Career-Proof Yourself with AI: Every Women’s Advantage | Danielle Zikman of LinkedIn Ep 09

I know AI sounds a bit scary, but if you don't, there's gonna be drastic implications and there's a huge transformation that's happening now. So just don't feel overwhelmed, just feel empowered and find your superpower. So if AI is driving and pumping this productivity efficiencies in your role, what is all the other things that you could be doing? What is your superpower to drive that forward? So it should be empowering, not scary. Welcome to the She Sells B2B podcast, and today I have Danielle Zickman from LinkedIn with me. Welcome, Danielle. Oh, thank you. So good to be here. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm finally excited to get you here and have you on the show. We originally met and had a quick chat, and I'd like to talk about your role at LinkedIn, head of marketing, and tell me what does that encompass and what division do you look after? So I'm the director of marketing for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, positions. So essentially my target audience is talent professionals, so my senior target audience is CHROs right down to a talent acquisition manager. My team spreads again across Australia, Asia, and Japan. The strategies are very similar across them all, but the how we execute to tailor the needs for the market is very, very different. So quite a challenging role, and then rolling up obviously to the global organization, but we have a local APAC team here. LinkedIn is one of those brands that leading the way. Everyone knows LinkedIn, and if you don't, I wonder what rock you live under. But it's an aspirational role to be head of marketing of such a big brand like that. When you started out in your career, do you imagine this is where you would end up? Yes and no. I would say I had aspirations and I targeted aspirational brands. Like, I always thought I was gonna be head of AMEX for their Black Card members, or like LVMH when I was living in London, and I had those dreams. Did I target LinkedIn when I saw the job come up? It's very much a dream for sure, being in such a global organization, a brand that's much loved, that still has so much growth potential. So yes and no. It's a very interesting journey I've been on in terms of majority of my career is B2C, and this is B2B. It's a new challenge, but certainly The skill sets are the same across both. So take us back to when you started out your career. What job did you land into, and how did it eventually get to LinkedIn? Tell us about that journey. Yeah, so in my family, you're either a teacher or you're a marketer, and I knew that I didn't want to be a teacher. My patience for my own kids tests me at the best of times, let alone teaching a whole class. So I wanted to be a marketer, and when I go back to like being aspirational, like my auntie was head of an aspirational luxury hotel brand. I'm like, oh, that's amazing! She got to travel, she got to represent this brand. And so I just was intentional on trying to get my way through. So I know everyone would have the same experience of trying to get that first job, or we don't have experience, or you don't have experience in FMCG, or you don't have experience in a global marketing company. It's just so hard that I actually was a bartender for my first job, and I pitched them before I moved to London, hey, I've got like 6 months, I want to get marketing experience, can I actually pivot to full-time doing marketing and just doing whatever else that you need? So it's trying to like influence— like, I was already known, I had my credibility, I was a great worker, but I tried to create opportunities to ultimately benefit my experience, to get a bank of experience to go to London knowing I need something to prove that I should get this contract role. So yeah, I quite intentional in my approaches. So then yes, I moved to London and then moved back to Melbourne, then moved to Sydney, but I was mindful of having a well-rounded sector experience. So I've had real estate, banking, telco, asset management— like you and I have that in common— and now SaaS. So I did want to mix it up between industries. That was important to me. I don't really know why, but now I think I have a lot of things in common and of like connections across the board to support me in my career. And I would also say I was also intentional on not being a subject matter expert, which I think a bit dangerous now at times, but I definitely wanted to be a generalist marketing leader and be well-rounded in that regard. So interesting, because what you're talking about is not being pigeonholed. I think that if you have a diverse experience of across different categories and different products, and you do get that diversity of thought as well and ideas around, okay, that's worked really, really well in B2C, what if we try to do something similar in B2B? Have you ever found that? Oh yeah, trying to take from your experiences and apply it to a B2B world? Absolutely. At the end of the day, we're marketing to consumers. Like, everyone's human. So it's— I really don't see a huge like line in the sand of this is a B2C approach only and is a B2B approach. I really don't see it that way. I am just hyper-focused on the persona marketing, so whoever's the individual, the human that we are targeting, and I'm hyper-focused on driving commercial outcome, both of which represent both sides of marketing. And I don't see it being one or the other. You can be super creative in both ways, which I think is really challenging and exciting for me. Yeah, definitely. You touched on commercial outcomes, which is really interesting. A lot of marketers or CMOs are very brand-focused, and I think that the conversation with C-suite decision makers, especially like the CEO— there's a lot of judgment from a CEO looking at the head of marketing versus the head of sales. Head of sales is obviously hitting metrics and bringing in the dollars. They look at marketing, and if marketing is not contributing to performance or outcomes or KPIs, that becomes a bit of an amber flag as to what are we paying marketing for? How have you manage to focus on your outcome drivers in your marketing role? Yeah, so I'll take a practical example, which would be, I would say, a huge channel for all B2B marketers, which is events, which certainly is a big channel for us. But when I started at LinkedIn, we, like everyone, would measure brand awareness at events, NPS, confidence index, you know, the amount of money in the room, etc. The brand perceptions was Y, we changed it to X, right? Yes, you capture leads, but we never measured what was the conversions of those leads. We never really measured if a customer didn't attend that event, what was their commercial outcome versus customers who did attend our events. And then we didn't really measure, I guess, the sales pipeline thereafter. So we are now able to track not only the leads, the brand metrics, you know, the perceptions, people in the room, the RTA in the room, etc., but we're now able to to determine, well, what was the rig, so the contract growth versus customers that didn't attend our events? What was the pipeline acceleration? What was the net new direct attribution to our activities? If we're not doing that, then I was like, why are we doing it? Like, so we are not in the world of being able to do amazing brand love work because of that challenge with commercial outcomes, given all of our priorities that we would have to do locally So we do have to make those prioritization calls, and certainly ones that I feel comfortable to say to the business, we are being able to deliver this. Otherwise, I just wouldn't do it. I've come from an events background, and I can say that measuring success has always been tricky. You use a lot of technical terms there in terms of MPS, RIG, etc. So sounds like you've got really into the weeds of proving the success of those events and attributing it to outcomes and sales and revenue. Yes. How do you do that in a realistic sense? Is it enabled today because of the tools that we have access to and the tech that we have access to, or are you able to do that even if you don't have access to expensive tools and tech? Oh, the latter. Scrappy is our middle name. In the US they call us— we're so scrappy because we really get done, I would say that where does your role stop and start? And I would say there, my role doesn't like end at a particular point, and we are challenging ourselves to think that way. So for example, if our events then generate lead pipeline for a particular product, and that goes to this particular point here, the challenge for myself and my team is, well, what happens after that? So we actually create a program of work to activate the sales team on what they should be doing from that moment, and then we track it thereafter. So we create blitz days after all of our events. We have a concentrated activation plan across all functions to go after those particular potentials because we've warmed them up. And how are we enabling every single cog in the wheel to then go after those customers in a very meaningful way. And we deliver them with all of the content, all of the speaking points, empowering them to do so, to progress that even further. And so then we'll be able to determine based upon not only the event itself, but based upon all of the touch points thereafter by a customer attending our events. We know that they have a higher contract size if they attend our events more than twice a year versus customers that do not attend any of our events. Events. So we know that that is a very important channel for us. So the detail that goes behind, say, a singular event, it's not just about the day or the event, it's all of the touch points that lead up to it and then post. You said about Blitz Days. Yeah. How long do you communicate? What's the buyer journey? How many touch points would you say you guys map out pre and post? Yeah, an event, for example. So pre-event, we activate Field like 2 weeks prior on this all the things that you need to know that goes into this particular event. A lot of sales teams won't actually be physically at the event. So how can they feel comfortable to have conversations with their customer post the event? So enabling them to feel comfortable to have those conversations, equipping them with the tools to have those conversations, but also we capture data from Dynamics on what's the status of all of the attendees' current opportunities. And contract size. And then we do a pull afterwards and we do it every single day during that blitz. So daily we can track how many net new opportunities were created. If an opportunity was created pre the event, then we've influenced that closure, but there's also net new ones that are created. And then we essentially track it a week and then usually monthly thereafter because our contract sizes are quite substantial that it does take a long time to nurture and then foster that renewal. And so So there's a lot of science and art into it, but I think if everyone is just curious, if you're creating an event and you're like, oh great, sales team, over to you, like, that's just not the right approach. You got to take extreme ownership. Otherwise, don't do it. Events are exhausting and hard work. Put your whole effort into a one-day or two-day event like a wedding, and you're like, what am I doing that for if it doesn't actually create this environment for a sustained commercial outcome? So you mentioned that sales won't necessarily directly be at the event, so there's a baton handed over to the right person to take care of lead post-activation. So say you're a workforce's a few hundred sales team, maybe. Is it in your best interest for that several hundred people to be physically at that event? So everything goes back to ROI. So we have to either A, have a role for them, so we put them to work with different roles and responsibilities during the day, which saves us costs on labor. Or they don't have a role and they might come at the end of the day where it's networking. So not every single person, no, would be at that event. And you mentioned substantial deal sizes, so we're talking enterprise level. How long are those sales cycles at the moment? Are you feeling like they're getting longer? They're getting longer. But they're getting more complex. What would be typically a role for our DM is then more scrutiny on the senior DM and then more scrutiny from CXOs. What's a DM? Decision maker. Okay, so our decision maker is the head of acquisition or the head of learning and development. For me, particularly in my particular role, our senior decision maker is a CHRO or CPO, and we are finding, given our solutions have huge AI advancements, it is enterprise program, costly to the business. It does involve compliance, legal, CFO approval, learning and development, upskilling your organization, sometimes require the tech teams to be involved too. So it's quite complicated. So the buyer circle, I should say, is greater than previously. Yeah, definitely seeing the account maps and the amount of decision makers that we're targeting and how to connect the dots between the two, especially if large enterprise deal sizes, you want to have at least 2 or 3 of the decision makers in the room and all agreeing at some point that this is a good decision to go ahead. I love the fact that you use scrappy. Give me an example what that means in terms of scrappy and where you've seen it work really well. Does that mean that you have an idea and you jump on it really quickly, test if it works, and then roll it out from there? What does that look like? I always thought scrappy to be non-intentional or quick to make decisions or wasn't strategically focused. And so it's taken me a bit of time to actually understand that Scrappy is highly strategic, just fast-paced decision-making, can get stuff done in a very creative way. And I think that just comes about with the level of empowerment I have in my role. I'm very close to the strategic priorities. I'm very close to our marketing objectives. I know exactly what the sales team needs because I sit sit with a sales team. I know their priorities, I know their challenges, and I'm so close to our customers. I listen to Gong calls, I sit next to them at events, I ask the sales team a lot of questions. So I always feel empowered based upon the information that I know, that I can proceed based upon these data-driven decisions that I've made. I do feel empowered to go to my boss and say, even I've annual leave on Friday, and I woke up with this amazing idea, and I sent it to my boss. And I actually checked it on Copilot first to make sure it was a good idea, and Copilot said it was a great idea. So then I just sent a random message to my boss saying, I really think this is a really good idea. She's like, brilliant. So I just feel empowered to think creatively based upon everything I know, and I feel like I have the context. And I think that's important to me, just having context. Next and just feeling empowered to do my best work possible. Sounds like for such a big organization at LinkedIn that you're enabled to feel like almost like a little startup within the business, that you can, you know, come up with an idea. And to me, scrappy, it sounds like that the speed in which you can take an idea and run with it, it's really great because in a lot of large organizations you get stuck through the layers of approvals and yeah, getting sign-off and budgets, etc. So that sounds really cool that you're enabled to actually move that quick and trial and test things out? I would say so. And I think like there's lots of challenges and opportunities being in a highly matrix global company, and then there's lots of challenges and opportunities being at a just an Australian-based company. And I would say that the creativity I have in my role is not what I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be highly playbook-focused, rolling out global narratives, and I'm pleasantly surprised it's not like that. The mention of sitting with sales and listening in to Gong calls, I love that because I advocate for that whenever I speak to my clients, and especially if they're on the marketing side and trying to get the sales and marketing to collaborate on an account-based marketing approach. The challenge there is adopting that as a culture. How have you seen, not just at LinkedIn but other roles, where you can bring the sales and marketing together? In what ways are you seeing that work really well? If you were to tell me, say for example, your top 3 ways that you would advise another CMO as to how to like collaborate more with sales? What would you recommend? It is challenging. It really is challenging. I think foundationally it comes from culture. So put culture aside, what the individual can influence. It is just being very curious. Like, why would you want a sales leader to come over and tell you what you think you need. That's not the case. And I feel like a lot of marketers will just be like, this is our marketing objectives and this is what the marketing team want to do. The sales team don't give a shit about the marketing objectives. And I would never deliver it like that to the sales team. I in fact delivered our marketing plan to the sales team yesterday, but in no means did I say this is the marketing only objectives. I say I've shifted my marketing priorities because I know what your core focus areas are. So he feels heard. What's your level of understanding of the sales priorities and what's your level of understanding of the team challenges? So I try to understand from the ground up. So I will sit next to reps and just say, hey, like what's happening with this contract? What's your current challenges with the CHRO over here? And you know, your product over here, like how are you finding that those challenging conversations to get that over the line? So then I'm actually more aware going into those conversations with the sales leaders saying, I'm hearing from your team. So I, you gotta put in the work, have layered conversations, come with data, come with customer insights. Don't come with, oh, the marketing team want to achieve this, and the marketing team want to create awareness. No, show them how you're driving conversion. Show them how you're putting their sales team in front of the customer. Like, what is those elements? How do they feel heard? What's in it for them? Otherwise. It's just noise. It really is. And so proximity is really important. Yes, but I also manage, as I said, Asia and Japan, and I may be there once a year. I would love to be there more often. I find that challenging because I'm very much relationship-driven and I place value in those relationships that I make. However, I'm in their quarterly business reviews, I'm in their forecast calls if I want to be in their forecast calls, I'm in their operational priority meetings, I have one-on-ones with the sales leaders. If I wanted to, I can dial that up depending on the needs of the market or dial it down. I'm not proximity to those people, maybe once a year max, but you've got to put in the work to build those relationships, to build the trust and the credibility. Otherwise you're just the marketer. And so how do you keep your finger on the pulse, being obviously headquartered in Sydney, having access and a flow of information with your teams in other areas in APAC? I have a weekly huddle with my team, and I personally take a lot of photos for my girls and my family, and I create annual photo albums. So I personally take a lot of photos to capture a moment, and I then ask my team to share a photo in the Teams chat every Monday morning. When you wake up, share a photo of your weekend, have a chat about it, and then in the huddle we might have like a little bit of a conversation around it and then go straight into the focus area. So it's all about like knowing your team well, and I try to have highly emotive, connective, all of the things rapport with them. I want to know them personally and professionally, and I invest a lot of time in that. And I have one-on-ones with them, obviously. Then we'll have a wider business team meeting every month. We have these weekly sessions now with the team to provide status updates with all the product innovations that's happening too. So there's a lot of connective tissue with everything that we're doing. We have a great cultural AMP's, like, team to try and support from a culture perspective, but we might see each other maybe once a year. So it's really important to put in the time on meetings that matter to build that rapport. It's a challenge as a leader to create culture, but to create culture across countries, yeah, that's another thing, especially when everyone's remote and not physically being there and seeing it. My team are fully remote as well. So we have very similar things of sharing, you know, song of the week. Yeah. And just photographs and things like that as well. Give me an insight into different teams in different countries. Are there similarities or differences that you pick up on how sales and marketing is done in other countries that is different to what we do in Australia? Oh, well, Aussies are just casual. We have a laugh. It's very different culturally. We're very much relationship-driven. We joke around a lot. Like, it's just so different to Japan. It's hierarchical-based, very professional. And then Singaporeans is, is similar. That's where our APAC headquarters are, but there's a lot of expats there too. So you'll have various different cultures in Singapore versus Japan. Japan has like a migration percent of like 10% of the workforce from immigration. So it's, it's very Japanese, it's very different. I can't even explain to you how different it is. And then how to communicate to the US, it's so different. I then have monthly syncs with my peers over there, and so it's just, it's very unusual. And I think it comes naturally to me because I do place value in relationships and I do invest in the individual to create that connection. And trust and integrity is my thing, that you just have to know the person in order to adapt and see. Actually, I'm authentic, I'm myself, but I will certainly be a bit more refrained in having conversations with other teams than I would with the sales team in Australia. It's very different. I'm going to shift the conversation a little bit around a statistic: 1 in 10 sales leaders is a female. And being in a leadership role yourself, and I know that you're Director of Marketing, but because you have such a close relationship with the performance and outcomes of what's happening in the sales division, how have you seen the shift over the years throughout your career in terms of seeing more women in leadership? And what are you seeing today in terms of sales in particular and having more women in that space? I would say my entire career, the sales team has been very much male-dominated, and it would very rare for me to be at the table with other female leaders. So I would say it's not based upon a lack of capability. I would just say it— the system is not set up that way yet. And I think we're in a wonderful transition period where AI is the level playing field. Like, people that can leverage AI in their roles are level setting everything that actually the female superpowers— we spoke about this when our catch-up— is our soft skills: emotional intelligence, collaboration, teamwork, leadership. In the age of AI, those are like gonna be paramount, that organizations will not be able to survive without those soft skills at the forefront. If listeners can really focus in on their AI literacy and figure out what their superpowers are specifically soft skills. I do hope that system shift will change or very much accelerate over the next 5 years. And as a female leader yourself, how are you helping or mentoring, for example, the younger generations as to what kind of skills do you feel someone who wants to get into a position like yours, what would you say to lean into when you talk about AI? But there's also the soft skills. Yeah. There's generally a lot of fear around AI is going to take my job or the potential of having that job. But you're saying leverage it. Yeah, I'm saying AI can take your job, but someone who's using AI will take your job. So it's, it's really shifting on not being scared of it, but dive into it knowing that your role will adapt. So skills will change. Your role now, 70% of the skills makeup of your particular role would change by 2030. That is wild to me. So I am placing strong importance on career-proofing myself. I need to be AI literate. I need my team to be career-proof, like not just me, but my entire workforce, people I care about to succeed in their life. So I would say I place strong importance on driving my team forward. And then internally, we do have a mentorship program. I actually love it to have those mentoring, both female and male ICs, individual contributors, across the globe. At the moment I've got one in India, Ireland, and the US, and I enjoy those conversations because I get a lot of energy from people that are quite hungry or that actually accept feedback and are willing to grow. So yeah, paying it forward in that way, and even interns that come into the team too. So I like to prioritize that. It gives me energy and it gives me a sense of reflection because I don't really feel like I should be on this podcast necessarily, or having people people look up to me in that way because I still feel like I'm quite young to be able to do all these things. But gosh, yeah, time does fly by real quick. What you're talking about there is that imposter syndrome. I don't feel imposter syndrome, I just feel like I'm still 25 in my mind. That's awesome. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like I, I can't believe I am where I am at the moment. So it's crazy. Have you ever had any challenges in getting to where you are in terms of the female representation at the table, especially around leadership? I feel like every role I've been surrounded by men in senior roles, and there would be very few female or even fewer female leaders that I connected to with the same sense of value system. Then I just use every interaction as a way to understand what I wanted me to be as a leader. Early career here, not being a leader, but just as an IC, an individual contributor, I would be very attuned to how people would speak to people, how people would activate people, how people actually cared who I was, if they knew my name. All of those things matter. And I remember, and I just knew that— I always knew I wanted to be a leader, and I always knew that my sense of values and who I am, all of these experiences would shape who I was. So I didn't I have great examples. I've got 3 wonderful female leaders in my career, one of which is my boss at the moment. But you just have to pick even the worst possible situation and be like, I'm learning from that because that's not how I would behave, or I'm learning from that because there's people at the table, male and female, that aren't speaking, so how can I get them to engage? Or how are they feeling? Or next time I'll give them a pep talk before going into the room so they know their purpose in the room. Because I think for me, upon reflection, if I had the level of maturity going into those roles, having a seat at the table, of really knowing what my value could be instead of just, you know, understanding my role, I think that I would approach those opportunities differently. We talked a lot about power of speaking up and finding your voice. When you're sitting at the table, sometimes you hold back and you don't speak up. How have you found your voice over time, and how would you encourage someone that you're mentoring to speak up in the right situation so that they elevate themselves and they get seen. I think that that's super critical now for me personally, being in a global organization. You might have snippets or moments in time with people that are in charge of your calibration, so it's so hyper-aware. Obviously for other roles, I wish I had more of a sense of— my courage might not be the way, but just like a really understanding the purpose of me going into room. Or I think it's probably my level of context of what would be said in that room was not clear to me, that I think if I really understood the clarity, understood the context on what would be discussed in that room, so I could be hyper-prepared and challenge myself to always ask a question or always say something. Whereas I have that challenge now for me and my team. We're like, we gotta say something. So I wish I did that before. Before. Yeah, you said hyper-prepared. When I was looking up the definition of imposter syndrome, there's statistics out there that women feel that they need to over-prepare for things in order to not feel like an imposter. So organically, we feel the need to hold back and not speak up. Have you ever found a situation where you've had to overcome that yourself? Gosh, I feel like it's so hard. We just don't have the time. Yeah, how do we have the time? I'm thinking about my Woolworths order right now, or like the kids lunchboxes or doing the washing as well as everything else. So I don't think we have the time to be hyper-prepared. And again, that's where AI will solve all of those things. But pick something. Like if I went into that room focusing on, I'm going to ask one question or be seen as an expert on this one thing, what is that one thing? You know, and I could have easily picked those moments. It could be a particular trading result or a particular insight of something that I could have brought up to the forefront. And without that golden nugget to feel confident, to be like, yes, this is showing up. I don't want to waste anyone's time either about just saying stuff for the sake of saying stuff, because I've learned along the way, me personally, I've seen that, and that's just not me. You're so right. I think that being really strategic about what golden nugget you're going to pick— in sales, I keep training people on, we can say a lot less but say a lot more by saying a lot less. Because the moment that we are talking far too much in meeting in a sales environment in particular, or in a leadership setting, the more you talk, the less you're actually making an impact, I feel. So if you are holding back in, right, what is that golden nugget piece of information so when you do speak it has that impact and that power? Especially with sales, why should they care about what you're saying? Because you're a marketing team, our marketing objectives are different. So what are you saying actually reflects to their goals too, would be key. There's so much psychology in sales and marketing, right? Knowing when to say what, knowing how to negotiate, how to close, how to apply the right pressure at the right time. I think it's super tricky. I think it comes down to just foundationally know your audience. Like, if you're where, like, consumer-led, persona-led, audience-led, it comes down to the individual. So even reps I sit next to, every single salesperson is very different. Sales leaders are different. The head of the VPs are different, etc. So I feel like if you're tailoring your message to the audience, regardless of who the audience is, you just have to understand your audience, be able to prepare and tell your messages to them. Talk about go-to-market, and how would you describe what go-to-market means to you if you were trying to explain it to someone that didn't know what that meant? Oh my gosh, um, I was on maternity leave and I got a call saying Essential actually go for a promotion in the go-to-market team, but you would have to like come back from maternity leave early. And I'm like, what is go-to-market? Like, what are you— like, I don't— I didn't really know what it was. And then I was leading all of these subject matter experts, and I was like, what am I doing here? Go-to-market to me is fascinating. And if I didn't do go-to-market, I wouldn't really understand the matrix of every single role across the organization and how it drives impact. So I would say go to market, think of an initiative, and think about every single touchpoint that initiative could activate. So even if you think of at Optus, I had to then still think about a call center. If you're on hold, what are you listening to? And then if you walk into a retail store, what's the screen at the front saying? What's the connective tissue to then the online media? What's the connective tissue to like the sales enablement? It's so interesting. And so you're having really a leadership role, influencing without any authority to corral this highly strategic initiative and presenting it in a pretty little bow to the organization on this is what we're launching and this is all of the touchpoints. It's actually quite fascinating, but it's very complicated because as I said, you don't have the authority for all the different teams. You can certainly influence outcomes. Corralling all the different milestones is very challenging. But essentially it's the program of work across multiple touch points, across multiple teams, seen by multiple audiences. It's really interesting to actually place a level of importance on marketing there. It's that every single thing that a customer could see or hear of that brand— so everything from being on hold on the phone and whatever the tone is, to when you walk into a store or you're walking around and you see the brand— it's every touch point that the customer could see, touch, feel, feel of your brand. So it's— that's a massive role, and it's also really rewarding because, you know, at Bankwest days, you could go to an ATM and be like, the screens, like, the ads that were on there, it's like, that was enabled and engaged by me. Or you would just have this really sense of ownerships, and I don't know, just achievement that you're able to enable all of this to happen in the role that you're in. It's pretty rewarding. In your current role with go-to-market and B be. Are you running any specific account-based marketing approaches? We dabble in it, and I would say dabble in it because it can be quite expensive, and we have to prioritize all of the things that we do given the budgets and the resourcing that we have locally. So I have to prioritize every single initiative to measure up against business outcomes to see if which is the ones that's going do the best job. So we test and learn everything that we're doing. But yes, going into this year, we are doing ABM. I'm curious, you said you find it quite expensive. What do you feel is making it feel that way? What makes ABM feel like it's expensive? It could be expensive in terms of budgeting, in terms of investing in a particular account to create a campaign, an initiative, data, whatever the thing may be, to activate that account, but it's expensive for me given the resourcing I have. That is ABM for, say, top 10 accounts, or that I have versus a scaled campaign versus a series of events versus video capture to do social proof. Like, there's just so many levers I can pull, and those decisions I need to make with accuracy as to, is that ABM going to make me feel comfortable to have a seat at the table to say we did this? Yes and no. It's hard to make those decisions. ABM alone, in the fact that you do the events and you have the full buyer journey and all of the points along that, I feel like that in itself explains it as an ABM approach if you were targeting a set of accounts within that event and then finding ways to ignite that conversation again again. Are there any campaigns that you've done in the last couple of years that have been absolutely outstanding and that you would basically use as one of the stronger performance metrics in terms of success? I would say our key flagship events, something that's Adore, but then it's one day and it's just a long, long lead-up for that. I would say, and we innovate every single thing that we we push the needle in terms of commercial outcomes and attribution, etc. I would say currently I'm very passionate about an initiative that we're doing, and it's because we're testing and learning, leveraging AI in this series of program of work. So we are leveraging AI to record our workshops, our customer sentiment, and not only does that mean that we're able to engage our customers from a face-to-face perspective, but then the way that we can use that information and that insights, because our customers want to hear from other customers and they want to learn from other customers because we are very focused on customer sentiment and the needs for our customers, will create a white paper based upon those AI recordings to then consolidate all of the learnings in Australia, Singapore, Japan, to then feed and fuel the program of work to create all of these assets thereafter. So it's not a heavy the thought leadership, big report coming down. It's actually crowdsourced, think tank style, that we've evolved the program to benefit our customers. Does that mean they're in clusters according to a problem or a market or a niche? Correct. So we know that if we engage our customers more than twice a year, the contract size is substantially higher. Okay, great. That my event strategy means I need to engage them more than twice. This series is 3 times. So we're trying to engage the same customers 3 times. We know our customers want to have, like every single person in the universe right now, want more tools and deep dives on AI. So we're doing that. So every single series has a deep dive topic just on AI. And we know our customers want to hear from other customers on all the trial and tribulations, all the ROI, all the test and learn, all the blockages internally on how to actually drive AI AI initiatives internally, which is really hard. There's compliance issues, risk issues, legal issues to basically drive AI in your organization. And so we're creating this of essentially the event strategy to fuel the campaign, to get all of the information to then re-engage at scale the customers who weren't in these clusters. So we've got Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan. And all of the insights I can tell you right now will be very different per cluster. Based upon their AI literacy is very different. But at the same time, even within Australia, their level of AI literacy in a company that you would think would be so at the forefront, maybe their actual team is not at the forefront. So within teams, within departments, within organizations, their level of AI maturity is so different. So we have to tailor everything. So why create a playbook? Of this is a thought leadership coming down to engage it. That is not at that level. So we have to have complete flexibility with all of our narratives moving forward because every single person is at a different stage in their AI maturity than the next person. So it's super complicated. It really is. And I think even just having guests on this show from different organizations and asking the question around AI, there's a nervousness to be able to talk to it with clarity or confidence to say that they see it much more as an adolescent rather than it's mature enough for me to be able to speak as an expert. So I appreciate the fact that, you know, you guys at LinkedIn are pushing that to the forefront. But what was interesting is that customers want to learn from other customers, and I think LinkedIn as a brand is really fantastic because you can bring those people together in an unbiased way. And when you say that you bring people together twice a year or 3 times a year, is that the face-to-face? At the moment, that's our strategy, is in a half, it's 3 times. So like try to like every second month to have deep dive topics. When you say deep dive topics, is that purely digital or face-to-face or a combination? Combination, depending on the persona. And how many personas are you dealing with? Is that quite a lot? Um, this year we're pushing to 3. Last year was just the DM, so decision maker and senior decision maker, and now senior decision maker, decision maker, and then the user. AI is all about the individuals using the tools. It's not about anything else. And obviously budget constraints, the person signing the contract is a big deal, but if the person signing the contract has the users saying, I'm not using the AI tools, so then you missed the mark there. So we have to do a very tailored and targeted approach to target those key owners to move the needle for that one account. And then that one account would have various level of AI maturities across the organization. It's just, it's an interesting world we're living in right now. Is there something you would see based on AI and companies out there using it and not using it? What do you feel like a lot more organizations in B2B could be leveraging? Is there anything that you're seeing that is working really well? Oh, I just feel like everyone just needs to have a go. I think that to your point before on feeling scared or overwhelmed that AI is going to take your job. Honestly, just have a go. Like, I use it at least every half an hour. And so be comfortable to be uncomfortable. You're not meant to know the answers. And even when I think about— so I've pushed my team to have— there's got to be one AI initiative that is actually going to generate business outcomes. And you think about, like, well, how can that happen? Um, how can that be? And actually, I'm trying to solve for the team of, well, what's our online, offline touch and how's the attribution of all those touchpoints together? AI can solve for that. So go and figure it out. You just have to try. And if you don't know, then ask questions, go and ask peers that are using it because I do feel if we're not prioritizing this, you miss the mark. And even sales teams are obviously Sales Navigator on LinkedIn is amazing, but also to people that are preparing for every single sales meeting, like how are you using Copilot? Copilot to even understand what's happening for the market, the account, the customer. Was the CHRO or CEO on the news recently? Just instead of having to spend hours doing research, you can do it in 2 minutes. So it's— use it to your best advantage. You should not be at all in a stage where you don't know because you can use it now. Yeah, I mean, you can't buy curiosity off the shelf, can you? Yeah. And I think that there's— I keep saying on Instagram and LinkedIn, various people running courses about how to AI. In particular, I saw one that was, if you're over 50, here's how. It's not just about if you're over 50, it's everyone. Yeah, but I think that the best way to learn anything about AI is to actively use it. You are the ones that need to train it, you are the ones that need to ask it for what you need. So you still need to have the brain there to say, what is the problem that I'm trying to solve? If it is about sentiment across the top 5 phone calls that I've had this week with customers, and there's a pattern there. Yes, put it into AI, put the voice recordings in there, and start to understand, okay, what is the pattern here? Yeah. And how can I now use that to turn it into some insights, or go back to those clients and customers and be able to offer them something of value? Completely. And I think that people— I found when I say to a client or a customer, here's what the last 3 tech clients have done. They want to feel like they're a part of the evolving, the progressive. And so that's been really interesting. So using AI and using it daily for sure has become part of my role. Efficiency has just gone through the roof, and it just, um, it changes every second of the day. So I need to place more importance on my prompting. And I know, like, like, if I— that was a few months ago, I'd be like, I'm not a coder, I don't really know what prompting is. But prompting is essentially the information that you put into it is as best information that you get out of it. So how can I dial up how well I feed information into AI to the best possible outcome back? And so I do prompting courses on LinkedIn Learning. I really try to understand how I can best use the tools to then best inform me. And I got served up was on LinkedIn how some people actually using AI, and they basically have created these agents on AI, so on like Copilot, to say, okay, well, my boss is this particular persona, and they create this agent to be like their boss so they can be more prepared going into meetings. Or it could be the CEO. You create agents based upon the personas that you're working with, or your buyer circle, right? And you give them the pitch or the presentation that you're going to be presenting and be like, you are this person, give me feedback on your responses because you would have already fit in all that information so they can improve their performance in that meeting. And I just think that's really fascinating too. So more of a development tool versus an output tool as well. And in sales, why not turn that into a persona around your ideal client? You know, I constantly look at an email that we got and training the salesperson, and okay, if this person writes in 2 sentences and they to sign off, go back with the same. Don't write pages and pages because they're telling you through their email style that they don't have time. They value directedness, and here you've added 4 paragraphs, and I'm like, please don't do that. Yeah, evidently they're just trying to get to the point. So, you know, if someone writes to you in bullet points, go back in bullet points. Yes. If they say hello or hi or hey, go back with hey. You know, it's, it's matching the energy of that. But you can very easily train an AI to read all of those things. Yes. And say mimic what the customer is saying and doing and make my language match theirs. Correct. Because it's psychology that if you use someone's language back at them, they feel like they're understood. Yes. And that you've listened. God, that just clicked in my mind in terms of emails. Yes, for sure. We did this values exercise on like you go from 10 values in a list of all the values to then 5 to then pick your top 3 values. And one of which for a senior DM was time. And now that you're saying that, I know the emails that I receive, it's just, it's because it's time. You're so right. That's really interesting, how to mimic or respond back in a way that will overcome that obstacle that you have. That's really fascinating. And I always say, if someone comes back to you with 3 or more questions in their email, get on a meeting. Yes. And answer those questions because they evidently are interested. They're warm. They're asking the right questions. Go for it. But feel like they don't have enough information. So that's an opportunity. There's so many little nuances like that you can train an AI on. So I— you've given me the idea there to create a persona in my AI world as well. This conversation has been absolutely fantastic. I really appreciate your time. My pleasure. Is there something that we've missed that you'd like to draw upon at all throughout our conversation at all? I just think to encourage your listeners on embracing AI, and I know AI AI sounds a bit scary, but if you don't, there's going to be drastic implications, and there's a huge transformation that's happening now. So just don't feel overwhelmed, just feel empowered. And the second point would be find your superpower. So if AI is driving and pumping this productivity efficiencies in your role, what is all the other things that you could be doing? What is your superpower to drive that forward? So it should be empowering, not scary. Yeah, I mean, I was teaching my mum who's nearly 70 how to use it. And she's in London and I'm in, in Melbourne. So I'm saying, download ChatGPT. And I said, you see the little mic button? You can talk to it. She's like, what do I say? I say, tell me what the weather's going to be like this week. And, you know, I need the recipe for this dish. And it will tell you. And then you can say, read it out to me slowly. And so, you know, I showed her how to upload a document and read it. And I said, ask the chat to act as though they're a ruthless lawyer and read that document to say, what are the red flags in this? And this is how I'm feeling. Yeah. And she is blown away by it. And now she keeps telling me that she's talking to AI more. Our worlds are exactly the same because my dad came over last week and I said, like, have you used it before? And he had no idea what it was. I'm like, come over to my screen, I'm just going to show you how quick it is. What's the coffee places to go to, blah blah blah. And I'm like, I'm sure that there's a golf swing thing that you can find out. But his mind was blown phone, and it just put everything into perspective on the world of work is shifting, that we're in that moment now. Like, it's actually pretty incredible. I really appreciate that. And I think that the number one message I got from this chat is don't be scared, just give it a go. Just give AI a go. Download the app, use it even in your day-to-day. Yeah. And just see how you can adapt it. But just start asking it to do things that you can't do yourself and see how much you can learn and even refine too. I put a prompts and they're saying, could I articulate this better? My audience is this person. How can I craft this message to resonate more strongly to that particular person? So even if you think your email is amazing, like, no, just try it with every single thing that you're doing. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for coming on She Sells B2B. And just one last thing, if people want to connect with you, I assume you're pretty active on LinkedIn. Yes. Great. So Danielle Sickman. Yes. Great, thank you so much. Thank you.