Rebroadcast:How Marketing Can Own Go-to-Market (Instead of Just Supporting Sales) with David Heyworth

Shaheen Hoda: Welcome to APAC's B2B Growth Podcast by X Growth. I'm Shaheen Hoda and on this show we're going to be unpacking trends, bustling myths and delivering insights you can put to work today to drive growth in apac. On today's episode, we were speaking with David Hayworth, a ah, seasoned GTM advisor and former CMO at Vocus. With deep experience navigating complex B2B sales and marketing landscapes, we're diving into what really matters for B2B marketers in the second half of 2025. Think agility, growth mindset and ditching the MQL vanity metrics. David shares hard won lessons from aligning with sales, why marketing should stop saying legion and start talking revenue, and how a simple coin became the ultimate ABM power move in the defense sector. Let's dive in.

Co-host: David, thanks for jumping on the podcast.

David Heyworth: It's my pleasure to be here.

Co-host: When you think about successful marketing in the second half of 2025, what are some of the non negotiables that you think marketing teams need to have in place?

David Heyworth: Non negotiables are really, we can often look at it. Is it, is it, is it SEO? Is it SEM, is it digital, is it harnessing AI? But I really look at it as the core traits of marketing. And the business really needs to know these core traits are there and they're the traits of agility, balance and growth. If they know that marketing is focused on delivering growth and delivering the commercial outcomes and it positions marketing far better, uh, within the organization. If I unpack that a little bit, you know, the agility means, hey, it's half two now. What are the changing priorities? You know, where we have a plan, we're executing to that execution is key and critical. But we're also helping navigate the business. So, you know, and it's the customer compass, uh, more than a customer map. So what's changed? What's working? What's not working? Are there other competing priorities? So really important time to really nail those around those three attributes as well for half two.

Co-host: Got it. And you know, you talked about the other, the other components. Obviously growth was another one. Um, you know, a lot of fine, a lot of people are demanding from marketers to hit higher numbers, lower budgets. Um, there's, there's a, you know, there's a bit of a budget cut that's going around, especially in the tech space. It's a little bit tight. Are your thoughts on that front in terms of, you know, what, what should marketers Kind of have in place with that lens.

David Heyworth: We've really got to make sure that marketing is there to drive the business. So I, I would suggest don't talk leads, you're generating talk revenue opportunities you're presenting to the business. So if each deal is $100,000 and you've uh, you've generated 10 of those, that's a million dollars of potential revenue you bring into the business. You'll find that that will be perceived, that'll be taken on blood by far more effectively by sales management and the general leadership within the business. It is key that you have a relationship with sales leadership. It's key that you have a relationship with finance. It's key that you have a relationship with product. You cannot go about just executing on the marketing plan. You know, we talked about agility, balance and growth. And agility really is, as we said, it's that flexibility. Are the plans right? Are they firing for us? Is it driving the roi? Uh, the growth is a growth mindset. Speak to products, speak to sales. What's working? What products give us greater margin, speak to finance. What's the P and L looking like? Is it a margin challenge we have or is it a revenue challenge we have? So that growth mindset helps us enormously in how we deliver for the business. Otherwise the danger is, as you alluded to, we're seen as a cost centre. Gee, sales aren't where it should be. Let's save some dollars. Gee, there's a marketing budget there. So therefore marketing budget is often, is often hit.

Co-host: You said, hey, one of the important things is talking about revenue, right? And not lead gen. I definitely a hundred percent agree with you on the Legion stuff. One of the maybe issues that marketers might bring up with that is, well, I'm not responsible for revenue. I can maybe create pipeline, um, but I can't drive it to close. Uh, and therefore should I be responsible for it? If I'm driving pipeline and my pipeline numbers are there, isn't that enough from my angle and should I be talking about revenue and responsible for that? I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on that kind of philosophy and approach.

David Heyworth: Marketing absolutely has to be conscious of the whole go to market motion. And that starts right at the basics of defining market and value proposition and um, enablement and marketing execution. So if marketing leadership that says, I'm sorry, I'm only really focused on this piece, that can be a recipe for disaster. So aligning and making sure that the business priorities are our priorities, it's embedded in our KPIs and it's what we're driving at positions marketing fundamentally different. It positions it as we were alluding to before, as a growth engine for the business. So that relationship we were talking about, and when I say relationship, it absolutely is. You should have in your diary interlocks with finance, sales, product leaderships. You should have updates, you should have listening posts and marketers. You know, we're solutionists, you know we love to drive a solution in a market. But I'd suggest we need two ears and one mouth in reference to those engagement with the stakeholders, you know, learn from them M. What are their challenges, what are they seeing, what's working, what's not working, really have that understanding, really take that input. And that input is absolutely critical from all those stakeholders. But I would say take the input, not necessarily the direction. The direction is the value that marketing brings and that's, that may sound like a little nuance but if they're saying this is the effect that I want, this is the desired outcome, then marketing can use our strategic value and our go to market build to help craft the commercial reality that business is driving towards.

Co-host: If I can, if I can go back, do you think marketing should own revenue or marketing should own pipeline?

David Heyworth: Um, I think there's an ownership right through the chain. Do they own uh, MQLs? Absolutely. But to say we've got MQLs, fantastic. We delivered you 73, go get them. And they haven't been converted to an SQL. So it doesn't have a, it doesn't have a customer desired solution or a timeline or a budget attached to it. That's what we've got to drive at because it's not real. And I'll tell you, in my, you know, in my last role we had MQLs that were being generated. What we found but is the pursuit of those leads were very, very slow. And in the business to business space we found customers are uh, wanting an answer to their queries almost immediately and to get back to them days after or weeks after just wasn't right. So we designed a um, digital tank, um, inside sales team, inside marketing, whatever you want to call it. And we could rapidly deploy out on those inquiries. So it meant that when we got an MQL come in, whether it was from a campaign, from the website, use your medium, we were responding to that customer. Within minutes or hours conversion rate went up from MQL to SQL. So that changed dramatically. But to your earlier point, it's marketing's responsibility to follow that through because in the B2B space. Depending on your technology or the solution you're driving, sometimes the gestation period of the deal could be a year, a year and a half. So we've got to maintain visibility on those opportunities. How they convert, how we interface our CRM into salesforce. What happened to those leads? Be involved in the sales standups and then be able to see them through to their fruition and the revenue they generate. That's real measurement of marketing value.

Co-host: You brought up a number of points that I think is really critical. Right. So and I love the fact that you brought in again, whatever you want to call it, SDR team, uh, inside sales rep Marketing. Inside marketing rep. It's a new, new title for that, for that role. I've heard, um, you know, business development or whatever you want to call them to report to marketing to get that full ownership and really drive, like have those first conversations with those prospects. Happens with marketing before they go into, into sales. Is that the direction that or the kind of the structure that you, you, you, you build? It sounds like it was at focus. Is that all right?

David Heyworth: Yeah, definitely, definitely. And look, they can be called a whole lot of things, as you said to call them, um, what they are, uh, or the service they deliver to your internal customers is the best option. So sales discovery reps, probably the best option there. But to the point as well is the funding of that. Now in marketing we have limited funding, key and critical to engage our stakeholders and sales to be able to uh, take them through the map of what we could deliver even over a short period. So in that example I gave you, we actually didn't recruit people. We went to a third party organization funded by sales because they love the concept, they love the idea of it and that third party put them in for three to six months. So they're a contracted period. We could then, you know, we could then evaluate it, we could see whether it was, it was going to be a success for us. Now sales initially said we want them in our organization. We said okay, no problems at all. So you're going to do the training for them, you're going to do the briefings for them, you're going to do the product campaign overviews for them. So the answer to that was geez, well we got to do a whole lot of things. So marketing took that over. So marketing did the briefings, marketing did the enablement people. Because again, enablement without a campaign is just information that washes over you and it's gone enablement and then build the campaign immediately saw a Dramatic change in effects, ran through the period, proved the model and then employed FTEs so we no longer needed external contract. I think proving the model is really important. And make sales the winner, make sales the success. There's no use marketing going hey, look how fantastic. There's sales discovery reps, they're yours. This is what the results that you're driving and I think that engenders greater support and recognition and partnership if you like between sales, marketing and product.

Co-host: In that case you've brought up a topic that it's dear to my heart and this is kind of like from our agency side we implemented and what we saw was a dramatic shift in terms of how we work with clients where we, we used to design a program and then maybe work with SDR or bdr, whatever it is, function inside of a client company and then execute that and it's just always lukewarm. Maybe work, maybe wouldn't. And the moment that we took that ownership and either we brought a resource or resource was directly reporting to us, just changed the game. So I love the, the idea around marketing should own that. We call it sales discovery rep which is again stands for sdr. I love it but I'd love that concept. Right. Another thing that I want to touch on and you brought us up in, in the previous uh, thing that you said, you said that they had to be there in weekly sales meetings. Tell me a little bit about that.

David Heyworth: Yeah, absolutely. So um, you know again marketing and the SDRs when we were briefing a new campaign were there in the, in the sales meetings. I think that's important for a whole lot of reasons. You know first is the listening post. Just have an understanding of what's going on, what's working, what's not, what large deals are progressing that perhaps started with an opportunity and what other deals are um, ah, available for us to be able to support in a way. So again, understanding from sales what's going on, understanding their pain and their pleasure that they're experiencing and therefore being able to offer our support and engagement. It's the chance for us to then do a bit of a 360 on that and say fantastic. Last week we spoke about this. You highlighted these as your challenges. What we'd like to put forward is a consideration for this campaign. What are your thoughts and what are your views on it? We're thinking we're going to do an SD WAN campaign. We're going to target this type of the market. We're going to add an offer with a specific expiry period. Do you think that would work? Are there sub segments? So uh, that kind of consultation with sales is absolutely gold because they're so used to uh, a cookie cutter approach. Oh, here comes, here comes a campaign. It's going to my customers. I don't want it to go to the customer. I'm speaking about something else or it's not the right time for other reasons. So getting them in early and having that understanding and support again is really, really key because it turns our campaign into the collective's campaign and initiative and it engenders better buy in better focus and better drive of the campaigns.

Co-host: I love the rabbit hole we've gone down here. I think that it's a very important point. I uh, believe it's one of the elements that moves the lever massively at a kind of, let's say lower end of the middle of funnel or even at the bottom of the funnel for marketing, which I think is really critical. I want to talk about ABM because I know you've done a, ah, number of programs that would kind of come under the ABM umbrella. And look, ABM has been around for a little while. How do you think it's going to evolve this year? What are the kind of changes? Where does, where does account based selling come in?

David Heyworth: Yeah, yeah, look, abm, you're right, has been around for many years and I prefer to call it account based selling because that's what it is. Um, you know, some call it abx, um, give it that level of flexibility. But critical success is abs. Um, I think what it does that it engenders that it's not just a marketing thing, it's an us thing and we will be successful if we focus and we execute it together. Um, sales absolutely positively has a key and critical involvement in abs. In reference to one to one, one to few, one to many. It links back into the overall nurture campaigns that are running and should be running within marketing the B2B space. We should be touching our customers regularly. You know, I'm always saying to inform, to educate and to offer. If we keep banging him over the head, say buy this, buy this, the relationship soon turns into either a transactional one or the relationship uh, becomes uh, an unsubscribed one. So to be able to inform and educate, those first two pieces are really valuable. The customer appreciates that. It might be a technology briefing on low earth orbit satellites. It might be an advice on trends that are happening around in AI without the SIL that helps you map your customers maturity as they engage and you will see customers start to engage content in a very, very different way if you are positioned in that old trusted advisor piece. So your abm, your one to many nurture is critical and I would also say in discussions even with finance and sales and others is that marketing just isn't SEO and SEM and the campaigns, it's everything we do. It's the campaigns, it's brand, it's events, it's everything you can see and do and feel within the marketing spectrum. Integrated marketing is part of that influence. So therefore when you start saying improving the value and trying to put an roi, don't be shy to be able to say the influence has value and articulate that value. You can see it in salesforce. You can see the customers, what they've touched, what content that have engaged, what events they've attended. And even when you look at a sale in a customer go into their salesforce, look at activities, you'll see the awareness in influence that customers are having. And that's from just your one to many. When you move to your one to few you can start really getting precise. One to few for me is really in the industry stuff. So it really is. You start going into healthcare and it's a low earth orbit satellite in our business might be great, you know, it's fast, it's, it's got great coverage, et cetera. But you know what, for medical uh, practitioners that's not it. It's about patient care, it's about recovery times, it's about bed availability. So really getting in the understandings within the segment is critical as you start moving to one to few and then one to one which does involve and require an intimate engagement with sales. And it needs to be scheduled, you need to have it on the calendar. We will outreach on this day, you will outreach on that day with a phone call. And that's why when you start going down that one to one and one to few, you really need to have committed sales leaders and committed people. Don't activate it right across the entire salesforce. Get the heroes, make them a hero if they're not already. Show that the model works and it is worthy of investment before you scale.

Co-host: So it sounds like you have a few battle scars. Yes. From sales involvement. Tell me a little bit about. You said be very clear with sales that we're going to do outreach here, you're going to do outreach there. I feel like I know where this is going. Tell me a little bit about the balust scars of uh, what has gone wrong in that situation. In the past.

David Heyworth: Yeah, look, I think with sales and you know, like, I, I feel we're all in sales, you know, we're all really driving. We all want an intimate relationship with our customers and we're all trying to use that customer compass in the best thing. I think we've all probably experienced perhaps sales going. You know what I need a brochure. Needs to be red at the top. Needs to have some splash of color. Needs to have a $99 a month with a star on the top right hand corner. Get me that by tomorrow. And we're all good. And sometimes we kind of fall down that path and we, our relationship changes, we become support to sales. And I mean that the nicest possible way. But at the end of the day, they're not marketing. Um, and it gets back to that earlier point. I said take their input. Absolutely. Take the reasons why they're wanting to do it. Take their experience of what's worked and what hasn't worked. But really it's marketing that will actually come forward with, uh, the approach based on that and the battle scars that you've, uh, suggested. Absolutely. You know, they do come from, from experience.

Co-host: Tell me what's gone wrong. Tell me, tell me an example that, that uh, that you said the scene and the marketing hit them up and then all of a sudden crickets and sales like, oh, sorry, I forgot. I got to figure out.

David Heyworth: Yeah, you know, one, that one that comes up was, was uh, was. It was a big event we invested quite significantly in and we'd done outreach prior to the event. You know, all the stuff you should do. You know, going to have a great stand there. We've got two speaking opportunities. We've got a cocktail thing in the, in the late afternoon of one of them where people can come to the stand. We got a great.

Co-host: Sounds, very expensive, all that kind of stuff.

David Heyworth: Great event, big investment. You know, a lot of people, um, coming, uh, through, you know, started the outreach prior, did some stuff on social. We're going to be there, you know, start laying the breadcums, having a plan sort of post event. You know, okay, this is what the outreach is going to be, uh, on the leads that we generate in the conversations we had. But, um, comes the event and it turns into like a social occasion. You know, they're meeting customers, they're not scanning anything. They're. Oh, we, we had a great conversation. You know, you've got all the people on the stand and then all of a sudden there's nobody on the stand. So, um, you know, at the end of that, after the investment, we were looking after day one and it's like where's, where's the leads? Yeah, I had some great conversations with who. Just a few people in the industry. What about? Just about general things, you know, was. It was frustrating in the regards because there was so much work and energy and investment financially, a lot of people's travel time, et cetera. And it really, it really didn't pay off because we really didn't get the leads that we generated from it. Was it part of a bigger nurture? Absolutely it was. But really was it measurable for us?

Co-host: You said that don't work with the entire sales organization, the entire salesforce create championship. I think that connects very closely to what you're talking about here. So my question is how did, how did you change your approach after that experience so that you have not only buy in from sales, buy in might be the right, wrong word. Having sales fully quote unquote committed, participating, actually being part of the plan. How did, how did you change your approach to make that more effective?

David Heyworth: Yeah, here I. Champions are uh, key. You know, you've got to have people that are absolutely committed to it and that are uh, perhaps already driving success within the business. And that's what we did. You know, we identified those champions, we got them involved in early. We actually use the two ears in one mouth and said how do you do it? You know, what's the magic? What's the success? How are you engaging? Uh, what does your engagement look like? How are you presenting the content? How are you identifying the low lying fruit? So it was really, it was really kind of a knowledge gathering exercise. Um, and what we found was an enormous amount of benefit in doing that and with leadership as well. But it led us to benefit around enablement that we were short when it came to the enablement here. We thought we created this event and it was going to be fantastic. But we hadn't enabled them, we hadn't given them the right tools, we hadn't pre qualified, we hadn't organized something that we did in the future such as organize discovery sessions for them post pandemic, post events. So I think the champions really helped us, the heroes really helped us define what those, those pieces of gold are, uh, and how we should do it better and then being able to get sales leadership to be able to support it and then to get the right people. In fact even right down to creating a schedule of who's on the stand at what time and who attends and who doesn't and the presentations, you know, being really tight on the presentations. And that was so much so that we said, fantastic, Mary, you're a presenter, please give us the bullet points of your outline and help us craft something for you. So it was, it was really being close in the participation and the involvement, et cetera, on that, and then activating other streams, you know, like social. So with our heroes, we were, we were videoing them prior to the event, we were pushing them out so people could see it. We were videoing them during the event, we were pushing it out so people knew why they needed to come and engage us. So it was just a far deeper type of engagement. And on the follow up, it was, was so deep that we discovered things that might sound ridiculous but carried so much weight. Now, I'll give you an example of this. This is, this is government and this is Defense, right? So government, hard nut to crack. You know, it's all about relationships. You know, how long have we been doing business together? Are you a truly a trusted partner? Uh, and that's, that's federal government, right? You go to Defence, you need to be sovereign. So what we found is we've done some technology briefings because they don't, you can't say, hey, I'm from Vendor A, I'm from Company A, come and see me try to convince you why we're the best. They won't attend. In fact, they're not allowed to attend. If it's a technology briefing or it's a commemoration, that's very different. And they can attend. So taking on the feedback from, uh, our sales leaders and, and our frontline salespeople, we got an intimate understanding of how defence worked and how in some cases they would have a vendor and they would either red flag, amber flag or green flag them and individuals that they could and couldn't talk to. It also came back to this trusted advisor. So we'd been dealing with Defence through the organisation and through organisations we'd acquired previously for over 20 years. We found out that senior Defence, when they work on a large project, they believe it or not, create a coin. And this coin symbolizes the strength of their relationship. It symbolizes the achievement that they both made together. And it is a testament to the work that they will do not only today, but into the future. So what we did is we crafted. Yeah.

Co-host: Who creates this coin? I see you.

David Heyworth: The coin is created. So these coins are created by Defense. Let's say if I'm in Defense and I'm dealing with US Defense, there will be these Coins that are exchanged between

Co-host: those two parties, between the vendor, um, and the technology.

David Heyworth: It's traditionally between defence and defence. So it's within defence, it's in. Within defence agencies. It might be Australian defence working with US Defence on a particular project. So they are normally within the defence industry. But what we realised is that the meaningful purpose of it, the ability to work together to drive common goals, the partnership, the mateship. So there were attributes like that that we were uncovering. So what we did is we actually crafted a coin. And this coin, can't see it from where you are, but it actually has symbolization of navy, army, air force and also a little person on it with a. With AI on it. So it covers all of those services and it says proudly, australian owned and operated, has sovereign secure, all the things that are really important. So. And this symbolized the 20 years of that work. Now, to give a coin is one thing and. Oh, here it is. Great, great word. But what we did is we hired the War Memorial in Canberra and we got an amazing MC who was our, uh, Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove. And, uh, he was also the head of defence. And on the evening he spoke about makeship and he spoke about working with partners. And, um, there was no sell whatsoever, ever. It was a recognition of the hard work. And at one stage, in between entree and dinner, people came out and Peter Crosgrove shook their hand and then gave them the coin. So, um, with our CEO, et cetera. So very symbolic, very emotional. You know, people had photos with them, et cetera. There was no sell on it, but it's further cemented what was really important for that segment being Defense.

Co-host: I love that story.

David Heyworth: Yeah, it was cool.

Co-host: Such a good story. Um, and you've taken picture, you're in

David Heyworth: the war memorial in Canberra. You know, there's aircraft hangar, these giant planes having over your head and you know, the legend is Peter Cosgrove. And yeah, it was, it was special.

Co-host: It's just. Yeah, it's just such a great example. It's such a personalized. It's like. It's not text textbook abm. It is like the next level in terms of the personalization and the thought that has gone through it, into it. The. That's such a great case study.

David Heyworth: And the point is we would have never known about it had we not had those conversations with sales, with probably our most experienced frontline sales leader who had intimate relationships with defense. He started talking about this and we're like, tell me more about that. What is that? What does that look like and then turned it into what it was. So uh, yeah, really take the time

Co-host: to listen and go, I'd love to listen to that recording of uh, how the conversation of coins came up to then, uh, then lead, to lead to this, uh, this, this kind of program. Let's, I want to, I want to zoom out a little bit.

Shaheen Hoda: Right.

Co-host: We've talked about kind of sales alignment, we've talked about abm, of course. Are there any other key elements of go to market that you think it's essential for driving growth, especially in complex deals maybe we haven't touched on yet?

David Heyworth: Yeah, um, I think it really is important, you know, go to market. You know, some people say, oh, go to market. What is it? That's the offer. You know, here's the product, what's the offer? But you've really got to, you're really going to slow down with Go to market. You know, you've really got to identify what, what is the market? What is the market we're going for? It's, it's all of enterprise. No, no, no, break it down. Um, what is the value proposition? What's going to resonate? What makes us stand out? What's the competitive landscape? Now let's be honest, don't just say a company, what are they doing in the market? What have they done, what are they proposed to do? And I think that's really important at differentiation. I think we race through it. Differentiation can often be our feeds and speeds, it can be specifications and that's just not it. So look at your competitors maturity, look at those relationships, look at how embedded they are, look at their ability to execute proof of concepts faster than you. So, and then once you get through that, it's really time for the messaging framework. And again frameworks often are overpassed and a framework is really a, uh, an expansion of your value proposition. Now uh, the value proposition is a silver bullet. But of course every customer is different. You know, they're not going to look at your value proposition and go, that's it. Uh, the example I'll always use with a team or others is okay, you're buying a car, you know, someone wants four doors, someone wants to carry a lot of stuff, someone wants to pull a boat and someone wants the sports car. I think, I think the messaging framework is really key and that's where you really unpack it. That's where you really say, okay, what are the segments? It's healthcare, it's defence, it's energy and resources, it's manufacturing, it's fsi. I know it can be time consuming, but it is critical now within those segments. What is it? Is it the cio? Okay, yes, it is. Oh, is it the cfo? Well, yes, it is. Is it the head of hr? Is it the head of marketing? Is it a cmo? Who are those key stakeholders? Because ABM or ABS is most effective when you're engaging multiple stakeholders. So not just if your CIO is your thing, not just knock on the door of the CIO. Huh? If this solution benefits HR. This is, uh, this is a SaaS solution, and it's great for HR. You're engaging HR as well as the CIO. I remember reading an article about your very large software as a service organization, and they said the last person you should engage is what was traditionally the primary target, the cio. Uh, articulate the value for the individual and for the business, where the value resides, not through the person that will implement that solution in the organization. So your messaging framework is going to be really, really key for you to be able to break that through. So again, across industries, again across titles, et cetera, if you're looking as the call to action to be a proof of concept, does that change the messaging framework? Is there a different message for the person that will do the poc, the proof of concept? And then after all of that, the. That's when you start getting to your marketing plan. All right, what are we going to do in integrated marketing? Are we going to use SEO and SEM? Are we going to do digital campaigns? So all of that other stuff's got to come before. So, um, that gives you a really good grasp.

Co-host: You know, I see this over and over. You talk about industry, you talked about enterprise, and you talk about industry. What do you do in situations? Because we're, you know, especially in Anz, the enterprise accounts in a industry might not be big enough to be able to run a program against it. Right. Some people, for example, would say, hey, I want to go enterprise. Let's, uh, say airlines, aviation. Well, there's really two companies in there. Well, I can't. I can't run a program for two companies. I want to do mining enterprise. Well, there's maybe four or five companies that are really at the top of the list there. Okay, well, we can't really run a program for, for four or five. Is that a problem that you faced before where you're looking at the enterprise space, but especially in the Australian market, the total number of accounts is not big enough, um, to be able to run just the program for, for those

David Heyworth: Um, I would argue, you know, when we look at, you know, the one to one, one to few, one to many, the one to many should be touching everybody. You know, you shouldn't be excluding anyone. It should be generic enough that it has power and influence. You know, like we said before, inform, educate. It might be the informant. Educate. So that's the touching it. You're touching it with your brand. You're touching it with your outreach. When you start looking at those sub segments like you said, you might say, well, airlines is a sub segment. Then you might say, well, hang on. Which airlines are current customers versus prospects? Because the current customers are a far greater priority than the prospects. You know, there's a lot of analytics around it says, um, you know, the value of a current customer versus a prospect, and, um, and the ability to be able to work with them, land and expand within those accounts. I would suggest also that AI is your friend. AI is your wingman. AI is your assistant. It will help you craft content. It will help you scale and work more effectively. I'm, um, not saying we're handing the keys over to AI to do everything, but I am saying that if you.

Co-host: Not m. Yet.

David Heyworth: Not yet, not yet. We'll be sipping that pina colada on a beach one day, but not quite yet. Um, I would suggest it enables you to procure content more effectively. Now, it might do it 60% there or 70% there. You still need to check it, you still need to add your nuances, but it does enable you to scale more effectively. I would also say get ahead of the game. You know, when you're building your marketing plan now, some people say keep 30% as a CMO, keep 30% of your budget, just in case, for stuff. I'm, um, I'm m not a fan of that. You know, I'm a fan of being able to have a solid plan that you've consulted with, you've worked with your partners, you've worked with your stakeholders, you understand your marketplace and have a plan in place. And that means your budgets are allocated for the second half on delivering specific ROIs. Now, if opportunity knocks, and there's another, there's another, uh, possibility that you can embark upon, then what a great opportunity you've got. You can look and say to your stakeholders or whoever, it's passed it to you, let's compare it with the current plan. Is it going to develop something as effective or the outcome is beneficial? Also, is it aligned to the strategy that we've agreed on? Because we said airlines was a major Focus. And we've touched them in the first half and now we're maturing that conversation in the second half. So if we're going to swap it out with your new suggestion, that will impact that. So that's a great and a healthy conversation to have. It also means that if someone comes knocking and says, geez, we're trying to pull the building, can we have some of that marketing budget? You're in a position to say we have optimized our budget for campaigns and initiatives right across the year, right across the segments. So it makes, it makes the budget commitment a little bit stickier for us.

Co-host: David, I got, I got some rapid fire questions for you. Ready?

David Heyworth: Yeah.

Co-host: First question I got is what is one resource? This could be a book, a podcast, a talk, whatever it is that has had a fundamental impact and the way that you work or live.

David Heyworth: You know what? Seth Godin is pretty amazing guy. Um, he's got some great podcasts. I remember reading a book, Purple Cow, defining how you really need to differentiate, how you really need to stand out. But I would also say with Seth, he's an incredible talent, a prolific writer, a, um, thought leader. There is a lot in which he says that you can actually implement and there's a lot in which he says and articulates that you can think about. So I'm not saying that every word that comes henceforth, uh, from him is gold, but really powerful thought provoking really keeps you in your, on your toes and on your game. So I'd say, Seth, second question.

Co-host: If you could give only one advice to B2B marketers, what would it be? Listen, you got two ears and one mouth.

David Heyworth: That's it. Use it in that proportion.

Co-host: Who are some of the. You talked about Seth Godin, but who are some of the other, um, industry experts, thought leaders, influencers, whatever you want to call them, the people that you, um, listen to or you kind of

David Heyworth: consume their content other than this channel, of course.

Co-host: Of course, of course. Let's, let's, let's put this aside.

David Heyworth: It's right up there. You know, um, I think the diversity in knowledge, where you get it, you know, I would encourage people to go in and um, you know, look at AI marketing mastery, you know, check that out, see what they've got to say. I think it helps bring a tapestry together. M. You know, with, you know, ChatGPT, we've always said the benefits there. But you know, have a look at what Google's doing, have a look at what Microsoft's doing. You know, OpenAI is is, is absolutely incredible. But, you know, it really is going to change the game in reference to how we operate. It is revolutionary. It is revolutionary to how we do things going forward. Will it change? Absolutely. It'll accelerate. So I, I'd say, to answer your question, um, be flexible, look at different points of view, because this space is changing so rapidly. I used to work many years ago for Telstra and there was a gentleman called David Fodey. He was the CEO. Uh, he was the head of enterprise and government when I was there and I was running marketing. And, um, he was amazing. But what he would do, if you're asking him questions, he would literally play the question back to you. He'd say, okay, so what you're saying is, da, da, da, da, da, da da, what do you think we should do? And it let you discover your own solution.

Co-host: I think through that bounces monkeys off, uh, of his back and back on your back.

David Heyworth: That's it. The genius of the man.

Co-host: I love it. Last question. Last question is, what is something that excites you about B2B today?

David Heyworth: I think it's customer intimacy. You know, like this is not consumer where we're just blasting it out to the minions and having a look at what the digital reaction is. You know, we've got a, we've got a huge, huge opportunity with customer intimacy in the B2B space. And don't lose that. You have the ability to engage your customers, pick up the phone, go out with a salesperson, speak to the customer directly, create a focus group, do a listening post. Don't just rely on one source of feedback about customer change. So that's what really excites me, you know, that customer intimacy in the B2B space. So I think it gets us closer to the requirements and it puts that customer compass in our hands.

Co-host: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was an awesome chat.

David Heyworth: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much and I love your podcast. Thank you.

Shaheen Hoda: Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you like APAC's B2B Growth Podcast, please share it with your B2B friends and subscribe for weekly insights on B2B growth across APAC. Sign up for the XG Weekly Newsletter link is in the description and if you'd like to let us know what you think about this episode or in general the podcast or anything else, you can email us@, uh, podcastgrowth uh.com we

Co-host: read all those emails.

Shaheen Hoda: Apex B2B Growth Podcast is produced and edited by Alexander Hipwell and music is by the mysterious Brickmaster cylinder. We'll see you next time,

David Heyworth: Sam.