Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

[00:00:00]

Natalie Nathanson: Welcome to another special edition episode on Shift and Thrive as part of our go-to-market miniseries. If you're a CEO, or business leader wondering how your go-to-market strategy needs to evolve right now to meet today's market realities, this episode is for you.

My guest today is a seasoned go to market leader in B2B Tech, and he's known for building marketing functions from the ground up, [00:01:00] especially in SaaS startups, targeting technical audiences.

Today he oversees a team of six across both marketing and biz dev at Selector and AI operations platform. Founded in 2019. Steven Ox. Welcome to the show.

Stephen Ochs: Thanks, Natalie. Excited to be

here today.

Natalie Nathanson: I am excited to have you, and I'd love to kick things off with, uh, a story and some examples from your experience. So, you know, we've previously talked about the importance of getting off the beaten path, especially when it comes

to go to market and,

you know, ditching some of those cookie cutter playbooks.

Um,

so could you share, uh, go to market example that really shifted how your team was able to engage with the market? And then we'll dive into some of the, the, the principles that emerged from that.

Stephen Ochs: Yeah, sure. So,

you know, as you mentioned, most of my

experience has been in, you know,

SaaS startups, right? You know,

anywhere

from Series A through

Series C. And you know, we, a lot of these companies are either starting marketing

for their

first time or evolving their marketing [00:02:00] function, right?

And so they don't have these

expansive marketing budgets and they wanna do things

in a very cost effective way. Um. and The traditional channels have become very cost prohibitive, right? The buyer behavior has changed and you know, the cost per lead us on LinkedIn is now over $200. a Lead AdWords

has

become very expensive.

You know, with the

evolution of AI search, you know. Now traditional SEO has

become a whole different game as

well. So the old playbooks that used to work

for everyone, you

know, have kind of changed and especially

through the

COVID

years. Right. You

know, we used to have traditional trade shows and experiential marketing and you know, that quite

drastically changed

and it started to come back, which is great.

So, you know, a whole niche started to cut out itself out over the last,

um, I'd

say, you know, five to seven years. With influencer marketing started to pen, starting to penetrate B2B

SaaS. Right. You know, it's

very common in the B2C world where you see [00:03:00] influencers on Instagram, TikTok, and you know, promoting consumer brands, but you're starting to see a lot more of B2B brands start to come through that as well.

And um,

you know, I started

playing around with that I'd say in early 2020. And the reason I started doing that was. Marketing to a technical buyer in general, they don't want to hear from a marketer, right? They want to hear from a, you know, a peer, someone who understands them, understands their pay,

their pains,

operates on their level, understands the technical depth, so you can't really fake

it with a bunch of

white papers and

things like that.

So

really what that leaves you with is with a few options. You either, you know. Hire someone to come in house and be that evangelism,

or you

start

working with external evangelists and

you start giving that show, don't tell experience so. Uh,

one of my previous companies, what we

started to do

is we reached out to this network of influencers and

started

to create [00:04:00] a thought leadership pod.

And we would, you know, really tap their shoulders for webinars,

through,

for podcasts, and for,

you know, also demoing, you know, new features we were making to make sure we could bring

them to the community and their relevant audience.

And

you know, what we really start to see is our cost per leads were much cheaper.

The amount of marketing work doesn't change, right? You still need your content marketing teams,

your

digital

teams, everything like that. But the distribution channels and change, right?

So what

you do is you end up spending less on, you know,

just these vanity clicks and you're spending more

for engagement and awareness.

And I

think that's the world we're really entering to. So. You know,

I started that playbook a couple, uh, companies

ago and it started to

really work and it's

starting to become

the norm

from what I've seen a lot. My other, you know, CMO peers are starting to do the same, right? They're

starting to really lean into the influencer model and, you know, I think there's just a lot there.

And [00:05:00] also one of my old mentors, you know, I

think he really pioneered

the quote unquote, community

free tooling, um,

mechanism, you know? 10 plus years ago, and I've, uh, learned a lot from him. And we've started to bring that and it becomes your number one lead magnet, organically and paid because you're giving people

value right away.

And I think that's

really the importance. Whatever you do value has to be forefront and center. You have a couple minutes to capture their attention and their trust and give them reason to wanna learn more. It's gotta be value driven.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah,

I wanna kind of come back to the,

the, influencer side and then we can talk more about, uh, the, the community, uh, tooling. Um, I think, you know, knowing that a lot of our listeners are kinda CEOs and executives, and not all necessarily in go to market. It. Um, I think that there can be some friction between, you know, do we try the, the tried and true,

which to, as we know

are not necessarily as tried and true these days as they [00:06:00] were five years ago.

Um, compared to kind of taking these bigger bets where maybe like the metrics, uh, don't show up in the same way. Um, like you said, it's more of a brand play, so how do you talk to kind of your, uh, kinda CEOs, the board, uh, around kinda what to expect and kinda what to, to brace yourself for, uh, to kind of harness this

and have,

have the stomach for the, the, the time to impact, I should say.

Stephen Ochs: So I think the one

thing that hasn't changed is everyone wants to be data driven, right? At the end of the day, we wanna see ROIs, we wanna see customer leads, we wanna see customer SQLs, you know, customer opportunities, um.

and

That doesn't change.

I think what you have to do is be willing to dig a little deeper to extract that information.

Right. So,

um,

we use Fathom as our AI note taker, right? So, you know,

I have my team combing through

the calls,

the AI

notes, and you know, we also have trained our BDRs and

our sellers to ask

like, Hey, how do you hear about us? How do you

find us?

And. I've had to have that [00:07:00] very conversation many times, right? Like I have a couple influencers on my team today and you know, the question comes up is like, hey, is there impact going beyond just brand recognition

and like we're working with

that cool guy, right?

And the

answer is yes.

I've been on so many calls this year that say like, Hey, I saw XY Z's post on LinkedIn talking about what you guys are doing.

and I wanna learn more,

I wanna see it, right? And it's not even

on the full product. Like I have

some of these influencers developing those free tools for us, right?

And they're showing off that free tool. And it's just a small component of what we do, and we don't even commercially sell it. And that has driven many, you know, high,

you know, intent,

um,

bottom funnel opportunities

for us. And

I

think at the end of the day. Revenue cures all sins, right? Everyone talks

about

that.

So I think

as long as you're capturing

that first party information, it

helps stomach it. Now

you have to sell it at first because like it's [00:08:00] gonna be a little uncomfortable, right? Because you're not gonna have those immediate leaves probably on day one or day two. And

the conversations I've

had to have

is like, Hey,

let's do this

as a pilot.

And let me hire someone who's versatile enough that if it's not just the influencing, they're impacting the business in other ways. Right? So I truly believe in building a Multifacet team in general. None of my people do just what their job is. They go

far and above what

that is every day. Just the nature of a startup in

general, right?

Everyone's

doing that. But

I

really look

for people who are willing

to go beyond, you know, what would

stay in their job description and.

Everyone we've brought on has been that

kind of player, um, for us. So it's worked out really well

that

hey, you

know, if

they're not making impact through just

influencer leads,

they're making an impact in other ways.

You know, doing customer trainings, going on site, evangelizing our customers, getting them excited, um, and there's a lot of ways

to go through

that.

But [00:09:00] what we, I've seen in general

is,

you know, the person's

salary is far less than me spending. Over a year's worth of digital media spend. Right. I still spend on

digital

media, but I'm not spending on that being the only way I'm generating leads.

And

you

know, that was the

playbook 10, 15 years ago. Hey, you have to do SEO and you have to do

PPC, and if you're not doing that, you're not gonna get leads.

Right.

And throwing trade

shows in there too, and content

syndication, whatnot. But you know.

We'd

spend exorbitant amounts of dollars on those and it

could take a

long time in nurturing and nurturing

to get value

outta that, you know,

content syndication, I've

always had a love hate relationship with.

Right? You know, did those people actually read

the content? Did do

they remember you? Is that going anywhere? You

just building a database of names at the end of the

day. Right. Um, influencer marketing, at least, you know, you're growing your reach at

the end of

the day because. Not only are you expanding your own [00:10:00] brand's reach, you're

getting reach through these other people as well.

I mean, if, if I could, I would hire, you know,

much more of them.

Because again, I think the value they give and the trust they have from the community is unmeasurable. Right? You know, these people trust them, you know? To be the innovators, to be the cool

thing. So it helps your brand be

front and center, and you're gonna get much more value

out of that in the short

term

and the long term over having the prettiest website, the

most web traffic, the most clicks, right?

Because especially if you're in an enterprise sale, it's all about experiential selling. You know, these sales cycles are 12 plus months. You know, we have to give them a reason

to keep engaging with us, and

they're getting inundated with white papers, webinars, all these other things. Everyone wants short form content

these days, and

they wanna see something that helps make their lives easier.

So

it's imperative to provide that. And the, the

ROI, you know, again, you just gotta go that extra mile. It's not gonna be a UTM [00:11:00] code,

but it's gonna be scraping notes

attached to

the opportunity through

your fathom or your gong or

fireflies, whatever

tool you may use.

And just make sure your team's

trained to ask, you know, some of those leading questions of like, Hey, how did you hear of us?

How'd you come across?

That first part of your

data is more accurate than

you know the

scrapers will ever be anyway, so just always back it up and train your team well to do the right things, to provide the data you need.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I think that's so important that like understanding those metrics. Uh, will look different, as you say, kind of

training

the team to kind of get at that and see the value in bringing that forth, uh, in a systematic way is so important. Um, and I think these kinds of techniques will only be, uh, will only rely on them more and more, right as there's more digital noise, as there's more lack of trust of knowing, uh, kind of is what you're looking at real, right?

Having

the, the real people, trusted community members, uh, is so important. And as you were talking about like this important of, of. [00:12:00] Multi-channel engagement and not, uh, putting all your eggs into kind of some of the, in a more traditional paid tactics. Um, it's the kinds of things we've been preaching for years, but now I think we're seeing the, the impact of the organizations that are doing that well.

Stephen Ochs: Yeah, you don't abandon it altogether,

right?

But

it's just not your primary anymore.

And, you know, there has to be a comfort level with it all.

You know, going back to getting your C-suite comfortable with it, you know, some of our influencers post content that's, you know, not to

the traditional corporate

marketing, right? It's, you know, very ad hoc, it's very hacky, you know, and that's okay.

You just gotta

strike a balance that they're still promo

posting

content for your brand, but also let them be them too.

Right?

And, you know. You just gotta make sure you enforce certain quality

standards. You know,

that's been a journey for us is that like, hey, like it's not a bad thing to give 'em feedback.

It's not a bad thing to ask

them to take a breath, you know? And just make sure that.

You're giving them creative freedom, but you're [00:13:00] also coaching them on like, Hey, these are the important things for our own

reputation as

we're

going through

commercial sales cycles,

that we we need

to make sure our audience feels this way about us.

Right. So, you know,

it's a

new

muscle

for a lot of people. It's been one for myself. I'm constantly learning and evolving for it too. Um, you know, because again, you, you wanna make sure these guys are happy because. Their whole job is their persona, right? So if you strip

them of that passion

a little bit and make that difficult for them, it's not gonna come through in the content they're producing and they'll just go out elsewhere and someone will snatch them

up for that value.

Right? Um, you know, at the end of the day, people are really starting to think different. You

know, it's not only, you know, one or two people, every brand's looking

for it.

So

if they see a brand

doing successfully, and that person, you know. Isn't having

that same joy they did on

day one and day later, another brand in your

same space is gonna

gobble them up [00:14:00] in a hot second.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I think that like, notion of being uncomfortable or being comfortable, being uncomfortable,

You, you talked

about it, I think it's just prevalent, you know, across the, the go to market world and unfortunately the world more broadly

right now. Um,

I find on the kinda the influencer front, um, in B2B, there's a lot more comfort level with kinda partnerships and kinda that, that those give to get kind of relationships, which in a lot of ways.

The influencer motions are not all that different, right?

There's some nuances

to it, but you're used to inviting people in your network to be on a panel at an event or on your webinar or like co-creating content. So it's really kind of a, a next iteration of that, and I find that sometimes helps make it feel, uh, kind of less scary and just kind of another step in that journey.

Stephen Ochs: Exactly. They're doing daily content, but

they're still doing those round tables, those panels, you know, their webinars, and that's again, making them valuable in other ways. Right. Like.

I make them

responsible for that, you know? And [00:15:00] they're also responsible, you know, 'cause we employ

technical

influencers.

They're responsible only for creating the free tools, the content, et

cetera. They, they do

demos and intro calls for us. They show up, you know, for those customer prospect facing calls. And, you know, again, that's making them versatile throughout

the entire cycle. And,

you know. Some of our prospects

get excited when they see the face, right?

They're like, oh, wow, I'm

kind of a fanboy right now. And they admit it. They're like, got your book, got this, got that. And you know, I, I feel like it also makes the

conversation for the

prospect a little less daunting too, because it's like,

oh, I get to meet like

kind of a pseudo celebrity in my space, but

it

is not just another sales call.

So.

Natalie Nathanson: For sure. Um, before we move off this topic, I just wanted to touch on more of the, the practical how to,

Could you talk about,

like, how do you find them?

Stephen Ochs: Sure. Um, you know,

I did a, I

do a lot of manual scraping, you know, through x, through Reddit, through, you know, um, [00:16:00] TikTok through, you know, Instagram.

You end up finding them and then you also ask your customers too, like, Hey, where are you getting your information?

Who are you learning from? me?

are you talking to? And it just

kind of starts to pop

up, right? Um, and you gotta find them in the right space in their career. Like, Hey, you know, they're at X company, you know, they wanna get out of the red tape a little bit because, you know, at a big brand, they're not gonna have as

much creative freedom.

Right? So you gotta just kind of

meet them where they are. You know, I was fortunate enough at my, at selector, right? Our, our influencer, um, he was already brought on before I joined. I didn't have to do that recruiting, but, you know, we've been looking. For others, right? Since, and having him here is

a good catalyst because he's introducing us to his network, right?

And other folks like him who are interested, you have the same

or bigger reach and you know, you just gotta kind of do the grunt work yourself. It's not going work

through a traditional recruiter. You gotta know your space, know your [00:17:00] industry, who's

putting that info out there. It's not

harder than a quick Google

search.

So

scrolling through social

media, some keywords.

Um, it's all

about being willing to do the groundwork yourself too, to find these people. At one of my previous companies, you know, the way we did, we maintained a list

of influencers. We didn't employ 'em,

but we had contracts with

them, right, to do like

case studies,

webinars, podcasts, et cetera, posting, um, you

know, we didn't bring 'em full-time in-house.

It didn't

make sense at that company.

But you know,

it was just a constant effort. We had to keep our Rolodex

up to date and

you know, you just gotta put that

DNA into your team of like, hey, as

you're conceiving content, you find someone interesting. Throw their name

down on that

list, right? Someone we can engage with.

Um, and you

know, I found that we gotta move past

the traditional webinars and podcasts, as you know,

so like getting these people to go on who have that audience and that reach. It's not just a brand thing.

Um,

that's important. So I make [00:18:00] that part of that, that muscle anyways,

right? Most

companies are doing podcasts and

webinars, so you're always gonna have to have a list of speakers and panelists.

So

it's a, it's a good way to start there. And then as you engage with them, as you build

trust, like you can

have that conversation, bring them in house, have them work full time, see if that's

what they're wanting,

because if they're not making enough money on their own to.

Fully support and monetize it.

It, you

know, as their full-time thing,

they still need a

corporate nine to five job to

pay the bills, to give '

em that career freedom. So it's all about, you know,

finding that

happy medium. Most of these guys aren't gonna have, you know, the

a hundred thousand

millions of followers that are going pay their bills every

day. Right. You

know, some are lucky enough

that will, but there's a lot of

good inputs. There's out there of

10, 20,000 followers who are. Who can make some good side money doing it, but it's not gonna support their families. So you allow them

to still

do that, but

then you make it part of their nine to five, which gives

them that kinda bridge of where they want to go to.[00:19:00]

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, no, I think that's all super, uh, helpful advice. Um, I ran a deep research report, uh, on something recently. It was kind of a. A niche, your topic within the space, um, and said, okay, who are the other people talking about this? Right? So there are so many different ways to, uh, get, get at that data today, and then,

and then

you really start the, the digging process as you were talking about.

Stephen Ochs: Yeah. And you know, I think.

easy to get comfortable, like

having other people

do your recruiting, do the, those things. Like I've been in a position

a couple times where

I don't have a recruiter, right? So I have to do my own recruiting, my own

talent

sourcing. So like, I feel like as a effective leader in general, you should always have like a roster of people you wanna reach out to.

Even if you

don't have a rec open, start those conversations,

right? Whether it's

for influencer

marketing or other pieces of marketing. You know, you should always have a Rolodex of good people that, hey, when you do get that budget, you do get that headcount, you're ready to act [00:20:00] quickly. Um, and, you know, it's, it's all about through social, you know, engineering on your own too.

You know, you're not gonna do that. They're just ZipRecruiter resumes or Indeed resumes. You got. really go out there and reach out yourself a little bit too. And, you know, just be a, don't be afraid of that rejection of like, Hey, like not interested

right now. Just try

to build a relationship with. You know people you'd wanna have on your team one day.

Natalie Nathanson: For sure. Um, Steven, I'd love to, um, shift into a topic, uh, top of mind for everybody these days is AI

and AI Go to market. I know you, your purview is across both marketing and biz dev. Would love to hear maybe one, uh, you know, tangible way that AI has really improved your team's go to market execution. Um, and we can kind of choose whether that's on the, the marketing or biz dev side.

Stephen Ochs: I can give a little example of both because I think it's impacted both ways and you know, we we're not doing

[00:21:00] any really fancy playbooks

where, you know, we're using

tools

like clay or any of these other automations like I wanna get there.

But that's a lot of work where we have other things in front of us. Right? But there's fundamental things that AI's brought value to, we're using it. You know, for, uh, email content generation, right?

You know, I

don't want my content marketers spending cycles writing a bunch of emails or, um,

other short form content that, you know, we can

have

AI spit

out.

Um, so we use it that way. I don't employ a graphic

designer. I have people who know enough about Canva and

Photoshop and whatever to do a little bit.

But you know, I've trained them all on GPT and other things to, you know, produce, uh,

multimedia

content that way. And, you know, we have an army of freelancers as well, but you know, AI can

get you most of the way there for your everyday social graphics and things like that.

So, you know, we save cost on that

to have the bigger,

um,

tasks handled by, you know, more specialists. Right. You know, the things I want on my [00:22:00] website, the things I want in our decks,

you know, that I want more love and

care into. I'm gonna work with a, you know, seasoned designer. The things that are just for a quick click or, you know, a thumbnail.

AI

should take care of that. Right. Um, and then AI should be able to get the frameworks for most of our blog outlines, things like that. We use tools like writer. I love writer. I think it does a, one of the best jobs of like. Actually creating like blog formatted content, um, better than GPT or Gemini or Rock, just because like it looks at it as a article and then it

asks for

the SEO questions and everything else.

So I think it does a really great job. It's relatively cheap. I

pay like

18 bucks a month for it, um,

get

a ton of value there. So from a marketing standpoint, we're using

it for content

generation and design. Um,

my goal is to get us to start using it more for

automation and AI engineering with

like tools

like clay and things like that.

So [00:23:00]

in the back half of this year, I'm going to hire

like

a

ops,

you know, marketing engineer kind of person to

really tinker with our tooling and get it, you know, in a

much

more AI friendly

state.

from a biz dev perspective, AI's been super important in a few ways, right? Um, fathom

has

become such an

integral part

of our.

Um,

sales stack. You know, we, when I got here, like we didn't take,

we just had

Salesforce, um, and HubSpot. We had your traditional tools, but like, they weren't optimized. Right? Um, and we employ

like

pretty enterprise level sellers, so we're not asking or expecting them

to take detailed

notes. It's not realistic.

So

we

implemented Fathom and we

love it. Our

CEO watches, our fathom calls our CRO, our CTO. You know, gets quick

notes, gets quick understanding, so it

helps the BDR provide value because they, you know,

hold and

ensure that

the, uh, fathom

note takers on all the calls, you know, from the top of the [00:24:00] funnel and our BDRs are involved all the way to

POC.

So, you know, we have in depth notes, you know,

really all the way without relying on people pen to paper. Then the Salesforce then the spreadsheet or where have you. So fathom's been huge. And Then also for us, uh, we use a tool called swan, which I think

has been really

impactful. Um, SWAN lives on our website and I can put our key demographics into it and tells us when someone from that

company comes in, it does AI research

saying, Hey, have they had major outages?

or Have they looked at tools

in the last 12 months? Here are the

key contacts.

Here's a AI

message for them and it can auto trigger it into email or LinkedIn. That's been really cool for us and impactful for the BDR side.

Um, and

then also, you know, we use some of the native tools within, you know,

uh, outreach,

you know, that they have their own ai, you

know, now, um, and

you know, our BRS use GPT and Gemini to craft some

of their emails for their sequences.

[00:25:00] So, and we

use, uh, auto dialer too called nos that has a AI component. So. You know, we use a lot of components of ai. Um,

my goal

is to become a little more creative with it, right? Find ways to help AI differentiate ourselves since we are an AI company, right? At the end of the day. So like, how can we use AI to stick out through the noise at the right times in the right moment?

So that's an active project, uh, we're working on every day.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, it sounds like you've really invested in getting a lot of those kind of core building blocks to get kind of the kind of phase one of value. Which I think is the most important place to start. And then you start to push of how do we think differently? How do we like really use this in ways that are unique to our organization and our own kind of go to market approach and all of that, which I think is a, a shift in mindset for some on the team.

Um, I'm curious what

you're noticing or

how you're leading the team as far as, um, those that are maybe more eager to kind of throw everything they [00:26:00] know up in the air versus kind of coming along for the ride.

Stephen Ochs: So, before

I go there, I think one thing I really wanna emphasize is I think it's important

to take off the rose glasses with ai,

right? And

think there's just this magical

AI and magical bot that second deploy is gonna do all

the work and all the

value. AI doesn't work without good data,

right? So if you

stumble into AI and expect value on day one, but you

don't have the good

data and foundations to feed it

through your CRM through what your

other databases, et cetera, it's not

going to be

impactful.

So take

the time to

build those foundations and get your data in a digestible state for

these

AI engines. 'cause then the, that's when the value starts to

come and when the AI can be impactful.

If you think it'll be impactful, just from, you know,

saying you have

ai, you're gonna stumble a bit, right? Um, and you're going to struggle

to get the value

and efficiency.

So

really don't

be afraid to say to your leadership, saying

like, Hey, I wanna go in

on ai, I [00:27:00] wanna adopt agents, et cetera, but I need to make sure our data's in a good place first. Right? Make sure, and if they say, okay, Winky had that done. Make sure that becomes your priority project for you, your team, et cetera.

Make sure your data sources are taken care of, are, you know, hygiene's being taken care of? 'cause then

you'll just be in such a better place. And

glad you did that.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I, I think that like, it's, can, could be considered kind of the, the unsexy part of,

of go to

market, but it's necessary evil, and I don't even wanna say evil because it's necessary in order to kinda unlock full value. But I think we're seeing a, a resurgence of making sure you have the right foundations in place.

As a way of, uh, being able to build on top of that, even like you mentioned Fathom earlier. Um, for us, that's been a huge unlock as well. Um, and that becomes a whole data source. But then you need to think of, well, how do you grab that data and how do you take kind of all of that and,

and, and do the right things

with it?

And so even like naming conventions for your meetings and, and [00:28:00] things like that, that, again, it's the unsexy stuff, but it's, it's important to be able to, to get the, the full benefit.

Stephen Ochs: Exactly. Um, so I, I just think that's

important for everyone to remember. And

when you're building up a

team like. You gotta have that

grace right as you're

doing that, because you can't just all sudden expect to deploy,

you know, all these systems and

tools and them work perfectly, you know, um, Salesforce, HubSpot, et cetera.

haven't become any

easier over the years to deploy and get value,

You still gotta put that grunt work in, um, so

really make sure you have those foundational principles and, you know, ask for that time early and often. Right. And.

Just make sure

that it's known that you're taking that time.

Natalie Nathanson: Yes, for sure. Um, I'm glad you, I'm glad you made that point. Um, and then, so I wanna come back to the kind of change management and how the team is evolving, you know, how they work. Are you [00:29:00] finding some people kind of naturally. Uh, kind of excited and moving in this direction. Is it more

of a, an initiative that you're kind

of pushing the team

Stephen Ochs: I think it's a, a hybrid, right?

I think a lot of my team,

uh, members are all just like kind

of naturally curious and say, and that's what I look for when I hire in general. You know, people are willing to think outside the box are self-starters, you know, so I didn't have any kind of AI mandate or anything like

that

for my team, but they're all doing it themselves and they're, they're very open about it and I encourage

them to do that,

right?

Like, tell me the ways you feel you'll be the most productive and bring more value to the team and I will enable you to do that. Right? Um, and that's kind of the culture I've always wanted because like. If I'm barking orders at them, I don't think they're gonna be the best

versions of themselves. Right.

I want them to like make sure they're like finding ways to be the most impactful and they're excited

about that.

If they're not, like, they're probably not the right

fit for my team in

[00:30:00] general, if they're not, you know, bringing that energy, that and curiosity.

Um. Because I, I don't wanna be a micromanager at the end of the day. I wanna put in processes,

I wanna

make sure we're all following things and we're all executing at the end of the day, and we're all, um, you know, hitting our goals.

But as long as that's happening, I don't wanna force how you do it to

get

there. Right? I wanna make sure that you have some creative freedom

to work as the best version as yourself,

because if

you can't do that, you're not gonna be happy doing your work at the

end of the day. You're gonna be miserable doing those mundane things that everyone dreads, right?

Like data entry, things like that.

Like it's

required. But if you find a better mousetrap to do it, whether it's through AI or you know, some automation engine, et

cetera, and we get the

same result, bring that to me. I'll gladly empower you to do that. So

I don't think I've found much resistance there.

I think

what I've

had to

do, it

sometimes is

remind people

like, Hey.

Don't kill

yourself trying to make

[00:31:00] this perfect. Don't

kill yourself.

Trying

to, you know, do these little less impactful tasks that AI can do for you that's preventing you from doing a

bigger thing.

That's the message I always

try to send to them.

Where I do enforce like AI usage and things like that is

like, what is

holding you up right now

that you could

have leveraged AI for that?

Then we could move to that next

bigger

thing. So like. I look as

AI as a change arrangement to unlock more than

to be the mandate, if that makes sense.

Natalie Nathanson: Yep.

Yep. It definitely does. And I'd love to into a different topic. You know, the,

is Discussion, uh, discussion, but especially given your purview and having, you know, both marketing and biz dev, uh, under your umbrella and working in kind of startup high growth environments, you know, what does that good alignment look like, uh, in practice for you

these days?

Stephen Ochs: Yeah, so

I, I've had the benefit of

always having a good [00:32:00] relationship

with my

sales leaders, and

I've also

had the benefit

of inheriting biz dev at a, now three

or four companies I've been a part of.

Um, I think really good sales marketing alignment starts with understanding the common goal, right? Like, Hey, what does success look like for all of us, right? Like, how does this make us all

money? Because at the end of the day, that's how they're

all motivated. Right is how are we gonna

be successful? How are

we gonna

earn ourselves a bigger bonus biggest, bigger commission trip?

Uh, how do we work together

on that? And then I've always

treated it like, Hey, how can the BDRs take

away some of that grunt work I know you don't like doing? Right. Um, and that's helped us a

lot and

especially where we ask our BDRs to be, you know, involved really until POCs are agreed upon. And.

Really

a part of it.

We ask them

to be part of the nurture and you know, like, hey, focus on sales guy. Focus on the opportunities. You're going [00:33:00] to be closing right now. We've got

you covered on the

follow up.

We'll CC you, you'll

be a part of it. And by the way, if you tell us you want own this particular pro, you don't want us doing

that

all good, do that.

We're okay. Right? Um. It's all about communication and speaking, you know, a mutual language at the end of the day. And the benefit there is like, hey,

we know exactly what

happens to every lead. Exactly what hap where it sits in the funnel. At any point you can pull that up, have notes, et cetera. And then the sales guy, you know, feels valued that like, hey,

I

can spend the time closing at the end of the day, that's what I wanna be doing.

Right.

Um.

You know, the collaboration really

comes from like, Hey, here's target

accounts, here's messaging, here's people we wanna get into. Um, and it's really worked really well because you know a lot of your

sales leaders in smaller sales

orgs, right? You know, if you're in a high growth company, you know, you don't have a massive sales org.[00:34:00]

So your

CROs and your VPs of sales wanna focus on their pipeline and closing. They don't wanna manage, you know,

the cold calling process, the email

process. So like I look at that as a chance

to,

you know, build that, you know, sharing of responsibility, relationship

between us that like, Hey, I'm gonna take

this off your bat,

off your plate so

you

can get focused on that bath right

and everything else.

And it's just. Been really natural and not everyone feels that way at the end of the day. Like I've had a lot of marketing leaders asking like, why do you want

to own Vista

Dev? Like, that sounds miserable.

Like, you know, that's more pressure on

KPIs that you can't control X, Y, z. I don't look at

that. I

look at it as like, Hey, we've built more true unity from the top to

the bottom of the funnel, from

the whole, you know, intro to close process.

So like. If I roll out like a new playbook or new stages in the

officer unity cycle,

new requirements, like I know they'll get [00:35:00] taken care of because my team's partially involved too, and I know there's mutual respect and mutual understanding, um, about it. So it's worked really well. I know other, um, leaders who feel the same and I know some leaders again who they just wanna focus on marketing and that's

great.

And.

I think it's all, you know,

the kind of product you're selling, the kind of sale, I think the more complex sales cycles, you gotta be flexible in how you do it. Um, but it worked really well for us. You know, at selector when I started, we just started our BED function. Um,

our

CRO was like, Hey, do you wanna take this over?

I'm really swamped. I said, sure thing.

at the time we

were just outsourcing two BDRs at,

you know, four

hours. a, a week, uh, sorry, four hours a day, each

not a week. And

you know, we,

before we

onboarded them, we were doing

three

intro calls a month, but then two

months we

were doing 30. So like we really scaled up,

we've decided to bring in

house and that function's become an [00:36:00] integral part of our pipeline, you know, from top to bottom.

And. You know, we're finding out ways to make it part of accelerating the funnel, acceler

shortening

sales cycles, you know, and just having a

more cohesive

team in

general. So,

you know, I think with sales and marketing are aligned, businesses flow much better. And I think if you have a mutual success

stake in

that dotted line,

it kind of

builds that connective tissue.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I think it's so important and, uh, you know, I think the, the functions are converging, uh, much more and increasingly will continue to move

in that direction.

Uh, even just having greater awareness of the two different disciplines, I think, uh, already goes a long way. Like I've worked with a lot of CROs.

They come from more of a sales. Background,

don't

know too much about marketing outside of the areas that they've been directly exposed to when they were a rep or sales manager. Um, and the best ones are the ones that like came in with a lot of curiosity to really wanna understand what are the parts of [00:37:00] marketing that they don't, didn't understand, how can they best work with marketing?

And then those organizations really see tremendous benefit.

Stephen Ochs: Yeah, my

CRO and I,

we talk

like a couple hours every day, you know? And we're always working like, Hey, can we optimize territories? Can we optimize the funnel?

What's working? What's not working? What's our ICP

looking like? So like we're having

those productive conversations and then he knows I have that co covered so

he can focus

on the closing aspect, right?

Um, you know, especially when you're a startup, you know, like

you're not gonna have tons of pipeline, you

know, to pad in the beginning, right?

So making sure

that you're on top of your deals

and everything's

really important.

then he

knows I'm building that top of the funnel, so he doesn't have

to worry about that.

So

like he's not worried about how many intro calls his team's doing or demos. He knows we've exponentially grown that. So he's worried about like, Hey, how we get this

customer through POC, how we

get them codes, how

are we executing so

he can [00:38:00] focus on that piece. And it just builds that more productive conversation between the two of us because we both give the updates from what we're closely watching.

Natalie Nathanson: I wanna ask

you, so maybe something a bit more, uh, personal, Steven, on your leadership journey. You know, you've been in, in marketing and go to market, uh, for

much of your career,

Anything that's changed [00:39:00] in kind of

your own mindset or how you approach

marketing, um, that you think has helped how you show up as a leader?

Stephen Ochs: Yeah,

I think, um,

what's changed in

my mindset is like

I always, you know.

I always was worried about,

you know,

hey, what if we have one

bad quarter, right? Is that gonna derail everything and derail trust and

put this exponential pressure on? I've learned to take that pressure and take, put

that aside, and focus on the, the longs of the short game.

If you always focus on short-term results, you're not building long-term sustainable

success. I think

it's really important to, you know, have that healthy mental balance. Um, because if you let the short term weigh you down too much, like yes, you need to pivot, you need to generate revenue, you need to generate KPIs.

Like, absolutely. But if

you're

sacrificing long-term success for a short-term bandaid, it's going hurt you later.

So [00:40:00] as long as you're willing to

have those honest conversations, not be afraid of, you know, the conflict that can come from that. Um, I think it sets you up to be a much better leader and you, you build a much more sustainable, uh, relationship with leadership too.

Like,

you know, you don't

have to say yes to everything and you

don't have to always, you

know, worry about pleasing everyone. I used to do that, that was just part of my DNA and I made a conscious effort to, you know, kind of shift, like, Hey, I still wanna make everyone happy. I wanna make

sure we're

delivering, but.

I'll dig my foot in where it matters now. And like, don't be afraid of, you know, the uncomfortable tension it's gonna happen. Um, don't let it completely derail your,

your vision,

what you're doing, you know, make the pivots as you need to. But if you're in a long-term sales cycle of 12 to 18 months

or

anything like that, like.

Stay the course. As you can

pivot, short term wins when the op,

the operating [00:41:00] presents itself. But don't always just focus

on the short term and the short term, like what's happening

in the moment.

Because a

long sales cycle is subject to so much change

that if you keep changing

with it, you're not gonna have anything that's measurable or repeatable.

Right.

Natalie Nathanson: I think that's really good advice, and I think to some degree comes back to something you were talking about earlier with the influencer programs, right? You're not necessarily gonna put that in place in that same quarter. Uh, kinda see the

reap the full benefits

of that.

So needing to look for, you know, where are those quicker wins, low hanging fruit, but also knowing that

usually, you know, the,

biggest impact areas are ones that kinda take time to build and, and see the full value

of,

Stephen Ochs: yeah.

You know,

I think we're, we've entered an age where quality's more than quantity.

You know, I used to be so worried, like, am I hitting the,

those numbers? You know, but I think if you focus, are you improving conversion rates? Are you getting better quality deals? Like if there's less of them and you're getting more [00:42:00] value, that's okay too.

Like, you know,

focus on those things. Focus. With that kind of revenue first mindset on like, Hey, what's driving value through the business? Not what's just driving value for marketing

KPIs. if you focus on

just always having to defend marketing KPIs,

that goes back to that

sales marketing relationship.

Like

it's gonna create fractures. It's gonna

put you in a bad place because you know you're not gonna own what

can be done better, and you're

always gonna be. Putting, you know, the ball in someone else's court or

trying to pass the blame,

like that doesn't work, right. It really needs to be like, everyone's a seller.

Everyone's a marketer. Have that mentality that you're in this together. Don't bifurcate the funnel of like, you own this. I own that. Like good luck, right? And it really needs to be like, Hey, how do I create a great relationship, a great ally, you know, throughout all the functions in what you do. And you know.

Don't, don't hide [00:43:00] failures, you know, but celebrate your successes

too.

So

Natalie Nathanson: I

think that's a very well put, and I think so much of that does come down to the culture and the leadership at the top and so to a lot of degrees, like the CEO needs to kinda give that permission and make it okay to look differently at kinda how you look at your metrics, how you look

at your initiatives and,

and all of that.

Um, which

I have one other question for you on a related note, um,

you

know, is what is something that you wish more CEOs and founders understood about, uh, go to market?

Stephen Ochs: I think I wish more CEOs understand

there's

no

silver lining playbook, right? That works everywhere. Everything. And from day one, you should bring in whatever

playbook you've used and It should

work right.

away.

There's a, there's a

learning curve and it should be able to be error and just have those open conversations and examine all aspects of the business

and

examine all aspects of marketing, right? [00:44:00] And talk through like the different opportunities and focus again,

where are we

gonna invest

in now

versus later?

And the why behind it. Just encourage those open, long conversations. Don't just ask for something and be okay. Even if you get the Yes right. Like, it's great you

get the yes, but make sure

they understand the why. Like

don't just stop the conversation at the Yes. Like, just

because you're like, oh, I should get off the phone.

Um, and stop, you know, selling, you know, just really make under Sure.

Make sure you

have that, you know, really good alignment. That's really important. Right. Um,

and

understand who they are as people. Like I've had leaders who.

You know,

just,

I

think it's good if you can

have that self-awareness of who

you are and your shortcomings and your strengths.

I've had leaders who are very open with like, Hey, I'm just a paranoid person by nature. I'm going ask, I'm gonna do these things. Like, so just know your leader and who they are. Like if they're a paranoid person,

just harm

them with data. if [00:45:00] they say, I don't need this anywhere, then you can stop. But like,

silence doesn't

always mean that you don't have to communicate and do the work like.

over communication is

key, I think, and I've to this day, like there's been times like, oh, things are going great. Like I don't need

to send this report. He

hasn't asked for it

for a few

weeks. Shouldn't stop doing that. Right? You should still like make sure you're in that rhythm and in that muscle because like all it takes is that one bumpy week where there's so much other stuff going wrong, and then they're gonna look for that

piece of information

they're not gonna have,

and then

they're going to be like.

What's been

going on, right? So just always arm

your

leadership with

the information they need

to feel

good or understand what's going on, right? Don't, don't make it too complex, short

and sweet is better, but just make sure they have enough to understand the why behind what you're doing and

the progress.

The

blockers, all of the above. Like

just list

it out.

And

If they say like, Hey, I don't [00:46:00] need this anymore. Great. But like, always make sure you're given something

Natalie Nathanson: That is great advice and I think we can all, uh, benefit from hearing that and, and re reminding ourselves of it. Uh, thank you Steven. I've really enjoyed this conversation.

Stephen Ochs: Likewise.

Natalie Nathanson: And thank you too to everyone listening. I know I loved hearing about so much of what Steven shared,

you know,

why he believes in influencer marketing and how that's worked for them, the true shift towards quality, not quantity, and the importance of

that

in today's environment. So if today's episode gave you any valuable insights and ideas, and I'm sure that it did, please share this with a CEO founder or go-to-market leader in your network.

We know these are the kinds

of conversations that help us scale smarter, build stronger, and create more resilient go-to-market engines. So thanks again, Steven.

Stephen Ochs: No problem.

Natalie Nathanson: This has been another great conversation on Shift and Thrive. I'll see you all next time.

[00:47:00]