Beyond Efficiency: Why AI Is Forcing Marketing to Rethink Everything, Not Just Cut Costs

00:00:11:01 - 00:00:32:19 Michael Welcome to disambiguation. I'm your host, Michael Fauscette. Each week, we interview experts in artificial intelligence, generative AI, and business automation to help business leaders understand how to use these tools for the biggest business impacts. 00:00:32:21 - 00:00:45:18 Michael Our show today is beyond efficiency.

AI is forcing marketing to rethink everything, not just cut costs. I'm joined by Kathy Mochi and Patrice Greene, co-founders of inverter. Kathy. Patrice, welcome.

00:00:45:20 - 00:00:48:21 Kathy Thank you. 00:00:48:24 - 00:01:13:26 Michael So just to get us started a bit. Why don't you. You both have very interesting background, so I'd love to explore that a little bit.

Kathy, I know you have an IT background and then came to marketing. Patrice, you were a adopter of the marketing automation world, Marketo. And then you guys co-founded inverter about ten years ago. So just give us a little bit more about yourselves and then also tell us how you know, what was your journey.

00:01:13:27 - 00:01:20:03 Michael How did you get inverter and then kind of where you are today., 00:01:20:06 - 00:01:21:25 Patrice You want to go first and then I'll jump in. 00:01:21:26 - 00:01:25:20 Kathy You you are first, Patrice. 00:01:25:22 - 00:01:58:00 Patrice So my background, early adopter of marketing automation, back in the early days, I actually started out in sports marketing and got to a fork in my career and ended up following this marketing automation B2B path.

And it was there that I actually met Cathy. I spent a lot of years servicing Elko community, the Marketo community, in the early days before we decided to to venture out and start inverter. 00:01:58:06 - 00:02:04:24 Patrice I'll let Kath give a little bit of background on herself, and then I'll sort of merge it as to how we ended up here. 00:02:04:26 - 00:02:30:00 Kathy So I would like to say I'm a long term survivor.

The tech industry I do have Michael, you said and IT ops background. So I've never had the luxury of separating marketing strategy for marketing infrastructure. And so understanding how teams work, how data flows, how systems are built. They're no longer, I think just back office concerns.

It dictates your home marketing infrastructure dictates what marketing can actually do and how people experience your brand. 00:02:30:01 - 00:02:36:19 Kathy Now it's all those things that underpin, you know, technology underpins all that now. So Patrice. 00:02:36:21 - 00:02:57:14 Patrice Yeah.

And so Kath and I met again when we were servicing the marketing automation community. And the firm that I was with at the time was very, you know, what do you need us to do in marketing automation? We'll go do it for you. So think of, you know, tech implementer and and our clients needed strategy.

And so I met Kath and I would pull her into these accounts and be like help them with strategy. 00:02:57:14 - 00:03:16:19 Patrice And I think it was through that that we just really started realizing there was a large gap in the marketplace as marketing technology was being adopted in B2B, and there were a lot of strategists out there that would dream up these strategies that just weren't feasible. I mean, even back in the serious decision days, right? It would be like, here, go do this.

00:03:16:19 - 00:03:36:22 Patrice But then, you know, the word that we would hear from MOS is like, okay, but what do I tell my team to do next? Like, how do I actually translate strategy into operational actions, right. That need to happen? And how do I make sure that my strategy is taking into account these technologies that I have now in my martech stack and taking advantage of them?

00:03:36:22 - 00:03:51:00 Patrice And so we just kind of felt like there was a lot of strategy led, but not tech enabled firms out there. And there were a lot of tech enabled firms out there, but they didn't have strategy. And we really wanted to bridge that gap. And that has been kind of who we are since day one and who we still are.

00:03:51:01 - 00:03:57:28 Patrice Right. You know, strategy led, tech enabled and supporting our clients with that, like roll up your sleeves, operational consulting. 00:03:58:01 - 00:04:22:18 Michael Sure. Now that makes sense.

Well, Kathy, in our prep meeting, you were telling me about a council that you held at the end of 2025, and and I know you said the consensus was that the marketers thought they'd be further along with AI than they actually are, that maybe the the results, the outcomes weren't meeting expectations from a business impact perspective. 00:04:22:19 - 00:04:38:13 Michael Now, that's that's a pretty big gap between, you know, expectations, which have been high on AI for for a while.

And the reality I mean, what do you think? What's wrong? And what were the CMOs telling you about the results that you know, weren't showing up? 00:04:38:15 - 00:05:07:04 Kathy I think everyone started out with gave people tools, they gave people training.

And that's a great it's a great starting point. Like you have to do that. And but I think the value got was people wrote content faster. They summarized meetings but there was never a revenue impact.

And I think two things happened. One, I think teams are at a I think the last two quotes from reason, my teams are at 150% like getting things out the door. 00:05:07:08 - 00:05:34:26 Kathy No one has the brain space left to take on. Like one more thing.

And I also think what happened was everyone got if everyone got better at using AI like I use it, everyone, everyone uses it. But until you start doing workflows where it goes across teams, everything gets optimized for the individual. And so you didn't have a set workflow that said, okay, I'm going to go from campaign to pipeline. 00:05:35:01 - 00:05:57:06 Kathy What does that look like?

What teams where the handoffs. And I think it just gets back to like, I think we know it works now. Like you have to have a measurable outcome. You have to build specific work, you know, have a specific use cases.

You've got to redesign the whole workflow. You have to make managers responsible for helping individuals come up with those use cases. 00:05:57:06 - 00:06:22:01 Kathy Like it can't be you figure it out on your own. And then I think a lot of people, a lot of teams that have been successful start putting that in as a performance measurement.

Some have AI ambassador programs, some make markets actually build and demonstrate use cases. I think not leaving it. The common thread is don't leave it to adoption a chance like you have got to create clarity, accountability and support around it. 00:06:22:02 - 00:06:29:22 Kathy I think everyone initially just said they thought just magically happen and it doesn't.

So I think that's where people are now. 00:06:29:25 - 00:06:52:12 Michael It was interesting over the last couple of years, conversations with executives, not just in marketing, but certainly applies, I think, to what you were just talking about was that focus really, especially with generative AI, was was the focus was purely on productivity. And and to me that, you know, it sounds interesting, but the but the problem was nobody was trained, nobody knew how to use the tools.

00:06:52:12 - 00:07:10:16 Michael And productivity didn't necessarily reach the outcome that you're looking for. Right. So that's that's an interesting observation from a CMO perspective to that, that, you know, the focus on the right metrics, but also the workflow really is the driver of that. And I think we tend to get focused on the tech sometimes.

00:07:10:19 - 00:07:13:03 Kathy I think overly focus on the tech. 00:07:13:06 - 00:07:16:20 Speaker 5 That's always been five five. 00:07:16:22 - 00:07:18:26 Patrice Figure out business impact later. 00:07:18:28 - 00:07:19:10 Speaker 5 Yeah.

00:07:19:12 - 00:07:43:10 Michael Well, and I mean, I grew up in the tech world, so I, I understand that from a vendor perspective, but from a user perspective, little rough. You know, Patrice, you said something that I thought really captured a lot of this, you know, that that last year people focused on efficiency. They piled on their workflows and in the pipeline didn't go up. 00:07:43:10 - 00:07:55:07 Michael Nothing changed.

So, you know, now the question is now what? I mean, if the efficiency gains weren't translating into revenue, what do you think marketing leaders should be doing differently this year? 00:07:55:09 - 00:08:13:00 Patrice Yeah, I mean, I think it's sort of piggybacks on what Cath was saying when, you know, she was leading our councils and she's done some interviews with some of our clients. And, you know, I don't even know if efficiency gains actually have been truly realized.

I think individuals have figured out how to do their jobs better. Right. They've figured out, wow. 00:08:13:01 - 00:08:32:20 Patrice Like, I can do my job more effectively.

I can get more done. That's both great and bad because now I'm being asked to do more. But I think now what we're seeing is just a recognition, like a recognition of okay, that's great. Right?

Like we everybody in my team is using it. But now how what's the next step that I take? 00:08:32:20 - 00:08:55:20 Patrice And I think those are the conversations that we're having now, which is like you tell me, what are the use cases that are going to drive business impact? How do we think about this where we just talked about, you said, you know, people by technology and, you know, it's rarely a technology problem I'm actually seeing right now.

There's a rapid adoption of AI solutions point solutions at that. 00:08:55:20 - 00:09:08:06 Patrice So I think we're going to start to see rev tech stocks kind of balloon overnight because people are they don't want to be left behind. Fear of missing out right. And so they're they're trying the latest thing and they're buying I mean every client we go into it's like have you heard of this one.

Have you heard of this one? 00:09:08:07 - 00:09:24:28 Patrice And so I think we're going to start to see an effort to try to figure out which of these is having an impact. How do I rethink think people are really thinking about how do I rethink marketing and how we operate? And I think it's an opportunity to really rethink the demand model and how we go about engaging with our buyers.

00:09:24:28 - 00:09:33:07 Patrice So we're starting to see CMOs take a step back and go, right, where do I start? What are the use cases and how do I rethink the way that we're doing marketing? 00:09:33:09 - 00:09:56:07 Michael I mean, I think that's really productive. I know a lot of the companies that I've talked to lately, they that focus on productivity, the focus on perhaps the, the, the, the tech more than the problem, sort of ended up automating a bunch of broken processes that you just they were just broken faster, right?

It didn't really didn't really solve anything. 00:09:56:07 - 00:09:57:15 Speaker 5 So yeah. 00:09:57:16 - 00:10:13:24 Patrice That's we say that, by the way, a lot of, you know, with with AI right now and, you know, folks on our team that Cathy's working with day in and day out is, you know, this client. If they want us to help them with this problem they came to us with, we're just going to be using AI to automate bad process or broken process.

00:10:13:25 - 00:10:26:19 Patrice And so getting people to understand that we actually need to focus on process first, you know, is, is is a challenge, especially when speed is really right. There's a there's a real palpable feeling of needing to move with speed right now. 00:10:26:25 - 00:10:27:21 Speaker 5 Yeah. 00:10:27:24 - 00:10:47:02 Michael Yeah.

Well, and I mean, that's you're right about the FOMO part. I think that's true. And you know, honestly too, that the history of marketing tech for the last 20 years has been very fragmented. Right.

There's a there are a lot of little point solutions that people brought in. They could easily bring them in with a credit card. 00:10:47:02 - 00:11:02:00 Michael And it wasn't a prize wide sort of thing. And so you just had all this fragmented tech that wasn't really tied together all the time either.

So it's kind of a situation that's been there, and now we just add AI on top of it. 00:11:02:02 - 00:11:03:26 Speaker 5 Yep. Yeah. 00:11:04:03 - 00:11:28:26 Michael So Cathy I know you compared you know what's happening now with marketing to what happened in the European supply chain.

You know, around 2000. And, you know, the idea that you have to rethink the whole workflow, not just bolt AI onto what you already have. And that's a big ask for marketing. I mean, what does this really look like to when you redesign your go to market workflows with AI?

00:11:28:28 - 00:11:32:09 Michael You know, at the core, rather than just a bolt on? 00:11:32:12 - 00:11:59:25 Kathy I think it is. It's it's back, like you said, the ERP days, I mean, finance, supply chain, manufacturing, how to work together. And they were not used to doing that.

And so it has to take that's why this has to come from the CMO. They're the only ones that can have each make each team work together. So as Patrice they don't do the same work faster, pick an outcome that you know, cuts across a lot of teams could be account prioritization, could be campaign to pipeline. 00:11:59:26 - 00:12:22:05 Kathy If it's campaign to pipeline, you've got to say, okay, where's the research happening?

Where am I losing time? Where to approval slow things down. We're in multiple people creating sort of the same thing going on. Where does strategy and production begin?

And, you know, the old days you used to get in like a workflow. You get a whiteboard and post-it notes and pull it out. 00:12:22:05 - 00:12:53:16 Kathy And but now I think what you have to decide. Then once that's there, what can I do?

What can agents do? Where do you need humans in it? And I think if you skip that step like Patrice, just accelerate the mess you had. And it's already messy.

A campaign process because it involves, as you know, product marketing, marketing ops campaign people, the social people, and the only one that can really drive that change and making it happen. 00:12:53:19 - 00:13:17:01 Michael Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you know, it seems to me that that marketing in general is not really been focused around use case and workflows. Right?

It's it's not necessarily the core strength, maybe. But if you if you outsource it to it, which is, you know, a place where a lot of companies have focused on workflow and process, they don't know marketing. 00:13:17:01 - 00:13:41:26 Michael So like, who should own this? How do you know how to organizations bridge that gap?

You said the CMO, can the CMO really accomplish that when we cross organizations? And, you know, what do you, you know, as a firm that comes in and Virta come in. How do you play in this to help, you know, get both sides at the table talking? 00:13:41:28 - 00:13:43:28 Kathy Patricia want to take that to start and I'll just.

00:13:44:00 - 00:13:44:28 Patrice Yeah, yeah, I'll take. 00:13:44:28 - 00:13:46:04 Kathy The. 00:13:46:07 - 00:14:10:15 Patrice You can follow up with me. But you know, I think there's a couple of things.

I think sometimes companies like inverted right, that sort of understand strategy, understand what I would call it, the rev ops infrastructure part of B2B. We're usually translators, quite honestly. And I think robots actually really strong rev ops internal resources can act as translators, especially right now there's a lot of discussion on, you know, when you think about build versus by. 00:14:10:15 - 00:14:24:01 Patrice And if we're going to build and we're going to leverage AI, are we going to use internal teams that are sitting in it?

And I could go down a rabbit hole and what's going to end up there? Because I think marketing is going to be the the last person that's going to get access to the, to those resources. 00:14:24:03 - 00:14:43:26 Patrice So then usually they end up having to use their own internal rev ops team who are also overloaded, which is why then they turned outside firms for support. So I think it's translation of the outcome.

They're trying to drive towards what's happening right inside the world of marketers and technically, what we need to do to make this solution come to life. 00:14:43:26 - 00:15:01:26 Patrice So I think that's a huge component that that we help them play. And Kathy and I actually talked last week about this. We were spending some time on on our own AI solutions for our clients and said, you know, we kind of were like, throw away the word transformation.

It's really about helping our clients get traction with AI. 00:15:01:28 - 00:15:25:10 Patrice I think sometimes transformation can feel like so big. And by the way, what are we transforming to? Because we need to rethink the way marketing works.

And I think a lot is going to change over the next 18 months. And if anybody says, this is where we're going. I think they're just theorizing. Right.

And so it's about how do we get traction to move in this direction with all this opportunity that surrounds us right now? 00:15:25:13 - 00:15:46:26 Kathy I also think another aspect is if you go back to the supply chain days, Michael Partners came in a lot because you are the neutral third party trying to mediate. This is what marketing wants. This is what sales wants is what I want.

This is what the rev ops team and really trying to come up with. It's a lot of facilitation. 00:15:46:27 - 00:16:06:13 Kathy I mean, that's what those firms came in to do. And I think where we come as we understand marketing, but we also understand workflows, data, how teams work together.

So I think we've got to have marketing expertise. You have to have organizational design expertise. You have to know how to facilitate. You have to know data in systems and workflow design.

00:16:06:13 - 00:16:26:04 Kathy And it doesn't end there. Because to roll this out you need change management. Like now we have to work differently. Like and so I think there's a lot of skills.

And even if marketing could do a workflow and a design, they throw it over it. It's going to they don't know what to go to market motion looks like and where all those strategic points are. 00:16:26:06 - 00:16:30:25 Kathy So I think you'd get back a solution doesn't really work. And then who's going to roll it out?

00:16:30:27 - 00:16:31:09 Speaker 5 I also. 00:16:31:09 - 00:16:55:18 Patrice Think on the change management, I think there's a new component that, you know, we talk, she said mediate. Sometimes we call ourselves marketing therapist. Right.

But I think there's I think there's anything in here which is you've got teams and resources that have anxiety and fear about their jobs right now, and you really need to make sure the communication around change management is sensitive, right to to what's going on in their world right now. 00:16:55:20 - 00:16:55:28 Speaker 5 Yeah. 00:16:56:00 - 00:17:15:19 Kathy I think the the difference also a change management. Michael.

If you look back you around in those early days we had an end goal we were going towards with AI. There is no end result. Like what it's going to look like freebies from now. No one knows.

So it's like it's it's a very different type of change management. 00:17:15:19 - 00:17:24:01 Kathy And I've been rethinking what does that look like when it's going to be like, well, this is what it looks like now. But when Claude has a new update or Gemini comes out. 00:17:24:03 - 00:17:26:03 Patrice Dynamic management.

00:17:26:06 - 00:17:37:21 Kathy That's what it's going to come down to is how do you how do you keep that that upkeep, that design, that maintenance of it all? I mean, you're managing systems now, and that's not a marketing expertise. 00:17:37:24 - 00:17:38:13 Speaker 5 Yeah. 00:17:38:15 - 00:18:11:19 Michael I mean, most of the the companies that I've seen that have, you know, had failures or problems with their implementation, they were misdirected to focus on the tech and not on the people.

And I think you hit on the big issue there. Right? It's there's a lot of there's there's a need to develop trust in the AI. But over time, that trust has turned into fear that, you know, both from a personal job perspective, but also a fear of what might happen from a, you know, things operate at machine speed.

00:18:11:21 - 00:18:20:07 Michael Does that provide greater brand risk, perhaps, than you would have had with other kind of approaches and that sort of thing? So interesting. 00:18:20:13 - 00:18:32:19 Kathy I think accountability is going to be huge. So if you approve the workflow and something goes wrong.

Are you responsible? Like who, who who do you point the finger at when something goes off. 00:18:32:21 - 00:18:34:25 Speaker 5 Yeah yeah yeah. 00:18:34:25 - 00:19:02:25 Michael That's and it's certainly it gets more complicated the more agents and the more autonomous agents you mix into that problem.

Yeah. You know, we talked a little bit earlier about the C-suite focus on productivity, particularly in marketing. And I think, you know, we've seen that result in some cost cutting reductions, that sort of thing. And and I you know, last year I saw a quote from Gartner.

00:19:02:25 - 00:19:25:22 Michael They said that 50 to 60% of the people you fire today, you're going to need to rehire in two years. I mean, how do you think CMOs ought to be framing this conversation, particularly, you know, when they need to push back on the board or on the CEO when they just focus on this cost cutting narrative and, and, you know, how do you make a better case for a different kind of investment here? 00:19:25:25 - 00:19:50:04 Patrice I mean, Cath, I'll be interested in your in your thoughts here.

But I feel like whatever they do they can't be the receiver of right. What to do with AI. And I think if you allow the business to form a position on what marketing should be doing with AI, and then there's a mandate that's coming down to cut costs, that's that's going to be hard to recover from. 00:19:50:04 - 00:20:15:10 Patrice I think, you know, the strongest CMOs need to have political capital, right, to be in the room for those types of conversations.

And they better quickly, right. Make sure that they're setting a vision for where AI can enhance the business, not even just marketing. Right. Because marketing's, you know, always been the department where we can't really justify the cost that we give you.

00:20:15:12 - 00:20:17:00 Patrice You know. 00:20:17:02 - 00:20:19:04 Michael I think we should invest here, but. 00:20:19:10 - 00:20:39:27 Patrice It's not like you to see where, you know, it's a little bit easier because we can see direct, you know, transactional information. And so, you know, we've got buyer groups that are very large and whatnot.

And so I think that there's a need for political capital and a vision for how marketing can impact the business and the role AI is going to play in that impact. 00:20:39:27 - 00:20:58:22 Patrice And that story can't be all about efficiency, right? That story has got to be about being able to reach your buyers, your audience, your clients in a much in a way that we couldn't do previously. That's going to impact the brand experience and really elevate that brand and bring you above your competition.

00:20:58:25 - 00:21:16:26 Kathy I think especially now, you have to have that revenue conversation. It has to be how do we grow our accounts? Like Patrice said, how do you grow? That's a growth conversation, especially now that by a journey is going to be AI mediated.

If you're not investing now with how you show up, you are not even going to be in the conversation. 00:21:16:28 - 00:21:18:27 Kathy Like this is where you need investment. 00:21:19:02 - 00:21:37:02 Patrice And then you got CEOs that are like cut costs because they think of they think of marketing sometimes, unfortunately, is still like, you know, you know, execution. Right.

It's just putting emails out and ads out. And that's like Kathy just said, no, your buyers are going to be right, experiencing your brand in a whole new way. And so you need to be thinking about AI's impact. 00:21:37:02 - 00:21:45:09 Patrice They're not just in cost efficiency.

I mean, there is cost, by the way. There is efficiencies to be gained. There's no denying that. It's just that's not the whole picture.

00:21:45:16 - 00:21:46:07 Speaker 5 Yeah. 00:21:46:08 - 00:22:12:00 Michael I mean, that does seem that that does seem very interesting from the from the idea that we've really focused on this, this productivity piece or the cost cutting piece. And yet the, the real opportunity perhaps is more about shifting that focus to grown revenue or, you know, figuring out ways to do that marketing brand experience more effectively with your customers. 00:22:12:00 - 00:22:18:00 Michael And that's that's a bit harder to measure, but it is measurable.

00:22:18:02 - 00:22:32:08 Kathy Yeah. Well, if you're not planning for that now, you will not be around. I mean, that is totally changing how buyers are going to buy. And if you're just think you're going to cut costs, you won't even be in the you won't even show up on the results in AI when people are looking for you.

00:22:32:12 - 00:22:33:21 Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. 00:22:33:21 - 00:22:52:08 Michael It's interesting. I mean, I've done surveys for several years now around buyer behavior and how much it's shifted. And, and I, you know, when I, when I worked with sales and sales tech companies, I often talked about the fact that we tend to to try to sell the way we've always sold, even though buyers are not buying the same way.

00:22:52:09 - 00:23:09:25 Michael So when we when we have issues, we think it's productivity, right? If you, you know, if 100 coal calls don't work, then a thousand must be better and 2000 must be even better. And yet the numbers don't really ever drive the results that you're looking for. 00:23:09:27 - 00:23:10:19 Speaker 5 Yeah.

00:23:10:21 - 00:23:32:28 Michael So so you guys mentioned to me, and I like this a lot. Probably if there are any McKinsey friends in the audience, you won't like this. But you called it the McKinsey threat that, you know, if marketers don't define how AI fits into function, then pretty soon the management consultants are going to come in and define it for you, and then you lose control over, you know, the process and the outcomes. 00:23:33:01 - 00:23:43:16 Michael What you know, how real is that risk and and how does CMOs, you know, what do they need to do right now to stay ahead of that?

00:23:43:19 - 00:24:05:12 Kathy I'll, I'll you can chime in. So I think I think CMOs need to step up and play and say, how is AI. You know, they need to find how it changes marketing, what roles are going to be transformed, what skills does require, what processes need to get redesigned. And they have to come up and document a point of view that's defensible and connected to business outcomes.

00:24:05:12 - 00:24:37:01 Kathy I mean, that's all it is. And then say, here's how the go to market is changing. And then here's the decisions I made on investments and here's why. Here's what I'm keeping core.

Here's what AI is helping and here's what we're outsourcing. And they've got to put it together. But I'd say it's more than just McKinsey if you're bringing in outside systems, if you're not defining your own workflows and where judgment is where these different things happen, the software companies deciding that or your CFO is deciding, like you have got to make those decisions about marketing. 00:24:37:01 - 00:24:39:21 Kathy And I don't.

00:24:39:22 - 00:24:40:04 Speaker 5 Know. 00:24:40:06 - 00:24:40:19 Patrice I think. 00:24:40:19 - 00:24:41:10 Kathy If they step. 00:24:41:10 - 00:24:41:27 Speaker 5 Up.

00:24:42:02 - 00:25:11:19 Patrice To me. We've seen this before. I mean, this is this is, you know, when finance CEOs, executive teams, you know, bring in outside, whether it's a McKinsey and outside consultant whatnot. And again, marketing is a receiver.

They are they are invited to the to the to the table to be told the output right of that work. And that's oftentimes I mean, this is back in the days when like demand centers came about and it was like, how would you centralize, decentralize? 00:25:11:19 - 00:25:32:04 Patrice What kind of organizational model do you have for marketing? We saw this come about because they would be doing organizational studies with the McKinsey, and then that would be, you know, marketing was one component of that, and there was no understanding of how marketing operates.

And so oftentimes back then, we would be supporting the marketer in what they need to go to that meeting with and how they control that. 00:25:32:04 - 00:25:46:09 Patrice And I think this is very I think this is very similar. It sort of touches on what we just talked about with the CEO right, in the C-suite, and just making sure that marketing is driving that vision for what's needed in marketing and not and not being the receptor of it. 00:25:46:14 - 00:25:46:25 Speaker 5 Yeah.

00:25:46:27 - 00:26:07:06 Michael I mean, it kind of reminds me in a way, you know, you talk about having to to fall back to to the to the technologist and, you know, the vendors as they come in, they redefine your process based on the process of the, of the product. I mean, that was sort of the problem that got way out of hand in the late 90s and early 2000 with ERP. 00:26:07:07 - 00:26:20:25 Michael Right? The the rigid process versus coming in and actually trying to redesign around the workflow that you needed to do in your individual business, not some best practice kind of an approach.

00:26:20:27 - 00:26:44:25 Patrice Yeah. Well, I mean, think about Salesforce. Think about the early days of Salesforce and right, you know, the ability to really highly customize that environment to your own unique sales process. And I think marketing technology has been, you know, the original Lopez Marketo is part out.

So has been somewhat limited in that flexibility. I think AI is going to bring the ability to really, truly customize operational workflow right, for environments. 00:26:44:25 - 00:27:00:07 Patrice Because again, if you sell $1 million solution and you have an 18 month sales cycle, you have a very different right approach to marketing than somebody that's selling a $5,000 solution that can be bought on an Amex by the believer. Right.

Very different. 00:27:00:09 - 00:27:30:02 Michael Oh that's fair. So, Cathy, you published some work on future State of the Marketing Organization. And I'm curious about this for box framework that you put in place for thinking about what strategic and core versus what's operational, non-core, when to hire internally versus outsource versus automate.

I mean, can you walk us through that model and how it applies to an organization that's trying to figure out where AI agents fit into their team structure? 00:27:30:04 - 00:27:52:02 Kathy Yeah, I think part of this goes back to how do CMOs have a framework to say where does AI fit? What do I have to have internal versus what is external? Where is efficiency.

And so I went back to that Jeffrey Moore what's corn. What's context. And he had a four box. And if you remember the top right hand is that's what that's what differentiated business.

00:27:52:02 - 00:28:18:25 Kathy That's the strategic part of it. That would be your narrative your position, your competitive research, your pricing, your packaging, anything that really differentiate. You know, you're you're tearing of accounts that you keep in house. AI can help across all.

But that's not you decide where that would help. Then think of the other side. So the top left side still strategic, but things that depend on what you've come up in the top right corner. 00:28:18:25 - 00:28:39:28 Kathy So think if you could outsource it though, you're going to do your ABM campaigns, your content, your content strategy, your martech design, like all that type of stuff can fit up there.

If you look at the bottom left hand corner, even though it's operational, so think of it source of advantage as your x axis, your y axis, the strategic outcomes. 00:28:39:28 - 00:29:10:03 Kathy So if you got operational stuff like I said, how people experience your brand now is through how your tech is set up on those processes. So think of it as workflow. This is your institutional excellent budget management workflow designs, customer relationship management anything like that.

And that again you want to probably keep the core design in house. And then anything in the bottom left hand is you could outsource that SEO, blog creation, media tracking, anything like that. 00:29:10:04 - 00:29:29:16 Kathy And so it starts to give you a framework about what strategic and what what isn't, what's operational. And then I think from there you can decide this is how I'm using AI, but I'm using it just in these core areas to support, like it's more of a thought partner in your top right hand corner or the bottom, it can do all that execution.

00:29:29:18 - 00:29:46:22 Kathy Execution will work, but also thinks it gives you credibility. If you're going into a meeting with the board or with the executive team, you just can't go and say, well, this is what I think it's like. Here's how I'm thinking about it. Let people push back on your strategy.

Like I said, you've got to define where AI fits in marketing. 00:29:46:24 - 00:29:58:07 Kathy You need a framework to to defend it. Other than well, you know, this person sits here, so I want to keep them. It's like, no, this is you know, realistically I'm thinking about to drive revenue outcomes.

00:29:58:09 - 00:30:19:15 Michael I mean, it is interesting to you mentioned the the areas that you could outsource in the past. And now the opportunity could be that, you know, some AI solutions can take care of what you might have outsourced to an agency or something before or two. So there's that's opportunity. But you have to understand which pieces can can be dealt with in each way.

00:30:19:15 - 00:30:20:24 Michael That makes sense. 00:30:20:26 - 00:30:34:20 Kathy And no one has unlimited time and budget. So I think you need to be strategic about like I said, teams are already maxed out, so where's the best bang for your buck on that. And but it gives you a way to start to decide that.

00:30:34:22 - 00:30:55:08 Michael Yeah that makes sense. So one of the things that I keep coming back to in this show and book that I published last year to, you know, about digital workforce and you know how humans and AI agents need to work together in a hybrid model. When we apply that to marketing, what do you think that hybrid team should look like? 00:30:55:09 - 00:31:10:25 Michael And are we heading towards that world where, you know, marketing managers or managing agents and humans, you know, onboarding roles, performance reviews, all those things?

I mean, do you see that model emerging? 00:31:10:27 - 00:31:29:22 Patrice I mean, I do, I think that and we have some clients that have talked about their vision of this. And I think what we will see, I think first, though, workflow has to get redesigned because we wouldn't really, I think, to try to take existing workflow and then use agents, I think would be a disservice to what's possible, right, in a future state world. 00:31:29:22 - 00:31:52:14 Patrice But I think once you redefined workflow and you think about it in the world of to Cathy's four box, what needs to be strategic and in-house, and where do I leverage my best marketers right to to get more out of them to scale?

Right. My best marketers? Where can where do they have agents that they potentially manage? Where is their human lead versus where is their human in the loop?

00:31:52:15 - 00:32:16:09 Patrice And I do think we'll start to see outsource to Cathy's point about budget. I think that there's going to be a move or a mandate for marketing to have more variability in their budget so that the business can scale up and down that budget. And that means you need much more of a flexible workforce, right? And so I think we'll see a combination of outsourcing as well as a combination of managing agents.

00:32:16:12 - 00:32:39:15 Kathy But I think you have similar management challenges with agents as you have with people. They'll be different. So you imagine all these capabilities, but as the manager, you still need to set the goals. What are the constraints look like?

What does good look like you're going to have to do quote performance reviews like you're reviewing the work. Still you're responsible and there's going to be performance reviews like the strategy changes. 00:32:39:15 - 00:32:47:18 Kathy What do I need to do. So I think it's going to you'll be an orchestrator, but it'll be interesting how you end up the agents.

00:32:47:21 - 00:32:53:21 Patrice The the ability for like because right now there's always a problem of random acts of marketing and marketing. Right? And is. 00:32:53:21 - 00:32:54:08 Speaker 5 It.

00:32:54:10 - 00:33:09:12 Patrice A strategic plan? And are we staying to that plan and are the teams operating together? I actually think, Kathy, like the way that you're describing it, there's probably a heightened ability for random acts of marketing. If you don't have the the oversight and control over it.

00:33:09:14 - 00:33:29:04 Kathy Well. And if you don't have the guardrails, one of the small experiments we started with a client is they had a very good brand name. They were high end, but we were running just trying to test the media and having an agent run it. Well, the agent initially, we just tuned it for performance.

Well, the ad that did best was one that was like this. 00:33:29:07 - 00:33:46:12 Kathy Basically a discount free like a free thing. Well, it over optimized for that. But over time, if we had not caught that, their brand would have started to be a low cost provider.

And so that's why I say you have to manage your agents and really watch. What are the goals you're giving it? What are the guardrails? 00:33:46:14 - 00:33:47:22 Speaker 5 Yeah.

Yeah I mean. 00:33:47:24 - 00:34:11:03 Michael It's goals and and and those boundaries, those guardrails, those hard guardrails have to be tied in. That makes a lot of sense, particularly in a performance environment. And that shift too, right.

I mean, we don't measure performance of the technology tools the same way we'd measure performance of a, of a digital worker that we're actually trying to treat like a part of our hybrid workforce. 00:34:11:05 - 00:34:12:25 Kathy Interesting times. 00:34:12:27 - 00:34:13:26 Speaker 5 Yes it is. 00:34:13:28 - 00:34:43:19 Michael Well, so we we talked a little bit about buyer behavior shift.

And you know, I think that, you know, that's been acknowledged now for, for several years that that buyers were changing. And of course with the, you know, with, with all the answer engine type situation. Now to these buyers have much more access to information. But you know, for this year, I know you guys have a theme around this, around this shift.

00:34:43:21 - 00:34:56:21 Michael I mean, how how do you think AI's reshaping the buyer's journey and and what does that mean for how marketing and sales need to adapt to the go to market approach? 00:34:56:23 - 00:35:00:08 Kathy Just let me start. 00:35:00:10 - 00:35:23:14 Kathy Well, I mean, even we are getting inquiries that people found us on AI. So I mean, there's just the whole thing about how do you rethink when you have to create content and messaging for machines and for people?

So there's that whole goal, whatever you want to call that you don't have to think about. I also think you have to rethink your whole content. 00:35:23:15 - 00:35:44:00 Kathy How do you get it consistent across all your different channels, across all the people that interact with clients? Because if and if you're not clear, with all that, AI will fill in the gaps.

They're going to decide the impression of your brand. So I think really understanding how that works, but also for a client coming in like you're going to have to have a tighter go to market with sales. 00:35:44:00 - 00:35:56:03 Kathy So what are these accounts? What is the intent?

How are we reading those signals together and how are you giving them that message also to interact with the by when they finally come? I mean, Patrice. 00:35:56:06 - 00:36:18:24 Patrice I mean, I think you you hit the nail on the head and people think about the well, if we talk about buyer groups, right. And the buyer's journey and fire changing.

Right. Two years ago it was changing. Now we have agents potentially doing research on behalf. So you now have a new role in the buyer group that we have to consider in terms of the agent role and what that's doing, and how do we organize our content so that they can find us.

00:36:18:25 - 00:36:45:24 Patrice I think the stat is, you know what, 70% of the journey is done before they reach out to you. Oh, and by the way, if you're not in their short list from day one, your chances are like, I don't know, below 5% or something. So it's it's don't quote me directly on that. But but so I think that I think that we have to really consider, you know, how access to information, how our content is being organized to provide that access to the information, how our website is being managed.

00:36:45:25 - 00:37:05:12 Patrice We're hearing clients want to, you know, and I think I just saw a post from somebody on LinkedIn that was comparing websites from a month ago to websites today and their positioning around AI. And so that was the point of the post was all around their position. I my head was going to look how fast they're updating their website to meet buyers with where they are in real time. 00:37:05:12 - 00:37:29:28 Patrice And so now we have to update our websites way differently than we ever did in the past.

And so that's going to require all new workflows and solutions and ways that we work internally to be able to meet that need. And then like Kathy said with ABM, I think now it's also how do you use AI to be able to execute a go to market in a way that we always envisioned, but could never actually do because of time constraints to get it done? 00:37:29:28 - 00:37:45:03 Patrice So think about research that would allow us to get so specific and scale 1 to 1 programs we could not.

If you talk to us two years ago and you told us you had 50 accounts in your 1 to 1 program, we're like, there's no way you have. Right? Like that's if you truly want to do 1 to 1. 00:37:45:04 - 00:37:55:16 Patrice Even the level of research that's required is.

So now there's actually an ability to all these things. So it goes back to the theme of rethinking the way we work. Right? 00:37:55:18 - 00:37:56:16 Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:56:16 - 00:38:00:00 Michael It changes the scale a lot on some of those things too. That's interesting. 00:38:00:06 - 00:38:03:21 Kathy Yeah. What used to be a luxury is now possible.

00:38:03:24 - 00:38:05:14 Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. 00:38:05:20 - 00:38:33:09 Michael Well, so looking at your own clients and I, you know, I assume they're probably, you know, businesses I talked to in general kind of moved through proof of concept or MVP. You know, they have some hypothesis they're trying to test that sort of thing. And now just starting to move into production with a lot of those systems.

I mean, for the marketing leaders in the audience who are at that same place trying to figure out, you know, where do you start? 00:38:33:10 - 00:38:44:13 Michael How do you move through the the proof of concept pilot? What's the most important thing? They could they should, you know, get right now before they, they try to scale.

00:38:44:15 - 00:38:45:00 Patrice That's all you. 00:38:45:01 - 00:38:47:08 Speaker 5 Can. 00:38:47:10 - 00:39:11:25 Kathy A use case where you have like a workflow, a workflow problem with a measurable outcome. And I think that it's small enough that you can learn from it, but big enough that it will actually matter when you put it in place.

And so you've got to have you've got to have a way to show this is going to work, and you've got to go across teams to make it stick and then drive that change management, but pick some workflow. 00:39:11:26 - 00:39:40:09 Kathy It is a problem and there's a measurable outcome. Like we want to increase campaign strategy to execution by 25%, but pick something and then do it. The other one that's probably the biggest one right now is between marketing and like BDS, are probably being disrupted far more than marketing.

That whole world is changing. In fact, I did a whole session on it on actually two sessions on Friday about that. 00:39:40:09 - 00:40:00:03 Kathy So again, that could be a good one. Like the handoff between marketing and sales.

So think of account prioritization. You have to get marketing, BDR sales and rev ops all on the same page. And just getting those definitions. What does good look like.

How are we going to interpret these signals. What are those handoffs look like? What's going to be relevant when we do that. 00:40:00:03 - 00:40:12:03 Kathy Just getting that down.

Then you know add the AI in in the workflow. But just coming up with those definitions make a huge difference whether you had AI or not. Actually. 00:40:12:06 - 00:40:13:01 Speaker 5 Yeah.

00:40:13:04 - 00:40:18:16 Michael I mean, just having the right metrics in place and being able to measure against them can drive a lot of performance. 00:40:18:18 - 00:40:20:27 Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. 00:40:21:00 - 00:40:38:03 Michael Well, so that's all the time we have for the conversation today. Really interesting by the way.

Thank you for that. But before I let you go, one thing I'd like to do at the end of every episode is get recommendations for the audience. You know, somebody that you think would be interesting for them to follow, thought leader and author. 00:40:38:09 - 00:40:49:15 Michael And I've had all kinds of interesting suggestions.

So, you know. Feel free to to to let your imagination wander a bit there. But but I'd love to to get a recommendation from each of you, if I could, for the audience. 00:40:49:18 - 00:41:11:16 Patrice That would be so interesting to see who you say.

If your audience is caring about B2B marketing specifically. I honestly think Harry Cunningham. I think he's one of the most insightful, interesting. He has the research to back it up and I just I honestly every single solitary thing he post, I learn every single one.

He just makes me think differently. 00:41:11:18 - 00:41:15:19 Patrice And so I find him pretty fascinating to follow. 00:41:15:21 - 00:41:35:20 Kathy I agree, but I feel he's a friend now, so, you know, you could not have to say you've given Kerry. I'll tell from an author, Jeff Woods.

He has written, I think came out a year, the AI driven leader, and he has a podcast. He has posts all the time. And if you're a CMO, I think it's great. 00:41:35:22 - 00:41:37:27 Kathy Any leader in the organization should read it.

And follow him. You're going To learn a lot, right? 00:41:41:00 - 00:41:47:02 Michael Very good recommendations. Thanks very much.

And thank you both for joining me today. Really enjoyed the conversation. 00:41:47:04 - 00:41:47:27 Kathy Thank you. 00:41:48:00 - 00:41:54:00 Patrice For having us.

It was a ton of fun. 00:41:54:02 - 00:42:18:04 Michael And that's the show for this week. Thank you all for joining us. Remember to like, share and subscribe to the show.

If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review to help others find us. For more research on AI and other software, check out arionresearch.com. If you're an expert in AI, generative AI, or business automation, either as a provider or an inducer, email your information to disambiguation at arionresearch.

com. Don't forget to join us next week. Disambiguation is an Arion Research production. I'm Michael Fauscette and this is the disambiguation podcast.