And it's a lot of what we're
doing at content Square at the moment is the way we are
applying how we, how we look at the use cases for our AI is we
look at what our professional services team do.
And then we take those models and then we go, OK, now what
part of that can an AI do for the customers?
So it just accelerates it for them.
But it's incredible, like even for getting AI like it is hard,
(15:02):
like I was saying, you know, there's ten different 10,000
probably people logging into an app at any given point in time.
Like how do you know what to do and what to prioritize?
And I think it's amazing how many companies just then don't
look and then just guess. And I go, well, maybe we'll just
like just change the login. Maybe we'll just add like login
with Google Now instead, or we'll just do phone based log
(15:24):
and they don't test it. So I think there's some
simplicity. We're still like, doesn't matter
how long you've been in this industry for, there's always
like a shocking you, you what? You don't have any analytics on
your mobile app, but that's but that's like where all your
traffic's coming from. How why not?
So there's a long way to go. Well, I mean, you're hitting on
something you and I had talked about earlier on and we have,
(15:45):
we've had this conversation withseveral other people too.
So I'd love your, your perspective on this, the whole
AI buzzword, reality versus perception type of thing inside
of the industry. I know I'm obviously Matt and I
are familiar with content Square.
We know the approach to AI, and I think you eloquently described
it here about that whole thing about providing additive value
and taking very, very measured approach to making sure that
(16:07):
there's reality behind the valuethat's being delivered.
But with the fact that the term is everywhere in the industry
right now, how much is that eroding trust in the marketplace
presently? And how is that affecting sales
motions? I mean do people say see AI?
How cautious should they be? It'll only erode trust if you
(16:30):
promise something and it can't deliver.
So if you say that your AI does something and you give them the
opportunity to take a trial or watch a demo and see it
happening, which is something that I'm still pushing on our
team a little bit because we're not strong enough at getting the
demos out because the products going fast.
But we're in a different way of marketing.
And I'm like, guys, this day andage, you've got to show how this
(16:53):
AI works and the value it provides.
So a customer can go, wow, that's going to be so great.
Let me talk to a sales Rep. Let me take a trial.
So as long as you, as long as you again, can position it in
the light of a customer use caseand they understand it.
And then you deliver to the promise that you said you have
within your product. If you miss promise, if you
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overstep, if you say too much, you will completely lose
credibility. If people take that product for
a trial, they'll never come backand they'll, they'll never use
it again. They, and they, and they don't
care. Like it's not like, it's not
like like if I, I tried 5 AI tools was yesterday, I didn't
really like any of them. I kind of just went actually
these actually got a long way togo with e-mail.
And I suspect it's probably a good thing when you think about
(17:35):
it because it's raining your emails.
It's very personal. So giving access to your emails
now that I'm like, I'm sort of sitting back a day later and
going, it's probably a good reason why it's not automating a
lot of what I want. But I'm actually kind of at the
point now where I'm like the Pearl Jam song in too deep.
So I just keep going. Just you, you got me.
You're like, you have everythingyou want on me.
(17:56):
I don't care anymore. Just go as hard as you want.
So yeah, deliver the other thingas part of the sales process.
You, I watched last week. I was a Oh no, it wasn't last
week. A couple of weeks ago I was at
Commerce Next, which is an e-commerce event.
And we had a major retailer comeup to the Content Square booth
and the sales Rep did an incredible job of pitching what
(18:17):
it is that Content Square does starting at super high level and
then starting to work their way down.
And I watched in surprise when we got maybe 10 minutes into the
demo and then we went and we have AI and the person that was
sort of leading from the customer side, their eyes
literally rolled in their head and then just disengaged.
(18:39):
And I went, oh, wow. Oh, that's not what I was
expecting. And I wouldn't have expected
that. And so that's the other part of
this story. The other part of the story is
you got to really understand your pitch and how it's landing
and look for body language. So you're, that means product
marketers and marketers and sales people getting on calls
with customers and seeing when the AI slide comes in, look at
(19:02):
the body language. Are people like disengaging?
Are they not believing? Are they stepping away?
And I just think that's important.
And, and maybe this is like in my feedback just now, I'm only
giving this like two or three customers that I've spoken to
about how that AI works. Now, if they're existing content
square customers and I tell themabout the AI, they are over the
moon. They're like, this is
incredible. I'm going to be able to go so
(19:22):
much faster. I already trust your data.
I can just now get it faster, faster than I could before, but
in a pitch, pitching AI upfront,when everyone else pitches AI,
it's got to come later. It's got to come like we make it
faster through AI, but it's likeeveryone is saying that now.
So it's like you still got to come back to how you
strategically differentiate it. And AI isn't the pillar.
(19:43):
It's not the it's not the one unless you have a revolutionary
agentic AI right at the front. That's like mind blowingly good.
Which you might, you just got tobe careful.
Yeah, I think about my own personal experience with AI and
ChatGPT, right, It was. It was valuable enough that you
could just do very simple question or thing and would spit
(20:04):
out something. That was impressive, right?
Yeah. But very soon we learned that
that was, you know, it wasn't enough, right?
It was like, that was the initial wow moment, but when
you're trying to actually use it, it didn't work.
And then understanding, eventually you had to be very
measured and concise with what you're asking and how you would
ask it and how you would build it.
(20:25):
And when you started doing that,it started being much more
helpful. I think that was everyone's
initial reaction to AI. It's got AI.
It's like, whoa. And then people realizing like,
well, OK, that doesn't help me at all, right?
It's cool. AI for what?
Yes, yeah. What, what, what, what like what
there's there's Lovable, which has AI for doing development,
(20:45):
which is absolutely mind blowingby the way.
And as you're saying, you subscribe to more software than
anything. When my wife saw Lovable on my
credit card statement, I had to do a please explain moment.
Not the best name for an app, but an incredible product.
But yeah, like there's Riversidefor podcasts has AI built into
(21:05):
it. What does it do?
It does automatic transcriptions.
It makes the editing easy. So there are things that you
know that AI is coming in to help us with.
And yeah, it's, it's going to benuanced and different depending
on what the company is. And you as a product, as a, you
have to understand, like there are 10,000 products out there.
What is your one capable of doing and where does it sit in
(21:26):
the ecosystem? How do you anchor someone into
like, why do they need you? And it's not they need you
because of AI. If they needed that, they'd get
it from Gemini and ChatGPT. Well, you're bringing up an
interesting question here. So you know and kind of merge
that with what Matt just said. So that deals with like within
the product, but getting people to engage you.
(21:47):
How are those AI tools now? How do you get their attention?
Because there's so much noise out in the marketplace right now
and everyone's throwing AI out like it's like it's an
everybody, me too type of term. How do you in this world where
everyone's relying on ChatGPT, Gemini Grok, you know, insert
name of AI tool here. How do you reach the customer
(22:09):
and get the right information tothose AI tools in a way that
brings is them to you so you canhave the conversation?
I, that's a good question you have to ask like my, can you
jump on a call in a minute with like our marketing acquisition
team and we can have the same conversations.
I think that the methods are still the same.
(22:31):
They're still similar. It's like it's, it's looking at
who your target audience is, being really clear on who the
buying persona is, what their pain points are.
And they're targeting them. Like you can target them
directly. You can try and have
conversations with them. You can target them through
social media, you can invite them to events.
You can have them as part of a demo.
(22:51):
You can work with your partner ecosystem and see if you can
work your way via your trusted partner as to how you do that.
Industry events, another easy way of doing it.
And have I covered everything digital?
And then, yeah, you need to likethe acquisition part is like
really it's and then just directsales, like obviously like SDRS
or, or enterprise sales reps or account managers and, and
(23:14):
partner relationships or, you know, through your ecosystem.
So I think it's, it's just identify that audience, figure
out the best channel yourselves with the right content.
Don't over communicate like I'm doing on this podcast where I'm
talking too much too much caffeine so I'll stop.
I want to pivot a little bit. I mean, still in the AI realm,
but not AI in the products you're selling, but AI into the
(23:37):
production of the product marketing, right?
Because Oh yeah, you know, that I'm imagining the trend now is
just let's just plug it and put in all our product information,
plug it in and have it spit out some stuff, you know, and maybe
massage it. What are you seeing in that
area? And then that's question number
one. But two, also, you know, a lot
of people do the research. They didn't even look at your
(23:57):
white paper anymore. They didn't even look at your
website. They just go and it gets us,
they spit it out right and then they give summary.
How do you combat that? So those are kind of two areas,
but the AI in delivering the messaging as well as getting it
noticed. Yeah, so the positioning that
ChatGPT and Gemini can do is absolutely mind blowing.
(24:19):
Like it's I, I did go, I'd had an existential existential
crisis maybe a year ago when I started doing it.
And I went, well, great. AI's come from my job first.
Like why didn't it go for accounting and finance like like
and legal? Why is it coming for me?
Like the positioning is hard. It's really hard, but I've
(24:39):
actually really enjoyed working with it and I use it really as a
sparring partner and I get really one of my core strengths
is strategic positioning, like whether it's how like how you
differentiate it. And I think it's because I, when
I left university, I did a stintat a corporate identity company
(25:01):
and I spent two or three years working with some big in, in
London, working with some big brands, really helping them
identify their brand, how they're strategically
competitively different, etcetera.
And that's really helped me in SAS.
So tools that I use and how we do it, all of the copy
positioning, it can write. I was doing using it today.
So if I give you a perfect example of today, I'm rewriting
a pitch deck and I literally hadGemini sit with me and I would
(25:24):
show it at the slides and then Iwould go, what I'm trying to say
on this slide is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then it would go, yeah, yeah.
Have you thought about this as well?
And if you thought about that and it's it's knowledge.
So pitch decks, positioning, writing.
Now there's some things that I'll tell you that would get me
in heaps of trouble at Content Square.
And let's just hope no one's listening.
(25:46):
But I'm going to tell you anywaybecause I don't care, no, that I
don't care about my job. But it's like, well, now that
no. One's listening, certain people
aren't listening. Certain people aren't listening.
I'm not saying you don't have a big distribution.
I'm just saying that if you wantto grab one part of this, don't
grab this part and put it on social media and at reply
content square and say hey guys,check out what Dave did.
(26:08):
Some of the people already know I did this.
I think you need to educate the lens.
So I've been actively doing it. So we were told only use Gemini
and I'm like I, no, I'm using all of them and I'm going to see
how I get what responses I get from all of them.
I do competitive positioning andI maybe replied to some analysts
(26:28):
with very specific needs that they had around how our product
is capable and what it does. And there might be things like
industry reports that you work on and normally as a product
marketer, you would work with 20engineers and developers to get
the answers on. Specifically define your auto
capsule. Where is it hosted?
What's it picking up, What SPL like the texts and specs of like
(26:50):
what's in a VCR manual is like what's I'm replying to.
I use ChatGPT for it and just kept massaging it until I got
what I wanted and instead of it taking me like 3 weeks, it took
me 3 hours and the answers were incredible and I fed it what it
needed and, and onwards we go. So I'm I now have Chatchip ET
and Gemini trained to the point where I can almost ask it
(27:12):
everything I need it personalized, knows what I want,
knows how we're competitively differentiated and then gives me
answers back. Whether that has any influence
over our visibility on just the LLM, I don't know.
I would have to ask our brand team whether that's helping or
not. But yeah, helping with pitch
decks, helping with writing, doing competitive reports.
I've even done like this. I put our press release through
(27:34):
there. So I got like frustrated with
the fact that we were and it wasn't revolutionary.
We were launching session replaysummaries.
It's not like we're acquiring anyone.
It was a feature that had AI in it.
We were doing it in two days andwe were going backwards and
forwards with three people on this stupid press release.
And I said, you know what? I took it, put it in the chat
Fet prompted it and then went rewrite it it for me got it
(27:56):
back, didn't tell them gave it to everyone.
Everyone went wow, this is incredible written by ChatGPT.
Awesome great move on like we just you just you know, like
it's just so much more efficientfaster.
The other thing that's so it's really funny is Gemini is now
really good. It used to be not so good.
The new model is incredible competitive deep research that
my only issue with it is it's almost too detailed.
(28:18):
So it'll go to a level that is very like I have to use in order
to give it to the sales team. I have to use ChatGPT to
summarize what Gemini does. So it's a little more
simplified. And then if you go one step
further, I know this is a long answer, then we start building
agents internally. So we've built internal agents
for like ask product marketing. How does this product compared
(28:40):
to that product and the agent that we have internally called
dust will do the analysis. We've already fed it, we've
trained it and it does the analysis for us.
So we don't have to do all of those and we're eventually going
to put all our pitch documentation in there etcetera.
So, so. Are are you confident in those
results though that it's going to spit out OK?
(29:00):
Great. It's it's better than it's, it's
better than not in the pitch presentations.
Sure. I'm still not happy with like
how you collaborate. I'm also not happy with the AI
about how it's very singular. Like if I work on something and
I want to collaborate with you, Matt, and I'm working on this
pitch or even that press releaseis an example, I have to export
(29:21):
it out to like something else. And then you don't get access to
the same AI that I had access to.
I want us all working with, I want the AI to come to the
meeting with us and I want to all work together with the AI
that I brought because my AI is smarter than theirs and, and,
and finish it off. So yeah, I'm happy with it.
I'm happy, yeah. But.
And I'm pretty fussy about it too.
So, so sometimes near enough is good enough.
(29:42):
But when it comes to the analystthings, yeah, you have to be you
were. I'm checking it like every line
item and challenging it and redoing it.
So it's yeah. So I mean, I really get the
whole idea here about AI really being able to provide simplicity
and and speed. Yeah, with respect to what it
is, because we all know that when it comes to sales, deals,
(30:04):
complexity kills, slows things down and just makes it much,
much harder to go out there and,and execute, whether you're
talking about marketing or actually the sales cycle itself.
So leaving maybe AI on the shelffor a second in this
conversation, what else could save marketers be doing product
marketers and marketers and sales people in general, if they
want to help? Well, not so much sales
(30:27):
marketing and sale and product marketing.
What could they be doing to helphelp sales close more Business
Today to fight that whole thing about complexity kills.
Can't be in the trenches with them like go go to the pitch go
to the reasons why you lost go pitch it yourself go talk to the
customer and find out how they're using the product.
Like I, I'm still shocked at howmany people that work in an
(30:51):
organization don't know what it is that the product is, that it
does and the value it provides and how it gets sold.
And I, I enjoy the opportunity to talk to customers and try
pitching. I have like a great sales
organization that trusts me to do it.
So they bring me in. So I'm fortunate, but you earn
that trust by being a good listener, really understanding
(31:13):
and then being able to bring value to the conversation as
part of that process. And even if you're just
listening in, like, I just thinkit's really important to, to
hear it first hand. How is it being, how is it being
pitched? And, and if you're not able to
go out to the customer, then spend the time line to
understand from them what's working, what's not working.
(31:33):
And it doesn't mean one Rep. It means like, because one Rep
will have one opinion. It means like, it's the same
thing I was saying about that one customer that didn't like
AI. It's like, get a consensus,
understand the theme and then try and solve it.
And it doesn't mean like wait for the CEO to tell you or
you're head of marketing to say,we need to do this.
It's like everyone in the organization needs to be
(31:53):
inquisitive enough to go and do their own learning and
understanding and bring that content back to continually
improve what it is that you're doing.
I just find that like, that's the only way you're going to
keep getting better and and that's how you're going to add
value to sales. And it's sales, like too many
teams don't emphasize the importance of why that software
(32:14):
is helping this business run itsbusiness.
Like really understanding the base and the value of like, why
do they exist? Is there a shot?
Is there? There's not that many companies
on the planet that aren't aroundfor any other reason than to, to
grow profit and revenue. Like it's you'd be very hard
pressed unless you're a charity or a government like then.
Yet teams that don't understand how your product fits into
(32:35):
helping them either be reduce costs, increase the revenue, be
more efficient. They're like retain your
customers, like just have the pillars of what what that
company cares about. And then just figure out how
your product helps do that and then get the message straight on
that. I think sometimes we just, we
you lose sight because it's you're just not close enough to
that customer and what they need.
Yeah, I think there's a fine line.
(32:56):
Between, you know, when you're selling a complex system, you
want to discuss the intricacies enough that people you know
aren't offended when you're doing this very simplistic
approach to it, right? Yet the tendency is then to go
too deep and you just talk aboutthese things that lose track of
what you're trying to accomplish, right?
And compare it to like, you know, your first grade, your
(33:18):
first reader book, right? It's very basic, you know, it's
very simple, as opposed to Hemingway, which you can also
say is a very simplistic way of writing, but much more complex
and nuanced, right? And I think that's our key was
to be mini Hemingway's, right? But how to take these very vast
concepts, simplify them in a waythat is tells a story and
communicates. And do you have any advice
(33:40):
around that though? Like how do you balance those
two things when you're when you're doing messaging, first go
to your, go to your best. Customers and understand the
value they get from the product.It doesn't have to be, I'm going
to go get a case study from them.
It can be go buy them a beer andsit with them and go, how are
you finding using the product? How many people are using it
right now? What do you find that's works
really well for you? How do you measure whether it's
(34:01):
successful? What don't you like?
What should we be fixing? And, and ask those sort of
questions. They're just big open-ended
questions that are interesting. And then just keep asking until
you get to like the value that it provides and and then expand
it. And then I think, OK, all right,
I'm gonna. OK, this is what I think the
value is. And then you build your slide
based on what you hear. And you can ask sales how they
(34:22):
pitch it and what they think. You can ask the CEO too.
They probably usually have a pretty good idea and a few
others. And then you go, OK, now I've
got a consensus. Then you build a pitch of some
sort and then you test it and you go out to a customer and you
go, hey, does this resonate? Is this how you feel?
And then you get feedback, particularly from people that
are willing to give you feedback, not just nod and go,
yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah.
(34:42):
Can I have my free T-shirt? And you're like, no, but like
just genuinely tell me like is this?
And and I I like just cutting tothe chase a little bit, like I
and I'll say it. Am I allowed to swear on this?
Don't swear. Yeah, you can bleep you if it's.
If it's, it won't be really bad,but it's.
Like I just don't like bullshit.Like I just, no one's got time
for it. So it's just like, and I will
(35:04):
say to them like, humor me, is this exactly, is this what
you're dealing with or not? And it, I, I've done this pitch
now to one of the biggest hotelsbrands in the world and one of
the smallest telcos in like Idaho.
And it exactly the same message resonated with both of them.
And it came down to like time. They don't have time, they don't
(35:26):
have resources and they don't have the ability to deliver to
the revenue that they're trying to achieve.
And then I just back away from that and go, OK, now let me tell
you how we're going to help you address those three things with
what we have in utter simplest way.
And both pictures for the largest customer down to the
smallest worked really, really well.
And it's because it was tested. And then I look for their
(35:47):
reactions and they, if they go, no, it's not, that's not what we
have, that's not our issue. Then I go, OK, cool, I'll change
it. How important in your?
Mind then, is it that you drink your own champagne, eat your own
dog food as an organization? Because I mean, the goals you
just described, I used to work there, are not entirely removed
from what the goals were going right.
(36:09):
So bullshit on me, Kevin. No, I'm not.
I'm not. You're agreeing very much on
your side. With respect to this one, yeah.
How? Important.
Is it then that your own organization, if your goals are
aligned with your customers in very similar fashions, maybe in
different industries, but the intent is the same.
(36:30):
How important is it that you're you're leading by example with
your own product? That's because you know, hot jar
on. Hot jar.
That was a that was a big selling thing for them.
You know, you go and watch theirYoutubes, they would have
wonderful educational systems onthat where they talk about, hey,
look at what we're doing on our own website.
Yeah. And we do.
That we do. We do that in funny ways.
(36:51):
We I as a product marketer and as a software junkie, I use them
all and we've set them all up and the product team have them
and not everyone else has accessmaybe, which sort of surprised
me. So I was like, why doesn't the
whole company have access to ourdemo of our product?
Like I don't understand this. And that's just naivety of me
because I just assumed because Ihad access, everyone did.
But you would hope anyway. Different Rev hole.
(37:13):
I think it's hard. Yes, we do.
And that the luxury we have as acompany is we have a product
that we are marketing to people just like us.
We are product marketers and marketers who are trying to
deliver a better digital experience and they're also
trying to deliver a better digital experience.
And our product helps us delivera better digital experience
(37:34):
whilst also helping them delivera better digital experience that
then helps the end customers. How we use the product is
interesting for our own use cases and also how customers use
the product as well. And so it, it is, it's, but
there's not enough of it. There's not enough of like
people that are code. They're in their own world
developing, they're in their ownworld doing positioning or
(37:55):
marketing or events. They're in their own world
selling. And sometimes people just forget
because their metrics that are important to them aren't the
ones that are occurring on that website to, to not log in and
look. So the closer you are to
positioning and the metrics thatmatter and what you're, what
you're selling to the customers,the more you're probably in your
(38:16):
own product looking at how it works, which is what I do kind
of religiously to the point where I got on a product
leadership call again, I'm just airing dirty laundry, but I got
on a product leadership call last week and I went, hey,
logged into the product yesterday.
Is this the new dashboard capabilities?
Because this, it looks like scaffolding and we just got it
(38:38):
back. A report from Forrester
positioned us really highly for a lot of capabilities, but one
of them wasn't our ability to provide a great dashboard
experience. And so I just want to make sure
we have our designers logging in, looking at this and we have
a plan to solve it. And they did, which is good.
And that's just me like being annoying, which I like to do.
But yeah, it's it's a super goodpoint.
(38:59):
A lot of people don't. They just don't.
They don't look at their own product, which is I think dumb
irrespective of platform that. I've ever sold for in in in the
past, every time I've worked outin the field with a seller that
actually knew how to use the product and could use it.
Maybe you only even in a fundamental way.
They were intimately familiar with how the product worked.
(39:21):
They were intimately familiar with how the experience would
present to the customer and theywere much more able to
communicate that in the cycle about how I can help you with
the problem that you just described to me.
So that investment of time I, I just find that it's a, a huge
payoff for most organizations, right, 100% because if you're
(39:44):
selling. You have to know, you've got to
put yourself in the customer's shoes.
You got to know what they're going to experience.
You got to know how to pitch it and what it does and how it's
differentiated. And the best way to do it is to
show it or know it yourself. Because if they're if, if like
what happens in most cases the site, the the customer has
educated themselves on that product already.
And you come in and you're not educated on the product.
(40:06):
All of a sudden you're not the expert anymore.
And what credibility and trust are you getting from a sales Rep
that can't understand more than what the customer's already
figured out themselves? You're going to get burnt
immediately. So it does depend like for
people listening and they're like, well, I sell like this
hospital grade like artificial intelligent, like segmentation
analysis that only works on premise within a mainframe.
(40:29):
You know, like the point I'm trying to make is there is some
pretty complicated software as out there.
Not all of them are, but like ifyou've got a super complicated
software, then I would understand.
It would be a little bit different.
But if you've got software like you're selling collaboration
software, analytic software, youknow, e-mail software, then
yeah, you should be able to log in and know how that product
(40:50):
works yourself. Crazy if you don't.
Wholeheartedly agree. And it's all about being able to
communicate in a way that makes sense.
Yeah, outside of the outliers you just described that ability
to go and contextualize everything that you're having,
that you know, you, your productcan do, so you can have a much
more pointed and effective conversation.
I couldn't be on board with you more.
(41:12):
It's why I say sellers need to be on a buying community every
once in a while so they can understand what it's like to to
be on the other side of that equation, to understand that
language as well. Correct.
So Speaking of advice, I mean, we're talking where where I
would love to keep going. And Dave, you and I could be
here all afternoon. It would be, it would be so much
fun. The folks that are listening, we
(41:32):
you've been sharing a lot of wonderful Nuggets, advice,
guidance. I hope so.
Absolutely. Rambling, yeah.
No, when you're talking. About people who are coming in,
key marketers, product teams, you know, what advice would you
give anybody that's coming into that right now with respect to,
you know, someone who's buildinga go to market strategy?
(41:52):
What would you tell them in thisday and age?
What would be the advice you would give them a listening
tour? You need to go and go and listen
and absorb as much as you can. I love when someone comes in to
do a first impression. I would go, what, why did you
join? What do you think?
What do you think are the issuesthat we think we should resolve?
(42:16):
What's missing? It's a great opportunity to go
like, Oh my God, we don't have avery good onboarding experience
to help people who are new understand how this product
works. Or when the pitch that I can't
find anything or our website's really confusing.
You can drink the kool-aid for too long.
And so when people are new, I love giving them the opportunity
(42:36):
to go, all right, here's your chance.
You know, you won't offend me. I wrote most of this, but please
tell me in all honesty, what works, what doesn't, What's your
impression? And if they're in marketing or
particularly also if they're in my team, I'll make them kind of
present it back to the organizerto to a small group, not, not a
big organization. Don't put them and I don't make
it stressful for them. It's like, I just want you to
(42:57):
understand. Also get to know them.
Then I would go listening to her.
You gotta go find out what's going on and you need to
understand who are we selling to?
Why are they buying it? How successful are we at
pitching? How much are they paying for it?
How, how long are they buying itfor who the people world that
are buying it? Do they rebuy after two or three
(43:17):
years? If they're rebuying, what are
they rebuying? Do they get an upsell?
Do they buy that? How's it being how's, how do we
sell it to them? How long was that sales cycle?
It's really getting into the full like as a go to market,
you've got to get into the full like the full gamut of like, OK,
how, how is this business? What's the engine and, and how
do we fine tune this engine and and what part role do you play
(43:39):
in fine tuning that engine? If it's someone that's really
dedicated to pricing, then you'dput the you would still try and
understand everything and then you would hone in on what the
pricing meant as part of that story.
I wouldn't say to them though, go understand everything about
pricing. It's like for me, always big
picture 1st and then laser, because if you laser you, you
just might miss context or something that was really
(44:01):
important upfront. So, you know, ask for, ask for
the for customers to talk to, ask for customers that are
happy, ask for customers that are unhappy.
Look at all the most recent deals, understand why they won.
Yeah, that, that, that would be my like.
And sitting on like those calls,sitting in strategy sessions and
then talk to product and like, what have they got coming in the
road map? How is the road map being
perceived? How is that being communicated?
(44:24):
Yeah, it could end up being, wow, you just like you.
You might the person I I know maybe what people are thinking
is like, Oh my God, the person'sgoing to be like drinking out of
a fire hose if they do that. That's a lot.
So give people time, give them like you got months and it's
going to overwhelm them. I did that recently with someone
that got on boarded. I said you came this week, but I
(44:44):
guarantee you next week your head is going to explode.
So when the head explodes, you just you get on a zoom and you
go today's the day head explodedand I went all right, cool.
Then you break it down for him. All right, now we're going to do
step by step. Let's go do this, let's do this,
let's do this, let's get you to meet that and let's just sort of
angle them in the directions because otherwise you might turn
(45:05):
someone off. Come in and learn as much as you
can in three months and tell me how you got to fix it.
And you're like, but there's so many things that are broken.
I used to tell people when. When I was running on the
enablement team is where earplugs at night so it doesn't
seep out of your brain and back onto your pillow at the end of
the day, right, Dave? Again, we could talk all
afternoon, folks, if they want to reach out to you to to learn
(45:27):
more, all you want on your podcast, follow on other
podcasts you might be on. Where can people reach out to
you? What's the best way to either
listen to you or reach out to you for additional connection?
I'm always lurking around LinkedIn.
Still, so you can get me on LinkedIn, It's Dave and I do, I
don't know, I do some random updates every now and then try
and make it kind of a little differentiated.
(45:48):
We also have a podcast, Tech seeking Human, where we
interview AI thought leaders. And this afternoon I've decided
I've got two of my friends that I used to work with and we're
going to do live in person. I don't know how it's going to
go, if I'm really honest. We're like going to dissect the
latest in AI and what Croc is doing with the images and
turning it into videos and what Elon thinks about, you know, the
(46:09):
next whatever. Try not to get myself deported.
So tech seeking human texting human is the podcast.
Jump on that as well. And yeah, through those two
channels. You should grab me.
I don't. I'm not on X anymore.
I understand. Very good.
Well, we'll put all that in the in the episode description.
People can reach out to you. And by the way, folks, if you're
listening, I do, I do encourage you to reach out.
(46:30):
Dave is a great resource, a wonderful human being, a lot of
fun to talk to you. As you can see, we're fun here,
but that does bring our episode to a close.
Matt, you've been a wonderful Cohost again today.
Anything you'd like to go and bring up at the end of the show
here? No, not really.
I enjoyed. The conversation very much some
of the things that we struggled with together for years, and I'm
(46:52):
glad to see someone still carrying the torch moving
forward. Absolutely.
Did you know we have great. Stewardship there.
So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming in.
I want to thank our guest Dave Anderson for coming onto the
show today. My Co host Matt Long and you for
coming in and spending your timeto go and learn a little bit
more about the world of enterprise software sales.
If you liked our episode, pleaselike follow, subscribe, comment.
(47:15):
It really helps us out on whatever platform you have to be
listening to. And if you'd like to know more
about the methodology that Matt and I, Matt and I follow when it
comes to selling, please go to our website and purchase our
book there. But until then, please come back
here next week and follow us here on our show.
We'll look forward to seeing youthen.
Until then, take care. Bye bye.