GTM Singularity: Dave Frankland on Reinventing Go-To-Market for an AI World

Hello and welcome to the Beyond B2B Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Lee Odin, CEO of Top Rank Marketing. And today, our guest is a leader whose work has helped so many companies think about customer strategy, intelligence and growth. He's a global keynote speaker and published author and contributor to influential research and business thinking.

And in his current role, he guides research on customer retention, growth and advocacy. and content strategy and operations. He's also delivering a keynote at Forrester's upcoming B2B Summit North America on the go-to-market singularity, which we're going to dig into during our conversation today. Of course, I'm talking about vice president and director of research at Forrester, Dave Franklin.

Welcome to the show, Dave. Thanks, Liam, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. So let's kick things off with one of my favorite questions to ask people, and that is your marketing origin story.

How did you tell us a little bit about your background? I know you were at Forrester before, you were at eMarketer and other roles, but kind of give us a glimpse into how you got into marketing in the first place. Sure, so I actually started my career in PR uh in London. I was working for one of the WBP global PR agencies, Hill and Nolton.

um Found myself, so I joined what they called a graduate trainee program where we were supposed to rotate between departments every uh three months over the course of a year. So you got exposed to different aspects of PR from crisis to corporate to consumer, et cetera. I started out in the, I was put in the corporate communications group, which I was devastated about because it sounded really dull. And then I was put in the tech group, which I was even more upset about because I was like, I don't know the first thing about technology.

And they were the two best things that ever could have happened to me because the world uh put tech at the center of everything we do. that's, that was my sort of, as you call it, the origin story was starting in tech PR. I moved to the States through H &K. um My main account was British Telecom and they created a joint venture with AT &T.

so BT asked if I would move over to the States and I was uh mid-20s single and someone was offering to pay my way to New York. I was like, let me think about this for a nanosecond. And I've been here, been in the States ever since. So I joined a tech specialist PR firm and then went in house and ended up leading um corporate communications at DoubleClick um when they were bought by Hellman and Friedman before the sale to Google.

So I was there for about six years at DoubleClick. Like I said, I started in PR, expanded. We naturally did a lot of analyst relations, which is how I got to know Forrester and ended up leading internal comms. And then uh it was actually a Forrester analyst reached out to me to see if I was interested in applying at Forrester.

And it was one of those things I'd never thought of before, but it was sort of a poacher turned. Gamekeeper opportunity and I was like that could be cool. So I ran that gauntlet of the application and interview process at Forrester joined to cover what they then called marketing services and did that for a few years and then myself and another colleague sort of looked at each other and said we were in this sort of direct marketing group and we're like we're not really writing about direct marketing We're not covering direct mail and you know some of the traditional things and we were doing a lot of database marketing and that type of thing so We did what we do at Forester.

We went out and surveyed a whole bunch of people and, you know, naval gazed for a long time and thought about who we are and what we should be. And we created the customer intelligence group. So I led that for a few years and then left. ran strategy at at a Martech vendor.

uh I did a few years of management consulting at Winterberry group, uh work free market. As you mentioned, I wrote a book and did my own consulting. And over the time I was in the wilderness for about 10 years and I realized that, uh Nothing had been as fulfilling as my time at Forrester, so I started to keep an eye out for opportunities and came back about three and a half years ago. Fantastic.

You know, it's interesting. You mentioned uh tech PR and uh BT. If I look back 24 years, I also was at a tech PR firm and we also were doing some work with BT at the time. It's kind of funny.

Anyway, probably not too many other intersections. Yeah. In very informative moments, actually. Yeah.

So as we fast forwarded to today in your role for three and a half years or so, you've been back at Forrester as VP Research Director, like, you know, what are you focused on now? That's what my boss keeps asking. um So there's sort of my day job and then there's everything else, right? So my day job is I lead two teams you mentioned, right?

So the customer retention, growth and advocacy. So this is our within our B2B family, as we call it. um It's all things customer marketing, customer advocacy, customer success and the B2B component of customer service and support. So that's all on one team.

And then the other team you mentioned was the customer sorry, the content strategy and operations team. so that's, think about content in this day and age, it's so central to everything an organization does. So who produces it? What are we doing?

How is it consistent? Where does it appear? What do we name it? How do we find it?

How does the right thing appear in the right place? All of that type of thing is the content strategy and operations team. And, you know, I'm not an expert in either of these things. you know, I sort of...

I think of myself as supporting the team as opposed to leading the team. But my job is basically to help that team survive and thrive um and deliver great work to our clients. those teams are on the phone all day every day with practitioners, with customer marketers, with customer success folks, with content leaders and helping them think through how they do what they do, how they can do it better, how can they adopt our frameworks, models. and elevate what they do, rethink every aspect of what they do, whether that's sort of the overall approach strategy.

There's a lot of those conversations going on, given all the changes in the world. And then it can be in the weeds down to things like, you know, how should I be thinking about compensation or I just took on this department, what should I do my first 90 days, those types of things. we really run the gamut across. And then I Our team cuts across all of our B2B services.

So I work really collaboratively with my peers. So we have a marketing executive service working with CMOs, their chiefs of staff, brand leaders, um digital leaders, uh partner ecosystem leaders all sit on our marketing exec team. Then there's our demand and ABM team uh doing demand marketers and ABM teams. um There's our portfolio marketing, is our term for product marketing, because product, you most companies have more than one product as a portfolio of products, as well as product management.

And then our revenue operations team, which includes sort of sales operations, marketing operations, customer success operations. And when you tie those all together, revenue operations. so, like I said, just given the nature of our team, we're focused so much on the post-sale with the customer attention growth advocacy team and content, it cuts across everything. So.

Big part of my job is figuring out how are we collaborating? How are we making sure that we're not saying one thing in one place, one thing in another? um And what are the ideas? How do we challenge each other to elevate our ideas at the end of the day?

That's our biggest currency at Forrester, and our biggest value is the ideas and how to bring those to life. um So I get to work with all these brilliant colleagues and uh have the privilege of literally never being the smartest person in the room, whether that's virtual or real. Well, it's an interesting thing you said that you're not leading, you're supporting. And of course, the irony is that the best leaders are supporters.

uh So you're clearly oh in the right spot. uh So in the marketplace, you're in a front seat to the work that your team and your peers and your internal stakeholders are doing. to the B2B marketing industry. obviously a lot of marketers in the world, and part of our job here at this part with this podcast is to kind of tap into what people are dealing with and how they're solving for those things.

They're facing a lot of disruption and transformation, especially this year. And I'm just wondering, what are some of the big changes in B2B marketing that you're seeing based on some of the research you've been involved with most recently? Yes, I mean, completely agree with your question and the premise of it. You know, when you look at the volatility of the past several years, so we can sort of point to the pandemic as a very obvious thing.

you know, geopolitical tensions and everything that that sort of how that's manifesting economic uncertainty and changes that are going on. know, there's these external forces that are for that are forcing us all to rethink everything we do, how we do it. um But then there's this sort of a new work models, right? So the opportunity to work from home, work from anywhere, hybrid requirements, et cetera.

m But then there's this sort of bring it, bring that circle in a little, if you like, and sort of the changes that are going on. We see, especially with buyers and customers, just buyer behavior is changing. We have the first and largest business insights survey that we do every year. It varies year on year, the sample size, but sort of between 16 and 19,000 B2B buyers every year that we dig into.

And we can obviously slice and dice that data a hundred ways from Sunday, right? So it's sort of getting into the, m what's the industry, what's the size of company, what's the type of product, all of those types of questions that we can dig into. But we just see these major sort of systemic shifts in how buyers are buying. So buyers are younger, they're making decisions.

um They're sort of bringing the provider or seller company into that discussion later. In some cases, they're making decisions early. And in other cases, they're taking much longer because of the consensus nature, know, buying groups, nature of buying groups and buying networks. It's harder and harder.

to sort of steer everybody in one direction. um The uh use of technology in that buying process, I can't believe where, how many minutes are we into it? And one of us is gonna for the first time mention AI, um right? just everything that that...

So ah just the nature of that, like just everything that's doing both to the buyer and the selling organization, right? In terms of how we use it, what we do with it. um So we just see these major, major, major changes going on. And it's this long building seismic shift that's about to occur, we believe.

We think we're on the brink of a major shift in the market right now. And that's what's both exciting and terrifying, right? It's gonna affect all of us. But for those of us who do what we do, that makes it really, really exciting too.

Yeah, it seems like there's with those challenges that cause, um you know, slowing down of decision-making and obviously there's fragmentation of discovery and uh speaking to, you know, the pain points and the objectives of those different stakeholders within a buying group and that sort of thing. That also spells opportunity, doesn't it? For those folks who do find out how do we adjust and navigate that new. uh that new reality, right?

Most effectively. So. You know, one of the places where marketers are finding answers, uh business people are finding answers to the challenges that they're facing are at events. And of course, the B2B Summit that Forrester hosts is one of those opportunities.

And so, you you're there as host. You're doing this keynote uh on the. the go-to-market singularity, which I want to talk a little bit more about. But I'm just wondering as far as the event, I'm sure you've been to a ton of events.

I know I've been to, but what is it that you're looking forward to most, I guess, is kind what I want to know with the summit. Yeah, so I think if I think of that at the broadest level, what I think is first and foremost, it's just human interaction, right? It's the energy and sharing of ideas. And we very much approach this from, we have our ideas, we're bringing them to the table, we're going to put them up on stage and we will deliver what we hope and believe will be great Forrester content.

Mm-hmm. don't have all the answers and people don't just want to hear from us. And so we've shifted significantly over the last couple of years to sort of making this also about learning from peers and rolling up the sleeves. so leveraging Forrester um frameworks, models, thinking, we'll do workshops that are analyst led.

And it's sort of like, hey, take out your laptop or a pen and paper and we're actually gonna do real work here. And I mean, some of the creative things that people were doing last year was there was a monopoly with analysts faces on the money. And, you know, it was all about campaign, you know, campaign spending. um Someone else brought in an evidence board.

looked like something out of a crime crime scene of trying to dig into processes. And so it just brings the research to life that it's not we're not in the PDF world anymore. Right. We're not writing for somebody to download a report and read it.

But But those ideas, that process of developing that writing, the ideas are phenomenal. So we look for new ways to bring them to life. One of the things we're doing in North America this year for the first time, but we did it at our EMEA summit ah in the fall, is immersive experiences. And so we're sort of describing this as sort of an escape room uh meets uh B2B thinking sort of thing.

so... It's, we won't lock anyone in a room, but we'll take people through in small groups, like eight to 12 people kind of thing through a process. so that one of them will be GTM focused, right? So you start out this journey as the buyer and then you flip, we will literally and figuratively turn the corner and you become the selling organization.

And so what do you do differently having gone through and walked on that side of the room? What do you do on this side of the room? Um, and so, things like that, just to bring things to life, roundtables, is much more our job in these is to facilitate the conversation, right? To ask a probing question and then let the folks in the room, let peers speak to and hear from each other.

And yeah, they might work in different organizations, different industries, they may have different roles in the organization, et cetera, but they can learn again, we're not the only ones showing up with the answer. We're participating in the conversation, but we're sort of, we're training our analysts to ask those questions in the room and bring this out so that there's value there. And then we have a series of sort of special programs that again are very much about bringing people together.

So we have what we call our executive leadership exchange. So this is an invite only for CMOs, know, heads of type roles where they get to attend the main conference, but we also have sort of pullout content that's exclusively for them and sessions for them. Similarly, uh Forester Women uh is an event we do. that's really, really popular.

And that's not only for women, it's for allies too, right? But sort of how do we empower, what are challenges? um One of the sessions they did last year was on reverse mentoring and they had a uh relatively young tenured person in their career and how they're helping more senior people with things like AI. And so we're taking that at further level and we've introduced a new special program this year called Future Leaders, which is for um Smart.

who are relatively um young in their career, so sort of six to eight years in, uh who have a lot to learn and to contribute. And so we're gonna do some, again, pull out content that would be very specifically for them, how to speak to executives. ah We'll do, again, a lot of sharing, so it's not just us speaking, those types of things. And the last thing I'll mention real quick is sort of we do certifications that are, we have certifications that that people can, sort of go through it, self-paced learning on our website and you can earn certifications, we do summit specific ones.

So this year we're doing one on activating the modern GTM. And so if you attend a certain number of sessions, a little workup, write up on it and that sort of thing, you would get this summit certification that's something to justify to your boss. Like, here's something I got. Like, physically, I can put it on LinkedIn.

I can do all those sorts of things to show that I'm furthering and I'm developing in my career as well. So that's, I mean, that's the big thing for me. There's so much, we put so much time and effort into thinking through the theme and the content and everything else. And none of the rest of it would work if we didn't do that.

But when you get on the floor, on the show floor and you just feel that crackle of energy, it's because of the bringing people together. It's what it's all about. That's great. It sounds very robust and I'm looking forward to it.

And, you know, I think there is a lot of hunger amongst business professionals for that human to human connection. And uh you've got a wide variety of opportunities for that. sounds like, uh you know, it's funny, I was talking to Laura Ramos about uh this event a little bit and uh she mentioned the escape room thing. I thought that was very, very clever, very interesting way to get people to work together in a gamified way, so to speak.

So yeah, that's pretty awesome. So, you you mentioned go to market and obviously go to market is a big, big part of the, uh, the conversation, um, as it relates to, you know, B2B marketing right now, engaging with brands and, and, customers. And, you know, it's something that's been on the forefront, uh, of, of, you know, what's advocated in terms of how revenue and marketing come together and, and, um, especially since COVID. and, and, but you've said recently that B2B companies, B2B marketers are facing a GTM uh crisis, so to speak right now.

can you kind of elaborate on that, what you meant by that? Sure, yeah. So it goes back a little bit to what I said around the volatility and that volatility and all of those market forces, external, internal, um should have compelled B2B firms to change how we engage with customers, with buyers, right? But what we see a lot of the time is that most firms are stuck.

You can't get off those sort of ineffective and let's be honest, sometimes abusive um practices, know, spamming customers, you know, not worrying about the relevance of messages, stuck in an MQL world rather than moving towards opportunities and buying groups, gating information still, right, and then internally still, like we're siloed and our incentives are not aligned as a result and our data and technology is completely fragmented. And so the crisis component of it, we've been papering over this, in my opinion, for several years, right?

This isn't, like I say, this is a sort of long building seismic event, we think, right? So it's sort of that question that people got asked, how did it happen? And it was slowly then all at once type of feeling is where we think we are. We'll talk about singularity in a second, I guess, but sort of, it's sort of, if you think of it from a uh astrological point of view, we're sort of at that event horizon.

Like we can see where this is going. again, with AI in the mix, that whole broken approach just won't work anymore. It's accelerating all of those market forces. It's upending buyer journeys, right?

It's expanding by networks. We see agents potentially as part of buying networks. uh It's giving buyers greater control. So it's just...

All of these things are happening. feels like we're in this swirling moment where we have to change. We can't keep doing what we've been doing and expect the same result. Yeah, you said agents and it reminded me, I think of some recent Forrester research about not B2B, not B2C, but B2A, right?

B2Agent, which I encourage people to check out if you can. So drill down into go-to-market singularity. I mean, you're touching on it, right? This collapsing of things kind of help.

Give us like uh a minute version of your keynote maybe. And let me let me step back first of all, and sort of because singularity is one of those words that's kind of interesting. But a of people have a different interpretation. And I think a lot of people's exposure to singularity is actually the AI.

It's in the AI world the way it's being used today, which is when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence, and we're sort of at the at the will of the machines kind of thing. That's not how we're using it. We're sort of going back to the math and physics and science of all of this. And in that world, singularity is used to describe a point where new and mounting pressures cause existing rules and models to collapse and entirely new ones to emerge.

So when you think about sort of what I've been saying in terms of the, is a long um building, but about to occur. phenomenon, you we just sort of see this unavoidable GTM singularity, right? So we're sort of thinking of it as a moment of urgent, inevitable, profound change in the norms and practices that sales, marketing, customer success, product teams have long relied on, right? So um we sort of, we think we're at or very close to this point of no return for most companies and It's when do want to lean into it?

You said what we believe earlier when you said this is both a threat, but it's also an opportunity, right? So those rules that we've used may, you know, for governing the sort of buyer and provider behavior, they may no longer apply, but they're going to force the adoption of new ones. And that's the thing. you, you know, this is an opportunity for if not first mover advantage, early mover advantage, and to lean into new ways of doing things.

And that's what Summit is going to be all about is we'll set up. And part of my role at Summit as host is sort of setting this up as this is the why, and then I'm going to pass over to the real experts who are going to tell us what to do about it, and I'll get off the stage kind Well, I mean, it is inevitable. believe I agree with you. even from what we're seeing on the more of a practitioner level, um yeah, pretty big changes happening.

um And, you know, the I don't know if this sounds dramatic, but the walls are closing in. Maybe we'll look at that escape room as a metaphor. It's like they're closing in, they're moving slow, but it's happening. And so there's things we need to do in order to mitigate that and to, again, take the tap.

Like you say, maybe there's a first mover advantage or opportunity here. uh And it's exciting in that context, the changes that we could make in order to uh evolve. to adapt, you know, because this is something that the notion of adaptation is something that has become central part of the marketer identity, I think, over the last five or six years, right? Because there's just been so much change that we've dealt with.

So uh let's talk about this idea of AI powered autonomy and what that means, you know, in a B2B marketing context. You what are you can drill down a little bit more into what? OK, so what are the challenges? What are the opportunities there?

Yes, I think from a challenge point of view, think, you know, GTM teams, we've been obsessing over kind of the minutia of a journey map or a nurture stream or whatever that might be. you know, buyers, yeah, but buyers haven't followed along. They're not playing the game with us kind of thing, right? So they, you know, buying has become one of of Ian Bruce, one of my colleagues phrases is that, you know, buying has become an act of confirmation, not selection.

know, more than 50 % of of buyers who make a decision based on our buying insights, buyer journey data, they come into a buying process with a preferred vendor in mind and more than 50 % of the time, they're selecting that vendor. So that's what we mean by it's an act of confirmation, not selection, right? So yes, there's an opportunity, but there's a very, very clear preference for a specific vendor at the start. so your buyers are now um richly informed, they are increasingly self-directed, they're increasingly decisive.

And they sort of are making those decisions long before the provider even knows they're quote unquote in market. And so that's what we mean by that sort of autonomy. They're turning to AI search, you know, whether you call it AEOG or whatever your acronym of choice is. And we're seeing that off the charts, right?

We talked about AI agents. I've mentioned expanding buying networks. um For us, buying network is sort of buying group is inside your organization. And our research shows that there's about nine members of a buying group on average.

Now, again, we drill into that and slice and dice that because it varies, right? Depending on size, scale, um expansion is very different to a first sale, all those types of things. But then there's 13 people outside the organization affecting that sale. So that can be everything from partners to influencers to agents, um the providers, and not just we tend to think we're helping, but so are our competitors if they're part of that conversation.

So all of those different elements make up the buying network, as we call it, and they're affecting that. And again, giving me greater insight and greater autonomy to sort of inform my journey and make my decision. And I'll bring you in when I need you. I'll ask you the question.

And I already know part of, you know, I'm only asking the question that I need answered. I have an answer to a whole bunch of the rest of the questions that you think you, that you want to tell me. It's not on your terms anymore. It's on my terms as the boss.

Well, I'm happy to say what you just described really uh lines up well with something that we do. And I won't talk much about it, but just like we have an architecture called best answer marketing. The idea is that, you know, how can we help a company become the best answer where buyers are looking and help them be that first choice during that out market phase when the time comes that the brand is in market and does reach out to select the vendor that, you you've invested in experiences.

and you've invested in signals of trust and credibility that make uh that mental availability for the vendors and you make that list, you know, as it were. uh Anyway, so you've talked about a connected go-to-market approach um as one that, so it's guiding, you know, this idea of trust and discovery. Um, it calibrates brand and demand, is kind of funny as people try to still debate whether you should do one or the other when it's both. Um, and, and, and also aligns this idea of, you know, the human experience and the role that AI is playing.

And I want to break that down a little bit with you if we can. Um, so what is your advice or what is, you know, your insights from research or the work that you're doing or that your teams are doing as it relates to what brands can do to improve. uh more trusted discovery. Yeah, so those topics, by the way, that you just mentioned are sort of the, when I said I'm going to get off the stage and let the real experts talk, those are our keynote topics, right?

So starting with that first one you mentioned, and I'll do my best to represent what they'll be speaking about, but that first thing, we're sort of talking about bridging what we're calling a visibility vacuum. And so John Buten is going to be going to be looking at sort of that visibility vacuum that leads to If you can overcome that leads to trusted discovery, right? So again, 94 % our research shows are using AI to inform their decisions. But we can't always see that, right?

It used to be that they went to a search engine, clicked to our website and suddenly, you know, we could see who it was, right? We could leverage tech to see what company they were coming from, where they were, who it might be, all of that. Now they're so far down the road, they're doing that, that decision-making before we know they're in market. And so how do we close that?

this we think is gonna require sort of a rethink of the buyer decision journey, right? So starting with a clear view of buyer interactions outside the company and sort of the information they rely on to decide faster and with confidence. So that's part of that trusted discovery. But things like continuing to gatekeep information just sitting out there is just a total fool's errand, right?

And so companies are going to have to, um, design and think about this for, for humans, buyer engines, answer engines in order to do all of this and, sort of meet the, that rising demand for more granular personalized information, um, delivered at scale through sort of, um, sharper segmentation and dynamic thinking and more nuanced personas and again thinking almost of machines. I don't say machines as personas, but thinking about machines as an audience for the information and the content we're creating.

But it can't be the same, right? So um all of that has to be done, but it has to be consistent and it has to be authoritative and it has to be all of these other things. That's really hard to do, but that's what's going to be required to sort of gain the trust and be found in that. So to connect the two words you're using, the trusted discovery, that's a lot of what John's gonna be focusing on on the main stage.

And then we'll have drill downs from that in our breakout sessions then. So we've sort of cascaded this all down from the idea of singularity to what's going to need to be done on the main stage. And then, okay, how do I do this? That's in the track sessions and workshops.

Great, great, great. So let's keep pulling on the thread of human and AI, uh especially as it relates to alignment. This is something that's very top of mind for everybody. And I'm just wondering, what are you seeing?

And it happens on so many different levels. It's 3D, 4D chess. It's not just as simple as AI discovery and AI-generated content. There's a lot of other aspects to it.

But I'm just wondering, what are you seeing in terms of what's working? um as organizations think about how they can create more better alignment between humans and AI. Yep. So, what I'd say is we're sort of past the experimentation phase, right?

Now we're in a very practical, let's plan for the long-term. This is not going away and let's do it planfully, meaningfully, all those things. So, there's a big focus on the sort of hybrid, human AI, who does what, why, where, when, where are the guardrails, all that type of thing. um So the sort of thinking about the distribution of responsibility, the sequencing of work, the data that's available to those various sides, um decision ownership, thinking that through.

So it's one thing to have work done in one place, but is there a decision, where's the decision being made? uh We hear about in the loop, on the loop, all these sorts of things, right? but sort of laying that out in advance, the what's okay to have autonomous execution, where do we need cross-functional orchestration of these elements, right? So what we don't want is marketing creating a whole set of agents and workflows and whatever else, and sales doing the same, and customer success doing this, and none of those, just exacerbating our silos and making them better, right?

Making our silos even more extreme kind of thing. Yeah, right, deeper, wider, like not what we're looking for, right? So it's that collaboration among humans and AI, among humans and humans, AI and AI and thinking about all of that. so human team members, we're big believers are going to remain the greatest asset within GTM functions.

know, even as roles and responsibilities change as a result of AI and, you know, the augmentation, the co-creation, the simulation, like all of that, but We don't think humans are being replaced anytime soon. To us, it's all about the calibration to ensure... Go ahead. no, the calibration.

Yeah, calibration to sort of, to bring that human, to maximize the human capacity, right, to impact business results. it's not about an, again, as you said with brand and demand, it's not about an either or, right? It's how do these things maximize, accentuate each other? And there's a lot, obviously, like I just chucked out a whole ton of stuff that companies have to think through.

Right, so do we think of agents as colleagues? If so, how are we onboarding them? When do we fire them? You know, we were joking the other day, we're going to put our agents on a PIP kind of thing, right?

um You know, but is it that or are they tools and workflows? let's have a shared agreement on that. How do we keep on top of emergent AI behaviors, right? So it's so hard to keep up with the day to day of all of this.

And then it goes back to that element of trust, right? So where's the responsible AI practice emphasis and the change management for humans, you all of the enablement and training and the AI queue, as we referred to it within an organization, um that has to be, somebody has to be responsible for this. It's not going to happen if you just say, we now have an enterprise license for X technology, go, right? It's just going to fall flat on its face.

You know, I've heard uh from, like I talked with Michael Brenner, who's a VP of thought leadership and customer advocacy at Workday. And he talked about this idea of their research has shown, you know, that the investment in people first before the technology, right? And even Brian Solis, who's at ServiceNow, he wrote a whole book about this called Mind Shift and the idea of setting the stage from a human perspective first before we can maximize our potential with the technology.

And I think there's translation to the AI aspect of that. With people, at the moment, there's still not an AI solution to the idea of human taste and imagination and curiosity. there's also the, yeah, yeah, and the human ability to understand what great looks like. What is great storytelling?

And so the transition from subject matter expert to orchestration expert, you know, brings in that capacity and competency and experience of the human to then be able to effectively work with technologies and other humans in a different way than, you know, the way we've done in the past is kind of what I'm sensing. uh on my team who covers content and has been heavily focused on the AI area. You know, one of the, yep, she's fantastic. And one of the things she wrote last year was sort of the, everyone in the organization is a, is a creator, how do you manage content?

To your point, right? It's kind of like, so everybody can do these things now, but how do we manage that? And should they be doing that? And again, it's sort of, you don't want to have rigid rules around everything, but there has to be.

guidelines and guardrails and thinking that goes into how we manage that as an organization or it's just going to be utter chaos. Yeah, well, there's certainly going to be a lot more investment in time and energy and resources into cracking that nut, I think. I think folks are going to get some of their answers at summit. So uh I wanted to circle back to the idea of this notion that a lot of what you said, it's not about decision or I'm going to misquote this, but the idea that decisions are made, it's about confirmation, not about decision, I think is what you said.

And so I want to talk a little bit more again about this fact that a lot of decisions or confirmations or whatever are made long before sales contact is made. I'm wondering what, through your work, through research, what has surfaced as the directional changes B2B leaders need to start thinking about? um what changes investments that they're making and resources they're allocating to start creating meaningful change so they can take advantage of being, and I'll use my own expression, be the best answer for those buyers before the time comes for the sales conversation to happen.

So I'd probably say one of the major things, another major area we're drilling into, and we'll have a GTM transformation track at Summit. And Katie Fabisak is sort of kicking that track off with a session on, I don't remember the exact terminology, but it's basically fusing strategy and execution. um And it sounds basic and obvious, and yet we don't see it that often, right? If you buy this premise of GTM singularity and all of the change we're seeing that you just set up in the question, right?

You've got to connect that strategy. First, you need a strategy. You have to agree on what that strategy is and document it and not just assume we have one and make sure we all agree on what it is and then connect it to execution. So that means we have a shared agreement on what GTM is.

Like I said, we've documented it. It's sort of uh an outside in audience focused um perspective, right? So it's not just our, we're going to sit in a room and decide what this is, but it's really looking um at what is going on in the world, in our world, you know, in the world that affects us, I should say, sorry, not our world. um And then that's going to require things like, you know, thinking about prioritizing segments and aligning revenue plans and calibrating um execution that is focused on those buyer segments, which again, it all sounds like, well, sure, why wouldn't we do that?

And my answer to that would be, if sure, why wouldn't we? Why aren't you? We don't find many companies doing it sort of thing. so um that's one of the really kind of cool things that we're drilling into at the minute.

Katie's kind of we typically launch a lot of research at Summit. sort of, you know, it becomes a uh Yeah. some sort of forcing function for us, right? It generates all these ideas and let's get them down and get them live at some sort of things.

That's one of the things that Katie is leading the charge on with a cross-functional team um looking at that. So I think that's probably what I would point to um more than anything. I mean, there's so much I could point to, right? But that's what jumps out as you ask that question.

Okay. Well, let's, kind of pull back a little bit and uh crack open day's crystal ball. And I'm wondering what some of your predictions for B2B marketing and sales are in 2026, I guess, without giving away any, uh you know, secrets that you might share during summit. You know, when you look at the year coming up in front of us here, what are some of the predictions you think are most important trends or if you will, that are most important for broadly B2B companies to be paying attention to.

Yeah, sure. So we actually publish our predictions um every sort of winter timeframe for the following year. So I'll pull on some of those if that helps. First one I'd say is, and I'll go to folks on my team's prediction sort of thing.

And we try to ground these, by the way, in very, we want to be able to grade ourselves at the end of the year. And we are not looking for an A. I'll make that just that disclosure upfront. Like if we get everything right, we're not pushing the envelope.

Anyone could have said that sort of thing. So it's one of these things that we do to ourselves um is we sort of say, okay, you have to be able to ground it in data. Makes sense, we're Forrester, but you also have to push the envelope. Like don't just say what anybody could say that.

And so um what the team came up with on the content side is that employees outside centralized content teams will create two thirds of content. Wow. So pretty significant. I'm going to look away for you for a second just to say, currently we say, share a B2B organizations in which centralized content teams lead content creation and production for GTM functions will fall from 45 % to 30%.

So it's already slightly more than half that is produced outside of that team. In many organizations, there's a centralized team that sort of do guidance and it's sort of a center of excellence type role. So it's not like there's only, think most organizations you work with, there's people creating content all over, right? um But because of the emergence of AI more than anything else, we just believe that it's put so much power in the hands.

Some of it is great, right? We can do more localization and translation than we ever could, than we could ever afford to do because we had to work with localization providers and TMSs and, you know, unless you are a significant scale business, that was really expensive. So now I can translate, but if I'm in a regulated industry or, you know, if I, if, I can destroy as much good even just goodwill like uh by doing this wrong, by not paying attention to the nuances of et cetera.

But even if you pull it back from that, just a general content, AEOs, humans, we, AEs, sorry, answer engines, humans, we want to see consistent, we want to see different, we want to see authoritative. And so what somebody in... XYZ silo in the organization creates as content that isn't consistent with what's being created elsewhere is going to make it less likely that you show up in an answer engine. Right?

So this notion of it being created could be great. We can accelerate, we can expand, can uh augment what we've been doing, as long as we're doing that in an intelligent and an informed way to make sure that it's consistent, additive, and not distracting from what our core messages and sort of brand promises and all those types of things. So that's one. um Another one that's somewhat of the moment, let's say, is we predict that 50 % more B2B Fortune 500 companies will prioritize patriotism in promotions.

Now, again, we make these predictions in the fall, winter, um given where things are going geopolitically. Will we see a pullback on that? Remains to be seen. And again, we don't look to get everything right.

We make a prediction that we think could happen based on our best thinking, but the world is volatile and ah that could well change. Right. And I think, you know, it could be one of those things that people just pull back from anything that could be remotely seen as political to others. That in itself is a political decision to do that.

Right. And so. Sure. uh In the B2B world, think in the consumer world, we saw a lot of this in the sort of late pandemic years, let's call it, right?

Where there was um a lot of emphasis on leaning into social um topics, uh B2B less so, but we've seen folks leaning into the patriotism side of things. And our call was that there would be more of it and 50 % of companies would prioritize it. So that'll be one to watch and see whether we got right or wrong. Yeah.

then I'll give you one more from from our predictions. And that was that 75 % of B2B enterprises will increase budgets for influencer relations. So that's good news for podcasters. But, you know, whether that's sort of literal influencers, I saw on one of your recent episodes when you introduce somebody as the corporate Natalie of right so so the the The sort of you know, there are folks that are starting to merge you you mentioned Brian Solis, right?

There's there's these there's these folks that are that are influenced in the market The likes of a forester, you know that are influencers but then The reason behind all of this again going back to that buying network conversation and is is we actually have influencers as one of the the five or six groups that companies should be thinking about. And so that can be in different ways too, right? So that can be review sites. So customers can be, it's not just the big eye influencers, it's thinking about influential relations.

It goes back to early stage careers for you and I, right? So when we started in PR, I still remember the definition was managing the relationships between a company and its publics. And influencers was one of those publics. um And so it's sort of come full circle to some extent, but was never as big in B2B as we think it is now.

And so we're seeing increasing emphasis on influencers. So we think 75 % of companies will increase budgets for influencer relations. Well, that's amazing. uh I'm just going to tell you that my company has been involved with B2B Influencer Marketing since 2012 um for a lot of brands we've heard of.

we're seeing more demand now than ever. And the sophistication um is pretty interesting, and it's growing. We've actually published original research on influencer marketing. In fact, uh we're going to start doing data collection for our fifth report.

on B2B influence specifically. I'm gonna be interested to see, I'll make sure while asking questions that help us reconcile against some of the findings that you're putting out. Cause I really, I see some interesting uh synchronicity, if you will, uh between the confidence, the growing confidence and this as a source of a source of confidence building around decision-making. You know, people want to talk.

I know it's a cliche, but people want to hear from peers. They don't want to hear from brands per se, you know? And so there's some, how can a brand architect, you know, those signals of trust, how can they architect relationships with people who are the most trusted voices in a market and in an authentic way? So yeah, lots, lots to uncover there.

say, um our blogs are not gated content, right? So if people wanted to follow Karen Tran on our marketing executive team, um she writes a lot about Info Relations. Darrell um over in APAC, ah Amy Bills then on the customer advocacy, you just mentioned the customer stories, right? So from a customer advocacy point of view, Amy Bills, um follow them on LinkedIn, catch their blogs on forest.

com. Some great insights there too. Yeah, I'll absolutely link to them. I had a great conversation with Karen.

Karen interviewed me and one of my team on our influence team for a Forrester report, actually. So yeah, very, very, very good info she's putting out there. I'm going to be visiting or attending B2B Summit for the first time, remarkably, this year. And I'm wondering what advice do you have for me as a first timer or anyone else who's a first timer um to get the best experience from this event?

um First thing I say is bring an open mind, maybe, as a suggestion, right? So we try to walk this line between looking as far down the road as we can while being practical in our advice. And it's a constant sort of, there's a tension between those two things, right? If you look too far down the road and even if you're getting it right, people don't know what, we can't act on that.

So we try to straddle those two things. So bring an open mind. It may not be what's affecting your company today, but maybe it is down the road. um Or maybe it's something you need to be thinking about down the road.

um If I give an example of this type of thinking, um one of our other keynoters is Ross Graber, who is going to be talking about a new accountability framework that's required for marketing. And Ross sort of was asked a question about uh measurement and AEO. because Ross is one of our experts on measurement. he's sort of like, it's not really where I'm focused.

And he started to think about it and he thought a bit more and he thought a bit more. And he's like, if I think of this as the canary in the coal mine, so much of what we've been measuring has been engagement based. And now you're telling me this person isn't going to engage with me until they're 80 % of the way through their process. All of those measures have gone away.

How do I justify my existence to my CEO, to my board, et cetera? And so it was that. I use it as an example of that open mind of like, this is in my world, but if I extrapolate it, if I think about it, like, so it's a great opportunity, just lift the head up from our day to day. I mean, that's one of the best things about going to events I find is there's that orthogonal thinking.

There's the tangential stuff that goes on, which I would then say a second and connected part of that is think outside your role. So we lay out our content, we make it available on our website so that people can sort of drill into I'm responsible for revenue operations or I'm responsible for brand or I'm responsible for content or whatever my role is and I can see a curated agenda for my role. Great, attend as many of those sessions as you can. But we think this is that we're unique to some extent.

We don't know of another conference that's looking across the entire GTM function and sort of thinking about how the interrelationship of these things. You're not coming to a marketing event and us saying, marketing should be at the front of the room and every, and then you go to a sales event and it's sales should be at the front of the room. And then you go to the customer success events, customer successes, everything. It's thinking about the inter interdependency and the interconnectedness of those things.

And so I bumped into somebody last year when I was going between rooms at one point and I was, you know, I can't help myself. I introduced myself. I'm like, how's it going? What, what's the best thing you've done so far?

It just so happened. Two of the people I spoke to in a row were heads of sales at their organizations and Both of them said, I went to this marketing thing and it completely changed how I need to do what I'm doing. that, and other. My marketing colleagues have been telling me this.

I didn't get it till now. So that opportunity to just think outside of your role a little bit is a great opportunity. And we're not, like I say, it's one message that it's tailored, but it's connected. Participate.

We talked. that is fantastic advice. uh Look outside your role. I look back at my own career and how many times I've had exposure to other disciplines within the overall PR and marketing mix and how informative that has been.

um To have an event like this that'll offer those opportunities is pretty cool, um pretty exciting. So let's wrap up with... what I like to call a dream, and this is silly, I suppose, but it's also fun, right? A dream career question.

So if you weren't doing what you're doing now, right? If you could do anything else in the world for your career, for a job, for a business, what would it be? If you weren't doing what you're doing now, you had to do something else, what would it be? be one of my dinner party questions actually.

um Although I added a tiny bit to it, which was if every job paid the same. um Because my answer would not have been my answer if I had to earn what I'd earned. And I've worked in bars in, I've worked in nine or 10 different bars in four or five different countries and always loved it. think the psychology of, and it was never in that kind of, um You know, make the fancy cocktails.

couldn't make you an espresso martini to save my life. It was pulling pints and that sort of thing. But it was the conversation side of it, the human psychology. You we had the time to stop and talk to me.

I worked in plenty of busy bars where you couldn't even do much, but I absolutely loved it. So that used to be my answer. ah I think today, though, I would probably as I get older and I start to look ahead to at some point not being. ah at a desk or meeting clients and all that, what would I do?

I think it would be scuba diving instructor. ah It's one of those things I love to do. ah My son and daughter are both certified, but my daughter just got certified. And watching them go through it and just, the first time you're in the ocean and just seeing their eyes in the mask, just sort of like the excitement and that wonder kind of thing.

You don't see that too often in... you know, in any age adult, she's a young adult. So, you know, just that opportunity to, at end of the day, you know, at Forest there's an element to which we're teachers, right? It's sort of, you know, we're looking ahead and then we're trying to bring the world along and convince and there's a teaching element.

And so I think that's always been a little, little part of what I enjoy to do. And so if I wasn't doing this, that would probably be, plus, you know, I'd want to do it somewhere warm and enjoy the, enjoy the top, top side time too, kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Not where I am in Minnesota, where it's just a little chilly uh and there's only three months of warmth or so, maybe more.

anyway, yeah, somewhere warm and beautiful. Well, great. Well, Dave, where's the I appreciate all this on all that you've shared. Where's the best place for people to connect with you?

LinkedIn. Easy to find on LinkedIn as DaveFrankland. I've abandoned all other social media actually, believe it or not. decided about six or nine months ago, I was like, this isn't helping my mental health.

I'm out. LinkedIn and LinkedIn is doing its best to convince me to live to part there too. But for now, that's where you can find me. OK, fantastic.

Well, thank you so much, Dave. I really appreciate all the insights you've shared. I'm excited to attend B2B Summit. I'm excited to meet you in person.

I hope we have that opportunity. And this has been great. Thank you so much. For me too, I really enjoyed it.

Thank you, the time has flown by. I want to thank you for tuning into the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast and make sure that you uh subscribe so you can stay tuned to our next interesting, exciting guest. And remember, there's no better time than now to become a Best Answer brand.