What Marketers Lost When AI Took Over | Belkins Podcast Episode #18

Michael Maximoff: Amy, what does great marketing mean to you in 2025? Is it measured in numbers or adjectives?

Amy Harrison: I think it is the perfect blend of science and art. There's so much that you can do in marketing. Marketing is a million little things and you have to be data driven and you have to be tracking. But if you don't have the magic, if you don't have the art of marketing, you'll never stand out. Um, in a world where AI can create so much marketing that is decent, you've got to have that extra spark in order to really stand out. The people's tolerance for mediocre marketing is getting less and less.

Michael Maximoff: So when you say it's kind of the mix the science and uh, the art or creative uh. Right, so how do we mix it? Do you start with the science and then you kind of turn that into art or you start with a powerful message and the kind of creative part of it and then you add the science later. You know, where is the, the balance there? And then where do you start?

Amy Harrison: That's a great question. So whenever I start a marketing campaign, um, I'll start by doing a lot of research. So that's where the science comes in. Right. You under, you have to understand your audience really well. Um, when I was getting ah, my graduate degree, there was a woman that, that taught a class for me that I thought was really good. Uh, she described the rhetorical situation as a pass fail model. So it's, your purpose is P, your audience is A, your scope is S, your schedule is S and your format is F. And so anytime I do a campaign, I make sure those five elements are always in there and they're always really tight. If you don't know the reason that you're doing the campaign, if you don't know who you're doing it for, if you don't know how large or how small it's going to be, how comprehensive. If you're not on a schedule, if you're just like in the, in the wind somewhere, then if you don't have the right format, then that's a non starter. So I start off um, my campaigns with that pass fail model. Then when we develop out the campaign, you do a lot of research into all of those different things like what's, who's your ideal customer? Who's your ideal um, company profile, your icp, what is your um, you know, what are the, what are the contextual situations around it? What's, what's going on in, in the world today? Right. So you do that and then you know, in terms of the, the magic that's a little bit harder to describe. That's where real talent comes in and we'll get in a room and we'll, we'll talk with our marketers and we'll work with other marketers. And that's where agencies can be very valuable because you get a focus group of people who are creative and, and exciting and funny and vibrant and then you create something that speaks well to the audience and fulfills the needs of um, the people that you've, that you've done a lot of research for. So I think that you know that magic kind of comes in both the creation and the execution of the campaign and then following it's very data driven. Um, you make sure that you're getting a good solid cost per lead and good ROI and you a b test things because a lot of things you think are great maybe won't hit in the market. And so that's kind of how I like to describe the science and the art.

Michael Maximoff: It's interesting when I think about the AI, um, most folk thinks about the AI for the application to the art part and uh, because it's more, you know, it's um, a good example is like how do we scale personalization? How do we kind of personalize our messaging for folks? Or how do we kind of get more intent with AI where like we can create the art, right? Like how do I make my messaging more engaging for folks through adding something that is difficult to get, something that like AI can kind of help me to get right in a way, um, instead of refining the relevancy, the science of it more and kind of, and creating the right structure, which is more important and then applying AI for that part, uh, that is more I think, um, just impactful. And let me give you an example. Like you've mentioned the ICP and the buyers, right? And um, I picked up a very interesting thing about like the, whether the marketing is growing or not because like what I've seen very often how folks are Talking about the ICP is a lot of CMOs, ah, as well is like these are the companies we work with or these are the folks we sort of like want to target. And you have this list of titles and then list of sizes of the businesses and so on and so forth. And then the way they get this information is like, oh, you know, for the entire industry or for all the different sizes. So when you're deploying this campaign using like AI or any automation whatever, right. Uh, you're Sort of like are looking at this as the one kind of pie, like more broadly.

Amy Harrison: Right.

Michael Maximoff: So it's like uh, all these titles, all the sizes, everything under the same roof and then we're going to do the messaging that will personalize for all of them. But what you mentioned is like, okay, so knowing your bias doesn't necessarily mean that, but also how do you break them down into more smaller pieces and then how you do the science to refine them. Right. So when you start a campaign, probably early months of it would be a science project, an experiment, rather than like a full on market marketing campaign, if you know what I mean. Right. Because folks kind of when they're starting with this, they like think about this like, oh, I need to generate an output like opportunities pipeline. And they don't treat this, they treat it as the full on marketing campaign instead of like a small kind of science project that they first wanted to get some, some data on and then only turn that into marketing campaign. Does that make sense?

Amy Harrison: It does make sense. I think, I think that it speaks to um, uh, what you, what you said made me think a lot about the way that I grew up. Um, because I am not a big fan of trying to pretend that you are giving somebody a personal message when you're not. And I know that is totally counterintuitive to what we're talking about with personalization at scale, but I think that that has really done a disservice to the marketing industry as a whole. I think that pretending to care about someone when you don't is a terrible thing to do. And I think that when, that people want to be cared about and marketing messages are just as much about emotion as they are about um, getting the message across. So when I was, I grew up in a family of entertainers, um, the Osmond family is my family. And I grew up on stage. I was a professional violinist and I played with the family for many years. And the thing that they taught me, I grew up in the middle of PR campaigns and marketing campaigns and personal branding. And even before those names were, uh, even before the term personal branding was coined, I was in the middle of it. Right. And one thing that I learned from them that was, has probably served me better as a marketer than anything else is that people want to feel special, people want to be cared about. And if you can actually portray that in your marketing, if you can actually authentically deliver that emotion behind a creative campaign that is very well researched, then that's really where the magic lies. And so when we Talk about AI automating everything and the personalization at scale in my opinion, and I know this is counterintuitive and kind uh, of an unpopular opinion, but I believe that the people who are really going to stand out in marketing are the ones that don't allow AI to automate away their personal relationships.

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. I think like when your story about the way you grew up was brought in. Brought up, um, is um, you know, very similar to my upbringing, uh, in marketing. Like I don't have a marketing background, um, so um, I have a sales background. So I started in sales and then when I started Belkins, uh, as an agency, um, because outsource SDR or top of the final kind of SDR function was part of the sales function all the time. Right. So we were treated as the kind of sales force. So in a way I was trying to be good at direct outreach. So I was thinking uh, about how do I create a good messaging and how do you reach out to folks and bypass spam filters and pick up the phone and have a good connect rate and then increase the. And just focusing on the kind of science behind it to just be better at that one thing.

Amy Harrison: Mhm.

Michael Maximoff: And over the years I got realizing that as the marketing or as this direct outreach was kind of evolving, it required more marketing knowledge. So we couldn't just work in silo in a way that you can operate in this kind of direct outreach niche anymore. So I cannot be just a sales uh, uh, function and just generate opportunities because I won't if I have any type of tricks up my sleeve and I do that and I'm in this genuine because I have this great hook or this messaging or something and I kind of have this playbook. Whatever opportunities are going to generate, they're not going to turn into a new business. So they're not going to be actual pipeline. They will be just. I got on the call because I love molecule approach or I got on the call because like they, they kind of grind me to getting on that call. Right. Something like that. So my marketing education started like probably like five years ago when I was just exploring on role of Marketing into what I'm doing in terms of the sales and growing the business. And then how do I build this kind of fundamentals to be able to um, to provide like an authentic marketing and just generate the actual opportunities rather than just focusing on the um, the, the non meaningful outcomes which are like just pure conversion without not getting anywhere. Right. And uh, well, fortunately I got to the point of learning marketing through the fundamentals and it kind of clicked me. I was like, hold on, now I can see all the companies, what they're doing with their marketing and they're doing what I was doing five years ago, which was trying to find this kind of shortcut, the playbook, the AI, the campaign, the channel, but disregard the fundamentals of how the buyers think, how they behave, how the marketing work, how the brand building work and generally what are the psychological part of this, right? Like building trust with someone that you can do business with and then what that trust entails? Um, yeah, so it was like eye opening for me. And so to your point, instead of more folks coming around to where I am at and sort of thinking about, all right, what we can do, the fundamentals the AI chased actually kind of moved everyone into different direction, which are more into more playbooks. So if I go to LinkedIn these days and just everyone is like, it's another automation, it's a framework. This is how you do this, this is how you. All that. And I was like, wow, what's happening guys? There's nothing about the fundamentals here, right?

Amy Harrison: It's so true. I think what you said is so valuable and getting back to the basics is harder to do than you think, right. And so as, as we've been talking, I guess if I could encapsulate it into a sound bite, it would be use AI for knowledge and leave the relationships to humans. I think that's fundamentally what it is. I think, I think AI is so incredibly valuable. But the moment that you start being inauthentic and trying to pretend like relationships that are AI driven are real, then I think that you're, that's, that's why there's so much noise on LinkedIn, that's why there's so much noise in email, that's why nobody answers their emails anymore, that's why no one, you know, a few people. I get a lot of responses on LinkedIn when people can tell that it's actually me instead of some automation that LinkedIn has. And if I have any advice for LinkedIn, it would be to kill all the automations in their Messaging, otherwise that channel is just going to die.

Michael Maximoff: You mentioned about the kind of the AI being helping kind of to build the structure. Um, just a good example is, um, the, the level of deep analysis that a marketer can do with AI these days hasn't been available like three years ago. So now I can take an industry in general and I can break that industry down into sub industries or subverticles. Like literally. Right. And then for every subverticals I am able to build a buying comedy and buying Persona for each sub. And then I am able to find the pain points of each Persona of the buying comedy for each subvertical. And then I can sit and I can talk about like, okay, is it actually true, not true, how we add this, how we refine that. And then I can build a messaging that will be relevant for those specific pain points. But uh, it's not going to have a lot of personalization and AI to it. Right? Because you're literally just kind of. But then you know your buyer, right? Like you know that.

Amy Harrison: Yes, I think that's right. I think that's what I use it for too. Like getting product market fit, understanding the industries, understanding who your buyer is. Like all of those things that you just mentioned, I think you can, I can do in two hours and it would have taken me two weeks. Like truly, it's that good. And that, that part is really important. But it's kind of like, you know, do you remember when did your mom ever schedule play dates for you when you were a kid? And play dates, uh huh. Where she would call, she would call the other mom and the other moms would get together and they'd be like, let's have our kids meet each other.

Michael Maximoff: And yes, I have that. I had that. Yeah.

Amy Harrison: So I've done a bunch of that for my kids.

Michael Maximoff: Okay.

Amy Harrison: And um, you know, I'll call my friend and I'll say, all right, let's get our kids together and go play. And you, you can know that the kids have tons in common. You can know that they're all in the same sports. You can know that they are have great personalities, both of them. Right. And you can lead them all the way up to the edge of that interaction, but you can't force that. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But that's kind of like uh, the way that I think of, of AI where it's like you can, you can get all the way that you can to that interaction, but you can't, you can't automate that away. Yeah, some people think you can though. What do you think of the idea that um, chatbots are going to talk to other chatbots and leave the humans right out of it.

Michael Maximoff: I had um, Goddard Abel, uh, CEO of G2, uh, on my show and this is the play that they're doing. So they will go into AI, um sellers and AI buyers, uh, that you will be optimized. Um, um, so he already envisioned that. So they, you can sign up for a, a ah, seller bot who will be purchasing software on your behalf and then they will be talking to uh, the uh, buyer will be talking to sellers who will be uh, selling the software and they will be optimized to talk with each other in a way. Um, I, I, I think that it definitely is the future for some of the, the M buyers. So for example like my, my, my partner Vlad who is like in AI all the time, he's like vibe coding, creating products and all that. Although he's also like a marketer like myself. He already uses AI to buy tickets for some concerts and to buy clothes for him, uh, and so on and so forth and he's very impressed. For me personally I love the notion of doing that myself in a way. So I like to be going and doing my research and kind of researching some other things about it because that's kind of life for me in a way. Right. If I don't have this small things in my life then I'm um, not going to enjoy it. You know what I mean? So I think like we're going to have two type of businesses though that could have that kind of emotion because they're trying to be effective, they're trying to be scale, they're trying to be like on the edge. But you're going to have so many businesses that would just enjoy that interaction, that kind of manual part. Um, but they probably going to just charge more for that because uh, it's like a handmade, you know.

Amy Harrison: Yeah, that I totally agree with that. And I do think that uh, I know Goder pretty well and I think he's fabulous and very, very smart. And I do think that the back and forth between the chat bots and the early stages of the buyer, um, the buyer's journey even all the way through procurement could probably be automated. And with a transactional buy like that, I could see that being a really good thing.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, yeah. So for example like you wanted a um, meeting recorder. Like uh, there are so many of them right now. Like literally you cannot have a difference between one or another and if you're gonna just do the list, like Google it or in ChatGPT, you're gonna have a very random list. So like even for example, right now I'm trying to uh, build a list of the other Legion agencies that I can kind of partner with, potentially do some M and a deal with. There's no way I can do that in an automated way. It's like everyone give me the different information. There is no true information. There's nothing like, you know, structured. So if there's a way I would have an AI, uh, seller that will do the procurement for me or buyer procurement for me in a very structured manner and in very full manner so that it will literally like a person, then yeah, I would buy for that. It's going to save a lot of my time, right? But ideally then shortlisting and talking to folks and doing something else that would be on completely on me, right? How I will handle that. So. And I think we are closer to this future than ever.

Amy Harrison: So my son works at Google Gemini, and the day that the video came out, um, where you could put, uh, the image in and it will animate it for you was just unbelievable to me. We just were like, our minds were just blown with those kinds of capabilities. And so, I mean, it's not perfect. You can tell that it's AI, but pretty soon it will be very hard to tell. And that's why I think that, that authenticity in marketing is even more important. And when you can find people who um, want to interact with other humans, I think that that is actually going to be a differentiation. If you can find a way to compete where AI is productive, but you still retain that personal touch, I think those are gonna be the winners because the ones that, um, you know, automate everything away won't have any heart left.

Michael Maximoff: Speaking about like AI, um, the. When we were recording this, ChatGPT 5 is out, right? And um, something that, the new thing that I've learned that maybe I don't know whether you know this or not, but um, I read and I heard that the level of sophistication of ChatGPT5 is not much better than the previous version in a way that it kind of showed the slowdown on a progress of AI in a way. So, uh, so the, because of like the compute probably and the Moore law and some other things. So, um, in a way that the, the new version, um, everyone thought that it's going to be much better in terms of like what it can do, but it appeared that it's kind of the, the level of the progression between the previous version and this one is slower in terms of their involvement. So um, and because of that I read that they kind of pushed the kind of the AGI kind of timeline to from 2027 to kind of 2030 in a way just because of that kind of energy compute thing. So it's not as smart as we hoped it going to be. And the speed of the, you know, evolution of it, which personally brings hope to me because I don't like when people are rushing through things except even adopting some of the new things like oh, let's just put all our, you know, axe into this brawl and then roll with it. And then you're like I don't know, maybe we can.

Amy Harrison: Yeah, I agree with that 100%. Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: Um, where, where does AI truly outperforms humans in GDM design today? And where it's still a hype. If you were to summarize it.

Amy Harrison: If I were to summarize it. Um, well I think from a marketing lens that's really all I can speak to. I hear different things about vibe coding versus and in sophomore engineering. Um, but in the marketing realm, um, I think that AI does a phenomenal job at press releases. There's a pretty standardized format for those and so that'll save me a ton of time writing a press release. Uh, AI is okay at blogs. It's not awesome though. And that ah, eeat format that Google uh, search recommends is really important to be able to show that there's real experience and authority in that in each one of those blogs. Um, I think that we're going to see more and more companies getting downgraded because there's so much like AI output being published. Um, there was a, I was connecting on LinkedIn with somebody buddy who had just put out hundreds of articles uh, on um, you know, on their blog and they were mostly AI driven and Google just like wiped them out and it's happening more and more. So I uh, think that. But blogs as a first draft, fantastic. And then you add all the personalization, um, the generative capabilities of images are better than I expected them to be. I'm surprised that you can get a pretty good looking human being just made generatively from AI. Does that surprise you at all? Yeah, I think it's pretty.

Michael Maximoff: It is, mhm. Um, especially when um, I have um, my graphic designer, um, in my team. Um, he started playing with um, generative AI a few years ago as a designer. So he kind of built his own offline sort of like Kind um, of machine with like how the AI is kind of his own whatever. But the point is that all the DAX and presentation that he's doing, especially internally, are now animated. So they are like moving. Every slide is moving. And it's so cool. I'm happy to share some of the internal ones with you after this. But that's so cool. And you can like. So the last time I did the 40 slide deck, I uh, said like, hey, personalize it in the uh, there was a, there's new um, game of uh, death trending of the Hida Kozima game. And my co founder is a fan so like personalizing the world of those stylistics. And he spent let's say a few hours, but every deck was like just amazing. Every slide and you were like, whoa, it would take thousands of dollars few years ago to do this and now you can literally have this much creativity. But obviously because he's so much creative as a person, he mastered the instrument and now he's like a, ah, designer on steroids. Right? He can do things that he couldn't imagine to doing that. But give me that instrument and I'm probably gonna do the same kind of slide with like the two tables and you know, the text.

Amy Harrison: So your analogy of that, the mastering the instrument. So as I mentioned before, I was a professional violinist before, in my first career before I went into marketing. And there is a level of mastery on an instrument that allows you to be more creative. And I think that you're absolutely right. Whether you are a designer or a coder or whatever, if you've mastered your instrument, if you've mastered your AI, it makes your job more important, not less. Like these virtuosos that are just incredible at their instruments, they pull out the feeling and the emotion and the um, the, the professionalism that, that no machine can, could ever duplicate. And I really love your analogy of that. I think that's 100% right. The master of the instrument.

Michael Maximoff: Uh, which brings me to one of my next points. Um, and I tagged yesterday on LinkedIn about this, but I love one of the quotes from one of the guys on LinkedIn. That AI is built to find the middle of the bell curve and advantage the edge where your voice actually live. It's not there. So I think you agree with this, right?

Amy Harrison: Yeah, I do agree with that, a hundred percent. Yeah, that's very, very well said. I, I agree because it's gotta be, um, you know, you've gotta have a center somewhere, right? You've gotta have a barometer from which they can generate. So I, I've never thought of that before and I think that's absolutely right.

Michael Maximoff: So uh, I think that's just what we've seen with a lot of marketing, a lot of campaigns, a lot of content. Like everyone is trying to be that middle of the bell curve, right? Like, and trying to be as good as with the formatting and with hooks and with other. But everyone start being the same in a way. And only those that are trying to be more authentic, that maybe are not as nicely written or they don't have that, or they're not, but they are kind of, they can stand out, right?

Amy Harrison: Um, yes. Well, here's an example. So we are doing a, our first user conference at Fullcast called Go to Market Live. And so we have our speakers that um, are our Go to market rock stars. And so we are putting their heads on their favorite rock stars bodies. And you can't do that with ChatGPT or um, or with Gemini, uh, because they're known images. And so you know what, you can't AI that away. And if we get shut down, we get shut down. But right now everybody thinks it's all in good fun and those are things that are generating a lot of buzz that AI can't do. So that kind of person, ah, and that engagement level that we're getting with our speakers and the fun that we're having with that, it's something that, you know, it is very authentic. It speaks to, ah, an earlier, simpler time and it's creative and it can't be reproduced. So I think more and more people are going to be finding ways to get past that bell curve like you say, and do things that cannot be reproduced by AI.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, you mentioned the conference you guys are doing. Um, just a recommendation, um, from a participant or like an attendee. Um, I would love if the organizers would verify and approve each and every deck of a speaker that's coming in. Uh, I think we're not doing as much good work of making sure that the slides, every slide makes sense and not doing that with some junior copywriter or some organ, but literally someone who is in charge of that. Hey, this is my conference. I have 30 speakers. I'm going to review every deck. Like, uh, that's what Nathan, uh, Latka, um, from Founder Pass, was doing for his conferences. And I love the amount of content he has and just the quality of it. Like I won one of the speakers and he got my deck back for like five times. Like Michael, this is not good. This is not inside. This is. No, no, no. And then I was like, okay, I can do better. And he was like, you know, challenging uh, me all the time to be better. So my final deck was like, I was like whoa, this is a lot of insights I can share. And it was totally different from the previous one. And all the other conference has been part of, especially the online one I totally love. They're just kind of very generic.

Amy Harrison: Mhm. I totally agree. This is a super good discussion because there is so much that's acceptable out there but it's generic like you said. So uh, one of the things I fully believe in this. And so, um, because I'm running the conference, um, and it's an executive level conference and so it's a smaller group. We have about um, we've accepted uh, 200 people into the conference and we have a number of speakers and I am going through every single speaker session with them. I'm actually emailing all of the participants and with a customized schedule because we have several different um, roundtables and breakouts and so. And the response is, is really awesome. People know that, that I've taken the time, that it's from me personally that I've taken the time to do this with them and they're responding in five minutes. You know like people know that when you care. Like they know and they'll be very responsive. It's the, the marketing that is soulless and generic and lifeless that people ignore.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, yeah. I love what you just say that just people don't read it. So a good example you mentioned um, um, someone that you know that created 100 posts on with AI and posted like on the right. I bet that he or she didn't read all the hundred posts. They just copy pasted it. They didn't read it before posting. Um, and that's what I've been. So when I started I was like okay, we need to be one of the best brands in the industry. Like we're gonna just kill it. I'm gonna spend 20% of my revenue on marketing. Like I will be just kind of putting money into marketing. We're gonna do content organic. I'll be producing dozens of posts every month. We're gonna just be the biggest source for lead gen, whatever choose. I created thousands of posts. I generated a lot of eyeballs, zero conversion. So no deals, low opportunities because I was doing like copy paste.

Amy Harrison: Right.

Michael Maximoff: I was just hiring the kind uh, of average writers just posting. I didn't even because there was so much content. I didn't Read all of that, right? Because like how do I. So they just kind of worked as a kind of uh, like a factory. Right at the end, at the end we knew that. Okay, we're just throwing money, Throwing um, money. And um, I brought in this um, um, SEO manager Eugene, who is incredible. And he read all and say, michael, did you read your content? It's like, sorry, Eugene, I did not. He's like, I read it. It's shit. It's just like literally like F iq. What is appointment setting? How does it work? What's the difference? Like whatever. It's like no one cares about this. And he questioned uh, this approach three years ago before ChatGPT and LML, so on. And see that Michael, like if we're going to do this right, we want to make sure that every article we post, every page, you're reading it. Like you read it. You look at this like, is this valuable? Did I learn something reading it? Do I have a fresh perspective? Is it full of insights, ip? How can someone else create this um, article like Belkins or. No, it's like can you just copy paste it to another competitors and say this is them or this is uniquely Belkins? And how do we see that? So we start kind of literally we deleted like 80% of our content. We start refining every page, like every blogs, everything and building like subject matter expert base, kind of bottom of the funnel with the quotes, the estimates. Like you just spend so much time. LLM traffic came in. ChatGPT came in. They loved this. They like, oh, wow, Balkans is authority source. They have so much fresh things happening here. Let's just put them way up the other. So now we are here and then the rest of the industry is somewhere on the bottom. They're just trying to survive something and we're just doing that more and more every month. And the reason is that.

Amy Harrison: Awesome.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, right? And that's just to your point, because I read the article. So now when I posting something, I'm reading it. I literally take like after whatever, 10 drafts. Like after you have a brief, after you do the AI, after you do a writer, the manager, the SEO. I take and I read this and I say like guys, this is not the way to open. This is not factual. This is not true. This is not this not the way it works. This is different. Like why not adding here? It's. It does. So we go through so much way, but then you post it. It's quickly picked up by all the algorithm. They put it and rank it on the top. It's picked up by the LLMs, and then you get the ranking and then the writers are proud because now they're coming and say, hey, all the pieces that I'm doing right now, they are top of the page, so they are more authority. And then this whole thing is just happened from someone that cares about the topic and actually read it. So just to your point about reading the presentation, reading the pages, like, if marketers start reading what their posting, all the ads, everything, I think we're going to see much better marketing.

Amy Harrison: Uh, overall, I love what you said and that what a great example and very like, I really appreciate your, your candid, like, experience. I've had the same experience myself, you know, where I've, I'm just trying to churn things out as an agency. And, and, and then you start, take a step back and you look at it and you're like, I'm not proud of this. You know. So, um, it's very interesting because, like, young marketers, um, I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of younger marketers and writers and sometimes I, they'll send something to me and in my less, in my less patient moments, I'll send it back to it to them and I'll be like, would you click on this? And they're like, well, no. I'm like, well, why did you send it to me? If you're, if you wouldn't do it yourself, why do you think it's acceptable? You know? Yeah. And so it kind of makes them think, oh, like the reason that they did that is because they, they lost track of the fundamentals. They lost track of the purpose, the audience, the scope, the schedule and the format. And they've got to get back to that, like, what am I trying to do and who am I trying to persuade? And so, um, I got a, uh, PhD in organizational rhetoric, which is how companies persuade. Right. And my, the foundation of my education was Aristotle and Kenneth Burke.

Michael Maximoff: Oh, wow.

Amy Harrison: And so I'm just telling you right now, Aristotle knew thousands of years ago what we're relearning every day. Yeah. If you ever want to feel insignificant, just read his stuff because you're like, oh, he already had it figured out. But, uh, you know, some of the main principles that I use all the time is that, you know, the, the three. I'm sure everyone's heard this. The ethos, pathos and logos. You know, the credibility of ethos, the emotion of pathos, the logical component of logos, all, ah, together. That's what creates the strongest marketing campaigns. And if you really want to persuade somebody to do something, you, you, uh. It's got to be emotional and it's got to, um. The most urgent campaigns have an element of fear to them. And so, um, that's what persuades the best. And we just you know, back to the basics. Things that we've known for thousands of years that just don't change with humanity.

Michael Maximoff: Um, I have a huge section of book here on anything kind of Greek myth. Just finishing the fourth book of Stephen Fry, uh, uh, the Odyssey. He was kind of retiling all the myth and then obviously all the, the Stoics and the, you know, Marco, Aurelius and then the Adrian. So I have like all of them. So I kind of are in the, you know, in the kind of decks. Yeah. And then you, like, it's so, you know, you're so spot on. It's like what these, those guys have been doing 2,000 years ago, it's so relevant and sometimes we're just missing it. And you're like, oh, this actually true these days. Right? Like, you don't need the other shit. It's, it's, it's just noise. Right. And Doc thinks this is forever, ever.

Amy Harrison: Right, Right, Absolutely. What's your favorite, uh, Greek myth right now?

Michael Maximoff: Uh, you know, for me, personally, I think like all the Greek myths these days are just tragic stories about. Tragic. Like all the heroes are tragic. So I've seen this, um, Heracles, Ah, myth in the West End. So I'm in London and I do theater very regularly. And uh, this, this new musical show, um, in the West End, uh, based on the Disney, um, um, Heracles or. Um. Right. Uh, yeah, but it was like more kids, so he's like hero. But all the. In my myth, they're all tragic people. They don't end up very well at the end. Right. Because they're.

Amy Harrison: That's exactly right. Like, like the Little Mermaid. Disney turned it into a heroic story, but if you look at the original, she turns into deceived because she disobeyed her parents.

Michael Maximoff: Right, that's exactly. So don't do that. Yeah, so I am, ah. You know, um, just, um, what do you think about patience in marketing and just the role of patience. Right. Because, um, I, I personally think. And again, the, the argument here is that we're not patient enough just because we have the, the market scarcity these days. Like, everyone is just growing. Everyone is deploying, deploying. Everyone have this super results. Everyone types things new. But I rarely find folks in marketing their patience that are just giving it enough time, enough iterations. Like, uh, we started this conversation from the point of, um, that, uh, you know, it takes time and it takes science to create an actual marketing campaign. Right. It's just you cannot do it from the first try. So just generally, like, what do you think? Like, what's the role of patience in, in your career, in your life and in marketing in general. And, uh, how do we sort of like assess this and what recommendations you can do for folks to kind of, whether they need to be patients or they need to, instead of that, just break some eggs and move faster. So where you're at, uh, I think

Amy Harrison: that's such a good question because as an agency, as a good agency, you know that you do have to be patient. But also the bad agencies out there tell people they have to be patient because they're not doing good work. Right. And they want to keep their contract for 18 months. So, uh, it really depends from m. My perspective. You know, does it take time to get a groundswell? Yes. Does it take time to build relationships? Yes. Does it take time to, to analyze campaigns and see what's really working? Yes. All of those things are true. Um, on the SEO side, it takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of consistent effort of, uh, best practices. But when, when SEM agencies tell you it takes patience and you need to let an agency sit on your keywords for 30 days in broad term, broad match keywords and not even look at the negative keywords. No, you need to be looking at your negative keywords every single day. Uh, so what I'm saying is patience can also be used as an excuse for laziness, especially agency setting. If, and if you don't, if you don't have a good agency, there are certain things that need to be, and inactivity needs to, that can also be described as patience. So, uh, when it comes to like, does it take time to develop something strong and authentic and real and, and, and kind of put your arms around a community? It absolutely does. And I totally agree with you that it takes time and, and a lot of people don't have enough patience for that.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, I think also it's the, what I mean by patience is the, the number of iterations you can make to make this work.

Amy Harrison: Hm.

Michael Maximoff: Right. Like, I think like we're expecting that, that first launch, that first ICP we're going to target. Either it's a spot on and we're going to have results, or it's not. And why it's not generating the results, right? Or the first, um, advertising campaign you do, or a blog post or a white paper, like, oh, we're going to spend $10,000 on this white paper. It should better work. If it's not, then we're not going to do another white paper. And you just kind of expected like you don't have a patience, especially from executive standpoint. Like. And uh, I think like, um, that's one of the best feedbacks that my CMO gave me back in the day. He was like, Michael, you just get it, right? Like you, you know, you get marketing. So sometimes I don't need to convince you all the times that, okay, if this suck, it doesn't mean that the next time is going to suck the same way, right? We're going to iterate. But you don't cut the budgets of this and say, all right, if this is didn't work, then it's, we just got to move on and try something else. So.

Amy Harrison: And it's hard to like have that conversation with your CEO sometimes and your CFO sometimes if you don't have an immediate ROI on some of these things. It's tough to understand why sometimes because like take a, take an event for example. If you've got an event, let's say you've got, um, I don't know, Dreamforce at the Salesforce conference at Dreamforce, right? Let's say you're going to Dreamforce and you spend $50,000 on the booth, which is kind of their minimum, you know, buy in these days, right? And then let's say that you spend another $50,000 doing a restaurant buyout so you can have meeting space. And let's say you spend another 20,000 on a big huge party so you can get, capture all the leads. And let's say you get like 5,000 leads out of all of those, right? A lot of times there are many, many, many ways that that can break down. In order to get a good ROI on something like that, you've got to have your sales team getting meetings in advance so they have something to do with the restaurant that you booked out for them. You've got to have a very strong booth strategy to have people coming to your booth. You need to have the um, the party go really nice and have people come. And then you have to have a super strong follow up strategy afterwards in order to capture the roi, uh, of those leads. And so a lot of times when people, a lot of CEOs will see that an event didn't yield well and then they'll say well we're not doing that show again. And sometimes that's the right thing to do. And sometimes your sales team didn't follow through and sometimes your marketing team didn't do anything interesting. And sometimes you know, so there's just like so many different things that could happen and then sometimes you know, it's a two year buying cycle and you gotta wait a little bit, you know, so it's, it's tough. It's really hard to know kind of what the, what the uh, all of the different factors are. But I agree with you that patience is, is a virtue and that we need more of.

Michael Maximoff: Um. Well you gave an example of one of the most um, expensive programs you can do these days, right. With like you've, I've like calculated there's probably like $150,000 you need to spend. Like we wanted to go to inbound this year but we couldn't afford it and we're like mhm, we just don't have that much budget right now that we can kind of throw and we obviously probably going to have an error. But just spending that amount right with the transaction or a few transactions is like very for budget. It's like uh, I don't know.

Amy Harrison: Right.

Michael Maximoff: It's always great. So you can start with something smaller.

Amy Harrison: Yeah, I think so too. You know for. There is something to be said for brand presence, right. When you get to a certain size just being there at the show and having a strong brand presence is helpful. But it's um. Yeah, there's a lot.

Michael Maximoff: But very often like someone like me for example who is bootstrapping ah company or you know, trying to grow a, you know, a SaaS but basically we didn't raise right. But um. And then now you go to a Dreamforce and then you compete with Notions and Hubspots and not the Hubspots but with like Notions and then like the mailchimps and outreach and then they. Everyone raised like half a billion probably at this point. Right. And they all are spending that much and you were like I cannot spend this much. Right. So. So you kind of have this kind of market anxiety of like everyone is doing this at the so much higher level that we are doing that in case we're going to. We cannot just keep it complete. So we need either to outsmart them which at this point is also difficult because they have dedicated teams that are just doing all of this all the time. So um, anyhow you have any tips for me like that? So if I'm in this situation where Like I am outfunded, basically, those guys. So what do I do?

Amy Harrison: Wow, that's such a great question. Because it is so hard to find the niche when you, when you have to do the guerrilla marketing. Right. And first of all, I think that you are, you know, with this podcast and with what you're doing already, I, and you know, doing the, the careful thought leadership. Those are two great examples of where you by far outshine some of these larger businesses that have a lot more money to throw at it. Um, I'm in the same position. I'm part of a new startup, so my background has been wonderful. I've really enjoyed the startup landscape and I've been in businesses that have a lot of money to spend and I have businesses that don't have a lot of money to spend. So right now we're in the seed stage of our new business and, and so we have to be scrappy. We have to be able to figure out how to break through the noise in a creative way. And it's tough. So it is. Um, I would say, you know, the, I want your advice for me as well, but I would say for you keep doing what you're doing on the thought leadership side because you have what nobody else has and that is the drive and the, you know, the, the real know how on how to do that. Um, I also think that that that's where the, the art comes in. That's where you can't just throw money at, uh, something and science your way into a marketing campaign. It has to be creative. And it's also where you can really win with relationships. When you, when people like you and they want to go have a beer with you, that will 10 times out of 10 be more effective than a slick marketing campaign. So what's your advice for me in the same area,

Michael Maximoff: I, I think like founder, founder led, uh, marketing, kind of founder led relationships. Founder, founder, lad, anything. At this point, building the brand is the, the baseline for every startup. Without it, you cannot just throw. So whatever you do probably like any other channels. If you don't have a good founder led, uh, you know, founder led, like brand, um, available that you can bounce off or rely on. I, um, think that's. And you guys already have that, which is amazing. I think that it's the, probably the first, right, uh, first step.

Amy Harrison: Right. It's, it's table stakes now. There are a few technology giants like Marc Benioff, since we're using Salesforce as an example, that put themselves out there front and center. And now we're all expected to do the same. So I think you're right.

Michael Maximoff: Every. Yeah, every business. Yeah. It's just um, you know, I'm trying to be very active with clients. So I'm getting on calls with clients. I'm kind of running my own content, I'm working with my delivery team. I'm trying to kind of um, put myself in a situation where I can learn a lot in real time and then I can repurpose this learning into whatever direction I think is best to grow the business overall and being kind of that. So that's why one of the reasons my title is Chief Growth Officer is for a long time we cannot place my role as a co founder anywhere in terms of like I'm just doing all these different things. And the team is very frustrating because they're like, why? Michael is on this client calls and then on the marketing and then speaking here and there. And so we're like, okay, let's put the role where like it makes sense. So it's like, it's growth. So whatever I'm doing, I'm just focusing on the company growth. And it kind of clicked with everyone and everyone's like, oh, that makes sense.

Amy Harrison: Mhm. I like that. And I actually read an article the other day about how so many Chief Marketing Officers are now becoming the Chief Growth Officers. And that title is changing and the role is changing. If you think about it, marketing is um, has a lot to do with every stage of the buying cycle. Right. It really is kind of the core of the engine and um, it has a lot to do with technology as well. So as a cmo, I'm expected to know a lot about technology, about how it works, about the analytics, you know, and it is, it's a lifelong, very immersive job. Because if I have to know about the science and I have to know about the art, it's a, it's, it's rough. Um, in a good way. I really enjoy my job.

Michael Maximoff: But, and I probably. You are also expected as the CMO to um, to write about product, to give product updates, to talk about customers, to sort of like be out there and literally be a seller. Right. Like, like probably people like you, you need to be pipeline generation person, not just your team, but you personally.

Amy Harrison: Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: And be very active about it.

Amy Harrison: Right.

Michael Maximoff: To compliment.

Amy Harrison: I'm expected to go to the events myself to source my own leads, to get my own deals and I think, I think that's a great call out. Um, what do you do as a co founder when you're doing so much like you mentioned and you have to do. Have you encountered in an agency where you just like get your max bandwidth capacity because clients expect to meet with you personally if you sold them the deal. When I was running my agency for 15 years, like that was, that was what was expected of me. I was expected to sell the deal. I was expected to deliver on it and know all about the accounts and the clients would call me and it got to be, um, really, uh, very, very busy and a lot of pressure. Um, how do you get past that stage where I was. I finally sold and joined the, you know, and then joined Ryan with um, cast and. And it's, uh, it's great. I love it. I love focusing on the marketing on one thing. Yeah, I do. I love it. But, um, how do you do it with an agency? Like, do you encounter that kind of bandwidth crisis?

Michael Maximoff: So I think you can relate. And for listeners in agency world, nothing is working at the same time, uh, at all. Like everything is not working. So you start Monday and something, all the weaker broke, something, whatever. Clients are happy, something's not working. Someone, uh, wanted to leave. Um, whatever is happening, you don't have money. There's always something that you need to take care of and you live week by week in a way like that. I, uh. So to where I am at right now is I was fortunate over the years to develop a core team or people I can rely on in certain situations.

Amy Harrison: Right.

Michael Maximoff: So I have still great people in delivery that I kind of have personal relationship with that I can rely on, that I can be very direct with sometimes where I can kind of expect that they can do something that I don't total them. They can pick it up, they can be proactive. Um, so, um, and I'm trying to develop those people as I go, um, and, and grow those, um, people to be able to always have, um, some other people that can be. That I can work with very closely for a shorter period of time and then cycle back, uh, to them within the longer period of time, if you know what I mean. So it's kind of. I'm not. So if I work with clients, then I try to work with them for a short period of time, let's say three months, very extensively, break a lot of things, kind of just try to. And then try to focus on something else and then see how the team kind of performs after that. Because to your point, being in that cycle all the time, you just cannot grow the business. Right. Um, and you just uh, focusing on that kind of Delivery part. Because again, nothing is working at the same time. Right.

Amy Harrison: So, yeah, I love, I love that. I think that's very well said.

Michael Maximoff: Um, um, going back to, um. Um, so we talked about kind of the channels. My advice to you, your advice to me. Um, for the listeners, any specific uh, content, assets or channels that are driving pipeline for you right now? Um, you know, best conversions or CAC payback. Um, you know, at this stage where you're at right now with your startup.

Amy Harrison: Um, right now, uh, there, uh, we are at uh, a kind of mixing, uh, or digital with uh, in person events. And both of them are working really nicely. Um, the personal relationships are, um, driving, but it's really along the buyer's journey. I will say that we have a lot of inbound leads that if we can pick up and then develop that relationship, that's really what's important. Um, when you think of your events, think of them as pipeline generating and pipeline accelerating. And there will be many times where we'll have a client because we deal with enterprise, uh, software. Right. Where the buying cycle is long and we'll have a client that will go to, that'll come in inbound and will go through, you know, three different events together before it closes. And that's what we signed up for. That is B2B software sales. Right?

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Amy Harrison: And I think that things are changing where a, uh, younger generation has the budget, right, and they want to do a lot more transactions digitally and they have a higher propensity to purchase large purchases all on a digital interface. So, um, for us, we still find a lot of value in um, LinkedIn, Google Ads, um, LLM recommendations, you know, and then I would say that our differentiator is really focusing on developing relationships with the actual people that will be our users and it will matter too. So what about you?

Michael Maximoff: When you mentioned like developing relationships, what do you mean practically?

Amy Harrison: Um, I mean flying out to see them and taking them to lunch.

Michael Maximoff: Right.

Amy Harrison: Becoming like actual friends with them, um, making sure that they have everything that they need, giving them opportunities for thought leadership. That's one of the reasons I think that your podcast is so brilliant, because it gives us an opportunity. Like, I feel like after, you know, I've. You and I have really never met before and after this, these 90 minutes, we're going to be buddies. Anytime I see you at a conference now, we're going to have a lot in common. Right?

Michael Maximoff: Hey, Amy.

Amy Harrison: Hey. Let's chat. Yeah. So offering people thought leadership opportunities and helping them build their personal brand I think is a really yeah.

Michael Maximoff: You know, like this podcast taught me to be better at sales. Just because when I come and talk to a new account right now, or trying to work on a campaign for someone m. I'm trying to be very generous and authentic. Even it's saying no or even it's saying like, I, ah, don't agree with this specifically right now. And here, let me explain why. And it just kind of build a lot of trust. Yeah. So you don't put this helmet over like, oh, I am in sales, so I have a pitch deck, I have a process, I have a contract. I'm evaluating you. You are like literally just, hey, you have a business, you have a problem. Let's just figure out how we can all solve this problem. And I will tell you how much do I need in terms of the resources or budgets to make this happen or if we're aligned, if you have what you, what it takes for us to do this. But just having that kind of genuine conversation and then follow upping on that conversation, like connecting with people on LinkedIn, uh, commenting under someone else post, reaching out to them again, sort of like being active and not just kind of, you know, being on that kind of seat of sales. Right.

Amy Harrison: I agree. I think that there's, there's a real appeal to working with a company that says, I can only help you in this area and let me refer you to somebody better than me in this other area. All of a sudden that trust goes way and you're like, oh, this person actually cares about me and actually wants to help me solve my problems. And so when I think when I, with the agency I ran, I did all of my own sales and so, um, I really just called myself the, the chief problem fixer, not the chief officer, because that's really all they want. They just want you to fix their problems. And if we can kind of keep that in mind and, and realize that we're in business to help people and we're in business to solve problems for people, then it just makes it a lot more natural. Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: Uh, um, so we mentioned podcast, you mentioned your event. So you obviously built a brand around Revops. Um, you do your podcast, you do events. Um, do you ever think about attribution at all? Like maybe brand attribution to revenue without this kind of hand. Wavy influence?

Amy Harrison: Yeah, I mean we, I think about attribution every day. All day, every day. Because we have to know where's the best place to put our money. And I'm sure that we've all. I'm sure you've heard this and I've heard this, that, you know, a lot of people say I wasted half my marketing dollars. I just don't know which half. That's what attribution is supposed to help solve, right? It's supposed to help us solve not knowing. And um, so I think about it all the time. M M Marketing pipeline is marketing source pipeline is one of my metrics. In the executive meeting last year I

Michael Maximoff: started thinking about um, marketing pipeline and generally about pipeline in a different way. I start thinking about that kind of bottom up. So I, what I do right now is like, I think about like what is the most easiest way for me to generate the first 10, 20 opportunities, uh, that I can talk to real customers and then I can do it, let's say through direct outreach. So I reached out to people, LinkedIn or send some messages or if you make a few calls and they're like, hey, is this relevant? Can we talk? Can we kind of, you know, can I present this to you after this and I establish that this is relevant for these people, they engage, whatever, then I go kind of bottom up. So I think about right, what else I can do that will provide me more engagement. So for example, like probably lots of folks that I reached out to, they're not ready to talk with me but they would ready to learn more about, you know, this is the relevant problem for them. So maybe I'm going to do like a LinkedIn Live or like a workshop or like a webinar. And then I said okay, can they engage it through, um, you know, look at peers. So maybe do a white paper with like a peer or whatever. And then I can do, okay, can I get. So I trying to sort of like whatever marketing I do instead of thinking about the attribution in a way where like, oh, this drives more momentum. I'm just thinking about what I can do to increase the opportunities for me from. And then if this increase opportunities, then I continue doing it. If it doesn't increase an opportunity, then I kind of are focusing on something else that uh, will increase the opportunities because I have a kind of a scrappy marketing. Right, you don't have budget for everything, just what provides the match. What do you think about this kind of, you know, weird approach or not

Amy Harrison: weird, but I don't think it's weird. I think it's the way everyone should do it. I think that's the. You articulated it very well. Um, I do think that we've just got to put our dollars are limited and um, I think that the companies who, even when they grow large and have large budgets, um, the more data driven they can be, the better. I've been in a lot of, um, large marketing agencies before that are very siloed and I think this is what revenue operations can solve. Um, there are enterprises that have no line of sight into the effectiveness of their campaigns and it's because the marketing and the sales teams don't really talk to each other. And so if we can help revenue, um, sync up and have a nice tight fabric where marketing and sales together, um, talk back and forth and influence each other's campaigns and um, you know, yield the results that we've all said that we can, then those are the enterprises that are going to succeed. I think that you can see when enterprises get large, the ones that eventually fail are the ones that don't innovate. So there's got to be a way. I think Amazon does this really, really well, um, with their everyday is day one philosophy where you know, you can, you can never sit on your laurels, you can never say, hey, we've got this figured out because somebody else like you and I are innovating faster and harder than our, um, than the, the 800 pound gorillas. Because we have to, because we have to survive. And in order to do that, speed is our greatest asset and our ability to innovate.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, that's so true. And just to add on that, um, because we need to survive, um, for me personally, AI was a very difficult sort of for marketing and acquisition. Coming into AI is like, oh, this new thing everyone have their own eyeballs with. So you can continue innovate only when you have resources for that and money for that. So what I decided is that I decided to go upmarket and start innovating with the bigger guys because they have bigger budgets.

Amy Harrison: Uh-huh.

Michael Maximoff: And you can do that instead of going smaller and trying to innovate with the smaller businesses. They already are struggling so they don't have a budget or whatever. So that's the only way I think right now if folks are listening to this and again, agree, disagree with me here, um, Amy, but uh, if you're into marketing and you have an agency and you wanted to innovate, you wanted to kind of move on, um, you need to have clients that can finance this innovation for you. And typically these are bigger companies like Amazon that have budgets, right?

Amy Harrison: Mm mhm, that's right. I think you have to go with what you, uh, you have to go where the money is. It's just that's just business. And if you can get, if you can get a foothold in a larger enterprise, that, and you can again, it's all about people still. You know, these are not faceless people. If you can find an innovative person inside a larger company with some good marketing budget, you can do a lot of damage. You can really innovate. Well, I love, I love that perspective.

Michael Maximoff: Um, lightning round. Um, overrated or underrated lead scoring?

Amy Harrison: Oh, uh, overrated.

Michael Maximoff: Can we stop on this point? Why it's overrated. Everyone is doing it. Everyone is doing it.

Amy Harrison: Yeah. It's just kind of a table stakes. Everyone has to do it. And I just don't think like having done the logic behind lead scoring myself, it's still not sophisticated enough to be able to rely on 100%. You know, like the way that the, the way that lead scoring works is you have to set your own parameters for what's going to score. A certain amount of points or a certain percentage or whatever. You know, that's, that part's guessing too. So, um, you know, you raised five points for every video view, you raised 20 points for every inbound form, whatever. There is some value in that, but it's not the only value. So that's why I say I have

Michael Maximoff: a, I have an example, uh, that probably going to make you laugh. But um, I have this agency that I'm advising, smaller agency, just doing a couple of meal and um, we are, you know, some of the customers that we cannot work with because either the industry we don't support or the budgets is too low. We are kind of um, referring to this agency that they work with, right? And they pay us commission back. And every month we are sending them say 50, 70 opportunities and about 30% of 40 of those opportunities are rejected by a sales team. Like they're disqualified, right? And they have this calculator in place like if they don't this industry or this size or this and this and this and then at the end of the day and we obviously those businesses, we don't, we do not get paid for them, whatever. But the point is that I became a fractional uh, head of sales for this agency for a couple of months to help them to fix their kind of sales. And I started working with their sales team and I started asking like, why are disqualifying them? And they start providing this weird reasons like, oh, because we want to be able to deliver because we don't do this, whatever. And it's like, but you never talk to customer, you never literally talk to them. And say, hey, you have a problem, let us face the problem. So the point is they start doing that and they decreased the disqualification to almost zero. They literally just uh.

Amy Harrison: That does prove my point. And I love that story. That is awesome.

Michael Maximoff: And it's so weird. And now we're like getting more commission, they're closing more deals, their pipeline is not leaking as like what changed? Because they start talking to customer instead of just relying on this calculator that they had qualification disqualification. If it's minus 5, then we not talk to them, whatever. And then just follow upping with those weird questions to qualify them. They just start bringing everyone to the call, talking to them, understanding the problem, showing the budgets and customers like yeah, we can afford that. That makes sense.

Amy Harrison: Mhm.

Michael Maximoff: And I was like, yes, because you are now customer based, customer obsessed. Like you wanted to solve the problem, the customer instead of being your own obsessed, like your business obsessed. Either you do this or not. It's not about you, it's about the customer. Right?

Amy Harrison: A million percent. Oh, that is music to my ears. That's interesting. I want to talk to you about um, your services after this call for that please.

Michael Maximoff: We're going to cut this, we're going to cut this as well.

Amy Harrison: This part. But I become a customer because I, I um, would love to work with somebody that understands leads like you do. And um, and I'd love to do that if you have, if you have openings.

Michael Maximoff: Um, well, it's actually there's a rule of this podcast that um, we cannot do business together once we kind of start talking just because we know each other so well at this point point. So you know, we're uh. Yeah. So we are not promoting, not selling anything here. So. Yeah, I'm joking. We're definitely gonna do some business. So um, um. So. Overrated. Underrated. QBR Dax.

Amy Harrison: QBR decks I think are underrated. I think, I think that a good QBR deck, if it's very thoughtful, is so important because you have to remind the people why you exist and it's, it's your chance to, to prove your value in every quarter. That's my opinion. What's yours?

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, 100% agree. Yeah, we need more planning. Um, more. Yeah. Three months, six months. Just rate rating. Yeah. 100%. Um, sdra handoff. R rated. Underrated.

Amy Harrison: I think that the handoff process is so important. I think it's underrated. I think a ton of, of leads leak out of that area right there.

Michael Maximoff: Um, one RevOps metric you would tattoo on every CRO dashboard.

Amy Harrison: Hmm. I would say revenue per employee.

Michael Maximoff: Yes. That's amazing. Yes. By the way, I start thinking about this metric only on my like 8th or 7th year because it was so low and I was like why we're doing this?

Amy Harrison: Uh, it really brings things home, doesn't it where you're.

Michael Maximoff: Yes, it is, it is, yeah. Especially when you have um, I have a friend who runs a similar agency, similar revenue and he has like 50 people and I have like more than 100 or 150 or something and then his revenue per employee is obviously much higher than mine and I was like why I'm doing this with so many. No one is happy about this whole relation and that's.

Amy Harrison: Right. Well that's where AI can help us, right?

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. Um, a contrarian take on a marketing source versus sales sourced pipeline.

Amy Harrison: M this is very interesting because I've done a lot of benchmarking um, about what works best. Um, when you hire enterprise level AES into a startup it can go really wrong really fast because they will expect marketing to source 100% of the leads but it doesn't have a baby startup doesn't have the ability to do that. Um, for the first 10 million in revenue it's a lot of it is founder sourced and then the metrics show that roughly 25 to 30% should be marketing source, roughly 40% should be AE sourced and roughly 30 to 40% should be uh, inside sales sourced. And so I think having that perspective, um, where the outside sales team knows that they're expected to source the not only speaks really well to what kind of salespeople they are but also speaks to how realistic they are about um, driving results for the business.

Michael Maximoff: One hire every robots team should prioritize in 2025.

Amy Harrison: Hm. A marketing ops person. People forget that marketing operations has more tools than anyone one sales has a lot of tools, marketing has even more. Think of all the channels that you have to do and in marketing like you not only have so many tools but you have so many different kinds of skill sets. Like a salesperson is a salesperson and there are variations on sales but it's still sales. Right. With marketing you the data, the data specialists, the project managers, the designers, the web people, the, you know, the, the people who drive to events, the event planners. Like you have so many different kinds of skill sets in there and so they're, each one of them has a tool to help them be more efficient. And so if you don't have a really good marketing ops person in there, things can go bad quickly.

Michael Maximoff: Um, the Thing. The single best question a board should ask about their gtm that they rarely do.

Amy Harrison: M. How do you, as a CEO and founding team, hold your team accountable?

Michael Maximoff: Say that one more time.

Amy Harrison: How. How do you. If, uh, I'm the board, I'm saying to the CEO of the founding team, how do you hold your own teams accountable? I think accountability is one of the most important pieces of a successful company. Um, Frank Slootman wrote this book called Amp it up and he has this. A lot of really, really good insights about the importance of execution. Strategy is important, but execution is what will make or break her business. So that's what I would say.

Michael Maximoff: When we think about having taking people accountable for uh, the results, uh, is it more a, um, should it be more incentivized in terms of. You just get there was. It should be more like kind of emotional, mission driven or it should be opposite to this, like the scarcity. Like if we don't do this, then we're gonna lose this or you're gonna lose that.

Amy Harrison: I'll go back to Aristotle, ethos, pathos, logos. Right? You hold people accountable by telling them, reminding them that you hired them because they're amazing. You hold them accountable by giving them a framework through which they can very easily understand like what they're responsible for and provide clarity in the metrics. A lot of times people want to be accountable for their own jobs. Almost always they do. But it's m. You know, from leadership, it's not very clear what their jobs are and what metrics they're being held to. Um, we use at Fullcast, we use uh, Marc Benioff's v.ah2mom method. And it works really well. The company objective, we have a company v2 mom and then everything flows down from there. So it makes it a very, um, it makes it very systematic. So everybody knows what their job is.

Michael Maximoff: Uh, all right. And I steal this one from you. Okay, um, few last questions. I'm going to let you go. Your, um, 2025, uh, state of RevOps findings. What are the three most surprising Deltas versus 2024 and what action should CROs take this quarter?

Amy Harrison: Oh, I love this. Thank you. Um, well, one of the one surprising finding for me was that people that we surveyed, um, which were very high level rev ops people in mid market and enterprise companies mostly, um, they already had three AI tools. And then the second thing that I found interesting is the average number of tooling, um, these companies had were 13. And the third thing I found very, very surprising was that every single person Said their data was terrible. So you have all these AI tools and terrible data, so nobody can use their AI tools. So I think that making that happen and making that work for people is going to be one of the biggest opportunities for growth in the future.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, data hygiene and cleaning of the data is one of the most important for marketing. Especially right now. The data decays like faster than ever, like every three months is just going down and down. Else we need to have a very nice robust process to do this, to clean it. And then, um, last question. Um, Your book the RevOps Adventure is out on what, September 9th next month?

Amy Harrison: Yes, it is.

Michael Maximoff: What's the single framework readers can implement in one week to see the results?

Amy Harrison: Thank you.

Michael Maximoff: Spoiler.

Amy Harrison: Yes. Okay. The RevOps Advantage is coming out September 9th, and in it we provide not only the frameworks of many of the experts that we quote, um, but we also are, uh, we've created something that we call the Full Cast Factor Framework. And we believe that this is the foundational, uh, level of what RevOps is, what it should be, and how you can build your own RevOps organization and get your engine humming.

Michael Maximoff: So if you were to single out one, I don't know, a framework or one chapter of this, that, uh, which would you focus on for the readers? They would must read and must implement

Amy Harrison: like your favorite, you must read chapter four. It outlines what the factor framework is. F A C T O R. And so that is a really very much foundational. Um, the publishers asked us, they reached out, um, proactively and asked us to write this book because they said there's a need in the market to understand actually what revenue operations is. And we want the experts to write the book on defining that industry in that market. So it's been a great privilege to be able to write that and hopefully it's well received.

Michael Maximoff: Dr. Amy Gook, thank you so much for coming in and joining Balin's show. Appreciate you.

Amy Harrison: I appreciate you. Thank you so much for the opportunity.