GTM org of 2028: smaller, sharper, more expensive per head

SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone, welcome back to Demandy Coded. Dan here with you today, joined by Josh, of course. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about the GTM org of the future and why it's going to be smaller, sharper, leaner, probably more expensive per head, but also different to what we're experiencing today. And you know, there have been um there's been a lot of conversations about businesses and layoffs and the future of structures inside of businesses and what happens to people.

And Josh, I know you've got some really interesting takes on where you see the future of like the GTM organization going. I've got some interesting takes as well. And yeah, we're going to dive in today on what where we see this going and like what we truly believe is the future for this GTM setup and org structure. SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.

This is um, I mean, this is an incredibly important topic. Uh, you know, we talk a lot about tech and process and whatnot. And we'll talk about some of that today too. But but the getting the people right is always the most important thing.

Like always, always the most important thing. And so uh I this is one I've been really looking forward to. Uh, and we'll talk about some new roles, three specifically new roles that um we think are coming into and we're emerging into the the modern go to market. And and then we'll talk about what changes within each of the you know the sort of current traditional roles that have been uh in our organizations for the last 20 years or so.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Just a quick one before we get into the episode, because I've got an offer that I'm sure all of you will be interested in. AEO is something that every B2B marketing team is trying to figure out right now, and most just don't know where to start. But at Blend, we're offering a full AEO analysis of your brand's AI visibility, and we'll walk you through exactly what we found and what to do about it.

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There's always new roles and new structures that happen, right, in every era of B2B go to market, I suppose. You know, you've got like the CRM era teaching companies to manage pipeline and customer relationships effectively. You've got the Martech era that taught them how to actually generate pipeline and like see it all in one place. You've got the SaaS playbook on top of that, how to scale it, and and now we're in this new era.

SPEAKER_03: Yep. Yeah, I I think you're right. I mean, you know, when you said Martec, the first thing I thought of was mass app proliferation. Like there's just so many.

Uh and step, you know, you all of a sudden enterprises would have stacks of 30 different apps. Uh and and that's a lot of that still exists today. But uh, you know, I I think there's a couple of things that are um happening, right? We're fundamentally um we're we're moving very, very rapidly from an effort-based model in go to market, you know, where you know, historically to be able to scale go to market to create you know, to create more leads, to do more content, to manage more campaigns, you were adding more people to much more of a system-based model where you have agents and orchestrated data and governed AI that are running continuously, and then you have people who are coming in and out of that um to deliver outcomes or drive outcomes.

And so it's um it, yeah. I mean, it's it really does require a reset, not just a building onto, but a really a reset in how we think about the overall architecture of what our go-to-market looks like. Um, it's not a faster version of what came before. It's it, I think we've used the term operating model before.

I I think it's a different operating model, a different operating system for go-to-market. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there's there's three things that are really causing this pull right now for businesses to consider. One is what's actually happening inside of organizations when it comes to the impact and actually the the amazing progress that like agents and AI and the production of that and the quality. Well, we were just chatting before we hopped on, right?

I've been using um Vid some more to try out their their video creation software, and I was like, I haven't tried this in a while, and it just gets better and better every time. So quickly, yeah, you've you've got the the inside of the organization, but we've also got to consider what's happening outside of the organization, the impact that buyer behavior and buyer preferences and the the way that they're buying, researching, um, the way that they actually want to talk to vendors and like discover information about them is totally changing.

And that just calls for GTM orgs to shift with the times. SPEAKER_03: Right. No, I I agree. I think in one of our last podcasts, you said uh 89%, if I remember right, of of B2B buyers now use generative AI uh as a primary source for their research and for how they and and in that research, something like 60% of of those searches end without a click, right?

They they don't actually come to the site, they get what they need, service right in the browser or in the LLM window or whatever. And and so um that fundamentally changes our how we think about engaging end users and what is what becomes critical if we want to scale the outcomes of our business. Uh but the other thing that I think is true, if we you know that's that's more primary new logo um focus, right? That's important.

But I think what else is true is that fairly recently the platforms, the the enterprise grade or or you know, small and medium enterprise grade platforms have really matured, and Hubspot being among them where historically, if you said CRM, it was little more than a you know a sales pipeline, effectively. Yeah. And and now what we see with HubSpot in particular, but and and there's other platforms too, but um we can now see and capture the entire experience of a customer from first touch, intense signals, uh, opportunities, pipeline, close, you know, um closed deals.

But now also implementation, customer success, engage how the customer is engaging with us, picking up on signals that would suggest that there's risk or opportunity to grow. So we have the truly the entire customer lifecycle inside a single place with uh real accuracy and automation that's enabled. And and you know, we'll maybe talk a little bit more about that in this uh podcast. But the um, but I think that's that's also an enabler to this new org structure, if you will, or or evolution of the org structure because of those capabilities.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So if we roll back the years, and I'll I'll put this on you, Josh, because uh like if we look at our hairlines, I think you've been you've been in many more GTM orgs than me, right? And have seen the structure play out again and again and again. SPEAKER_02: Um there's nicer ways to say that, but yeah, it's probably true.

SPEAKER_01: Uh you said worse. Um and yeah, I think if we if we think about the the GTM orgs of the of the past, what did that look like compared to where we're going now? SPEAKER_03: Gosh, uh, where do you want to start? Do you want to start in um marketing?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. SPEAKER_03: Okay. Uh so let's see. Um when we think about marketing and historically, like what we had, what we've had are content people.

Um, content people, the content marketer was taking, you know, probably 60 to 70 percent of their time just on first draft creation and going through a very thoughtful, very painstaking process to create new content. Um that we're seeing overnight practically shift um to where that that person it the governance layer of AI is still critically, critically important, right? Like we don't want AI to we don't want to suggest that you can create content um you know at light speed with Claude uh just having access to you know the internet and going nuts.

Um the the ability to constrain Claude and to govern the information that goes into that that content creation process is absolutely a hundred percent critical. Uh but if you build an environment like that, then yes, uh that content marketer is is spending more time curating those that in that environment, that educational environment for Claude, than they are creating new content. New content's getting produced really, really fast. Um and uh assuming it's governed, it's being it's it's on point, like it's really good.

Is it is it a hundred percent as good as what was created before? It might not be. But if you give me as a as an entrepreneur or business owner, if you give me the choice of sending out four campaigns in a week or spending four months creating one campaign, and that's those are you know maybe extremes, but if you if you put that in front of me and the four campaigns in a week are 90% as good, I'm running because time matters, right? I don't I don't have the time anymore to be waiting for for that, and so yeah, yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01: You know what, Josh? Uh I think most content written now via AI is better than if I was to brief a writer five years ago. Like, hands down, because when we think about the the change in the process of that, if I was to brief a writer five years ago, they might be brand new, like to the business or to an agency that we've just hired. They have no context about our business, who we sell to, who we are, our convictions, anything like that.

But now I can plug all of that into AI if that's a clawed project, if we attach blend core onto that, whatever it may be, I can upload that knowledge and have that immediately give me a more accurate, better quality output than before. So yeah, I agree with the change in that role. I think what content people have and writers have is expertise about how to actually write something that gets engagement, like the cadence of wording, the the rhythm that comes from creative writing.

That isn't pre-programmed into like Claude or Chat GPT. That's expertise that is built up over time. It's that it's the expertise that is what's needed, it's not the actual output that you need that person creating. SPEAKER_03: Correct.

Yeah, production ceases to be at the human layer, but the the human's expertise and wisdom uh and uh best practices needs to get woven in. You're right. Um and and you know, good news is there's ways to do that. Um so uh but beyond that, like I think about um like demand gen um and the people who are in the marketing team creating campaigns, executing campaigns, um you know, I think the those roles um become um much um fewer, um but but but broader.

So they're they're building not just individual campaigns anymore, they're building in they're building agents that know how to create create and or execute on multiple campaigns 24-7 that you know that are intelligent campaigns, super intelligent, right? Like really, you know, lots of if the user does this, do this and so on, and and uh and getting signals from lots of different places to be able to make decisions. Um that that that marketing ops demand gen type resource needs to be someone who can think you know at a broader level and then work within the agent tools to be able to do that.

Um and so, like I say, I think you you need fewer of them, but they become more senior, which is a theme that we'll talk about um as we go through this. Um and then I think there's a a new role um that goes along with what you were just saying. Um let's call it a a brand knowledge steward. Um there's somebody in the business that is the focal point for um knowing at a really detailed level what that business stands for, what their convictions are, what their values are, what their competitive positioning is, um what their products and services do, all of the the detail that makes them them, that person's job is to uh tirelessly curate their repository where they store that, that where they have act where AI models have access to it.

Um and and that function in a smaller business, it it's a part-time role. In a larger business, I think it's a full-time role where they are continuously improving the quality of the AI output by improving the quality of the um digital identity. And uh, and it it's we've used the term digital twin before. I think that's the reality, is there's this digital twin of the commercial side of the enterprise or the business that um that that person is responsible for putting together.

And it's it's what candidly, it's what we're doing for some of our clients now. Um, because these roles don't exist in in many organizations, but in by 20 by 2028, we think, yeah, these will be commonplace. Um, but we're we're serving that, and then we're putting the all of that into Blend Core um to serve as that repository that then allows their people to use Claude and other LLMs to be able to create um content in mass and and different types of assets all within the guardrails of how that business wants to uh wants to portray itself.

But that I think I think the brand knowledge steward, something we could say guardian, whatever, you know, like brand guardian. I like that one. Uh could be, you know, is is something is a function and maybe a full-time role, depending on the size of the business. SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

And as when we when we think about brand in this instance, we're not talking about just a visual brand, right? Like brand brand guardian is is a thing that um is quite common in marketing. Like somebody in the function would own the brand and be the steward of um like the brand guidelines, I suppose. But what we're talking about here is like a holistic business repository of information, basically like a product manager for your own company's identity.

And they they govern that, they compile it. And I I know for a fact people will be listening to this thinking, like, that's such BS, guys. Like, you know, that that's not gonna happen. But you when you start using AI, as particularly like clawed projects, we've got hundreds now, and you really, really start to come up against issues with um consistency.

And even at a team level, even at a small team level, inconsistency is creeping in. And as more and more organizations catch up and just use AI more and more and more, they will like bump into this issue. It is absolutely inevitable. That's why like we are we feel so strongly about this and this role existing, because I think to overcome the like just bombardment of AI and AI production happening, you have to have some sort of central governance around it.

I think, yeah, this role will be important. SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, let me put it a different way. Like, there's a real ROI to that role. If um if my uh let's talk about proposals.

Okay, so we all think, okay, great, I can record a call and I can generate a proposal like that, and it'll be ready for my AE to send out and it'll be custom to the customer in the conversation. Great, super. Um if I don't do a good job with AI governance, that proposal will either go out, including things that aren't true, and we know that for sure because I've done it, um, or um it it will be caught by the AE and then the AE will spend hours. You know, the whole idea is that the AE doesn't have to spend hours anymore, right?

They're not writing these proposals from scratch or filling out a template or whatever. Um they're they're having 95% of the work done for them. And so they should be able to take that 95%, finish it up in 45 minutes, and send it out. The if that's not true, it breaks down the entire investment that we just made in that proposal creation capability with AI, right?

Like it's it proves it to be false. Um, so I can prove a real ROI to the investments we're making in AI based on creating a governance layer that is effective at enforcing my digital identity um and and making sure that you know that we're not inventing things. Um I mean the risk of the uh the risk of the AE send not catching it and sending it out with something that is patently not what we do is scary, even right. Um, so um, yeah.

Should we talk about the sales work? SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I think this is where you've spent a lot of your career, right? And you've seen the roles within this evolve over time. I think the SDR role is something a lot of people are talking about right now, like the B BDR, SDR, whatever you want to call it.

Um because of the prospecting tools coming, the the volume play becoming easier, this role is yeah, really uh one to discuss. SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it um again this it goes from effort-based to system-based, right? So instead for the BDR, the future BDR, um, is somebody, and you're right, we it could be SDR, it could be like that that first person in the you know who's responsible for top of funnel, um, getting top of funnel to you know, handoff point or even to mid-funnel to handoff point.

Um, they're no longer doing the first action. The agents are doing the first actions. We're then we're bringing in intent data that allows the agents to perform more effectively. And so the outcomes of those are actual hand raisers or are actual engagement.

Um, you know, uh, they meet a certain level of engagement that that says, yeah, these are these are worth now talking to directly. And it's a warm talking to because they've already been that user's already been. Engaged with us in some manner, right? Whether it's a LinkedIn engagement, you know, uh agent or it's a which you know is an evolving space, uh, or it's you know, it's it's email, it's another channel, whatever, whatever that agent was doing, or however, or multiple uh channels that that agent was using, uh, once we get it to a certain point, and that's where that that's where that uh you know architect uh comes in to to design, okay, this is the point where we would want a human connection, like a really truly human connection.

That that BDR then is responsible for taking those and moving them forward uh and pushing, you know, either disqualifying or pushing. So they spend, they have to know more about the business, they have to know more about the products, they have to know more about the customer uh than they ever did before. Um, so they're become more senior, just in like it's your the people who will qualify that aren't the qualify for that role, aren't the um really hungry but fresh out, no, you know, no experience uh people because the their uh the the convert like what you're measuring isn't activity anymore, you're measuring conversion, you're measuring output pipeline created, uh, and in some cases closed sale, right?

Like which is another topic we'll talk about in a second. Um, so I I think for the SDRs and that that org, at the very least, you have fewer, they're managing based on uh warm engagement, and your agents are now are doing all of the truly front-end work that you used to have them dialing for dollars. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so like I can see that I can see two approaches here really where the BDR, like as we call them now, BDRs don't exist.

I can I can see that. I can see that actually happening because I think the role changes so drastically potentially into running agents to do this stuff. Because when we think about like even HubSpot's prospecting agent, which I've been using recently, and genuinely impressed with the output. Um, it it is better than a brand new BDR who knows nothing about our business who joined like five years ago and didn't have access to all this context.

And I think the role shifts so much towards like this agentic operator who can run this stuff. And whether it's a human or whether it's an agent that gets that first touch and that handoff process, I don't think it matters, but I think the the role that controls it changes. SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Yeah.

And then, you know, how far they take it, right? So you said they could it could go away. What you're really saying is are are the are the people who catch the stuff coming, the opportunities coming out of the agent, are they gonna take it to goal or not? Are they gonna finish the sale or not?

Um, and I think that really depends on what you're selling. SPEAKER_00: Yeah. SPEAKER_03: Um, I think the if you're selling more transactional, shorter sales cycle, fewer people in the buying process um products, where there's and there's lots of people who sell stuff just like that, then yeah, you probably have one role. You have a sales role, and they they work directly with what comes out of the agent and they work through it to close the business.

Where you have large ticket, complex um maybe enterprise sales processes that take a long time and have multiple um uh you know committee members on the buying process and um and it and you know fairly technical uh in terms of complexity. That's where I think you still have uh a BDR who's operating still on volume to some extent, right? They they're taking everything that comes out of the eight the agenic work, and they still have to get it to a certain place, a qualified place, to hand it to the AE or engage the AE.

But I think there's still a a like the the men and women who have made their careers running enterprise sales processes, that is a complex and difficult process to manage. And the ones who are who do it really well, you don't want them spending their time on mid mid-funnel stuff. You want them really focused on um on the quarterbacking the the very complex high tech high ticket sale. But it again, it just depends what you're selling.

If I if I don't if I if I can execute my sales playbook with a single resource, candidly that's better for the customer, um, and it's probably better for my business. SPEAKER_01: Thinking about comp plans here, because well, I don't you'd have seen different structures over the years, but BDRs typically would have been comped on some sort of volume output or you know, connection. SPEAKER_03: Yeah, usually meetings, meetings that you know it's not usually just rant raw call volume.

Um, like it's still a little bit of outcome-based, but it's it's very much a numbers sort of game. Um, yeah, I think it's you know, the the comp for that type of role. Let's say there are still two roles. It's still, you know, the comp plans for those uh BDRs who are catching the eugenic work and developing it, it's it becomes how much of what you handled closed.

Yeah. How much were you able to convert into pipeline? How much were you able it was able to be closed? Yeah, you're not actually doing the closing, but um you're responsible for setting up the organization with deals that meet what the kinds of deals that we're gonna have a high close rate for.

And so that's that's really your job. And then you hand it off to the person who's gonna actually close it in the event that those two are compressed, right? Simple sales cycle, what what have you. Now you you you don't have anybody that you're paying to set meetings, you're just paying people you're paying the salesperson for on quota, right?

And you've now completely eliminated that top line, that sing that handoff point. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, good point. Okay, so after it let's say there's a there's a two-layer motion, or even if there's a one, right? We're still gonna have an account executive, sales executive in in some form, whatever that takes.

Where do you see the change in that role happening? Because that's not gonna stay the same either, right? SPEAKER_03: No, I mean um brutally honest, as a sales leader, I need fewer of them and I need them to handle more accounts and their quotas go up. Um, and I say that because I can now automate, I can record all their calls and all their touch points, I can do all of the analysis, um, I can catch um deal risk way sooner.

Um, and so and I'm automating a lot of the things that they used to have to do. They don't even need to update HubSpot anymore. Yeah, right. They can automate almost all of that by um and so um the administrative work of being that AE goes away almost completely, and the creation work of that AE gets largely AI enabled, and so they should be able to handle more deals, work with more customers, and they're like instead of I think maybe historically pre-AI, if a rep spent 50% of their week talking to customers, that would have been awesome.

That would have been a great a great achievement. Now 70% of their time should be able, should be freed to be able to do that. Um, and and you know, that's what they're good at, that's what they should be best at, is being able to build relationships. I still think people buy from people, right?

And people buy from people they like and they want to work with and they want to have confidence in, and so it frees them up to be more relational, um, and to which is kind of counterintuitive to this whole AI thing, right? Where we're saying, oh, well, the buyer doesn't want to talk to us until much longer on, and so on. But in the end, there's still a human-to-human buying process, and I don't think that goes away in 2028. Um, I don't think uh it's scary to even think about what's you know, 2030 and beyond.

But the the idea that um people aren't going to be in the decision-making process for what companies buy in B2B seems too futuristic and frankly too too risky. SPEAKER_01: Um I I even think like authenticity actually will just become more important in the entire go-to-market, even though it seems counterintuitive, like you say, because all we're talking about here is using AI to like automate all this stuff. But I think in doing that, you're automating the the boring things that nobody ever wanted to do anyway, which frees up like in marketing and in um how we actually engage with buyers and distribute content.

A lot of that frees up time to create authentic content that people truly connect with. And that I think that goes all the way from discovery of your brand all the way through to close. Like yeah, I I truly believe that authenticity is never been more important and will never be more important in you know, five years to come. SPEAKER_03: I think I think it even changes the role of the of the head of sales.

Like historically, the head of sales would have spent a lot of time inspecting, doing pipeline calls, inquiry, you know, reviewing deals and so on. Because of the automations we can create and the um, you know, the yeah, I mean the automations, the the uh AI analysis we can do in real time, really, that role stops being inspection and starts being intervention. That they can they can very like you put the VPS sales, let's say, on their front foot a hundred percent of the time.

They are active. The AI is telling them you have deal risk here, you've got opportunities here, you've got things, you know, that uh an executive relationship that you should be inserting yourself into here. Um, these are your most, your three most important deals for these reasons. You've got to go get those done.

And you know, right, like all of the my day as a head of sales shifts from oh, I wonder what Bobby's doing right now, to oh, I've you know, I'm I've got this call, I've got this person to engage, I've got the and and it's all I'm helping deal, I'm helping move deals forward uh or avoiding deals cratering, you know. Yeah. Uh and so so yeah, I think um I think that role changes as well. And and you know, that that favors the entrepreneurial mindset.

Uh and you'll see some VPs of sales who are more who have historically been more pure play managers, um, I think they'll tend to go away. I think they'll struggle uh because they won't have, you know, they the if you don't have a bias for action in that role, I think you'll be, you know, you won't be able to keep up with the pace that the business expects you to go. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah.

I you know, I think everyone should start playing around with connecting like their CRM to something like Claude and using Claude co-work to trigger actions every morning to, you know, run a certain report. Like I've got a couple of Claude Cowork projects that run every morning and basically dictate my day. And I yeah, it it can truly change roles. And I think, yeah, the head of sales one is one, but throughout the entire org, right?

How how you then gather data and find information changes because you can have it sent right to you, which is awesome. But I think there's a layer in like architecture, uh architecting the system as well. And that's a role in itself, I think. SPEAKER_03: Totally.

I think growth architect is is going to be a role that um emerges that has purview across marketing, sales, customer success, like the entire revenue lifecycle. Um uh and they are they are really business strategists who understand the how how the tech works and can can orchestrate or can um design orchestrations. They may have people who are hands-on keyboard creating the orchestrations behind them, but they're the ones who are like I think on a whiteboard saying this is how this, you know, our revenue lifecycle is going to work from now on, and finding the ways to make it go faster and faster and faster, and and removing friction from each, not just each silo, but each uh seam, uh, the handoff points between this the historical silos, uh, which we can talk about too.

So I but I think the um that role, growth architect, will become something that uh you'll start to see soon, like really soon, uh as people start to really appreciate what what should be being done. Um, particularly if you're in like a PE owned business and you've got you know, you've only got so much go-to-market resource, and you've got to be as efficient as you can and predictable predictable as you can. Um I think that that role, maybe more than any other, is is going to be one that is becomes of strategic value for for the business.

Here's a here's a question for you. SPEAKER_01: Because because growth architect isn't a role right now, nobody has it on their CV. Nobody nobody is a gr growth architect, really. So who are the growth architects now?

SPEAKER_03: That's a really hard question. Um thank you. Some businesses you have sales in like smaller businesses, maybe. You don't have anybody who's who's specifically thinking um like a um an enterprise architect.

So bigger companies have things people called enterprise architects. That's the exact same or very similar role, but they look across the entire enterprise and they're uh like they're huge, um huge purview and complexity. Um this is very so this becomes more a flavor of that that is um very deep in go to market, where an enterprise architect probably doesn't know the most about how to um how to get the best response rates from in an agenic outreach uh process. Uh the um the the growth architect would, um but it's that same sort of skill set.

Um it might come out of sales engineers. Um that's a that's a function that's been in businesses for a long, long time. And they tend to be people who are subject matter deep um and and commercially oriented. Um, so it it could come out of that, but they but you know, like you it wouldn't just be a flip the switch, like there's a lot of education training.

Um, I think there will be some CROs uh that you know are more system and process CROs that are like, oh, that's actually an interesting job at a at a maybe a bigger company. So if maybe I did I did the CRO joke job, like I think it's a really like enterprise or not enterprise executive type role, um, but not again, not manager executive, more strategic executive. Um, and then I think there will be a lot of consultants who do who have been in the you know, the the KPMGs and other like um consultancies that have looked at how to build um your enterprise architecture, and you'll see them start to create these roles that they service people with.

You'll see companies like us say we be we can do this for you. Um, but I think the um I think consultants will be a big part because it's a very much a consultative function. That'd be my guess. Yeah.

Off the cuff since you didn't prep me for that question. SPEAKER_01: I like to just slide them in occasionally. That was good. No, I I agree.

I think I think it's interesting. SPEAKER_03: So there's one group we haven't talked about yet, customer success. Yeah. Um I think it's important that we, you know, we we always talk about marketing and sales.

We uh have to always talk about customer success too, because the in most bit most B2B businesses, the majority of the uh short-term opportunity growth opportunity sits in the existing base, right? And so if we don't talk about customer success, we're missing out on a big portion of where our opportunity lies. Um, you know, so if you think about a CSM uh who's in a in a business historically, um oftentimes they're in roles where they're firefighting, they're reactive, they're uh they're getting pinged from lots of sides, and they're the people that have to go into the business and figure out how to solve the customers' problems.

Um they're they're supposed to be driving growth, but you know, building uh monthly business reviews or quarterly business reviews takes six to eight or hours of maybe a couple of days to prepare for. Um uh so as a result, because of all of that, they can only manage you know 20 to 40 accounts typically. Um uh much more than that, and it becomes like your surface level. Um I mean there's exceptions, but if if you're delivering a fairly complex solution or you're serving an enterprise, I think yeah, 20 to 40 is probably about right for those organizations or for those people.

Um now, after this shift, I think those people go to uh easily 50 to 100 accounts apiece. Q, you know, the QBR prep drops to under an hour. Um the the reactive is replaced with the proactive where where our systems uh are identifying where there's risk and and proactively say pushing that individual into here's how I go and and solve for this, right? Um and um and and in doing so we create better customer relationships, happier customers, but we're also spending more of our time on our front foot uh with those CSMs who are who are being where with systems that are helping them recognize where there's opportunity.

One of the fundamental problems with problems, tendencies with CSM organizations is they're either staffed with people who are fully sales mode and they really don't care anything about customer success. Um uh, and that generally doesn't help you build long-term happy customers. It makes people feel like you're just constantly selling to them. Um, or they're staffed with people who are very customer, like customer relationship, customer satisfaction uh focused.

And as a result, they're they tend to be people pleasers, they tend to not hear when the customer says, when the customer says something that might be a little bit critical, they stop, they don't think, oh, that's an opportunity. That's an opportunity for me to grow that that account. Um and And so being able to um leverage AI tooling in and help those people do a better job on either side of that, um, I think will will make them go faster, but also improve customer relationships.

And if you improve the customer relationship, then those more of those customers will grow faster. And so I I think you have fewer, but they do more and they out and they ultimately lead to faster growth if you build it right. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah.

Since since working with you, I've thought much more about customer success and in particular the relationship between marketing and customer success. And I think there's a missing piece that often gets left out, which is RevOps in like the structural organization of these things. Because when we think about RevOps, we often think about well, it's probably sales first, true, like truthfully. And then you might have like marketing ops that gets rolled up into RevOps, but like you're most of your revenue is probably from your existing customer base, anyway.

So why is RevOps not in that conversation? And like I I think it it now will be with a more centralized function. Like we spoke about um agent operations lead at like earlier in the conversation, and that's the opportunity, I think, to roll this all together and you know, truly start thinking about RevOps as as this centralized function that can impact customer success just as well as it impacts sales and tie absolutely everything together in the growth cycle. SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think those people um like in this new org structure, um, I think those people, you know, you kind of like you, it's like RevOps met DevOps and they had a baby.

And and they're they're very um um technically savvy, but they understand how you know that they're there to build connective tissue um so that there aren't siloed handoffs, um, but they it is a cons it is a continuous, always visible, always um thinking system that is, you know, regardless of where the customer is and at what stage, uh, from prospect to you know the our longest standing tenured client. Uh and and if we do that well, those people uh I think report to the growth architect.

So so if you think about the CRO or the CEO, depending on the size of the organization, growth architect is designing how this all works. Um, they then have the um what do we call them? The genetic or um agent operation. Yeah.

Um those those roles will then sit under that per that growth architect implementing the the systems. Yeah. And then and then you probably have some level of um training um and enablement function that at larger organizations that that is necessary to that go and we and work through every part of marketing, sales, customer success to make sure that they're getting the most out of the systems that are being built. Yeah.

In small in smaller orgs, that's just getting everybody together and and saying this is how we're gonna do it now. SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, but yeah, I think so. Okay. So when we think like we've gone through roles there and and different um organizations within the business, but what's the actual business value of all of this stuff?

Because you know, people listening to this might be thinking that's actually scary, and you know, my job might be at risk. But if you're able to pivot and move into, you know, this new go-to-market space that we'll we're predicting in 2028, like what's the actual business opportunity there of restructuring in this way? SPEAKER_03: Well, I I think very simply, um building a building the new go-to-market well uh is will be for the next four or five years, will be a competitive differentiator.

The faster that you go, the more effective you do it, the better you will outperform your competition in most B2B spaces. Um and so uh and then in four or five years, the companies that didn't do it died, to be very honest. Uh and the companies and and so everybody gets to be back at a at a level playing field, and then we wait for the next giant right, yeah. Right.

Um, but you know, I yes, jobs are gonna change. Um the people that I worry the most for, if I'm if I'm really honest as a dad, I worry about the people coming out of school now, yeah, or becoming out of school in the next three years. Um I I tell my son uh all the time, if he's not on his own really investing his own time into how AI works and and you know, in how to use AI and enable AI in different um capacities, he's good like I don't care who you hire. You're gonna we're gonna hide, you know, we're gonna hire a copywriter, but that copywriter needs to know how to get the most out of their expertise, but getting the most out of an AI-based production process.

Uh and it uh if you're so I think that mind shift is start is definitely starting. But the people who are just coming out of school and don't have the benefit of 10 years of experience doing something and have a depth of expertise, what is it? How do they catch up? How do they get to and I don't have a great answer for that, other than like companies like ours, um I see us being somebody who can bring in um like well okay, so pick on Joe.

Uh so Joe, my son, works for us. Uh he's a he's in he's in uh college uh and he's been over the last three years working for another agency and now for us, uh, he's been building his skill set. Um but as a part-time college kid, intern type role, um when he gets to graduation next year, he'll be way ahead of the like from a practical standpoint of the the kids, whether he comes to work for us when he graduates or whether he goes and does something else. Um, I think the I think that model of hiring kids in school, um, I say kids, I know I'm an old man, I shouldn't say kids, um, young professionals who are um who are still in school, I think that's internship programs and co-ops, I think become really, really important.

Um and if I were a dad sending a kid to school who wanted to go into the business world, I I would not let them go to a school that didn't have a program like that and really focus on it, right? So I think that'll be a part of it. Um uh this was not what we planned for either, Dan. But um, I think you're like care about like I care as a as a just as a human being, I care about people and education as well, like shifts with all this stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01: So, like as business requirements change and the personnel inside those businesses change, what is taught at an education level shifts with that. It actually takes time for that to catch up. So it's really, really important to be able to like be hungry and like go and learn this stuff and just yeah, figure it out, try it out, make mistakes, get frustrated, and um, but just have a foundational understanding of like how it all works for sure. SPEAKER_03: Yep, yep, no, I agree.

Um, yeah. Um, otherwise, I I think actually it it creates greater opportunity for career growth and um and frankly earnings growth, because like in the end, an organization that does this well should have fewer people delivering more revenue faster, right? Sales cycle should compress. And you're and you're you know, probably you're getting like from an NRR standpoint, you're probably getting five to fifteen points of improvement um just in the revenue you're getting from your existing base.

Um and and that that drives greater profitability. Greater profitability should mean that we can invest more in our people. Um, and every like everybody wins. Um yeah, that's how that's how I envision it anyway.

SPEAKER_01: I think job satisfaction also increases as all of the things we don't like to do, we can offload to an agent. Uh like I I have way more fun now, like because I can do more things that I actually want to do. I don't have to do as much admin, as much like I don't particularly like writing at all. I don't really have to do that anymore.

SPEAKER_03: Um, so so I think that's for entrepreneurial team members like yourself, I think that's true. Um, for people who have gotten um very comfortable, like there's just different different people are wired differently, right? Yeah. So if I've built my career and my what I like to do on doing this thing, I do feel for those people because those like that mindset, you're probably wired with that mindset.

It's not a it's not a oh, I'm just gonna go be more entrepreneurial. Like that's I think they're on um and so like the struggle's real for those folks. And I think we do need to help them with training, with um patient enabling, you know, time. Um, as long as they have the right attitude that says, yeah, this world is gonna change on me or is has changed on me, I need to change my box.

Um I then we need to recognize that okay, that there's gonna be some reskilling and and things that need to be done. And that's that's incumbent upon us as as responsible employers too. But but I for yes, for guys like you, candidly for guys like me, like this is kidding the kidding the candy store. I guess so much fun.

SPEAKER_01: It is for sure. All right. Um, well, that was a bit of a detour for this episode, but an enjoyable one. Um do you wanna do you wanna do you wanna leave any like final thoughts, wrap us up in terms of what we've covered today?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I I think very simply, um the future of go to market is here. Um roles are changing. Um, the the organization of the future is um moving uh into fewer people, more senior people, um, with some different roles that are haven't existed before. But um, you know, the growth architect, the uh agenic uh operations lead.

Uh I I struggle with that one. I get we're gonna have to come up with a new name for that. Um uh those are roles that that really are gonna be necessary and gonna have a per a view like a have a very high level of visibility in the organization. Um the um the importance of having a system of record that really does show for the entire growth lifecycle, the entire revenue lifecycle, um, every touch point um and maintains a history so that whether you're in marketing and you're looking at an account or you're in sales and looking at an account or you're in customer success, you you see that entire, right?

The I think of the customer success person that is told, well, sales told me, well, we can solve that now, right? Like if we capture everything sales told them, which we should be able to do, uh, then we can go back and we can identify in the in what was previously unstructured data, now we can identify, oh yeah, we actually did make that commitment. Or no, we this isn't what we said. That's you know, and we can solve for those sorts of things, um, and try to iron out those confusion points.

Anyway, um, you said quick things. Uh and uh and sorry, passion gets away, gets in my way. Um uh where was I? Uh okay, so the last thing then, because I know you're looking at me like wrap this up.

Uh we I'm actually I'm good to go still, but like, you know, we've said the the critical thing to all of this, yes, have a system of record, but if you're going to implement AI in your go-to-market, it has to be governed. It has to be governed. I don't care if you buy Blend Core. I mean, I I do personally, but if you don't have a governed environment and a and a role that um, whether it's an outsourced role or an insourced role, a role that is on the on the you know, in the tower, protecting and making sure that your your digital twin, your digital identity stays you, all of this falls apart.

All of it does. Um, because you start, you in that you inject risk. And as soon as I inject risk, I slow everything down. I can't do what I wanted to do.

And so the key to unlocking ROI in AI enabled go-to-market is making sure that you have governed AI. And um, and so I leave you with that. SPEAKER_01: Amazing. Perfect, nice one, Josh.

Let's wrap it up there. Um, yeah, fun episode. Hopefully, you enjoyed this one as much as we did. Um, and yeah, we will catch you next time.