So, is this the end of sales as we know it… or the start of something better?

On this episode of the B2B Roundtable Podcast, I sit down with my friend Brent Adamson, co-author of The Challenger Sale and author of the new book The Framemaking Sale. Brent explains why buyer confidence—not more information—is the real barrier to closing big deals today, and how leaders can help their teams become the sellers customers actually want to talk to.

Brent Adamson on Framemaking and the Future of Sales

Key Takeaways

• Buyers want confidence, not more information. The real risk isn’t being ignored—it’s being irrelevant.
• Framemaking is the answer. Instead of persuading, sellers must help buyers frame decisions and build confidence in themselves.
• Four forces undermine confidence today: decision complexity, information overload, objective misalignment, and outcome uncertainty.
• Sales and marketing must unite. The mission is to build buyer confidence in themselves—not just in the supplier.
• AI won’t replace sellers, but it raises the bar. The sellers who thrive will show up as trusted guides and sense-makers.

Pull Quotes

“It’s not your customer’s confidence in you that matters. It’s their confidence in themselves.” — Brent Adamson

“If you could be the one seller your customer actually wants to talk to, that’s an incredible place to be.” — Brent Adamson

Guest Bio

Brent Adamson is a researcher, speaker, and author best known for co-authoring The Challenger Sale. His new book, The Framemaking Sale, explores how sales professionals can rebuild buyer confidence and create customer interactions that truly add value.

Connect with Brent on LinkedIn

Get the Book: The Framemaking Sale

Full Transcript

Brian Carroll:
Welcome to the B2B Roundtable Podcast, where we bring together ideas, people, and strategies shaping the future of sales and marketing.

Today, I’m joined by my friend Brent Adamson, one of the most influential voices in sales. You may know Brent from his groundbreaking book The Challenger Sale, which reshaped how we think about commercial conversations.

I’m excited because we’re talking about his new book, The Framemaking Sale. And it couldn’t come at a more urgent time. In a recent survey, 75% of B2B buyers said they’d prefer to purchase without ever talking to a sales rep. Is this the end of sales as we know it—or could it be the start of something better?

Brian Carroll:
We’re going to talk about why buyers have lost confidence in sales, what’s driving this shift, what it really means to be a framemaker, how leaders like CMOs and VPs of Sales can build teams customers actually want to talk to, and what the future of selling looks like in an AI-driven world. Brent, you open your book with that stat—75% of B2B buyers would prefer a rep-free buying experience. That’s wild.

Brent Adamson:
First of all, it’s great to see you, Brian. Thanks for the invite. That statistic comes from Gartner research, one of the last pieces I worked on before leaving in 2022. We asked thousands of B2B buyers: “If you could buy a large complex solution without ever talking to a sales rep, would you prefer that?” Seventy-five percent said yes.

Now, that doesn’t mean they actually buy without sellers—it means they’d prefer not to. The data shows a big and growing gap between customer preference and customer reality. That gap represents risk for sellers.

Brian Carroll:
So it’s not the end of sales—it’s the end of salespeople not adding value.

Brent Adamson:
Exactly. The question at the heart of this book is simple: What would it take to be the one seller—or the one team—that customers actually do want to talk to? If you can be that person—showing up less like a seller and more like a human—you can differentiate not only from competitors but also from the overwhelming flood of information customers already face.

Buyers Don’t Want More Info, They Want Confidence

Brian Carroll:
What are the ways sellers unintentionally undermine buyer confidence?

Brent Adamson:
One of the biggest findings is around decision confidence. When customers feel highly confident in their decisions, they are up to 10x more likely to make a high-quality, low-regret purchase.

But most sales and marketing teams focus on building confidence in the supplier— “trust us, our brand, our product.” What actually matters more is the buyer’s confidence in themselves.

The real opportunity is helping customers feel confident in the questions they’re asking, the research they’ve done, their alignment as a team, and their ability to execute. That’s what Framemaking is all about.

Brian Carroll:
Can you define Framemaking? How is it different from Challenger Selling?

Brent Adamson:
Framemaking is about creating the context—or “frame”—that helps customers make sense of complexity and move forward with confidence.

It’s built around two key moves: prompting and bounding.

• Prompting = introducing ideas or perspectives they may not have considered.
• Bounding = narrowing focus so they can prioritize what matters most.

Together, those moves create a frame that gives customers both ease and agency—the decision feels simpler, and they feel like they made it.

Challenger is part of this lineage—it’s about teaching and reframing—but in today’s world of overwhelming content, simply adding more insights isn’t enough. Customers don’t need another “smart idea.” They need help making sense of all the smart ideas already on the table.

Four Forces Undermining Buyer Confidence

Brent Adamson:
In the book we unpack four big challenges that undermine buyer confidence:

1. Decision Complexity – too many people, too many steps.
2. Information Overload – endless content, conflicting advice, and AI adding even more noise.
3. Objective Misalignment – different stakeholders with competing priorities.
4. Outcome Uncertainty – even if they believe the solution works, buyers fear their team won’t implement it well.

The job of a framemaker is to help buyers navigate these challenges—simplifying, prioritizing, and guiding them without taking away their sense of ownership.

From Challenger to Framemaker

Brian Carroll:
If I’m a VP of Sales or Marketing, how do I coach my team differently? How do I stop undermining confidence?

Brent Adamson:
Challenger was about showing up with powerful insights. That still matters, but in today’s content-saturated world, simply adding more insights can overwhelm customers further.

What buyers need now isn’t just more ideas—they need help making sense of all the ideas. That’s where Framemaking comes in. It’s not about proving how smart you are; it’s about helping customers feel smart and confident in themselves.

Brian Carroll:
That word—sensemaking—is powerful. Buyers are overwhelmed. They don’t want another rep adding noise. They want someone to help them make sense of it all.

Brent Adamson:
Exactly. And that’s the opportunity. Show up as the one person who helps buyers cut through complexity and feel good about moving forward. That’s how you become the rep they actually want to talk to.

A Story of Framemaking in Action

Brent Adamson:
One of my favorite examples is from a sales rep we call “Tara.” She sold human capital management solutions. In a discovery meeting with the head of HR, she suggested bringing procurement into the conversation early.

Most reps would avoid procurement until late in the process. But Tara said: “In working with other customers like you, we’ve found that when procurement gets involved earlier, things go much smoother. You might consider inviting them now.”

That simple nudge reframed the process, avoided future roadblocks, and built customer confidence. That’s Framemaking in action—it doesn’t have to be grand. Sometimes it’s just a well-placed phrase that frames the decision differently.

Marketing’s Role in Framemaking

Brian Carroll:
What role does marketing play in this shift?

Brent Adamson:
A huge one. Marketing can gather stories, lessons, and pitfalls from customers and feed them back into sales plays and content. Instead of just creating thought leadership about the supplier, marketing can create confidence content—tools, checklists, benchmarks, diagnostics—that help buyers feel more confident in themselves.

Imagine win-loss analysis focused not on why customers chose you, but on what they wish they’d done differently in their buying journey. That insight is gold. It can shape sales plays, create powerful collateral, and make your content strategy far more valuable.

AI and the Future of Selling

Brian Carroll:
With AI moving so fast, what does the future of sales look like?

Brent Adamson:
AI can surface options, compare vendors, and even create frameworks. But at the end of the day, customers are still human. After all the data, many will say, “I just wish I could talk to someone.”

The sellers who thrive will be the ones who become that “someone”—the trusted guide who helps customers feel clarity, confidence, and connection. That’s the future of sales.

Closing Thoughts

Brian Carroll:
Brent, you landed it. At the core, this is about empathy and human connection.

Brent Adamson:
Yes. There’s never been a better alignment between doing what’s right for sales and doing what’s right for humanity. If you want to hit quota, win big deals, and earn that President’s Club trophy, the way to do it is by helping customers feel confident in themselves.

Brian Carroll:
And that’s what The Framemaking Sale is all about. If you want to dive deeper, get a copy—it’s packed with strategies, stories, and tactics that will change the way you sell.

Brent, thanks as always for joining me.

Brent Adamson:
I appreciate you, man.

If you found this episode helpful:

• Subscribe to the B2B Roundtable Podcast wherever you listen.

Most teams don’t struggle because they lack automation or content. They struggle because they’re guessing about the buyer’s journey instead of understanding it.

At best, nurturing becomes educated guessing.
At worst, it becomes scaled annoyance.

And in a world where AI and automation can multiply messages instantly, bad nurturing doesn’t just waste time. It erodes trust faster than ever.

Buyers don’t experience funnels.
They experience relevance, timing, and intent.

When those are missing, even “helpful” messages feel intrusive.

This is why lead nurturing fails when teams guess the buyer journey.

The Real Problem Nurture Is Supposed to Solve

Most leads are not uninterested.

They’re unresolved.

They stall because priorities shift, internal consensus breaks, risk feels too high, or timing simply isn’t right yet.

Traditional funnels assume steady, forward motion. Real buying journeys don’t work that way.

Buyers pause. They loop back. New stakeholders enter. Urgency fades and returns.

Nurture exists to manage uncertainty over time.

Not to push.
Not to remind.
Not to “stay top of mind.”

Its role is to preserve context, build trust, and support progress when buyers are actually ready to move.

(Related reading: Why Lead Generation Was the Wrong Mental Model)

Progression vs. Activity

One of the most damaging assumptions in marketing is that more activity equals more progress.

It doesn’t.

Open rates are activity.
Clicks are activity.
Form fills are activity.

Progress looks different.

Progress shows up as:

• Clearer problem definition
• Better internal alignment
• Reduced perceived risk
• Increased confidence to engage

Buyers don’t move because you sent more emails. They move because something became clearer or safer.

Nurture should answer the buyer’s next question, not repeat your last message.

Nurture as a GTM System Function

When nurture works, it doesn’t live in one place.

It shows up across inbound follow-up, outbound sequences, SDR conversations, sales follow-ups, closed-lost re-engagement, and account expansion.

That’s why treating nurture as “marketing’s job” breaks the system.

Nurture is a shared GTM system function.

It connects:

• Demand Clarity – who this system is for
• Lead Management – how signals flow
• Sales Development – how humans engage
• Executive decisions – what the system optimizes for

When these parts are disconnected, nurture becomes guesswork. When they’re aligned, nurture creates continuity across the buying experience.

Why Lead Nurturing Fails Without Lead Management

This is the part many teams miss.

Lead nurturing isn’t primarily a content problem. It’s a lead management problem.

When your lead management system captures the right signals, nurturing becomes helpful instead of spammy.

Those signals include:

• Fit against your ideal customer profile
• Intent vs. casual interest
• Buying-group engagement
• Where the buyer is actually stuck

When those signals are missing, nurturing turns into noise dressed up as personalization.

Effective nurture depends on a system that makes the journey visible, then routes the next best action with context.

This is the bridge between GTM systems and real pipeline movement.

(See: How to Do Lead Management That Improves Conversion)

Where Lead Nurturing Breaks Down

Most nurture programs fail in predictable ways:

• Teams guess buyer stage based on content consumption instead of buyer reality
• Automation replaces judgment and scales weak assumptions
• Context is lost at handoffs, quietly eroding trust
• Email becomes the system instead of one tool within it

These are not tooling problems.

They are system design failures.

The Real Risk of “AI-Powered” Nurturing

AI doesn’t make nurturing smarter by default.

It makes it faster.

If your assumptions are wrong, AI will help you be wrong more efficiently.

The teams winning with AI aren’t sending more messages. They’re using better signals and stopping messages sooner when relevance drops.

Automation should amplify understanding, not replace it.

The Bottom Line

Lead nurturing isn’t about moving leads through stages.

It’s about helping buyers move through uncertainty.

That only happens when nurturing is grounded in real customer understanding, supported by strong lead management systems, and designed to build trust instead of pressure.

If your nurturing feels busy but ineffective, don’t add content or automation.

Fix the system. Learn the buyer. Then scale.

Where to Go Next

• Who is this system actually for?
  Start with Demand Clarity and Ideal Customer Profiles.
• When is a buyer truly ready for sales?
  That’s the role of a Universal Lead Definition.
• How do signals move without losing context?
  Explore Lead Management and Flow.
• What does this look like in practice?
  See the case studies.

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I interviewed Dr. Philip Kotler — often called the father of modern marketing — about what brand activism actually means, why most companies get it wrong, and what it means for B2B.

Kotler co-authored Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action with Christian Sarkar. The conversation covered how branding evolved from product labels to value commitments, why B2B is not exempt, and why activism that starts in the marketing department almost always fails.

What follows is the full conversation, edited for clarity and readability.

What is brand activism?

Brian: I’m excited to have you on the show today to talk about brand activism. So, what is brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: Brand activism, Brian, is a movement toward making a brand do more than just tout the virtues of a product or a service, its usual function, and to go and even identify some value or values that the company has and cares about. For example, I would say a company that is active with this brand would be, probably, The Body Shop, especially when it started out under Anita Roddick. Because she made it her point that she’s not only selling skincare products as a retailer, but she really was also fighting for animal rights, civil rights, fair trade, environmental protection. So her brand was active. I don’t mean that all other brands are passive, because they do a lot of work, but the implication is that companies carry reputations, and they want to have a good reputation.

More and more consumers would like to know, about a company they deal with on either a frequent basis or on a fundamental single-use basis, they would like to know what kind of company is this, what does it care about. Because our society is saddled with a lot of problems, and does the company care about any of these problems, or does it just think it’s supposed to make money? Well an increasing number of companies would like an identity that goes beyond just making the product or service. And that is what we are calling brand activism, the brand that actually connects with some cause, or maybe several reasons.

Why Kotler wrote the book — and why now

Brian: You recently wrote a book on this topic. I’d love to know the story behind why you wrote the book Brand Activism, and why now?

Dr. Kotler: I think that, if you look at some barometers, like the Edelman Trust Barometer, about the level of trust in society today, it’s undoubtedly been falling.

Brian: Yes.

Dr. Kotler: And as a result, many companies are not going to be trusted either, as part of maybe government not being believed, and other institutions. And companies ought to be the first to fight against bad companies, rather than stand near them or be part of bad companies. So the idea is that, at this time, companies want to be profiled in a certain way. In other words, the reputation a company has could be just whatever happens in its course of behavior. Or it could also be something that only could be designed better. Consciously better.

The evolution of branding: from products to values

Dr. Kotler: And you see, the whole idea of a brand itself has gone through several stages, and that’s very important. I think brand activism is probably the highest stage, but let me tell you what the steps are in my mind.

Brian: That would be great.

Dr. Kotler: Yes. The first stage is when the company simply does its best to feature the right side of its product and services. Now that’s normal. That was an identifier. Then brands moved into trying to define the company’s positioning, but not social positioning. Just their positioning like, Walmart is lowest price, and Disney is family entertainment, DuPont is highest quality, and Toyota, long-lasting reliable performance. So in that second stage the brand became, not just one mentioning a product, but it was positioning the product.

Then the brand moved further, to define perhaps a set of qualities about the company. Let me take, as an example, John Deere, which makes all kinds of equipment for farmers and for forestry workers and for construction workers. You would say that at this stage, John Deere would describe itself for its quality, its integrity, and its innovation. It’s really positioning, but it’s multi-positioning. Namely saying that it stands high on many traits that are valued by most people.

But this could move into a fourth stage where the brand actually adopts a particular cause. You know about corporate social responsibility, and a lot of companies are into that. So, a company may say that it really cares about the climate problem and wants to help move solutions toward keeping a safe climate in the world. Or it could be some other cause. Then brand activism is alive with that development of going from corporate social responsibility to the company actually saying, here’s one of the things we’re going to move forward on, to the extent that we can afford to do it. We want to make more useful products, make money doing that, but we also want to push forth some cause that would help.

So that’s the evolution of branding, and brand activism is at one of its latest stages.

How customer expectations changed

Brian: It’s interesting, as I’m listening to you, as you talked about just the drivers that have been … Some of them have been consumer expectations, and the trust that we have towards institutions has fallen, but what has really been driving brand activism, and how have you seen, or from what your research has shown, have customers changed their expectations?

Dr. Kotler: I think customers were asked how they feel about the economy and society, we would hear them talk about concerns and fears related to migration, connected to a decline in ethics, problem of gun control, very high federal budget, very high debt, and education failing. Some many people, either they never got a good education in a country that should be rich enough to give an excellent knowledge to everyone, or the college education, whatever it was worth, it saddled them with a lot of debt. So there are all these social issues, and they become the ground out of which brand activism becomes essential.

We would say that companies do not have the right to be silent about these issues. In fact, there is an increasing number of people who would argue that companies owe it to their consumers to show that they care for more than just their product and making money. And that’s the groundwork that inspired brand activism.

Is brand activism different in B2B?

Brian: As I listen to you, it sounds like all these things that externally happened in the world around us, which affects our daily life, is influencing brands to pick up some of the slack in terms of being able to connect with customers. Do you see a difference between B2B companies and B2C companies with brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: No, I don’t see a difference. I think both types of companies will want their reputation to go beyond just making their product as well as possible. That if you take equipment companies like John Deere if you take consumer companies like McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, any one of them … In fact I’d say that if you start doing a count of the companies that have made their brand more active in that sense, that there’d be a lot of B2B and a lot of B2C companies in that list of brand active companies.

Brian: I was just trying to think, some of the brands that come to mind for me would be like Nike, or Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, Starbucks, are pretty acknowledged, and I know that you’ve highlighted them in terms of consumer brands. Do you have any names of like B2B examples that people could look to? And it could just be for me, I was thinking perhaps Salesforce.com or Apple. Anyone else?

Dr. Kotler: Yeah. By the way, I’m glad you did mention Salesforce.com because its leader is one of the pioneers in this area, it’s Marc Benioff. And as CEO he says that he wishes he and other companies were … Not companies, but personally, that wealthy people would accept to pay a higher tax, because that’s the only way in which we can address some of these growing problems. So he is distraught with homelessness in San Francisco, which is increasing.

Brian: Yes.

Dr. Kotler: And also, the affordable housing, which is missing. So he personally told other considerable companies in San Francisco to pool their money in a fund that could be used to double the budget for the people fighting homelessness in San Francisco. So that kind of thing comes from a company which is a B2B company.

I would think that B2B companies have been generally slower as marketers to begin with, because most of what we know about modern marketing, as opposed to just sales training and thinking, came from the consumer side. It was P&G and Unilever, and companies like that that created a difference between the concept of sales and the concept of marketing. In the sense that a company might say, “I do marketing because I have a salesforce and I advertise.” That’s not marketing. That’s just having two resources that could be used within the framework of marketing, but it is not going to be equivalent to creating a sound and effective total strategy that will keep a firm alive and well for years and years to come. So marketing is more than just sales. Now that concept of marketing came to the B2B world later than it came to the B2C world.

But then B2B discovered marketing and doing more with it now, and I think they will do more with brand activism. Remember, B2B companies are very close to their customers. Consumer companies don’t even know that much about individual customers. They can learn a lot now, more and more than ever, but B2B companies know through the salesforce every buyer, and what he or she is like. And maybe they don’t think their values have to be done through brand activism. Pretty much, any business buying from another business knows a lot about the values of the seller. That’s why they’re buying from that seller.

Brian: Right.

Dr. Kotler: There’s less need for the B2B companies to get into brand activism because it’s happening anyway.

My observation: Kotler’s point — that B2B companies may not need brand activism because values already show up in relationships — made sense in his era of long-cycle, relationship-heavy B2B. Since this conversation, the environment shifted. Many companies pulled back from public positions on social issues, and “brand activism” became politically charged. But the underlying question Kotler raises hasn’t gone away: buyers still evaluate who they’re doing business with. They still notice what you protect and what you tolerate. Whether or not you call it activism, silence is still a signal.

Brand activism is a company decision, not a marketing project

Brian: Brand activism, though, it’s not a marketing thing, right. In terms of, it goes deeper into the business strategy and purpose. Do I understand that?

Dr. Kotler: Oh, absolutely. No marketing CMO, chief marketing officer, is going to take the brand that he is responsible for protecting and enhancing, and suddenly move into brand activism on his own, or her own. That is a decision that is corporate level. No one plays around with choosing an issue like gun control or the environment or our overcrowded prisons, or anything like that, and just does it through the marketing department.

So absolutely, this is part of the designing and protecting of the firm’s reputation and meaning. It’s a good question, we often see the word “purpose” coming up now in the literature. What is your purpose as a company? “Well I make cars.” That’s fine, but fundamentally, what you contributing? How are you justifying your company in terms of making life better in society? So to that extent, this is a corporate … Brand activism has to come down from the top. And we participated in discussion at several levels of the company.

By the way, one of the benefits of being brand active is that your employees may be turned on more to the company and its contributions. They tend to be very proud of their company because it cares about more than just making widgets. So that’s probably a motivation for the CEO and the executive suite people to say, maybe we really want to get into choosing our values carefully, and putting them into our brand framework, because it will help not only those customers we now have, but to attract more customers, and also to excite our own employees about our purpose.

What marketers can do to support brand activism

Brian: As I’m listening, I get that marketers can’t do this on their own, it really needs to be a top-down from the CEO, the board, looking at the whole executive team, so what can marketers do? Are there things they can do to support brand activism? I know you put together a framework, I don’t know if this would be an excellent time to talk about that?

Dr. Kotler: Well if the impulse is going to come from the CMO, chief marketing officer, here’s what can be done. Let’s say you’re in a company that is not doing brand activism, there’s no display of their values or the issues they care about. Okay. The CMO probably is, if he gets interested at all, it’s because he, or she, or their department, is talking about, wouldn’t it help if we start worrying about the future of water and whether there’ll be enough to make our Coca-Cola? The water problem will be a massive issue in the future. And yeah, there’s agreement with the marketing group that maybe they should bring that to the executive suite. It’s a possibility of putting into their brand work some mention of the intense interest, and doing what can be done to conserve water, and protect good water, and so on and so forth.

So it is stimulated initially by someone in group in marketing that sees that it would be an excellent move to refresh the brand. Every brand gets tired over time. One of the critical requirements of the CMO is to be able to, from time to time, kick that old view of the brand and put in some fresh insight and meaning. And one could come through brand activism, it could come in different forms too without brand activism. So the brand manager who begins to care a lot doesn’t have to be quiet about it and maybe successful in getting the company at the top level to endorse this thing.

As long as the CMO can research any issues that might arise or embarrass the company is taking that cause, and that means if there’s any level of real risk, probably brand activism won’t be adopted. But this comes up with or without brand activism, it would come up with just, there’s a lot of loose talk by executives about some issue, company would be concerned to make sure that the company is or is not taking a position on something. So I really believe that it’s brand activism is something to be brought to the attention of the senior management of the company by the CMO, or whatever way it happens, to consider taking some action on that.

Kotler’s brand activism framework

Brian: As I’m listening to you I hear the idea that marketers really need to start with a plan, and as I understand, you put together a framework so that people can put brand activism into their organization. If this is something that they want to do, there’s a framework that you developed. Can you just describe the framework you put together for brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: The first need was to describe the different types of brand activism that may be chosen by a company. The models that we distinguish are, first, it could be social activism. That would mean taking a stand on gender, or LGBT, or on race problems, or aging problems. Education or healthcare. That would be to identify your company as being concerned about the social side and social issues.

The second would be workplace activism. Instead, the company might want to address issues of corporate organization, CEO pay, worker compensation, or labor and union relations, and things like that. So the brand may really be addressing workplace issues.

The third possibility is, the brand addresses political issues, so we call that political activism. Sort of complaining about lobbying, or voter rights, or gerrymandering. Problems of actually voting. That may be the form that a company adopts.

Or the fourth form might be environmental activism, where there’s concern about air and water pollution, and emissions, and conservation.

The fifth would be economic activism, where the company takes a stand on wage and tax policies that impact on income inequality, and even on the redistribution of wealth or something like that.

Finally, in the framework we say, or you may go toward legal activism, and talk about policies that impact corporations, such as tax policies, or citizenship policies, or employment laws.

So that’s the framework, and we provide a system of maps and canvases and scoring systems that could help a company that gets serious about adopting brand activism. By a scoring system, it would be a system to see how the company is viewed before it went into brand activism, what is it expected to accomplish in the minds of its customers and the public about being active in that set of issues, and what is their score. How impactful has been their adoption of that issue. And on what, on sales growth, on profit levels, market share, and so on and so forth. So we do need some scoring system to know if we should increase our brand activism on that issue, or just stay where we are, or actually if it’s not working for us at all.

Authenticity: where brand activism breaks

Brian: The thing that I’m hearing is that we need to decide what our purpose is, or what’s our reason for being beyond money. That’s part of the purpose, the overarching goal, and from there, then the framework helps me show where I am at today, and how I can improve. How do you see empathy fitting into this for the customer? From a customer standpoint, this can feel like companies are … I’ve heard some critique for women’s issues, companies pink it up. Meaning they put pink on things for women’s issues, but it’s really not authentic, and we’ve seen some other brands do that. Do you have some thoughts on this?

Dr. Kotler: Yeah, we’re concerned about authenticity, and that adopting an interest in promoting an issue, that’s a real issue, can get lost in what we might call very superficial talk by the company on occasion, about mentioning the problem and so on. That there’s no real commitment. It’s like we would say to the company, you’re active about being against pollution; what have you done with that position? If the only thing you’ve done is talk against pollution, but no action, then we’re not as impressed with that.

There’s a term you may remember, green-grassing or something, it’s about appearing to be a green company, but just through talk, and not doing much about it. But I believe that in the end, there would be researching customers, and you hope to find that a lot of customers, when they’re asked about this company, don’t just mention its products, but as a matter of fact the question would be, do you know whether company X cares about some social issue. And if after you as a company did a lot of brand activism, you find out that hardly any customer of yours noticed that you took a stand on that issue, then it’s not working. Probably because you’re just talking it up and not committing. So we need a scoring kind of thing. But when it works well, we believe it enhances the value of the firm in the minds of, not only existing customers and the employees but potential customers. It may even be an entry point, that discussing pollution opens your company to a lot of people who don’t know much about your company, but they know a lot about pollution, and they’re happy to see another ally in the fight against pollution.

The word empathy is suggesting that will customers really be empathetic with the company, feeling that the company is sincere and caring genuinely about that issue, or will they not believe that it’s authentic?

Where to learn more

Brian: I really appreciate you taking time out of your day just to share with us about the notion of brand activism, how it’s impacting, how we can employ it, why it matters. What’s the best way for readers and listeners to find out more about your book, and brand activism?

Dr. Kotler: Our book is listed on the Amazon Books list and against either my colleague’s name, which is Christian Sarkar, or again, my name, Philip Kotler. It’s open to anyone to look up, and there’s no cost to going to the Marketing Journal. It’s MarketingJournal.org. And brand activism has some articles in the Marketing Journal. And basically, there would be more to read about brand activism that way. All you have to do is get on and type the word MarketingJournal.org, and follow up more on brand activism.

Resources

• The Case for Brand Activism — Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar
• Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action (book)
• Purpose matters to marketing
• Why empathy-based marketing works

According to Michael Brenner, “Most of the marketing that we do that stinks and doesn’t work is that some executive with a big ego asked us to do it.”

On top of that, marketers are not in a happy place.

According to MarketingProfs 2019 Marketer Happiness Report, “Only 10% of marketers say they were very fulfilled in their work.” The report looked at the dimensions of feeling fulfilled, valued, and energized by the work, that our work is impactful, and engaged.

That’s why I interviewed Michael Brenner (@BrennerMichael), the CEO of Marketing Insider Group to talk about his new book Mean People Suck.

We need more empathy inside our companies to empathize more with our customers.

Michael Brenner states, “The most counter-intuitive secret to success in business and life is empathy.” I’m excited to share his thoughts on empathy with you.

In this interview, you’ll learn about asking what’s in it for the customer, rethinking your organizational chart, and making the changes you need to make to be more successful today.

Why did you write Mean People Suck?

Michael: Again, I must give you credit. You were out in front of this empathy topic in marketing.

I think long before me. Kudos to you. It just took me a little longer, but mainly as a content marketer and as a former internal corporate marketer, I reached out to folks that I know that are still living and breathing corporate marketing struggles every day.

I found a couple of things, the number one being that marketers were miserable. It’s like that scene from, I think it’s Poltergeist where the obsessed woman has help written on her. Was it Poltergeist? Anyway, there was a woman possessed, and the words help showed up on her stomach because

I feel like a lot of internal corporate marketers feel that way. They’re miserable.

Why are marketers so miserable?

Michael: When you get down to it, I’ve found that it’s mainly because they hate their boss.

They don’t love the corporate culture. They’re not happy with what they’re being asked to do. They feel they don’t have an impact.

When I looked at why content marketing programs aren’t successful, the answer superficially was content ROI. What’s the ROI of content? And if you don’t mind me, I’m not being promotional, but I wrote a book called The Content Formula, All About Content Marketing ROI.

And when I went back to folks I sent the book to, but I found that it wasn’t enough. The math isn’t enough to get people over the challenges that we’re facing and how to do marketing that doesn’t suck.

Most marketing stinks for this reason

Michael: The answer is that I wrote the book is that most of the marketing that we do that stinks and doesn’t work, because some executive with a big ego asked us to do it.

Executives love seeing logos on stadiums, and they love seeing Super Bowl ads, and all the things that we make fun of marketing about primarily come from a request from sales or marketing or product people.

And the companies where content marketing is successful or marketers are happy are making an impact because there’s a culture of empathy. Their cultures don’t suck. The companies don’t suck. The leaders don’t suck. That’s why I wrote the book. Maybe a long-winded explanation, but that’s why.

Why empathy is more important now

Brian:  It’s hard for marketers to care about the customer when they don’t feel cared about too. They don’t feel safe. They’re anxious, or they’re frustrated, or they’re overwhelmed. You also talked about empathy. Why does empathy matter, especially to marketers and does it lead to better results?

Michael: Yeah, One of the stories that I tell in the book, the very first corporate book that I read, and I have to give credit to the former CEO at Nielsen, my first company who made most of us in the company read the book. And I was like, “Oh, here we go. And I read the book. I was like,” Wow, this is actually really pretty cool.”

It’s called the Service Profit Chain. I write a lot about it.

The book isn’t talked about much, but the premise is simple. Three or four Harvard business review professors got together, and they said, wait for a second, we’ve seen this correlation between engaged employees are happy employees, happy customers, and higher stock prices more satisfied stock investors.

They did some actual research and found that where there’s employee engagement, there is customer loyalty. Where there’s customer loyalty, there’s higher spend rates and retention and higher stock prices.

The counter-intuitive secret to success 

Michael: The key to those environments, those cultures, those companies where there were happy employees, was empathy. The company’s purpose was to make their employees happy because they knew happy employees created delighted customers. It’s totally intuitive, and yet it’s counterintuitive.

That’s one of the reasons we reconnected. my LinkedIn post’s empathy is the counterintuitive secret to success. The thing is, I think that life has beaten us down and gotten us to believe that we should take what we want, and we should put our elbows out and get to the front of the line. It’s the opposite. It’s counterintuitive that if we help people, we can get what we want.

It’s right for marketing, which really has a bad reputation. Most people think marketing is propaganda and promotion, but the companies that have effective marketing are those that are empathetic. It’s those that are empathetic to their customers and don’t just create advertising and propaganda.

Empathy really is the key to marketing and business and in life. I kind of wrote the book kind of really trying to straddle all three of those perspectives. I hope your listeners look, and hopefully, they can maybe get back to me and tell me how well I did to try to straddle those three.

Brian: Well, I just want to say I’m excited for you. I’m passionate about this book because big-picture empathy or caring for customers or wanting to help people it’s easy to talk about. Right? I think if you were asking your own executives, do you care about your customers? Do you have empathy for your employees? I don’t think anyone would argue with that, but it’s easier to talk about than it is to do.

Getting customers to care (begins with caring)  

Brian: One of the things you talked about was just the customer journey, and what the experience is for customers, why they don’t care about brands anymore and how the brand doesn’t matter. So why is that?

Michael: Well, the first thing is I think it’s essential for marketers and especially brand marketers, corporate marketers, but I also believe those who are in the trenches there need to understand how to explain this to executives. And that is that we just aren’t that important. We’re not as exciting or important as we think we are.

My former company, Nielsen, did a survey of brands and found that consumers wouldn’t care, 77% said they wouldn’t care if the brands they use disappeared completely. We’re seen as replaceable in many aspects. While we think we’re super important, and we believe we are fascinating. Our customers are just trying to get through every day and trying to meet the challenges they face.

They’re trying to stay awake. The bar is low. Yet so many brands don’t create any kind of messaging or sort of stories that resonate. And so that’s really the trick is if you genuinely care about your customers, you don’t talk about yourself as much.

When I meet somebody new, I don’t say, “Hi, my name is Michael Brenner, and I’m awesome.” That’s the last thing I would ever say.

If I want somebody to listen to me, I say, “Hi, how are you?” My first thing is outreach. It’s empathy. It’s not promotion and propaganda and ego. I think we just forget that sometimes when we’re sitting inside the corporate marketing department.

Brian: Well, you’re illustrating the point, and then I’ll come back, that empathy is more comfortable to talk about than it is to do. We’ve got to overcome our own bias, thinking that we have the answer.

How to use empathy in your marketing approach

Brian: I believe marketers come from the perspective: If I were the customer, how would this appeal to me? Or, as you talked about the leader who wants to see the logo, well, that’s not a customer-focused decision in their calculus.

How might marketers use empathy in their approach to customers?

Michael: In my first book, The Content Formula, I talk about my year-long struggle to get my colleagues inside SAP to see and to have empathy for our customers. I started with data. The data often leads to the conclusion.

For example, at SAP, we were selling a cloud computing solution called SAP HANA, which now has a little brand awareness but then didn’t have any.

What I tried to show my colleagues in marketing was that people weren’t searching for our product name. They weren’t searching even for SAP cloud computing solutions. They were searching for things like what is cloud computing.

In every industry, no matter what thing you sell, if you sell, cybersecurity solutions, and you sell the world’s most excellent cybersecurity solution named alpha, I’m just making this up, people aren’t searching for alpha as much as they’re searching for cybersecurity solutions.

When I found the data didn’t work, I moved to fear, FOMO, in a way, but really fear. I went to the sales team and showed them that I use this term, the buying journey doesn’t start with a search for our product. And the sales team understood that better than my peers in marketing.

And I use search. I said, “Hey, look, when, when I, when I type cloud computing into Google, IBM, and Oracle and Salesforce show up, but SEP didn’t show up at all.” They got angry. That anger then translated to direct mandates over to my peers in marketing, who finally created the atmosphere and environment for me to create customer-focused content. It was kind of like a mafia move if you will. I kind of strong-armed them too to see that it was the right thing to do.

Brian: The point you made is you went to the people who we’re talking to the customer. They had that insight. And ironically, we’re in marketing, we’re supposed to influence messages of customers, but we are not in the building.

Putting customers in the center of your org chart

Brian: You have a lot of great stories in your book. Do you have a favorite story? And if so, which one?

Michael: Yeah. One of the things I talk about how to create empathy inside the organization is to rethink the org chart. I talk about how org charts are boxes and lines, and they show who’s above and below us.

Basically, they highlight who directs orders down to the minions who do the stuff, do the work. I talk about the org charts miss the most important person, and that’s the customer. I’m not suggesting every company should recreate the org chart, but if we rethink the org chart, it will look more like a bullseye, right?

You have the customer at the center, and all the departments branching out from there would be thinking, how should I best serve this customer? There’s a couple of stories in the book of people, and they’re not all necessarily marketers, but indeed a few who’ve done that.

Cleveland Clinic empathy story

One is Amanda Todorovich from Cleveland Clinic. She has a viral empathy video. If you Google Cleveland Clinic empathy video, you’ll see an internal… It was initially an internally created video to try to get the executives inside Cleveland Clinic to see that Cleveland Clinic is more than just a business. It’s more than a hospital operation.

It’s an organization that serves patients. The concerns that patients have are matters of life and death and giving birth and dying. Amanda’s teams’ video was incredibly impactful. I get chills just talking about it. I use it in every presentation, and it has 4 million views online.

They released it publicly at the behest of their executive team because they really understood the impact of, hey, you know, what makes us different isn’t because we have great surgeons, and we have utilized some particular technique or equipment, what makes us unique is that we really care for our patients.

It’s kind of empathy writ large in a way to a corporate mission in many cases all the way down to the content that Amanda and her team create every day, which serves patient needs. And so that’s one of my favorite stories from an empathy perspective.

There are probably 15 stories. I could keep going. I’ll stop myself because I love talking about the people, I call champions, the champion leaders, the people that celebrated others, and achieved success because of that. That’s the counterintuitive nature of empathy. It’s helping others, live your life in service of others, and you get what you want. And that’s really at the heart of the book.

Brian: Well, in my experience, I 100% agree. I’ve always had the best marketing selling feels like helping because it is. But I had a Jerry Maguire moment where I realized I wasn’t living that. My team was more focused on trying to convert people instead of connecting and help.  We asked hey, what do customers care about? How can I help them get it? Ironically when we stopped trying to get leads, we got 303% more opportunities because we were really helping people.

Do you have tips for developing more empathy customers that you could share with our listeners?

Ask this: what’s in it for the customer? 

Michael: Yeah. There’s a couple of, I guess, tools I wanted to develop for your listeners. For the people who were like me who was sitting, getting asked to do stuff that we know won’t work. And the sort of the highest-level insight is asking what’s in it for the customer.

For example, your sales leader comes over and says, I’d like a brochure for this niche industry event we’re going to. It’s going to cost you $4,000, and it’s a couple of designers and a printer to get created. Just ask, “What’s in it for the customer?” Do people really read our brochures? Are they going to throw it right in the trash? You might think it’s essential to stuff that inside the conference bag, but I’ve never read a brochure myself from a conference.

If we ask what’s in it for the customer as opposed to thinking of our jobs as just doing what the sales team or the product team or our boss tells us to do, the answer, I think, is sometimes surprising.

We wouldn’t do half of what we do if we asked what’s in it for the customer.

The pushback questions

I offer three deeper level questions that there’s a couple of examples of people who have done this. I call it the push back. It just goes a bit deeper.

Who is this for?

Why is it important?

How are we going to measure the impact?

And if you ask those three, those are three deeper level questions from them what’s in it for the customer sort of overview.

Again, you wouldn’t put your logo on a stadium, you wouldn’t create a brochure that costs a lot of money to print and kills trees. You wouldn’t do a lot of the things that we do that we roll our eyes about when we think about marketing and when we think about really all the propaganda that comes outside of companies.

Brian: It’s so funny as I listen to you. As I talk with marketers, often, VPs will lament, and we forget what it’s like to be a customer even though we’re all customers ourselves. That’s kind of the crazy thing.

Any other things you wish I would’ve asked about before we just close?

Michael: No, I think we’ve covered the primary tips. I appreciate you bringing me on and letting me share these tips with the readers. I’d love for your audience to read the book.

Again, everything I do, I’ve done in support of this desire to try to help people. I started blogging before I had a business just because I wanted to share what I know. The keynotes I give, the books that I write, and even the client work that I do get paid for are really to try to help people, and it’s worked for me.

I don’t think I’m smarter than other people. If it works for me, I think it’s the secret for many of us to live a life that’s maybe a little more meaningful, a little more impactful. I just talk to so many people. I talk about this crisis of engagement and empathy. The world feels like a meaner place these days.

Three takeaways from the book

The three takeaways from the book are: be kind, be cool, and be you.

Be kind is just because it’s the right thing to do.

Be cool is don’t take things personally. A lot of the mean people we meet aren’t psychopaths and narcissists, they’re just having a bad day.

Be you is because the people that are, I think, living their fullest life, but they know what their purpose is, and they’re working in support of that, and it’s often in service of others.

You may also like:

Download the Mean People Suck Companion Guide PDF courtesy of Michael Brenner

Bring more innovation to your demand generation now

4 Steps to Do Lead Nurturing That Helps More Customers Buy

8 Questions to Steer Your Marketing Priorities

Why this conversation matters for revenue leaders

This is a conversation about something most B2B leaders won’t talk about publicly: the cost of building your career at the expense of everything else.

In 2019, I interviewed Carlos Hidalgo on the B2B Lead Roundtable podcast. Carlos had just published The UnAmerican Dream, a book about walking away from the hustle culture that nearly destroyed his family and his health.

I related to the story personally. Shortly after building and selling a successful company, my 17-year marriage ended. The entrepreneurship-divorce connection is not a coincidence. It is a pattern, and it comes from treating work as the one system you can control while everything else erodes.

Carlos and I talked about why work-life “balance” is a myth, how to set real boundaries instead, and what happens to your productivity when you stop grinding and start governing your time.

If you lead a revenue team, run a business, or manage a sales and marketing function, this conversation is worth 20 minutes. The advice is specific and practical.

The interview: Carlos Hidalgo on work-life boundaries

Some of the hardest working people I know are in sales and marketing.

We often read success stories about how hustle and grit drove fantastic success.

That said, the relentless pursuit of success can leave behind damaged relationships and personal life carnage in its wake.

Take me, for example.

Shortly after building up and selling a successful company, my 17-year marriage ended.

There’s a reason entrepreneurs have a higher divorce rate.

For me. My pursuit of business success left my health and my personal relationships in a severe need of help.

I needed to redefine the kind of life I wanted to live, make different choices, and set better boundaries.

It wasn’t easy.

Now, my health, relationships, and personal and professional happiness are so much better.

That’s why I was excited to interviewed Carlos Hidalgo (@cahidalgo), CEO of Digital Exhaust and author of the new book The UnAmerican Dream.

In this interview, you’ll hear Carlos’s story about finding personal and professional happiness and establishing work-life boundaries.

This is a must-read for sellers, marketers, and entrepreneurs.

Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background?

Carlos: Yeah. Hey Brian. Always a pleasure to talk to you. I have been in B2B marketing and sales for over 20 years. I think right now it’s about 25 years, which is hard to believe.

I’ve been both client-side, and then in 2005, I co-founded an agency. That agency is still running. I left that agency at the end of 2016, beginning of 2017 to start another business. So, could say I’m a bit of an entrepreneur. I love creating things.

Now, I work with B2B companies in the whole area of customer experience under the new brand VisumCX, and then just wrote my second book.

The first book was on demand generation, so if you ever have insomnia, go for it. You can read that.

But this book was the UnAmerican Dream, which is more my story and a whole lot more personal than the first one.

Why did you write The UnAmerican Dream?

Brian: Can you tell the story about why you wrote this book, The UnAmerican Dream, and why now?

Carlos: Yeah, great question. When I left Annuitas, which was the first company that I had co-founded and started, I put a post on LinkedIn about why I was going.

It was more to get back to what I should have been doing in the first place, which was cultivating those meaningful relationships, especially with my children and marriage.

I was struck by the number of calls and emails I got from fellow entrepreneurs and fellow business leaders who were saying,

“So, how did you do this? What steps did you take because I am at my wit’s end? I’m never seeing my family,” or “My marriage is falling apart,” or insert whatever they were going through.

I was shocked.

Wow, this is not just me going through this.

So, that’s why.

But the why now, is the idea of that book came to me over two years ago.

But I needed to work on me first.

I had to get some things straight in me, and one of those things that I start with the introduction, I believe, saying I first had the idea in 2016.

When I told somebody the title, they said, “It sounds like an angry book.”

I believe if I had written it then, it would have been an angry book because I had a lot of things that I had to work through and deconstruct some things that I had held to be true which weren’t right.

So, I needed to wait. Waiting, I believe, made it a much more authentic book, a much more vulnerable book, but not an angry book in any way.

Walking away from the UnAmerican Dream

Brian: I’m going to ask the same question you got asked by many people on LinkedIn. How did you walk away from this UnAmerican dream, and what do you mean by that?

Carlos: Yeah. Wow. How I did it … From the outside, it probably seemed like, oh, he woke up one day and was like, “I’m done.”

It was a 10-month process for me. I really wrestled with the decision. And you know, Brian, you’ve started businesses. You’re an entrepreneur yourself.

When you start something from scratch, and you put everything you have into it, you really … The term I hear often is, “This is my baby.”

I wanted to make sure that, first and foremost, I had come to a place where I’m like, “I’ve got to do everything I can to get back those relationships that I had neglected for so long.”

So, I tried to do that within the context of the first business.

That took me 10 months.

I kept wrestling with what should I do and how should I do it?

Getting the courage to make the decision

Carlos: It was a conversation which I’ve told many times, so I want to elaborate in case there’s an overlap with people who have heard this before.

But, a conversation with a colleague in the lobby of the Westin who encouraged me.

He said, “You know what you need to do. You just need the courage to do it.”

I called Suzanne, my wife, at that point, a few hours later and said, “I’m leaving.”

When it came down to it, I really just pulled the ripcord because I didn’t have a big buyout waiting. I didn’t have this significant hoard of cash in the savings account where I could run for months and months.

It was a risk.

It was scary.

It was like, “Okay, so what am I going to do now?”

But everything panned out, and everything worked out. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was the best professional decision I ever made.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Brian: Well, Carlos, for our listeners, it will come through. You and I are good friends. I was just thinking about you as an entrepreneur and as I know you. I mean, entrepreneurship is in your blood. It’s part of your history, part of your family history.

As I was reading the book, you wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What’s getting in the way of that?

Carlos: Wow, so much is getting in the way of that. I think, first and foremost, is we as Americans are on this treadmill and this pace, and we have made work our God.

We work more than any other group, any other nationality in the world.

So, just think about that. I just read a stat last week where 32% of Millennials will not take more than a four-night vacation because of work. 70% of the population says, “I don’t have work-life balance.”

I was at Nashville this last weekend, and the people we stayed with, he’s like, “I didn’t take all my vacation. I can’t.”

I think part of what’s getting in the way of our happiness is we’re slaves to our jobs, we’re slaves to our career, we’re slaves to our businesses, and that’s a choice that we have made.

I know people will debate me on that all day long, but it is a choice that we have made.

Quitting weekend work

I literally, before this, saw a LinkedIn post that said, “If you’re reading this on the weekend, it’s clear that you’re a top performer.”

So, if you’re not connected to your profession on the weekend, the message is that you’re not a top performer.

That is a total fallacy because I don’t work weekends anymore. I used to all the time. I don’t any longer.

That means I’m not on LinkedIn, I’m not promoting anything, I’m not doing anything for my clients, and everybody knows that.

That’s a boundary I chose. I think that’s one thing.

How social media impacts happiness

The other thing that I think that it’s really getting in the way of our happiness is social media, and these stinking things. We are so attached to, and I will use the word addiction, to our devices, and to social media.

To the point where we’ll put something on Facebook and then 20 minutes later we’re going and seeing how many likes.

We retweet.

“How many followers do I have?”

We have created what I call social loneliness where we are so socially connected, but we are so utterly lonely because people don’t really know us.

We haven’t built a relationship, and as human beings, we’re wired for connection.

I think when we put those things ahead of what we’re wired for, our happiness or our ability to choose joy, severely wanes.

Brian: There’s so much there, Carlos, as I’m listening to you. Something I remember from a conversation you and I had a while ago, and you had been going back to when I was trying to start my company again, as I was starting something new. You talked about setting boundaries instead of trying to get a work-life balance. Why is that?

Why Focus on work-life boundaries, not balance

I don’t believe in work-life balance because I tried it for … At different parts of my career, I tried it.

At other parts, I was like, “I’m completely unbalanced, and I’m good with that.”

Now, when I think about it makes me want to shake my head.

The stats will show you 70% saying I can’t achieve work-life balance. So, when I see that, I know the reality is it doesn’t exist.

The picture I get is my daughter, who was a gymnast for 14 years. Upon that balance beam and nothing made me more nervous.

I had kids in theater and kids in sports, and they could perform, and I’d get a little nervous, but man, when she was there, you think about that. It’s hard to balance.

It’s hard to balance across a trajectory of time.

So, what I did is I rejected the idea of balance.

Maybe it’s semantics, but for me, the idea of boundaries is they are more permanent.

It takes work to move if I draw a boundary or install a limit. So, I’ve adopted boundaries, and when I say “I have,” we have because I’ve done it in the community, first and foremost, with my wife.

Editor’s note (2026): Carlos’s reframe from “balance” to “boundaries” mirrors how I think about GTM system design. Balance implies constant adjustment. Boundaries imply structure. The same shift applies to revenue teams: stop trying to balance activity and results in real-time, and build a system with clear operating boundaries instead. The principle is the same whether you’re protecting your family time or protecting your pipeline from noise.

Building boundaries in the community

Brian, you and I have talked about my boundaries, and I’ve invited you into that community of people who have permission to be like, “Hey, I’m kind of seeing this stuff,” or “What’s going on here and how are you doing with that?”

Because God forbid if I’m the only one who’s going to determine am I balanced.

Defining what you value and want to protect

What we did was to define what we want to protect? What do we want to value?

For me, time with my family, time with my wife is priority number one.

My health, both physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual is essential.

So, I go to the gym regularly. I meditate.

I take time just to stop and think and shut off my phone and close my computer.

Some days, it’s just staring out the window. If you were to look at me, you’d be like, “Is this guy really working or what?” But I’m thinking.

So, it’s those types of things that I protect.

The counter to that is I’m so much wildly more productive in my work because there is a boundary around the time that I’m working. I’m not engaging in friendly conversation or texting or meeting a buddy for lunch. I am absolutely focused in on what I’m doing for a living.

So, my clients get the best of me as well as my relationships.

How to set work-life boundaries

Brian: For those out there who are seeing this, it’s not easy to do. At least, for me, it isn’t. Do you have any tips, and advice on what you found we can do to get better at setting boundaries or non-negotiables in our life?

Carlos: Yeah, you’re right. It’s not easy to do.

I’m the first to say I don’t have this all figured out.

I’m on the journey with everybody else. I may be a few steps ahead, but I also know people who are so much far ahead than I am. It’s something I’ve been doing for two years. I shared with Suzanne the other day, I hate when people say, “Well, they’ve really done their work.” Like we’ve all arrived, we should all be experiencing.

Three weeks ago, I picked up my phone and wanted to check my email at 8:00 at night, and Suzanne’s like, “So, what are we doing because this is two nights in a row?”

And it was utterly appropriate, total gentle, not any kind of like … But that’s what I wanted.

Start with your closest relationships

Carlos: Anyway, back to the question. I think, first and foremost, you have to do it in the community with your closest of relationships.

If that’s a spouse, that’s a boyfriend, girlfriend, close friend, close co-worker, even your boss, right?

Say, “I want to give the best of myself in all aspects of my life, professionally, personally, whatever else.”

Whether it’s work, if you’re going to the gym by yourself, I want to give the best while I’m there.

Write down what you value

So do that in community and then sit down and really write down what do you value.

I was talking to somebody the other day who was talking to me how much they value their physical fitness.

Then literally, almost in the same breath, it was like, “Well, I don’t have time to go to the gym.”

Okay, so you don’t really value your physical fitness.

When I say to them even go for a run outside because if you’re shunning that, or if you’re shunning the annual checkup or whatever that is, you don’t value … You may say you do, but your actions say you don’t.

Clarify what is getting in the way of what you value

Carlos: So, really define what you value, and then say, “What are the things that I’m letting get in the way of those things that I say I value?”

When you do that in a community, you’re going to get a much different perspective than if we just do it in isolation.

Because often the people we surround ourselves with, that we are close with, can kind of point out our blind spots which are of massive value to us and should be embraced.

I would say those are a couple of things that I would highly recommend.

Identify blind spots by doing this

Brian: That’s really good. I can identify with the blind spots and the need to have a feedback loop. There are things every person has that we can’t see how we’re living our life or how we’re showing up.

We won’t know unless we ask people, “What do you see that I’m missing?” It sounds like to get to that place you got to have an intention or purpose, too.

How would someone start the conversation about this?

Asking for additional help

Carlos: I think it’s starting with being really honest, first and foremost, about here’s where I’m at. I’m not here to judge people who are going to work 14 hours a day.

If that’s what you and your community have decided is good and works for everybody, who am I to say you’re wrong?

That’s not my place.

I think just asking the question, “How are we doing?”

Asking the question, “Hey, here’s what I want to be doing.”

I value family time, I value fitness, I value fun, which can be a value. It may be something you like.

Ask “What do you see that I’m doing that’s getting in the way of that?”

If you’re going to ask that question, be prepared for the answers.

Part of the work I had to do was to sit down and hear some pretty unpleasant things.

I didn’t want to hear about things I had done, the choices I had made, the decisions I had made.

That is not a fun thing to go through, but it makes us better. It makes us more aware.

Communicating your boundaries

Carlos: I am so much more aware now, even more so than I was also just a year ago, or when I’m in my personal boundary after working hours of not checking my phone, not trying to stay engaged, not returning that text.

I’ve gone to this extent to make my partners, and my clients, and my professional connections aware of that, so oftentimes if I do get a text at 7:00 at night or 9:00 at night, what I’m starting to see is, “Hey, I know you’re not going to get this till the morning.”

I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right.”

Even if I see it, I’m not going to respond to it.

Why work devotion and hustle porn are destructive

Brian: So, I was thinking about the LinkedIn post you brought up about, “Hey, if you’re looking at this on a Saturday … ” There’s this whole notion of work devotion or hustle porn. Why is that such a thing today? Why is it destructive?

Carlos: I think the reason it’s a thing today is you’ve got so many loud voices out there promoting it.

You’ve got Kevin O’Leary who’s talking … Literally says, “25 hours a day.” In the interview that I think I quote in the book is, “It’s 24/7. Get used to it. Get over it.”

You’ve got Jack Ma with his ridiculous 9, 9, 6. 9:00 to 9:00, six days a week. You’ve got Grant Cardone with his unhealthy approach to 95 hours a week, and the list goes on.

Daymond John’s, “Rise and grind.” We’re not real entrepreneurs unless we do this. I think those voices are so loud, and it’s this idea … I couple that with if I’m the scarce resource to my organization, which means I’m working long hours. I’m always available, we make that part of our identity, it is a perfect storm.

Carlos: The reason it is destructive is we only have a certain amount of time each and every day. 24 hours a day, 86,400 seconds.

If I’m devoting the majority of that time to my work, something has to suffer. Either I suffer which, if I do, I can’t give the best of myself to my relationships.

So, either way, my relationships take a hit.

When I go back to fundamentally as human beings we were wired for a connection, then we have to start to think about, so, what does that mean?

When we begin to move against what we’re wired for fundamentally, we begin to see anxiety, we begin to see anger, we start to see sleeplessness, we begin to see loneliness.

Editor’s note (2026): The connection between hustle culture and GTM dysfunction is direct. When leaders reward presence over output, the entire system optimizes for activity instead of clarity. SDRs send 300 emails because that’s what gets measured. Marketers stay online at 10pm because the CEO is emailing at 10pm. The system reflects the culture. If the culture is “always on,” the system becomes noisy, reactive, and brittle. This is the same problem I diagnose in GTM engagements, just seen from the human side.

More socially connected but more lonely

Carlos: I was doing research on that this morning. It is off the charts.

Over half of Americans are saying they have feelings of loneliness even though we’re so connected.

Just like all porn, hustle porn is destructive. It’s toxic, I agree with Alex Ohanion. I applaud him for taking a stand against it.

Honestly, I would be delighted to have the individuals that I just named shut up because they are doing a disservice to entrepreneurs and business leaders and families everywhere.

That’s why I had Suzanne write a chapter because there is a story on the other side of every hustle story.

I lived that hustle lifestyle for far too long. It’s not sustainable. It did damage to us as a family and to me personally.

Sellers and Marketers are overwhelmed

Brian: I really appreciate you just sharing that there is another side to this. As you mentioned and as entrepreneurs, and you and I have worked in the sales and marketing world for a long time, is this happening in sales and marketing? If so, what can we do to change it?

Carlos: Oh, it is. I work with marketers on a day to day basis. I see more and more.

When you say, “So, how’s it going?”, they’re like, “Oh, my word. I’m slammed. I’m overwhelmed. I have so much to do. There are not enough hours in the day.”

I get emails from clients at 10:00 at night. I got a text from a client not long ago that said, “I feel completely overwhelmed, and I’m so down. I don’t know what to do.”

I go to conferences. At the last conference I was at, I asked a bunch of marketers, “How many of you feel there’s not enough time to accomplish what you want to do in a meaningful way?”

Virtually every hand out of 200+ went up.

I definitely see this on the marketing and sales front.

Giving people permission to turn off

I think what we can do about it is, first of all, business leaders if you’re listening, start to create a culture that gives your people permission to turn off.

Carlos: When you are sending them emails at 10:00 at night even if you’ve said, “Hey, we have a culture where we have our working hours,” you’re putting them in a position of, “Can I tell the boss to wait?”

That is a disadvantage you’re giving to your people.

If you really want the best of them, you will allow them time to step away and turn off and not feel they have to shorten their vacations or be connected on vacation or connected at 9:00 at night.

That’s number one as a business leader.

Designing your job to fit your lifestyle

Number two, there’s a corporate profile in the book of a lady named Claire Potter who is in a sales role.

Claire works for a multi-billion dollar organization.

What she did was,

“Hey, I just had my first child. I travel. My husband travels. That’s not sustainable. I’m going to create a new job role in my organization, and at the same time, I’m going to create a plan B. I’m going to start to talk to recruiters and understand what jobs are available that would now suit my lifestyle.”

Then she went to her organization and said, “If you want me to stay, this is my new job.”

Her new organization said, “That’s awesome. We value you. We want you in the organization.”

She took the initiative to say this is what I’m going to do.

Defining the kind of life you want

Another profile in the book is Elle Woulfe, who is the CMO at PathFactory.

One of my favorite lines in the book, she closes with, “Life is short. I want to make sure I’m here for it.”

Elle had an opportunity to get a very high-profile job with a great company.

She decided to take a role with PathFactory, which is still significant, but it didn’t pay as much, for her family and for her own sake.

But it enabled her to live the life she wanted. Define what kind of life you want, and then design your career, job, and business around that and what it looks like.

We talk about that as well in the book.

Listen to the full interview

You can listen/subscribe to the B2B Lead Roundtable Podcast via iTunes, Spotify, or email updates.

What this conversation still gets right

The hustle-as-strategy era hasn’t ended. If anything, AI and always-on communication tools have made the pressure worse. But the principle Carlos describes, that boundaries produce better output than grinding, has only become more validated.

The leaders I work with who have the healthiest GTM systems also tend to be the ones who have the clearest personal operating boundaries. That’s not a coincidence. People who govern their own time well tend to build systems that govern themselves well too.

If your team is burning hours but not building momentum, the problem might not be the funnel. It might be the culture underneath it.

You may also like

• Revenue Operations & GTM Leadership
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Why? Because today, buyers are in control.

For this reason, we can no longer have an artificial divide between marketing and sales.

I interviewed Heidi Melin (@heidimelin), CMO at Workfront, on how to get sales and marketing to operate as one revenue team.

Brian: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Heidi: Absolutely. I’m a career CMO.

I’ve been in marketing my entire career, having started on the advertising side but primarily focused on fast-growing software businesses.

So, I recently joined Workfront and am the CMO at Workfront.

How can sales and marketing operate as one team?

Well, throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work well with some sales teams, and I’ve also learned my fair share of working with sales teams and marketing teams that don’t align very well.

Also, all those lessons learned include ensuring that the goals are aligned and ensuring that the marketing team has the same goals as the sales team.

Indeed, the marketing team tends to have a broader view of the marketplace in the long term. But the immediate-term goals must be aligned.

So, being aligned on lead generation or demand goals with the sales teams is critical.

We talk about it inside Workfront as one view of the truth because so many times we’ve all probably sat in meetings with sales and marketing executives, and you spend most of the meeting arguing about whether or not the number is right instead of diagnosing what we need to work on to improve.

So, ensuring you’re working on a standard set of numbers is hard.

It sounds straightforward, but it’s hard.

One key to success, I think, is ensuring that measurement, all programmatic activities, and the process-oriented partnership between sales and marketing are aligned because it’s one business process.

One business process focused on revenue.

I think that marketing and sales historically have been thought of as two separate business processes; we talk about it as a critical handoff.

But I think about it because it’s one business process, and inside a company, it’s really focused on the revenue of your business.

It starts when a marketing team targets a specific customer or prospect, and they raise their hand and ask for more information or engage all the way through to close business. So, it’s one business process, not two separate business processes.

And, oh, by the way, it’s aligned to something way more important than a sales team or a marketing team: it’s aligned to how a buyer buys your product.

And we forget that sometimes, we’re like, “Oh, well, the marketing process does this…”

I’m like, oh no, no, no.

We’re just trying to facilitate a buying process.

Flip your focus on the customer

Heidi: Yeah, and so when you flip that, and you look at the focus on the customer, all of sudden marketing and sales from an outreach, from an engagement perspective, has one unified goal, which is to move a buyer through a buying process.

And when you have that change of mindset that becomes important.

I’ve worked in businesses where we focus cleanly on that critical handoff, and that handoff is the most vital piece. And frankly, it’s an essential piece, but it’s not the crucial piece.

Heidi: Yeah, it should support, and we have the tools to help that entire life cycle.

When I first joined Workfront one of the things that we did was as soon as we handed off an opportunity to the sales team, it was like, we’re out, we’re done, check, we’re finished.

Frankly, there are so many tools in a marketing toolkit that we can align with a selling motion and be more successful in helping to nurture prospects through a buying process.

To me, that has been an evolution that has been enabled by technology and is one that is critical in ensuring that sales and marketing are aligned.

Brian: As we talk about this whole idea of alignment, and you brought up measurements sounds easier said than done to get marketing and sales to agree on what common goals and measures are.

How to get sales and marketing using the same numbers

Heidi: I think it must start a big picture and really understanding targets and targets by sales teams and working backward from there.

Because if we realize that as our goal, our goal from a marketing perspective is undoubtedly to raise awareness for the business and drive demand for the business.

Our goal is to drive revenue for the business. And so, we can all understand our revenue goals and then the steps that we all need to take to get there.

So, to meet our revenue goals, backing out of that, what kind of demand generation volumes do we need to have to achieve those revenue goals.

We then agree with the sales team not only on what we are going to use as our qualification criteria, how we are going to evaluate whether or not a lead is indeed a good lead or a bad lead.

Also, ensuring that, from a volume perspective, the marketing team is lined up to support the company’s revenue goals.

So, backing it out from revenue is critical.

And we’ve all been in situations where there’s a pendulum swing that goes from, “The leads are terrible, and we’re getting way too many of them” to “The leads are high quality, but we’re not getting enough of them.”

That’s a constant balancing act with engaging with the sales team. And there may be reasons to shift or change a qualification criterion based on the maturity of a field sales organization or a time during the market, like during market seasonality. There are lots of reasons to make those changes, and you can’t do that in a vacuum.

What works to remove barriers of teamwork?

Heidi: You must go back to the customer, and you must understand the buying process of a customer.

And if you can look at the buying process of your customer and map that out to not only the activities and programs that you engage with to move that prospect or customer through a buying cycle but understand how it maps to a sales process, is essential.

So, if you can get to a place where you can map out the buying process from the time someone raises their hand or engages in some way through to closing business and revenue.

Also, understand how the customer or the buyer operates during that and how that maps to our internal process, you can actually really demonstrate where marketing adds value and where sales is adding value and where both of us add value.

Heidi: That’s where you can look at language and metrics and ensure that at each stage, you have the right metrics that you all agree on and the right language that you’re using to describe.

You must go back to, “how does your customer buy your product?”

If you don’t know that process and you don’t know how your marketing programs or your sales teams operate aligned to that, then you’re missing a big piece.

Brian: What have you found that works or what advice might you have for someone who would like actually to go back to that beginning?

Is it journey mapping? Is it interviewing customers?

What are the steps you would recommend?

Understanding how your customer buys

Heidi: I think that there is nothing more valuable than interviewing customers that have just been through that process.

As marketers, we don’t always have as much engagement directly with customers as I think we should.

So, sitting down with customers that have just gone through a sales cycle, understanding the process that they went through, really listening to what their needs are and starting to look at that; you see commonalities for how customers buy whatever product it is.

Then taking that, making some assumptions, standardizing it, and then mapping it to internal processes.

I know we just did this recently at Workfront and we learned a lot.

One of the most valuable things that we learned is that there were stages that we weren’t touching.

We weren’t touching the buyer in the buying cycle, and we were getting them to engage, but then we weren’t continuing that conversation in a way that helped move them forward or we weren’t providing the kind of nurture programs that we could in the early stages of the sales cycle.

Spend time listening to how customers buy

Just taking the time to step back, and to spend time with customers, listen to how they buy is the place to start.

It’s excellent practice for marketing teams to do that work and creates many synergies with the sales team because many times the criticism of a sales team is that they’re on the front lines. They’re the ones on the phone; they’re the ones in person talking to customers.

And a common criticism is that the marketing team is sitting in a back room somewhere developing programs and campaigns and not listening and touching customers.

So, having and leading that discussion with a sales organization is beneficial because it demonstrates the engagement that we all need to have with those customers as they go through a buying process.

Brian: I’m so glad you brought this up because I do find that, to your point, for the most part, marketers often do get isolated, especially in B2B, because salespeople are usually having more conversations or sales development reps are or whomever. And so, what you’re saying is, get this buyer insight and from that marketers will have a different perspective.

Marketing must understand the customer perspective

Heidi: That’s correct. It brings a different level of perspective, and it also takes away from where marketing teams can sometimes get stuck which is in activity-driven programs where they’re doing just a lot of programs that are generating volume and activity but not necessarily moving the ball forward.

So, paying attention to how we can do things at different points in time to move the ball forward is awesome. It also gives them a broader perspective of not just stopping when that lead is handed over, like, we’re done.

Marketing’s done, marketing’s green, we’re good. Yes, taking responsibility for that portion of it, but our job doesn’t stop there.

And so really stepping back to from the customer perspective is a way to do that.

Mapping the entire customer lifecycle

I think the first step is really to sit down and map it out together, and you must start somewhere.

So, I’m a true believer in, in beginning with a rough idea based on customer insight of what that buying process looks like through the life cycle and not stopping just at revenue but looking at how do we continue to engage those customers.

Because in the case of Workfront, like many businesses, we have a land and expand strategy where that relationship with customers continues well beyond that first sale.

Review and refine the customer lifecycle as a team

So, understanding that all the way through and having a sort of the first pass and then sitting down as a senior leadership team and really refining it together, both the sales and the marketing team members, is really valuable because then you start to share a language, as we talked about.

You start to understand where the disconnects are.

Sometimes when you do that, there are insights that you uncover that you thought, “Oh my gosh, they thought we were doing this, and we thought they were doing this and no one’s doing it. We have this big gap.” And it gives you much visibility.

To me, that is an extremely valuable exercise, and it doesn’t have to be perfect either.

People talk about journey mapping, and they spend months and months and sometimes years on mapping that journey.

To me, if you can get a basic journey down and map your business process to it, you’re going to be much farther ahead than most companies, and the quicker you can move on that, the better.

Revenue team meetings include finance and operations

Heidi: Then, you refine it over time. One of the most valuable tools that I have used in my career is when you bring together the sales team, the marketing team, and the finance team together as a revenue team and you solve problems within that group, things get a lot easier.

To me, that’s one of the tools that I have that I think is beneficial because we must all be operating as a team. That’s the only way that you can get away from, “Marketing’s not doing what they’re supposed to do” or “those salespeople aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

We have a weekly revenue team meeting at Workfront, and that includes our CFO, our head of sales, and me as well as folks on the operations team.

We go through a standard set of metrics. We have one view of the truth, and then we also go through and tackle challenges that we may have, for example, we see this in our pipeline: how do we tackle that issue? What’s the right way to do that? And that combination of people; we’re all addressing the problem.

It’s not a marketing problem; it’s not a sales problem; it’s not a finance problem: it’s a revenue team problem. So, shared ownership issues.

Make sure marketing campaigns are known and agreed upon by sales

I think the strength of sales enablement programs is tremendous. So, as you look at developing marketing campaigns, ensuring the inclusiveness of those campaigns with the BDR, ADM, inside sales function, as well as with the sales and sales leadership teams and ensuring engagement and alignment.

Because to me, that is one of the most valuable pieces of communication: ensuring that the campaigns that we’re investing a company’s money in are well understood and agreed upon by the sales organization so they can support them as they continue through a buying process.

And ensuring that it isn’t just about developing a campaign to identify a lead and a qualified sales opportunity and stopping there. Instead, developing the campaign and enabling the field representatives, whether they be on the phone or in person, to carry those same messages forward and giving them the tools to do that.

That is one thing that I feel strongly about. One of the areas that can be frustrating is when a sales and marketing team isn’t working as well together.

Focus campaign development on the entire buying process

If the sales team is like, “I don’t understand or know the campaigns that you’re running in my territory…”

There’s no excuse for that anymore.

We have a technology that enables that today, and we have common systems and platforms that we’re using, whether it be a marketing automation platform or a CRM platform. There’s no excuse.

So, to me, that’s a really important part that marketing has responsibility for is ensuring that campaign development is not only informed but also supported through the buying process.

Brian: That’s great. And what I was wondering is, we talked about sales enablement, what other advice might you have to marketers and listeners out there who want to improve operating as one team?

Creating shared goals and standard key metrics

Heidi: I would say aligned and shared goals.

That is certainly something that a common set of key metrics that the entire team is looking at and that it’s not metrics by team or by channel. It’s metrics for the marketing organization that we all play a role in.

That, to me, is extremely important.

Providing visibility into programs

Also, ensuring that there’s visibility to the work that’s going on in the business.

Not to be self-serving, but that’s one of the places that Workfront actually helps us a lot is that we can see what everyone else is working on.

And that is a really valuable tool to ensure alignment and also ensure better use of our investment dollars, so we’re not overlapping with each other, or working against each other. And so, the visibility into the programs that we’re investing in at a very detailed level is an essential part of working together as an organization with a common goal.

How technology is impacting marketing today

Well, marketing has changed so much.

That’s such a loaded question because you look at over my tenure, not just at Workfront, but over my career, the technology that we have at our fingertips today as a marketer is overwhelming.

So, one of the skills that I think it is really important for marketing leaders across marketing organizations regardless of B2B, B2C, doesn’t matter, is to understand technology and the impact that technology has on your business process and understanding where technology can help you solve problems, and look at technology to support business process, not to drive it.

The reason why I say that is because I’ve worked in many organizations where there are so many tools out there that will solve problems.

It’s really easy to say, “We have this problem, let’s go get this tool.”

I call this “that-tool-itis,” and we’ve had our fair share of it.

I’ve seen that certainly Workfront as well as at other companies that I’ve worked for but understanding at a deeper level how the technology can support your business and your business goals is a critical skill.

The impact of digital transformation

That speaks to digital transformation. You think about marketing as one of the organizations in an enterprise that has been digitally transformed.

We do marketing so differently, today than we did ten years ago, so digital transformation has really driven lots of change, not just in marketing, but in departments, in large enterprises. They’re always changing and having to adapt the way they work.

To me, that is sort of the most significant change that’s going on in the industry today is, as companies, no company on the planet would say, “We’re not going to transform digitally.”

Companies must keep up today.

However, it happens department by department, marketing being on the early end, but it’s changing the way knowledge-workers work in any organization, and to me, that’s the hardest thing to keep up with.

Brian:  I think many listeners are nodding as you’re speaking to this right now that we deal with every day. So, with all this technology, how do you see empathy or customer empathy fitting in?

Where does empathy fit into marketing?

Heidi: Well, I think that it is an area that has probably been overlooked.

As marketers, especially, have adopted technology, it’s become all about the data; it’s become about the analytics, it’s become about the numbers.

So, we’ve forgotten that there’s a customer on the receiving end and that it isn’t just about the numbers.

It’s about tying to the emotions and how a customer feels as they go through a buying process and being deliberate about ensuring that messaging is targeting people is hard.

It’s one of those things that I think many companies have forgotten in this age of digital transformation, this age of an overwhelming amount of data.

The marketing job has become a data-centric job, not a people-centric job and I think that it needs to balance out.

I think both are critically important because of the concept that it’s people, even in a B2B setting.

You’re not selling to companies, you’re selling to people.

Unlocking the insights and the emotional triggers that people have is how you’re going to move things forward and how you can use technology to support that versus just using technology as an enabler.

So, I think it’s gotten lost as marketing’s gone from almost 100% art to really science-based.

We’ve forgotten the people component, and that’s something that we must layer back in.

And the companies that are doing well are the ones that have done that successfully.

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According to Circle Research, marketers are split. Half say they’re “old school,” while the other half believe their approach is innovative.

Circle Research found that most marketers (93%) who describe themselves as innovative say that it has made their marketing more effective. However, 83% of lagging marketers plan to bring innovation into their approach this year.

I interviewed Jeanne Hopkins (@jeannehopkins), CMO at Lola.com, on how marketers can bring more innovation to demand generation.

Share a little bit about your background.

Jeanne:  Thanks, Brian. My undergraduate degree is in Accounting.

Believe it or not, the accounting office where I started told me in my annual review that I probably didn’t have a future in accounting because I was too loud. Everything was balanced andhing was good, but I was too noisy for a nice, cut-and-dry accounting office.

That’s when I moved into toys. I worked for Milton Bradley Company’s in-house advertising agency. Then, I moved to LEGO and then to other consulting companies.

I got into the software, an internally funded company called Datum E-business Solutions, which delivered a trusted time application.

A long time ago, way back in the year 2000, it used to be that you’d send an email. Maybe somebody would send it again, but it would be like three hours later or three hours before, and that’s because networks were not on the same timing device.

So, the whole concept of having timing and having to be secure became something that became critically important to all networks. From there, selling into IT, B2B technology companies, that sort of thing. So that’s my gig.

What does Lola do?

Jeanne: Lola.com is a corporate travel management solution that allows finance people, office managers, and business travelers themselves to be able to see their full travel details and integrate with an expense platform. I know, Brian, you’ve probably done some expenses before-

Brian: Yeah.

Jeanne: You take a picture of the expense, you watch it go into the cloud, you fill out the form, and it takes half an hour or hour and, I bet you avoid it, right? It’s like one of those things-

Brian: You wait until the last minute to do it, and if the reports are due on Monday, you’re doing it Sunday night.

Jeanne: Of course, taking away from family time.

Brian: Right.

Jeanne: We integrate with Expensify, Concur, a whole bunch of different finance applications, as well as travel. You can book all your travel with us.

We have a complete support network that helps you get checked in and makes sure that when disruptions come up (reroute people, get people back sooner or back later) and any other hiccups that business travelers endure. We’re trying to mitigate that for them.

Brian: I wanted to highlight you because you’ve done so much, you know, since you and I met, and we could date ourselves a bit here but-

Jeanne: That’s okay.

Brian: Way back, as we spoke, I think, at a MarketingSherpa Conference.

Jeanne: 2006, yeah.

Brian: Yeah! I was impressed by you and just how you were bringing innovation and creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking. Also, you’ve continued to do that throughout your career.

Driving more innovation with demand generation

How did you start thinking differently to drive innovation with demand generation?

Jeanne: Well, I can’t claim the credit myself, so I’d say that there would be a couple of different influences. I would say both of my parents are artists of a kind. My dad paints, he plays music, he writes. My mom sings, plays music, and paints.

So, when I was in high school, I majored in Art. We had to submit a portfolio, and I enjoy thinking from an artistic view of the world. That’s the left-handed component of me.

However, then, when I graduated from high school, I went to college for Accounting because I’m ultimately practical, right? I said I could always get a job adding things up.

I read constantly. I’m trying to always look for something a little bit different, a little bit ahead of the curve.

I don’t want to be an early adopter, but I want to be at the forefront before the competition catches up with us. So, I’m lucky to have a kind of a creative outlook, and I think.

Start seeing stories

My dad was a newspaperman. He was a managing editor of the newspaper in western Massachusetts, in Springfield, and I can look at things and look at story ideas. This a story, like just us having a conversation right here, Brian.

Jeanne: So, we each have a story, we have a back story that goes back some 13 years now-

We know each other. We worked together, you know, you have a family, you know my family, and that’s a story.

So, I sent a note to my internal content team, and I said, “Hey, I’m doing this podcast. When it gets published, I think we should do a press release and post it on the blog and backlink to Brian’s blog because that’s where he’s going to be posting it,” but, that’s not creative.

Don’t you think that’s where people kind of drop the ball?

Getting it done

Brian: I do. I think it’s like bringing the two pieces together and what I’ve respected about you is that you were always willing to try something new, you know? And you would see it through and wouldn’t let it drop.

Jeanne: Are you saying I’m a nag?!

Brian: Well, I think a little bit. You want things done well, and you own it. Being creative is great, but being creative or innovative isn’t going to matter much unless you can get it done.

Generating revenue

Jeanne: A place that I worked at a few companies ago, one of the salespeople contacted me and said, “Oh, they’re completely rebranding. They’re doing all this kind of stuff.”

I feel like marketers who go the rebranding route, the new logo route, they’re arts and crafts marketers because while that’s important and a brand is essential, it’s not as important as generating revenue.

Brian: Yeah.

Jeanne: But almost a thousand of them were untouched by sales because we don’t have enough salespeople, so working with an organization to make sure if people are downloading content, you want them to get touched.

They may not be ready to buy, but you want to be able to make sure they’re touched. So, I’m trying to come up with a solution to that internally. To go figure out what I can do to help the sales organization achieve the revenue targets that we have as an organization?

Seeing the whole business

Jeanne: I think that one of the challenges that many marketers have is that they don’t look at the whole business.

Because our job is not just as marketers, and this concept of arts and crafts marketer and saying, “Okay, I’m going to change this logo from orange to pink,” and therefore all these people are going to come to us and say, “Oh, I love your new logo and can I buy from you?” That’s not going to happen.

Generating revenue and building a great relationship with sales

You haven’t given anybody anything of value. I feel and have always felt that my job is to generate revenue.

And that becomes challenging for many marketers. If I looked at what this brand person is doing, you’re going to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars with an agency, and you’re going to go through this whole process.

I understand this individual has been there for eight months, and the sales team hasn’t seen a single lead. I would stick a fork in my eye if that were the case. My job is to generate leads.

I want to have an excellent relationship with sales.

I want to make sure that the sales leader that I’m working with is somebody that I like, and respect and we’re joined at the hip to grow the business together.

Brian: I want to call attention to something you’ve said that it’s so important that you go beyond the lead. You’re looking at the whole business and focused on revenue. I think it’s just part of being a good marketer is looking at execution.

Getting and keeping customers

How do we take this person we built a relationship with or start a conversation with and carry it through to helping them become a customer?

Jeanne: Yes. Also, stay a customer.

The four circles

Jeanne: Because when you think about it, I feel like there’s like four circles, if you will.

1. Employees

The center ring is employees, and if employees don’t have a sense of what’s going on and they’re not being communicated with, like here are the events that are coming up, here are the PR things that are coming up.

What’s the full transparency so that the employees know what’s going on with the product, marketing, sales, team, and everything?

2. Customers

The next one is customers; unfortunately, customer marketing as a concept is not something marketers dig. But they don’t think about them until they’re gone.

3. Prospects

Then the next level is prospects. Many marketers focus just on prospects.  Then, what’s the conversion rate, visit-to-lead, visits-to-CTA, CTA-to-opportunity, the opportunity-to-customer?

4.Community

Oh, that’s all great, but you also have a community, and when I worked at HubSpot as an example, we had a million people that were part of the community. They were not going to become customers, but you know what they did? They amplified content, so we had a new E-book on something, sent it out, the community would leverage it, and that’s what you want.

But if you don’t start with employees and customers, the rest are all for naught, and prospects look at reviews and what other people are buying. You must have a solid core of employees and customers, and that’s the holistic view in my mind.

Brian: Well, as I talk with CEOs, I hear the metrics they care about looking at customer acquisition costs (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV) because they tie back to the diagram you just shared.

How much effort and money do we need to spend to acquire a customer? And how well are we keeping them?

What is the most significant trend affecting marketing?

Jeanne: I think it’s the immediacy of things. I think we are all suffering; I mean, you’ve read the attention span of a goldfish and all that kind of stuff.

We use Drift on our website because people want to get information right away. At my previous company Ipswitch, we implemented Drift.

As a global company, we expanded the hours for the third-party company to monitor all of our Drift interactions.

They acted as kind of a tier zero to funnel people to the community, be able to answer in Spanish, and do different things with our Drift implementation.

Over these eight months, we generated $3.6 million worth of pipeline because people got answers right away. They will set up a demo and make sure you get to the right salesperson. I think that there’s such a flood of information, people want answers right away.

So, the great thing about Drift and this implementation that we leveraged is that it is a personal one. It’s not a robot if you want some help. Let’s schedule this. Let’s do this.

Point them in the right direction to get people the answers they want when they want it.

Closing the marketing black hole

I’m sure you’ve had these instances where you send a note, which has been happening to me increasingly. You send a note to the contact desk email thing, you fill out the form, and you never hear back.

It’s just a black hole. You wonder, as a marketer, have you ever filled out one of those forms for your company? Do you know if anybody’s ever going to get back to you? So what a wasted opportunity.

Brian: It’s such a great tip. Be a secret shopper of your own web experience and your 800 experience, and your Drift experience. Ask yourself, how does it feel?

Jeanne: Right.

Brian: And seeing things from the customer’s point of view, you spend time talking about connecting with salespeople.

How marketing can drive sales and revenue better

Jeanne: I think most marketing people would benefit from some sales experience.

I’m lucky enough to have, in the course of my career, worked in sales. I carried a bag, carried a quota. I like marketing people to feel that they’re tied to sales and their ability to hit their numbers.

It’s not just, “here, I generated a thousand leads and throw them over the fence; you deal with them.” But have you ever called any of those leads?

Have you ever touched any of those leads when people are saying, “I don’t know who you are? I never downloaded this. I never do that,” and that happens all the time.

Jeanne: And if salespeople, out of every ten leads they get eight of those, “I don’t know who you are, I don’t know why you’re calling me. I don’t know this.” They’re going to start to avoid the leads that you’re sending them.

Even though you tell salespeople you’re going to have a hundred “nos” before you get a yes. Selling is hard. It’s very, very difficult.

Scrubbing leads

So, it’s our job as marketers to scrub the leads. That’s what I’m trying to do here is before I throw them over the fence, I want to scrub them.

We’ve taken out international. We’ve pushed to nurture anything that’s a public email address. They want company email addresses, and we’re trying to narrow this down as far as our service level agreement is with them.

But my advice would be walking a mile in their (sales) shoes, and you’ll build some empathy for how hard it is.

Ways marketers apply empathy better

Jeanne: I think empathy’s a tough thing, Brian, right? You talk about the emotional quotient like such as intelligence quotient like that your EQ.

I’m lucky enough in my career, I’ve always had a good relationship with finance people because if I want more money, for whatever reason, I want to be able to say, “give me 100 thousand dollars and I’ll get you 500 thousand, and this is how I’m going to do it.”

I’ve done it before. That sort of thing because most marketers with finance people are over budget and don’t understand how to talk to a finance person.

Understanding finance people

So, finance people, let’s talk about them in travel. Finance people are the bad guys. They are always the bad guys. They’re the ones that kickback your expense reports. And they say, “this isn’t going to get covered, or they may say, “you need to get your invoices in the next five days,” or your expense reports or whatever.

It’s always the bad cop, bad cop, bad cop, and you know, these people don’t travel, so what do you think their viewpoint is of a salesperson that is travels or maybe overspending? How do you think they feel?

Brian: Well, they feel they are probably irresponsible or not looking out in the best interest of the company or, you know, feel like they’re entitled and want the white table cloth treatment.

Jeanne: Yes. You know, they want to be business class. So, we’ve been doing this series of webinars on implementing a travel policy like “how to sell your travel policy within an organization,”  “How to take the pain out of creating a travel policy” because, in our consult, we can put parameters like nobody takes a first-class trip.

They can bypass it, but if you have set up a travel policy and somebody books first-class to go to Austin or something, it gets triggered, and then they know that when they were doing it like this, it’s out of policy, and that’s very intentional.

It’s like video cameras at Wal-Mart or something. You’re looking at it is going, “oh well, okay,” you’re being watched a little bit.

So that provides a level of transparency and clarity to the employee where most employers have policies that are “use your best judgment,” so what is your best judgment?

Your best judgment. I need to stay at the Intercontinental for $400.00 a night, and you’re like, “oh, no! The La Quinta’s perfectly fine for 99 bucks a night.”

So, what’s reasonable? Is La Quinta 20 miles away from your meeting, and you must rent a car for $150.00 to go back? It’s trying to rationalize what works and what doesn’t work for an organization and take the emotion out of it.

Seeing from the perspective of your customer

Brian: Well, it’s interesting because you’re thinking of the experience of what it’s like to be in finance, and you’re trying to help solve the problem they’re dealing with, which is we’re human.

We don’t want to feel like the bad guys all the time, even people in finance or HR or whomever it may be. They serve a considerable value to the organization in driving profitability and ensuring people have payroll met and all these essential things.

Jeanne: Absolutely.

Brian: So, it just sounds like you were trying to see from their experience how do you make it better, and then you focus on helping them solve it. Is that what I’m hearing?

Applying empathy to personas

Jeanne: Well, and another example is another persona that is a user is, say, the office manager or whoever’s responsible in the office for booking.

You’re responsible for booking people to go from office A to office B regularly. If you could see this all in one place rather than worrying about this person’s travel itinerary and that person’s travel itinerary-

Jeanne: What we figured out from an ROI calculator that I worked on is that the average business trip takes 60 minutes to book. You go to four to five sites.

You could go to Marriott, or JetBlue, or Delta. You’re trying to map out your itinerary.

You’re trying to get it for a reasonable price, but also on your schedule because you want to be home on Friday night, you want to be home on Friday night no later than 5:00 so that you can have supper with your family and watch a movie, right?

Solving related problems

However, if you had a choice, this becomes problematic for people, and then you, as an individual, are talking to Donna at the front desk. You’re going back and forth, back and forth, the flight is gone, this is that, and if you could manage it all and you could save time, and you could save productivity, that’s good for the company.

It’s good for you as the traveler and that poor office manager that’s like a rock-hard wall.

Layering empathy

Jeanne: That’s having the degree of empathy for the user, the customer, and as a business traveler, too, that we want to help them be able to get home.

The busiest travel times that we see, people start booking Sunday night, and they’re booking Mondays and Tuesdays for travel, and it might be traveling out two weeks or something, but they’re thinking about their schedule.

Also, another thing that happens is people don’t think about the changes. Think about the business trips you’ve been on, and I’m pretty sure that one out three of your business trips changes. You book it out two weeks in advance and then suddenly, somebody wants to meet you here.

They can’t meet you at this time; they’re gone. So, you end up trying to travel, change your travel, and your flights are not refundable, and your hotel is pre-paid. What do you do? Those are some costs because you can’t get your money back.

Jeanne: So we’re trying to deal with refundable and trying to say don’t always go non-refundable because you got a one out of three chance that it’s going to go away, so you might as well spend the extra 50 bucks to make it refundable and not worry about it.

Brian: You’re looking from the customer’s experience, seeing it, and you said earlier for the sales team, walking in their shoes. Going from frustration, annoyance, anger to feel calm.

Advice to be a better marketer and rise to CMO

Jeanne: I would say the most important thing that they need to learn is how to speak. They need to know how to talk in front of a group without using all those crutch words.

If we’re talking on this podcast and every other word I said was “um, you know, like,” those are all crutch words we don’t feel comfortable hearing.

Jeanne: And I would suggest that people that want to be able to move forward in their careers join a group like Toastmasters, Or Start a group like Toastmasters so you have the practice of being able to do this so you can have conversations on webinars, on podcasts, and be able to present in front of your company.

As you know, speaking in front of people is hugely intimidating. How do you get over that hump where the people in the audience are feeling just as scared, if you will, and can present your company, offer your point of view.

If you get called into a board meeting (and every CMO is in the board meeting every single board meeting), you must present your information in a way that makes sense to the board and build that level of internal confidence. So, that would be the advice that I would share.

You may also like:

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Why Marketers Fail at Customer Empathy and How to Fix it

Getting sales enablement right to increase results

Why this interview still matters

In 2019, I sat down with Dave Gerhardt, then VP of Marketing at Drift, to talk about conversational marketing. At the time, Drift was one of the fastest-growing companies in B2B SaaS, and Dave was one of the sharpest voices in the space.

A lot has changed since then. Drift was acquired by Salesloft in February 2024. Dave left Drift years ago and built his own brand. The #noforms movement he describes below has evolved from a provocative stance into a mainstream conversation about buyer experience.

But the core insight from this interview has not aged at all.

Dave’s argument was simple: most B2B GTM systems are designed to capture and qualify buyers, not to help them. Forms, scoring, and handoffs optimize for the company’s process, not for the buyer’s progress. When you flip that, when you design your system around helping buyers get unstuck instead of pushing them through a funnel, conversion improves because friction drops.

That is a GTM system design problem. And it is still the most common one I see in my work today.

The tools have changed. Chatbots are everywhere now. AI can handle conversations at scale. But the underlying question remains the same: is your GTM system designed to help the buyer, or to process them?

This interview is worth reading for the principle, not the product. I have added editorial notes throughout to connect Dave’s observations to what I see in GTM system work today.

The interview: Dave Gerhardt on conversational marketing

Traditional sales and marketing methods have failed to keep pace with how modern B2B buyers purchase goods and services.

Meetings, phone calls, and email are still important B2B channels but how can you have immediate conversations?

Conversational Marketing is about having direct one-to-one conversations to connect with customers and offer help.

By using targeted messaging and intelligent chatbots to engage with leads in real-time (while they’re on your website), you can connect with people in real-time and convert leads faster.

That’s why I interviewed Dave Gerhardt (@davegerhardt), VP of Marketing at Drift.com and co-author of the new book Conversational Marketing. Dave is also known as DG.

Watch the interview on YouTube

Share a bit of your background and what does Drift do?

DG: So, my background. I don’t even know where to start. I love marketing. I do marketing at Drift. VP of Marketing; been here for three-ish years right since the beginning of the company.

The way that I talk about Drift is that Drift connects you now with the people who are ready to buy now.

Which is a significant change from how traditional marketing typically works, where most of the traditional marketing and sales systems were kinda built for later? Go to my website, fill out this form, and somebody on the team is going to follow up with you later.

But you know, there’s just been a huge shift in the way that we all behave and communicate online, and the now is more important than ever.

I think about walking outside this building: if I called Lyft on my phone, the driver would be there in about one to two minutes, and that’s what we expect from everything. Except in the B2B world, where the rules, for some reason don’t apply to how we actually all do things in real life.

Brian: Right.

DG: So, our mission at Drift is really to transform the way businesses buy from businesses, and the way that we do that is through conversational marketing.

Brian: Well, that’s awesome! And so, that sets us up actually.

Tell us about Conversational Marketing?

And what motivated you to write the book? Why now?

The reason we wrote the book is that we’ve just heard so much about the power of conversational marketing, we felt it firsthand.

We use conversational marketing and Drift to run our whole business, and we have become one of the fastest-growing companies of all time in this industry. And it’s not because we have some secret, but our secret has been we’ve used our own product and really made conversations the center of our business.

And so, as we created this category of conversational marketing and started to educate more people about it late last year, we were like, “You know what? It’s time to write the book.”

We’ve wanted to write a book. We had enough stuff to say, case studies, examples, methodologies, playbooks, blueprints, and all that stuff.

And so, you know we said, “Let’s make 2019 the year that we write the book, and really do the best job we can trying to help educate the future of marketing and sales on this next wave.”

Brian: Well, it’s really well done.

Editor’s note (2026): Drift was acquired by Salesloft in February 2024. The product still exists as part of the Salesloft platform, but the independent brand and the category it created have been absorbed into a broader “revenue orchestration” positioning. The principle Dave describes here, meeting buyers where they are instead of forcing them through your process, remains the right one regardless of which tool you use.

Why do marketers need to rethink their content/lead generation?

DG: Because content’s a commodity, right?

Everybody has a podcast. Everybody has a blog. Everybody’s into videos. Everybody’s on social media.

Content five, ten years ago you could be like, “You know what makes us unique? We are a B2B company, and we have a blog.” And people are like, “Blogging? No way!”

Today, all that stuff is a commodity, and nobody’s going to be on their commute home tonight being like, “You know what I wish I had more of?

I wish I had more content from a B2B brand. Like, I need another B2B podcast. That’s what I need.” Right? And so, there’s got to be some other way to compete.

You can’t just write a four-page PDF and slap a form in front of it and say, “Here you go sales team. Here are some leads.” Because we’re all kind of starting to ignore that, right?

I try to avoid filling out forms if I can.

I hate talking on the phone. I never answer numbers that don’t usually call me. I never reply to cold emails. And so, something had to give. And that’s really the shift that we’ve seen in the market.

And something that David (who I wrote this book with; he’s the founder and CEO of Drift) the thing he talks about is, he calls it the shift from supply to demand. Right?

Customers have all the power today. Ten years ago, they didn’t have any of the power, and so if you sold iced coffee, you could be the only person that sold iced coffee.

And you could say, “You know what, Brian? You’re going to have to go through my process, and you want one of my iced coffees? Great! Come back at 5 o’clock tonight. Call me on this number, and I’ll talk to you.”

Where now, customers have all the power, right?

By the time I’m ready to buy an iced coffee, I’ve already evaluated four or five other companies, and I’m there in your store for a reason.

Really, the concept that information is free now, it’s not something that can be a differentiator for you anymore.

Brian: I was just thinking you sell to marketers, right? And so, naturally, we’re kind of a snarky bunch. We know how things are played, and so it’s about building trust with people as well. I just wanted to hear the story; I was reading the book, but also, I first heard about it, I think it was a year ago. This whole idea of the #noforms movement.

How did the #noforms movement get started and what do you mean?

DG: What do I mean by “no forms”?

That’s a loaded question. So “no forms” is pretty, what’s the word I’m looking for? Not a rhetorical question, but you know what I’m trying to say, right?

Brian: Right. Right.

DG: You need no forms because of the whole process that I think marketers got into this world of just abusing forms, right? And I’m not preaching to anybody;

I did this too, right?

I remember one of the first things I did at Drift.

I wanted to write an article about the Growth Marketing influencers you should follow on Twitter. And so, I made a Twitter list, I put it in a Google sheet, and I put a form behind it.

And I said, “Hey! You want to get my list of 50 people to follow on Twitter? Put your email in here.” Like, that person’s not a lead. Right?

There’s no intent there. I’m just gating this thing that is a commodity, and so we kind of started this whole “no forms” movement to challenge marketers to rethink how they do demand gen and how they capture leads.

It started because about three years ago David Cancel called me one morning on my way into work and he’s like, “Hey! You got a second?” And I knew something was wrong because he never talks on the phone. He only texts. He only sends IMs, Slack, WhatsApp, and text messages.

So, when he called me, I was like, “I’m getting fired. Here we go.” It was actually worse than getting fired.

He was like, “Hey! I think we need to get rid of all the lead forms on our website and our content.” And I was like, “Okay. And do what?” Like, I’m your first marketing person here. You pay me to generate leads, and you’re taking that away?

So, what are you going to measure me on? And he’s like, “No, idiot.” He didn’t say that.

But he’s like, “You’re missing the point. If we’re going to build a business around conversations, we need to lead the way, and we need to remove all of our forms and show businesses how to generate demand and drive sales without having to gate content and use lead forms.”

And so, it was really like a turning point for us, because it’s like, “Alright. If we’re going to build this thing, we’ve got to live it firsthand.”

And it was amazing because it wasn’t just a marketing lesson, right?

I remember sitting next to two of our engineers, we shared a little table together and they’re like, “Okay. You’ve got no forms, so what would you do here?” And they’re like, “We’re building this thing as we go on the spot.” It was super transformational for our business because we were able to see how it worked firsthand.

But then we got to go and educate the world, right? Because you say “no forms” to marketers, people are going to jump off the side of the boat.

But for us, we were like, “Hold on. Let me show you how you would do a webinar registration without a form. Let me show you how you would do this on your pricing page without a form.”

And so, it gave us an opportunity to really go out there and educate the market. And the results since then have been amazing.

Editor’s note (2026): The #noforms stance was deliberately provocative, and Dave acknowledges that here. The practical lesson is not “remove all forms.” It is that gating commodity content behind forms creates friction that costs you more in lost trust than it gains in captured emails. In my lead management work, I see this pattern constantly: teams gate everything, then wonder why their lead-to-opportunity conversion is low. The form did not create intent. It just captured an email address.

Brian: You know it still stings and feels a bit like heresy, this idea of “no forms.” because every marketing automation provider has been built in forms. We have tons of popups. I have popups on my blog and on my website, and the question is if I get rid of forms, then how do I engage people

Engage and capture leads with no forms

DG: So, the short answer to that is to have a conversation, right? And that’s really why Drift exists because the way you’re going to capture leads now is by having an actual conversation with somebody.

I’ll give you an example. Forms work. And in reality, the best advice I could give you is, don’t replace your forms.

That’s what you’re going to do eventually after you’re very successful with conversational marketing. But I want you to use conversational marketing in addition to your forms to start, right?

And you’re going to create a second net that’s going to create this fast lane for the best people because if somebody has very high intent and they land on your website, they don’t want to fill out a form.

They want to get an answer now. And so, Drift is going to create a fast lane for those best people.

So, part one is, use Drift or conversation marketing in addition to what you’re already doing with forms. The other part of that is something we see all the time, right?

How do you ask a question to a form? You can’t.

You either fill it out or you don’t, right? We see this happen all the time.

Engage in real-time conversations on your website

Somebody will come in on our website and our sales reps, when a named account comes to the website, they get a notification on their phone that says, “Hey! The VP of Marketing at DropBox is on the website right now.”

We had a real example like this, and I’ll just make up the companies.

The CMO at Starbucks, she comes to the website, and she says, “Oh, I was interested-” and the bot says, “Hey! What brought you to Drift?” And she says, “Well, I was interested in doing this, but it looks like you don’t integrate with Slack and so we’re actually not a good fit.”

At that moment, the sales rep pops in and says, “Whoa! Hold on a second. We do integrate with Slack. Can I show you? Here’s a help doc.” And she’s like, “Oh, interesting.”

Long story short, they have a 40-minute conversation. That turns into a demo. That deal closes a month later.

How does that happen in the world of a form? It doesn’t. Because the only opportunity is you either fill out the form or you don’t, right? There is no conversation, and that’s the heart of conversational marketing.

Replace digital paperwork with bots and AI

Now, the next question people ask is, “Okay. So, does that mean that I have to have my team sit there on chat waiting for new messages 24/7?” No. That’s where we use bots and AI.

We don’t use bots to replace a human, and we don’t want to put anybody out of a job, right? But we use bots to do that stuff, so people can go on with their day, right?

We want bots to handle the digital paperwork; the stuff that was normally used for a form, right?

A bot can ask the same questions that a form can ask in two seconds versus having to add the friction of somebody filling out a form.

That way, as a marketer, I can do what I’m good at, which is getting people to talk about Drift and coming to our website. And a salesperson, all they have to do is take calls all day, right?

That’s the kind of relationship that conversational marketing can help.

Brian: What I think as I’m listening to you, I think of two ways of building a relationship.

And one, which you’ve touched on, is if you get rid of forms, you’re making things available to people, and you’re helping them. And so, it’s like reciprocal altruism. You’re giving something of value.

And two, it’s through conversation. That’s how we build relationships.

Brands using conversational marketing

DG: I mean, there’s so many. I don’t have one specific brand example, because there are so many different ones. I’ve seen some creative ways people have used conversational marketing.

We have a customer who uses it not to book sales meetings, but to sell tickets to their event. So they have this high-end event, and it’s in March.

Every person that lands on that website get a, “Hey, Brian. Nice to see you here. Did you know that right now we’re running two for one ticket? Do you want to get one? Click yes.” Okay. Have a conversation to do event tickets.

We have customers who use conversational marketing instead of forms to do webinar registration, and it makes webinar registration one click. So, basically, it can double the number of conversions by simplifying the webinar registration.

A lot of people actually use conversational marketing with content, which is, “Hey! You just finished reading this article about thing X. I bet you’d also like part two, which is about thing Y. Do you want to go check that out?” And the bot basically leads them to another piece of content

Think about customer experience and be patient

It would be annoying if every time you visited our blog, a bot said, “Hey! Do you want a demo of Drift?” You think, “No. I just want to read this article.”

But what if on the fifth time you come to our blog, we then ask you for the demo? And the message is like, “Hey! Alright, let’s be honest. You kind of come here a lot, right? Can I show you what the Drift product is all about?” Right?

That’s such a different ask, and it’s just about being a little bit more patient and doing it when the time is right.

We think about this a lot. If you had a brick and mortar store and to every person that walked in you say, “Hey! Do you wanna buy something? Do you wanna buy something? Do you wanna buy something now? Can I show you where to buy something?”

You would scare them away. But that’s how most B2B companies operate, and that’s how they do business on their website.

Brian:

Yeah. And we know how that feels in the retail setting. We don’t want to be there. We don’t want to have that experience.

As I was listening to you share the experience of what it’s like to be in a store, for example, and how that would feel, it leads me to think about empathy and how we think about the experience of the customer.

How empathy empowers conversational marketing

DG: Totally. So, I think of it as, not to simplify this, most B2B marketers, we treat the people on our website like they’re dumb, right?

Like they did no research, they just happened to stumble upon your website in the middle of the desert and go, “Huh…what does this cybersecurity company do?” Right? It doesn’t happen that way.

Nobody is just browsing a B2B website for fun. You’re not lying in bed on a Saturday morning going through B2B company’s websites. So, step one is, understand that the people who are there are there for a reason.

They probably listen to your podcasts, they watch your videos, they read your blog, they got on your email list, a friend told them.

And so, even if they kinda stumble upon your website, like I said earlier, information is free now, right?

If somebody comes to the Drift website and they don’t find what they want, guess what they’re going to do?

They’re going to go over to Google, and they’re going to type “Drift alternative,” and they’re going to find one of our competitors and they’re going to use their product. And so, I think it is all about empathy.

It’s understanding who somebody is, why they are on your website. There’s a good chance they don’t have all the answers, and they’re here for a reason.

My wife and I bought a new car about a month ago, and it was amazing. We walked into the dealership, and we already had basically everything narrowed down. We just wanted to go for a test drive.

And you’re nodding, and everybody that you say this to is nodding because that’s how we all behave like people. As humans. That’s how we all buy.

But then something happens in our brains when we go to our jobs in sales and marketing.

We’re like, “Alright. I’ve got to make sure we don’t tell them anything about this unless they talk to us.” Where the old sales rep tactic of, “Oh, you want to know the price? Yeah, let’s get on a call.”

No! Just tell me the freakin’ price over email.

That’s not what the decision-maker is going to be, and so it all starts with empathy and understanding that the goal should be to have a conversation with somebody who is in your store.

If you change your mindset to that, then your “store” as a B2B company is your website. If I’m a B2B company, I want to have conversations with the people who are in my store, which is my website.

If I had a store, I’d have somebody in front and somebody on the aisles being like, “Hey! I’m here if you need anything. Let me know if you have any questions.” Right? That’s how we think about conversational marketing as a layer for all this.

Put your customer first

Brian: And as you bring it up, I mean we’re all customers, and yet at the same time when you’re a marketer you’re not your customer.

So, you need to think about that experience, as you just talked about, and from that place, how can you help them?

Otherwise, we just have this bias. We love our product. We love our website so much, and we really need to put the customer first is what I hear you say.

DG: Totally. The customer has to be first, and I think here’s the easiest way to be empathetic about it. Think about what type of marketing you react to, right?

We don’t ever think like this. We think of, “Oh, I’m just going to send this email for the fourth time in three days.”

Hold on. We’re all the same, right? There’s no more like I’m not “B2B Dave” and then I go home and I’m like “Dave the dad,” and “B2C Dave.” No. I am just the same person in all walks of life now.

That’s because of our experience as consumers, we live in a world where I can order a Starbucks on my phone. I can order a car on my phone. I can order four boxes of diapers and have them sent to my house tomorrow and spend $300 in two minutes on my phone.

And then when you go to a B2B website, we want things to work the same, but they don’t.

To really break into empathy, you actually don’t have to think about what somebody else feels.

Reverse engineer what you like when you buy

DG: Think about how you buy and think about the last thing you bought and start thinking about how you can reverse engineer your buying process to match what you would like.

Brian: Yeah. I would probably also add, if I think of that and then also at the same time realize if I now start believing I understand what a customer’s thinking, then I have a bias. You know?

So, I’ve really got to understand them too and what they want. You need to spend time with the customer to understand what it’s like, what their experience is too.

Why plain text emails are better

DG: Yes! So, plain text emails. This is something that we first started doing about three years ago, and we did plain text emails because I think people just started to get “banner blindness” in the email.

When I saw a highly designed HTML big banner type of email, I was like, “Oh, this is a promotion from a company.” We wanted all of our emails to look and feel like they were being sent from a friend.

So, our whole email marketing strategy was like, “Alright. I’m going to a wedding with my family in New York. How would I email? I’m meeting my mom and dad at the train tomorrow. How would I email my mom to make sure we’re going to be there on time?”

Subject line would be like, “Tomorrow?” “Hey, mom! I’m just making sure we’re still on for tomorrow. We’ll be there at 1 o’clock. Do you need anything from me?” Why do our marketing emails have to be different than that? That’s how we talk.

That’s how we would communicate. And so, we started thinking about what if we just ditched the banners, ditched the design and we started sending plain text emails that were always written like they were from a friend?

Brian: Yeah. It was written as if it came from a real person because it did, is what I’m hearing.

Does your email feel like it came from a real person?

DG: Yeah! The thing that was so frustrating for me was that I got a bunch of responses from people like, “Ugh. You’re trying to be too sneaky. I don’t like this. It felt like a real person.”

And I’m thinking, wait a second, doesn’t that just reveal the state of the industry that we’re in?

So, B2B marketing is not supposed to sound like a real person. And I was like, “No, that’s exactly why we’re doing it.” I want it to sound like a real person.

And we even had an email that when you would subscribe to our blog, you would get an email from me and it would say, “Hey!” You know like the welcome email you get after you sign up for something, right?

And it would say,

“Hey! I just want to get this out of the way. My name is DG, and I’m VP of marketing at Drift. Even though this is an automated email, I just wanted to let you know that I’m a real person and I’m really here, and I actually really did write this. And if you ever get spammed or if you ever feel like your inbox is being disrespected, just email me directly.”

Source: Drift.com

And that one email just disarms so many people, because it’s like look, I’m a real person. I had a video of me saying that. Nobody’s trying to get you upset. Nobody’s trying to spam you. We’re real. We’re human.

This is what we’re doing. That little piece of humanity in that email was such a disarming thing, and it helped us really build a relationship with those early subscribers that we had.

Just be real and show who you really are as a person

Brian: Well, it seems like as you read in the book the way I would describe it is, you’re treating people as people, not as leads. Not as objects to convert.

You’re just relating to them as other people, and you’re a person.

Brian: When I first started 20 years ago, before it was called business development reps, my VP of sales said to me, “Just be people with people.”

And you know, I was 23. I was an intern, and I was trying to sound important because I was calling executives.

And I think when I embraced the fact that I was 23 and didn’t have a lot of experience and just was who I was, there’s that authenticity and it just is.

DG: I love that, because of look, and this is not to be disrespectful. I don’t have the most experience in the world, but I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing now for like the last eight, ten years.

No 23-year-old BDR is going to know more about marketing than me, right?

Brian: Yeah.

DG: And that’s not a knock. You had just graduated college and are in an entry level sales job so if you tried to reach out or call or LinkedIn or whatever, and tried to tell me that I could triple my conversion…whatever, right?

I mean, there’s no way.

So, I think, how can you be human? How can you show who you really are? “Hey! Look, I’m at this company. I’m not a marketing person, but man, we have this product that has seen crazy results for so many customers just like you. Can I show you how it works?”

Right? That little change makes such a difference.

Business development, the problem is the process, not the people

Brian: I love the section you actually wrote about BDRs and personally, I get questions about BDR reps.

For example, how do we help them do better? You talk about the problem is the process, not the people. How do you mean?

DG: Yeah, it’s probably not a people problem.

I think the process is more like, most BDRs, most any sales, marketing, whoever, the reason they do bad things is that they’re not incentivized to do the right things.

Which is, “Hey! 23-year-old Brian, you’re a BDR. Look, you’ve got to make 200 calls today. That’s all I care about. Make 200 calls.” Of course! What are you going to do? You’re going to make 200 calls.

Or, “You’ve got to send 300 emails today.” Then you’re going to send a bunch of automated, terrible emails and you’re going to be like, “Alright. It’s 2 o’clock. I’m going to go home.” So, I think if you have people who are incentivizing behavior like that, then, of course, that’s going to be the result, right?

Whereas if you said, “Look, you need to get two meetings a day. I don’t care about how many activities, inputs, outputs, whatever. Two meetings a day.”

There are two ways to go about getting two meetings a day.

You could send 300 emails and hope you get two emails, and how are you going to send 300 emails in eight hours? Well, either you’ve got to blast people, or you could reach out to six of the perfect, dream customers, right?

And you’re going to book two meetings from it. And so, that means you’re going to spend half your day doing research. Is it the George Washington or Abe Lincoln quote that talks about chopping down a tree?

Brian: Yeah. If I had an hour to chop down a tree, I’d spend 50 minutes to sharpen my ax. Or something like that. (here’s the quote)

DG: That’s exactly right. So, it’s the same process for sales and marketing that I think we’ve got to help bring back to the world.

Editor’s note (2026): This is the same system design problem I see in every GTM engagement. Teams set activity targets (200 calls, 300 emails) and then wonder why the output is low-quality pipeline. The incentive structure creates the behavior. When I rebuild SDR motions, the first thing I examine is what reps are actually being measured on, because that tells me what the system is optimized for. If the metrics reward volume, you get volume. If they reward buyer clarity, you get pipeline.

Brian: That makes sense. We have time probably for one more question, but I’d love to ask you a lot more. If we have a coffee together and I said, “DG, how do I get into conversational marketing? Where can I start?” What tips would you recommend for me to get started today?

How to begin conversational marketing

DG: Number one is to go and buy the book. Pre-order it. Because we’ve taken everything we’ve learned over the last two and a half, three years and put it into this book to help you get started. And obviously, we have a ton of great content at Drift designed to help you do that.

But let’s assume that you’ve signed up and you’re going to use conversational marketing.

For me, it would be, pick one to two things, one to two places that you can be successful right away. The biggest mistake I think people make is, “Alright. I bought Drift. It’s everywhere. Let’s see what happens.” We’re like, “No. What is your plan?” They’re like, “Oh, well…”

So, here’s a better example. Most websites have a “contact us” button, or “request a demo,” And that pops out a 13, 15 field, 20-field form, whatever. You fill it out. I’d be like, “Oh, that’s easy. We could replace that easily.”

So, start with that one page. Have a contained experiment on that one page. Prove out success and then start to expand. Then put it on the pricing page. Then put it on the homepage. Then put it on the blog. You’ve got to have a motion that you’re going to try to improve.

Well, we think we could double the conversion rate on our homepage by doing this, right? So, that’s where I would start is pick one or two familiar patterns, whether it’s your blog, whether it’s your “request a demo” button, and start there. And really learn.

You’re going to learn a lot more than you thought you would. I think a lot of people say, “I only want to book sales demos.” And then they start using Drift, and they’re like, “I haven’t booked a demo yet, but I’ve had five conversations this morning that blew my mind and, oh my God, I need to change my homepage.”

That’s the stuff that you can’t quantify until you actually get out there and have real conversations with people.

Editor’s note (2026): Dave’s advice here, pick one or two places to start and prove success before expanding, is sound system thinking. It applies to any GTM change, not just conversational marketing. The biggest mistake I see teams make is trying to fix everything at once. Start with the highest-friction point, prove the fix works, then expand.

What this interview still teaches in 2026

The specific tool Dave was selling no longer exists as an independent company. The category he helped create, conversational marketing, has been absorbed into broader platforms. The #noforms movement has gone from radical to routine.

None of that matters.

What matters is the system design question underneath all of it: is your GTM built to help buyers make progress, or to process them through your internal workflow?

Every theme Dave raises in this interview (forms as friction, BDR incentive misalignment, the gap between buyer intent and organizational response) — these are not conversational marketing problems. They are GTM system problems. And they persist whether you use Drift, Salesloft, HubSpot, or no chatbot at all.

If your team is generating activity but deals are not converting, the answer is rarely a new tool. It is usually a system that was designed to capture rather than help.

That is what I diagnose and fix.

Where to start

If this interview resonated, the GTM Lead Leak Assessment can show you where your system is creating friction between buyer intent and your team’s ability to respond. It takes under 10 minutes.

Take the GTM Lead Leak Assessment →

Or book a 30-minute GTM Lead Leak Review →

You may also like

• Redesigning GTM Around Buyer Motivation: 303% More Sales-Accepted Leads
• What Empathy-Based Marketing Really Is (And Why Most B2B Teams Miss It)
• Email Lead Nurturing That Actually Works (When the System Is Right)

Sales have always used an account-based approach. Now,, marketing is adopting account-based marketing. But it’s not an easy road.

Here’s why:

In B2B, you’re never selling to an individual. He or she is almost always part of a buying team. Moreover, the bigger the potential deal, the more people, departments, and functional areas get involved.

For this reason, many B2B marketers using a leads-based approach hit a wall with their account-based marketing efforts.

ABM isn’t just about marketing. ABM works best in companies where all revenue-generating areas are closely aligned as one team.

So, how can you improve your account-based marketing results?

To help, I interviewed Jon Miller (@jonmiller), CEO and Co-Founder of Engagio. Jon and his team just released the Second Edition of The Clear and Complete Guide to Account-Based Marketing. He brings a fantastic perspective on how to complement a leads-based approach and adopt account-based marketing.

What inspired you to start Engagio?

Jon: Great.  I’m excited to be here and to have a chance to hang out with you again. It’s been a while since we talked.

So, my background: I’ve been in marketing technology almost my entire career. My undergraduate degree is actually in physics, and when I was coming out of college, I ended up doing a lot of work with companies that were trying to take advantage of all the customer data they had [in order] to make decisions.

Because I came to marketing with that quantitative and analytical background, that led me into a series of marketing technology companies that were basically all about really trying to use all that data to drive better customer decisions and one to one interactions. You know, very much inspired by the Don Peppers and Martha Rogers book The One to One Future.

I worked at Exchange and then as an early employee at Epiphany, which was probably the leading marketing technology company of the mid-’90s.

After we sold Epiphany, I co-founded Marketo, along with Phil Fernandez. And I think that’s arguably, or maybe not even arguably, the leading marketing technology of the last ten years or so. Recently, it was sold to Adobe for just under 5 billion dollars.

I had a long career in marketing technology, but one of the trends I think is always true is marketing is changing all the time, and the underlying technologies are changing all the time.

I just felt about four years ago that Marketo wasn’t, frankly, moving fast enough to kind of keep up with all the new trends and changes in how marketing was done.

I was inspired to start a new company that would be seeking to build out the next generation of marketing products that could really take advantage of all these new trends.

One of those significant trends is what’s now known as account-based marketing. And so, that’s where I decided to start, to focus, to have Engagio be a platform for account-based marketing.

How do you define account-based marketing?

Brian: Well, there’s a lot of definitions out there about account-based marketing, and I’ve talked with CMOs and VPs, and they see account-based marketing as just good marketing.

But I’d love to ask you: you just had this new book come out, The Clear Complete Guide to Account-Based Marketing and you’re on your second edition, so how would you define it?

Jon: Yeah. So, first of all, let me just say, really excited about the book. You know, it is a second edition; I wrote the first one about three years ago. I’ve learned a ton more about ABM in the last three years.

I’ll start with a colloquial definition of ABM then I’ll give you my formal one. I think the colloquial one I like to use is a comparison back to the kind of marketing that we did with Marketo. And that is the marketing that I like to describe as fishing with nets.

When you’re fishing with nets, you run your campaigns, and you don’t care which specific fish you catch. You just care– did I catch enough? That you can then do lead nurturing, and lead scoring to kind of run it through the system.

But when you’re going after bigger or more strategic accounts, or maybe because you’re going after your existing customers for expansion, or you’re in a narrow industry.

Any time you have a specific list of named accounts, you don’t want to wait around for those big fish to swim into your net. You’re going to find ways to reach out to them proactively. It’s much more like fishing with a spear. And so, to me that’s the simple definition of account-based marketing: it’s spearfishing as opposed to net fishing.

A breakout of account-based marketing

Jon: My formal definition is that account-based marketing is a go-to-market strategy that will coordinate personalized marketing and sales efforts to land and expand at target accounts. Can I just explain what some of those words mean?

Brian: Yeah. If you could break that out that would be great.

It’s a strategy

Jon: First of all, I’m very precisely calling it a strategy. ABM is a way of running your go-to-market. And how your sales and marketing and customer success teams work. It’s not a campaign or a tactic. So, you really do need to kind of say, “We use ABM as our go-to-market strategy or at least one of our go-to-market strategies.”

Personalized to the right people and accounts

Jon: Second, ABM is really all about being personalized. There’s so much noise in the market today; if you’re spearfishing and you’re trying to reach out to the right people at the right companies, somehow you’ve got to break through all that noise and the best way to do that is with relevance, resonance, and empathy, which I know we’ll talk about.

ABM is a misnomer because we’re saying it’s account-based marketing but right there, in my definition, I’m talking about marketing and sales. And let’s talk about that a little bit later.

Landing and expanding revenue

Jon: ABM is about landing and expanding. I think that especially today, so many companies earn revenue through subscription and recurring revenue models.

Just focusing on that new business, which is what the net fishing is all about, is a minimal myopic focus, and ABM expands, or changes, the marketer’s mindset to focus on the entire revenue journey:

• landing/creating new pipeline
• accelerating existing deals
• expanding and retaining existing relationships.

ABM plays across all that. So, that’s why I chose that definition.

From leads-focus to account-focus

How is ABM is different than demand generation?

Brian: Well, it makes sense, and I appreciate what you’re talking about, just the overarching trend.

CEOs focus on lifetime value (LTV) and CAC (customer acquisition cost). And so, ABM is providing answers to that.

There still is so much confusion out there, and you say, ABM isn’t just about marketing. How do you mean?

How is it different from demand generation? Because I still think people out there, even though we’ve just talked about the definitions, yet are getting confused.

Jon: Yeah. Well, so I always thought it was ironic that we called the category Marketo played in marketing automation. People think marketing automation means that you have fewer humans doing less work. The reality is the exact opposite.

When you buy a tool like Marketo, or any marketing automation platform, it requires work. People have to do stuff.

ABM is not just about marketing; it’s about everything

So, in many ways marketing automation is a misnomer in the same way that ABM is a misnomer because ABM is not just about marketing.

If you’re focused on the entire revenue journey (creating new pipeline, accelerating existing deals, expanding and retaining relationships) that can’t just be marketing: it has to be an orchestrated business initiative between the different functions.

And frankly, if it’s just marketing, it’s not a strategy; it’s a campaign.

At Engagio, a lot of our customers have their strategies, and they’re not called ABM.

They call it something like account-based everything. Or the account first initiative, or something as simple as account-based sales and marketing.

I’ve seen all of those at play, and I think it really is the right way to think about it because otherwise, as I said, it’s just a campaign.

Unteaching that it’s about leads

Brian: Well, I think that’s a vast distinction, especially as people are considering the future. I liked in your book, as I was reading it, you have a quote, “Salespeople never talk about how many leads they close, they talk about how many accounts they closed.”

And do you find that marketers see this differently, and why?

Jon: Well, yeah. I mean this is my fault, and a little bit your fault.

Brian: Sure.

Jon: We taught marketers to talk about leads.

Brian:  Right.

Jon: Literally, we called it lead nurturing, and so on. And the technologies that we use, like Marketo for example, they were built to be really lead-based systems.

Marketers focus on leads. Salespeople care about accounts.

Which, almost by definition, meant they were not on the same page. And that’s not the only reason marketing and sales have trouble getting along, but it certainly didn’t help.

I think a big part of ABM really put is merely just marketers, frankly, adopting the language the salespeople use. And just, again, being on the same page.

Brian:  Yeah. I think salespeople have practiced, in some ways, the very things that you’re talking about in your book.

They may have called it strategic account selling, major account selling, and target account selling.

But they did focus on these accounts, and as you talked about, now marketers are coming alongside salespeople and working on these accounts together. So, we’re going to talk about some process steps, but I wanted to step back to something you said earlier.

How does customer empathy fit together with ABM?

We have more channels, content, and technology to reach customers than ever before, but connecting with customers has never been harder.

I am of course a big proponent and fan of customer empathy.

How do you see building empathy for our customers to bridge that gap of connection and trust and account-based marketing fitting together?

Jon: Yeah, in ABM, once you identified the accounts you want to go after, and the people at those accounts you want to reach, you’ve got to kind of find a way to reach out to them and engage them.

It’s such a crowded, noisy market and people love to ignore unwanted marketing and unwanted messaging. I think at the core if you want to cut through the noise you have to find a way to delight your prospects, educate them, add value to them.

I think empathy and relevance are just two sides of a coin. If you empathize with your prospects, the people you’re trying to reach, it means you understand their pains.

And if you understand their pains, you’re going to be in a much better position to teach them something about their business and create content for their specific economic motivators, their particular pains and that is how we stand out.

Jon: I think it’s just very much like The Challenger Sale, which is so popular on the sales side of the equation, that’s what the best salespeople do: they teach, and they tailor, and they do that by having empathy with their customer. So, very much these things go hand in hand. I’m sure you have additional thoughts on that because you’re the empathy expert.

Brian:  Well, I certainly do, and for our listeners, we had Brent Adamson who is a co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer, so we got Brent’s thoughts about this on empathy and sales, and I’ll share my perspective.

At a deeper level, neuroscientists have shown is that all our decisions are based on emotion. So, what we need to do is connect to, as you talked about Jon, the pains. But also what are the results people want?

The buying journey is like climbing a mountain

Brian: And we have to think about when they’re making a purchase where it’s a complex sale and ABM is oriented to that what causes us to change is that we see something in it for us and what causes us to stay stuck–it’s like trying to climb a mountain.

Read more on this: Putting Empathy in Account Based Marketing

If I want to climb and I’ve got to take other people with me, some of them don’t want to go.

Or I’m concerned about how do they feel about doing this?

How will my team see me?

Am I’m going to be concerned about–is this going to add ten extra hours to my week, and I’m already maxed out?

So, there’s this personal stuff that’s happening inside your customer because we’re all customers; we all make decisions emotionally.

We think B2B buying is less about emotion, but the stakes are higher, so it’s even more emotional. So, I find that we’ve got to tune into every stage of the journey and what’s happening.

B2B tends to be more about avoiding negative emotions

Jon: That’s a great point. The only thing I’d also add is I think the emotions in B2B tend to be more about avoiding negative emotions.

Whereas B2C might be about kind of seeking aspirational emotions. Because in B2B there’s such a disconnect between the–if you make a good purchase your company is a little bit better off. You make a bad purchase, you can lose your job.

Brian:  Yeah, and often people start journeys by, “Hey I’m learning about…and I feel inspired and hopeful we could actually do something.”

And pretty quickly after that, it goes to despair. Like “Oh my gosh is this even worth it? I want to try to get this into our company; it’s so hard.”

For that person, they’re really saying, “Do I want to do this? Is it really going to be worth it?” And as you talked about the pain, just changing is painful and there’s so much there.

ABM Process Steps to follow

We probably don’t have time to go through all of them, but I was just going to ask, where do you see marketers getting stuck, or need to put more attention in those seven ABM process steps?

Jon: Sure. So, just for the listeners, I’ll summarize the seven steps down and keep it simple, which is it’s only really about who, what and where and then measurement.

Who do you want to go after? Which accounts? Which people?

What are you going to say to those accounts that are actually going to be empathetic and relevant?

Where is how do you actually get that message in front of them?

What channels? And how do you orchestrate those interactions?

And then the last piece is the measurement of the whole thing.

Where do people get stuck in ABM?

Jon: So, regarding your question, where do people get stuck?

The ABM Maturity Curve

It’s really a maturity curve. Obviously, to start, you need to pick your accounts. That is a process that has to go hand in hand with sales.

The companies that are less mature can get wrapped up right around the axle right there. They just can’t find a good process for how do marketing and sales actually collaborate around an account selection process.

Picking too many accounts

Once they’re past that stage, I guess the best way to describe it is sort of the next area I see people get stuck is; frankly, they pick too many accounts to really be able to deliver the level of personalization and relevance that’s indeed required to be successful with ABM.

I’ve seen people pick, they have 200 tier one accounts. And having 200 tier one accounts means that you are not creating a bespoke customized interaction with in-depth account-relevant research at every one of those 200 accounts.

So, there’s a set of interconnected challenges there. But it starts with recognizing that you’ve got to be able to break through the noise and stand out. That requires being more relevant, and you have to right-size the number of accounts you pick to your actual abilities to be able to be relevant.

Scaling ABM and automating it

Jon: And then the third challenge that the most mature companies run into is then scaling the whole thing.

So, great, you’ve identified some accounts, and you’ve identified things that you can do that are going to really help you stand out and it worked great in your pilot.

Now, how do you really start to automate some of those steps to bring it to the next level and make sure that any time a target account’s doing something interesting, your sales team knows about it, you’re following up appropriately? It’s really started to become a machine and not a whole series of one-act heroics.

I’d say those are probably the three if you look across the who, what, where, the three areas where people kind of get into trouble.

Checklist for Building an ABM Foundation

Tips to do ABM better

Brian:  That’s really good, Jon. do you have any tips or actionable advice that you would give to someone just, like, over coffee, and they said, “Hey, how do I do better?”

Jon: Yeah, a couple tips. I think the first is that I see a lot of companies start their ABM journey with display advertising.

First, don’t start with ABM advertising

And I think they do that because it’s really easy; it’s an easy button. You just have to spend some money, give them your account list, and hey, you get to say you’re doing ABM. But I’ve also seen that lead to disillusionment with ABM quite frequently because the reality is, I don’t care if you’re doing account targeting or not. Ads are ads.

I don’t click on ads. I don’t even notice ads, and I’m sure that’s probably true with a lot of other executives. So my first tip is don’t get seduced into thinking that you can really just start with ads. I think of advertisements as a nice thing you layer on top of an existing program. But, not your first step. That’s my first piece of advice.

Second, you can’t be account-based if you can look at accounts

Jon: I think my next piece of advice is that you really have to think about your technology infrastructure.

At Marketo, I started trying to do ABM with Marketo and Sales Force and the systems that I had, and it was hard. It was hard because those are lead-based systems. The data in those systems don’t roll up into your account. I made my market operation team crazy just trying to kind of set up the processes so I could even measure whether we’re also having an impact at the account level.

So, again, if you’re looking to start, I really think it’s worth considering what is your account foundation? And how do you look at data at an account-based level?

It’s kind of obvious when you say it that way.

What’s your favorite chapter in your book and why?

Brian:  That’s very good. As I was looking through the book, this is a 175-page book that you’re offering for free to people for providing information. You put a lot of effort and energy into it, it’s very well done. What’s your favorite chapter in your book and why?

Jon: I’m not going to pick one, I’m going to pick two here.

Brian:  Okay, sounds good.

Different ABM styles and ABM Entitlements

Jon: So, I think first, the whole part two of the guide, which is all about the different styles of ABM, and the concept of ABM Entitlements is entirely new in the second edition.

I think I like it a lot because when I go and talk to our customers about how they take their ABM program to the next level, this concept always comes up.

The different styles and the entitlements. And it’s related directly back to the problem I talked about earlier which is people tend to have picked too many accounts, and therefore aren’t really able to deliver enough wood behind the arrow. So, I think part two about the styles of ABM entitlements is one of my favorites.

ABM Metrics and Measurement

Jon: And then probably the other one I like a lot is this whole section on ABM metrics and measurements, partly because I’m a quantitative measurement numbers guy. But it’s really struck me how different the metrics in ABM are from those in traditional demand generation.

In a nutshell, the metrics in traditional marketing primarily focus on quantity, and back to the net fishing, it’s all about how many leads did I generate? How many opportunities did I produce? How many people attended my webinar? How many people showed up at my event? And so on. It entirely misses out on the much more fundamental questions around quality.

First, are these the right people from the right accounts? It’s not about counting the people you reach; it’s about reaching the people that count. And so, are you measuring that?

And even furthermore, it’s about understanding the depth and the quality of the relationship. How engaged are these people with you?

Most salespeople would rather have meaningful engagement from a decision maker at a target account than a hundred random leads and ABM metrics really kind of embraced that concept.

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Empathetic Marketing: How To Connect With Your Customers

And buyers are tuning them out harder than ever.

Not because buyers hate marketing.

Because they hate being treated like a target.

This is the core problem: modern GTM systems are optimized for activity (touches, sequences, attribution) while buyers are trying to do something else entirely: reduce risk and make a safe decision.

That’s why trust and empathy aren’t “soft skills.” They’re conversion infrastructure.

In this conversation, I interviewed Steve Woods (@stevewoods), Founder & CTO at Nudge, about what it takes to build real B2B relationships in a world full of automation, hustle culture, and buyer skepticism.

Author’s note: This transcript is edited for clarity and readability.

Quick Answer: How Do You Build Trust and Empathy in B2B Sales?

You build trust and empathy by helping buyers make progress before asking them to buy.

That means: maintain context, give useful “next steps,” and trade self-promotion for perspective. Automation can support the research and timing. It cannot replace the human work of building trust.

Key Takeaways

• Trust moves deals. “Activity” does not.
• Buyers want a guide, not a pursuer.
• Automated sequences are decaying because they strip context.
• The best outreach is a give, not a disguised ask.
• Your system should surface relationship risk (lost touch, stalled progress), not just track touches.

Why Buyers Are Tuning You Out

It’s tempting to blame channels.

But the real issue is behavioral.

Buyers have learned to protect themselves from noise. They’ve been trained by years of spammy follow-up, vague “checking in,” and fake personalization.

So they do what rational people do. They ignore you until they need something specific.

Trust becomes the differentiator because it reduces buyer risk:

• Risk of wasting time
• Risk of looking foolish internally
• Risk of choosing the wrong vendor
• Risk of being pressured into the wrong timing

That’s the frame for everything below. Not “how to nurture.” Not “how to get replies.”

How to become safe to engage.

The Interview

Brian: What inspired you to start Nudge?

Steve: You and I have known each other for a long time. A few decades. My history before Nudge was Eloqua in the marketing space.

We saw marketing transition from an arts-and-crafts discipline into a measured lead generation and demand generation engine that started to connect with sales.

That was remarkable.

But looking over the fence at sales, we realized the next step was the core of getting deals done.

Steve: Building trust and relationships is the core

The core was building trust and relationships, and the breadth and depth of those relationships within our organization, that would allow the deal to move forward.

Trust and empathy had to be developed, and ultimately the deal would be closed based on those relationships.

So we decided to tackle relationship intelligence: understanding where trust is being built, where empathy is being built, and how you make a sales team more effective by focusing efforts on the right initiatives.

Brian: What growth lesson did you learn from Eloqua?

Steve: We were lucky to be part of a major change. Marketing went from unmeasured to measured.

With Nudge, we tried to be proactive: what dominant theme will shape sales for the next decade?

It became clear that relationships, trust, empathy were the core thing. And it was unmeasurable. It was intuitive.

Steve: Deal slippage is relationship slippage

Every sales leader, when you talk about deal progress and forecast and slippage, it’s about relationships and trust. But it’s not measurable. It’s self-reported by sales reps who often have happy ears.

We thought: if we can put measurement around trust, empathy, and relationships, then build tooling to steer effort, we can be part of a meaningful transition.

Why “Hustle” Collapses Trust

Brian: What inspired you to write about holding the hustle?

Steve: It stemmed from a rant.

We spent time interviewing buyers about how they buy, and salespeople about how they sell. It was Mars and Venus.

Buyers want thoughtful co-conspirators on a journey. They selectively bring in sales when they need deeper points of view.

Salespeople talked about automation, numbers, a thousand emails a day, “Did you get my last email?”

It was bizarre to realize they were describing the same animal.

Early sequences felt like diligence. Now they feel like spam.

So the rant was: “Stop. We must stop this in sales. It’s not working. It’s going downhill.”

That became the #HoldTheHustle thesis.

Buyers Don’t Need More Info. They Need Meaning

Brian: What makes a difference in the buyer journey?

The salesperson often matters more than marketing in the buyer’s lived experience.

Buyers want to know the rep is their advocate, talking straight, not pitching.

Steve: Buyers want you to journey along with them

Buyers want someone to go along with them on a journey and challenge them, educate them, and help them see the problem differently.

The facts are out there. Buyers can Google facts.

What they want is:

• So what?
• What does it mean?
• Where will this work?
• Where will it fail?

When a rep asks a question that makes the buyer pause and think, trust starts moving forward.

Steve: The trust bar moves when you create insight

“You’re probably thinking about it this way. I’m going to push you to think about it that way. Here’s why. Here’s a story. It might make you uncomfortable. But it’ll give you insight you wouldn’t get from a search.”

Empathy and Automation: Where They Actually Fit

Brian: How do empathy and automation fit together?

Steve: You can’t automate empathy. You can’t automate trust.

But you can automate the background work that makes empathy possible: understanding your world, understanding the buyer’s world, and teeing up the moments where a human can add value.

The human part is the conversation:

“Saw this, thought this, here’s a perspective you might want to consider.”

Automation can put enough on a silver platter to guide those “right moment” conversations.

3 Practical Steps to Build and Grow Relationships

Step 1: Identify where you’re losing touch

Steve: Look at your relationships and ask, “Where am I losing touch?” Most people don’t do this.

You have a first conversation. If it becomes a deal, great. But 90% don’t, and they drop off.

The best reps used to manage this manually in spreadsheets.

At minimum, put a floor under relationship building: stay in touch on a simple rhythm (for example, every 90 days) with people who matter.

Step 2: Define the next step that helps them on their journey

Now you develop the logical next step based on where they are.

You need context:

• What’s happening in their company?
• What recent events occurred?
• Executive changes?
• Where are they in their journey with your organization?

This is the evolved version of “digital body language,” but grounded in reality, not vanity engagement.

Step 3: Nudge them forward with a give, not a pitch

The next step is a nudge: “You’re probably here. You might be thinking this. If you considered this dataset, this perspective, this story, your view would evolve.”

Not a sales pitch.

Not “Let’s do a one-hour call.”

A give that builds trust first. Then, later, you’ve earned the right to ask.

The Hidden Challenge for Marketing: Do You Have Any “Gives”?

Steve: If sales doesn’t have real gives, they’re stuck with big asks: “Let’s schedule a 60-minute call.”

That’s not a give. That’s a tax.

The best orgs build actual gives:

• useful datasets
• helpful documents
• experiences that reduce buyer risk
• insight that helps internal alignment

Not traps. Not half-assets that require a call to unlock the other half.

Real gives create real trust.

Hard Truth: Trust Is Your Only Sustainable Conversion Strategy

Buyers don’t hate follow-up.

They hate follow-up that has no point.

They hate being chased with zero context.

They hate “personalization” that’s just a variable token stuffed into a template.

Trust is built when your system helps buyers think, not when it tries to make them act.

If your GTM motion is built on hustle, your buyers will experience you as risk.

And rational buyers don’t buy risk.

Bottom Line

Empathy is not soft. It’s operational.

If your system can’t preserve context, equip humans with useful gives, and support buyer progress, your “optimization” will just create more noise faster.

Stop trying to out-automate buyer skepticism.

Build trust like it’s a revenue system. Because it is.

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It used to be that you could accelerate growth with huge customer acquisition.

Ramping up your sales and marketing is not enough to sustain growth. Today, the best companies are growing through customer success.

That’s why I interviewed Kia Puhm (@kiapuhm), CEO at DesiredPath, to talk about customer success.

Kia’s got a fantastic perspective on “how do we accelerate and grow our existing customer relationships,” which is something that many companies don’t focus on nearly enough.

Can you tell us a little bit more about your background?

Kia: Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here. I come to software from an educational background in computer engineering and practical experience background of 22 years in the industry working at rapidly growing, very dynamic software companies.

I guess I’ve built every post-sales function, and always the common denominator has been how the organizations I led get customers to adopt software so that they are using it and get value out of it. Moreover, it translates into loyal customers that can translate into additional revenue at some point in time.

I had to do that with a finite, limited amount of budget and resources. So I always try to figure out how to drive that adoption equation while doing what I could or what I had available to me and use that most efficiently, if possible, to do it.

What’s the most significant trend affecting your work?

Kia: Great question. I’m going to have to say disruption. With all the changes happening out there to businesses, with technology and data and information we have, and artificial intelligence, and just the way the world is changing, it’s changing how we operate.

So, the biggest trend in the work that I do with my customers in helping them understand their customers and how to support that is how do you do that in a continually disruptive environment where things are always changing?

Vendor-centric vs. customer-centric

Kia: There have been many studies done and much research that shows that companies operating from a customer-centric viewpoint (that deliver amazing customer experience) far outperform their competitors that aren’t customer-centric.

So, I think that that is where companies are moving toward, and that is how we adapt to all these changes that are continually happening.

The reason I think that’s important is not only the obvious (customers stay loyal when they have good experiences and that the product is delivering on the promises that it says it’s going to deliver) but also as our customers keep evolving and changing, so too are the ways that we operationalize that and support those customers.

If you are customer-centric, it means you are observing that evolution that’s happening to your customer base. You’re able to be very agile and nimble in responding to that as a business.

If you keep using that information, that observation of a customer, either passively or through active engagement with them to find out that information, you could feed that into your organization and continually change and respond to that to continue to drive that value for customers and that loyalty that you need to keep growing your own business.

Using journey maps to improve customer success

Kia: I know you, and I have had conversations at other times and have completely aligned regarding the type of approach that we use.

I use customer journeys to facilitate customer-centric thinking to make sure that an organization understands empathizing and understanding what customers are trying to accomplish when purchasing your products.

When you understand it from the customer viewpoint, specifically, as it relates to software, how you support and deliver the various services that you need to to help that customer adopt that software fully and continue to drive ongoing value from that software, can dramatically change when you look at it from the customer’s standpoint.

From a vendor-centric to a customer value approach

What I see all too often, and it’s so natural for us to do this as vendors, defines the value proposition that our product is meeting in the market. We organize ourselves for how we’re going to deliver on that value proposition, and then we tell customers all about that.

It’s a very vendor-centric approach, and while we don’t walk in their shoes, we’re trying to push the product in an environment that we’re not necessarily familiar with.

I think problems with retention and why customers have difficulties adopting software are not because they don’t necessarily understand the value or can’t learn the software or understand it. It’s because we put the onus on them to understand how to operationalize, take that software, and put it within their environment.

However, if we start to employ a customer-centric approach and if we understand the following:

Why, in general, our customers buy our products? What do their environments typically look like inside? What are some of the common trends and challenges that they have in their work environment? How could that software seamlessly or best fit into that?

We can now take a lot of that burden off that customer.

Taking the burden off the customer

We make it easier. We make it more enjoyable to bring that software into their organization. Moreover, the faster we do that, the more we make it feel seamless and easy and have a better experience with that, the better they’re going to adopt it. Then they’re going to recognize the value because it had felt easy, and it’s going to meet the objectives that they set out to achieve when they purchase the product, which then translates into loyalty.

When you build that loyalty through trusted advisor-type of relationships, that’s where you can start to talk to them about doing more, which is that ultimate nirvana of expansion and driving more revenue out of that install base.

I use those journeys as the beginning step of understanding, walking in the customer’s shoes, seeing what that looks like, so that then we can figure out how to align organizationally to that journey and translate that into something that makes sense from them, from their perspective because it’s coming from their perspective in the first place.

Brian: I like the way you think, Kia. For our regular listeners and readers, you just heard the episode with Brent Adamson from Gartner. Brent said that as much and as for how difficult it is selling B2B today, for our customers, buying is even harder.

Applying empathy to develop better customer journeys

I think we’re still in the infancy of journey mapping. I mean, some people are quite advanced in it and companies that are advanced, and there’s much information out there on how to conduct journey mapping and how to do that quite effectively.

When I talk about infancy, I think we map out the customer’s journey, but we still do it from our perspective. In the work that I do, I haven’t seen that yet. I’m waiting for the day that somebody shows me a journey map that they’ve done that reflects the customer’s viewpoint and their perspective versus a vendor-centric approach.

If you’ve got that journey, then you start to add on “What is in place? What is that methodology?” Not just processes, but the role alignment and systems alignment, and technology that needs to be in place to support that customer journey.

Now you’ve got this business model, and then if you’ve got this closed-loop feedback, where you’re getting input from customers, and you’re feeding it back in: this is where the agile comes in.

Getting more agile with customer feedback

You can then respond to that and continually improve your operations as you’re getting that feedback from customers as they’re evolving so that you’ve got this agile, optimized business model. That’s where I think journey mapping is not just the mapping per se. It’s how do you operationalize all that and create that agile business model. This is where I think is the next stage in evolution.

To your point about empathy, it’s just common sense. How can you understand someone’s point of view if you’re not thinking from their perspective? I think that it takes just that skill set of empathy to be able to understand that.

That’s the interesting work that I quite enjoy doing with clients; it’s getting those “Aha!” moments where “Oh. Wait. I thought I was doing it from the customer’s perspective, but, ah, now I see. I’m not thinking from their perspective,” and then just that training to keep thinking from the customer’s perspective, and then things start to click, so just honing those empathy skills.

Brian: What I hear from you is understanding how people think, really. We need to understand how they are thinking about their business now and understand the emotions. What are they feeling at various points of their journey? Do I understand correctly?

Capturing emotional moments of truth for customers

Kia: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that’s a component. In the industry, people often refer to the concept of “moments of truth,” right?

Moments of truth can make it or break the interactions that customers have with your company as a brand that could decide whether they continue to be your customer. They also tend to be highly emotionally charged at those moments of truth, and then there are other times in the journey that might not be critical moments of truth.

I think there are emotional elements there that help to understand that customer perspective. So you need that emotional component and understanding of that because what needs to be done at a certain step in the journey can get delivered in multiple different ways.

Well, if you know what the feeling of that customer might be, if they’re feeling angst about using the software, if they’re feeling excited about it, if they’re feeling bored about it, you might approach the discussion with the customer differently. You might approach how you’re instructing them differently or how you’re working together with them. Those things all impact, and so when you have that visibility into that, you can be much more targeted and effective with how you are moving that customer through that journey.

How can others start to improve customer success?

Kia: That’s a great question. Sometimes, it can feel overwhelming or very abstract. People often confuse customer success or customer experience with just making somebody happy or feel good.

I look at it very much as a disciplined way of operationalizing how you’re going to engineer an amazing experience for customers, not only in the business outcomes they get but also in that emotional experience, to become a very consistent repeatable methodology and approach.

It can feel overwhelming, like, “Where do I get started?”

Journey map to see from the customer’s perspective

Journey map and understand what that would look like from the customer’s perspective. You will start to see how your organization is aligned in each stage of the journey to support that journey and those emotional points in that journey or those critical moments of truth.

This is where this concept of agility is what I think is so empowering and why I employ it with my customers and why I think it’s so powerful is that mapping these things out.

Maybe you don’t get it right, but if you start to have this concept of closed-loop feedback, where you’re reading and understanding the customer more and more, then you can start to make that continuous improvement and really create that agile business model that keeps getting honed and refined as you learn more about it.

You don’t have to have it right and perfect at the beginning. You might have it completely wrong, but if you map something out, you start to observe it and validate whether things are right or wrong and start to use customer feedback to inform how you should tweak operations.

Alternatively, what you’ve got in place to provide a better customer experience, that’s where you’re going to optimize that approach, and it should continually be dynamic forever.

None of us have static customers. They’re just as dynamic as we are in our business operations, so let’s ensure that we’re continuing to observe them and see how they’re improving or what they need help with and build that into our model. Actionable advice is a journey map. Build some initial model, observe it, and then keep honing it. It’s not just a one-time effort.

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How Empathy Will Grow Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline

How sales hustle and automation can hurt customer experience

This post draws from my conversation with Brent Adamson, Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner and co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer, to explain why most GTM systems fail buyers—and what empathy-driven teams do differently.

Quick Answer

Customer empathy in B2B means understanding how buying feels inside the customer’s organization—not just what they want to buy. Research from Gartner shows the biggest obstacle in B2B is not selling solutions, but helping customers make sense of complexity, reduce risk, and align stakeholders.

Key Takeaways

• B2B buying is harder than selling due to risk, consensus, and internal politics
• Empathy requires understanding how customers think and how buying feels
• Mental models reveal how customers frame problems and decisions
• The best sellers act as guides, not closers
• Solving buying problems creates more value than pushing solutions

Why Most GTM Systems Fail Buyers

Most B2B GTM systems are built on a dangerous assumption:

Engagement = intent

Form fills, webinar attendance, and content downloads signal curiosity—not readiness to buy. When systems treat early engagement like intent, pressure increases:

• Sales pushes too early
• Buyers feel rushed
• Conversations stall or go dark

This isn’t a people problem. It’s a GTM system design problem.

What Customer Empathy Really Means in B2B

Definition: Customer empathy in B2B is the ability to understand how customers experience risk, credibility, and internal resistance during the buying process—not just their stated needs.

According to Brent Adamson, empathy has two components:

• Understanding how customers think about their business
• Understanding how buying feels inside their organization

Most teams focus on the first. The second is where deals slow—or die.

How B2B Customers Think About Their Business

To change how a customer thinks, you must first understand how they already see the world.

Gartner’s research emphasizes mental models: simple maps that show how customers define goals, obstacles, and tradeoffs.

Instead of starting with financials or org charts, effective teams ask:

• What do they believe is broken?
• What feels risky to change?
• Who needs to agree internally?

Once documented, these models can be validated directly with customers:

• Did we get this right?
• What’s missing?
• What matters most?

Why Buying Is Harder Than Selling

Buying a complex B2B solution often requires:

• Building internal consensus
• Justifying risk to leadership
• Protecting personal credibility

In large buying groups, stakeholders don’t just fear a bad decision. They fear being blamed for it.

This is why buyers hesitate—even when they like the solution.

The Buyer Sherpa Model

In complex B2B buying:

• The buyer is the climber
• The change is the mountain
• Your GTM team is the Sherpa

A Sherpa doesn’t push. They don’t promise an easy summit.

They help buyers:

• Understand where they are
• See what lies ahead
• Avoid unnecessary risk
• Decide whether the climb is worth it

This framing shifts sales from persuasion to guidance.

Why Empathy Improves Revenue Outcomes

When teams design GTM systems around buying—not selling—pressure drops and performance improves.

Empathy-driven systems lead to:

• Higher decision-maker engagement
• Stronger internal alignment
• Fewer stalled deals
• More durable revenue

Empathy isn’t about being nice. It’s about reducing friction where buyers feel stuck.

What Leaders Can Do Monday Morning

1. Audit recent deals to identify where buyers felt risk or confusion
2. Listen to sales calls for clarity, not pitch quality
3. Redefine “sales-ready” around buyer readiness, not engagement score
4. Align marketing and sales around helping buyers decide
5. Reward progress toward clarity, not speed to meeting

Frequently Asked Questions

What is customer empathy in B2B sales?

Customer empathy in B2B sales is the ability to understand how buyers experience internal risk, decision anxiety, and organizational friction—not just their functional needs.

Why is buying harder than selling in B2B?

Buying is harder because decisions require consensus, justification, and personal credibility. Buyers must convince others and protect themselves from blame.

How does empathy improve conversion rates?

Empathy reduces pressure, builds trust, and helps buyers navigate complexity—leading to better conversations, stronger alignment, and higher-quality pipeline.

What is the Buyer Sherpa model?

The Buyer Sherpa model positions sales and marketing as guides who help buyers navigate decisions safely rather than pushing them toward a purchase.

The Real Lesson

Empathy is not a value statement.

It is an operating discipline.

When empathy is built into messaging, qualification, and handoffs, pressure drops—and performance follows.

Your buyers are already looking for help.

The only question is whether your GTM system is designed to give it.

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You can read the full transcript with source material below:

Here’s the transcript:

Are you applying empathy as part of your sales and marketing approach?

Why? Because according to Brent Adamson, “empathy” is the one word that matters most to sales [and marketing] success.

It’s tough to buy. B2B customers are overwhelmed with too much information and too many choices, trying to get their colleagues to agree, not to mention second-guessing.

This is part two of my interview with Brent Adamson (@brentadamson), Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner, and the co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer.

You’ll learn ways to apply empathy and how to solve buying problems.

Writers note: You can view part of our interview here: New research: Boost organic growth from current customers.

Does empathy capture everything your book, The Challenger Customer, is about?

Brent: The idea that empathy is the core principle of the entire book The Challenger Customer, I admit, is more of a personal opinion based on all of our research.

You’ll notice the word doesn’t appear anywhere in the proper book. It’s only in the acknowledgments where I made just a little blurb at the very back (a short note to my daughters). And I used the word empathy there.

But in many ways, for me personally, one word captures everything that the book is about.

I know this is a topic not only near and dear to your heart. But your expertise here is far deeper than mine.

But when I think of empathy, I think of two components to it, but it’s almost a right-brain, left-brain, or the rational versus the emotional.

I don’t know what the right way to think about it is.

But from my perspective, empathy is, at a fundamental level, your ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes and see the world from their perspective.

And that might be logical (how they view the world from their perspective), or it might be emotionally (what the world feels like from their perspective).

I find both of those attributes of empathy to be potentially hugely powerful for anyone in sales or marketing.

How customers think

For example, whenever we’re talking about Customer Improvement or even the broader work in Challenger, is this idea of mental modeling.

The whole idea being, if you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, what’s the first thing you must understand more than anything else?

How would you answer that, Brian?

Brian: If I were to do that, I’d need to understand their experience and how they see things.

Brent: You got it. This is where I have fun talking to you because you get this stuff. And I say this with great, hopefully, empathy and respect for anyone out there.

What I find when I ask most leaders, sales, and commercial marketing leaders that question is: “If you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, what’s the first thing you have to understand?”

Virtually everyone will say, “Their business.” So, then they start reading 10K’s and the annual reports and the financials and all that kind of stuff.

We saw in our research closer to where you are, which is, if you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, the first thing you must understand is how they think about their business.

That’s the thing you’ve got to change.

Map customer thinking

We find it can be very productive to draw a “map” on a piece of paper. A map of their thinking. We call this a mental model. Mental mapping is another term for this idea.

You can simply draw a couple of boxes and some connecting lines.

What are their goals? What are their objectives as an organization? What do they believe to be the primary challenges or the primary drivers of achieving that goal?

What are the secondary challenges or the secondary drivers for each of those? And then you can map it.

Mental map example

We do this in all our research here. We build mental models for heads of sales and mental models for heads of marketing all the time.

It’s how we do our research, but there’s nothing to say that heads of marketing or marketing teams, sales teams couldn’t do the same thing for their customers, which is to put on paper a straightforward diagram.

Don’t over-complicate it, a few boxes, a couple of lines of our core objectives as an organization.

What they’re trying to achieve?

How do they think they’re going to get there?

Challenges they believe they’re going to get in the way of the lever they need to pull to make that happen, whichever perspective you want.

And then once you’ve got that mental model, you can put it in front of a customer and say:

Did I get it right?

What would you add?

What would you take away?

If I gave you 100 pennies to distribute across these ten boxes according to priority, how would you distribute them?”

When you’re all done, what you have on the piece of paper is a picture of how the customer thinks about their business.

Change the way customers think.

If you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, the first thing you need to understand is how they think about their business: now you’ve got it on a piece of paper.

Now what you can do is step back and look at it and say, what did they miss?

Which box should be bigger? Which one should be smaller? Which one’s not here at all but needs to be?

Which connective arrow needs to go from this box to that one instead of this one to only that one?

And you can begin to look for opportunities to challenge their thinking to help them improve their thinking.

To make them smart about what they’re doing. But that only works by having that mental model to begin with, which I would argue, at least from a logical perspective, is at least a form of empathy.

Because that’s what that model is: it’s a picture of the world from their perspective; it’s about seeing the world from your customer’s perspective.

That doesn’t have the emotional component that some aspects of empathy have, which we should be talking about.

Brian, does that count as empathy in your perspective, or is that outside the bounds of how you define the term?

Brian: Oh, it does. I think it’s the two levels you just touched on. It’s the perspective-taking, so understanding how they see their business, and then the second thing is the emotional side.

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio said, “We aren’t thinking machines that feel. We’re feeling machines that think.”

And so, what he argued is, we make emotional decisions rationally, so we need to take both perspectives to understand.

Help customers buy

Brent: Now, imagine a world where you are talking to one of those stakeholders, and this individual must get a consensus across the other four or five to make that deal happen, and you know this is all implicit. It’s not explicit.

In their mind, they kind of have that mental model in their map, right?

Well, I care about this box. He cares about that box. They may not be thinking about boxes per se, but it’s all sort of there.

And one of the things we know from our research, what we also know to be true as just individual professionals, is going down the hall and convincing your colleagues to do anything differently is kind of a pain.

Sometimes it’s kind of scary. Sometimes it’s a little intimidating.

We find that the larger the buying group, the more individual stakeholders feel, not only their credibility.

But in fact, their actual job could be on the line in advocating for a supplier, which gets into the emotional side of empathy.

The Thursday morning test

So, you think about it from a supplier’s perspective. “Well, why can’t they all just get on board? It’s like herding cats. I can’t get these people to align.”

Think about what it feels like. Think about that person sitting at their desk, and I call this the Thursday Morning 9:00 Test.

It’s Thursday morning, 9:00, and you’ve got to do what? What are you going to do, how are you going to do it, and how will that feel?

Now I’m thinking about buying your CRM solution. And it’s Thursday morning, 9:00. I’m thinking about how to get my company to buy that solution, which I really want:

I’ve got to talk to someone in IT.

I’ve got to talk to someone in procurement.

I’ve got to talk to my CEO.

You know what, I feel kind of sick to my stomach. I don’t want to do that. That’s a pain in my neck.

And suddenly what seems to be a slam dunk because [I’m in sales] this person I talked to loves it is in danger because that person doesn’t feel like going to talk to his other people.

So that becomes a hugely important part of empathy too:

What am I asking this senior decision-maker, my contact person, to go inside their own company?

What does that feel like?

And chances are pretty good. It doesn’t feel very good. It’s hard work. It’s credibility. It’s business case-building.

They’re going to ask me questions.

All those questions your sales reps have all the time, what if they ask me questions I can’t answer?

What if they ask for data that I don’t know how to provide? You know what?

Your stakeholders you’re selling to have the same questions when they think about their own colleagues. What if my head of IT wants to have a business case? I don’t know where I’m going to get that.

Then he’s going to ask me a bunch of questions I don’t know the answer to. Look, I just want this bleeping bleep CRM system, but this is too hard – never mind.

Be able to place yourself in the shoes of that stakeholder and understand what it feels like for them not to.

We always think about what it feels like to sell our solutions but think about what it feels like to buy one of your solutions, and it rarely feels good.

The new sales imperative

Brian: I really appreciate you sharing your perspective because this is tough work, even for us as sellers to look at because we spend so much time focused on, “How are we going to get the deal done?”

Instead of understanding from our customers how do we help them get the deal done and navigate all the things they need to do to mobilize the support to make it happen.

Brent: We have an article in the March/April 2017 issue of the Harvard Business Review, and it’s called the New Sales Imperative. As a supplier, we find that the single hardest thing about solutions is not selling them. It is, in fact, buying them.

The pain of buying

I talked with 1,200 people at our Vegas conference last year. I simply asked them to take their selling hat off and put their buying hat on and think about their own organization.

Think about a recent big, complex solution that you purchased with your colleagues at your company in the last 18 months, whether it’s a CRM system or some sort of lead management system or IT system or consulting engagement, whatever it is.

Think of all the people involved, all the decisions you had to make, all the hoops you had to jump through.

Now, if you had to pick one word, one adjective, to describe that entire buying journey, what would that be?

As I said, I’ve done this with thousands of people worldwide, and inevitably, what do you think the words are, Brian? Take a guess.

Brian: I’m just thinking about what the words would be. I’m not even sure.

Brent: It’d be things like long, hard, awful, frustrating. It’s interesting. When you ask people to place themselves in their own purchase journey and just ask them to share one word, they get kind of angry.

It’s interesting. You can see their tension. The cuss words start coming out in ways that are not really appropriate for meetings that I was conducting.

Someone in Chicago, the head of marketing, said, “I never want to do that again.” like it was one word because I asked for one word.

Someone in DC said “landmine.” And I said that’s not an adjective. And he said, “Landmine-ish,” which became my word for the year.

But the point of all this being, if you put yourself in the shoes of your customers and ask them what it feels like to buy a solution, I literally have heard three positive words out of thousands and thousands of people I’ve talked to.

It’s all negative.

And then you ask them a second question, which is interesting. You ask them: “Alright, so how much is that paying? How much of that time, how much of that frustration was the result of the supplier selling to you? And how much was just a result of your own company getting in its own way? ”

And nine times out of 10, 10 times out of 10, people will say, “It had nothing to do with the supplier’s selling to me. It’s just my own company.”

Because we’re already convinced our one company is the worst company in the world, we either get in our own way. We’re too complicated, we have too many meetings, on and on.

It’s not a selling problem (it’s a buying problem)

What we have here is not a selling problem at all. What we have is a buying problem.

And buying is really bleeping hard with all the committees and all the information and all the options, and it all just becomes completely overwhelming. Again, back to the point about empathy.

If you can understand this as a seller, as a marketer, and you can appreciate just how hard it is to buy not just your solution but any solution.

To filter through all the information and pick out which information matters most, to sift through all the options and determine which choices matter most.

To wrangle all the different people and figure out all the different questions they’re going to have, and you can anticipate, this is empathy.

If you know what that feels like and then logically, you can anticipate what those problems will be and which information will matter most, you can effectively become the coach to your customer. Not on what to buy but on how to buy.

You can take them by the hand, and you can guide them through that buying journey and become that buying sherpa, and not solve for selling but solve for buying.

Be a buying Sherpa

That’s what a lot of our more recent work has been about: adopting what we’ve come to call a Prescriptive Approach to sell. We’ve seen marketing organizations do this really well through content that is self-serving; that the customer can self-serve on.

My Google search will take me to a white paper that a company has written, which can take me to step by step:

“Looking to buy a CRM? Here’s the 10 Step process. First, do this, talk to these people. Here’s the information that matters. This question doesn’t matter.”

And from a customer’s perspective, the reaction is not, “I see you’re trying to trick me into buying your stuff,” but rather the reaction is, “Wow, this was really helpful. You just made it so much easier.”

And you can only do that effectively as a supplier if you come at this whole idea with empathy, understand what it feels like to buy because it doesn’t feel very good.

Brian: We’re going to talk a bit about your marketing research in a moment but, a lot of us treat the journey as this beautiful looking linear model that moves from left to right, and it’s a nice flow, but it’s really like climbing a mountain to our customer.

Brent: Yeah.

Brian: I love the word picture of being a Sherpa. Because sherpas are there to help people climb, help them along the journey. And the whole idea of empathy. It’s applied empathy because our goal is really to help people on their journey.

Brent: I totally agree. Now let’s not forget that we’re all in the business of doing one thing at the end of the day, which is selling more stuff.

Brian: Yes

Brent: So, empathy is all well and good, and it’s so powerful that the cynic in someone listening today might say:

“Well, this is just empathy for the sake of selling more stuff.” And to some degree, that’s true because that’s what we’re solving for in the world of sales and marketing.

But that doesn’t mean it’s less powerful, any less honorable. It’s helping customers find ways to generate greater value for their business they haven’t appreciated independently. And then navigating them to a place or helping them navigate themselves to a place where they can realize that value.

I think in many ways it’s not only an honorable thing to do for your customer, but it’s also a very profitable thing for you to do as a supplier as well.

Brian: I 100% agree. I mean, at the base level, practicing this way, marketing and sales can and should be a force for good. And so, as you’re talking about this, I wanted to shift to marketing research.

The B2B digital buying journey

What surprised you about the b2b buyer survey findings on the customer buying journey and the most the most-important channels customers are using?

Brent: One of the things we are studying this year in our marketing practice is simply digital. We get a little more specific than that, but you can imagine.

Particularly B2B marketing. Now, B2C marketing digital had been a huge part, if not the primary part, of buying for a long time now. It has become equally important in B2B very rapidly over the last several years.

Not surprisingly, we’re getting questions around the world from the CMOs that we work with around: “How do we move to become a more digitally proficient marketing organization? What does that even mean? What would be the characteristics or hallmarks?”

So, we’ve set out to understand at least some of this world of digital buying in the B2B space with more detail this year so we can provide our members with greater, more actionable advice.

We are really trying to understand what the buying journey looks like in B2B, and then effectively along that buying journey, which parts are most likely to be digital?

And along the way, we found something that was actually really interesting.

What you find with most marketers (and I mean this with deep respect, this is just the result of the way we all came up and the way marketing’s always operated) is that we tend to think of digital in marketing as a tool for demand generation.

That is largely upper funnel to maybe mid-funnel capability. And the idea is that we use digital (whether it be websites, whether it be online conferences or discussion boards, or advertising or SEO, you name it) as mostly a way to create and/or identify opportunities/customers that we then vet through maybe digitally based lead nurturing campaigns.

And at some point, we give them that marketing-qualified stamp of approval on them, and we pass them over to sales, and we say, “All right, go get ’em guys.”

And at that point forward, it becomes mostly a sales rep (calling, in-person) trying to close that deal. From our perspective in marketing, it’s like, okay, we got them that far, it’s all, you guys. Get ’em.

We’ve come to understand from our research this year that just because a customer’s in-person/over-the-phone buying journey has begun doesn’t mean that their digital buying journey has come to an end.

It’s not like digital in the up-funnel and in-person on the down-funnel. Rather, the two coexist. The thing that I think is especially interesting and new for us this year because buying behavior is still in digital channels, even late in a purchase.

Often, long after we in the marketing organization have handed it off and said, “Go get ’em, sales,” our customers are still online learning.

There is still late-stage digital buying activity, and that’s got some fascinating implications from our perspective.

Are we even thinking about that? So, from a marketing perspective, is it largely demand gen, and then digital is done? Well, if it’s late-stage, what’s actually happening?

And as we dug into our research, what we find is, for example, one of the things that your customers are really looking for through digital channels in a late-stage, later in the purchase process, is reassurance.

So, I’m talking to Brent, the sales rep, and Brent’s making all sorts of promises, and he’s convinced me to buy this multi-million-dollar solution, which is great. I trust him. He’s not a crook, right?

Nonetheless, one way or another, this thing’s big, it’s disruptive, it’s expensive, I’d kind of like to get some reassurance. I’d like to see maybe what other customers have experienced in buying this solution.

And so, irrespective of my ongoing in-person conversations with that sales rep, I’m going to go out and corroborate what I’m learning there and maybe add to it through digital channels.

Provide digital reassurance for the late buying stage

One of the things we found in surveying customers this year is, the most likely place for them to go to get that late-stage digital reassurance is the supplier’s own website.

Which I found kind of ironic, like, “I’m not sure if I completely trust the sales rep, so I’ll go to the company’s website to get reassurance.”

Nonetheless, that’s what happens, which begs a fascinating question, which is, when they go to your website to get reassurance on what they hear from your rep, are they even going to find that reassurance? And is that reassurance going to be consistent with what the rep has said in person?

Because if they’re not aligned, you will raise all sorts of red flags for that customer. The implications here are fascinating, but I would imagine that rings true so far.

Brian: It does. As I listened to you and something you touched on in marketing, we’ve always had this traditional handoff from a marketing qualified lead to sales. So what you’re saying is we need to go beyond handoff and think about the whole journey.

So, what can marketers do differently based on your research? Because there is this gap right now and buyers are going back to the website to get this reassurance, marketers have this gap that they aren’t filling right now from what your research shows.

Brent: It’s funny. I tell people, the cool thing about doing research is every time you do a large-scale research project, you always inevitably find two things.

You find answers, which is great, but you always get more questions. This is actually good because it keeps you in business, but there are all sorts of questions here.

If digital doesn’t work as a handoff but rather as an ongoing effort, to your point, Brian, that raises all sorts of questions.

B2B buying is omnichannel.

What should not just marketing do but sales do and commercial leaders? Because what you have here now, at least what we can really see clearly in our data for the first time, is sort of what we’ve watched happen, and certainly in the business-to-consumer world for five, ten years.

Effectively what you have here is an obvious picture of omnichannel buying.

Your customers are gathering information. They’re engaging the purchase process through multiple channels simultaneously, whether it’s digital, whether it’s a website, whether it’s SEO, whether in person through sales reps.

And all that’s simultaneously happening, so it’s isn’t just early on: digital, later on: person, but rather all the time always-on digital, person, and lots of other different channels. What it means is we’ve got to coordinate across these channels in a much more effective manner than we have in the past.

Omni-channel in B2C is interesting enough. How do I get all of my digital teams in marketing to collaborate more effectively?

So, I’ve got social, I’ve got search, I’ve got TV advertising, that would be the consumer world. I’ve got to get my TV team and my agency partner, my online people, my social, my Facebook team, they’ve all got to coordinate.

What’s interesting is once you move omnichannel buying from the B2C world to the B2B world, it gets 1,000 times more complicated. Because now omnichannel means that we don’t just have to span teams within the marketing function. We have to span functions altogether.

So, the alignment isn’t just this team and this team in marketing. Still, it’s the entire marketing function has to be aligned with the sales function in some way that frankly we’ve just never really fully appreciated before because we were always solving for marketing or selling as opposed to solving for buying.

And so, some of the questions this raises for us would be things like, how does one just do this? How do you overcome decades of institutional inertia? I’ve been doing this for 15 years and one of the first things I heard on my first day of work when I joined CEB many years ago was, “Why can’t sales and marketing just figure out how to collaborate?”

And now when you solve for buying you find the urgency has gone up dramatically.

Because again, if I hear one thing from my sales rep. And I’m finding a different thing on your website that’s going to, at the very least, raise questions in a world where you’re trying to get me to change behavior, which, as you remember, is risky.

And if I see anything that makes me a little bit more nervous, at the very least, it’s going to slow me down if not shut me down.

So now you’ve got to get all of these different pieces of a marketing and sales organization aligned so that you’ve got one message to the customer, and it’s always consistent.

So, your customer can go on whatever buying journey they want, whether it’s digital and different kinds of digital, whether it’s in person. No matter which path I choose, I’m going to get a consistent message.

Because if they’re not, it’s going to slow things down, and that to me is really fascinating.

So, we’re trying to figure out what, practically, tactically, what does that mean? What has to be aligned? How do I do that? I think the answer here, I think for us, is TBD. That’s what we’re on right now, and we need to figure this kind of stuff out.

Brent: Would it be better if sales and marketing were reported to a single person? And I think what we’re finding already, even very anecdotally, is that those organizations where sales and marketing report to a single person are just more likely to succeed in this environment for all the reasons I’ve just mentioned.

Brian: I’d like to try something out on you. I’m actually writing a post about this. I’ve thought about this idea of empathy and how do we support the journey.

Go from campaigns to digital conversations.

I think it’s really moving from this campaign mindset to conversations. Since we’re thinking about this, how can we have a more congruent conversation with our customers as they go through their journey? So, in effect, we’re helping them.

I think the best marketing and selling feels like helping (because it really is).

I like this idea, and you talked about one message. It’s a conversation that’s bi-directional. The principle of what I’m saying is when we’re more congruent, and it changes the conversation to be more reciprocal with our potential customer.

Brent: More reciprocal and also more efficient, right. Because one of the things we find about sales cycle times is, of course, they’ve gone up dramatically.

It just takes longer to sell, partly because it takes longer for customers to buy. And again, to your point, if they’re finding incongruent signals across the different channels from which they are gathering information, that’s going to slow things down that much more.

The challenge here is, again, we’re still trying to figure this out, but the word you use I like, Brian, is the word conversation. But in this context, you have to look at it not literally but metaphorically.

Because a conversation is a human interaction, it’s people talking to people and conversing with one another.

That takes us back to 10 years ago when I’ve got to have a sales rep involved. I’ve got to train my sales reps to have better conversations.

And that is absolutely true, but this is more conversation in a metaphorical sense, which is not only an actual real conversation between these two human beings. But it’s also a “conversation” between our company’s website and that customer, or through these third-party influencers and our customer. And so that broader view of the overall conversation and managing that becomes the bogey we’ve got to focus on.

Brian: Yeah, and as I was thinking and listening to you, our customers see our websites personified.

They put a human context to the brand, to the company, even the language that’s being used, and, so I think, the metaphor, that’s really what I’m talking about.

I’m glad you articulated it that way. This metaphor of a conversation instead of the traditional campaign, which is looking at being more mono, and what I’m saying is more bi-directional.

Brent: I think that’s right. By the way, going back to our empathy point, now you can start asking fascinating questions with the metaphor of the conversation.

Imagine you’re at a party.

Imagine you go to a party: So, what makes for a good conversation? What makes for a bad conversation?
How does it feel to be involved in a bad conversation?

You just feel awkward, and you just want to go crawl under a rock, or you want to go away.

Honestly, you just want it to end. That’s what it feels like from a customer’s perspective when they’re engaged in a conversation with your company that isn’t going according to expectations or is sending mixed messages.

Ask yourself: are we doing that to our customers? How do we make our customers feel like a conversation partner? It would be an exciting thing to explore.

Brian: Research on how to improve is a good conversationalist. Instead of trying to be interesting, be interested in the person you’re talking with.

And that in and of itself is so much of what we do as marketers and sellers. It’s all about us, and it’s really all about them.

Brent: The best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten about the conversation was, “Keep the other person talking about themselves.”

Brian: Totally.

Brent: That’s way too simplistic, but it is in the ballpark of what you’re talking about, which is so much better articulated.

How Empathy Will Grow Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline

This stuff is so interesting when you start solving buying problems as opposed to selling or marketing problems. And again, I think that’s where this idea of empathy comes in at a very high level.

Take your selling hat off, take your marketing hat off, and just ask yourself:

What does it feel like to buy?
How hard is it? What’s hard about it?
Why would I not do it?
Why would I choose to opt-out of it?
What would have to happen for me to think it was easier?
What would have to happen for me to feel more urgency or more excitement around it?

Solve for buying instead of solving for selling or marketing, and I think you’re going to be significantly better off relative to your competition.

But it’s elusive. In fact, the traditional approach is no longer working.

According to CEB, now Gartner, “Only 28% of sales leaders report that account management channels regularly meet their cross-selling and account growth targets.”

That’s why I interviewed Brent Adamson (@brentadamson), Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner, and the co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer.

Writers note: You can view part two of our interview here: New research: Empathy and how to solve buying problems

 Can you tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background?

Brent Adamson:  I work with an organization formerly known as CEB and has now been acquired by Gartner.

I work with the Sales & Service and Marketing & Communications practices here at the company. And it’s sort of our mission in life, at least in the business to business space where I spend most of my time, trying to understand with data, with research, with analytics, what does world-class B2B selling and marketing look like?

We get after that, again, with all sorts of analysis and research. It’s funny, we’re actually industry agnostic. We work across industries, go to market models, geographies, and try to understand (across all of the different kinds of companies out there) what do we all have in common?

What’s the recipe for success that’s going to help us all move the dial, do a little bit better, in sales, in marketing and ideally in sales and marketing?

How can sellers drive account growth?  

Well, sure. This is brand new research for us. In some way or another, we always study growth, right? Because that’s what sales and marketing are all about.

There’s a certain almost urgency, or we like to call the “Why Now?”, of this growth question, especially in sales, which is especially relevant for us today.

And that is simply the journey that we’ve all been on over the last five years, five months, 10 years, 20 years of building out broader capabilities across our organization to offer our customers, if you will, solutions as opposed to individual products and/or services.

The idea that if you can offer your customer broader solutions, that’s going to allow you to stand out, to differentiate yourself, to command price premiums in the marketplace. All good things to do and good reasons to do it.

The thing that’s interesting though, Brian, as you add all those capabilities to your portfolio that you can now bring to your customer to add that additional value. The actual value they create for you as a supplier is of course directly contingent on your ability to actually sell them, to get your customer actually to buy those incremental capabilities.

Not surprisingly, companies all around the world, in their efforts to grow, are looking to existing customers to buy into more of the cart, as we all like to say, to penetrate that account more deeply and get them to buy into more of the value that we can offer.

It turns out this is a huge challenge for B2B organizations around the world, which is, simply put, to get existing customers to buy more of what we have to sell; to essentially drive growth with existing customers. That is the challenge or the terrain, as we like to say, that we dove into this year.

What can sales do better?

What can we, as sales organizations, do to do a better job of driving growth with those existing customers? When you dig into it what’s interesting is the amount of frustration with sales organizations around the world in making that happen. There’s only about roughly a quarter of the heads of sales that we surveyed this year who told us that their account teams were meeting, let alone exceeding, cross-sales or up-sales across portfolio goals.

Whether you call it up-sales, cross-sales, land-and-expand, whatever you might call it, we’re all struggling to get that incremental revenue from our customers.

Let me take a breath there, but that’s sort of the terrain that we dived into to try and understand what’s going on. I would imagine, Brian, that’s something you hear a lot about too across your listenership.

Brian: Yeah. I was just talking with a CEO and his team, and that’s really a struggle. They were wondering how do they grow organically?

They talked about customer success, and they talked about how they could service their account above and beyond, but that just didn’t seem to be enough.

Driving organic growth (it’s counterintuitive)

Brent: Well, no. You’re right. It was counterintuitive even to us. We always have these hypotheses that we test in all our research, but it’s interesting to see how the data and the research shake out.

What we found is a couple of things here in this world of account managers, if you will, that this is the farming side of the hunting/farming debate. Right?

That’s about our farmers, and they must be nurturers and take care of our current customers, and then when they fail to grow, we think, “Oh, they need to be harder, and they need to be tougher, and they need to be more aggressive. We need to get them in there.”

What’s interesting is when we fail to drive growth with current customers, we often blame the people. We need more hunter-oriented sales professionals in our account management ranks, or we need someone that is going to ask for the business or be more aggressive as opposed to being so nurturing.

There’s an interesting tendency to fall back on DNA or at least on individual traits and assume that the lack of growth is the result of the wrong people.

Then you get the CEO saying, “We need better people. We need different people.” What we’ve come to understand really is not only is it the structure of the role.

Growing and keeping customers what you need to do differently

Yes, you’re on the hook for driving growth in existing accounts, but let’s not forget you’re also on the hook for not losing the business that you’ve already won.

At the same time, you’re partly on the hook, or at least partially you’re involved in the servicing of those accounts as well. You’ve got success or managing, making sure they get value from that which they’ve already bought, and then driving incremental growth.

What happens in the account management role, unlike a pure hunting role, is that when you’re sitting over, or at least involved in, all three of those categories simultaneously, not only your time, but your attention and focus gets split in some interesting ways that create all sorts of tension.

So, if I’m a pure hunter, all I’m tasked to do is to go out and bring out new logos or new customers altogether. But if I’m a farmer, if I’m someone in an account management role, yes, I’ve got to bring in incremental business, but never at the cost of losing the business that we’ve won already.

That’s the thing we say: the single thing worse than failing to grow an account is failing to keep it all together.

What you have now is this interesting tension of an account manager trying to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time. They’re trying to do very different things simultaneously, which is grow the account but not lose the account.

Balancing account growth with retention

And the reason why that matters is that what you’re asking the customer to do in this environment is two very different things.

To keep the customer you essentially must get the customer to agree to the status quo. So, keep doing what you’re doing, sign up for it again, renew that contract, buy the same amount, renew that business if it was a renewal-based business, so that’s a status quo decision.

But a growth decision is to do something different, to buy more, to expand to more seats, to go to a new geography, to incorporate this new service or new technology.

From an account management perspective, I’ve got two tensions simultaneously. One tension is to try to get them to grow without losing what I’ve got already. And simultaneously I’m trying to get my customer to change and not change their behavior at the same time, and this turns out to be hard, right?

So, this stuff’s really fascinating from a social science perspective.

You think about, how do I play that card, what’s the strategy for winning and driving growth in that environment. So full circle back to your question, Brian.

Does over servicing customers drive growth?  

We find that the predominant mental model of account managers in this world is, well, first things first, before I get the growth I’ve got to get the “maintain,” I’ve got to get the “retain.”

Let’s make sure that they’re happy, let’s make sure they’re taken care of, let’s make sure they’re satisfied. In fact, let’s make sure they’re delighted with whatever we sold in the past.

So, let’s over-serve them, let’s provide world-class service, and if we do that we’re going to, at some point, achieve a threshold, permission, and if we can get over that permission threshold, then we’ll have won the right to ask them for growth.

And somehow, the fact of just by being so happy with the service we provided in the past, will drive growth.

And so that brings us full circle to the punchline of a lot of our data.

What we found is when you provide a world-class level, even just an above average level of service and success to your customers, they are twice as likely to renew.

So, we can find no statistically significant impact on that level of service, and the likelihood of that customer to grow.

So, put it all together and what you get is service drives retention, but it doesn’t drive growth.

And that’s a really interesting thing to find in a world where the mental model, essentially the working hypothesis of not only account managers but all the way up to the CEO is, let’s serve our customers. Let’s create these world-class moments of delight, and that will earn us the permission for growth.

And we just don’t find that to be the case at all in our research.

The zone of wasted effort

Brian: The rationale and logic has always been, go the extra mile, delight. What your data’s showing us is that there is a point of overserving our customers?

Brent: We gave it a sort of provocative name, so if you draw this out in a set of curves, and we’ve got graphics to go along with this.

But the idea is if you think more service equals higher likelihood to grow, so you think of almost sort of like a… If you grasp this regarding growth likelihood, it almost looks like a 45-degree angle going up and to the right.

So service is on the horizontal axis, likelihood to grow is on the vertical and the more service I provide, the farther I go to the right, the higher I get on the vertical. Because service leads to growth.

What we find is in fact that the line doesn’t go up and to the right endlessly, but it shanks to the right. It levels off and ends to your point regarding diminishing returns, and at some point, no matter how much more service you provide, you pour into that account, the chances of driving growth do not go up, because service doesn’t equal growth.

And so, what happens is that you keep providing more and more service with absolutely no incremental impact on growth likelihood.  It creates this huge gap between the amount of service provided and the amount of service that you needed to provide simply to get retention.

We call that gap the Zone of Wasted Effort, which is somewhat provocative.

But the Zone of Wasted Effort is in fact that.

It is effort that you’ve expended in serving the customer, in delighting the customer in hopes of getting growth that will never actually get you growth.

Because it doesn’t lead to growth, and so at the very least, in that Zone of Wasted Effort, there’s all sorts of questions there, but one of them is simply: what are the opportunity costs of our time?

How much time, money, effort, people are we pouring into a customer to provide world-class service when, in fact, the customer’s going to renew or retain anyway?

Strategies to drive organic growth

Just in Atlanta two weeks ago, one head of sales said, “We do this all the time.” The real price is not just the opportunity cost/time that you pay, but the fact that you are now raising expectations for your customer way above anything that you ever originally promised, and your recalibrating, or resetting their expectations for the next deal.

So yes, it gets you attention, which you were going to get anyway, doesn’t get you growth because it can’t get you growth. What it does do though is it makes the next deal you do with the customer even that much more expensive because you’ve recalibrated their expectations way higher than you ever needed to do originally just to keep the account.

Brian: This is a problem that’s affecting nearly every B2B company: “How do we drive organic growth?” What are some of the strategies, the things you’ve found, that sellers can do differently?

Set clear expectations

Brent: A couple thoughts on this. One is, to get back to the previous point, it becomes really important in this world to set very clear expectations.

The thing that heads of sales ask us all the time is, “Okay, I get it, or I kind of get it. I’m on board. I see the data makes sense, so I understand that at some point there’s diminishing returns to providing greater and greater service but how do I know how much service is enough? How do I know when I’ve reached that threshold; I’ve maximized the benefit for retention knowing that there is no benefit for growth? How do I figure out what that moment is?”

And the answer simply is, “It’s in simply meeting the expectations that you’ve established with your customer in advance. Whether it’s formally, through something like service level agreements or more informally through quarterly reviews or business reviews, or account planning processes.

But one way or another, setting those expectations very clearly, probably in writing with not only your customers but your own team, so that you don’t perform way above them, because all that does is add cost with no real return.” So that’s point one: setting expectations is super important.

That is more of a cost mitigation strategy, it’s not really a growth strategy as you asked for. So, Brian, the flip side is now how do I drive the growth?

Focus on customer improvement

Well, what our data has led us to understand is there is a completely different strategy altogether, which is something that we’ve come to call “Customer Improvement.”

For any of the listeners on the podcast who are familiar with our work that we’ve done in The Challenger Sale, in The Challenger Customer, this idea will sound very familiar. Effectively, it’s a subset of behaviors, or attributes that are all completely consistent with the Challenger body of work.

We tested a whole bunch of different attributes in our data across about 750 B2B customers, individual stakeholders involved in a big B2B purchase.

And what we found is for those suppliers who were perceived by those customers as providing a set of interactions that we’ve labeled “Customer Improvement”, they were significantly more likely to buy incremental services, additional geographies, additional features, additional products from that supplier.

Customer Improvement is the ability of a supplier to help critically assess the customer’s business in a way the customer hasn’t fully appreciated on their own, and help them identify new ways to grow, to make money, to save money, to lay out the ROI of taking a step in that direction.

Get customers to embrace change

If your goal is retention or renewal, what you’re trying to do there is just get your customers to embrace the status quo, to just keep doing what they’ve already decided to do in the past.

But to get them to grow, you need to get them to embrace change – to do something different, to buy something different, and if you want your customers to do something different, well that’s change.  Change is perceived as risky, and if I’m going to do anything risky, if I’m going to do anything that’s involving change you’ve got to make the business case not for buying your solution, but for changing their behavior.

And that’s what Customer Improvement is all about. It’s building a business case and articulating a business case to your customers for why they need not to buy your solution, but why they need to change their behavior in a way that’s going to improve their business.

It’s a really powerful lesson completely consistent with what we’ve found in the past, but what’s so stark about it in this context is that for existing accounts, while service and success do not drive growth, Customer Improvement does, dramatically so in fact.

Go from reactive to forward-looking

Brian: It sounds like what you’re saying is we need to move from being more reactive and looking at how do we deliver and retain, to proactive, being forward-looking.

I was thinking of this conversation I had with this CEO and his team. They have this customer success strategy, and it was really helping their customers become like gold medal athletes at performing what they do.

And the problem is the customers weren’t wanting to be gold medalists. What they wanted to be is to get their job done more effectively simply and there wasn’t that vision. And so, what I’m hearing is, you need to help someone.  If they want to embrace that level, it is to know where they want to go and how you can help take them there. Is that what you’re saying?

The difference between customer success and improvement

Brent: A little bit, yeah, it is. I would use slightly different language, only in the sense that the term Customer Success, at least in the world of software service for example, the big cloud providers, and that sort of world, the term success or Success Team has taken on a very specific definition or framework.

So, a Success Team there is generally designed to make sure the customer gets as much value from that which they’ve bought from you in the past as possible.

So, this is a proactive team that would reach out to the customer and say, “Hey you’ve got this subscription from us,” for example or, “You’ve bought this product or service from us. Did you know it has this capability you can take advantage of? Or, did you know there are these ways we can help you based on the contract we already have in place?”

So, it’s a proactive call. It’s not reactive in the sense that a customer calls you when they’re upset because something doesn’t work but because you’re proactively calling them and helping them get value from that which they’ve already bought. It’s proactive but backward-looking.

It’s focused on what you bought from us as a supplier in the past and making sure you get as much success from that as possible.

Now the Customer Improvement thing is not a thing.

The Customer Improvement concept, or the approach, is not backward-looking, but forward-looking.

And it’s not about your capabilities but the customers.

In fact, it’s completely supplier agnostic in way that will just drive you crazy.

It’s weird to try to get your customer to buy something without talking about your capabilities, which you will eventually, not at the beginning of the conversation though, but at the end.

So, if you think about a four-square, where the vertical dimension is supplier across the bottom, customer across the top and then the left-right is on the left, it’s sort of backward-looking, and the right is forward-looking.

Success Teams tend to be in the bottom left box. Success Teams tend to be backward-looking around the supplier’s capability. So, let’s make sure you get as much value from that which you’ve bought already. It’s a proactive push but around that which you’ve bought already.

Customer improvement isn’t about you

The Customer Improvement story up in the top right is not about you at all, it’s about the customer and how they can change the way they think about their business, in a way that’s going to help them reap greater returns in the future, going forward.

So, back to your point that the customer doesn’t want to be a gold medalist. In this world, what you need to do is figure out what your customer is ultimately trying to achieve, who are they trying to be? If not, a gold medalist then is it a silver medalist? Is it not a medalist at all?

Or, what are their ultimate goals as a commercial organization and you can ask yourself:

Okay, if that’s looking forward to the future, what they’re trying to achieve? What is it about that strategy that is incomplete or perhaps even misplaced?

How are they going to get there and what have they missed? If that’s what’s important to them, how can I help them get there better than if they ultimately are planning on getting there on their own?

And I suppose if you wanted to raise it up a notch in altitude, if you really wanted to you could go in and argue with, “That’s not even a good place for you to be starting within the first place.”

That is a higher-level argument, which is sometimes harder to have with your customer and I would never use the word argument per se, but “debate” if you will.

But one way or another you will find that this is the case, that your customers were always going to be oriented towards the status quo.

Because change is expensive, it’s disruptive, it’s scary, it’s risky, and if you’re going to get your customers to change their behavior, the first thing you’ve got to do is convince them that that change is even worth it in the first place.

That maybe it is worth it to become a gold medalist. Or if you only want to be a silver medalist that’s fine, but let me show you how the path that you’re on towards the silver medal isn’t going to get you there nearly as fast or as effectively as you thought it was going to.

Related resources:

Driving Growth Through Smarter Account Management

Quotable: Why Changing Behavior Is Your Biggest Sales Challenge

Why customer advocacy should be at the heart of your marketing

How customer-hero stories help you connect better

How to Attract B2B Buyers with Amazing Content

For example, Corporate Visions recently surveyed 500 B2B marketers and sales professionals that 20% of organization content creators “just do what they think is best” with no overarching structure at all. And just 27% of organizations are content that focuses squarely on customers and rather than their own story.

And all the tools and technologies meant to help boost sales productivity are now are slowing things down.

What’s the bottom line?

Salespeople are getting overwhelmed and slowed down with increased complexity, just like the customers they’re selling to.

That’s why I interviewed Dave Brock (@davidabrock), author of the Sales Manager Survival Guide, also CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE. Dave’s brilliance is his focus on practical simplification. And I’m excited to bring his thinking on sales enablement and what can be done to raise sales team performance.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Dave: Brian, thanks so much. I really appreciate the chance to continue the conversation we started in Washington, and I appreciate you inviting me to this.

By background, I actually started as a physicist in my career and ended up going to the dark side of selling and sold mainframe computers for IBM for some years. Went up the food chain to more senior management roles, then left to become EVP of sales for a technology company as part of a turnaround, later held VP of Sales or CEO roles in several technology companies.

And now run the consulting company – we help our clients solve some of the most challenging problems in sales and marketing and deal with the new buyers. We have a highly collaborative approach in helping really outstanding people solve really, really difficult problems.

What is the biggest trend you see affecting your work and sellers today?

Well, clearly, it’s the convergence of some things that we see in the marketplace. It’s the new buyer. Everybody’s changing the way they buy, and learning how we engage these new buyers through marketing, sales, and customer experience is critical.

At the same time, we see tremendous transformations in business and business models, whether it’s the digital transformation that virtually every company is undertaking or just older business models being displaced with new business models.

We have some of the classics of Airbnb, turning the hotel and lodging market upside down or Uber turning the taxi and limo business upside down. We see that the new business models occurring are driving real stress on customers.

And then the final thing is just overwhelming complexity, just between the rate of change, the amount of information we’re deluged with every day. Most of the people I’m meeting are really struggling with at least one of those three things. I see it impacting virtually everybody.

Brian: I can relate to those challenges. I think just in talking about complexity for sellers and marketers, I was having a conversation with someone earlier, and it’s just an overwhelming number of tools an average salesperson uses or a marketer uses. It also creates challenges around collaboration, that internal collaboration.

How do you get internal collaboration to improve sales performance?

Dave: The easy answer is to break down the silos and start talking to each other. It’s easier said than done. We see a lot of the issues we face regarding internal complexity, and internal collaboration is just people being well-intended doing their jobs. Still, somehow their jobs aren’t aligned with each other, or there are things about their jobs that cause them to conflict with other people. Simple things like aligning roles and responsibilities, aligning metrics, some classic value stream types of analysis.

I just had a conversation earlier today with a marketing executive and his top management team. We talked about the value proposition they create for sales, and sales are the downstream customer of theirs.

Again, we have to rethink our working relationship, rethink the classic business process re-engineering of our workflows, our roles, and responsibilities. And really get some alignment in metrics so that we realize we’re all on the same team, with the same end goal.

Brian: That’s helpful. And something that’s really come to age recently is sales enablement.

What’s the role of sales enablement to help achieve this?

I think I’m on the wrong side of some debates on this. I look at sales enablement as more a set of processes in a set of activities than a separate function within the organization.

If you look at what sales enablement processes are supposed to do, they’re meant to help maximize the salesperson’s ability to perform. And so, you look at that and say they are a whole collection of things we can do to do that.

The first is the frontline sales manager and their role in coaching and developing everybody on their team to perform at maximum capability. But then these frontline sales managers need a lot of support in many areas, whether it’s tools and technology, whether it’s new programs, whether it’s people selection and performance management, whether it’s training, whether it’s content, and so on.

So, you start looking at seeing all these things contribute to enabling the salesperson to perform at the highest level possible.

Now, who does that stuff? It could be all over the place. It could be marketing that’s doing some of this stuff. It could be HR that’s working on a lot of the talent management types of things. It could be sales operations, or it could be people in the sales function.

So, I think the discussion around sales enablement is more powerful when we look at the things that we need to do and then look at who in the organization can do those most effectively and most efficiently.

Brian: I like how you talk about it because I often think when I speak of enablement, I often am looking at marketing and sales. But, as you’re talking, it’s bringing in the finance team, the human resources team, so it’s a collective effort, not just one single group or department. That’s the whole point you were saying earlier about bringing down the silos. Do I understand that correctly?

Bringing down the silos that get in the way of sales enablement

Exactly. I got engaged in debate not long ago about how sales enablement earns a spot at the CEO’s table. To me, that was one of the most ridiculous discussions I’ve ever seen.

We now have sales enablement executives that not only want to have a spot at the Chief Sales Officer’s table, but now they believe they should have a place at the CEO’s table. The CEO’s table’s getting pretty crowded.

I think it goes away from the point of what we’re trying to do. And, I believe that it actually starts building more barriers to collaboration and working. We’re building to the degree that we are creating another silo and another set of functions competing for attention and corporate resources.

Again, I tend to like to look at these as more processes and workflows and the things that need to be done. And then we look at who can do those most effectively. And if it a sales enablement organization, well, that’s really powerful, but we shouldn’t overlook the other parts of the organization.

Brian: We spent time talking about sales enablement. Marketing does have a significant role in helping raise the level of performance for the sales team. As you and I were in D.C., we talked about how often marketing is looked to as the “leads people.” We need to think beyond that regarding how they can impact the efficiency and effectiveness of each sales rep.

How do you think marketing can help raise the level of performance of sales?

We must change our mindset from marketing being the “awareness people,” the “create interest people,” the “leads people,” the “demand gen people,” and so forth, and look at the entire customer buying journey. Look at what that is and who can contribute to that.

We have the traditional feeling that marketing does demand gen and lead gen and tosses those over the wall to sales. And sales immediately reject all of them as being bad and tosses them back. But we separate these processes.

I think modern sales and modern marketing are very different. I like to look at modern marketing and sales as kind of like a basketball team. On a basketball team, every person has their defined roles. You have a couple of guards, you have a couple of forwards, you have a center, and you practice plays, and everybody tries and plays those roles. You get really expert at that. But then, in the game, you’re very agile and nimble and adapt to what’s happening with the competition and what’s going on with the game.

We need to look at marketing and sales more like a basketball team. What are our roles? What are our responsibilities? What are the plays that we execute? Who executes those?

Working as an agile team

But I think we have to be very agile in working with each other in saying, “Who’s the person that should be taking the shot right now? Who should be bringing the ball down the court?”

I look at marketing and sales, not as the sequential process where marketing gets the leads and gives them to sales, and sales take care of everything throughout, but we work together in the demand gen process, and we cooperate in the buying process.

There’s a huge amount that marketing can bring to the party with qualified opportunities. Whether it’s case studies, whether it’s tools, whether it’s content relevant to where the person is towards the end of the buying journey, and those kinds of things. We really need to look at it as an interrelated and integrated set of processes.

Brian: It makes a lot of sense, what you’re talking about. I think the challenge is that marketing and sales often are doing the same things. They might have different words for it.

For example, marketing may call it lead gen, lead generation, or inbound sales might call it prospecting, social selling, etc. They’re doing the same things. As I’ve talked to salespeople, they often feel they’re succeeding despite the marketing, not because of it. I was talking to someone trying to build his own pipeline. He was getting leads from marketing, and they weren’t helping. He was prospecting, trying to figure out how to cold-call, etc.

Do you think salespeople are getting it wrong with how they prospect? 

I do think we’re getting a lot wrong about prospecting. One is I don’t think enough salespeople are prospecting.

Most everybody I talk to is opportunity-starved, but we have a lot of these kinds of mindsets and mentalities that say, “Well, it’s marketing’s job to get those leads. And if they aren’t getting the leads, you know, there’s nothing I can do. Or it’s the SDR’s role to take those leads and qualify them or do something with them. And then my job is to take those great leads that the SDR gives to me.”

I think the first thing we do is change salespeople’s mentality and say, you know, marketing will do everything they can to get you the right kind of leads and the right kinds of opportunities. SDR’s are going to do everything they can. But if the volume isn’t sufficient, you have to go out and start finding business yourself. You have to prospect. You have to generate new business.

You might go to marketing and ask them for help in doing that, maybe giving you a particular program that you can execute as well. The other thing, too, is I sometimes think we get our prospecting models, and particularly the SDR-driven type models, a little bit backward.

What’s not working with the current sales development rep (SDR) model

I think we do a disservice to SDRs. In most organizations, the SDR is kind of an entry-level job to selling. They do something that most salespeople would refuse to do, which is to call people they’ve never spoken to before and prospect them. It’s a really tough job.

But one of the disconnects we have is these poor SDRs often calling on C-level people.

I get SDRs calling me every day. I feel really sorry for them because they’ll call me and say, “We believe we can help you improve your business.” And I say, “Cool. What am I doing wrong? How should I be developing my business?” and they’re floored. They don’t know how to carry on that conversation. They shouldn’t be expected to. If they’re brand new to selling, why are they calling me a C-level executive, albeit a small company, but a C-level executive? We’re matching the wrong people up with the target audience.

As a result, we’re creating terrible first impressions. If somebody calls me and can’t have a powerful, engaging first conversation, I’m going to have a negative opinion both of that individual and their company.

I think we’re missing huge amounts of opportunities by not having the right people. I wrote an article about a year ago saying, “Maybe we need to get some of our most talented senior-level salespeople being SDRs.” If they’re creating that first impression, and if our target persona is this C-level person, then those are the people that have the best capability of setting up a very, very positive first impression and opening up far more opportunities than a brand new SDR without that experience base.

Brian: I love that suggestion. It reminds me of before it was called an SDR. That’s what I started as at 23. I was on the phone. I was calling C-level people, 23 years old. There was very little training advice, coaching. It was on the job. Later, I started a company helping people do that. I worked for a company that, myself, I was CEO. I made calls with the team on the phone, and the whole point was to learn, see what they were experiencing, and understand.

This is really a great transition into talking about this idea of empathy. That’s the hard part: how can somebody who doesn’t have experience connect with someone else and understand their perspective and feeling?

How can sellers be more empathy-based with their approach to customers?

Dave: I think there are some things. First of all, empathy is about caring. You’ve got to care about your customers, whoever those customers are. If you’re only in business to say, “How can I get an order?” then you’re never going to be successful at all.

You’ve got to care about your customers. You’ve got to care about their success in achieving their goals. If that drives you, it changes your whole orientation and your process for engaging the customer in the conversations you have.

That shouldn’t be a do-good or Pollyanna-ish kind of mentality.  The only people I’m going to engage are people I know who have problems that I can solve. I’m not wasting my time calling on people, engaging them, and caring about them and their success if they don’t have the problems I can help them solve. It is very focused on calling the right people that we can do some things with. And then it’s understanding who they are. It’s sitting behind their desk or being able to walk in their shoes.

There are a whole number of ways you can do that. I used to sell to the large money center banks in New York City. To learn about banking, you hang out where the bankers hang out and hang out at Harry’s at Hanover Square. I’d learn a lot by just talking to them over a beer about their businesses, their dreams, and where their problems were, which enabled me to connect much more effectively with those in the business.

We’ve got to start hanging out where our customers hang out, whether it’s discussion groups, whether it’s trade shows. It’s really learning about where they live and what they worry about every day. It’s asking questions, and it’s getting engaged in those conversations. I think along with caring is curiosity. If you have those two attributes, you’re going to figure out what the customer’s about. You’re going to know how to engage the customers. You’re going to understand how your products and solutions might serve the client and help them—two fundamental attributes: caring and curiosity.

Our empathy is our marketing/selling intuition.

Brian: That is terrific. I really liked how you brought it together regarding meeting those elements, then

immersing yourself in the world of your customer, going where they are.

It’s interesting, as I was listening to you, I don’t know that the marketers who are reaching out, or making that initial impression, have actually been able to get in the world of the people they’re hoping to influence and help to drive change, to work with them through their journey.

I would say that what you shared, what you did, as a salesperson, we need to do that in marketing too: get in the world of the customer and observe. From that, we’re going to have the empathy or putting it another way, and we’ll have the intuition.

Our empathy is our marketing and sales intuition; to know how to best move forward in what some of those opportunities are.

Dave: It’s really funny how some of these cycles go, but I remember maybe 10, 15 years ago, when there were many initiatives around understanding the voice of the customer. When you looked at how a lot of those initiatives were implemented, some of them literally would live for several weeks with the customers, sit and observe them in their jobs, etc.

Getting marketers out and treating the customers less as an intellectual exercise or an analytic exercise, but actually visiting the customers. Spending a few days of watching them work, talking to them not about what we sell and whether they like these things that we sell, but talking to them about what they do, what they feel, and how they think.  And then bringing that back in and say, “Now we know the customer, and we’ve seen where they live. How do we take that information and best leverage it to engage them where they’re at?”

Brian: Fantastic.

What other actionable advice do you have for those who want to help improve sales enablement? 

Dave: I think it’s a little bit counterintuitive. It may sound simplistic, but we don’t do it. So many of our initiatives, so much of our thinking, are driven inward-out rather than outward-in.

We have our products, and we have our services. We think about what we want to do and how we want to bring those to market. So we develop all our launch programs, all our marketing programs, all our sales programs, from an internally-based orientation, about what’s most effective and what’s most efficient for us.

Usually, when we execute those, we find we’ve missed one thing: we’ve forgotten about the customer. We do that may be most effective and efficient for us but may not be effective or efficient for the customer.

So generally, I find the fastest way to the best and most effective solution is always to work your way back in from the customer.

Who are they?
Where are they?
How do they work?
What drives them?
What do they care about?
What are their dreams?
How do they buy?
How do they self-educate?
How do they learn about things?

Trace those things back into the design the process that meets them where they’re at, rather than trying to force them to find us and meet us where we’re at.

You may also like:

How to do lead management that improves conversion
How customer-hero stories help you connect better
Lead Nurturing: 5 Useful Tactics to Get More Opportunities
The Biggest Contributor to B2B Revenue

Customer advocacy marketing programs help you increase revenue by improving customer acquisition and retention (and they’re also your best source of leads).

How? Because you’re helping to motivate happy customers to speak about you positively to others. And delighted customers are your most powerful hidden sales force.

For example, in 2016, IDC research found that only 10% B2B companies surveyed had a customer advocacy program in place. This year, “The Role of Marketing in Customer Advocacy” report found that has increased to 67%, which is a 570% increase.

That’s why I interviewed Mark Organ (@markorgan). Mark is the Founder and CEO of Influitive, and he’s been a thought leader in the space of sales and marketing technology, a real innovator. I’m excited to bring his thinking to you on customer advocacy.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to start Influitive?

Mark: Yeah, thanks. I’m really excited to be here, Brian. I think this is an amazing podcast, and I’m excited to share my story. I’ve lived several lives already. One of them, before I started Eloqua in 2000, was as a research scientist. I was actually a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Northwestern University in Chicago.

I was really fascinated by how the brain works and what were the biological bases of behavior. It was fascinating for me. Although research, while fascinating, has some challenges concerning it, especially getting paid well. I also wanted to spend more time with my wife, so I left the research world to get into the business world and joined Bain & Company as a management consultant; from there, I started Eloqua.

The other big thread in my life other than being a scientist was being an entrepreneur. I started companies even as a teenager, as far back as age 13. I’ve always been really fascinated with working for myself and satisfying customers.

Really, I think now I’m bringing both of those together in my company where I still feel like I’m a scientist. I still feel like I’m trying to discover what makes human beings really work and tick, but also being an entrepreneur, building software for marketers, and leveraging the understanding of people and what drives them.

Regarding what motivated me to start Influitive – we’re an advocate marketing software company. So we believe that the future belongs to companies who, as opposed to marketing directly, do a better job of discovering and nurturing, and mobilizing their customers to do the marketing for them.

We think the future is for companies to get their customers to do the sales and marketing. We built some software for discovering, nurturing, and mobilizing advocates.

I got the idea while I was at Eloqua. It was 2005, and great VC convinced me to spend a couple of weeks out in the field to understand how and why people bought my software. What I learned was when we sold software efficiently, it was because there was tons of this advocacy involved. There were multiple referrals on the way in. Many case studies were relevant on the website, the best references, and those prospects went very quickly.

At the time, Eloqua was a bootstrap startup, so selling our software quickly was super important. I got really excited about this idea of advocacy, but it turns it was way harder than I thought to generate consistent advocacy. That’s because we didn’t actually understand what motivated the advocates.

I really wanted to understand better what motivated the advocates. Through some interviews and lots of other things like that, I began to figure out what drove advocacy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t work on that when I was at Eloqua, but when I had a chance to transition out, I had an opportunity to work on it at Influitive.

What are some of the lessons you’ve learned about building a company with the customer at the heart of your business?

Brian: That’s really cool just hearing how you brought together the two worlds as the scientist to understand what motivates people and then putting in a way that you’re able to help people. I’d love to hear some of the lessons you’ve learned about building a company where from the beginning, the customer is at the heart of your business model.

Mark: I’ve learned a lot just about how to build a company. Regarding putting customers at the heart of your business model, one of the things I learned the hard way, coming from Eloqua, was how important the employee experience is.

One of the big differences between the two companies is that while I was at Eloqua, I was very obsessed with what we called our True North, which was measurable value to the customer, and that’s a pretty good thing to obsess about.

If you are making your customer money every day, you’re likely to have some success. Still, one big change that I made at Influitive was really treating my employees as my primary customer, making sure that I was providing the best possible experience for them.

There is so much money available for companies to generate growth and generate an efficient business model. The people who create that efficient business model and that growth are our people. Talent is a scarce resource today.

That’s a big fundamental shift for me, and honestly, I think it mirrors a significant shift even in the marketplace. If companies today don’t treat their employees as their primary customers, the future will not look too bright for them. That’s one key thing that I learned regarding building a company.

We built our software came from the knowledge that I gained from interviewing hundreds of super advocates. Literally, understanding people who might generate several referrals a quarter and be available for references on demand and love to speak on stage for you…all those active advocates that all of us really depend on.

None of us can build a successful business without our customers doing that sales and marketing for us. Our lifetime value of the customer and customer acquisition cost would be entirely out of whack if we didn’t have that working in our favor. There were some things that I’ve learned about that.

Three important things about customer advocacy

On the macro level, there are three things that I’ve learned that are really important.

The first was that people advocate more when they feel like their part of an exclusive tribe, like when they belong to something bigger than themselves, then that’s when you see a lot more advocacy.

For example, you can see that at a sporting event. When you go to your local stadium, you’ll find people whose faces are painted in the team’s colors. Why do they do that? Well, they do that because they want to belong to something bigger. They want to be part of an exclusive tribe.

That’s what we found. When companies do advocacy programs, if they can give it the right name and the right feel and the right brand and really make people feel special and exclusive, you get a lot more advocacy. That’s the first thing.

Second, we learned that people want to be able to experience the impact they made on a company. I learned this firsthand. As part of foundational learning for starting my company, one of the things that I was excited to do was learn Mandarin Chinese. I thought it would be a cool thing to do.

I learned to speak enough Chinese with this amazing product that, after six months, I was able to have a meeting in China without an interpreter. It was a pretty amazing experience. I used this product called ChinesePod.com and what I found was that (you can see now, I’m still advocating for it) my advocacy really waned over time, and it was because I wasn’t really feeling the impact I was making on the company.

I didn’t know what the results were of the referrals that I made as an example.

We’ve learned that if you give advocates feedback, they respond better.

If you let people know the impact of those referrals that they’ve made if you let people know if they’ve written a guest blog post or been on a podcast, just like this, how many hits did that podcast get?

Did they get a thumbs up?

Those sorts of things generate a lot more advocacy because people are getting that feedback.

The third is social capital. If people are experiencing benefits in their life, their career as a result of the advocacy they are making, they are going to do a lot more of that.

Those are three sorts of social/psychological things that I learned were really important in generating a lot of advocacy. Then, the micro-level makes it easy, making it fun, making it more rewarding.

For example, a lot of games do that. They build things to make it more addictive, all work. We’ve bottled all that, and we’ve put that into our product so that you’ve got that exclusive tribe, the people are getting feedback, they’re getting social capital, and they make it “game-ified” and fun, so that people want to come back in again and again. It really works.

We’ve now come to the point where I think that we’re building something that will become a new standard for how companies go to market by putting their customers at the heart of the way they go to market.

Brian: That’s really cool.

How important are customer advocates, and why should we create or be involved in their community?

Mark: Here’s one of the things that I’ve seen, especially lately. Maybe it’s because I’m running a company that’s all about advocacy, but the industry leaders in almost every sector are also the advocacy leaders.

Like for example, Tesla in cars. Tesla’s market cap is equivalent to, I think, nearly all the other car companies combined at this point or very close to it. I’m thinking, why is that? They are also an advocacy leader. They don’t have any commissioned salespeople. They don’t do traditional marketing. All their marketing is done really through their own customers.

The impact of that is just incredible because you’ve got this massive unpaid sales force that’s way more efficient than any sales force that you hired could be.

Brian: Right.

Mark: The other thing that we’ve learned is that advocacy is kind of like a beneficial virus. For example, a company built with advocacy, which has a lot of advocacy, and those who become a new customer because an advocate recommended them, they, themselves, are much more likely to advocate. Essentially, there is a culture of advocacy around these companies.

These companies rocket up to being industry leaders. They are so much more efficient regarding their sales and marketing, and they’ve got the culture that keeps this sort of positive feedback group happening, which I think is really exciting. We see that with a lot of our customers, they’re industry leaders.

So many of our startup customers have gone public (i.e., MuleSoft), or there are so many of them that have gone public, or they’re industry leaders like Oracle or SalesForce, IBM. I think they do well because of this financial power of having a large unpaid army of advocates.

It feels amazing to work for companies that have a lot of customer advocacy. It gives you that sense of purpose, like, I know why I’m here. We’re adding real value. Look at all these customers we’re delighting, but they are helping us grow.

It’s such an empowering, exciting thing to be a part of. I think the most important thing entrepreneurs can do to build advocates and mobilize them. Now, also have a fantastic product and terrific service, but we don’t actually get involved in that area. We actually only work with companies that have a great product, and that’s because we’ve learned the hard way that our product works really well for companies that are already delighting customers.

Early in our history, we had a couple of customers who, frankly, we’re not doing a great job, but they might have had a handful of happy customers. And they wanted us to help give them a megaphone to mostly make it look like they had that kind of advocacy even if they didn’t.

Honestly, we’ve learned that’s not a good business skill. We tend to work with companies that already do an excellent job delighting customers, making sure they win. It feels like we are really doing good for the world because we’re helping the good guys win.

[responsive_video type=’youtube’ hide_related=’1′ hide_logo=’0′ hide_controls=’0′ hide_title=’1′ hide_fullscreen=’0′ autoplay=’0′]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK_FWihgnKk&feature=youtu.be[/responsive_video]

Brian: I appreciate you saying that. This is going to segue us into talking a little bit about empathy. Often in marketing and sales, it had been outside-in, and what I hear from you is, no, it’s from the inside out. It needs to be authentic. You connect with your employees.

As you know, I’ve been doing some work in empathy-based marketing and selling and how it can help us connect with our customers and create better results.

How can empathy and advocacy based-marketing connect and help empower companies?

Mark: I love this work you are doing on empathy. As an entrepreneur, with every year that goes by, I realize that it’s the number one skill, I think, that business leaders need to develop to win.

Often it’s thought of in an employee context for sure. For example, I’ve worked with a coach for the last three or four years, namely developing my skills as a leader, which includes being more empathetic. Meaning truly and deeply understanding my employees and, in particular, feeling what they are feeling, but it extends way beyond employees.

That is why I love the work you are doing about being empathetic for companies and understanding their experience. In fact, this whole business that I’m doing came from empathy in the beginning because it was all about understanding the most desirable buying process for someone to go through.

Brian: Yes.

Mark: If you think about the last amazing buying experience you’ve had for something that wasn’t just a commodity, but something you had to think about, really. The chances are that process you went through had some trusted people, whether those were other customers you trusted or that salesperson you worked with did such a good job that you truly and deeply trusted that person. You trusted this individual had your best interest in their heart.

The chances are that trust and that transparency were just completely interwoven in that buying process you had.

That’s what I learned when I was at Eloqua and trying to figure what was going on that some of these prospects bought in four days instead of four months?

That experience had tons of advocacy all over it. People talk about customer experience all the time. I’m not sure some people even know what it means.

To me, customer experience is all about feelings. It’s all about the way people feel at different parts of their journey with you. So if we want to make people feel great, if we want to make people feel like there’s trust, then you’ve got to infuse that buying process with the power of authenticity, authentic other customers. There’s an intersection right there.

If you care about your buyer, if you care about their experience and want them to feel great when working with you, you should probably talk less as a salesperson and as a marketer. And have more of their trusted, relevant peers do the talking for you, not because it’s more effective, but because they like it. That’s the experience that they really want more than anything. I think there is a massive overlap between the ideas of empathy and advocacy.

Brian: I love that, and I agree with this as I’ve researched understanding this perspective and thinking of customers and how they are feeling. Do they want to know how you’ve helped people like me? What has worked for others in my field, and how can I get better doing what I’m doing? Because there is that authentic someone who’s been in my space or experience.

I just wanted to talk about some actual tips you might have for our listeners today who feel inspired. They realize they have advocates right now. They may not have even used that term. I love the word advocate and what it means.

How can marketers start identifying and better supporting their customer advocates?  

Mark: That’s a great question. We’ve produced an interesting piece of software to help mobilize advocates at scale, but it doesn’t mean you have to do that. Really, every company in the world should be doing advocate marketing, and it may be as simple as just having a meal a couple of times a year with some of your best customers. There’s really no agenda there other than to get people together and to ask how to improve and maybe share a little bit about where you’re going as a company. That alone can cost very little.

We have these dinners all the time, and they cost $1,000 to get eight people together at a nice restaurant and have a small boutique meal, and wow, it just makes a big impact. Because those people are your best customers, they want to affect your company, right?

They want to help shape your company. In some cases, they may already feel like they are more a part of your business than their company because they believe so passionately in your idea. Giving them an exclusive tribe and saying, hey, this dinner is not just for any one of our customers.

It’s for our most special customers. Not because you buy a lot from us either, by the way. It’s not about purchasing. It’s because you get it. It’s because you believe, and we think that your ideas are leading edge and will be ones that everyone else is going to subscribe to, so we want to spend more time listening to you. We want to take care of you. That message will always be well received. It’s very inexpensive, and it’s got a very high ROI. Just beginning there is a great place to start.

I know many companies are already doing that before we start talking to them, and they have people believe in advocacy, and it appeals to them.

The next step is to centralize your advocacy with a single person doing the talking. Many of the companies we work with before we started working with them had four or five different people in their organization who are all doing little bits and pieces of advocacy in their own way.

You might have one person in charge of referrals, another person in charge of talking to customers. The problem there is you’re really missing out on a lot of potential advocacy. That same person that can be a reference for you is also willing to speak on stage.

If you have a point person in charge of advocacy for your company, you’ll get a lot more, three or four times as much, without spending any more money. In fact, you could actually end up saving a lot of time, money, and frustration because you centralize that process.

Again, that’s actually a very empathetic thing, right? Because what you’re saying is: you know what I care about more than the types of things that advocates do? We care about the advocates themselves. We actually care about people. We care about their experience. We want their experience to be great.

By having a single person in your company in charge of that, I think that shows a lot of respect and appreciation for these very important people. If you just do those two things alone without buying any fancy software, you’ll get a lot more of this very valuable advocacy for your company, and it could be quite transformational. Then, maybe you’ll be ready to have a really scaled-up advocacy program, and that’s what we do at Influitive.

We create communities where there are some virtual places on the internet and on mobile where you can invite your advocates in, make them feel like a million bucks, let them know how they can help you, and get them to interact with each other. We have about 300 great companies that are doing that. They are enjoying the experience, but there again, you don’t have to do anything fancy. Just get people together and show some appreciation. You’ll get a lot of value out of it.

Brian: That’s terrific, Mark, and thank you for the action points. I was going to ask you one last question before we close. What’s the question you wished I asked but haven’t yet?

Mark: Maybe something about the future? Often a good one is to bring out the crystal ball and see what we see in the future of marketing and that sort of thing.

Brian: That would be great.

What do you see in the future for B2B marketing or selling macro trends?

Mark: Something that I’ve alluded to in this conversation was around the “whys” of customer experience, and the role marketing will have played in customer experience. One of the things you’ll notice, some of the best companies we have, particularly in the west, are obsessed with customer experience.

I think you have more buyers inundated with emails and websites and all sorts of stuff. Marketers will need to have some control over the customer experience in the future because that is going to be the main source of where their best leads are going to come from and their ability to convert those leads.

We see with our customers, which tend to be on the leading edge of the curve, where marketing and customer success are starting to merge a little bit. It’s very analogous to how sales and marketing began to come together in my Eloqua days, under the idea of the standard definition of a lead.

Brian: Yes.

Mark: I have done sales and marketing stuff together, and you’ve done a lot of writing on that. I’ve learned much from you over the years on that. There is a similar thing that is happening now. The customer success and marketing and product are coming together to define the optimal customer experience, and that is a big, big move.

Marketers who can get on that and understand this new language of customer experience and drive it will do very well over the next few years. I think that’s one big trend.

I do think that this idea of marketing by proxy is tremendous. It’s a huge thing, and these are skills that most marketers do not have today. Marketers now are good at running these cross-functional, multimodal, nurturing-style campaigns to drive leads and this sort of thing. The ability to do that has been really dominant over the last 10 years.

That’s changing as buyers are becoming inundated with that stuff, yet the ability to get others to do the marketing for you and learn those skills will be pretty significant. Because there is such little knowledge in this area, we actually have quite an education effort.

You can go to Influitive.com and check out our resources page, and there are lots of educational materials, as we are trying to train this next generation of marketers to think this way. Instead of thinking about how do, I bombard people to get my way? It’s how to find the right individuals who are relevant and trusted, and how do I get them to carry our message for me? I think that’s going to be a big deal.

And thirdly, everyone is talking about machine learning and all that these days, and I think it’s probably going to create just as big an impact. I think AI machine learning is probably at the very top of the high curve right now.

Brian: Right.

Mark: Three years from now, everyone will say, well, I don’t know what that was all about, I guess that was all hyped up, but then in ten years from now, people go wow, that really was a huge change.

So I think it’s definitely worth tracking what’s going on in that technology, and we’re certainly spending quite a bit of time playing around with it here. Some of the things I see for marketers, (and actually, there are a lot of sales professionals who listen to your podcast) I think empathy is just as important if not more so for sellers and so is advocacy, so is mobilizing your proxies if you are in the sales profession as well. I think there are a lot of parallels.

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Do you focus on capturing product stories or customer-hero stories?

The answer sounds like marketing nuance. It isn’t.

It’s the difference between content that gets skimmed and stories that get repeated inside the customer’s org when you’re not in the room.

I interviewed Mike Bosworth because he’s been right about something for a long time:

People love to buy. They hate to feel sold.

Customer-hero stories are one of the cleanest ways to make that real in modern GTM.

Quick Answer

Product stories talk about what you do. Customer-hero stories show how buyers win.

In complex B2B, the best sellers and marketers don’t “pitch.” They facilitate the buying journey by helping buyers picture themselves solving a real problem, reducing risk, and making a decision they can defend internally.

Why This Matters in Modern GTM

Despite all the time, money, and tooling poured into “productivity,” the performance gap inside most sales orgs is brutal.

One benchmark Mike referenced is the classic pattern: a small percentage of sellers drive a massive share of revenue.

What do those top performers do differently?

They connect emotionally. They create trust fast. And they don’t lead with the product.

That’s also why this matters for marketing: your content either helps Sales create trust or it creates more noise.

The Core Shift: From “Integration” to “Agreement”

One of my favorite moments in this interview is when Mike reframes “sales and marketing integration.”

Most teams hear “integration” and think tools, APIs, and tech stacks.

Mike’s point: the real leverage is simpler.

Replace the word integration with agreement.

Agree on a small set of fundamentals, and suddenly handoffs stop being a black hole.

One of those fundamentals is the definition of a qualified lead, which lines up with what I’ve written for years about the Universal Lead Definition.

What You’ll Learn From This Interview

• Why product-first marketing backfires (especially in cloud and subscription businesses)
• Why “qualified lead” is a prerequisite agreement, not a scoring trick
• How customer-hero stories reduce buyer risk and accelerate internal consensus
• Why bottom performers abandon discovery frameworks (it’s not the framework, it’s trust timing)

Video Interview

Watch the interview on YouTube

Interview Highlights (Edited Transcript)

Author’s Note: This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

Brian: What’s behind the shift you’re seeing in sales and marketing right now?

Mike: Cloud technology is forcing companies to be more empathic. It forces the conversation to shift away from “our solution does this” and toward how the customer uses our stuff.

That’s customer usage marketing. Or what we call customer-hero marketing.

If we’re going to sell empathically, ideally we won’t even be “selling.” We’ll be facilitating the buying journey, because people love to buy and hate to feel sold.

Brian: Where do you see sales and marketing break down most often?

Mike: In most companies they’re two silos pointing fingers. Marketing thinks they’re sending great leads. Sales thinks the leads came from the janitorial staff.

Tim Riester and I went looking for the touchpoint that actually matters.

It’s the definition of a lead.

If the head of Sales and the head of Marketing can agree on a qualified lead, integration gets easier fast. And that word “integration” messes people up. People think APIs and systems.

I started swapping “integration” for agreement. It simplifies everything.

Brian: What has to be true before you can even define a qualified lead?

Mike: First Sales and Marketing must agree on:

• Who are the buyer personas?
• Who are our best customers?
• Where can we help them be a hero?
• What goal or problem are we helping them solve?

Once you have buyer personas, then you think about the psychological buying process and how buyers bring in other people.

The goal is to help customers buy without pressure.

Brian: Why do top sellers outperform so dramatically?

Mike: Most of the bottom performers struggle to build an emotional connection and trust with a stranger quickly.

They dive into discovery questions too soon, before the buyer trusts them enough to be questioned.

That’s why the VP of Sales says: “Top performers love this framework, bottom performers quit using it in two weeks.”

It’s not because discovery is bad. It’s because trust timing is off.

Brian: Give us a practical definition of a qualified lead.

Mike: A named targeted buyer persona at a target account is curious how we helped a peer achieve a goal or solve a problem.

That word matters: curious.

If they’re not curious, they’re not really a lead. They’re just a record.

Brian: Why should teams focus on customer-hero stories instead of product stories?

Mike: Because stories let people visualize themselves solving a problem. They create a story in the buyer’s brain where they see a better future.

The customer becomes the hero by using the product.

So don’t market the product as the hero.

Market your past customers as the hero. Then you’re helping new prospects become heroes too.

My GTM Clarity Take

If you want to improve results from this interview, don’t turn it into a “storytelling initiative.”

Make it operational.

• Define a lead as a shared agreement (start with the Universal Lead Definition)
• Design handoffs so buyer context survives from Marketing to SDR to Sales
• Build story capture into your GTM system, not as a one-off content project

Customer-hero stories are not fluff. They’re how trust scales without your team sounding like every other vendor in the category.

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I spoke with Sweezey about what the research revealed. The full conversation is in the podcast episode above. What follows are the findings that matter most — and why they still hold up years later.

The core finding: 15% annual churn

B2B contact databases lose roughly 15% of their accuracy every year. People change roles, leave companies, get promoted into different functions, or move to new industries entirely. At that rate, a database that is not actively maintained becomes functionally irrelevant within about four years.

The problem is not that emails bounce. The problem is that the person behind the email no longer fits the persona you built your campaign around. The email still works. The targeting does not.

Sweezey’s research put a number on what most marketers sense but rarely measure. When the average B2B email address costs around $150 to acquire, and the average marketing database holds roughly 50,000 contacts, that database represents a $7.5 million asset. Most teams assess its health by checking bounce rates — which tells you almost nothing about whether the people in it still match your ICP.

Personas are not static documents

One of the most useful distinctions from the research is that personas are not fixed segments. People enter and leave target personas daily based on job changes, company shifts, and role evolution. A VP of Marketing who was a perfect fit six months ago may now be a CMO with a completely different set of priorities and decision-making authority. Or they may have left the company entirely and landed somewhere outside your TAM.

This means persona maintenance is not a quarterly exercise. It is an ongoing data hygiene discipline. The teams that treat personas as living segments — tracking both growth rate and churn rate within each persona — catch drift before it compounds.

The marketer tenure problem

There is a compounding factor that makes all of this worse. The average tenure for a B2B marketer is about 2.4 years. Sweezey pointed out that a gerbil lives longer than the average marketing career at a given company.

That turnover means the person who built the personas, configured the scoring model, and set up the nurture sequences is often gone before the database has fully churned. Their replacement inherits the system without the context — and usually without the institutional knowledge of what the data quality looked like when it was fresh. So the decay accelerates without anyone noticing.

What has changed since this research

The underlying dynamics Sweezey identified have not changed. Marketer tenure is still short. Database churn is still real. Personas still drift.

What has changed is the tooling available to track it. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, intent data platforms, and enrichment tools like ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Clay now make it possible to detect job changes, company moves, and role shifts in near real-time. Some teams use automated workflows that flag when a contact’s title or company changes in the CRM, triggering re-qualification or reassignment.

The gap is not technology. The gap is discipline. Most teams have access to enrichment tools. Few have a systematic process for using them to maintain persona accuracy over time.

What this means for your GTM system

If your outbound motion, ABM campaigns, or nurture programs are built on a database you have not audited in a year or more, the targeting is probably worse than you think. The emails are not bouncing. The people just are not the right people anymore.

Three things to check:

• What percentage of your database has been enriched or verified in the last 12 months?
• Do you track churn rate within your target personas, or only total list size?
• When a contact changes roles or companies, does your system catch it — or does the old record keep running through sequences until someone notices?

Good targeting requires good data. Good data requires ongoing maintenance. The research Sweezey did at Salesforce quantified what that maintenance gap actually costs — and the numbers have only gotten larger as B2B databases have grown.

Full conversation transcript

Lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the full episode using the player above.

Brian Carroll: Our data represents our relationships. Have you looked at your own data? Some questions I want to ask you today: What is the annual growth rate of the personas in your database? Do you know how many of them have churned? What is the size of your audience, and are you sure about that?

I am super excited to have Matt Sweezey — he goes by Sweezey to me. He works with Salesforce as the Principal of Marketing Insights. Salesforce along with LinkedIn just released a new research study. As I understand it, this started in 2014. It is the B2B Persona Report. I wanted to talk with Matt to bring this information to B2B marketers. Matt, welcome. Can you tell us more about your background?

Mathew Sweezey: Thanks Brian, love being on here. My background is kind of interesting. I was one of the really early employees at a small startup called Pardot, which is a marketing automation platform. We grew that, sold it to ExactTarget, and I became a Salesforce employee. Along that road I wrote a book called Marketing Automation for Dummies, wrote for lots of different publications, and now I head up forward-looking marketing ideas and theories as Principal of Marketing Insight at Salesforce.

Brian: Tell me about this study. What motivated you to do this research?

Sweezey: What inspired me — and I think what is funny — is that to me these are fundamental marketing questions. What bothers me is the fact that no one else was trying to ask these questions, or whether they really knew they should be asking them in the first place.

Let me explain. As a marketer, we have metrics. We say, all right, we got 10,000 email addresses this year. That would be a metric that we give to somebody to validate our efforts. But that is like saying, I have got 10. 10 out of how many? That is the question. It is not what did you get, it is how effective were you. These were effectiveness measures. Without really detailed information about our audiences — their size, their growth, their churn — we have no way to answer any of those questions. And those should be key fundamental questions we can answer about our job. That is what sparked this.

This idea started a couple of years ago when I wanted to understand the value of email better. Think about this. When you look at the average cost for a B2B business to obtain an email address, that is about $150.

Brian: $150.

Sweezey: $150 to obtain an email address. When you look at the average size of a B2B email database, the average is 50,000 names. That is what a marketer has. Not their addressable market — let me be clear on that. If you multiply those two together, the marketer has a $7.5 million asset under their control, which is their email database. That is the largest asset a marketer owns, point blank.

When you say that is the largest asset, then you start to ask basic questions. How do we evaluate it? How often does it churn? And there is no data we can give you. The only measure we have of the health of our email database is: did the email bounce, yes or no? Horrible metric. That is what led me down this path.

Brian: What surprised you most as you analyzed the data from this research?

Sweezey: I think the biggest surprising thing is that people do not realize the amount of movement inside of an organization. What I mean by movement is that a person has both horizontal and vertical changes within a company.

If we are only looking at the measure of whether this email address is good for us, and we are only looking at the bounce, all that says is: does this person still work at that company? Which as a marketer is not enough information to know if they are still in our persona. Because if the email address is still good but the person took a horizontal shift — say they were the manager of business development, and now they are a manager of support — their email address is still valid, yet that person is no longer in your persona, and you should no longer be targeting them. But because that email address does not bounce, we still do.

The second thing I thought was really fascinating was the idea of growth and churn. One of the things we often do not think about is that our personas are actually a fluid set of people. It is different day to day. There are people that leave a persona completely — they were in a managerial role and now they are in a different department. And there are people that enter that marketplace completely — the reverse, where they were in support and now they moved into sales, making them a part of our persona.

When you start looking at these growth and churn rates, you see some pretty large numbers, and they are all double digit. Here is the power of math: if your database churns at an average rate of 15% per year, that means your database is irrelevant if you do not continually update it in 4.2 years. That is the decay rate. That is how quickly your email addresses become completely invalid.

How many of us have just had these databases forever, and we say, yeah, we have 50,000 emails? That does not mean anything if on average you are churning at 15% per year. Each year it is declining in value by 15%, and we forget that it is a fluid set. This data helps us determine just how fluid it is, and gives us a better way to evaluate our efforts and actually understand this most valuable asset that we have.

Brian: As I am listening to you, the first things you shared blew my mind. You are right — we generally look at the health of our data based on whether emails go through or not. Check your own experience, those of you in our listening audience. How many of you have had your job responsibilities change at the same company? And that does not include job changes to other companies. Matt, I am thinking about that in my own data and how I do marketing, because that is a whole other dimension. Vertical, horizontal, and then what do I do about it? But first, your report said that B2B marketing as we know it is fundamentally changing. Why is that?

Sweezey: The main reason is that the idea we have of marketing was created in a limited media environment. In the limited media era, there was only so much media that could be created, and it was only able to be created by those who had the capital to do so — businesses. Distribution had to go through a preexisting distribution network, which meant you had to pay for it. So distribution was limited to those with the capital. That funnels down to how much media exists in the marketplace. You only had businesses who could create it and distribute it, so the entire media environment was a captive marketplace.

Now we live in an infinite media environment where there is no longer a barrier to creation or distribution of content. All of the ideas we have about marketing were created with a captive audience in mind. We no longer live in that environment. We have entered a world where businesses are the extreme minority of content creators rather than the predominant majority. Just because you write a piece of content does not mean someone will find it. We have so much content that we use algorithms to connect people to content. Consumers are using those algorithms to filter out the noise. And there are better options, so consumers are taking them.

Brian: It sounds like if we took away our marketing and our advertising, would our customers miss it?

Sweezey: No, they would not at all. They hate it. Gallup put out the trust-in-professions poll, and they have done so for decades. Advertising professionals are one of the least trusted professions. The only professions that are more distrusted are congressmen, lawyers, and insurance salespeople. We are only one percentage point more trusted than insurance salespeople as a profession.

We still do these things because we have such a long and vested interest in the idea that it works. It really does not work. It just worked because we were shooting fish in a barrel. They had no other recourse. And now that they do, we can see it. There are over 600 million devices with ad blocking. That is the largest boycott in human history, and it is boycotting our idea of advertising and marketing.

Brian: There are five areas from the study I want to cover. First, email. Every marketer touches email, and those who email are impacted by this research. What can marketers do?

Sweezey: This research does not give a lot of specific email tactics. Rather it puts into question when you should ask for email and what the value of email is in your organization.

Think about telephone numbers. Any marketer who uses email marketing now asks for an email address before a telephone number. That is a progression of communication channels. Now we have other communication channels like social. Maybe we should hold off on asking for email until later, because a social handle is usually a personal handle, which gives you personal access to somebody. Social has a longer shelf life. That is an idea.

The other ideas are really just to help people understand the effectiveness they have with obtaining email addresses, and then to realize standard best practices. If you email somebody five times and they do not respond, stop emailing them. Churn them out of your database. Just because you have that email address does not mean anything. You do not own them. At one time they thought you were relevant, but apparently you have proven not to be relevant in their lives. Take the hint and stop.

Brian: I want to pick up on something. With my own email list, for our listeners, there are third-party providers that can help you append social data to the email addresses you currently have. When you have someone’s LinkedIn profile, as people are mobile and moving around, your data represents your relationships. It is very hard to start relationships over and over if people move from company to company. What I am hearing from you, Sweezey, is that we need to think multidimensionally instead of just get email, grow our email list.

Sweezey: That is a harder question, because this data did not specifically look at that. But I think the basic things I have mentioned apply. If you realize the amount of churn in your database, be aware that you are reporting a metric to your bosses that is not really accurate.

If you say you are basing performance on a 3% engagement rate with your email addresses, you really have a much higher engagement rate with your core demographic than you think, because most of those people in your email database probably are not in that demographic or persona anymore. By scrubbing out all these people you can actually show your effectiveness a lot better. That is kind of crazy to think about.

The other thing is, realize that email is a very specific type of communication. It is the number one communication method for business. But that means when business is applicable. If you have people in your audience and they are not actively in a sales cycle, email can help you keep up with them, but do not discount all the other avenues you can use to stay connected.

Brian: What are some questions you wished you could have dug deeper into, or future research ideas?

Sweezey: The amount of work to get this data — I will never want to rerun this research. We are looking at 15 million data points over a span of six years, running some pretty heavy analysis, combining multiple data sets. I think the numbers are here. In our given environment I do not expect the process of people switching jobs to change dramatically. I think these churn rates and growth rates will stay pretty consistent for a significant period of time. The total database sizes are pretty accurate, and with the growth and churn rates we can mathematically predict with a high degree of accuracy what they will be at any point in time.

Brian: What is the question I missed asking, or that you wished I had asked?

Sweezey: How about this one. We are all marketers that listen to this podcast, right? Let us talk about ourselves. Here is one of my favorite statistics from this research. You got kids, Brian?

Brian: Yes.

Sweezey: Did you ever have hamsters?

Brian: Yes, my daughters did.

Sweezey: A gerbil will live longer than a marketer will stay in their current position. A marketer’s tenure on average is 2.4 years. The average life cycle of a gerbil or a hamster is three years. So if you buy a gerbil and put it on your desk, it will live longer than you will keep your job.

Brian: Crazy.

Sweezey: And by the way, in comparison with all other jobs, marketers have the highest churn rate of any profession. Salespeople are second. Marketers are first. Think about that.

Brian: We have always known it is tough. This is why I do what I do — I want to help marketers do better. And if we are moving, I want it to be for positive reasons. It is a challenging job, but I love it because we get to learn so much. But hearing about that churn, I think for all of us, we have to get used to dealing with change, because change will happen to us, including at our jobs.

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Here’s why:

According to research curated by Mack Fogelson, consider the following:

• 73% of people care about the company, not just the product, when making a purchase. (BBMG)
• 50% of purchases are made because of word-of-mouth (Brains on Fire)
• 85% of purpose-led companies showed positive growth (Harvard Business Review/EY)

In sum, purpose matters because it impacts your growth, revenue, and profit.

That’s why I interviewed Mack Fogelson (@mackfogelson), the CEO of Genuinely, a consulting and training company. I met Mack through a mutual friend, and we’ve developed a friendship too. I’ve learned a lot about marketing with purpose and why it’s important to revenue growth and profit, and I’m excited to share her thinking with you. You’ll also learn four steps to articulate your purpose.

Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication.

Mack, can you tell us a little bit more about your background?

Way long ago, I was a teacher and did that for a while. Then over the last fourteen years, I’ve been in the marketing space, so everything from building and coding websites to optimizing with search engine optimization and SEM to building community and brands and the full, integrated approach to marketing a company.

All of those layers have brought us to where we are now, primarily teaching companies how to use these concepts, frameworks, and the processes that we’ve tested and know really work to grow their companies. We do this to ultimately help businesses in the digital age compete, contend, and build really great, meaningful, and sustainable businesses.

What inspired you to focus on purpose and humanize marketing?

Around the time I started having my family, I just realized that if I was taking that time away from my kids, I really needed to make it count. I’ve built a business around something significant to me and for my employees. We started by helping companies be better. I started getting into the conversation about community many years back. When many marketers were talking about how to rank #1 in Google, I talked a lot about the benefit of the community and businesses building a community to help their companies. What I didn’t realize at the time, but unfolded many years later, was that purpose was really at the heart of all of that: helping companies understand how you bring people together through purpose and drive the organization’s growth.

You said that it’s not about what you spend on marketing; it’s the purpose that helps you get focused. Why is that?

Because there is so much that has changed, the world isn’t the same. Businesses aren’t the same, and the way the business community works. Customers are not the same. So, we cannot expect marketing to be the same. Mainly we’re looking at consumers now. We expect authentic and authentic and human experiences. And not only that, but employees are looking for more meaning in their work just like I was many years ago.

It really comes down to the fact that it’s not about what your company sells or solves anymore, and certainly, you need to be incredibly stellar at what you sell and what you make, but it’s about who your business is. And really, it’s about the three components of purpose, people, and promise, and having those pieces work together for any given company so that they can reap all the benefits that purpose brings, like, customer acquisition and retention, customer connection, and employee satisfaction.

How can we overcome this disconnect and better connect with our customers?

Most companies are pushing their product and their services rather than really leading from what their business is here to do and bridging that gap between the purpose of the company and the people in line with that. So, when the conversation is about the product, there isn’t much of a conversation.

Let’s say we’re just talking about Dove. They sell soap. But ultimately, they aim to help women feel good about their bodies. So, it’s the intersection of those things (selling soap and helping women feel good about their bodies); the cultural relevancy of attacking an issue like women’s self-image and body image and wanting actually to help solve that problem in our world is what has given Dove such incredible growth in their organization.

When the conversation shifts from being about the product to being about the purpose, it becomes something else that drives growth because it’s the word of mouth that companies are looking for. And that doesn’t come through talking about a product; it originates from the connection they have with the shared values and wanting to do something bigger. Not to say that they don’t generate significant profits from this path; it’s just a different way to it.

You’ve talked about why building an authentic and human company is necessary. So why should those in B2B marketing care about this?

The purpose is becoming more of a trendy topic; you see it everywhere, and I think that’s the biggest disconnect. Companies think that, on the outside, if the market with purpose, they’re good; they’re safe. And maybe many companies are doing that. But if then the experience with your business is not really all the way to the core, then that’s where you’re going to have significant problems (think about recent events with companies like Uber, United, and Pepsi’s commercial fail).

Ultimately, in the day-to-day, companies want to know how do we achieve growth and how we continue to acquire customers? How do we keep our customers? When your business is not looking at building a deeper connection with that customer (which comes from purpose and empathy, as we’ve talked about), there is no connection. When you have no connection, you have no customers.

It’s really in applying the purpose to the organization’s day-to-day and understanding that it’s not just some visionary thing. Still, it’s about identifying your purpose and then making it relevant to your customers. It’s helping your teams understand what purpose is or isn’t. Many companies think it’s a PR approach or it’s a tagline, or it’s a mission or value statement. And that’s all great, but when it comes down to it, the purpose is really what does that mean to your customer who needs your product and wants to connect more deeply with your company?

Think about Patagonia: they’re selling a stellar product, but they’re also going deeper to say, “We are going to pioneer technology to make better clothing. And we’re going to reduce the impact of that on the environment. Then we’re going to give this technology to our competitors because if they have it, then we’re making a larger impact altogether.”

Companies need a purpose. Because they need to keep their employees, they need a purpose to keep their customers, and ultimately there’s something bigger than their businesses are here to do, and it’s not an altruistic path. It’s a road to profit. It’s just, again, a different way of getting there.

Does empathy play a role in understanding your purpose and connecting with customers?

Definitely, one of the biggest things that we see is that companies lack the customer connection and, apparently, the connection to their purpose and any type of authentic or personal or empathetic connection to their customer.  Because they’re using data to make decisions (which they have a copious amount of), some companies don’t know what to do with it anymore. Success is not just analyzing your customer data or your audience data, or the psychographic data you get.

Success is not just analyzing your customer data or your audience data, or the psychographic data you get on your customers. It’s participating in one-to-one interviews to understand their behavior truly and, more accurately, knowing what they’re thinking and feeling. Because when you get that digital data about your customer, it gives you some very quantitative benchmarks about the profile of these people, but it doesn’t tell you what they’re afraid of; it doesn’t say what they’re struggling with right now at this point in their lives.

Connecting with your customers on that one-to-one basis obviously opens up a huge conversation for understanding and empathizing with where they’re coming from. But then, by understanding that thinking and feeling, you can then shape your entire content strategy based on removing those roadblocks. And that is something I think ties into many things, in addition to purpose and empathy.

Brian: That’s where we were going to go next. I often talk to marketers who really don’t get to spend face time with the customers they’re looking to influence or reach outside their companies. The takeaway here is that marketers need to spend more time connecting with clients, not just through their channel of their sales team, but actually having these conversations and spending time practicing and using their empathy to do just that.

Technology is getting in the way of customer connection.

Mack: You and I talk about this a lot with technology, and how everybody thinks that technology is a magic pill; they believe that there must be a tool or piece of technology or software that is going to help them build their customer base faster. The fact of the matter is that technology is part of the root of the problem. Companies need a purpose; they need empathy because they’re trying to solve these much deeper connection issues with their customers by using technology instead of speaking with their clients. Tools and technology can’t help you do that.

So, I think the companies that understand how to use technology wisely need to be able to use these tools at a certain level, even to do a bunch of the heavy lifting and dirty work that we couldn’t take part in many years ago. But success is in taking that data and pairing it with the one-to-one participation in the flesh with these people to understand who they are, what they really need, and help them get their roadblocks removed.

Brian: I agree with you.  The very thing that’s supposed to help us (this technology) connect with our customers more efficiently and effectively is getting in the way of doing that. And so, to counteract that, or the counterpoint, is humanizing and putting more energy into that human connection so that when we do apply the technology, we’re using it well and in a way that can help facilitate conversations and connections that we’ve already established.

Can you share any other tips or examples that our listeners can use to articulate their purpose? 

Mack: Four steps would really help them understand “how do we even approach this conversation?” There are so many things that must be in line: strategy, leadership, and obviously, your product or service. But purpose greatly enhances the opportunity for success, especially in the digital age, especially regarding competitive advantages.

So know, if you’re going to go down this road, that you don’t have to start all over, you don’t have to overhaul your entire organization. In fact, many companies we work with just need an outside perspective to help them understand their systems and processes that they use to market and sell; they need a little tweaking here and there and a reminder of “Hey, at this place is when you integrate purpose. At this place is when you really bring it back to the goals of the organization, wrapped with purpose.” Or, “You need to get to the customer in this place a little bit earlier.”

Four Steps to Articulate Your purpose

Step 1: Clarify the purpose of the organization.

We talked a little bit about Dove.  Their purpose is not to sell soap: their purpose is to help women feel better about their bodies. So that’s a big difference there.

Same with Chipotle. Their purpose is not to sell burritos: their purpose is to make food with integrity, and ultimately to pioneer food safety systems and help other fast-food organizations to know that they can make great food and still make it healthy and good for our earth.

It’s like understanding the difference between just a mission and the product you’re selling and actually making the conversation about purpose. So, start there. If you’re at a loss as to how to do that, there are many resources online. And that is how you find your purpose. It’s not easy to do, but it’s certainly a place that will make you extremely relevant in your customer’s lives.

For more on this, read Ogilvy What’s the big ideaL and Evolve or Die: How Authenticity and Purpose are the Future of Brands.

Step 2: Deconstruct your customer’s journey.

So, now I’m getting specific to sales, marketing, customer experience, and those teams in your organization and understanding how to do this by talking to your customers. As I mentioned earlier, you definitely want to be looking at the customer data you can collect digitally. Understand the audience data, the demographic data, psychographic data that you get. But that is typically where companies stop.

They build these personas, and they don’t go any deeper into actually spending face time with the customer. And that’s where all the good stuff is. That’s where you’re going to find connections, and that’s where you’re going to understand what your customers are thinking and feeling at every stage in your funnel so that you can generate resources, content, experiences that help to remove those roadblocks. So, that’s the second part, deconstructing that customer journey so that you can make that bridge between your purpose and your people.

Step 3: Connecting your team’s purpose to your organization’s

The third step in getting purpose really well integrated into your organization is connecting your team’s purpose to your organization’s purpose. Ultimately, you have to know the purpose of your organization in its entirety to really understand why your organization, as a whole, exists beyond making money?

With your team: understand what role they play in achieving that purpose to apply that more specifically to their day-to-day. That can go a really long way toward efficiency, output, and morale, especially when your team is pushing hard and days are getting longer. The meaning side of that really matters to them.

Step 4: Adjust how you communicate your purpose externally.

This very much directly applies to your sales and marketing and customer experiences team. They’re the most outwardly-facing, and they have the biggest responsibility in making sure that what is happening inside of your organization is also being effectively communicated outside, so customers know you’re not a façade; that purpose is not a veneer and that it’s truly how you operate inside and out.

You want to teach your sales and marketing team to understand the difference between having a productive conversation and a purpose discussion. When you make that shift to not just pushing your product, but to helping those teams understand the bigger purpose of your organization and how that connects to your customers, you’re opening an opportunity to connect with exponentially more people, more organizations, more influencers, more people in the media, more communities, who are either already your ideal customers, or they know somebody who could be.

For more on these steps, read: Why Your Organization Is Getting Sales and Marketing Wrong.

Brian:  Mack, that was fantastic. Thank you. You did a good job breaking down to four points, and I feel like this will be tangible for our listeners. We’ll also supply some resources and links for people to dig into these areas as well.

I wanted to ask what advice you would give to those who want to apply what you’ve just talked about and bring this idea to other leaders inside their company.

What if this idea inspires someone – how can they get the conversation started inside their company?

Mack:  That’s a great question. I think it’s starting small. I believe that purpose as a concept seems very intimidating, especially to leaders, because they feel like, “Oh my gosh, you’re talking about an entire organization overhaul, and we can’t even keep up with what we’re doing every day.”

It’s not really starting over. It’s just optimizing what you have and better connecting it and communicating it to understand your employees and customers. So, I think it’s just starting small.

We typically start with a small purpose workshop. We’re talking maybe 45-60 minutes of helping companies understand what purpose is and what purpose isn’t.  Once they start the conversation, I think it’s also to understand that purpose seems fluffy, maybe, when you’re trying to hit your ROI and your metrics and the goals you have financially for your team and the organization. But it’s not fluffy. This is about growth. And in this day and age, this is the approach to growth.

But when you’re selling it to your leadership, it’s “We’re going to teach our sales, marketing, and customer experience teams how to remove roadblocks for our customers by connecting that purpose. And that, ultimately, is going to drive sales, it’s going to drive retention, it’s going to drive connections, and ultimately it’s going to drive our growth.”

Brian:  Terrific. What’s the best way for readers and listeners to get in touch with you?

Mack:  They can come to our website genuinely.co or find me online. I’m on Twitter at @mackfogelson most every day, happy to chat there.

Additional resources on purpose:

Why Your Organization Is Getting Sales and Marketing Wrong

How Purpose and Authenticity are the Future of Brands

Winning with Purpose – EY

Purpose at Work – LinkedIn/Imperative

The Business Case for Purpose – Harvard Business Review [PDF]

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How Empathy Will Grow Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline

4 Ways You Can Humanize Marketing and Build Relationships

Lead Nurturing: 4 Steps to walking the buying path with your customers

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Stuck on words: how can marketing connect with customers better?

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Most B2B teams don’t fail because they lack data, tools, or automation.

They fail because buyers don’t trust them.

Modern buyers are highly informed, deeply skeptical, and allergic to self-serving messaging. They can detect “we care about you” theater in seconds.

Empathy isn’t a branding choice anymore. It’s the price of entry.

In this conversation, I sat down with Michael Brenner to unpack why empathy remains the most underutilized advantage in B2B — and why most GTM systems quietly erase it as companies scale.

At the time of this interview, Michael was CEO of Marketing Insider Group. Before that, he led digital and content marketing at SAP as their first head of digital marketing, then VP of Global Content Marketing. He’s now VP of Thought Leadership & Customer Advocacy, continuing to push the same ideas from inside a large organization.

Author’s note: This transcript is edited for clarity and readability.

Why this conversation still matters

Most marketing teams aren’t struggling because they lack tools. They’re struggling because they’ve lost the thread of the customer as work moves from human conversation into systems, dashboards, and handoffs.

Empathy breaks inside real GTM systems when meaning gets dropped — during routing, scoring, automation, and internal metrics.

If you want the broader framework behind this conversation, start here: What Empathy-Based Marketing Really Is (And Why Most B2B Teams Miss It), Human-Centered Marketing: How Empathy Beats Automation in B2B, and The Empathy Paradox.

The interview

Brian: Can you tell us a little about your background?

Michael: I’m excited to talk about empathy because I think it’s a missing element in today’s landscape.

I’ve spent more than 20 years in sales, marketing, and leadership roles. About ten years ago, I joined SAP as their first head of digital marketing, then became VP of Global Content Marketing.

A lot of that work was about modernizing how SAP connected with customers — not just digitally, but respectfully.

Today, I run Marketing Insider Group. I built it because I’ve been inside corporate marketing teams. I understand the politics and cultural friction that make change hard.

My focus now is helping marketers earn trust by being useful, not loud.

Brian: What inspired you to write and speak more about empathy?

Michael: Executive conversations often go like this: “We get digital. We get content. Now how do we make it work?”

Even when ROI objections are removed, there’s still resistance.

There’s a natural instinct inside organizations to promote themselves. And that instinct fights the thing that actually works — putting the customer first.

Empathy is the missing element. And it’s missing in a lot of corporate cultures and structures.

Brian: You’ve said empathy is counterintuitive. Why?

Michael: Businesses behave the way people do socially — they put their best face forward.

It feels counterintuitive to believe you can sell more by talking less about what you sell.

But the data keeps showing the same thing: the more you help customers make progress, the more your business benefits.

Michael: “You can sell more stuff by not talking about the stuff you sell.”

Brian: How do we overcome what you call “collective amnesia”?

Michael: Collective amnesia happens when we walk into work and forget we’re real people marketing to real people.

Ad buyers may hate ads — yet still buy reach and frequency. That disconnect fuels noise.

In a crowded market, the assumption becomes “the loudest wins.” But shouting doesn’t create trust.

Brian: What do you wish marketers and sellers would do more?

Michael: Be helpful. That’s the secret.

We justify self-promotion by saying, “That’s just the game.”

But the best way to help your business is to help your customers.

Michael: “When you help your customers, that’s the best way to help your business.”

Brian: Can you share an example of empathy breaking down?

Michael: Wells Fargo is a painful example.

I presented to their marketing team before the scandal broke. We were discussing content and engagement as signals of customer value.

A senior leader pushed back and said, “We buy reach and frequency.”

That mindset treats marketing like broadcasting, not helping.

When the scandal became public, it felt less like a tactics failure and more like a cultural one.

Values don’t exist unless organizations reward them.

Brian: What’s a positive example?

Michael: SAP.

Leadership didn’t just talk about empathy — they rewarded it.

Empathy became something people were recognized for internally, and that showed up externally. How SAP’s CEO Bill McDermott used empathy to build more powerful teams

Brian: How can people “sell” empathy internally?

Michael: If you’re not the CEO, lead by supporting customer-focused ideas — and the people behind them.

Ideas die without backing.

Empathy inside organizations often shows up through who gets supported, promoted, and protected.

Brian: How can people connect with you?

Michael: Find me on LinkedIn.

Bottom line

Empathy isn’t about being nice. It’s about earning trust in a market where buyers have every reason to be skeptical.

If your GTM system strips empathy out at scale, buyers feel it — and they opt out.

The companies that win aren’t louder. They’re more helpful.

You may also like

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• The Empathy Paradox: Why Even Customer-Centric Marketers Misunderstand Buyers
• Why Most B2B Lead Management Systems Fail (And How to Fix Them)

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Editor’s note (2026): I recorded this conversation with Jill Rowley in 2016 — and it’s aged better than most content from that era. Jill’s warning that “technology is enabling bad practices” was about email sequences and early automation. In 2026, with AI-powered SDR tools generating thousands of personalized-sounding messages per day, that warning has become the default condition for most outbound programs. Her core argument — that relevance beats volume and empathy beats efficiency — is more urgent now than when she said it. Jill spent 13 years in software sales, including at Eloqua, and was one of the first people to build programmatic social selling motions inside enterprise sales teams. She later became Chief Marketing Evangelist at Marketo and now advises multiple B2B companies on GTM and sales transformation.

The interview

Brian: Jill, can you tell us a bit about your background?

Jill: Sure, Brian. I describe myself as a sales professional trapped in a marketer’s body. I spent 13 years in software sales, and for 10 of those years, I was selling to marketers.

This unique experience lets me understand both sides of the equation — sales and marketing. For the past three years, I’ve been helping companies use social media strategically in sales, creating programmatic, organization-wide approaches to social selling.

Brian: What inspired you to start social selling?

Jill: Honestly, it was my frustration with traditional sales methods. Cold calling and mass emails weren’t getting my prospects’ attention. Social media offered a way to be where my customers were, be visible, add value, and join the conversations they care about. It was also an invaluable research tool for understanding my buyers.

Brian: Are salespeople still being pressured to make more calls and send more emails?

Jill: Yes, and that’s a huge part of the problem. The mandate for many sales teams is simply to “make more calls, send more emails.” But more isn’t better — more relevant is better.

Today, everyone has access to contact data, so prospects are flooded with generic, impersonal messages. Automation tools are only amplifying this with sequences that come across as tone-deaf and absurd by the seventh touchpoint. The result? Prospects are annoyed, not engaged.

Brian: Why does it seem like things are only getting worse?

Jill: It’s because technology is enabling bad practices. Sales leaders need to wake up to the fact that buyers have changed dramatically. People buy differently now — they do their own research, trust peers, and value insights over pitches. But too many sales teams are still using outdated methods that don’t align with this new buyer behavior.

Brian: What mistakes do you see in social selling?

Jill: A big one is taking old-school tactics and applying them in new-school channels. Too many salespeople are using the “me, me, me” approach on social media, where they talk about their product, their company, and what they want, rather than focusing on the prospect.

I recently received a generic LinkedIn invite from someone claiming to be a social selling expert. That’s a red flag. If you’re not even personalizing your outreach, you’re missing the point of social selling entirely.

Brian: How does empathy play into social selling?

Jill: Empathy is critical. Social selling allows you to see through the eyes of your customer. LinkedIn, for example, lets you get insights into someone’s skills, career history, and what others say about them. Use this information to craft a thoughtful approach.

Empathy isn’t about pushing a sale — it’s about genuinely understanding what the customer needs and how you can help them achieve their goals. That’s how you build trust and rapport.

Brian: What tips would you give to those looking to improve their social selling skills?

Jill: First, if you’re ineffective offline, you’ll be even less effective online. Social media amplifies both the good and the bad, so focus on adding value, not just pushing for a quick sale.

Social selling also requires ongoing training. Platforms like LinkedIn each have their own cultures. Sales teams should invest in training to learn how to use these platforms effectively and align them with their overall sales goals.

Social selling isn’t about rushing to close. It’s about being a facilitator of the buyer’s journey.

Brian: Can you share an example of a company doing social selling well?

Jill: ON24 is a great example. They put their sales team through a 10-week training program with Sales For Life, culminating in a certification that requires reps to use social media to source new opportunities. This structured approach ensures that the team is aligned and ready to succeed with social selling.

Brian: What excites you about the future of sales?

Jill: I’m excited about the balance between technology and human connection. AI and other tools can take over administrative tasks, freeing up sales reps to focus on empathy, research, and relationship-building. But remember, technology can’t replace human interaction — it’s there to support it.

Brian: Any final thoughts?

Jill: In social selling, trust is your greatest asset. To build trust, focus on the buyer, not yourself. Mutual benefit matters. As a mentor once told me, “To be interesting, be interested in something other than yourself.”

Connect with Jill

Find Jill on LinkedIn.

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In this interview, you’ll hear from Jim Fowler, founder of Owler, on what he’s learned to grow fast. Owler – a free competitive intelligence platform – went from 0 to over 500,000 users. And they’re on pace to exceed a million users by the end of this year.

I first met Fowler when he was the co-founder of the cloud-based contact management platform Jigsaw, which he sold to Salesforce.com for $175 million (now Data.com).

Writers Note: The transcript has was edited for publication.

Brian: Jim, tell us about your organization. 

Jim: Sure, Brian. It’s a pleasure to be on the show. Owler is a competitive intelligence platform. All business professionals use it, but our biggest participants are sales and marketing folks that really need to keep their finger on the pulse of their competitive grasps. That means their competitors, their customers, their prospects, their partners, etc.

The general trend here is there’s just so much information out there. Our goal with Owler is to become a must-use tool that gives a lot of very crisp information that people can absorb. That’s the key thing that we’re a tool that helps people outsmart their competition of the competitive intelligence platform.

Brian:  Your brand name is derived from your last name, right?

Jim: One of my marketers came up to me as we were naming the company, and we were looking at a bunch of different names like Jigsaw.  I love that name. I mean, it’s a simple word putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Yeah, it worked great. That was a high bar to get over. She came to me and went, “Fowler, I’ve got the perfect name for our company: Owler.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, haha. Funny.” I thought she was joking. She’s like, “No, I’m serious. First of all, it’s five letters. Number two is that owl, wisdom, and people will be able to spell it. Most people aren’t going to associate it with your last name, which is true.” You’re more astute than most, Brian.

I was embarrassed by it at first, but now I love it. Of course, we have a cool little owl. By the way, the Owl’s name is Jim, so Jimf Owler. Any of your listeners are users of Owler, and I imagine there are thousands. They’ll be familiar with our owl that we call Jimpf.

After you sold Jigsaw to Salesforce.com, why didn’t you decide to ride off into the sunset? 

What inspired you to start Owler?

Well, that is a great question. I can tell you they’re a few times along this path that I’ve wondered that same thing. Startups are not easy. I equate a startup with a bag of problems. There’s just a bunch of issues to solve. You know, I was still a pretty young guy. Jigsaw was a great acquisition. It was a $175-million-dollar acquisition at that time. By far and away, the largest Salesforce has ever done. Now, that’s pocket change for those guys. They’re doing massive stuff.

I think that you realize that you don’t really do it for the money, especially once you’ve had an exit. You realize that the creation, the ability to go out and make something out of nothing and create a company that employs many people, but more importantly, build products that people love. I mean, that’s what gives me a charge. I’m really pleased.

At Owler, we’ve doubled our user base over the last ninety days to 500,000 active users. We’re going to blow past a million active users on those things by the end of the year. We’re starting to look at ten million, which is about one-tenth the size of LinkedIn. That becomes a globally important company. I think that’s what really drives founders because you want to … It’s like being a chef. You want to cook food that people love, and when you found a company, you want to create a product or products that people love. It’s a big endorphin hit.

How did you acquire so many active users so quickly?

Yeah. There’re a couple of things that I’ve learned both at Jigsaw and Owler. The first answer for all your listeners out there is it’s never easy. That sounds great, but what you need to understand is back in ’13 and ’14, as we struggled a way to get a really engaging product, there were many days where … When you first asked why didn’t you ride out into the sunset, there were many days during that time where I just went, “Why am I doing this?”

If you’re feeling pain, that’s the normal situation. Jigsaw never grew this fast. Jigsaw was more of linear growth. This is really hockey sticking, which is super fun.

The on the ground advice I will give is the first order of business is to dial really in SEO. SEO is something that everyone hears and understands search engine optimization, but that’s the free traffic that you get. Really getting your SEO strategy down is critical. At Jigsaw, we spent a lot of time and effort on paid SEM, search engine marketing, and different types of paid traffic. It’s not only expensive. It just isn’t as effective in our experience as SEO.

There’s always an eighty-twenty rule, by the way, for startups. I’m a big believer that you want to focus on the eighty, and then once you become a more mature company, focus on the twenty. This is a classic principle that eighty percent of your return will come with twenty percent of the effort. And then the last twenty percent of your return is going to require eighty percent of the effort. So make sure that you’re hammering that first eighty percent return with twenty percent of the effort and really focusing on that.

I find it’s with all of the traffic driving things that you do. That’s number one, but to me, that’s the one that you cannot disregard. You have to pay attention to SEO.

What are some of the other lessons you have learned along with the way?

These are things that most of your listeners probably already heard, but I will reemphasize them because they’re trite and true. I’m a real believer that your product is your marketing. Obviously, if you’re an expensive enterprise product, that’s slightly different because it takes more time to get users, but I still argue that it’s the same.  … It is that you can sit there and beat on all of these different ways to get traffic and users, but when you have a product that people love, that is your best marketing because that’s when it starts getting viral.

We found this at Jigsaw, and we’re finding it even more now that SEO gets people exposed to your product. Then once they do, it’s a viral impact, and now the viral side of Owler is what’s making it grow so fast. SEO doesn’t grow exponentially. It grows linearly, whereas viral grows exponentially. You can only get the hockey stick with some viral component. Yes, you can spend a bunch of time with different software that helps get the word out and all that, but I’m old-school in that way that you know it when you see it. When the virality is there, you know it, and when it’s not, it takes time, and you need to keep working on just making sure you have a compelling product. I recommend a parallel path on SEO and product optimization.

What do you see as the future of B2B sales marketing?

I would say that the biggest trend I see is when I talked about this at Jigsaw, and I’ll continue to talk about it now. Salespeople are going to continue to have to become better marketers.

With Jigsaw, we provided a set of contact data to communicate with people directly with phone numbers and business email addresses. I said at the time, what this means is that the people on the receiving end of these communications will get more and more communications. It’s a funny thing. Sales and marketing, their job is to communicate with people that don’t really want to be communicated with, but they need to be because they need to buy stuff.

I think that we’re going to continue to see the buyers or the receivers of these communications get more and more of it, and it’s become more and harder to rise above the noise. What it means is salespeople are going to have to become better marketers. They’re going to have to work hand in hand with marketers to get them.

Marketers, frankly, are going to have to become gods because their job is just getting harder and harder. I mean, people have no attention. We’re in the age of a hundred and forty character limit because all people will read, which makes the job tough. With that in mind, all of our communication is crisp, simple, scannable data.

For instance, our descriptions of companies are one sentence long. We only allow a hundred and forty character description of a company because we know people won’t read more than that. I think understanding these trends is critical regarding future success. It’s going to continue to accelerate, is my prediction.

What would you say to B2B marketers out there who want to help their sales team sell more effectively today?

I’m a big believer that marketing’s number one job is to take away salespeople’s excuses for not making their number.

What you don’t want is you don’t want the finger-pointing. Do you know what I mean? Marketing’s typical, “Hey, I’ve got this budget I spent on it, and sales are so lazy they’re not even following up the leads that I’m driving them,” and sales will sit there and say, “Marketing, you’re sending me crap leads.” As a CEO and knowing both sides of this and having come up through the ranks as a VP of sales and salesperson before I founded Jigsaw, I’m just a big believer that it’s all about numbers.

Sales are the most measurable department in your organization after finance. What mind boggles me is how rarely people really measure sales all across the board. They’re getting better, by the way. Data is becoming more available everywhere, but to me, that marketing’s job is to take away their excuses. It’s basic funnel management that you need a certain number of leads cranking in. There’s always going to be a little bit of fight around the quality of those leads, but to me, that’s just all it really is marketing providing the air cover, being able to bring those leads in whatever is the most cost-effective way. To me, it’s that simple to where you’re just going, “This is a sales issue. This is not a marketing issue.”

I always look at, by the way, is the further part of that … I think the way you want to manage sales is to expect nothing from marketing. Anything you get from marketing is a bonus, and then, of course, it’s the CEO’s job to go hammer marketing to make sure that they’re meeting sales.

When you approach it in those two ways, you have a very healthy look at how it’s supposed to work instead of making it adversarial.

Are there any success stories that you could share?

Yeah. Jigsaw, we did this really, really well. There was a real healthy tension between marketing and sales, where marketing was really pushing and … I would say that the best way to do it has a way to manage the leads. There’s so much software out there now for marketing … All that marketing automation solutions have come so far since we did it …

Regarding feeding sales, I don’t have any magic pills. There was a sales methodology, and it is today one that I still recommend that I think your listeners will find interesting. It’s what I call an email sandwich that was very effective as a specific example.

Yeah, tell us more about it.

Yeah. From a sales or marketing … It depends on which function it’s going to align and wherein the pipes you are. When you’re out there trying to push new business, you’re trying to take a company from what I call a suspect. We believe that these folks should be buying our products to a prospect, knowing that they have needed budgets. There’s a lot of communication that goes there.

I’m – again, you’ve heard me use the word old school a little bit … I’m a big believer in this concept of email sandwich. Email, phone call, email. Email, phone call, email. There’re folks out there that love to just email, and there’re folks out there that go, “Oh, email … No, you got to call them.” I’m a big believer in using both of those in a sandwich way.

This is where marketing and sales really need to work together because marketing is usually expert at AB testing messaging to get people to respond to something. Sales are the point of the spear. They’re the ones that are really learning what works and what doesn’t work and have excellent communication between these. That’s what we did well at Jigsaw. We’re focusing on our user growth and engagement of billing the database. We’ll do it as well, but I found that this helps sales and marketing get in sync of sales doing kind of the test bed of what works and then marketing finding ways to automate that to marketing automation. To get that first email out and making sure to leave the voice mail so they can hear your voice.

That’s another key thing from a sales perspective. It humanizes the experience. It’s harder and harder to leave voice messages now. Phone systems have changed even since Jigsaw was sold, but there are still ways to get your voice in front of people that humanize it. Again, this is building on what I talked about earlier about salespeople becoming better marketers.

Then, of course, following with email. I just found these email sandwiches are a simple concept to understand. You test the heck out of them regarding what works with different audiences, but I find that that brings sales and marketing really closely together, and it’s a structure that everyone understands and can focus on.

Brian: It’s a great suggestion. At the age where I believe that we’ve overemphasized, or the pendulum has swung too far to inbound marketing. You’re advocating to humanize your brand by having human beings and a human touch connect with your customer. There’s a real person behind the company that the email is coming from, a real person.

Do you have any tips or advice you give to sales or marketing leaders who want to grow revenue rapidly?

I would say that my biggest tip is to be absolutely aggressive about your time. The number one mistake that I think I’ve seen marketing and salespeople do is spend time on that nonproducing. The long side of the Pareto principle. They’re not sitting down from the very beginning going, “Okay, what is the twenty percent of our effort that produces eighty percent of the return?” It’s always different for every company regarding what are the things that are going to move it.

To me, I know it sounds formulaic, but I believe this is the problem. What I push as a CEO is the twenty percent that’s moving the needle of your effort and then putting eighty percent of your time into those programs. Do less, not more. Figure out what works, and don’t go out there and try to put too many balls in the air. I think that’s the number one mistake that I see that can hamper your driving revenue.

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