102. Series 4 | Episode 2. Demand-Gen Strategies to Drive B2B Startup Success, with Kartik Krishnan, B2B GTM Leader

Speaker A: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Market Mentors podcast. I'm Matt Dodgson, co founder of Market Recruitment and we connect B2B tech and SaaS businesses with marketers to help them grow. This week we're joined by Kartik Krishnan. Karthik started his career at Google deep in AdWords before working for B2B tech scale ups like on Fido, CapDesk and BMary, a UK unicorn, plus a stint at Founders Factory helping startups. Across all these roles he's been involved in demand generation, whether that be digital inbound, abm, growth, marketing. So he's well placed to discuss how to tackle demand gen at uh, early stage startups. I hope you enjoy. So welcome to the podcast, Kartek.

Speaker B: Thanks Matt, good to be here.

Speaker A: Uh, so we're here to talk about demand generation at uh, early stage B2B tech companies. As a marketer, as you all know, these are some of the toughest jobs out there. Limited budgets, limited bandwidth, high expectations, the list goes on. So our aim with this podcast is to simplify things and bring some ideas for marketers in this situation. But before we dive into these ideas, some terminology, let's get it out of the way. Demand generation, demand creation, demand capture. What do these things mean to you?

Speaker B: I don't want to throw terminologies for the sake of terminologies. I hate when people get stuck into the semantics of it all. But what I think what's important is early, uh, stage founders. Now look, we all know that things are getting tighter, so they're not going to have a luxury of four, five, seven different people doing these things for them. They're going to have to think about these things themselves. That's something I've been speaking to for a little while. I don't think that that's. Well, it's just become even more the case now than ever before. But as you do that, it's probably typical for a founder to leverage their network to speak to some of the businesses that, you know, why they even started their B2B business in the first place. So they have a kernel of accounts that they've thought about and then they're doing either there's, then there's a spectrum of different types of founders. There are those who are probably doing a lot of good brand building. So what I would say some of the demand generation piece also you need to do, are they missing an opportunity with actually going out to the accounts that they do care about that will that they have the right to win and Capturing them. So that demand capture piece, or at the other end of the spectrum, there are businesses and founders who, as I say, have that first set of accounts that they had always thought about. That's why they built the business. And they stay there and they're waiting and they're watching and they're maybe doing bare minimum amounts of demand generation. They're doing very little of proactively going out, telling people what they could achieve with a business like theirs. And without that, you're not generating enough interest, you're not gonna be able to capture enough. Does that make sense?

Speaker A: Yeah, it does. And you're right, this terminology can be used in different ways by different people. I always think of demand generation as being the overarching topic or subject or area, whatever you want to call it, classify it as a category. And then demand creation is getting out there and putting out interesting content that creates that demand. So that if somebody says, oh, do you know what, I've got a problem here, they think of your solution first. Whereas then demand capture is more kind of capturing that existing interest in the market. And that could be somebody like Googling something. So it could be SEO, it could be content, it could be paid ads, that kind of stuff. So that's how in my head, how I always kind of split it up. But it does vary.

Speaker B: It's not even about how exactly split up. It's just that you do need to recognize there are two different bits of activities in there. Right. Like you said. And I fear that too many companies are doing mostly, I think, I think I could put most company, most founders in the bucket of doing a little bit of demand capture. And while they don't have the luxury to hire a marketer who's going to help them build a great brand and put a lot of marketing activities out there, they cannot not invest some time and energy. They have to be doing something on the, hey, here's what we can bring to your world. This is why we exist. And one fine day you'll be ready for our business. Then they can demand capture, right? Because if you just wait for the business that are in market ready to be captured, you're just not capturing enough. And you're not going to give yourself enough pipeline, you're not going to give yourself enough revenue.

Speaker A: And why do you think companies then struggle with this then? Especially early stage B2B tech companies?

Speaker B: Well, I think, um, it is a tough skill, right? So the reason you have a whole marketing team probably is because, you know, you have to do stuff that is outside of your comfort zone, perhaps to put stuff out, messages out there that'll demand, generate and that I'm not even talking about like really clever, sophisticated, coherent campaigns that are going to last for months and months. I'm talking about at least putting out a webinar, doing something that is going to attract the attention of your prospective buyers and making yourself visible in that space, making yourself be known. And particularly, we're now coming into a world where a lot of new businesses have been created in new categories. Right. Solving for problems that were in the fringes, that were not really the biggest challenge or I mean, there were challenges, but businesses didn't think they needed a solution to solve for them. And so if you're category creating like that, if you're forming a new set of businesses that no one's already been buying, you have to demand generate. So that's probably one of the reasons why people are doing a lot of demand generation. Now I do want to speak to the other kind of edge case of, uh, businesses and founders who have a fair amount of presence in the industry. They're constantly being seen at events, they're probably the big voices on LinkedIn. Great. I mean that's, that's, that's important. Let's not take anything away from that. I wonder if their business haven't grown as much because they haven't demand captured, they haven't actually actively gone out and said, okay, since we've spoken, since you seem to have an interest in this, here's how we can help and here's how we should help you today, not in three months, three years time. So there needs to be that balance. And I've seen, I've seen in my last four or five years of doing this that there are founders who sit on both ends of the spectrum and very few straddle both. And it's because it's challenging. It's because you have to kind of move your mindset and keep doing a bit of both. And that's where the challenge lies.

Speaker A: Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. So let's zoom out a bit then. Uh, let's say we have an early stage company that's still trying to figure out for uh, example, who its customer might be. Should they, in your opinion then should they focus on just finding the right audience by proactively targeting them, or should they be thinking about inbound at the same time then, bearing in mind what we just, just talked about. Yeah.

Speaker B: So that therein lies that challenge of how you manage that balance. Right. And I, as I mature, I'D like to think uh, finding that like business is really just that balance. Right. Finding where you, where you should be putting more of your energy, especially as a probably very time poor, resource constrained founder. But I would say you have to do a bit of both. So I'm advising a uh, founder who I'm working with directly, doesn't have a marketing team yet and there is a case of yeah, he's, he's the uh, company's major, most important salesperson. Right. So demand capture is certainly a big part of his role and what he needs to be doing. But I've been saying to them that they do need to do at least once a quarter something that's more putting themselves out there, making themselves be having these conversations around. We can do this for a business. You may not have thought this is valuable but look, it's compliance is coming, regulation is coming or the AI world is moving in such a way that you have to move into this space. So that is a demand generation piece that I'm advising them to do so. And the good news, I think the way that you would decide where to put your energy, how do you decide where to put your balance is you've got to look at some metrics and that is to say, okay, it's all well and good if you're closing deals, but what's your pipeline? Right. So is your pipeline filling up as if it'll enable you to close the same amount of deals that you close in Q1? And it may not be that you. So you, you do some demand generation today and it's really actually not even going to be. So we're in Q1 today, right. If you do demand generation today, it may not even lead to pipeline generation for Q2. It'll probably be Q3 by the time those companies come back in. That is a cadence you need to be thinking about. And obviously I'm generalizing here. Sales cycles are across the board. But I'm just trying to say that you're doing a bit your demand capturing. God knows your board is asking you for revenue so you're definitely going to be doing that. At the same time, are you doing enough to make sure that Q3's pipeline is also being set up?

Speaker A: And do you think about when you're splitting it from a budget point of perspective or a time perspective? How do you think about should you be one third on um, capture two thirds on creation or the other way around? How do you sort of think of it from that perspective?

Speaker B: Yeah, again you will have a slider almost that you'd go in between these two things. Now, let's be also honest, demand capture sometimes is a little bit of, it can be more, um, it's more one to one. You know, you have your set of accounts maybe that you're going after and you as a founder are reaching out to them. Maybe you've got a seller who's helping you. So there's limited, I would say, expansive spend to be had on the capture side. You can maybe do direct mail, you can stand up yourself at a big event as a way to do some demand capture. Fine. But a lot of your investment in a marketing sense will probably go towards the demand generation side. And what I'm generally seeing is early stage founders are shying away from doing that, thinking our, uh, demand capture is working reasonably well and maybe if we throw more salespeople at this, we will get there. But that's not the way to think of it. You have to have that balance of demand generation. So you need to spend the money there while also thinking about capture. I don't mind your estimation of 2/3 on demand generation, 1/3 on demand capture as a kind of rule of thumb, just because, as I said, there's less opportunity to spend big money in demand capture as far, speaking very generally. Right. So that's a decent rule of, um, thumb. But interesting thing will be to have that dialogue quarter on quarter to see where it moves, how you move the slider.

Speaker A: And what about channels? I mean, there are so many channels, so many ideas for B2B companies right now. When you're thinking about the sort of demand generation or as I call it, kind of demand creation side, keep it simple, think about one channel. I mean, LinkedIn's obviously a core channel for a lot of companies. Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, I will say that I'm a big fan and I'm seeing a lot of success also with standing up a webinar where you put the founder as the center point, as in they're asking the questions. They're asking questions to an audience that hopefully the founder's prospective buyers resonate with, can respect. See the credibility. You're doing two things there. You're ensuring that, um, you're giving this audience base some value. So they are, you know, connecting you with some value in the long run. And, and in the meantime, just also by association with these panelists, you're giving yourself some credibility. It's wonderful how you can pull in some very senior figures or enterprise clients, might send along a speaker or, I mean, you've got A relationship. So you're able to leverage an enterprise speaker even though they're not a customer. But hey, just by showing that you are associated with that sorts of conversations shows that you could be solving for enterprise problems, let's say, you know. So, um, I found webinars is a really good way to demand generate, which also can help you with demand capture. Because the nice thing is if you're seeing something to an account that's like stuck in stage two, stage three of a pipeline, and you've got a very senior leader on your panel who's endorsing you or saying that this is an important problem to solve for, you use that at stage two, stage three, so you get a bit of demand capture benefits, second order effects from doing this webinar by doing demand generation.

Speaker A: Yeah, the classic don't listen to us, listen to what our customers say about us.

Speaker B: Well, I just want to say one thing to that, which is that don't even have to restrict yourself to customers. I feel like every founder would love to have their founder, uh, their customers come up and say, you know, I love working in this business. They're doing solving problems for me. The realities are you've gone and got out your first customers. You're probably not in a great position yet to be able to, you know, say that you've already delivered a lot of value because it's early doors. You know, I'm talking about founders at that stage. Also, you've got your customers, you may not be able to push them to be on your panels yet. Right. What you can almost do is talk to someone who's solved for this problem with pen and paper and just get them to say that this is a big problem, this is not a problem easily done with pen and paper. That itself is valuable. Right. Someone who has suffered from the consequences of not doing the problem that is valuable. Someone who has, you know, done the problem, solved the problem in one geography, but not in your geography. There you go. That's all the ways that you can turn just someone who's not a customer, someone who's not actively working with you, into someone who's almost making your point for you.

Speaker A: And like you're saying, and a lot of this content that you produce or stuff that you end up doing can be used both across demand capture as well as demand creation or demand generation as you call it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: What about, uh, qualifying leads and what about qualifying these opportunities? How should they think about qualifying them?

Speaker B: Yeah, this is, this is the other point though, right? Like, so if you Start doing a lot of demand generation. If you move that slider fully to the demand generation side, there's a good chance you're gonna stop going off the accounts. You really thought you were likely to win. That's the worry. And that is certainly where. And that's, by the way, that gets us into the old world of marketing, sales disalignment, you know, because marketing's going out, generating all of this stuff, but they're not really talking to the accounts we care about. They're not. This is a salesperson saying, the sales is thinking, we know we can try and close these accounts. We've closed equivalent accounts. Why are we getting these other opportunities in? So this is where you have to be very kind of. Again, there's that balance piece. You have to a, I think, do the kind of demand generation even for the accounts that really matter. So what the accounts that the sales team are calling out for, it'll go to my favorite thing in the world, abm. Not my favorite thing in the world, but one of my favorite, like marketing concepts. Because it means that you're very intentional about. We think this account can buy from us. So we're standing up this kind of materials. This is why we're producing this kind of content. Great. Secondarily, you need to be doing some stuff that, I mean, some of this stuff will generate inbounds, but you want to then be super critical about how much time and energy you invest there. Your sales team, probably very light there. If you're just a founder, you're even lighter on the ground. You need to be super critical and you need to not chase everything. The best case scenario is if you can have a junior salesperson, founder associate, someone like that who, um, is either keeping some of the leads warm or is handling some of the standard. And the best scenarios, if you can get them into a mold where the sales motions are standard, they can handle some of the early pieces and then the founder comes in. That gives a founder a little more capacity to talk to potential partners, to talk to accounts not in the territories that you already serve. Just talk outside of your typical industries. Fine. But look, that all comes at a cost, the cost being the founder's time. So do not get, do not stray away. I've seen so many businesses suffer because they're thinking, oh, that looks really shiny and cool. That's another big brand from another region. There's another company in Japan that could use us. Wait, wait, hold on. Are you even able to serve an Asian market? Are you able to set up the Time zone issues, all of that stuff, you know, so that's where you have to be very careful. So I want founders to be thinking as they do, demand generation. Sure, there will be a lot of interesting inbound that can come your way, but still be ruthless about which ones you move into your pipeline. It's not pipeline if it's not got a good reason why you believe it can close.

Speaker A: And I've seen some CEOs have a lean sales team where they have themselves on point almost as if they were the ae. But then an SDR team, a fairly young SDR team doing the pre qualification on the inbound as well as some outbound stuff. And that tends to work fairly nicely because it's not a huge expense to be sort of having one or two people in an SDR role and then hopefully they can sort of build their knowledge and move into more of a closing role. I've seen that model work quite nicely.

Speaker B: Yeah, I will just stop to say one thing though. I hate that customer experience and I'm sure no founder wants to do this where an important account is being asked to sign up for the webinar and then come along and then an SDR is going to qualify the account into an opportunity and then hand over to the founder if it's an important account. If you can spot that, if you have the signals that this is ICP or ICP close, go in. Uh, don't do another qualification from a junior person. You can do qualification and turn into a demo in one call. You should be ready for that. But equally, it's always about the size. You're going to choose the size of the aperture. Right. So how many icp, non icp, how many around ICP accounts are you going to let talk directly to the founder? How many are going to go to the sdr? But again, by having these conversations, I think you're building up a nice scalable, repeatable motion because it's always a case of, okay, last quarter we missed some of these big accounts and now we have some traction there. Let's go harder them, they go straight to the founder, if you see what I mean.

Speaker A: Yeah, I do, I do. One term that we were talking about before we hit record was product market price fit is something I haven't uh, actually heard too much about. You know, the pma. I've done one of the courses there in terms of product market fit. But how should be companies be thinking about product market fit and then also product market price fit, especially in their early days?

Speaker B: Yeah. Let me again Give you some context. It's just I don't again, don't want to throw more terminologies for the sake of it. I'm saying here that, you know, I'm saying that you have to demand, generate. You need to then capture some of this business. That's the key way to make revenue. But look, that's also not the end of the game here. Founders are obviously thinking about retained revenue. You know, their boards are asking them for nrr. And how do you achieve nrr? You might get some early signals that this business in this segment is, you know, winnable. You've closed them really quickly. Great. So you'd say there's product market fit or I mean a few businesses, it's product market fit great. But now you also need to observe that the price you're charging them is amenable, is, is in the right ballpark for what they're willing to spend. You're able to make the negotiat. I mean, obviously, you know, you will want to be smart about your negotiations. You want to see what terms and conditions you're amenable to. But herein lies yet another part of the challenge. As in you're starting to close this account. You might veer towards over promising. I've seen some businesses, some early founders do this, so they're that they're actually charging 10k for what is going to be 40ks worth of work. Okay. They'll build up some stuff in the long run that's maybe a risk worth taking, it's maybe a bet worth making. But um, 10 to 40k is a real big stretch. So you at least want to try to get that fit a little closer. Right. Uh, and on the other hand, you're charging. Okay. When the Customer only sees 20k worth of value, that's again not going to work or they're going to try and undermine the deal. There's going to be lots of question marks and they're probably not going to retain. So that's where I mean by product market price fit. And that's why I'm saying constantly generate, capture, be aware of what's happening downstream of the funnel and then see if you can have opportunities here that are creating upsell opportunities. The best case scenario, I think boards also love this is when you're able to tell them the story of we did this. Three months later, they were, they were ready to buy, we were able to sell them the basic package. Then they saw more and more value. They've expanded the user base, they've expanded how many licenses they're buying, you know, whatever the pricing mechanism is, that is the story you want to get to. And that comes. That then depicts product market price fit.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's all about the net revenue retention at the moment, isn't it? So, uh, cool. So what about from an experiment point of view then? So if somebody was looking to run some experiments to find product market price fit, then how would they go about that?

Speaker B: Yeah, great question. I mean this is what I mean by this is where you may be experimenting outside of your standard. I know this ICP is buying and they're retaining. Okay, that means you've got some amount of product price fit. Congratulations, you know, but you can't just stay there. There's going to be competitors who are entering that space. You need to keep expanding. And this is where my experience doing new market expansion, my experience doing kind of helping businesses move from SMB mid market towards enterprise has comes uh, to bear. And the challenges here are that you don't know as much as you would want to know about this space. And that's why it's all the more important to run experiments and kind of gather data. And maybe what you want to do I would propose is you have a squad of someone who's on the marketing side. It could be in house or someone that you hire outside of your own, your own company because you probably again don't have all these kind of resources are uh, ensuring an SDR is watching over every potential inbound that comes there and is making a concerted effort to glean as much information. So you put one of your really good SDRs on it and as a founder you're paying attention, you're aware of what's happening, happening with all those businesses and then you even set some goals around these are the businesses I think in that new segment, in that new region that we can win or we should at least be having conversations with. Then again, you can lean on things like yeah, you could go to an event where in that region where there's a bunch of those accounts, right. You can go have conversations. Founders should probably be there themselves and they should be trying to capture as much of is this going to work? Is this going to be product market fit? Is this going to be product market price fit? Right, like, and they have to then kind of guesstimate that they should then stand up some activities that not just turns, I mean goes beyond just that first intuition, but starts to make it a little more repeatable. So if they had success with one type of event let's say, and they were able to talk to the right accounts there. Can they do something equivalent in house or can they do something that helps them bring those same businesses towards themselves and maybe attract a few more that could be some kind of content for that specific industry or that specific space. When you do that, you start to show credibility and again, you're starting to get more expansion. And that's when you then hire another salesperson, another SDR maybe for that new segment. That's, I think that's a very nice layered approach. And again, it'll start to hopefully open up the right doors for you. You start to grow your revenue.

Speaker A: And the, I guess the challenge there is how long do you wait, as in, you know, so many founders, I'd say, and you'll know this as a market to have those kind of unrealistic expectations. I was talking about right at the top of this podcast, you know, where are the leads? Where are the leads? Sometimes they just don't come as quickly as founders want. But I mean, if you're looking at that, then what sort of signals would you be looking for either on, from a volume perspective or a time perspective? How should you be thinking about that?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, it's a great question, you know, and let me not kid myself. I know the founders are also doing a hundred other things and they're managing the business overall. But this is where the really great founders or founders have to come up with an instinct here and they have to be able to again put their bets in certain places. But that's where then some tricks there are. You combine with other sources, first party data as well as second and third party data. So that is to say you are, uh, on the ground, you're hearing some things, you think an industry is the right fit, but you're also gleaning at the same time that no, that industry is going to hit regulations or that industry has got massive headwinds right now because the AI, the way AI is going to change that industry, don't go investing in that industry. But on the other hand, and then like ideally you get a situation where yes, you've guessed on the right industry, right space, you having some conversations there, customer is telling you that they used someone who you built a relationship in. Your customer, uh, account tells you that they used to work in that space. They also think this is a problem in that space. That's the kind of like second and third party research, you know, not intentional, you're not selling to them, but you're trying to get this Information. That's how you then line these things up. And then you have to be quick and agile about. Okay, so we know that that space is interesting. We think that there's good headwinds in that space. We'll be able to sell to them, they'll buy, they'll retain. They'll have similar problems as our existing customers. That's where we can win. Then you have to then stand up that motion. You have to then generate and capture in that space.

Speaker A: Gotcha. And without trying to summarize what you've just said there, to me, this sounds a little bit like mini ABM or ABM for small companies. Sort of is picking one either vertical or section or list of companies or whatever it might be, and then experimenting with those. I know ABM isn't necessarily experimenting, but ultimately you're building something around that particular set of whether it be one customer or 10 or 15 or whatever it might be, or a small sort of industry. Am I interpreting that kind of right as I'm thinking about it?

Speaker B: I think this is not. This should not surprise anyone. Like, anytime you do an experiment, you really have a hypothesis. Right. And in the case of B2B hypotheses, they're typically associated with accounts. I mean, a small number of accounts or even a big grouping of accounts, ie, and industry. So you're always, as a founder, saying, I think that set of accounts as a B2B founder, uh, will resonate with my, with my proposition. And here's the reasons why. Right. So you always are thinking along those lines. If you were a B2C founder, uh, you'd be thinking people with that Persona, with that demographics. I almost said firmographics there. That's the wrong one. You know, B2B2C. In B2C, you'd be thinking about demographic endpoints, Personas, and you'd have a hypothesis. The equivalent there is having a hypothesis of the account. And that's why it comes back to abm. Yes.

Speaker A: Yeah. How do you advise on budget then? What sort of budget should companies be thinking about? Is it a case of use what you've got then, or do you define, uh, a figure?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I would say at least 10 to 15% of your annual marketing and sales budget should be dedicated to experimentation, trying to get into new industries going outside of your icp. It could be that you could get lucky where something you do generates enough inbound outside of the usual remit. So much non ICP that actually starts to work. You've got, uh, success out of your standard bit of work, understood. A new territory without even doing anything great. You know, that means you can take it. You've got a little luxury in playing with that 10%, 15% budget. But if you don't are not properly penetrating another industry, another space, another geography, you need to spending a bit of your budget, you need to be putting some active time in once a quarter. Look, you know that the funny, the funny thing about the year is Q4 is already a short quarter. Q1 can be a funny quarter. You're probably having to optimize for Q2, Q3. Try and experiment, make sure you're doing something and then hopefully within the year you see outcomes from it. Next year you're going to try another experiment. That's how you'll grow. The greatest businesses in the world are the ones where these experiments are compounding on themselves because they've learned a few things here, they're able to turn that into a much bigger, much more successful experiment there. So their 10% of their budget some years gets lost because they've just, you know, completely spaffed up the wall. But in some other years they are learning great lessons and are able to dial that up massively. And their product market fit is so strong that everyone's retaining, they're themselves unlocking new business for the founder. That's the hyper growth scenario kind of thing that we all dream of. But if not, you should be doing these experiments.

Speaker A: And do you think that's too much? I mean at the moment we're hearing so much about how it's got to be efficient, there's got to be a return. 10 to 15% seems to me quite high to uh, in a way speculate, you know, experiment. Some people might be listening to that and going crikey, that seems like quite a bit of the budget to be

Speaker B: potentially I was, by the way, this is this maybe, maybe the percentage is uh, tied to the actual figure. So I'm talking about like someone who's spending 50 to 100k. You should spend 5 to 10k on experiments. Right? Once you're spending a million, yeah, I'm not proposing that you're spending 100, 150k unless you have someone you're dedicating to it, which again you wouldn't want a full time person managing this. You would only want someone who's a generous, who can dabble in that space or you use an agent, agency use a third party. But to go back to your original point about uh, efficiency, I don't think VCs or boards will actually Push back on you. If you say we try this experiment. We were very focused about it. Here's the hypothesis and here's what we learned. We know that this industry is not ready for us today, but we can come back to it in three years time when some of these regulatory changes have moved or when, uh, it's probably not going to be three years time in today's fast moving world is probably going to be, we can try again next year. You know, I don't think any board's going to come back on that. It's rather. We tried 17 new channels and only three of them work and we wasted the money on 14 channels. That's going to be problematic as a conversation. And sorry if I'm turning this into a bit of a what you need to say to your board situation, but I think that's, that's a lot of what founders have to think through. Right. They have to unlock the capital that they need to grow and for that they need to have in these kind of dialogues to be able to constantly be getting the business that they need and growing the business.

Speaker A: Business.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So switching gears a bit then, last couple of questions. If, let's say, for instance, um, you know, you may be a founder or we're working with a company that has got through this sort of stuff so they've experimented, they've got a few, I hate to say the word playbooks, but a few, a few campaigns and channels working and they're getting a return, etc now it's about, you know, accelerating that investment. They're seeing a return on the money they're spending in marketing. It's helping sales drive pipeline and conversions and all that kind of stuff. How would you then start to build out that marketing function? Because I think when I speak to a lot of early stage founders, this is one of the areas they can struggle with a little bit. What would you do?

Speaker B: What I'm thinking about is so yeah, early doors, founder does not have the luxury probably to hire too many people, but as soon as you have some channels that are working, actually you can probably get some uh, part time resource, freelance resource that can help you scale some of those channels. You know, you can maybe outsource, let's say add in LinkedIn advertising on top of what you were already doing, that kind of stuff. You can work with someone who is able to run experiments in a region that you want to run new experiments in. Great. What probably you need to bring in house is someone who's going to be very precise, very meaningful with the Messaging. Why do you have the right to win in a particular space? I'm talking to a company that's winning in HR tech, winning in Rev Tech, but they wanted to expand to another segment that requires a lot of thinking. And that's the kind of thinking that has to be in house about understanding the, what your feature set is, why it's relevant to that product space. Why should those other guys care about you and not work with one of your competitors? So in other words, a product marketer, a kind of messaging specialist who's also going to then maybe think in the long run about things like if you're working with um, enterprise sales, then analyst relations. If you're not working with enterprise, then maybe it's PR or maybe it's some combination of those two. They'll also have to think about sales enablement and their KPIs, by the way. Interestingly, Matt, not one of the things we've spoken about is very long run. It's not even demand generation, demand capture. There's no, not going to be too many signals out of it right away. But what is it probably nrr, you deploy this person. They're suggesting some industries, they're suggesting some spaces, some activities. Those activities should generate, should be tied to your customers retaining. They should be shown to hopefully help you upsell. They should hopefully help you be able to close sales more quickly. So conversion rates, that kind of stuff. I've said that on the demand generation side you are probably putting out uh, ads, you're putting out some content. So that's all the stuff that I think you can outsource. But maybe you bring a generalist who's helping you do that or coordinate some of that. On the other side, I think abm, the demand capture piece actually requires someone who's a bit more specialist. Again, very close. Your sales team sort of, you know, creating that bespoke experiences that lead to better sales, better relationships. That might have to be someone in house or someone at least who knows your business very intimately. And sitting alongside both the demand generation, demand capture people is SDRs as like the qualifying layer. The person who is putting the message out there, making sure that you're repeating it often enough because you know how long it takes, how many touch points it takes to actually engage someone. So, so to just replay that, you know, product marketing people somewhere. I think of them as sitting at the top. They're overarching. They're like seeing how you're winning in this industry, that industry, this industry. What does it mean for other new Experiments. How are you generally improving your conversion rates? Demand generation on one side, which is some of the more passive stuff or LinkedIn ads where you're hopefully converting people who are eventually going to talk to you. Demand capture is the ABM side of things. We need to win these accounts today. You have a specialist probably helping you with that or someone who gets to your business quite deeply, working very closely with SDRs. SDRs are putting the messages out there and then SDRs are waiting for some stuff to come in from demand generation that's hopefully keeping your engine running and going beyond just the demand capture piece.

Speaker A: So would your first hire be a product marketer then or would your first hire be a generalist that uh, knows product marketer?

Speaker B: I guess it would depend on like how subtle and complex your industry is. So if I'm speaking to a company that has a lot of competition, I'd rather hinge on the product marketing side because they need to get their messaging super crystal clear. But if it's someone, if you're still very much in a space where you're creating a new category again, you want someone, you as a founder, hopefully you have some of the product marketing thinking and then you can work more with a generalist to get the messages out there. But it's somewhere on that spectrum and it's certainly not a social media expert. No offense to any social media experts, but I'm sorry, that channel is not going to be enough on its own to help you crystallize your message and get enough traction doing enough demand generation. Demand capture outsource that social media, it's very important outsource that first hire should be someone who can help you push into new spaces, understand whether you're achieving product market fit.

Speaker A: And I think from my side is one of the most important things is the level of that person. I see too many early stage companies hiring somebody too senior, too early. They're too removed from the tools. They very good at interviewing and very good at talking about what to do, but they're just too far removed from the tools.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And actually the model I've seen work quite nicely recently is hiring somebody who's quite hands on but can plan and uh, be strategic, but then pair that up with somebody who's got quite a lot of knowledge, could be fractional, could be something like that, so that it helps with their development. They don't feel fully isolated. One of the challenges with this role is that you are on your own and you've got to fight internally for marketing's voice. You've got to push back with everything that's asked of you. So it can be a very, very lonely and challenging place. And having somebody who can almost like a mentor, work with you to support you, to develop you, as well as offer you guidance based on their vast experience. I think that model works quite nicely to start off with.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's what I think the one thing that I see coming from all of this, the, what do you call it, the combined motions of, you know, crash crunch. We're not getting as big funding rounds as once you used to. You are running into a world where there's this whole AI thing that people want you to leverage. It does mean you have to be more agile, more frugal, more efficient with your teams. And I think you're absolutely right. It's a combination of someone who is in house, who's able to think deeply about your business day in, day out, is doing the execution, while there's maybe someone supporting them from a fractional standpoint or is a specialist in one particular kind of channel and is giving them impetus and is being like a very good partner for that person. Just putting them into this role by themselves. Yeah, they're going to suffer. Right. It.

Speaker A: Last question then. Crystal ball time. Uh, then what? Um, let's, let's think about the next 12, 18 months. I mean, a lot's happened, it feels like a lot's happened within the last 12, 18 months. But for the upcoming 12 to 18 months. And what do you think will change for B2B marketers?

Speaker B: Look, I think a lot has been spoken about, um, leveraging AI, being AI first almost. And I don't think I'm one of the people who's actually, I'm really, I'm starting to be a techno optimist. I'm starting to see the value in these things, you know, for instance, really, I can imagine, I said about qualifying. Right. I can imagine that AI really guides you on who you should be speaking to, who you shouldn't. Brings you a few more signals than you can otherwise afford to. It's starting to challenge what I said earlier. Tooling. You don't need very sophisticated tooling, but maybe for a fraction of the cost, you can get $0.06 level of intense signals, you know, and God knows I spent a lot of money on $0.06. Wouldn't want to do it as an early stage founder, but maybe you can get those kind of signals early dose 12 to 18 months from now. I really do believe that marketers will have to have embraced AI into their workflows a lot more. So uh, you will be a leaner team and you will have to use AI to if you're writing content, either produce, I don't want to say more quantity because the answer is never just more quantity, it's just sharper, more precise, why you're producing it, all of that. You'll have to use AI, ah to kind of listen and get more intense signals and get more data on why you're doing certain things. And at the same time you'll also hopefully be more connected in. So silos should really start to disappear in the next 12 to 18 months. In other words, unless you're really pulling up the barriers, every sales call can now be recorded for free or next to nothing. And there's no reason why any seller should not be recording their calls. Sure, they will not. They'll be worried about how they're perceived and things like that. I get it, but maybe you can even just share like a version of the transcript or certain parts of transcript. But all those silos should break down. Any interested marketer should know what's selling, why it's selling, why it's not selling. They should be able to use that to inform how they're doing events, how they're doing webinars, how they're doing content creation, what's happening with our lead nurture? Uh, if it's not working as well, can we talk to our uh, product teams and see what we want to talk about through our uh, lead nurture emails? That can be more enticing to why are you producing a feature? Let's talk about that in our emails. So these silos will have to break down and I'm sure that the uh, teams that are going to win are the ones who are embracing these kind of methodologies earlier. There'll be a bunch of teams that will survive despite not embracing these things. I'm not going to say that this is all going to have to happen, but I think the teams that are very likely to win are the ones that are embracing new workflows, breaking down silos, being collaborative and moving fast and experimenting.

Speaker A: Good stuff, good stuff. Well, it's always fantastic talking to you Caltech. Um, I like it because when I talk to you I feel like I'm talking to a product, ah, marketer, a growth marketer, an abmer, a demand generation person, all in one. So it's always fascinating to talk to you. So I really do appreciate you sharing your knowledge and time.

Speaker B: Jack of all trades, master of none it's always a pleasure talking to you, Matt. It's always good to, you know, doc shop with someone who also understands the space and is well, we're all trying to do this the right thing by these founders that have a real challenge in front of them. But I think the world's hopefully becoming a place where they can make this happen. We're going to have lots more founders succeeding than ever before, thanks to the ubiquity of access and tools that they're going to have. And so it's not a bad world. It's a good world indeed.

Speaker A: I like the positivity. Positivity in 2020, huh? Five good stuff. Thank you, Kartik. Cheers.