SalesScreen: Why B2B marketing stays reactive and what strategic demand gen looks like in 2026

Speaker A: Welcome to Rebuilding SaaS Marketing, a podcast by DigitalHenge. I'm Renata, a growth expert and co founder of a marketing agency for SaaS companies. Together with founders and marketers from across SaaS world, we're figuring out how marketing works in the age of AI. In each episode we uncover one story we what worked, what not, and what still keeps them awake at night. And today we're joined by Sabi Ahmed, director of demand generation at Sales Screen. And we're going to talk about something that's been on my mind lately. With AI, it's never been easier to create a marketing strategy. Um, some ask for marketing advice about channels and even create a whole content calendar in seconds. But Sabi says that B2B marketing nowadays is reactive, not strategic. So we're going to discuss what strategy actually means. When tactics are instant, what should you stop asking your ChatGPT and start doing yourself? And we're going to discuss the topic of 5% to 95% of users who are ready and not ready to buy. Let's get started. Thanks for joining. How are you?

Speaker B: I'm doing great. How are you?

Speaker A: Great, great. I want to start with something that's been on my mind lately. Um, the whole premise of this podcast is that we're talking about how AI is changing B2B marketing. And one thing I see that founders do started to do at least that they upload their brand, the information about their company, uh, to ChatGPT and ask for their marketing strategy and they get a beautiful output and think that they're ready to start their marketing. But uh, you talk a lot about that B2B marketing nowadays is reactive and not strategic. Do you think that AI makes it worse or what do you think by that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, thank you. That's an amazing question to start with. Um, I think like I said, like a lot of times like uh, B2B marketing is reactive and it's not because of AI, it's not because of human, it's because of how we are approaching marketing and specifically the modern day behavior of buyers. And that what makes the everything like complex? Uh, I wouldn't say bad, I wouldn't say worse. I think it's complexity. Uh, if you look at AI, like AI is evolving every day and um, a lot of people just go inside AI, I mean especially you know, if you're talking to any sales rep or any marketer, like you know, they're dumping in like prompts there. But like those prompts are not personalized. So the way I see in the Day. Like a lot of people are seeing AI, like, you know, it makes our life easy. We save a lot of time. We just go and put something out there and gives it output. Yes, the input and output is really important, but the output can be as good as your input. And I think like a lot of marketers, founders, we do not pay a lot of attention and a lot of time in making our inputs better and that changes the entire game. Like a lot of outreaches, uh, on every other day and they look more or less same. And then we blame AI for that. But as I said, the outcomes are important, but it totally depends on your inputs as well. And that goes back to the icps, the buyer Persona, how well you understand your icps. And I think AI is not making it worse. It's the way we are approaching AI. I think it's complex and AI can only give you answers based on what information is available. So if you put like a generic input in any AI, like, you know, people are just comparing like perplexity versus Claude versus ChatGPT. They can access a database, they can access information from the web or from their own databases. But it all depends on your input. If your input is. The output would be generic as well. And you know, kind of it. I think it's evolving this way, uh, to my best of knowledge.

Speaker A: And can you explain the concept of reactive marketing instead of strategic? Because I found it really interesting and I want to understand what's the problem with this.

Speaker B: I came from B2C, uh, so I think the entire thought process came from there. And in B2B2C marketing, like a lot of the trends that I'm seeing in B2B marketing, it happened like in B2C marketing a decade ago. And that's why I always call it like it is reactive in a lot of ways because B2C marketing was always relying on creativity, like a, uh, creativity in terms of how you want to position your brand. You have to understand your buyers all the time. So let's say a basic example of B2C marketing. They do not have precise targeting like B2B marketing. They go on Meta, for example, they go on TikTok. They just target people by their interest. So they don't know the intent at all, are just using their creative or their brand positioning in a way that they are hooking people, they're connecting with people, and then they set up those funnels and everything. So that is very proactive approach. Versus in B2B, we tend to wait for signals a lot and then we Complex the signals a lot versus we go back and say, okay, how do we want to position our brands in the first place so that people are being exposed to the, you know, the pain points. And then we connect it versus B2B. Marketing is relying more on the tools. Like, okay, this tool does this, this tool does this, it goes into the funnels and we just do. When this thing happens, when an intent hits, we send somebody a generic message or we outreach versus we're not spending like a lot of time on. We could reach the brand in a so many different ways without, uh, totally relying on the signals or then we react. So in that context, I always think like it is reactive, it's still reactive. We are finding ways of how AI can help us in reaching out people automatically while we are sleeping. That I, to be honest, I don't like it. Like this is a very reactive approach of marketing. Not just B2B marketing. If somebody is doing it in B2C as well, people can spot easily, like if it is an outreach written by AI, for example, or it is not designed for me. So that approach is very reactive, especially in B2B marketing.

Speaker A: Uh, and when we're talking about intent, so we're looking for people who are actively looking for services, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And uh, in your LinkedIn, uh, you talk about like it's only 5% of the whole audience who are actively looking right now. And um, when someone is in that 5%, what, like what kinds of signals are you looking at in your, I don't know, marketing dashboards or with your tools?

Speaker B: I'll try to explain my definition of 5% versus 95% as well, because I think they differ case to case as well. Uh, there's a phenomena or there is a conversation like on the Internet about, you know, don't chase the five person or chase the 95%, you know, and that's kind of a definition about intent as well. The way I see it, even 95% is not about intent or 5% is about intent. It's the whether they are in market or they are just out of market. So within the 90. So I'll start in market like an out of the market, for example. And I try to explain it like 5% in market buyers, for example, you're selling a product right now. The product is not just a product. Right. It also solves the problem. So that 5% group of yours, it's not in not the 100% of that 5%. It's somebody saying, I want to buy a software today. MHM they might be searching for a solution or they are searching for, you know, a problem. So they are more exposed to the problem. They know their problem, they're still in market. So people, a lot of marketers, we consider them okay, that is the clear intent is declared. We want to run bottom of the funnel campaigns around these people. For example, like a lot of times I hear about G2 as well. Like G2, 100% intent. Let's run bottom of the funnel ads. That's not there. Like they are part of that 5% bucket. But that does not mean that they are ready to buy today. Within that 5% as well, you have people who are actively looking to buy and you have people that are just exposed to the problem. So for example, in our case like if it is gamification, if somebody is on our G2 profile, that does not signal us that they are ready to buy. That means that they are in market, they have been exposed to a certain problem and they are looking for possible solution. So rather than us just sending them, you by us, gamification is the best thing in the world. We could just approach it in a very different way like try to understand their problem. So that's the five person bucket.

Speaker A: And how do you understand their problems? Just to um, dig deeper into that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. So let's say we build this company sales screen sales gamification company for a reason. Right. We know the problems, we have the customer database, we have the buyer Persona. So we know why people come to us when they are ready to buy a gamification. They could have a motivation problem. They do have a productivity problem. So the use cases are defined. Now as a marketer we have those pain point metrics exercises and everything done. And every marketing team has done those exercises.

Speaker A: So you have like every marketing team.

Speaker B: I'm trying to play good. Uh, majority of the marketing team, we always go in those exercises. We try to understand the pain points. So you have those pain points now in my case as well. Like one of the things that I did wrong with G2 when I was starting with G2 campaign is I was just pushing bottom uh of the funnel content considering that you know they are ready to buy. The campaign was a mess. Like it didn't work out. And then we just reverse engineers like okay, they are not ready. So we go back. So, so we know the problem that we as a company solve. But we just, because this is an instinct that marketing has intention conversion, kind of a lead generation method, although we don't want to call it Lead generation. But we always are in lead generation. So we took a step back. For example, so for us is like, you know, if there is a clear intent as well, like try to understand, you know, you can always go with one or two pain points that you feel that are more that are closest to the solution, we run with that. So that's how we understand and the way, you know, what pain we should be highlighting that can just bring them into the funnel and move them closer to the gamification. Um, so that's kind of the 5%. That's how we understand it for an audience where you know, there is some sort of signal, there's some sort of in market behavior that they have. Then there is a 95 percentage which is.

Speaker A: Let's stop it here because I want to um, to understand a little bit more about this 5%. So um, from your background, so you came from B2C marketing and I'm sure and you also talk about it in your content. So you tested some of the mechanics of B2C marketing in B2B. And tell me more about this because first of all I want to know what exactly you tested, what worked, what not and how your team reacted to this. Because maybe for them it was, you know, a little bit strange to use um, B2C mechanics.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I joined B2B marketing during COVID times where the world was anyway crazy. Like you know, everything was here and there and it was a uh, it was a funny experience when I came in and I was like, okay, how about we do this? How about, you know, we write like some engaging copies in search chats, for example. Like I got a lot of pauses there, like no, we can't do this. That doesn't follow the principles, that doesn't follow the guidelines. Like M. Okay, let's not do this. So I started running those experiments, you know, book specific copies for example. I try to go granular like with what was the approach. So what I brought from B2C is the proactive approach of, you know, you can't wait for X number of days and following all the guidelines or the playbooks to make it work. It's not going to move the needle faster. In B2C what we, what was normal for us is like continuous testing. Like every week new testing, every time you bringing a new idea. Testing. Testing is testing that I didn't find it in B2B and I was making a lot of my team uncomfortable because you know, they are not wired to do these things like every week come up with a New asset every week. Do something else. Like this is trending in the economy, like how about we just position it this way etc. Etc. Etc. So that creative approach or relying more on the creativity versus the playbook was a challenge for me first of all in terms of uh, including it into the strategy. But over the time it worked out. It worked out as in like you know, we do have tools, the tool does X amount of the things. But the needle mover would be the creativity. Like you know, if you have test one ad copy, for example, one design, one audience for example, if it is working this way, cut down quickly or iterate quickly and just move faster because the users would not wait for 90 days, you know, for you to create an ebook and then do it. You have to act quickly. And one thing that I did like in the company the last five years as well is try to optimize on behavior. So you know, try not to look on the vanity metrics always, you know, if. And that is what we're going to discuss it as well. Related to intent because a lot of the definitions of interest, like if somebody hits my pricing page, it's a strong signal, I think it's wrong because person can come to your website and browse it in so many different ways. So just by looking at the pricing page doesn't signal you that you know, Renata is ready to buy. Renata came to a pain point page. Just look at your pricing page because it is there on the website. That does not give you the right signals. Yes, it's a positive signal that they also have seen your pricing page. But that doesn't, you know, automatically these, all these tools, this give you like classification. This is a high penetrated account. Go after them and when you reach out, reach to them, they're like no, we are not ready. Uh, this is not a product fit. We don't have budget. So we all hear like these objection handlings all the time. So the creativity, just to summarize it like the creativity was the thing that I brought into B2B. And that was the same time when Chris Walker, you know, the former like CEO of Refine Labs, he was doing like a lot of this great work of demand generation. So that really helped me in validating my ideas because he was doing the same thing. Understand your ICPs, be creative, be open to them, try to solve their problems. So this is exactly my mission was as well show the problems that we solve in a very creative way. Rather than saying SLAs, book a demo, et cetera, et Cetera. So that's kind of, uh, the major thing that I brought, uh, from B2C.

Speaker A: Interesting. So I think creativity in B2B is underestimated, uh, because I hear a lot that, um, founders and marketers just want straightforward results and they try to achieve it with straightforward tools, like, for example, Google Ads. But what you say that we need to test and be creative and find some pain points. It's very interesting and maybe to some, to finalize this block about, you know, 5% who are ready and creativity as well. How do you understand if this test, for example, you iterate weekly, you, um, upload new creatives or, I don't know, new mechanics. How do you understand if this is working right now? Because sales cycles can be like six to 12 months, especially when we talk about enterprise sales. So what are your immediate metrics that you're looking at? Not vanity metrics, as you said.

Speaker B: I mean, vanity metrics are so important. I mean, it is vanity metrics, but not the clicks, not the impressions. It's the engagement metrics that are so important for somebody who is doing a creative work. Because engagement leads to conversions. So let's say a vanity metric never leads to a conversion. Then that's the gap in the market. Like, you know about the vanity metrics and then you know about the conversions, and in between there is an engagement that is very underrated right now. So, for example, like, the way we test is that let's assume, like LinkedIn, right? You are exposing like your intent signals or anything, your campaigns on LinkedIn. Now, LinkedIn offers you both vanity metrics and engagement metrics. So the one thing that I did, like, I just completely killed the tofu, mofu and bofu concert because I felt like this is very outdated and just renamed it to awareness, consideration and conversion. But this basically approach changed the game for me and my team because now we are thinking in engagement versus vanity metrics. So awareness, what are the signals that we need from an awareness? For example, LinkedIn offer allows you to run video ads versus text ads. And all these attract engagement without people coming to your website. For example, if somebody is expending your LinkedIn post, that's a signal LinkedIn provides you. If somebody is consuming 25, 75%, 50 or 100% of your video, that's a signal. So the way we approach that, okay, this is a signal, we need it. This signal cannot be transferred to a tech stack. Cannot. But it stays in LinkedIn. And then later Adam started Fibler and that really helped me. Like, wow, now it is telling me who is influencing where the stage is. And you know, we kind of build that. So we build our own mechanism in a way that the website conversion is the last stage of marketing. But before that, let's try to look at the engagement week over week. Understand what is moving forward. Whatever it's not moving forward, do not kill it, optimize it. You know, give it like a couple of chances. Okay. If the copy is not good or the image is not good, let's just try to reiterate that. And if the engagement signals are moving, retargeting. So in our campaigns, like we have like seven, seven, eight different retargeting campaigns based off these stages and we just name it ourselves. Like S Stage one, for example, Stage two, or you could call it touchpoint. So we basically change the vanity metrics into engagement metrics. That signals us like how people are moving without even coming to the website. And in the last stage we say, okay, now it's the time to introduce, let's say, uh, a creative mhm that has a landing page connected to it. So it's a game of patience. It is vanity metrics, to reiterate. But we changed the name to engagement metrics and that kind of gave us like an edge over understanding our audience. And it really gave us like one thing that I'm so proud of my team as well. Like we ran LinkedIn campaigns and we not only got like traffic from the campaigns, but we, we also noticed that people started liking our content. Like, and I was so happy. Like, okay, an ad campaign is being liked, loved. So something is really good here. Like this is maybe even comments. That's a strong signal. Yeah, there was comments like good and bad both, of course. Uh, and we accept that because you have to be creative, you know, as marketer, like try out this pain point. Maybe it works for some people, maybe it doesn't. But that signal basically was really useful for our sales team. Now if they want to outreach this person, now they have a known contact. Now they understand what content this person is liking. Now they can personalize a lot of content. So but it start with just changing the vanity metrics game to engagement. And that is something that is really helping us.

Speaker A: Very interesting. Uh, so I uh, think with this around 5%, it's more or less clear. So we're trying to be creative, but also after that trying to understand if they're interested or how we can solve their problems. But we have this 95%, uh, who aren't ready to buy. And um, what do you do with them? Like, you know, they're can, um, they might be not ready to buy for six or 12 months. Do you ignore them? Uh, like do you communicate with them in, in any way? Like just tell me about it. Because I think this is the most interesting part because this is a very. Like a founder doesn't want to understand that we need to communicate with people who are not ready to buy. But in my opinion it's wrong. And I want to know your perspective.

Speaker B: I would start with, you know, I did the same mistake of just, you know, we have databases. Like every database is good. You know, you put your firmographics data and then you have this list of account. You say this would be an ideal customer for X company. And we say okay, now we need this than 95% and we have done the same thing in our company as well. Like trying to convert them, trying to talk to them and they are not ready. Frustration happens. And then we took a step back, like why they are not talking to us? What's something that we are not doing right? So couple of things and I'll start with the strategic lens. Let's say why we ended up on getting these 95% because it starts with your business goal. Like you have 100,000, let's say revenue goal and then you, you do your research as marketer. You say there's a demand available of 10,000 people. In best case scenarios, if I convert those 5% people, I get this. But the remaining is coming from where people are not in market. So I have to go out and try to convince people to buy from me. So that is the 95% group first. Now within that 95% as well, you have to understand your own business and classify like what would be an ideal customer for us. And a lot of times that I was a culprit as well for this mistake. Like we were not doing enough research. We were just relying a lot of the tools and there's like, okay, this could be our customers. Like these hundred accounts for sure they can be our customer. But not all of them would be ready or not all of them are classified to be a customer. So the first thing what we did is like just try to change the approach, involve human a lot, uh, in the human. And that's what we call human intelligence process. In coming up to the list. Now to your question about what would be the approach if these 95% of people like are not ready, you know, you are just trying to spam them, for example, and you don't want to spam them. But what is the something that you could do? And it goes back to the basic thing that I was telling like yes, the creativity is the basic thing. Like I uh, think in B2B what we all are doing, like we try to complex the process all the time like as marketers because we try to innovate something that is not required. The same principle of that 5%. Because the reason I try to imply a lot on the 5% is basically it's the same if somebody is typing in or searching for a software that is a different audience versus somebody searching for a pain point.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You can't have like the same messaging for both. So within that 5% if you have 80% of the people, if you do like a Google keywords planner, like if you any go to any industry. Right. Type in any keyword, the keywords with software versus the keyword with problems, you would all anyway see like a big difference. A keyword with a software is 20 versus a keyword with a problem is 80. So it's an 8020 rule here. Like you know, the 80% are still not ready. So those 80% basically are your 95% of the audience. So what's your approach there? Try to bank on your creativity and try to just hit them with the pain point and try to convince them versus say okay, because. Because we also tried the same thing like same approach. Put the bottom of the funnel or middle of the funnel and say okay, why are you not buying from us? We are hitting your pain point. So we had this frustration as well. What we change approach again, the engagement metrics, nothing specific that we did, we say okay, we need to optimize for the engagement metrics. We need to keep an eye on what this company is doing, how they are doing, what is the closest pain point that we can serve and make it a cadence of creativity like run, run, run and run. Different motions and let them do their journey. I think one of the things that we were doing wrong as marketing team, we were trying to control, take control of their journey. Mhm. Which was wrong. Like you have to let them do their research because now with AI you can't control their touch point. You know attribution tools, I mean I love all attributions tools but you cannot define, dictate and control a buyer journey. Gartner I think did a research of you know, the nonlinear journey, like 500 touch points that happened. I think that explained everything. Because if you cannot control a uh, journey, you cannot dictate the touch points. So what you can control, which we in the marketing, we say control the controllables. Like, what are your pain points that you can serve, how creative you can become, and continue to show them the value that you can bring without being aggressive with your messaging. And that's what we did. Like, you know, let's say if we are targeting software, we do the research. Okay. Sales leaders would be on LinkedIn or on certain other channels. Okay. We have to give ourselves at least three months to continue to show them the value of the company. Pains and pains and connectivity. So being patient there. So that's kind of the approach, like I said, like, nothing different than the 80% of that 5%. It's just banking on the creativity and be patient with the journey and not completely relying on. If somebody is seeing the pricing page, I'm gonna jump and say buy the product. Like, okay, if somebody have seen like a pain point, what is the next thing that they would be excited. So this is like an exercise we did on Miro. Like, if Renata has seen like one message, what is she expecting next? If you've given the other message, okay, what's next thing she would be expecting? So rather than us, it's about us. It's about the buyer Personas, like how you can help them running their own funnel versus us coming. This is my tofu. You have to be in my tofu and you have to be in my mofu and bofu. I think it was like old age. I think marketing, where you have this defined, you run one creative. I think right now, even if you buy like a clothing brand or something, you. You do not buy it, like on the first attempt M. Like, you see, see, see, see, see. And then it's top of a mind. I think that's the core of demand generation as well. Rather than being pushy, just keep top of the mind. I think that's a metrics that, you know, it's not a vanity matrix. I think it's an engagement matrix. Keep top of the mind in. In the mind of buyers so that when they're ready, but they. They might not be ready. You know, one day they wake up and they are ready. No, you have to make them ready. You have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing in a very creative way so that they will feel like, yeah, this isn't exactly my problem. Maybe I'm not ready today, but in three months, when I'm ready, I want to see you. I want to see you somewhere. Um, so that's kind of the approach of the 95 person.

Speaker A: I really like the idea of that we don't control the journey, uh, that we just need to be there and we need to understand uh, what people expect and what people do step by step. Because I see a lot of examples when we, or just marketers, uh, we're trying to control it and you know, we see this beautiful funnel and we think that it's going to work that way. And in reality I don't m. People just come to the website when they're ready to leave, uh, their like request, uh, in other places they're researching all the time, maybe like for three or six months.

Speaker B: Uh, but you put like another good thing. Ah, sorry to interrupt you. Like I really want to say something here because you raised like a very interesting point that I speak a lot internally, um, is about website. Website is the most important thing for any company regardless of your segment. B2B, B2C Mid Market Enterprise. And if you look at like the buyer journey, the conversions happen before somebody coming to your website, which means that education is very important, distribution is very important. Nothing should be operate in an isolation, be it ads, uh, be it podcasts, be it, you know, any other marketing, distribution channels. You have to educate the user. And then literally what we preach in the company is like when somebody is spending their time or taking out the time and coming to your web website, you should convert them. So that's also one of the most important element that is very underrated. We just post like a couple of sections on the website with some random words or the jargons out there and say, okay, this is going to help us convert. Which is not helping any anybody right now.

Speaker A: Yes, it's true. But you know what I want to ask you a lot of. I hope that a lot of our listeners are founders who are bootstrapped or who doesn't have a lot of budget to wait for six months to convert their audience. What is one decision that you would recommend to uh, do right now?

Speaker B: Very important question. I um, would say, you know, do not do too many things at once. Spend most of your time in understanding your icp. Uh, it looks an easy task for a lot of founders. You know, they either download a HubSpot template or you know, some, some other templates. Like, you know, John is a sales leader in X company. He drinks coffee, he plays golf. I mean then call it a day. That's my buyer Persona, that's my icp. I think it is so underrated right now in just putting a lot of efforts and time researching your ICP and connecting it to your pain. If I were to recommend or to rebuild my marketing career, I would spend most of the time in ICP definitions understanding the icp, Understanding what pain itself, because it is so connected with everything. Like if your vision is connected to a narrative, the narrative would be connected to a messaging, the messaging would be connected to a campaign, and the campaign would be connected to execution. And because you know, every founder wants as you are, as you said earlier, like every founder wants to have quick results. And quick results leads into doing things that basically then later on requires audit. And then you spend like a lot of money hiring consultants and doing an audit and cleaning up everything, be it your website or channels or everything. If you start today, start with where you can make an impact, both as a founder, both as an individual in the marketing team. Where you can make the most impact. Your sample size or your, you know, the target size wouldn't be thousands of companies, but it would be 10 companies that you could best serve. Start there and then, you know, the ICP and the business research will also tell you like what then would be the channel is right for you today and then just spend your time there. The scale up, the growth, everything comes at the right time. But if you are spending money because let's say founders won't have like a lot of money to hire one SEO, hire one this and this and this. And the VP of sales and marketing. Start with an icp, I think underrated thing and bank more on creativity. Um, the creativity doesn't mean that graphic designers or video editors. The creativity is what the message is and how it is simplifies rather than over complicating with jargons. Use definitely AI because AI can help you with saving a lot of time. But do not use the regular prompts. You know, try to speak or uh, use AI as an advantage. As an advisor, like when I create like campaigns, I give a specific prompt to AI. Say, consider you are an advisor that I just hired and your goal is to do this. How would you react? I think my responses from the AI is totally different after just changing my gist prompt because now the AI knows how it needs to react. So those are kind of like my go to things for our suggestions for the founders or any marketing leader out there is spend a lot of time on your icp. That's going to change the game of your business.

Speaker A: But how exactly, uh, do you understand all these things about your icp? Maybe you can.

Speaker B: Sure, yeah, yeah, sure. So, so they are like there's one thing that everybody does and there's one thing that a lot of, a lot of companies are not doing, so everybody's doing when it comes down to ICP is firmographics. Right. Every available tool out there is giving you firmographics data.

Speaker A: Firmographics, uh, is when we understand the.

Speaker B: Yeah, so the industries could be, the technology could be, you know, the size of the companies or employees, etc. Let's say a Polo or Zoom. You could find like all this information there. The behavioral data is not something a lot of companies are doing. Like what could be their ideal pain points? What could be something that they would. If they, it comes in front of them, like the classification of the user, it's not there. And that is something no tool is offering right now. No tool can do that for you. So that requires a human intelligence. When I say icp, like partially everybody is doing icp, but everybody is doing the firmographics icp. Less companies are doing, uh, psychological, you know, psychological drivers. Icp, your behavioral understanding, like what this customer is doing. You could do it like with chat GPT as well. Like, you know, uh, is this company is investing in, you know, in things that you could get like a lot of signals, hiring signals that tells you a behavior. A behavior. It's not an intent signal, it's a behavior trigger. So you have to get all these signals and put it into a behavior. If somebody is hiring, that means the behavior of the company is what. It's something they are investing on people means they are really on a behavioral journey of growth. So if, if a company is having like organizing events, for example, that's a behavior, that's not an intent signal. So a lot of tools that they map it as like an intent signals, those are not intent, those are behavior. So, so within icp, I mean, we did it like in the last six months and that completely changed our ICP situation right now because we also did the firmographics. We got like thousands of companies and the chances of success or the conversion rate was not even 10%. With the behavioral, uh, analysis or a layer on top of the icp, things are moving pretty quickly because now we understand a little bit better for our icp. So that's kind of the thing within the ICP that I think we all should be doing. It's not easy. Uh, unfortunately it takes a lot of time. And then everything that takes time has some worth. Uh, you know, you could put like something in a, in a Zoom info or Napoleo, for example. It gives you data, but you shouldn't be stopping there. Add this layer and this is going to change a lot for your business.

Speaker A: So the firmographics is just one part of the whole journey. But usually we make mistake uh, when we just rely on it and we don't see at people. I would say, because I also think that in B2B we don't work with companies. We work with people uh, who are actively searching and looking for a solution to their problems. And actually if we're going to show them the solution, they're going to succeed in their job and that. But it's also important to you know, uh, to understand what people they are, what are uh, their goals. Yeah. Everything.

Speaker B: Okay, exactly what you said. I think this is the most important thing right now.

Speaker A: Okay, perfect. And I also see that companies don't do that. They just skip this step completely and rely on different signals. I would say let's talk about AI.

Speaker B: My favorite topic.

Speaker A: Yes, because, because um, you mentioned a couple of times that you also use AI uh when you know, when you're trying to understand the ICP or uh, when you're trying to get this strategy. But what I see is that founders uh, usually put their brands and uh, some information that they have maybe from their marketing teams and they just add, ask what's my positioning? Or like what's uh, the positioning of my competitors and what should I do? What's my icp, uh, and what is my marketing plan? Um, and I think that like m. The problem is that they want immediate tactics. They don't. They're not looking for a strategy. And with one. Exactly, I can help you. How do you use it in your um, day to day uh, work?

Speaker B: It totally depends on your role as well. Like let's say AI can help you in building strategy, can help you in refining your execution. It can really help you in saving time and creating content. But I will reiterate what I said earlier in the call is the inputs are so important. If you're just asking what is my strategy, what is my positioning? AI is going to give you a very generic answer by just reading your homepage and try to come up with an answer that both give you an idea and please you as well. Because that's kind of the behavior of every AI. They are designed in a way that they want you to renew their subscription. And every B2B software company does that. So it depends on how you want to use AI. And that starts with be real to yourself, be honest to yourself. Like what exactly you want to achieve with AI. Let's say if you want to Build a strategy. Give AI a lot of information that is sitting with you. If you have done an ICP research, provide every single detail. Of course, be careful with the PII information.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Do not share personal information, but tell AI. Like if Renata is my icp, what exactly does it mean? Like, you know, give more and more insight inputs, which is a normal behavior for every marketer. We don't spend a lot of time in AI. We don't spend a lot of time in tools. Like we spend like five minutes, it is going to help us or do some magics. So I'll try to go step by step with, you know, for strategy, what you can do. Like I said, like, you know, give as much information as possible. The challenges you are experiencing, everything that you are experiencing and what output you want to achieve, give that input and it's going to help you. You for content as well. Like you you might have seen like on LinkedIn, the M dashes and everything which is easily spotted. Like this is a ChatGPT or AI content. Understand how to sound like a human. Just doesn't say like I want you to sound like human. That does not explain AI anything. Give some ideas, write something by yourself. Say this is my voice. Create like documentation. For example, ChatGPT and every other platform can have like, like documents attached to it. Try to put some effort there. The efficiency doesn't come with just by clicking a couple of buttons. You have to invest some time in doing it and choose your AI as well. And that's kind of the thing that is very underrated. Like I have been using ChatGPT a lot, but I switched to CLAUDE in the recent days.

Speaker A: Me too.

Speaker B: If you are, let's say if you want to write good content, it's claude. If you want to build like a good strategy and a very detailed, complex, you know, uh, queries, you want to do it. It's ChatGPT for example. So understand what an AI can do for yourself or your business and then work on your inputs and I'll try to keep it very similar. I think the inputs are the biggest problems right now with AI. And then we blame AI because the outputs are very generic. If we just work on our inputs and that goes to an icp, that goes to in strategy, it is going to help us. But please do not expect AI to do execution. AI cannot do any execution for you. You require human intelligence even to run AI. AI can give you a lot of directions, AI can help you create a lot of content that saves time. But AI cannot create or cannot be the next subby or the next Renata. It can help Renata and Sabi to be a better or better productivity by 5x but it cannot replace so don't try to replace yourself uh, and just hand over like you tell me chatgpt, what should I do or eat today? Be very specific, take that control. I mean the only place I would say take control from an agent like just be human, get efficiency there. I think I did like a chatgpt thing like um, when the year was starting and it told me like I've created 5000 strategy documents in 2025 using chat GPT and it's because I was iterating the one document is not enough so you need to be spending let's say hours and hours in understanding what you can get it. So use AI. Uh just to summarize this one. Use AI for your advantage, not as your replacement, not something that defines you because again the inputs are so important for your output and you could see marketers succeeding with AI because they are working on their input. So for every company, company that is trying to build an agentic, you know, AIO, etc, etc, whatever they want to build it, focus time on your real pains, ICPs, understanding your business, understanding your role and then personalize the inputs in a way that it can help you. Like now I write content like blog content for the company for in less than 30 minutes because I've done like the hard work of setting up everything. Now I just, I give it a topic like Claude knows like how I want to sound like what are the things I don't want to do it, what is the core of the business. So things like that. I think it's an amazing thing but just don't completely rely on AI to do everything for you.

Speaker A: So if I hear correctly, uh, the strategy is still on humans and um, not the execution but maybe the help in the execution uh can be delegated to AI. But if you know how to handle

Speaker B: it right, yes both execution and strategy is in human uh, you have to just use your brain more than you are doing right now that is going to help you elevate with your AI, for example with anything you want to do.

Speaker A: And maybe to summarize a practical advice for founders who are listening, uh, what founders should, should stop asking their chatgpt and what should they start doing themselves? Maybe one thing, you know,

Speaker B: um, that's a very tough question I would say I think founders should be, should stop asking for shortcuts. Um, there is no shortcut to business. There's no shortcut to life. Um, I'll try to give you an example, like a personal example that would help you or audience understand it. Like last year I started the Fitness Journey and it took me like several months with chat, uh, gp at that time, the Claude, I wasn't using Claude, so I was just, you know, putting it in chat, GPT, diet plans, fitness training, etc. Etc. And it took me three months just to build it, build it, build it. And I realized like, I was just finding a shortcut. But uh, the only thing that I should be doing is going to gym. Uh, that was the only thing. Like, you know, you need to go there and yes, you need to do something. ChatGPT can tell you a lot, but it cannot go in the gym and you know, do work out for you. So that's what I feel like something, something that founders do it as well. Like they, you know, spend some time, find a hack. Like we should be building this amazing tool that can help us in scrapping Reddit, you know, all these sources and do this and that. I think we should be stopped doing it. Going back to the basics, uh, I think with AI, something that really helped me in my career in the company as well, like basics are back.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Okay. You go back to basics, do all the basic work, which is icp, which is proper marketing, which is proper messaging, proper everything. And that's what every founder, every marketer, every human being should be doing, is go back to basics. Because nowadays human intelligence is a premium thing you need to have or you should have or you will have because everybody is just dumping like some generic inputs out there. So if you, so how you become like different player in the market when you try to position yourself as a human, like a real human with the human intelligence. So founders should stop coming up with bunch of ideas, focusing on one idea and just execute it to the core.

Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, I agree. Uh, so we talked about 5% of buyers who are ready to buy, 95% of users. I don't know audience who is not ready to buy and about AI. But still I want to understand why is this so hard to be strategic? I'm sure that you as a, uh, director, um, uh, as a manager have thought about it and maybe you have people in your team who are struggling to be strategic. Why we're trying to always look for shortcuts, as you said. Have you thought about it?

Speaker B: I mean, it's an everyday situation every marketer, every leader is experiencing. And one of the reasons is there's a Lot of information out there, which is both a blessing and a curse. Everybody has access to information, both your team members, your company members and your buyers. And in that, while it really helps us as a business, as an individual, it creates a lot of complexity as well. You can think of new ideas every other day when you wake up, and then you don't have the capacity to execute it. And that's moving you from being strategic. I think one of the things that being strategic would require you to have is patience and trust on what you are doing, which is because of the flow of information we have. It is just fading away that we execute an idea today and then something new comes up. For example, build this workflow and make your life easy and then we want to immediately jump on that thing and then you're leaving the core thing that you're doing. So I feel like that's kind of a challenge, the way we handle it. Just try to reiterate what are the basics that we are doing and the long term impact of it. I think everybody should be realizing that not every trend is for us, not everything is built for us. So we need to lock down our priorities, what can move the needle for us and stick to that and be patient as a leader because patience will give you like major success. While you need, you need to be adaptable with new technologies and ideas. But you shouldn't be scrapping the idea that, you know, you spend a lot of time on. And we have done it as well, like, you know, spending like months and months on an idea and then, you know, then after a week switching on another idea and then, and this first idea is also not working, the second idea is not working because, you know, the maturity period was never hit like for any of the ideas. So as a leader, trusting your skills, trusting your strategy and patience is something that would give you results.

Speaker A: But the thing I keep noticing, um, when I'm talking with founders or um, people who runs around companies, they say to me that they don't want this beautiful strategy deck. You know, they don't want this, all this stuff because they don't know how to use it after that. So my question is, even though a lot of companies have this strategic document, like this beautiful deck with all their positioning and with all their, I don't, uh, know, branding and everything, and maybe even with pain points, coins and ICP and everything, it sometimes doesn't change how they execute it day to day. Why is it happening?

Speaker B: Yeah, the biggest problem is the connection. Because when the vision is starting for any company, The CEO is starting a vision that this year we want to change something. And then when it comes down to the campaigns and the execution, it is coming from the muscle memory only, only from memories. The original idea is gone. Like something is, I mean I have seen like a lot of times like what is written in a strategy documents. And if you look at any campaigns, they both are talking differently. It's not carried out like yes, the beautiful presentations are there, but where we lose attention is that we are not carrying the message at every stage it should be the same. Lock down your strategy, continue the consistency, the patience. I think that Mrs. Like with every marketer, every founder is. We just do not carry the message. So the biggest problem is the connection not between just the teams, but your entire strategy is not connected. Because then when you go to, let's say an SEO, for example, the SEO will work in isolation and come up with something different. Like yes, you need like the overarching strategy as well, but it needs to be connected overall. So the connection is the biggest problem I think in a lot of companies and a lot of marketing that we, we forget why we are doing this and it is not caring. And the channels are saying something. Uh, for example, I think Most of the B2B companies are saying empowering your, this, empowering your, this skyrocketing. This is the same message. And it's not because of AI, it's because everything is not just connected. And that's why it just speaks a very different language. And that's kind of, I feel like that's a big issue in marketing right now, is the connection is broken or it's not Async, for example. Um, so that's the biggest thing at least we have found in our team and in the operations we were running and we sorted it out. Like how do we run a campaign, for example, that speaks the exact language. It becomes adaptable by channel, but it doesn't completely work in isolation.

Speaker A: Uh, as far as I know in sales screen you also had this um, exercises of how to connect marketing and sales. But not only marketing and sales, but the whole company, like customers success manager and the leadership team. So I think this requires a very, like someone who is responsible for all this connection, um, between all of the stages, uh, of not, not marketing but, but the operations of the whole company.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Surprisingly there is nobody uh, to do that. Uh, it's kind of in our DNA. So we call it like a revenue team and we make customer successes and marketing all part of revenue. Because, because in uh, each of Our discipline, we impact revenue. It's not just sales, not just marketing. It's a customer success as well. Because the business is not from starting from a traffic to lead or to a sales. It's a retention as well. And these days like the more revenue comes from your retention or expansion, you know, not new businesses, because it is tough. So surprisingly, there is no kind of um, like a program that connects everybody. It is the collaboration. So instead of we call it like ownership. Ownership. Ownership. We as a company we say collaboration. Collaboration and collaboration. How do we collaborate on this and that and this? And how can we help? How do we share knowledge to each other? And that's what challenges us like a lot of times as well. Like one person has a different idea, second person has a different idea. How do we sit in a room? Because we are a complete remote company. We have a office in Oslo, but majority of the staff is working remotely, which is really helping us. Definitely we had our challenges in making these things work. But right now the instilling of a collaboration mindset is really help. Like we go in a room, like we talk about what ideas do you have. Everybody gets a chance to speak about what they are thinking and then we collaborate. It's not about one person making a decision. It's the entire team making a decision. And based on some logical, um, logics and other stuff. For example. And the approach we have it like, let's try this one crazy idea that Renata has. Like maybe it will work. We don't know. Uh, so kind of this mindset that the collaboration, I think that's really helping us in the company.

Speaker A: Yes. That's nice. Actually I was surprised that you said that this remote setup helped you, not uh, in the other way around. Okay, so, uh, maybe to sum up everything that we've talked about, uh, if someone's listening and it's a founder of maybe of a startup or a company with IRR about 3 to 5 million, what's the one and first decision they need to make right now to make their business grow?

Speaker B: Going back again. Your ICP is the main thing. Um, very underrated. Um, I mean I can talk about channels, I can talk about creativity, but you can only expand from your existing database or your existing customers. Right. Even if it is net new logos that you want to do it. You really have to understand what has brought you to 3 million. Stop chasing what other companies are doing. Their ICP might be different than yours. So the first step should be understand why you have reached to 3 millions and then from There audited, like what are the good things that brought you to 3 million? What are the opportunities that you missed that would have like 7 million here? And what are the things that you should be doing to one double down on this? Uh, like three or five millions. And the opportunities that you lost. I think that's the first step. I would always take it, like spend some time in understanding, spend some time in audit and then you will have like a lot of data. Trust me, like just by doing this. And then put AI, put creativity on top of that and make small goals. And one thing that we preach at sales screens, we're like small wins matter M and we said give it to our customer and you could think of 3 million to 5 million. Let's say you're at 5 million. So first goal is 6 million. Right. You could find like a lot of low hanging fruits to get to 6 million by just looking at your data. And if you instill it into your process, then reaching from 3 to 10 millions wouldn't feel like uh, a mountain to climb. It would be. And that's the main thing. The ICP is the very important thing. And then not over complicating the strategy as you said like a couple of times, like charge you break and give you like strategy. But that strategy is very generic because your input was generic. So be specific what your ICP is. Be specific about your customers and then I'm 100% sure ChatGPT or any AI tool will give you the bare minimums, the basics and that is what you need to scale for to your business.

Speaker A: Very nice. Uh, and actually about the small wins matter, I think. Yeah, this is what makes your product so great because uh, you highlight for your audience these small wins and that leads uh, uh, to the, to the great success.

Speaker B: Ah, exactly. I mean recognize people, small wins. That's the mantra we have and it is really working out.

Speaker A: Very nice. That's, that's really helpful. And maybe the last question I have for you, um, what I haven't asked you, maybe is there a thing that you wanted to tell to our audience and yeah, uh, you didn't have a chance.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we wanted to talk about the learnings I had as an individual and a company. I think sometimes we are shy away from calling out our mistakes or what we didn't work out. And I wanted to say that uh, because you know, you will make mistakes in the process and it's not about mistakes. So just be open to making mistakes, just be open to trying out because I think People are very scared of, you know, I don't want to do this because I'm scared of doing it. And that puts them into a mental state of always defensive, always reactive. That is one thing that I have seen a lot in B2B marketing. Unfortunately, it's people are defensive because they are scared of mistakes. If somebody is listening me, like, that's something that I learned in my career, in my current company as well. And I'm thankful to my company, like, they gave me this opportunity. The mindset of always trying out. Don't be scared of what you think could work out because you never know what can work out. You know, then that's the classification of being creative. Try it out. Because you don't know. Because a lot of times, one thing that I wanted to say, like, a lot of the times when we, we are sitting in a strategic, you know, room, we are building everything on assumptions. We assume this is going to make work, which is a really good thing. But there's a difference. There's a layer that assumption turns into a factual theme. Can only happen when you try, when you execute, when you just put it into the market. So I made like, a lot of mistakes. I tried to put it on my LinkedIn. I'm not so active on LinkedIn, but I will be. Um, call out your mistakes, learn from others, and be open to try out new things as they come to you. So that's kind of, you know, something that we didn't talk about. But I think, like, it's gonna, it's gonna really help, like, a lot of people who are in a zone of, like, scared of trying out new things.

Speaker A: I really liked your, uh, idea that every team or every person should sometime throw spaghetti on the wall. You know, just, uh, not to be too serious and maybe try new things and not to be afraid of mistakes. I really support this idea. Okay, thank you very much. Where people can follow you, uh, maybe and to know more about your work or about sales screen.

Speaker B: I mean, LinkedIn is my place. That's kind of the only social network that I'm active on. Um, I consume like a lot of content every day, although I don't post a lot. Um, but you can always find me a lot of people in our company screen. Like, we share like, a lot of insights there. So please follow us like if you like our content and reach out if you want to know more about my journey from B2C to B2B marketing. Um, and yeah, I'm happy to share, happy to collaborate, and thank you very much. Renata and Duba for giving me this opportunity to speak and yeah, looking forward to, you know, learning more from the people and you guys as well and trying to contribute as much as I can.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. That was really valuable.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you. The thing that stuck with me from M this conversation is how you approach your strategy. So Sabi says that it's very important to focus on your audience, not to use a tool that shows you how many companies are ready to buy or how users use your website if they go to the pricing page or if they just browsing the core thing of any marketing, but especially B2M B marketing, is to understand who is buying and what problems they have. If you know that other things are so much easier that you want to spend a budget to take best things, you will understand what works and what not by seeing the engagement, how users interact with your content, and eventually how they convert. But the conversion is not the most important part. A lot of founders are using AI to generate more content, more marketing strategies, but Sebi says that the most important part is to understand your audience. If you know what your audience wants and how they're looking for the solution and when they expect something from you, you're going to succeed. Thanks for listening to Rebuilding SaaS Marketing, a podcast by Digital Hunch. If this episode gave you a spark or an idea, share it with the founder who is in the same stage of growth. Follow Digital Hunch on LinkedIn and find Rebuilding SaaS Marketing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Follow us as we redefine how marketing looks in the age of AI.