275 - AI Made Writing Cheap, Listening Just Got More Valuable (Maitri Sheth, Hubspot)

Speaker A: Building with buyers. Thank you for joining me, Maitre Chef. We met and we kind of, like, chatted, and I got to know you and just got to know the work that you do, and I knew, you know, I had to have you on here to share some of your thoughts, bounce some ideas. So welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you so much. Anna. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I feel like the first conversation we had, we just ripped off ideas so easily, and it came so naturally that I was like, okay, it would just be fun for us to record this conversation and put it out there for people, because it's always interesting to hear from other folks in the industry who are working on the same things that you do. And sometimes I feel like as PMMs, we get so much into our bubble of what we are working on that it's good to have the perspective of what's happening.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And so let me just give a little bit of background on you. So, Maitri, you're a senior PMM M at HubSpot. Previously you were at Gong as a PMM. And so I think that you have a lot of cool experiences to share and building with buyers. So it's really like a show that explores the role that customers play in helping companies build to their next level of growth. I believe customers back 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50, like, customers, have always been a gold mine that many companies overlook. Uh, we'll talk about that, but we'll also explore some other topics and concepts. One thing that's been on my mind recently, I was talking to somebody about the work that I do, and they were like, wait, so you don't know the answer when you're listening? When you're doing customer research, you don't necessarily know the answer, but you know how to hear it. And I'm like, wait a second. Yeah, I think I do that with the podcast too, right? When I. When I talk to people and I'm listening, um, and then I hear something, I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's gonna be the thing that people love about this episode, right? So I don't always know the answer, but I know how to listen for it. I know how to hear it. So as a, uh. Like, in PMM world, I don't think that my skill is positioning or messaging. I think that's like, that's the output, right? We all have that as part of the output that we deliver as pmm. I think the listening is. Is the thing, right? Like, recognizing that's it. When someone says it listening and understanding. So I want to just bring that up as, like, a side note that I was thinking about this week. I think listening and understanding is underrated, especially these days. And just one quick quote that I was just reading about. Seek first to understand. Only then can you be understood. That comes from this really small, um, book I have called 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Have you read that book?

Speaker B: No, I have not. I try to stay away from some from books that are just, like, about, you know, amping, um, your productivity. But I get that. Like, I feel like it's. You know, it's funny that you brought this up today because I was talking to someone about this recently about just the fact about how a lot of our job as PMM is that we have an idea about how this product should be launched. Right. For example, or, like, how this feature should be positioned against our competitors or something like that. But when we actually interview customers or, like, do a beta, uh, you know, like a beta with your customers and things like that, you start to hear things that are probably not in what you started off with, like, not in your positioning doc at all. Or like, you start hearing words that are more of the lingo that your ICP uses rather than what you. As a pmm, if you're disconnected from your icp, you would never have insight into that lingo or those technical words that they use on a daily basis. That's very unique to their business. And, you know, having worked at Gong, it was just like an aha moment for me every time I would listen to a conversation that my sales reps would have with their customers and things like that. It's the easiest cheat sheet that you can have to putting your messaging and positioning together because you really can pick up words that your customers used during conversations and put that as your headline. You don't need to go around hunting for more how to make this jazzier or how to make this more crisp and things like that.

Speaker A: You really need chatgpt, like, give me a better phrase.

Speaker B: Give me a better.

Speaker A: Just go straight to the source.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We sort of end up complicating it more in our head. But if you just speak to customers in the language that they speak on a daily basis, you can really. It, like, clicks for them immediately rather than beating around the bush.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny because, like, immediately when I mentioned the book, you're like, I don't wanna read those books. You're like, stay away from how to make me more efficient. I'm already, like, bogged down with all

Speaker B: these, I feel like, yeah, I mean, all of LinkedIn, all of my social media is just posts like this. I was like, I do not need to read.

Speaker A: I get it. I get it, dude. I get it. It's a very thin book. And that's why I was like, I saw it on my shelf and I'm like, I need to go back to that because it's very short and quick.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: But I really just. I, uh, wanted to open up with that because I think that the listening and understanding piece is again, like, super underrated these days. Everybody's just bogged down with the tools, bogged down with the pressure, bogged down with hitting numbers. I totally get it. That's always been the case. Right. But where I believe we as PMMs, like, need to keep our one leg in there, even though people keep pushing us out of that circle. Right. Is the listening and understanding. And so wanted to bring that up. Okay, so let's talk about you. You made the jump from B2C to B2B marketing. I did as well. I love finding people that come from B to the B2C world because I think that there's some bad habits that have been created within B2B. I see it all the time on LinkedIn. I see founders posting stuff, I see venture capital firms posting stuff. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what is happening right now? You know? So I think that coming from B2C, it really has shaped my approach to B2B marketing and B2B product marketing. I'm curious, how has it shaped your approach?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like that was. It's definitely a great starting ground to BMM. If you start off in B2C, in my opinion, I feel like B2C really taught me that nobody deserves your attention and nobody owes you their attention. Like, when I was working at this watch company called Daniel Wellington, which is a Swiss watch company, I was selling a watch to, like, I had to position the brand as affordable luxury to a 22 year old. And I was sort of put in a box of like 40 other browser tabs that that 22 year old had opened when he was looking for a watch too. So you have like three seconds to catch their attention. And how do you really do that? So you really need to strip down all of that jargon and all of that, the image that you put up, just because you have to connect with them as humans first. And I feel like that really taught me, and I feel like that was also like my inspiration to get into B2B? Because when I first got into B2B, I was like, this is crazy. What are these legal sentences that they're writing as headlines like, who allowed them to do this? So I was really curious to come and see that. Okay, how can I come in and change that? And how can I really bring in that human emotion and that connection aspect to how we talk about products to other buyers? And how is it that we break that barrier of, like, you know, you have to just speak to them in the way that it's supposed to. You know, how you're taught in B2B that you're supposed to talk to them a certain way, and that's the only way to do it. But I feel it's great to see how the market is shifting now, how more and more people are hiring creative minds to talk about B2B messaging, just because at the end of the day, we're all humans. The funniest story I have is that no buyer wakes up thinking, today I'm going to go and buy HubSpot or buy Gong. They are waking up thinking, I have this huge challenge and which company is going to help me solve for it?

Speaker A: Actually, I woke up today and I was like, hey, I really want to buy HubSpot. I have. I use HubSpot. But I can't imagine that being the case, right? I wake up thinking, like, I want to get that coffee from that one coffee shop that's open on Thursday morning, right? Yeah, but, uh, that's not B2B exactly.

Speaker B: Uh, but it's also like, there's something going on on your mind, like something that's bothering you, which is your problem area regarding work, where, like, how do I help my team save more time? How do I get my team to adopt more AI? How do I not overwhelm them with the amount of AI tools I throw at them?

Speaker A: And.

Speaker B: And how is it that we who are selling this to them, speak to them about that without the mention of HubSpot at all? You know, like, that's the trick where you talk to them to their problem and like, hey, we help you solve for that and this is how we do it. And I feel like your brand name is always the second line and never what you start off with.

Speaker A: So let's get into kind of like the nitty gritty stuff that you're working on right now. So previously you were at Gong, now you're at HubSpot. Tell me about those first, like, first days. First 90 days. Like, you don't have to go through like day one, day two, day three. But I'm looking for more. Like what were the things that were super high priority for you and maybe as you talk to like the pmm, um, workflow that you started to build and that you're getting excited about because you've been kind of fine tuning it over.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that because I do feel like I'm, um, I feel like I'm like eight months into my role at HubSpot now, so I can look back and reminisce about like how much of a, uh, difference it was from 8M months.

Speaker A: That's M. Like 5 years.

Speaker B: Yeah, I know, right? Like I still, I try so hard to play the new person card at HubSpot, and they're like, no, you cannot anymore. Yeah. But I feel like coming from gong, it was, it was different because I was an early marketing hire at gong, so I was there for over three and a half years and I really saw the company go through the whole hyper growth phase that it did. And When I joined HubSpot, it already had a sales team that was equal to the number of people at Gong. Like, HubSpot has over 2,000 people in their sales team selling globally across different continents. So for me really it was about understanding the velocity of HubSpot. Right. And before, uh, I could change anything about it, I just wanted to take it all in and understand who are the people who are making the decisions, who are the stakeholders that are uh, that take up the room and are making meaningful decisions that would affect the work that I'm doing. So the first 30 days I feel like was just about absorbing all of it and like talking to a million people, but also realizing who from them are the people that will, that I will have to work with the most, or like, that I will have to navigate difficult situations with as, uh, we get into launch and other such stuff. And I feel like the next 30 days, after the first 30 days were just about the real work. Right. Like, that's where you get into the grind. The honeymoon phase is over. So you're really trying to prove as to what you've brought from your experience and how do you put that into a, uh, company like HubSpot that has spent the past 20 years really creating a business for themselves. And that's what I really like about HubSpot too though. You know, the fact that it's been around for so long, but they're still so open to change. They are not guarded off with like, hey, we're not going to Adopt AI or like everyone has to work according to the way art CRM works, otherwise it's not happening. That's not what HubSpot does at all. Like, they're very. They're so close to the customer ear that they understand the pulse of our customers and really work fast to make sure that the product is keeping up with that. And I feel like that for me was the biggest unblock in terms of the fact that I really wanted to work for a company that listens to customers before throwing their product to them. And I feel like HubSpot really does that to its core. SMBs are the biggest chunk of HubSpot customers. As people like you, like, you know, people who are like wearing multiple hats, they don't have a sales team and a marketing team to really go, uh, in and call people and maintain a CRM and things like that, then HubSpot really empowers customers with agents and AI tools that help them do that. So for me, the next 30 days were just about how do we show impact to these people? How do we not overwhelm them with the number of AI agents that we have or even the number of AI agents that competitors are throwing at them? So it was really about getting into the weeds of our AI agents narrative and working around how we can make that more outcome focused. So what is it that the problems that the customers are facing right now, how is it that our win loss interviews are going? What are they leaving us and going to competitors for? Or uh, what are they hiring us for? How is it that our sales teams is talking about this? And of course listening to conversations on Gong Song helps a lot. But I also feel like, and this sort of goes back to our first conversation that we had about like just listening and understanding. I do feel like a very niche superpower for a PMM to have is pattern recognition. And pattern recognition comes across different channels, right? Like of course, listening to conversations and looking out for what that aha, uh-huh moment is, is one. But then also like looking at data and like figuring out what are the use cases that my customers are hiring this agent for the most where that friction point. How is it that I can make their in app experience better by making sure there is like a bot or a notification that really pops up when they are facing issues at payment gateway and things like that. So how do you recognize patterns across different channels and put that into a strategy that truly helps customers achieve the goal that they want? So I feel like even though it's been eight months, I am in that phase right now, where we are constantly problem solving and recognizing patterns and making sure that we're building towards.

Speaker A: Can I share something? Because you said patterns and. And I think one thing since we. So it's really easy to have access to data now, right? We can pull it from. We can ask Claude to pull from everything, right? We can use the mcps, we can connect to everything, all the data flows in. And we ask Claude, Claude, uh, what are the patterns that you're finding in these sets of data? And Claude will give you the thing that shows up more times, but that doesn't actually necessarily mean that that's the number one priority to focus on, right? So one thing that I've been thinking about and working on is I also look at data, right? Because of, like, customer research and prospect research. And one thing that I would do in the work for clients is not just look at patterns. Patterns are interesting. And honestly, I think that the more we look across even more data and bring in all sorts of things that come, more stuff is just gonna come up, right? The trick is figuring out what is important, right? What is an actual insight. And so the one thing that I built to help me do this is something that kind of scores. And the score is not based on the number of times something was said the score is based on. It could. Emotions that came up or Surprising, right? Something that's really surprising to us because I don't know if you know Christopher Lockhead, but he was on my podcast a few times, if not four times. And the one thing that I love that he brought up is look for the weird, right? Because a lot of people look for the pattern. But do we ever look for the weird? Not, uh, not so much. We're like, that's weird. We don't. We don't want that. Like, that's too strange. And no one's gonna. But I actually love that because, like, that's where some of my aha. Moments have come from, right? So I just wanted to bring that up because I think pattern recognition, yes, AI tools are really good at that. But I think that what we're good at and what we can maybe even build into the tools is a way to recognize not just patterns, but the things that are outside of the pattern, the things that are weird, the things that are emotional or surprising. Right. And that can give us ideas for stuff, too.

Speaker B: I love that so much, especially because I feel like the more we are inundated with AI tools and I mean, you can't help it but depend on these Tools just because they make life so much easier. But there are times when you have to take a step back and you have to figure out that, okay, I can listen to a, uh, customer call as a podcast on my treadmill and I will get all of the insights that I want. But there is so much knowledge and wealth in actually booking that call with your customer and asking them to open up their laptop and show us how they really use this agent and where are the friction points. And that having that dialogue with them, I feel like, really helps unlock so much more than what you could by listening to just five calls that your reps had with customers because their goals are different. It's not really getting to what you really want. And that's why I feel like doing more of the groundwork is so much more of value now than it was ever before. I really make it a point to test or be a beta, uh, user of every agent that I'm working on within HubSpot as a customer first, like, okay, put this in my demo environment. I'm going to play with this for a day and come back to you with feedback to my PMs. So it's really like, you put yourself in your customer's shoes and you're really seeing it from that perspective of like, hey, yeah, I put notification tab here, but does it really make sense? Is it, like, ruining the experience that the customer's having with the UI that is going through? And I wouldn't have ever been able to catch that if I was just looking at it from my PMM hat perspective? You have to be able to embody what your ICP really goes through. And that's the reason why being close to the ground and to the voice of your customer matters so much more now than it ever did before.

Speaker A: Would you say that the PMM workflow that you're excited about, did you mention it then? Is it the this idea of, like, getting into the data and listening to the calls and listening for those words and phrases? Like, is that the workflow you're excited? Is there another workflow you wanted to share?

Speaker B: I feel like, yeah, there are, like, a couple of workflows that, um, I've been exploring as you play with different AI tools, right? Like, I feel like one of my first moments of wow, this is so much easier with AI was like, you know how what every PM really, I feel like, has as a part of their KRA is like your release process. Like, you get every PMM on a monthly basis, gets updates from their PMs about what's on the roadmap, what's going to market, and how is it that we want to talk to customers about that and how is it that we put it together in a newsletter or an email to them that really goes out. And this used to take up. I feel like when I first joined gong, this was 80% of my work because we were churning products so fast that how is it that you really put it into two lines and send it across to customers, track how they are replying to it and you know, how is it that they want, what are their requests for products, feature requests, things like that. And that whole process can become so much easier with AI. For me, it was as easy as linking my zapier with an airtable where the PMs really had their updates, uh, put in there with their one lines of technical details of what this feature does, linking that ZAP flow with my Claude so that it had all of the information of how to not use jargon words, how to not have buzzwords in these messages, how to be outcome focused. I fed Claude Project with all of that information and all I had to do was a QA check in the end before that newsletter really went out. And that became a workflow that unlocked for me the power of how much time and how much efficient the work of PMM can get if the QA is always in our hands. I feel like that human in the loop factor always has to be there. We've all been in situations where we've let AI go rogue and I'm sure there are stories of like, that's not the best thing to do. And that's why I try to step back from it as much as I can and only rely on it for blockers that I find in my workflow on a daily basis. So yeah, this release one was the first one for me.

Speaker A: So one thing I've been meeting with like about um, a dozen 15 VPs of marketing like at the past couple weeks. And one thing that's, that keeps coming up again. I don't always look for patterns, but sometimes I do. This pattern keeps coming up where a challenge is now. You know, engineering teams are able to release the things that they were planning for next year. It's being rolled back to 2026. And so everything is just moving much faster. And even if it was fast at uh, Gong for you now, it's probably even faster at HubSpot, right? They're just able to release launch so much more. And so the challenge I think for marketing teams is keeping Pace. Right. Just keeping up to it. Because the goal, what we do in marketing is not just make it apparent to our customers and prospects. We also have to do the, uh, enablement internally too.

Speaker B: Oh, yes, yes.

Speaker A: And so that's just been something that's been a challenge that's been mentioned. Like, how do you move as quickly as engineer, where, like, engineering was always kind of working on this, like, flow of product releases and now we have to like, keep it, uh, be in lockstep with them. And that's. And that's hard. And so I only say that because people keep bringing it up. So how do you think about that? Like, since you are kind of, you mentioned like, releases and launches. And then the other thing is also keeping a narrative tight. It's not just telling people, we have this, uh, feature. We have that feature now. We have that. That's like, okay, so who.

Speaker B: A laundry list.

Speaker A: What does that mean? It's a laundry list. Exactly. So how do you think about that?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting too, because I feel like it's true. And I think I also heard this on the anthropic head of product was on Lenny's podcast and she was talking about how they are shipping weekly. Like they want to enable their teams to go out there and if they have an idea, literally ship it. Like, don't wait for approvals or how this will be perceived by customers, but really shipping fast in terms of if you have an idea, just go run with it. And it was interesting because I do see that being trickled down to multiple companies in terms of just the velocity at ah, which everyone is going to market with the kind of releases that they have. And I feel like it's more important than ever now for a PMM to have more of an operating rhythm. And I feel like earlier it used to be almost a joke that a, uh, product marketer is also a project manager. Like, you really need to have the chops of being, having good stakeholder relationships and like keeping a launch tight so that it goes to market in the most perfect way possible. And that's more important now than ever. Like, yes, cloud can turn up a messaging doc for you and you can take it to market with very low lift from your revenue marketing team. But what really matters is how tight is that group and how quickly are you able to make that a repeatable process across different launches that happen. So having a strict bill of materials, having tiers for your launches, being able to give guardrails around how we position each product, because I feel like it's always a, uh, tug of war with your product team where they feel like every product that they are launching is the most important product and should have a blog post, a PR release and things like that. But you as a PMM M really come in and add that discretion. About like, how many customers is this affecting? Is this more of like a change management or is this more to do with the fact that it's going to disrupt their workflow and they need to have admins log in and things like that? So how is it that you really get into the nitty gritties of things and have an operating model that can repeat across similar launches as we go ahead with it?

Speaker A: So like questions that you ask, right? It's like, okay, they just launched something or they're releasing something. Here are the questions I need to go through for each of these in order to understand what do I execute on.

Speaker B: Then it's like your basics, right? Like, how is it that you want to be able to put this out there for customers? And I say this more also because I feel like these were things that I learned early in my career in B2C in terms of like, how are we taking this to customers? What is it that they would care about? How is it that we first put the customer first and then talk about a product? And I feel like coming back now to B2B, that's more important than ever. Like, a product manager might think his product is amazing and every customer should know about it, but if it's only affecting 25% of my customers base, I'm not going to do a PR release around it. And I have stats to back it up and data to prove that. So leaning more on those things help a ton when you're trying to not just not overwhelm your customers with the amount of releases you're having, but also, as you said, not make your releases feel like a laundry list. I am so overwhelmed now with the whole agent washing that's happening where every company at a minimum has 10 agents, at a maximum has like 50 agents. And I log into a tool and I'm like, I just want to be able to do this. And they're like, oh, but you, you use five agents to be able to achieve that. But that doesn't really help. Like, that's not saving me any time. I'm probably spending more time learning your tool than I would with getting the output. So uh, one thing that's really helped me with that is like, is like just going to, you know, when AI first came in it was all very interesting and you could go to it with an, with a, with a line and it would come up with an idea for you. But I feel like that is the biggest mistake I'm seeing everywhere where if you go to an AI tool with an empty head, expecting it to have ideas, you will not land at a good place. You need to know what you want, and you need to know what you want to say. And AI will help you refine it. AI will help you achieve a better outcome. But it has to start from you and your mind first, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: It does make sense. Yeah. So I guess the answer or the, your specific experience now with like the, the engineering moving quickly and product releases is you still kind of have the guardrails of. Let's ask the questions first before we go fast, fast, fast across all the channels and informing. And it's, uh, a laundry list. Like you don't necessarily need to do more every single release. Right? You have to kind of. So that's kind of your workflow and your answer to that. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Do you feel like you have a good grasp on how the AI tools and workflows that you're using today, like, tap into actual meaningful business results? You mentioned outcomes. Probably. I heard that word come out maybe 10 times. So I know you care about it. Right? Do you feel like you have a good grasp on that? Because I think that's the big question these days is like, is the work that I'm doing using these tools and using these workflows flows, is that actually giving us meaningful business results? And maybe you don't know yet. And that could be an answer too. But what do you think?

Speaker B: That's interesting because I feel like I've had time to think about that in terms of just the fact that how I not just use my, the tools that AI tools that I use on a daily basis, but also like from a customer perspective how they use HubSpot, like, are we able to justify to them how we are able to help them solve business results? And especially for the AI tools that I use, I feel like needs to step back and take an audit at some point of the AI tools that they're using as to like, is this really something that a team member wouldn't have been able to do it? And I'm just like spending way too much time going back and forth with Claude. I feel like before we got, before everyone started going down the Reddit holes and like on LinkedIn, figuring out how to make your GPT or your Claude talk better or sound more human or like, be more, be less jargony. Everyone was turning out really, really bad content. And at that point I feel like I did step back and I was like, is this really making sense in terms of like, does a customer really care if a product is AI powered? If that's what we're putting in front of every release that we are going to market with? So I feel like the AI tools that I use, I would have a good grasp on them because I would be able to go back and see, did it save me time, did it really give me the results that I really wanted with it? Or, um, was the output that it put forward, how much QA did I have to do on that eventually before I could send it to a leader or to my enablement team to run with it? So those factors for me play a huge role in being able to figure that out in terms of how we empower our customers with HubSpot agents and how they work with it. I feel like something interesting that I've been trying to establish, and I know we both spoke about it last time, was really about trying to solve for the blank slate syndrome that a lot of companies have, uh, a lot of teams have when they first adopt an AI tool. Even for me today, when I first started using Lovable, I literally opened the website and the tool and I was just staring at it for five seconds because I was.

Speaker A: Because it's a blank page.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm like, there are so many things like, how do you do this? Like, how do you figure it out? Like, what is the prompt I give to get the best result? Or like, how do I get to the output quicker and not have that many back and forth conversations with it before I really land to what I want.

Speaker A: I can't remember were there like little pop ups that said first do this and then you'll look on the right and it's building something. I think there was a little bit of onboarding.

Speaker B: I think there is. And I feel like we've done this research. I don't remember. I think someone at Gong one of the PMs told me that more than 80% of people click cross on that and never go through those onboarding. Onboarding tours. Yeah. Because everyone's just like, like, you know, it's, it's, it's the joy of learning something new. Right. You want to be able to figure it out on your own or you think it's too annoying and it's talking to you as a five year old child, so you don't want it to do that to you. So for me, even if I went through that onboarding tour that they would have, it was a blank slate syndrome of like, what do I do with this? Like, how does this help me in what I want to achieve? And of course it takes a little bit of trial and error to get to that, but for me really that means is like a customer thinks the same way when they've probably reintroduced a new agent to them and we're like, oh, this helps you save so much time or this helps you meet your revenue goals. But like, how, how do you do that? And I feel like, uh, something that I worked on recently was really putting together a playbook that we sent across to customers during the launch of a recent agent that we had where the playbook was not just about how do you use this tool, but it really had five customer testimonials of how real customers from a beta release had used this product. What was their team size, what were their challenges, how are they able to achieve it? What eventually were the business results that they achieved by using this agent? Really talking about their own unique workflow that would ignite the minds of people reading it, being like, oh, uh, this is how you do it. Maybe this is what I can replicate for my team too, or I can take this idea from this team and carry it forward and do something bigger with my team. It's just about being able to ignite that thought within the mind of customers and then let them run with it. Because everyone loves the whole learning experience that each AI tool has given them the ability to do. Like you can code even though you're not a coder, or you can learn create a brand new deck without having to open PPT at all. So things like that is something people enjoy doing and, and that's what you give to them, but you also help them solve for that blank slate syndrome that they have when they open AI first.

Speaker A: So the blank slate syndrome, that's one thing, it's like, yeah, what do I do with this? Right? But when you think about business results for, you know, from the work that you're doing as a senior pmm, um, like, is it clear how the tools are giving you meaningful like outcomes for in your role? Or you're not sure. And that's okay if you say you're not sure.

Speaker B: See, I'm not sure about a lot of tools, but there are some tools that I'm a hundred percent sure of. Like, yes, this is improving my productivity

Speaker A: like, like, which, which one?

Speaker B: I think Claude, I feel like I've made the switch. I was one of those people who was obsessed with GPD and used it as my personal therapist and my personal coach and all of it. And then it was all like, okay, this is just. And I thought I could never adopt a Claude. And now I do. And there's projects and there's co work and there's codes, and there's so much that you can do with it that every day as a pmm, I feel like, uh, your context switching so much because you're working on multiple releases, you're working with multiple stakeholders, you're dealing with legal on one call, and then you need to completely context switch on your next call when you're working with web, uh, strategy for a new landing page. And Claude really helps you.

Speaker A: I agree with you. Like the context switching and the fact that you can have connectors to everything and then just start a new thing. Right. And it's just able to access whatever through one tool. I love that as well.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: So, Claude. All right, I agree. I, uh, think Claude is pretty, pretty good at, uh, helping with context switching and therefore making you more efficient.

Speaker B: Yeah. Kind of switch out one more tool. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker A: Please, please.

Speaker B: I'm like a huge, ardent fan of Grammarly, which is now superhuman. I feel like I fought to get Grammarly for myself when I moved to HubSpot because we had it at Gong, but we didn't have it here. It really is so much easier now to, like, not keep obsessing over, uh, whether my sentence looks correct or like, I. If I don't have to copy paste it into Claude, like, make it better and things like that. I just love how seamlessly Grammarly integrates it's with your, with your doc or your slides or whatever you're working on to help you achieve that.

Speaker A: Okay, I love that too. So let's kind of switch a little bit here. So marketing is using creativity to solve business problems. Do you know who said that? You may not know who said that. He was. It was Udi Ledergore. He was on my podcast and he said the exact phrase, which I will never forget. Marketing is using creativity to solve business problems. I love that because that's what it is.

Speaker B: I love that so much. I also love everything Udi says.

Speaker A: So that's, uh. Yeah, yeah. No, everything that comes out of his mouth is like. So maybe we could talk about that. Because one thing, I was just looking back at my website and like the blog articles that are newer people aren't reading as much as the older ones, which I have written about creativity and I've written about creative campaigns because I've talked to a bunch of startups on the show and from previous years. And so maybe you can think about something creative that you've been working on. Because I think that. But again, with all of these tools and all this data and all these patterns and all this stuff that people are. Everybody has access to and everybody's shipping fast and everybody's trying to catch up, right? Yeah, but we're still like, wait a second, we need to be creative because there's still magic in marketing. And so maybe you can share like something creative that you've been working on either yourself or with your team.

Speaker B: That's interesting. And I feel like, like, I feel that very personally in terms of like, just how creativity is slowly dying with AI. So, uh, in my, in my personal

Speaker A: diagnosis, Tell me more, why do you, why do you feel like creativity is slowly dying? Is it because of the blank page syndrome where we're like, I don't know. You tell me, Claude.

Speaker B: I feel like there used to be a beauty in a half, in a half broken thought, you know, like, it was fine to have a thought which was lingering on your mind that you would think about in your shower and you would obsess over it for the next two days of like, okay, how do I, uh, make this happen? And like, uh, what does it mean to like, for me to be able to go out there and do this? Like, for example, anything? And now I feel like it's just easy. I get out of the shower and I ask Claude and it gives me probably a go to market plan for like, how do I take that idea and run with it? Which was probably never in my mind to do with. But, you know, so I feel like I miss having. I, like, I miss. I resist the urge to ask Claude a lot of things in my personal life because I'm just like, okay, I need a break. I deal with it so much when I'm working that I need to be able to keep my cognitive sense at its peak because otherwise we're just constantly on our phones and talking to Claude for every small thing. So that's my story for that. Because I also personally feel like in my personal time, I love to do pottery. So I am, um, a ceramist. I do pottery. I work across different models and things like that. And for me it's really about like, yeah, how is AI ever going to disrupt this world? Like, how Is anyone going to stop appreciating a well made cup or a bowl that's made from clay sourced from a different continent and glazed somewhere else and things like that? So I definitely see that there's beauty in creativity and how we bring that more into our lives is upon us. How much are you restraining the um, invasion of AI in your creative ideas is upon you. But what I really talk to my team about in terms of creativity is how is it that we don't just follow what has been the rhythm for the longest time? Like if you see something working really well, it's great, let's run with it. Especially when product is shipping things so fast past. But, uh, where is that unique perspective coming in? Like, what are we doing different for this launch? How is it that this ICP is going to experience something similar to what we exposed them to last month and why is it going to excite them now? Maybe we should do a video around this this time. Maybe we should do host a webinar where we get them to talk about this year. Like how is it that we creatively engage customers to be as excited about our products as, as we are. So I feel like that is the unlock that each release should go to market with because otherwise it's all just a laundry list where you're rinse and repeating the same things.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you almost strive to like infuse a little bit of like, hey, before we do this the same way we've done it before, how can we make this unique and interesting? How can we do something different? How can we take a unique perspective? How can we, we take what we've learned from other folks maybe in the B2C space, doing stuff into B2B. Right. Like I've heard that a bunch of times from folks that have come onto the show like that. Uh, and I've learned a bunch that like B2C folks are doing. And I'm like, that could totally be something. And I think B2B is starting to implement. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: But we could always do way better. Yeah. I love that. Creativity is just like always on my mind. It's uh, it's the hardest thing. It's the hardest thing and it's getting even harder, I think because it's so easy to like my kids are like, can you just ask Chad GPT they have a question And I'd be like, oh, uh, let me think for a second. And they're like, just ask ChatGPT mom. Like, I'm not gonna wait for you. And I'm like okay, uh, I guess like it's easy, right? And then it'll give you a uh, correct answer and maybe even more thorough. Yeah, but they're growing up with that. And so what does that mean? That they're, they're gonna immediately just have a crazy question and go straight to ask. Which kind of is like opening up an encyclopedia and being like I'm learning about random topics and random things so it may not be a bad thing. But how about we sit and think and look and process that back in our memory? What did we learn in school or what do we think? What's the hypothesis? Right. Yeah, totally.

Speaker B: I agree, I agree. I feel like I am, I have a two year old son and I, ah. My husband and I constantly talk about how we are worried about like what is, what is, what are the kind of jobs he's going to be interested in when he grows up? Because like what would it mean to you know, be a part of the workforce when he grows up and like what are the opportunities that would come his way in the world of AI? And I would be really curious to understand more about how schooling systems also implement it. Like I've heard so much about how schools don't want kids to use AI or like iPads and computers and things like that.

Speaker A: They want them to use iPads, but they don't want them to use AI on their assignments. I think there's like a double standard. Yeah, it's.

Speaker B: Yeah, but will there be a world where you can really force them to not use AI, uh, when they're like, are surrounded by it at all times. Yes, but like how would they adapt to it or like bring that into the curriculum or what the guardrails would look like. Like sorry, this is derailing but like

Speaker A: I know because kid, kids, kids thoughts always derail. Yeah. But I do want to ask you like you started to talk about. I did want to mention one thing. So I have a client, Novatic, they, they have a uh, tool that helps you build interactive demo, interactive product demos. And so one thing that Natalie Marc Tullio would bring up about content creation and I also like there's just things that get stuck with me. Like what Udi said one time, what I read in that book, what Natalie said and she said about content specific. Specifically she's always thinking about like what is unique and valuable. If you can just make the content unique and valuable every single time that you put it out there, then think about how much better it's going to be versus other people that don't think about the unique and the valuable. Those two pieces together. I think that's.

Speaker B: I love that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Simple. I always look for like the simple, simple methods, simple framework, stuff like that.

Speaker B: Back to basics.

Speaker A: Back to the basics. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: I wanted to ask you about writing because we've talked a little bit about that and I know that back when we met just to chat, we talked about writing with AI. And uh, I don't even know if writing with AI is even in like three months or six months. We're not even gonna say writing with AI anymore. We're just gonna say writing. Yeah, right. Because it's just gonna be either part of the way you do it or part of the way you do it sometimes. But it's just writing. Like we don't say, you know, building a business with HubSpot or you know, like sending an email with HubSpot or you know, doing this other thing with Google Sheets or you know, we just don't. Right. And so it's, it's weird to say writing with AI, writing with AI. We're just going to drop the with AI and just talk about writing. So what's your approach to writing with AI? We'll say it now to make it very clear in your role. Like how do you uh, uh, it sounds like you don't just like have the blank page and say write me this. Like you have something already, uh, in, in your mind that you want it to sound like or talk about. So any, any like example that you can bring up about how you approach writing with AI.

Speaker B: That's uh, I mean it's such a core part of our job as PMMs. Writing on a daily basis, whether you're writing releases or you know, just emails and decks. Like I feel like, oh my God, decks is like a huge thing about being a pmm. Right. So I think this goes back to what I mentioned earlier about the mistake that you make with AI tools is you go with an empty head and you expect it to have ideas and you're going to fall flat every single time because it will put forward for you a very beautiful 2000 word blog that you should go and run with, but you won't get enough clicks on it and you won't have customers really connecting with it because it lacked that emotional connect or it lacked naturally the bridge that your product had to build to connect with that customer. So I feel like there are certain questions that I always go to AI with when I have an idea and I'm using it to help me achieve better around it. And, uh, these things really come down to, as you said, what is the value that we are leaving the customer with this writing? If you have a list of things that you want to be able to achieve for this writing writing, give your AI that. Tell it what you want. The person leaving the room or like, leaving this page, what you want them to believe after they leave this page. What are your proof points? How is it that you want to empower the reader to feel after they go away from this piece of content? And once you have these few words and sentences that you want to be able to achieve with your writing? That's when I would suggest going to AI and telling, okay, this is my idea. This is what I want want to achieve with this writing. These are the outputs that I want help me drive this faster. And I feel like that's when you'll really be able to nail what you want to do. Because I feel like I made this mistake really early on where, you know, when Claude first would start making decks, you go to Claude with an idea and you're like, oh, make me a deck with, uh, it, and, like, put it on drive. And it looked so great. And it had all of this animation and colors, which, like, would have taken me hours otherwise to do it. And I was like, this is amazing. I'm going to, like, go ahead and run with it. And when to go into the room and present it, it literally fell flat because the content was. Was just so jargony and was not connecting at all, even though it looked beautiful.

Speaker A: Oh, did you actually present it? So you saw the output and it was.

Speaker B: Yeah, I thought it looked so good. And I was like, this is something. My team's going to love it. And, like, this is exactly what we need. The. The quality of text that should be going ahead. And then I'm talking to my team about it, and they're just like, what are you trying to say? Like, you know, this is confusing.

Speaker A: Too many words.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, the slide looks lovely, but, like, what's the point? Like, what are the next steps? Like, what is the action I take? And that's when I was like, oh, my God, like, did I just fall prey to my own thing about, like, you know, not using AI too much because it's difficult to not be enamored by it. Like, how easy it is, how quick it is. But that human intervention, it really needs to come in to figure out, okay, this can look pretty, but, like, what is the content really talking about? Is it meaty enough to be put in front of customers or team members or like whatever sort of content that you're working on. So I would rely on AI tools more for the structure rather than the content.

Speaker A: Okay, so that's kind of your solve. There is like, it's more about the structure and then you fill, you, you fill in the content pieces. Like a, you fill in the thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. How do you. I know this is probably like a loaded question, but I really want to know. There are so many people at HubSpot, like 12,000 plus people. How do you get everybody to adopt the same narrative to like stay on, um, message? How do you do that?

Speaker B: I think it's definitely a learning curve for me, especially as I came from Gong, where we would have like one enablement session every month and it would be like a live enablement session also because we had like a 500 people team so it was easier to like talk to them. Enterprise, down market, upmarket, things like that. But at HubSpot, you really have to hack your way through it in terms of like, I feel so much empathy for sellers, uh, at bigger companies because there are so many competing products that they need to work with and we are constantly overwhelming them with more products that we want to put out there. And we're like, oh, talk about this product. It's so interesting, it's so cool. This and that, that. But I feel like what really helps is making sales feel more like co authors instead of students. When you're putting together these enablement things, like bringing them in early into what you're building definitely helps shape the narrative of how it will land when it actually goes to market. And I feel like it's been. Sales can be your best partners in messaging, positioning, go to market strategy because they literally are the people who talk to your customers on a daily basis. They know it more before you ever started putting your positioning doc together if this product is going to land or not. So for me, what that looks like is like having them involved in the beta process, showing them a demo of things before we actually ship it. Bring them, have a tiger team of few salespeople from different segments and ask them about the UI of your new product. Is this, do you think this is going to land? Do you think this will work? This won't work. And that sort of helps them feel more confident as the product builds too, that yes, I can sell this confidently before this ever goes. Or like, this is something I'm going to talk to my team about for selling because I was able to do this and so should they? So bringing them along the journey works wonders also, not just throwing enablement assets at them and hoping for them to run with it. That never works. I feel like you constantly. The uh, biggest thing I always tell my team is that your messaging docs are never set in stone like you.

Speaker A: Is that what you use? Do you use messaging docs with uh, yes, we have.

Speaker B: With enablement. No, but like we have like a source of truth that, that all the teams can run with in terms of like if anyone wants to put together a blog or enablement assets or social media copy, they refer to this.

Speaker A: How many pages is the messaging doc? Because everybody's got something different. It's long. How long is it? Is it?

Speaker B: So I don't like to rely on the long one though I do put together a quick guide which is just problem areas, uh, solving statements. What is the proof around it? What is the outcome? It helps achieve like literally a table with like all of these things written down. And for me I feel like, uh, AI just makes things so verbose that you can like run with it and have a 500 page messaging doc that no one will read. But the beauty really is in how you concise it and how you really get to the point in a few words. So when I put that together, so like I would have a launch tomorrow and I put that together but like if I am not going back and reworking on that doc in next quarter, it's going to go stale so quickly and no teams are going to be able to run with it. So you cannot create a messaging doc and set it, uh, think it's like done and dusted and then ever again have to look at it. If you want your sales team to really keep selling the products that you're making, you need to empower them with more proof, more messaging that really speaks to audiences in the phase of the market that they are in right now. You need to have separate messaging for upmarket, for down market, depending on where they are in their AI adoption journey and things like that. So uh, all of those factors matter.

Speaker A: Okay, one quick thing is, um, this is really hard. I think the larger the organization, the harder it is to stay on message. And so one thing that I think about, and I think where things are heading into the future, instead of a doc, you need to have like we work in Claude day to day. Oh yeah, right. Uh, yeah. So like having something in there that everybody can access from the same. It's not a doc, but it's like the brain, right? So just thinking about that. Yeah, that's, this has been like awesome and I wanted to ask you more questions. There's always more, right? Like we can always chat on up. I know, I know. Well, we'll probably talk offline as well. But like this has been such a great like digging into your workflows and how you ramped up at HubSpot and your, you know, just your thoughts on really important topics that um, are sort of challenging these days for, for PMMs and for marketers. So thank you so much Maitre. Appreciate you. If anybody wants to find Maitre, she is on LinkedIn. Maitri5 There are four more I guess, right? You're the fifth one. And of course you can always visit, visit HubSpot, uh, by going to HubSpot.

Speaker B: Com.

Speaker A: Thank you so much Maitri.

Speaker B: Thank you so much Anna. This was lovely.

Speaker A: Great to see you soon.

Speaker B: Bye.