Becoming the Brand Everyone Talks About, ex-CMO of Gong ($300M ARR)| Belkins Podcast Episode #23

Udi Ledegore: Your neck is on the line. Good luck. That's your hook. Like you open with that. You have to do something different to grab attention. And you have to, uh, work even harder to keep that attention.

Michael Maximoff: You are a great storyteller, by the way.

Udi Ledegore: People are naturally drawn to stories. Nobody memorized a spreadsheet in ancient times. There's no spreadsheets on caves anywhere. It's stories. We tend to think of most events as A, B, C. That's the order they happen. But for a good story, often start with B. Then we'll go back to A to explain how we got to B, and then we'll resolve to C. That makes a much more interesting story. 70% of the buyer journey is completed before your buyer reaches out to you, the vendor. That should change your marketing focus because now it's not about the best follow up email, whether or not it has 10 links or not. It's about how do I make sure my buyer learns what I want her to learn about me before I talk to her. What that means in practical terms is what are people writing about me on Reddit? What are people writing about me on G2? What are people writing about me on Glassdoor? Um, which awards have I won that she might have heard of? Uh, which conferences has she been to that I might have presented there?

Michael Maximoff: It's never been as, uh, easy, uh, to sell as now, and it's never been as difficult to buy as now aspires. Right.

Narrator: Udi Ledegore is the chief evangelist at Gong and the former CMO who helped turn the company into one of the most recognizable brands in B2B SaaS. During Gong's rise, he helped define the revenue intelligence category, scale the business to hundreds of millions in revenue, and build a company that reached a multi billion dollar valuation. He's also the author of Courageous Marketing, a book built around a simple idea. Safe marketing is forgettable marketing. Across more than 20 years in the field, UDI has built a reputation for bold positioning, strong storytelling, and marketing that actually leaves a mark.

Michael Maximoff: Everyone talks about best practices in marketing, but I wanted to talk about your, uh, taste in marketing. How did you develop your marketing taste?

Udi Ledegore: I think growing up in Israel, our appetite for excitement and something that grabs attention is pretty, pretty darn high. Um, we're recording this while there's another round of violence there in the region. We won't get into the politics of it, but just uh, to give some background. That's where I grew up and so, um, we're used to our attention being grabbed left and right. Uh, by current events. And we need something very exciting to get us to pay attention. And I looked around when I got into B2B probably 25 years ago, and most of the marketing did not really capture my attention. It was very technical. It, uh, often looked like a technical product brochure that exploded on a screen and someone quickly turned into a TV ad or print ad. And, um, then I looked at our friends in B2C, and they've always known how to communicate with consumers. Whether it's soap commercials or car commercials or beer commercials or snack commercials, they know how to communicate with people. And I thought, well, why can't B2B be more like that? So I think that that's part of what developed my, my taste in marketing. I never really understood why B2B defaults to boring.

Michael Maximoff: So now when you want to get some inspiration or want to see what's happening, you just go and you look more for direct to consumer, e commerce B2C brand rather than, um, looking what the other guys are doing in B2B.

Udi Ledegore: Right, yes. And I think the best inspiration often comes from outside your field. Um, to be more precise, I think some of the most interesting things happen are when you connect two fields that are not obvious or two things that are not obvious and create something new that is unexpected. I, I look at consumer brands and I look at TV shows and I look at, um, oh, there's a really cool collab between Lego and Nike. Or was it Lego and Adidas? I forget. But like a shoe and, and a Lego brick. Um, and that's interesting. And they, they created a unique shoe for lovers of both brands. Why don't we do more of that in. In B2B? Um, anyone who's ever watched me at a live event or podcast in my home office knows by now that I'm a big fan of Jim Henson and his Muppets, because I have a bunch of them in my, uh, in my home office. Um, that, that inspires me, taking a sock puppet, which is essentially the first version of Kermit, and turning that into a cultural icon that thrives 50 years later. They just made a pilot episode for potentially a new season 50 years after this started. That's wild. Like, this was a sock puppet. How did he animated and put life into it that generations of children like me grew up on it. Um, so I think that's when you start looking around you. Um, just be immersed in the culture, especially of your audience, and try to create something that would look familiar enough to them so they know it's relevant but also a unique spin on it. So like, huh, I haven't seen that before.

Michael Maximoff: Folks, if you're enjoying the interview so far, I would appreciate if you spend a second like comment or subscribe to Belkin's podcast on the platform where you're watching this. I'm trying to get my show listed in the best podcast and a couple of seconds of your time would really help me a lot to do that. Thank you so much. And let's get back to the interview. Um, uh, we've done a kind of competitor who research kind of, you know, create an account and went and get calls with all the competitors, right. And the biggest observation was that all the salespeople we've been talking to, uh, they didn't connect with us, they didn't hit it off. You know, they were like have like a playbook or script or something and there was no common human part of it. So you know, we went back and said, hey, you know, the low hanging fruit for us be it for, you know, our sales team to be like humans, right? When you connect, when you joke, when you talk with someone, when you wanted to have a beer with someone, right. That you're not just.

Udi Ledegore: And the data supports that. Um, if, if you've read any of the Gong Lab research, I think our first piece back in 2016 or early 2017 showed that the best salespeople as measured by they have a higher win rate, they speak the least amount of time when talking to customers. So on an average discovery call, the salesperson should be speaking less than 46 or so percent of the time, definitely less than 50%. And let the customer do most of the talking. And if you talk to great salespeople, that's what they do. They know it's about relationship. And like any good relationship, it's m. Usually more about listening than about talking. Something I'm still working on, I'll be first to admit. Um, but the best salespeople, they, they intuitively know that and now they can also measure it. But um, they speak less and they ask questions. Then they let the customer rant.

Michael Maximoff: Um, I got an email from Gong, um, last, um, I think a few days ago with feedback after my call saying, you need to less interrupt customers. Please just kind of be more patient.

Udi Ledegore: Just turn that off because it's so insulting.

Michael Maximoff: And I sent it to my head of sales like, okay, now I'm getting feedback as well.

Udi Ledegore: Yes, I know a few people in my life who would agree with that, uh, that I interrupt way too much.

Michael Maximoff: Um, um, um, it's very difficult to uh, keep that kind of human part in the B2B sales process. Like, I mean I was always trying to build a sales team around like, hey guys, just we need to connect with customers and this is, you know, we do it. But then over time, um, there was like a period when we didn't have a kind of head of sales. And now we brought someone in, very incredible person. And he looks at the sales team, he's like, Michael, they all look robots, like they're not connecting. There was like, that's why our closing rate is so low, right? And we're like, okay, what can we do? And then in a couple of weeks of just changing the, the tune, we say like, oh wow, our close rates are like incredibly high. Like you see, you send most of the um, conversation, most of the demos into contract send stage rather than in the lost stage where like they disappeared. And it was like um, an eye opening for me. So even for me as a founder that I usually, when I talk shop with or just had on the call with the customers, you know, I don't follow the playbook. You just kind of, you know, just try to swim. Right. And uh, I still some thinking about, oh wow, like there's a lot of, for me to learn as well because I sometimes jump straight into the business and action. And okay, this is how we're going to code the contracts. And people would like to talk about the baseball and the awards that they have on the book. Right. And I was like shocked about it.

Udi Ledegore: I mean it's interesting because for most of history, sales was considered an art and a craft. And I think it's only in the last 10 to 20 years, I'll say conservatively, that people have started to understand that there's a lot of science in it as well. I'm not saying it's 100% science. Sales is not an exact science. There's still an art and a craft in it. But when Gong came on the scene 10 years ago, we started uncovering the science part of it and actually showed that, oh, we can actually measure a lot of these things. Because if you think about how Salespeople were trained 20 years ago, um, they came in and there was some sales veteran who walked around with the bag and showed them how to do it. And this is how you should do it. Why don't ask questions. This is how we do it. And it either worked or didn't work for the best of them. It worked because they intuitively understood what now we can Measure and teach. Um, I've hired people who went on to become some of our top sales leaders at GONG. I hired them as SDRs 8, nine years ago. And they worked up the ranks from commercial aid to enterprise AE to managing teams. And they were never salespeople before. And we were able to mold them using gong. They're very talented, hardworking people. Not taking that away, but we were able to mold people from a variety of different, different backgrounds, from bankers to, uh, athletes, to people in all walks of life that never sold anything before and show them how to do it. Uh, not just by attaching them, uh, to, to like an apprentice model to someone who's done this, but actually showing them what they're doing that's working and what they could be doing better.

Michael Maximoff: Um, I know, like, although, you know, you have data and you can look and say, okay, here is how we could do better, um, I know that you are not a fan of the best practices in marketing and following what others are doing. Looking back, um, you becoming skeptical about best practices, was it like some moment in your career, a, uh, hard earned lesson or something like that where you're like, okay, well we need to do something.

Udi Ledegore: So here's the more nuanced view on best practices. Obviously when, when I'm looking for a sensational title, uh, I'll start a social post or a title by saying that best practices are shit and ah, here's what you should do instead. Uh, like most things, real life is a little bit more nuanced than that. Now at gong, we have an operating principle that we call challenge conventional wisdom, which really says we're not going to deflect any best practice for the sake of being different, that, that would be foolish and we would end up reinventing the wheel many times. But if sometimes you just need a wheel, so use something that's already been invented, um, I often give an example from, you know, everyday life. Um, there's a best practice of when your kids get in the back seat, you buckle their seat belts. I'm not looking to challenge that or get creative around that. I'm going to tell them to buckle their seatbelts when they get in the car. They know that by now. Um, however, when our goal in life is not just to get through the motions of something, but to grab attention, you have to do something different. Because of the way our psychology works, you have to do something different to grab attention and you have to work even harder to keep that attention. And so when you're looking to grab attention, um, when you look at breast practices, what you often see is things that have been done over and over and over again. Those are not going to get your attention. They're just not going to grab your attention. Um, you know, if the first page of a newspaper were full of obituaries, it would not grab a lot of attention because people have seen those before. Unless you recognize a name, that's a different story. But, um, you need something sensational to sell. The paper and the tabloids know this, of course. They need something so off the charts that you'll just stop and say, okay, I need to stop everything I'm doing and go read that. And in marketing, often that's what we need to do to grab attention. Again, not when you're on a call. You already have someone as a captive audience. You don't need to create this excitement every 10 seconds. But when you're thinking about a commercial, when you're thinking about a billboard, when you're thinking about a, uh, piece of content, an email subject line that you want to get someone to open, it has to be exciting enough to get them to open it and hold their attention. And very often following best practices is going to lead you in the opposite direction of something so mundane, so boring, that they're just not going to. They're not going to look at it. So it goes back to what we're saying earlier. A lot of B2B marketing, it seems like they just have these formulas and templates of this is what an e book should look like, and this is what an email should look like. And they just all look the same. I'm sure, like me, you open up 90% of your emails and you can tell that someone used the same template to write them. Oh, there's a little personalization blurb up here, and here is the value and here's the call to action. And it's just done in such a boring, templated way. And sometimes they even forget to replace those tokens and just says, uh, insert personalization here. I've received those. I'm sure we all have. Um, it makes you wonder, why are people so lazy? And why do they expect to get a response when they're not putting the minimum effort into it?

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, I'm against personalization. I'm for relevancy in a way. I always have the stake where I don't care to see in my email what kind of school I graduated. Right. Or when you just found something around, like, oh, I watched the podcast with UDI and then buy my product. Right. If it's not relevant. So you don't study my business or where I'm at or my stage or what my problems rather like about me. Right. So I'm more into kind of relevancy, however, saying that I got an email from a gong grab in December and by the end of the month I bought the software and the email was damn good. I was like a good email. And I responded back and it was like, let's say Chris and say, hey, Chris. Uh, I mean, um, if this is an automated email, I'd like to talk just because to know how you wrote it, you know, was that damn good personalized email.

Udi Ledegore: It was not. It was not, uh, automated. I haven't seen the email. But you, um, won't be surprised by now to learn that there's a science behind this. Um, if we have 60 seconds, I'd love to go into personalization a little bit since you brought it up. Um, we ran a study a couple of years ago now analyzing millions of emails and the different ways that they were personalized. And we let our AI categorize it. And turns out there's several types of personalization. One of them is the lane type that you talked about, which is a personal anecdote like, oh, I see you played for this golf club. Or I see you went to this school. Uh, here's a baseball cap that's, that's very lazy. Um, then there's personalization that's been, that's based on an event like, it was great seeing you at last week's webinar. Or we met at the, um, inbound show two weeks ago. So that's event based. There are a few other types. I won't bore you with all the details, but, but here's one really actionable takeaway that we found, which explains why a lot of these personalizations that you get seem very lame. And some of them seem like, whoa, they really hit it off the. Out of the park. So we found that there's. Amongst the many things that we found that work, one big one is this. Uh, when we're talking to senior leaders and we define senior leaders in the B2B world as director level and above. So director, VP, C level, talking about something personal like the school they went to does not work. Does not work. What works three times better is talking about a company goal, um, that we know at their company, not something we made up. So the best salespeople use AI now to read the quarterly earnings report, go to the website to look for any strategy changes, maybe read your LinkedIn post to see if you posted this year's main goals. And they pick at least one of the main goals that the company has that we know that senior leader cares about and we open with that. And that creates the relevance, uh, that you talked about. Because let's say you have a very specific goal. You're trying to grow your business in eastern Europe by 34% this year. Imagine that we started with that and say, hey, given that this is your goal, here's how we can help. Is this worth 15 minutes of your time? Of course it's worth 15 minutes of your time. This is your number one goal this year. So that's what works for senior leaders. Interestingly though, for lower level, lower ranking people, um, usually as defined by manager and below. So mostly individual contributors, something related to their personal career advancement and goals seem to be work better than company goals. And intuitively once you read that, you understand why. Because if you're a VP at the company, you're measured by how well you help achieve the company goals. If you're a manager or a coordinator or an ic, um, you're trying to advance your career and uh, you have less influence directly on the company goals. And so once you understand the science behind it, you know, okay, uh, Michael is a director and above, so he must represent the company goals and he cares about that a lot more than where he went to school or where he did his swimming lessons. So let's, let's focus on that and show how we can help him.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, that's so true. Um, uh, you know, I usually call it like, show me that you know me in terms of my industry or my business. So I don't, you know, I really like when people say like, you know, you are in appointment setting or you are leading lead generation agency. So we know you and we know your struggle. Here's the pain point. I like to solve it and I would be like with my both hands on it. Right? I was like, yeah, absolutely. Let's, let's talk. It's like, uh, I'm, I have a problem.

Udi Ledegore: But it has to go deeper than the first line of your LinkedIn profile.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course, much deeper. Especially now with like AI, you know, listening and scraping and everything.

Udi Ledegore: Like uh, I see your insert title in insert industry. That's, that's just lazy and boring.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. You are a great storyteller by the way. So how is important storytelling in your career and just generally how important is storytelling for, you know, for CMOs as the, one of their Key competencies.

Udi Ledegore: I think I fell in love with storytelling as a child. Um, I've told the story m many times but I was always a, ah, theater kid. Not so much as an actor in productions, but a lot of the behind the scenes stuff. And I already mentioned Jim Henson and his Muppets, which I think is amazing the way he could create life and a story around a sock puppet. Um, if you expand that now, um, the Muppets are part of the Disney franchise. So uh, you look at Disney, they're the best storytellers in the world if you watch their movies. And there have been books written about. Like there's a book that a friend of mine wrote called Pixar Storytelling. It was actually really interesting about the formulas that they use for uh, for writing the best selling movies in, in all times. Um, and there's a science behind it. Again, there's lots of craftsmanship and artistry, but there's a science behind, behind telling a story. And when I sat down to write my book, I also had to learn the, the key plots. And there's uh, seven major plots that almost every book falls into. In B2B, it's a little bit different. But uh, if you look at all the best novels, they fall into one of seven plots. It's like either a journey of self discovery or um, you know, love story that seems unlikely. And then some big mess happens and in the end everyone is together and happy end. And that once you kind of see that, you can't unsee that. And it kind of ruins a lot of things for you. Because when you start looking at books or watching a movie structure. Yeah, but by page 50 I'm like, okay, I know where this is going. Like this is the, you don't know all the plots and turns on the way, but you kind of know how it's going to end by then. By then. Like, oh, you know, they're never going to kill this character, uh, because they're part of the big resolution at the end. Um, so I fell in love with, with storytelling by reading a lot of books and watching TV shows and, and movies. And it goes back to the attention grabbing that we talked about earlier. People are naturally drawn to stories. Um, you look at the first elements of how tribal knowledge was passed on from one generation to another. It was with stories. Yeah, nobody memorized the spreadsheet in ancient times. There's no spreadsheets on caves anywhere. It's stories about animals, about immigration, about, you know, how things came to be. Um, look at the just so Stories, um, it's all these really interesting stories that have a teaching in them. And, and we tend to remember stories more than we remember spreadsheets or product specs, which is still surprising. Like you said, a lot of salespeople, they start with, oh, here are the specs of our product. Who's going to remember that? Uh, tell a story and show how. If you can make your audience the hero of the story, you're already winning. If. And every salesperson knows this. If you can show your audience how they become the hero of the story, um, whether they're an individual contributor, like, hey, if you let me help you with this project, you will become the hero of your department. Or if you're a C level exec, if you let me help you, you're going to help hit your company's goal. You're the one who's going to get all the credit. So you help you understand that the story is about the audience and that grabs their attention and keeps their attention. Um, so I just think it's the most effective form of communication if you think about storytelling. Um, and, uh, there's that, that old sunscreen, uh, song with the line that says, never read beauty magazines because they'll only make you feel ugly. Um, that's how I felt when I was writing my book. And I read a lot of books about writing books, and with every chapter of every book about writing, I felt I was a worse and worse writer because, oh, I don't use those strong verbs and examples and, uh, I don't use that beautiful way of theming together all these different chapters. Um, but, but I got a little bit better at just being aware of them and then suddenly looking at my writing and saying, okay, that's, that's way too long a sentence. And instead of using a verb and three qualifiers and, uh, adverbs around it, I could just use one strong verb instead. Um, so I, I think learning the techniques of good storytelling. There's so many TED talks out there and YouTube videos and, um, uh, Nancy Duarte has a great, uh, TED Talk about, um, some of the best talks in the world, from Steve Jobs announcement of the iPhone to Martin Luther King Jr's I have a Dream. She analyzed them and found the same patterns in them, which is not so surprising because they're really strong, memorable human stories. One about technology, one about a civil rights movement. But you get the point. Um, I think that's one of the best skills that I'm trying to teach to my kids. And I think we all need to do that as part of mentoring or coaching or parenting, to teach people to tell a good story and to teach people to listen. Maybe that's something I still need to work on.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, you're absolutely right. Um, it's like in music, right? I know you're also, uh, into music. Um, so it's like, there's a structure to it, right? Like always. And it's, uh, a. Like, sometimes our brain, because we've seen those stories over a long period of time and we kind of sometimes expect it. So what brain doesn't get it? It becomes annoyed in a way, right? And it's like, okay, something is not working here. Like, it's not. But when you get it right, then you have a nice, complete piece and you have the relaxation. So your brain doesn't produce more energy to, you know, to digest that type of piece of information. It's more, like flawless. And you're like, okay, nice.

Udi Ledegore: Yes.

Michael Maximoff: It's like, with a good call, when you have, like, you know, where this is all going, you know, what you can be discussing, but very nicely executed. Even if you are aware, you have a satisfaction of a. A great professionalism, you know, and a great, like. Oh, like, they put time on this, they put a thought on that. It's. It's great, right?

Udi Ledegore: Yeah. A great example of that in storytelling is anyone, uh, who posts on social media or does any sort of writing knows this, that we're always looking for a hook. What can we begin with that will draw people in? And I was taught to do that for every chapter and every story in the book. And sometimes I sat down, as most people, I think, do, and kind of write down the story chronologically of this is how it happened. But when you describe things chronologically, often the beginning is very boring because it's what we call the exposition. You're just setting it up like we're in London. We're in a room. There's lighting, there's cameras. That's really boring. Um, and then, uh, one of the first chapters in my book, um, I wrote the story about my super bowl commercial in 2021. And when my editor saw the story, he said, look, you have all the ingredients here, but your hook is buried in the middle. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, on, um, page four, there's an email you got from your CEO after a long, winding story. And the email read one line. It said, udi, basically, your neck is on the line. Good luck. He said, that's your hook. Like, you open with that. Now that's very counterintuitive because it's in the middle of the story. But you don't understand how I got there. Exactly. That's why people are going to want to read next. That's exactly what you were saying. Uh, you're now uncomfortable because you're unsatisfied in a good way, in a way that makes you lean in. I want to understand how we ended up with that email that's saying my neck is on the line. So chapter one opens with that line, udi, your neck is on the line. Good luck. Read the one line email from my CEO, true email. And then I break it down. So if you think about the chronology, um, we tend to think of most events as A, B, C. That's the order they happen. But for a good story, often we'll start with B, then we'll go back to A to explain how we got to B, and then we'll resolve to C. That makes a much more interesting story.

Michael Maximoff: Do you think you become a better marketer after you wrote a book and published it and went more into kind of even better into storytelling?

Udi Ledegore: I think parts of some of my marketing skills became better, for sure. Um, around. Around storytelling. Um, I think my social posts are better now. Um, for the most part, when I, When I take the time to sit down and write them properly. Um, there are many other parts of marketing. Marketing is a lot more than storytelling. And I, um, saw this as I evolved the Gong marketing team from a team of one, which was me, to a team of about 60. Uh, when I transitioned to my current role three years ago, the focus that was required of me changed a lot over the years. So in the early days, it was a lot about these stunts. And if we just figured out, you know, how to get some cheap media for a Super bowl commercial or get a billboard in Times Square and use the creative in a really novel way, that would be enough to fill the pipeline for a quarter. At the volumes that Gong operates now in any company as it grows, that's not enough. You can't rely on these heroics. And it's a lot about managing a team and making sure they're all aligned on the same goals. And managing a campaign when 60 people is involved is a bit of a nightmare compared to three or five or ten people where we all sat around the desk, same desk pod, and we were coordinator, and we were, you know, just talking over our shoulders like, hey, have you done that? Yeah, have you done that? Um, it's done. So the focus of the work changes. A lot as the team grows. And, um, it includes a lot of this quote unquote boring stuff now of coordinating and aligning. And, uh, there were. There are people now that their whole roles are like chief of staff and campaign manager. All this stuff. It's not my passion area for you. It's not my passion area. Um, I did it because I had to. But if I look back to how my team evolved and which parts I enjoyed most, I think we did what I considered our best work and that I enjoyed. Enjoyed most in the earlier days when it was a small team, when, uh, these. If we did these heroics often enough, we got the results that everyone was happy with. And, uh, and we just had the fun of thinking them up and not having to deal with too many spreadsheets and, uh, coordination and, uh, alignment efforts.

Michael Maximoff: When do you know, um, that a, uh, marketing idea has an edge, um, compared to, you, uh, know. It's, uh. We're just trying too hard.

Udi Ledegore: First, it's impossible to know before you run. It's impossible because if it were possible, then every campaign by brands who have the resources to invest in it and figure this out, every campaign would be a winner. And there is no brand in the world that has figured this out. I mean, look at the best brands, whatever they are that you look up to, they've all had duds. The graveyards are full of campaigns, uh, that people had a lot of hopes for and just didn't work. From even the biggest brands who can do the most market research and have all the resources to the best creative agencies. Most super bowl commercials, right, which is arguably the most expensive medium in the world. They suck, most of them. Like, you won't even remember. There's dozens of them every year, and you don't remember most of them. Um, so I never know. I never know. And I think, um, there's enough data from different fields to tell us that going for perfection is counterproductive to get it compared to getting more at bats. Daniel Pink wrote a lot about this. Um, so he quotes this famous, uh, study where, uh, two groups of people were put in a pottery studio where they make pottery. And one group was told, you have one hour to create one pot, but make it as perfect as you can. The other group also got one hour, but they were told, make as many pots as you can. At the end of the experiment, they had professional pottery artists, I guess, if that's what they're called. Uh, look at the pots created by both groups. Which one do you think created the better pots?

Michael Maximoff: The second group.

Udi Ledegore: The second group created the better pots because they had more at bats. They were not worried the whole hour that this has to be the most perfect pot I've ever made in my life, which is what happened to the first group. So they ended up with one pot each, which was decent because they put a lot of attention to it. But the second group, some of them made 3, 4, 5, 8 pots. By the eighth one, guess what? They naturally got better at it. Anyone who's ever tried a hobby like cooking or playing an instrument knows that that's the situation. Like, if you give me a Bach prelude and you say you have one hour played once as best as you can, I'm gonna play it very, very, very slowly. And I'm gonna make mistakes. Still gonna make some mistakes in it. But if you give me an hour to practice any way I like, I'm probably gonna break it down and gonna, uh, get through the easy parts easily and stop practicing them because they're easy. I'm gonna practice the hard parts 20 times until I crack them, and then I'm going to start connecting them together. By the end, I'll probably make a better performance of it. And I only played it once as best as I can. So. So getting more at bats, um, which goes back. Sorry, I know. Straight from your original question on.

Michael Maximoff: No, no, no.

Udi Ledegore: Um, on marketing creativity, but you need, you need more at bats. So, uh, even the best marketers know that a lot of their experiments are not going to succeed. That's why they're called experiments. They're not called just, yeah, you know, running it. Um, and, um, you need to create a culture where people feel safe to fail. If you want to succeed and have really creative, standout results and campaigns and people willing to take risks, you have to create the psychological safety that allows them to fail safely. I know that sounds like this whole New age American thing, but it's very, very true.

Michael Maximoff: That's true.

Udi Ledegore: Um, a lot of teams, they don't have that environment, and people feel that they need to succeed in everything they do or their job is on the line or they won't get that promotion. Now, if you're constantly failing for years and not having successes, you probably should be worried about your job or that promotion. But the best people who earn those promotions, it's not just because they follow the book. It's usually because they had outsized results. They took a risk that paid off. And it's usually. It doesn't happen on the first or single risk that you take. You've got to take a lot of risks. Some of them are not going to turn out well. Now you have to have good judgment because you don't want to take risks that are going to bring the company down. Right. If something you do is going to cause a security breach or a uh, PR disaster, then you might lose your job. So you need some guardrails around that. But within those guardrails there's so much that we can do and so much risks we can take and experiments we can run that most teams still don't do. But when you do that, that's when you get those gems. One uh, out of those 20 or one out of 100 campaigns that shines is worth all the work and all the experimentation that got you there. So do I know in advance it's going to work? Never. Um, but the reason that several of them did work is because we ran a lot of them. A lot of them.

Michael Maximoff: Um, we uh, I uh, was owning my marketing team and managing the team for a while and um, as a founder and uh, brings me to the story about the pottery. Me and my wife went to see to do the pottery. And um, ah, I, within an hour, two hours, I broke probably like 50 pots. Basically I was just on it and it's like I need to figure out how I do that quickly. I wasn't kind of patient enough and at the end I didn't make any pottery and she spent like X number of minutes but she made a good one, you know. And then I went back and said, okay, this is probably talks to the personality, right? Like I need to get my hands dirty for like a lot of tries to get to the point when I become comfortable to then spend more time on it. Right. And that's just more entrepreneurial thing. But um, that was an approach that I had with my marketing team and the kind of, the whole anxiety that they always had with me, you know, because I was providing the pressure and just a lot of tries. And at some point in time, I remember I hired CMO and she said, listen Michael, let's just leave the marketing team alone. Let them figure it out. And to my great surprise, they actually figured it out. They somehow created their own internal structure, their internal movement, their own speed, their own way. And because of that they might, they didn't follow the KPIs and the speed of the other departments of the company. They were different from sales, they were different from delivery. But within their own world, they start producing pretty ah, darn good ideas that led to uh, a few really Good campaigns right now. Great thing is that a lot of those campaigns worked. The bad thing was that they became sort of out of touch in a way, you know, that it was very difficult then to do anything with them because they became a little bit rigid in their own way because they are like, they knew that they're successful in the way they operate, but if you try to move them and say, okay guys, we also need to operate a little bit differently, they were more uncomfortable about it, you know.

Udi Ledegore: So that reminds me of a chapter in Adam Grant's book, Think. Um, again, he analyzes performance at an individual level, at team level, at company levels. And there's a really interesting chapter on team performance where he brings examples from high performing teams that organizations like NASA, where arguably there's very little room for error. Yes. Um, but they actually give them a lot of freedom for experimentation. It's NASA, right? I mean, they're breaking new ground every single day. Like nobody's ever done what they've done before. They can't follow any best practices. There is no bigger space agency in the world. So they need, they needed to create that psychological safety of experimenting and researching and finding creative solutions. And anyone who's watched Apollo 13 or other movies know that those are some of the most creative people in the world. Which brings up the question that you raised. But then how do we align them to what the organization needs to achieve? Um, if we just let them be artists all day and go do their thing, how do we know that they're still helping of helping us achieve the organizational goals? And so what Adam Grant found is that creating that psychological safety opens up all the creative chakras and lets people fail safely and run all these experiments. But it works best when it's coupled with what he called process accountability, which sounds very boring, but here's the very, uh, simple concept that it masks. Process accountability is making sure that all these experiments are designed knowing that in their best case scenario, they will serve the goals that the team and the company are trying to achieve. Here's an example for marketing, if that sounds too, uh, out there, uh, we have a million dollars of pipeline to create this quarter. That is the goal. Now go come up with all your best creative ideas. Just tell me a story that in the best case scenario, your campaign idea will help us get closer to the million dollars of pipeline. That's all I'm asking. So if you're saying let's put up a spaceship, literally going to space and film a commercial, which a company called Paddle here in the UK did, uh, their CMO did a great job with that, but it created a pipeline. He showed me how he measured the ABM results of that campaign. He literally worked with the university in Oxford to put up a little spaceship out of space, out of, in outer space with an app running there. Their, their product, uh, and they customized it in space to create like 30 different ABM videos. It's wild idea. And he knows exactly how much pipeline and business came out of it. That is the perfect way of doing this, like giving all the creative freedom. So he didn't know if it would work and in fact he hated the first version that came out. He scrapped it. He started again, uh, because it was so bad it did not meet a standard. So he, he kept experimenting. But he knew that in the best case scenario, this is going to create 30 ABM videos. Each one of them is say $1 million account. This is going to help us hit our pipeline goal. And he did. And so when, when you describe the marketing team that kind of went astray and was happy and creative within, maybe what they were missing was a little bit of process accountability of like, okay, if most marketing teams, and I'm um, a big believer of this, their goal should be make sales easier, right? And everything we do should demonstrate how we make sales easier. Maybe that's the missing link to add to their creativity and psychological safety. And you said they were happy and experimenting and doing all these trials, but how does that contribute to making sales easier? Once you manage to link these two things, then magic happens. Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. I might have missed the second part, especially now when I read this, um, book, um, by the authors of the Challenger Sales, the Frame Making Sales. They just published it a few months ago. And uh, the whole kind of spiel of the book was that it's never been as uh, easy, uh, to sell as now, and it's never been as difficult to buy as now as buyers. Right? And that stuck with me. I was like, okay, that actually makes sense because like, even in marketing I'm trying to overcomplicate with like, let's create more white papers. Let's just create more comprehensive blog coverage, just more research. Let's just, you know, send a follow up to a client for like 10 links. And then after getting this punchline I was like, what I'm doing with, with everything, like I'm probably like 100 other companies where buyers are shopping for something, doing that instead of just sending one nice email with a good story, personalizing or like, you know, uh, going from uh, you Know, this is what we've discussed, this is what we uncovered, this is how we wanted to do this, yada, yada, yada, and then just be more memorable in that way. So that someone who read this like, oh, yeah, I remember the conversation with Michael, rather like I remember 100 links that Michael sent.

Udi Ledegore: You know, I think there's a bigger picture to that, which is, um, there's a 15 year old Forester stat that's been wildly circulated and abused at this point, which is 70% of the buyer journey is completed before your buyer reaches out to you, the vendor. And in gong research we found last year, um, evidence that that number is actually closer to 85% today. Now, once you understand that, once you understand that your buyer is doing 85 of her research, 85% of her research, before she reaches out to a vendor of choice, that should change your marketing focus. Because now it's not about the best follow up email, whether or not it has 10 links or not. It's about how do I make sure my buyer learns what I want her to learn about me before I talk to her. What that means in practical terms is what are people writing about me on Reddit? What are people writing about me on G2? What are people writing about me on Glassdoor? Um, which awards have I won that she might have heard of? Which conferences has she been to that I might have presented there?

Michael Maximoff: Triggers.

Udi Ledegore: Um, so you need to understand this, you know, uh, the way I like to think of it, uh, for years us marketers were taught that there's a marketing funnel, but that was completely made up. Um, there is no buyer in the history of buying who said, oh, yes, I got your awareness paper and then I read the decision paper and then I finally decided to come to you. That doesn't work that way. Um, more than a funnel, marketing is a tornado or a hurricane that engulfs our buyers. And you want to make sure that at all those different touch points which are not going to show up on any dashboard, I'll tell you now, they're not going to show up in any dashboard. They get everything they need so that when they finally get to the eye of the storm, when they finally are ready to talk to you, they have 85% of what they need. And so they probably don't need the 10 links from you unless they ask, like, here's the 10 things I need you to send me. I, I don't think I would send them 10 links. They probably just need one or two things to help them justify this internally. Because they've already done their research. And so if you look at the best brands today, and um, the transition from SEO to Geo or AEO is also highlighting this need because people are losing a lot of traffic, right? Um, we've all seen that websites like HubSpot have lost maybe 40% of their traffic in the last couple of years because the search engines are not sending the traffic the way they used to. Because people are getting the answers that they want now directly on the search engine. Now, if you know that, and I think that's just a, uh, microcosmos of the buying journey in its entirety. You need to make sure that what you're trying to teach doesn't happen on that discovery call, which very few people, relatively speaking get to. That it's already out there that you have customers speaking on your behalf, you have partners speaking on your behalf, um, third party reviews and credibility with industry analysts like Forrester and Gardner and G2 and others. Like, they're all saying what you would have said if you had that meeting. Because that's where people are really looking at right now. That's the top of that hurricane or funnel.

Narrator: Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: And, um, unfortunately you cannot do it overnight, Right. You need to do consistently over the years. Like, uh, you know where, when you were telling this, I was like trying to relate to my journey in my marketing, right? And um, that's exactly what we've been doing all the time. You were like, hey, you know how other, um, companies like G2 and for us it's clutch and others are talking about us, how we are everywhere. Like, how do we create this kind of image, um, of our brand across the board that will be telling the story, right? So creating the perception. So when customers talk to us, they already are familiar with us. This kind of feeling of familiarity and the uh, closeness in a way that, you know, you want to do business with them. Something that's just remembrance, right? In a way. Um, and it's very difficult to achieve that in our professional services lead generation, because there's hundreds of agencies that always do the same, right. And um, it even starts with a name. When we were creating the name of my company, Balkans, uh, which is like a weird name for a lead generation company. And um, we had a square logo in the past and um, strange colors. But the point was, um, most of the companies were Leadwear, Leadberry, Lead Magnet, whatever, deal, you know. And we were like Belkins basically, right? And I remember like 10 years ago, I was like, okay, this is the stupidest name for lead generation company. But then over time, when you start adding, you know, the emotion, the colors, the perception, something, and then people look and say like, oh, wow, we like the websites, the visual, the messaging, how people are talking about that, how we perceive the brands. And that was like, over time gives you this powerful instrument of just building the trust in a way. And then that trust converts into just a pipeline. And you're right, it's like a hurricane. You just try to be at all of those places and trying to consolidate and align so that especially in the time of AI, you don't want clutch and G2 on your website and your social talk, different language because everyone will be confused. Right? So as soon as you align that messaging across the board and, uh, control it in a way, uh, but do that and not just aggregate your traffic on several campaigns on your website and thinking that, oh, now I'll be blowing up then, right?

Udi Ledegore: Um, so two quick thoughts on that one. Uh, it reminds me of this joke I think I saw in an old TV show where they said, uh, no VIP has ever used a service that has VIP in its name. Um, which is true if you think about it. So I actually think Belkins is. Even though it doesn't mean anything immediately to an average person like me, um, it sounds more elite than Lead Magnet or Lead Something. Um, and I think once those companies expand their offering, they'll have to rethink the name. Like so many companies, uh, in our space there was a company called Outreach, um, because they started by creating software for Outreach. Now they're trying to do more, but that's the one thing they're known for. And unless they change their name, they're probably going to be stuck in that perception forever. Uh, Gong was always an evocative name of those who are in sales. Know that, uh, many sales teams celebrate by hitting the gong on the sales floor when deals are won. So this helps sales succeed. But there's so many things that sales need to succeed and we can continue adding products as we do every year, but still keep the name and it's just as relevant as ever. Um, the second thing though, to go back to, um, the struggles of how it takes a while to build that inbound swell of people reading your reviews on different sites and so on. Um, I want to make sure I was, I was understood correctly when I, when I said you need to build that because that's how most buyers live out their journey. Uh, I'm not saying if you start a business, just sit back and wait for those reviews to create or try Driving them because it could take years to build that, that, uh, inbound swell. When I came to gong, uh, I was their employee number 13 and marketer number one. It was very early days. We had zero inbound, like nobody had heard about us. We had 11 paying customers and nobody heard about us. Um, and so I split my efforts into both aggressive outbound for short term results, because that's what you have to do when nobody's heard about you. The same time working hard with content marketing and other brand building activities to create that inbound. So that in a few years I went from 0 to 40% of my revenue and pipeline was created inbound. If I didn't start those long term efforts on day one, I would not have achieved them after three, four or five years. If I had done only that, we'd be out of business after a couple of years because we'd be out of money just spending on those investments that take years to mature. So we needed the short term revenue that came from outbound activities. So for most enterprise sales motions, those are the two things you need to balance from day one. You need outbound for now and inbound to make it easier tomorrow. Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: And, uh, even going, circling back to what you mentioned around, um, making mistakes. Like, you cannot build an inbound engine that works without making a ton of mistakes. Like in my personal example, uh, we did, um, content marketing early on and I was spending a lot for years only getting the page views right, no deals. Um, had to rebuild the marketing team somewhere like five, six years in the journey of doing that, consistently investing. And the new lead came in and say, hey Michael, you know what, we need to probably cut down 8, 70% of the content and the remaining 40 we need to rewrite. Because like, if you remove Belkin's name from the content and put another company name, it's the same content. You cannot tell whether it's a Belkin or any other. It's a, it's a, it's like an entry because there are balconies there. So, and we start, I've made this exercise in 2021 before, like LLMs and before the traffic went down. So I did this exercise, but that was hard. Like, imagine going back and say, like, hey, you know, we spent probably several million dollars and at that time for us was like huge budget right over, over the years and we need to cut down 80% of the content and just, we need to rebuild everything, write every article. Because like, and uh, you know, we've done that. It was a hard thing to Swallow. But after we've done that and we've learned how to do it right, uh, when AI LLMs start popping up now our traffic is growing because we don't have an SEO content or clicks. We have a more unique, authentic, you know, information to answer the questions. That builds authority and then you become an authority source overnight. And then now your LLM is growing, your competitors are here and then just kind of because you went down to the foundation, say okay, well no one reads our content. We even don't read our blog. Uh, you know, just let's start reading with it. Right. Like, and oh, this is not true. This is like this copywriter wrote it. No one talks like that.

Udi Ledegore: Right.

Michael Maximoff: So um, um, so but that was my kind of graveyard. Right. That I paid for. I know. Like obviously everyone who saw you speaking and known Gongs and the successful campaigns to run. Can you give me a few examples of the graveyards that you have that are like, you are embarrassed for or like you know, that, you know, I mean that was a very thin ice for you too. Uh, is there any.

Udi Ledegore: Yeah, yeah, of course there's many. Uh, thankfully they're probably hard to find on the web today, but there's many of them. I think uh, one example that comes to mind was uh, about five years ago when we were already a decently big company doing business with larger and larger enterprises. I mean today five out of the Fortune 10 companies use Gong, so the biggest companies in the world. Um, but back then we were already in larger enterprise and I was still producing some commercials and video content that uh, were kind of TikTok was just coming on the world stage and we wanted something fun, uh, to speak to the younger generation. And uh, my chief revenue officer said udi, I'm not sure that serves us anymore the way it did three years ago because our customer profile was now more enterprise. Yeah. Uh, and our company um, was bigger and more robust and better known. Um, and I think I, I let that slip for me for a little bit too long and I was still creating some materials that uh, looked very startup. As in we're desperate for attention which every startup is. Um, and there's nothing to be ashamed about that. But, but at that point I think uh, we needed something a little more buttoned up, a little more um, I guess self respecting that uh, I probably should have done a bit sooner. So there's definitely some, some of the last kind of video commercials and stuff that I created. Uh, they probably belong to an earlier era of gong.

Michael Maximoff: Well we had um, thing like four years ago maybe we had a chief meme officer like the position and several people in the team, some of the freelance, like they were just creating this TikTok, you know, shorts and memes. And it was bad. Like I, I watched them now I was like, oh, who does that? But to my great surprise, they built our recruitment pipeline, you know, so it didn't get any customers, but people were recruiting us. Like, oh, I watch your tv, you want to do that? Like, yeah, like I, I like your style of humor, whatever. And I was like, who watched that? Right. Like, and ah, but we stopped over time because again, to your point, like, we became more mature and it's just not a, it's good investment at that time, you know, so.

Udi Ledegore: Right, yeah.

Michael Maximoff: Uh, is there any, um, you know, kind of B2B marketing advice that comes to your mind that is, um, rather actively harmful right now?

Udi Ledegore: That B2B advice that is harmful?

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. That you hear, um, a lot or so see a lot out there.

Udi Ledegore: I think one assumption that I know I had and I know a lot of marketers have, is assuming that some of their well established competitors or neighbors in the space have figured out things because they're bigger and have been around for longer and have more resources. And so we tend to look at what our competitors are doing on their website, how they change their messaging, which colors they chose, and just assume that, oh, they've already tested this and this is what works. So let's just use those elements. And I would caution against that, uh, that that is often it can lead you down a wrong path. Um, first of all, why would you assume that your competitors are smarter than you? Um, that's a terrible assumption. Um, I'm not saying be, be cocky about everything and I, I've aired on that side too. But the world has been changed by people no smarter than you and me. And if you remember that, um, something fresh that we came up with. Just because it hasn't been done does not mean it's not a good idea, just means it hasn't been done. That's literally what it means. Everything around us was done for the first time at some point, um, by people no smarter than you and me. So we can all create new stuff. And I often tell the story. When, uh, we created Gong's first intentional Website Back in 2018 or 2019, we looked around all the B2B websites, starting with those in our space, but moving along other broader B2B websites. And um, they all used what one of my team members called Series A Blues Uh, they all had these very similar blue hues that paired beautifully with whites and grays and just looked very unoffensive, like they're very agreeable, but they all look the same, and they were very boring. Now, how did that came to be? Because many marketers looked around us, they said, oh, everyone's doing these. Blue, white and gray. That must be what's working for everyone. That must be what customers expect. Let's do a blue, white and gray website. And so yet another one became blue, white and gray. When I looked at that, I said, okay, that's what everyone's doing, so I need to do something else now. Uh, what's the opposite of that? And then we came up with bright pink and purple and bulldog and all that crazy stuff. And it worked. And we got a lot of attention, more than any other neighbor in our space, uh, that were much bigger than us by then. Um, so I think just sometimes reminding yourself that you're as smart and as creative as anyone else in the space, and just because they've been around for longer and they're doing something a certain way does not mean that that's the best thing for you to do. Oftentimes it means you should do the opposite.

Michael Maximoff: And often there is a, uh, timing for an idea. And some ideas are just way out of the future in a way. Uh, my co founder always comes up with some ideas that I am more realist, more conservative in a way. So when I look at those ideas, I was like, there's no way we can do it right now. Or there's other things that we can work on right now and what's happening, especially when you need to pivot or rebuild the company or whatever, and what happening in three years, I say, you know what? This, now the timing is right. And he's like, I told you, I told you we need to do that, right? And it's like, yeah, because the timing wasn't the right one for that idea. Um, do you have any, um, anything that comes to your mind where, like, you, you remember there were some ideas that, or some campaigns that you like, okay, we need to run that. But you didn't do that. But then in several years you had to run that at that. The timing was there. So you kind of looked into the future a little bit with regards to, but didn't take the, didn't take the jump.

Udi Ledegore: Um, I think one, uh, example of that at Gong is our first customer event, which, uh, I waited about three years before doing. And, um, every year my CEO and others came to me and said, are we doing customer event this year? Said, I don't think we're ready. I'm afraid that we won't be able to fill a room. We only had, I don't know, a few dozen customers, a hundred customers, like, how are we going to fill a room? There's nothing sadder than renting a big space and then nobody showing up. And, uh, you end up starting to.

Michael Maximoff: But you can then post now and say, listen, it's empty and then it's gonna go trending. Right?

Udi Ledegore: I know, I know. It would be terrible. Um, so I finally pulled off our customer event in 2019, which was a huge success. Um, and I probably could have done it a year or two earlier and started gaining the learnings from that. We probably could have gotten a few more under our belt before COVID because we did that big event in October of 2019 and then three months later Covid started and we had to go virtual for a couple of years like everyone. So I probably could have done that, um, earlier. Um, I will say fortune favors speed, so you have to move fast. And um, we've looked into this many times at Gong at different decision making frameworks. And one thing that we follow a lot, we didn't make this up, uh, but we follow a lot, is quickly doing a triage of decisions into reversible and irreversible decisions. If it's a irreversible, uh, decision, then it's definitely worth taking our time, collecting all the relevant information, getting all the feedback from all the relevant people, and making a careful, deliberate decision. There are very few decisions that fall in that bucket. Very few. 95% of the decisions we make, if not more, are reversible decisions. Another way of thinking them as a revolving door, like, uh, we go through the door. If we don't like what's on the other side, we go right back, come out on another side. And so if you think about most campaigns like where are you going to put in your LinkedIn ad copy? That's a reversible decision. Like unless you're writing something so horrible that you're going to get sued for it, um, it's probably a versible decision. You launch it, you wait a week, it didn't work, you pull it down, you put something else. But if instead you're waiting three months to get that perfect copy, you, you just lost all the market intel you could have gathered in those three months. You lost the leads you could have gotten, um, and all the learnings. So once you realize that most of life's decisions, not just at work, by the way, it's at home as well. Like, what are we going to get for dinner? I know people who get analysis paralysis from trying to decide what to have for dinner. Uh, I don't. It's just food. Like, let's have dinner. We'll have noodles today, we'll have a chicken tomor tomorrow. Who cares? Um, most of life's decisions are reversible. When you understand that it allows you to move faster with less anxiety. Because, you know, hey, if this doesn't work out, we'll just roll it back. Yeah. Um, again, some decisions, like a major hiring decision, those are big decisions. Technically they're reversible, right? Other than death, everything is reversible if you go to the extreme. But. But there are decisions that are very hard to reverse, like making a major hire. So we want to be very careful about that and getting all the references and all the relevant people to interview them. But. But then there are other decisions that are just reversible, like pick a color for your website, pick a booth at the trade show. Just do it. It'll be fine.

Michael Maximoff: One of the biggest, um, I think I see mistakes that a lot of my customers are doing early on when we start the relationship with them is that they're so buttoned down on how do we do the messaging, how do we do this, how do we do that? And just really spending so much time and all of that. Then as you said yourself, you're not opening many doors in between that time to be able to actually find the approach that works. And I always say to them, listen, um, we probably the ideal client profile or the messaging we're using right now, probably three, four months, we're going to be way, way doing something different. So the question is, how do we shorten the time from us to get from where we are right now to actually finding the angle that works and the messaging and differentiation and something like that, and the companies that realize that and they are trying to move faster usually end up in a much better position. But if they start by default, where they say, okay, this is our icp, this is the only people we want to talk to, this is how we want to position ourselves. And we're just rigid about it, uh, very often you move slower and, uh, it just takes so much time to get. So eventually you still need to change it. But instead of taking a few months, it's going to take you a year. And companies don't want to wait a year. So that kind of cultural change. I think it's very important. That's why, um, you know, um, now when I'm trying to kind of position my company, my offering, I always say, hey, let's spend a couple of few months, like one, two, three months, just really moving quickly and R and D and just kind of really finding it. Because you don't have data, you've never done that before. Right. You, you think that chief Sustainability officer is your ideal client profile? Maybe not. Right.

Udi Ledegore: Like so with within guardrails, I would say, because I've also worked with appointment setting agencies and sometimes they bring people that are clearly not in my ICP and that's, that's a waste of time and money. So within certain guardrails, like yes, uh, within a sales team is going to be the rev ops buyer or the sales enablement team or the uh, sales executives. I don't know. But it's not going to be the HR or finance person. So.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, anything like to uh, the point that you just mentioned, like that sometimes agencies can be way off the radar. Um, I saw something that I really liked when uh, you spoke about the agency that was doing your website and the fact that only by working with them very closely, you were able to maximize the output that you received. So they wouldn't done the branding on the website the way they did if you were not very actively involved into that. Right. And I think that's something that's happening very often when you bring on a partner and you just let them be, it's like, well, this is their job. Well let them do that. Right. They might end up in a, in an, you know, somewhere very far away from where you want them because you didn't have a very tight kind of connection. Right.

Udi Ledegore: So yeah, the way I look at it, um, people often ask me about early hires and uh, I've, I've heard from marketers I respect that said that their first hire would be a graphic designer because it just helps them move so fast with other things. I respect what they're doing. If it works for them, great. Um, but then people are surprised when I told them the first graphic designer I hired at Gong was after we were well past 100 million in ARR. People go, what? Yeah. And that was when I hired my first full time PR person as well. We were past 100 million ARR and I'm seeing founders and CMOs that are less than 10 million struggling to understand whether they need a PR person or a graphic designer. Yeah, I'm one of them.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Udi Ledegore: Okay, so so here's how I think of it and maybe this is helpful to you or other people. Um, I like to think about what's a core capability that I need on my team. If that is core, I should decide I should start working and developing it very early. If it is not core, I need a very strong justification to bring it in until much, much later. Um, so here, practical examples. At gong, from day one, I knew that our core is going to be our content. Um, because I had built content marketing as the backbone of demand gen strategies at several companies before. I knew that I need really strong, unique content that nobody's built before. The only way to do that is to build that capability in house. If I outsource to a content agency that's working on six different brands in different spaces, I'm going to get very fluffy generic content that nobody's going to want to read. So, uh, my first hire was a content creator to create that content. And very quickly we established the best content practice in our industry. However, graphic design. I had a freelancer in Romania for about five years that we used to send work to and when we got back in the morning, because, uh, we worked in the U.S. his time, our opposite. The work was ready, it was convenient. Did it win any design awards? No. Was it good enough? Yes. Now, if you're a brand like Apple that hired Johnny Ives early on because design was at the core of what they do, I totally get and respect that. And oh my God, they have the most beautiful products in the world because that was a core competency. At gong, we have great looking products. They're not winning any design competitions and specifically marketing. Right. Uh, we do put a lot of work in our ux, so it probably could and should win design competitions. But marketing assets? No, it just, it had to be consistent and look like it came from gong. So we have our style guides of these are the colors and these are the fonts and these are the icons and these are the photos, uh, you can use. But anything you do within that, um, even if you stray a little bit left and right, it'll look like gong. It's good enough. We cared about the content itself, what's written in it more than the design. So why would I hire a designer and worry about her IT and laptop and seating space and days off of work and team meetings and weekly one on ones. That's like thousands of hours and resources wasted on something that my freelancer did almost as well as anyone would have done in house. Um, so that's how I Think about that. Uh, do you need this to be core? Do you need a learning curve? Um, arguably, if social media is a huge channel for you, you need someone internal doing social media that get really, really good at it in a way that's uniquely yours. If you're just doing social media to keep the lights on, you can get an agency to do that for you. Why would you waste time on having someone do that in house with all the headache that comes with it? Product marketing, for most companies that's a core competency, so you need that in house. Uh, I probably brought it in way too late at gong, different reasons but. But that's a core competency. But things like pr, things like graphic design, I, for me they never were core. So for many, many years I worked with agencies and freelancers and we did pretty well.

Michael Maximoff: Discord Channel. Yeah. So profound. Thank you.

Udi Ledegore: You're welcome.

Michael Maximoff: So, um, uh, when, um, I posted a few weeks ago about the uh, you know, the fact that uh, there's a lot of kind of anxiety in the marketing space and people are figuring out what the hell is happening. You know, Google search, uh, engine is going down. Like, uh, you don't know, like, do I need to double down on ads or something? Social media, whatever. Right. So, um. And then again, the world is going to shit, right? Like wars everywhere, you know, like this, the economy, the stock, like everything. Right. And marketing feels that a lot. Um, and um, like personally, uh, because again, I've been around not that long ago, um, I would say like this is m. My, um, maybe second, uh, market cycle or down toward cycle, something like that. So you've been, you've been around for many more downturns. Like.

Udi Ledegore: That's a very kind way of calling me old.

Narrator: Yes.

Michael Maximoff: I mean obviously you've been running the marketing teams, you know, for. I probably would have been in school at that time then, but if you

Udi Ledegore: ask my kids, they'll tell you that my first pet was a T. Rex. So, yeah, I've been around for a while.

Michael Maximoff: So, um, this particular downtour, this uh, you know, this crisis we are right now, um, is it particularly bad how it's different from the others? And um, would you feel that. Would you say that now it's more difficult to be in marketing than before because of um, the AI disruption or it's more privileged and more easier. And the feeling that you have in your bones right now with regards to this specific downturn is, uh, we're fine.

Udi Ledegore: I don't think it's harder now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Like you said, I've been in this field for over 25 years. I was in the workforce during the dot com bubble burst of the year 2000, funnily enough, with the same CEO I have today, Amit Bendav. Uh, we were working together 28 years ago already. Um, and we were not teenagers back then either. Um, so we've seen a lot of these cycles. We've seen the dot com bubble burst within the 2008, 2009 subprime collapse. Uh, we've seen Covid, we've seen the 2023 economy downturn and both our home countries are currently at war, which is, seems to be a regular cycle by now. Um, so these things always come and go. What's helped us at GONG and what's helped me personally, um, which is easier said than done, I'll be the first to admit, is to try and separate what we can control and what we cannot control. Because the paralysis and analysis and uh, anxiety come mostly from the things that we cannot control. Uh, control gives us a lot of calm, actually. Um, now for control freaks like me, uh, I often err on the side of assuming I can control more than I can actually control, or at least want to control more than I can actually control. I find that a lot of people, um, they, they don't even separate those two things very well. And they get into a lot of anxiety and worry, which is a natural response to things they cannot control. Like when will the war in Ukraine or the war in Israel be over? I don't know. Uh, I don't know. I do know that there's very little I can do about it. There's very, very little I can do about it. And so other than checking on my family and relatives and friends there and, uh, being polite and asking if there's anything I can do, I know they're going to say no because there's really nothing I can do. I focus on what I can control. And by doing that, we regain a sense of agency, of, okay, what we do actually matters. Right? Um, because I'm a very small believer in thoughts and prayers. Uh, I don't think they work. And uh, if it works for some people, great for me. It doesn't work. Okay. And I'm not a believer in it. Um, so I'm biased towards action. And I find that taking action, going back to the revolving doors, even if it's not the most perfectly researched action, it gives me a sense of regained control. And I can do stuff and I can make decisions and I can make a difference, and I can make progress, even if it's in something small and tiny. And, you know, with all the things that we mentioned, with the economy and with wars, like, worrying about the copy on our LinkedIn post seems so trivial and m. Dumb. But it's what we can control today. And if we made some progress, if we made some business, if we helped our employees feed their families, if we helped our customers grow their business, that matters. Um, so I don't. I don't think it's harder today. Obviously, the tool set that we have is different. I think to an extent, the skill set that we need is different. So I'm seeing folks around my age that have been doing marketing for 20, 30 years. Some of them are definitely struggling because they find a need to adopt a new skill set now. Um, but the kids that are just coming out of college Today, they. They're AI native. Um, my kids, I've got kids ages 11 through 13. They. They look at an image and from a mile away they can say, oh, that's obviously AI generated. And I hear them talking like that in the car and like, well, this is a different generation.

Michael Maximoff: Amazing.

Udi Ledegore: Uh, yeah, Me and my parents are still figuring this out. Right. Um, so for them, this. All this AI stuff is going to be super easy. Um, where I think some people are finding it hard to catch on is or to catch up is things that we did in the past that we considered, just like in sales, we considered an art and a craft and were okay, that there was almost no way to measure and improve what we were doing, a lot of these things are changing now because AI is giving us ways to improve and change them in sales and in marketing. Um, a lot of things are showing up on dashboards today that did not show up in the past. And if you're the type of creative marketer that just wanted to try things without any measurement and just, uh, had great creative ideas, which we absolutely need. We've been talking about this for an hour. We need all these creative ideas, but they can and should be tied to better measurement today to iterate faster and find out what's working and not working and actually measure results. Um, that's the adaptation that we need to do now. And salespeople the same. You know, the salespeople of a previous generation that went out with a bag and thought they knew everything and just leave me alone, I've got my way. And they closed some deals. Some of them closed many good deals. But today we know that we can teach and improve pretty Much any salesperson, if we just look at the metrics. And your metrics was, you need to interrupt less and mine is, I need to talk less. Um, we can improve these things and we have data that shows that if we follow these instructions, we will actually get better and sell more. And so if we're not willing to do that, our employers will hire someone who is.

Michael Maximoff: What about the feeling of, um, being, um, left behind, especially in marketing, right, like with the disruption. I sometimes have that feeling when I go and check social, like LinkedIn, like, is my company? Is, is my brand gonna be left behind? Because, you know, the other guys are like trending and posting or like my, my content, like, will I be left behind? Will Google algorithm? Do I need to double down? Or like the other things? Like, do you have that feeling sometimes? Or like, if you don't, then why, you know, how do you control it? Or did you speak to other marketers? They have that same feeling. Because I feel it's very relatable for everyone right now, especially when you have the news of like, cloud code. Anthropic is doing this, 5.4, ChatGPT is doing that. Everyone is on AI automation. Everyone is not doing any work. I'm doing 10 technics more. I look sometimes like, oh, I just want to close that LinkedIn and just do what I do. You know, just write a nice newsletter basically, right. Without the anxiety of, like, I need to be 10 times better.

Udi Ledegore: You know, so things, I mean, it's a cliche, but, uh, of course, and it always has been, but things are really changing faster than they did. Um, which I think gives most of us two choices. Um, doing the same that we were always doing in a field that's changing rapidly is probably not going to cut it and is not a winning strategy there. You know, if you're baking bread, you can probably keep doing it the way you were doing it last week. Um, if you're, uh, I was looking at the, I'm sure everyone's seen by now that anthropic spiderweb, uh, chart of how different professions are being changed. Uh, and I looked at some deeper versions of it. Um, you know, there's a lot of professions that are not changing and AI is not expected to change. Number, um, one is coroners. Coroners are not being affected by AI. Gardeners, uh, uh, the design part is being affected by AI, but the actual planting of seeds and trees and um, you know, taking care of your plants, that, that's not changing anytime. Um, coffee houses, they're, they're not changing

Michael Maximoff: a lot from white collar to blue collar.

Udi Ledegore: So, so, so here's my point. Yes. Um, one option is you adapt. If, if you're in a game that's being changed like B2B marketing and sales and anything that, that now AI has the potential to change very quickly. Your choices are either stay in the game, but that means you have to adapt quickly. And if you're looking at other players doing stuff and you're wondering like, oh, am I going to survive? Well, you should probably be doing stuff too and get into that game and adapt action. You have to take action, um, and, and make sure you're staying at the top of the game because the landscape is changing very, very, very quickly. The other option, and I've seen folks do this and it's fine, is to say, you know, this game is changed and I don't like the way it's changed and it's not for me anymore. Um, I know folks who were CROs at Ah, successful B2B companies that you've known. Um, they're now running a golf store. Um, they, uh, opened a laundromat. They joined their family business. Uh, they just decided this rat race is not for me anymore. Um, they had a good run, 20, 30 years. Uh, it's changed in a way that they, they don't want to keep up. And I think those are valid thoughts and valid actions. And not all of us have to be in that next stage of the game. You know, we've been playing it for many years.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Udi Ledegore: Um, that, that CRO who's running is, I think it's a fishing supply store or something. He's much happier now than his last five years in tech because he just felt like he wasn't keeping up and it wasn't for him anymore.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, I agree. It doesn't mean that you always need to have that next stage. Right. Like I've been CRO for 15 years, so I need for next 10 years be CRO. I cannot just be a, you know, owner of the golf.

Udi Ledegore: No, you know, linear career paths are great for, for some people. And if that's how you measure your success, you've got to be sales, uh, sdr, salesperson, sales manager, vp, CRO, CEO. Go do that. If that makes you happy. Just do what it takes. If at some point doesn't make you happy, we only get one chance of this life. Might as well go open the fishing store.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. This is always, ah, a question of like, um, or internal feeling. You know, when you're like, can I make it. Or like, is this still what I want to do? Or rather like, do I need just to do something else? Because like, I'm good at other things, but I'm so close to figuring this thing out, right? And you're like, okay, I just need to more. And that, ah, bar or figuring out, always just stretching, stretching, stretching. Right. So I think like, even, um, it's about more like a punching about your weight all the time. Right? Like, so, um, do you know if, um, like with your career, with the success you've had, um, is there a period or is there like a bar where you are punching, punching about your weight and then you're like, okay, I am in a good spot. Or that bar is always going up and up and up. And you are not, you're never kind

Udi Ledegore: of, uh, okay, you're, you're opening up a whole other can of worms. Um, um, but I'm, I'm happy to get into that. So when I think about what's next, I'm at a point in life that career is just one of the parameters. And what's next? Um, there's a model I love going back to that, uh, people can look up. There's a lot of writing about. It's called the four burner stove model. Uh, I know some people haven't heard it, uh, which I was surprised when I talked to people who haven't heard it. I never heard it. It's very helpful. So, so here's the 60 second version. Um, your life, our life is like a four burner stove. Um, one burner is for your personal, physical and mental health. One burner is your family and close relationships. Third burner is for your career. And the fourth is for your social life. Friends kind of outside that immediate circle. Um, you can replace them if you have other big priorities. But those are what most people would consider the four big burners. Now anyone, uh, who's ever cooked knows this, that if you put all four burners on high, uh, you're going to run out of gas and you're probably going to burn all the food. So, uh, at any given point, even the best cooks, they have something on high that they're watching very closely. Everything else is probably on medium and low. So they can walk away without worrying about that burning. But it's also going to take longer to cook. That's how I like to think about life. And the interesting thing is you can use that four burner stove model at any resolution that you can. Here's what I mean by resolution you could look at that four burner stove and say, hey, this month, real true story. This month we're in March 2026. Um, I have international travel pretty much every week the month and so, and it's all work, uh, related. So career is on full burner right now. Uh, family, even physical health is on low because I'm not seeing my family for most of the month. I'm not going to the gym nearly as often as I should. I'm not eating as healthy as I should because I usually cook at home my meals, but now I'm eating outside, which is harder to stay healthy. But this is a conscious decision now. I'm not stressing out about it because I know from mid April I'm going to be home for a while, gonna catch up on my gym, gonna catch up on the good eating, gonna, uh, spend actually in April already spending time with family on vacation. So that's where I'm gonna push the family burner on high. I'm gonna push work on low. When I'm on vacation, I really unplug. Um, going with my family for like 10, 11 days in April, I'm not gonna be working, not doing webinars, not taking calls, not doing anything. It's going to be on low. Um, now you could do this almost at the daily level.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Udi Ledegore: And say, hey kids, I, I can't join dinner tonight because I've got to work really late. I've got this big deadline, it's the last day of the quarter. Whatever your situation is, make it conscious. Um, and that I think solves a lot of the anxiety that people have around work, life balance. I'm speaking from a very privileged position and I want to be acknowledge that and be aware of that. Um, there are people that struggle with this a lot. Um, but I have some control over these burners and levers. And if I'm conscious about it, again, going back to probably having a feeling of control over more things that I actually have. But I know that if some days I need to do a work dinner, even when I'm in San Francisco, I have a very high bar for missing dinner with my family. It has to be something that's very important. But when it happens, I explain it to them. Um, and I just do it with very little guilt because I have my bar. Um, I probably take less than one work dinner a month in San Francisco. Um, but that one's a pretty important one. It belongs to a community I really care about or it's part, uh, of my book tour of Promoting my book, which my kids understand is obviously important to me. And, uh, it makes me happy. So I'll go do that. And then the next night, of course I'm going to cook dinner at home and we're going to have family time. So I think when I'm thinking about what's next and am I comfortable right now or am I always pushing? Um, I'm pretty comfortable right now because my four burners, that's why I went to this whole backstory before answering the career question. My four burners are in pretty good state right now. I go to the gym about as often as I want to. I'm eating pretty healthily. Um, I'm spending lots of time with my kids. I know which homework they're struggling with right now. And, um, I go to their games and I go to their concerts. And, um, all the weekends we spelled, we spent together. Um, so I'm in a really good place right now. Now, could I take on another early stage CMO role? I could. That would mean working now, longer hours again, probably traveling more, less time for my family, less time for my health. Um, I might be ready for that at some point. Maybe as the kids grow a little bit older and five years, my kids are starting to go off to college. I think I might want to work harder and more in five years. But right now I'm really enjoying where my burners are most of the time. And, uh, I think it's a very helpful model to think about. Um, so you're not staying behind because you choose to prioritize family right now. But you know that as many people have famously said, you only get like 18 to 20 summers with your kids. That's not a lot.

Michael Maximoff: That's not a lot.

Udi Ledegore: You get 18 summers with your kids if you live in the US in other countries like in Israel, you get to see the kids 30 or 40. Not because they live at home, they're going to live nearby. So in Israel, Friday nights dinner are very, very common in families, even with older kids that already have their own kids. Um, if, when I was living in Israel, I saw either my parents or my in laws every weekend, we rotated every weekend we saw either my parents or my in laws. So that's very common. But here in the U.S. not in the U.S. today, but where I live now in the U.S. the geography is much, uh, larger. And so a lot of people see their kids a couple times a year for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Um, I hope I get to see my kids more than that. But I'm not assuming I will right now. So knowing that you only have 18 summers with them has to affect other decisions like career and travel and other things.

Michael Maximoff: The awareness of it. Yeah. Woody, thank you so much for coming down to London saying no with me for the chat. Really appreciate you, man.

Udi Ledegore: Thanks for having me, Michael.

Michael Maximoff: Guys, hope you enjoyed the interview. If you haven't, like, comment or subscribe to Belkin's podcast, I would appreciate if you do that. It's just gonna help me a lot to get even better, um, guests and interview them on your behalf. Thank you so much, and I'll see you all in the next, um, interview.