Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

S&T_Breaking Through The Noise Compilation
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Welcome to a special compilation episode of Shift and Thrive. Today we are tackling one of the biggest disruptions to the B2B landscape, how artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing buyer behavior. Traditional outbound sales and gated white papers are breaking down. Inboxes are flooded with AI generated noise, and buyers are using AI search to evaluate vendors before they ever [00:01:00] speak to sales.

We've compiled the most cutting edge tactics from our Go-to-market experts on how to raise the bar on creativity, leverage AI to do the heavy lifting for your prospects and cut through the noise in today's chaotic market. Let's jump right in.

First up is Kerry Cunningham who joins us to dismantle the blank Slate fallacy and reveal how modern buyers are actually using LMS behind the scenes to evaluate your brand.

Natalie Nathanson: is there a commonly held belief, um, about the, the buying journey that might sound right, but that you're finding is, is doing companies a disservice?

Kerry Cunningham: Oh yeah, there's a bunch of those. I love these. Uh, so the first one is, and I call it the blank slate fallacy. And it's what I was just talking about a minute ago. Your buyers are really experienced in your category. unless your category is brand new, but like for as long as the category you're in has been around, people have been evaluating that.

Now, if you've had a really hard time getting adoption of anybody in that category, maybe a lot of your buyers are still pretty naive, but for the [00:02:00] most part, your buyers already know you and they're already experienced in your category. And, one of the things that I've been fond of saying lately, just 'cause it's fun, is that, You know, your, website is losing traffic.

But it's not because of chat GPT, it's because what's on your website is boring and it's not suited for the kind of people who are the decision makers for buying your stuff. it's maybe suited for who they were 10 years ago. but your content is probably all about how great you are and how you're number one and your buyers have evaluated you 6, 7, 8 times already and they know whether they think you're number one.

They're not gonna take your word for it. so that's one that we, have content and this idea in our head of our buyers as blank slates, as people who are starting fresh with no biases or preferences every time they go out to buy something that is so far from the truth. It's ridiculous. So that, that's one.

Um, another one, and [00:03:00] this may be even as more fundamentals, I'm just writing something on this. Virtually all of our goals in marketing. Are based on our potential buyers doing things that we would never do ourselves. So the most obvious thing is filling in a form on a website to get a white paper or a piece of content.

Like, You know, your audience, Natalie, when was the last time anybody in this audience has filled in a form to get a white paper?

If you exist in an established category, something that's been around 10, 12, 20, 30 years, your buyers know you and your competitors well. And if you have 20 vendors in your space, you still have to compete to get onto shortlist. If you've got four or five, there's almost no chance you're not gonna be on the shortlist.

'cause almost everybody's required to evaluate that many vendors, right? Um, but your buyers have been evaluating you and [00:04:00] your competitors for as long as your category's been around. So one of the things that I think everybody needs to understand is your buyers aren't using, uh, Google and chat GPT to find out whether you exist.

In most cases, they already know that. And that's why LLM uses more toward the middle than the beginning. 'cause what they're doing in the middle is they're saying, alright, so. We know that these are the four or five vendors we're gonna evaluate. Um, I know which one I like, but I also have five other people I've gotta convince and four other people I'm, I'm going to inform, uh, And so chat, GBT or Claude or whatever, can you put together a table that compares these vendors across these five things?

And by the way, here's what I want that table to say. This is a, a part of the way everybody uses, uh, LLMs that I think we need to understand a little better. We don't ask them a question in a topic that we're interested in and then just say, okay, well, there's the answer. That's, that's all I need to know.

Natalie Nathanson: You know, you, you talked about how self-promotion, [00:05:00] uh, doesn't work, and I think that ungating content can feel scary. Uh, but I think what we've seen when we've done it for ourselves, for clients, it doesn't negatively impact the results, right?

If someone likes your content is in market or wants to further engage with your, with your company, they will do that, right? They can fill out the contact form, they can, You know, whatever, whatever other ways to, uh, to reach out, they'll find a way to do that. So I know it can, uh, feel scary, but it actually, um, to me is almost kind of back to the, the original intent of inbound marketing, right?

It wasn't put out content and kind of grab, have forms everywhere. It was, if you put the right information and it reaches the right buyers, You know, people will self-select in and kind of come into your fold at the right time.

Kerry Cunningham: Yeah. I think, You know, we have to get away from the industrialized production of contact names, which is what.

Inbound marketing became, um, [00:06:00] and shift back toward what, as you're saying, it really started off being, which is how do we help buyers develop a preference for our brand and our solutions? That's what it's there for.

Um, but we got lost and it, and it really became a, a machine for producing contact names that we could pass on to BDRs and sales reps. Um, And so I think that that's, uh, You know, the mission, the mission scope or mission creep or whatever that's called, it just, uh, it got way outta hand. Uh, and I think we have to shift away from that fast.

Uh, because it, your buyers don't care about your self-promotion. They don't wanna fill out forms chat. GPT can't fill out the forms, so You know, you need to do something else.

Next we hear from Christina McMillan sharing a brilliant tactical example of how to use AI to do the heavy lifting for your prospects and completely bypass traditional cold [00:07:00] outreach.

Kristina McMillan: right now everyone's in a transition where they're learning how to leverage ai and we're. Alon of the conversation around how to leverage agents, which to me are things that are more department and organizational level.

There's still Alon folks can do on the individual level to level up their own game, to level up

their team's game, et

cetera. And so I'll give an example first on maybe the individual level. So obviously in sales we're seeing things like using AI for meeting prep. It's like.

Take a

look at everything I've done and give me a

quick summary so

that I'm knowledgeable when

I go in

as if I had been talking to only this account.

I'm really knowledgeable about what's happening. Um, help me do things like prepare for and follow up. So I, I, as a rep have really, really good hygiene. Those are some like very basic execution things. On the marketing side, of course, we see things like content generation. I, um, in the research that we've done on Go-to-market AI adoption marketers have been the fastest and most furious adopters of ai.

And it's because one of the [00:08:00] biggest things that marketing has to do, which is pump out content, was really well aligned to what AI did. Right out of the gate. Um, it might not have been the best writer, but it sure as heck got you to that

first draft

faster, which then allows you to edit faster, which then allows you to get stuff out the door faster.

And so I think anything that can be done on that individual level is something that everybody should be looking at. What can I do? What are the, the, the repetitive tasks that I'm trying to do that can be done bigger, faster, stronger, smarter with ai? So, um, another example that I really like is, uh, one of our portfolio

companies took, took

that, um, to what I would say is almost like a really cool extreme.

Um, they were trying to reach out to, uh, CEOs in their prospect base, and they were like, we we're just not getting any response. And so they said, what if we just tried to offer a ton of value? A little bit, um, account based

1 0 1,

but what if we could create custom market research reports for their business, um, on the challenges facing their industry and just some ideas related [00:09:00] to what we do on how their particular business could navigate those incredibly value, almost a consulting like deliverable.

But I'm sure everyone listening would be like, Ooh, that must take Alon of time

and effort.

They used AI to do it, and they could create 20 page, 20 to 30 page market research reports. In minutes using deep research, the earliest iteration of deep research in in chat GPT, then they would package those and they would, they would, instead of having it sent from a rep, they would have it sent from their CEO to the other CEO and they would use that to just get that first conversation.

It was wildly successful and they credit their success to this microsegmentation. It was one report for each account,

and

normally we might think, if, You know, pre ai, we'd never be able to create that type of content with that depth of richness and doing all of that type of research. It's people pay thousands of dollars for market research reports like that, but now we can offer that value directly ourselves.

Now. Theoretically the prospect [00:10:00] could go and do that themselves, but

they don't

have time. And so it, what I find really, really interesting is we can now delight them by doing their work for them as a value add in our go-to-market motion. And, um, that's just been so

promising. So

on that individual level, there's still a ton of value as we move up into the more department and or team and department level.

Let's say we're seeing things in like helping, um, workflows of the team

move faster. It doesn't

mean the entire thing is agentic and autonomous, but things like, again, I'll use content as an example. If, if we are trying to, um, uh, support a meaningful social media presence, we've got Alon of assets we have to create and, um, we could use, You know, chat GPT and do those ourselves.

But now we're seeing things like Canva who is helping you take one campaign and create many different formats of assets that might support it could be a month's worth of content in a matter of a couple of hours. Um. It's simply so [00:11:00] powerful that I would, it's just you can't ignore what it could do for you and your team.

And so, um, as we continue to go up beyond just individual and team level, You know, those are very focused

on productivity.

Like how do we do more, um, in less time and how do we create those outputs? As we continue to move up the scale of, um, use cases, we're starting to look at things like how

do we

improve the quality of what we're doing?

So some of those, um, later adoption

use cases look

at things like,

how can we

use AI to analyze the behaviors that we've had that we've been doing and make better decisions? How can we go back and look at past deals to identify signals that we weren't aware of that are indications of good deals that will eventually close?

So those are just some examples of, of the cool things that I'm seeing people do.

I mean, I've, so there's Alon of concern that productivity improvements, um, it's like all this magical time saved, um, is, is the goal of ai, but [00:12:00] then what are people doing with that time saved? And what I think is really, really interesting is, um, to answer your question specifically.

At some point, everyone in our organization needs to have basic AI knowledge. I equate it to, You know, when I was in school, it was back when, um, they taught us how to type right and everyone had to learn that basic, um,

fundamental

skills of business. AI is gonna be one of those on the individual level.

You will need to figure out how to apply it to your individual role to make you better in that individual role. That said, when we're applying it to, um, roles that duplicate in organizations like a sales team, it doesn't mean that I want each person to repeat those things individually. Can we put some of that

stuff behind

the scenes?

So we, we have um, uh, one organization that, um, presented at our go-to-market AI summit. And what was really cool is they had hundreds

of sales

reps and they said, You know, we're gonna set out to save the sales [00:13:00] reps, uh, 10 hours per rep per week. So could we do lots of little ai, You know, um, efficiency projects to add up to 10 hours per rep per week.

And of course they, they want their reps to be able to, You know, use AI and all that. But they just said, let's just take that off the table for right now. Could we create the space for them completely behind the scenes? So things like, um, before they would have to go in and click in five different places to look at the account history and prepare for a meeting.

Could we actually look at their calendar, see what meetings are on their calendar, and then have AI automatically pull synopsis and email them to them in the morning so that all the rep has to do is open their email

and

they did things like

this.

Delighted their reps. Like it was, they said it was astonishing.

Like we thought for sure the reps would be like, I want it somewhere in Salesforce, but their reps were not even using some of the platforms that they had used as their foundational systems because [00:14:00] their, they could just go to their email and get what they needed. Um, that then allowed them the space in the organization to try more things.

And I think last I checked, um, they were up to like 8.7 hours on average per rep, per week with those types of things. So yes, the entire, uh, workforce will need to step up, but what we don't need to do is have everybody figuring out how to set up their own agents, how to create their own custom gpt, how to get perfect at prompting just yet, there's Alon of improvement we can make for them, and then scale behind the

scenes.

Next in our lineup is Rev ops expert Jackie Lehi, who explains why generic AI personalization is dead, and how Go-to-market teams must raise the bar to use AI for building true visceral empathy.

Jacki Leahy: My view on all the ai, it's not to replace SD SDRs or even like Enhance or efficient. It's, it's really not even about efficiency. It's about the bar has been raised.

right?

There's AI slots, so really,

and it's so easy to be like, [00:15:00] hi, reference your last job,

reference, blah,

blah, blah. Right?

GMT20250717-170207_Recording_1280x720: That's.

Jacki Leahy: It's almost too easy.

Like a year and a half ago that would've been like, wow, I can't believe you mentioned a customer and a case story and the specific value we brought. Like that would've, that would've done numbers 18 months ago. But now it's just like, yeah. So I have a hundred emails telling me something specific that I know that they got just because of, uh, right.

Uh, so it's really on us, the go-to-market practitioners to, okay. The bar has been raised. But our creativity and resourcefulness also needs to be raised. So like using that as momentum, uh, to really supercharge our elbow grease. So for example, this is a company that acquires like mom and pop HVAC companies.

I'm sure. People are kind of knowing the baby

boomers are retiring [00:16:00] and their children don't necessarily wanna

take

over the business.

So there's this

huge, what do I do with this sustainable business? That's not huge. Right? but a lot of people have caught onto

that. So

now these mom and pop, business

owners, like two years ago.

Would've been like, wow, this person wants to potentially buy my business. that's interesting, but now they're getting emails all the time. but what if

you

could use, AI agents to go run down creative questions like, how many children does this person have?

What ages are they? can we

find their

professions on LinkedIn? Does it, look like there's, a real gap in legacy here,

to talk to,

even tracking down what businesses are around you in Google, Maps, you know, [00:17:00] all of these things that it's like. If the prospect really thinks about it, it's like, oh, yeah, I, guess I

can see

how they triangulated that, but it's about being resourceful and bringing it to the next level that, creates value.

Like no matter what, after someone reads my email, I want them to be like, huh, I never thought about it like that. So that's really the, that's the task at hand.

Up next is GTM Leader Saja Chi Caral, breaking down how to avoid accidental AI adoption by creating custom prompt libraries to drive highly targeted account-based marketing.

Natalie Nathanson: Uh, I'm curious if there's any, uh, anything that you've created for yourself, whether for kind of personal or professional use, a custom GPT, kind of anything in your, your personal prompt library that you'd wanna share.

Sajag Chikarsal: Oh

yeah. Uh, there, there are quite a few, uh, I won't bore

you with

all the details, but I'll probably share one in a more corporate setting. So, in my most

[00:18:00] recent company,

uh, you know, I was at, uh, the VP marketing cel or, or the

CMO of cel,

uh, the company in the private 5G space. Um, you know, the B team used to report into us.

And what we did was we, I actually ended up creating

a prompt.

We

wanted to target all the Fortune 500 companies, specifically in the manufacturing logistic warehouse, oil and gas refinery space.

Um.

if you really wanna do a BM, and we all know that you need to personalize your A BM outreach as well.

Um, and it's very difficult to find insights, right? So you wanna find insights about the company, you wanna know how well they are, what problems they're facing. You also wanna find insights about what personas you want to reach out to and what these personas care about, which events they go to. So I ended up creating a custom GPT and that GPT was, most of these Fortune 500 companies are public.

You know, let's say 70 to 80% of them. And I said, um, it was probably a two pager prompt and I kept refining it to the point that it just started [00:19:00] yielding the results

that I

wanted

to be.

But it actually ran insights on all the, at least the last three earnings report. And within the earnings report it scanned everything.

Like what were the pain points highlighted?

Is

the company profitable? Have they got new funding or do they have new funding for a new project that is coming up? Um, is the stock price going up or down? Are there any specific personas named in the earnings report? Are there any competitors or are there any partners that are named in those earnings report?

And it, you know, the output that I asked it to generate was. What are the pain points that company's going through? Uh, what are the tailwinds for the company? What are the headwinds for this company? Who are the key personas that are named? Uh, search these key personas online and tell me which events are they gonna go to.

And then I a asked for a very specific output. Now use all that summary that you've created. Chat GPT of this company from the earnings report. And tell [00:20:00] them and, and probably create a quick summary of how CEL Salon can help them with their enterprise connectivity. So it gave me a quick summary and then I said, use the summary to even create

a

code outreach to any executive within the company.

So it took me some time to create that chat, GPD, but uh, or a custom GPD. But when we ran it across 5, 10, 20 different companies, it just gave us a very detailed description of the company, the personas,

the partners,

the competitors, and it equipped the BDRs. Generally, they would have to work

with their

sales rep, and they have to spend probably

a couple

of days

to get

to a point on which persona within that company do they want to reach

out to.

Now with that information, all that research work has been reduced to, let's say five or 10 minutes. They've got everything and then they can just prioritize and strategize like, okay, this is what I've got

to know.

Who do you think that I

should reach

out to? Is it multiple people or one

person? Right.

So that was a very good example.

Um, uh, there are a couple of other GPTs that I've created for myself. For example, if

I'm talking

to [00:21:00] a bunch of companies, you know, I've also created like, okay, you know, tell me more about the company, their GTM, their personas, like the product solutions. Uh, what is the market? What is their tam? What is their sam, right?

And how do I need to, uh, you know, talk to this company, uh, if, if I'm talking to them about their pain points. Um, um, so three gpt that I think every company that should create is, uh, one for their a BM personalization or personalization at scale, running

insights

on their first party data, which is their product usage data or their CRM data.

And then the third one would be, um, just training A GPT or a gem on your brand and tone that can really help you. Fast pace, you know, whatever outreach you want to do to

their customers.

I've created a bunch of others and you know, maybe that's a conversation for a separate time. I've even created some AI agents, uh, and I'm still on that journey.

I'm trying to learn more and how to connect more and more sources, uh, to create more [00:22:00] agents.

Finally we wrap up with Yossi Carmen, who discusses the massive explosion of AI content slop, and explains why returning to authentic old school marketing tactics is the ultimate way to cut through the digital noise.

Yossi Carmon: So in my opinion, the, the, the most important PO point today in GoTo marketing is authentic authenticity. Onset authenticity. Authenticity, sorry. Um, that's the main, the main part with AI today, with everyone being able to, uh, to generate content. If it's a video, if it's, uh, uh, um, even messaging, whatever you have.

You can do it with AI and, and social media and everywhere is like, there's a, uh, almost 1000%, uh, um, growth with content. All, all, all over social media because of ai. 'cause everyone can now write amazingly very story storytelling, very [00:23:00] appealing. Uh, but people are like sick of it already. They, they want, uh, something very authentic.

Very true. Um, and I think with, with your go to marketing, in my opinion, is the market will, will be, in the next five years, it'll be more word of mouth people recommending to, to their friends, uh, more on that area. I think people want to see, want to see in their eyes or hear with their ears, see that the, this is the actual.

It's actual, it's like live, not No, no, not a video or, or ad. Um,

and

experience. People wants to experience that themselves. Um, it's not enough to, um, uh, there's a lot of fake out, like, um, crazy fake. And I think therefore the, if anyone plans with [00:24:00] go to marketing, uh, email, emails, uh.

Add the, the efficiency of those drop down to almost zero.

All of them ads. Google ads not working anymore at

all.

Completely. Like it's, uh, and AI is like, everyone's searching in with ai. So you, you need to think out of the box.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah,

Yossi Carmon: would go by the way, I would go as a marketing person, I would go to the old ways. You know, you are my age. On, on average, I can close enough.

Uh, when we were in, in, uh, like 30 years ago, we sent envelopes with letters to people, to their inbox, uh, mail inbox. Uh, that was the, the an, an amazing way to reach out to, uh, business, uh, partners, to um, to CEOs, to executives. It was easier. With a gift, I think. I think the go to market, the next go to market will be back [00:25:00] to that, to that area,

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