Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

Natalie Nathanson: Welcome to another special edition episode on Shift and Thrive as part of our go to market spotlight series. If you're a CEO or business leader wondering how your go-to-market needs to change to evolve right now to meet the market realities of today, this episode is for you. Today's guest is a go-to-market and marketing leader who's seen every stage of the life cycle from early stage startups to post IPO industry giants.

He was the first marketing hire at Zscaler, helping to build the company from the ground up, and he got to ring the bell at NASDAQ before they went public at Google Cloud. He led marketing efforts across 140 products, balancing depth scale, and go to market orchestration globally. He's also held marketing leadership roles across numerous functions, spanning roles, including CMO, VP of marketing, product marketing, and brand.

He's a builder at heart and just as comfortable crafting strategy as he is rolling up his sleeves, and he recently started coding his own agents to showcase what's possible. These days, he's advising companies on how to cut through the noise, modernize their go-to market, and use AI in ways that actually make a difference.

Saja

Chacar, welcome to the show.

Sajag Chikarsal: Thank you, Natalie. That

was a little bit embarrassing listening all about myself,

but thank

you, thank you for having me at the show. Um, I, I have to say I really, uh, like the way you've put this podcast, I think it sits at the intersection of the change leadership as well as, um, uh, the practical way of implementing GTM strategies for all stage of companies.

So thank you. Happy to share my thoughts with your audience, and I'm sure I'm probably gonna be learning a lot, uh, along the way too.

Natalie Nathanson: Thank you. Thank you. And I know, uh, we'll have plenty to talk about. And you know, I know you've worked across some pretty different go-to-market environments including, you know, category creation and a startup. And, uh, as I mentioned in your introduction, orchestrating over 140 products, uh, in tandem at Google.

Uh, I'd really love to start the conversation by focusing on go to market transformation as a key theme of the podcast. And really to start us off, what would you say has been your biggest takeaway from your various experiences leading go to market transformation?

Sajag Chikarsal: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question and,

all the three roles. In fact, you know, if I talk about

Zscaler and you've,

uh, kindly said that I've, uh, you know, experienced the growth, the tremendous growth in going to the IPO, but I would probably, to answer this question, I would lean more towards my journey at Google.

The

biggest transformation there was I was part of the Google marketing or the Google Cloud team.

Uh, Google Cloud was

really getting

serious about enterprise business and, uh, we had about 140 plus products when I joined, and there was no integrated campaigns

team.

And now I think it's more than 160

plus products.

Uh, we were doing about a billion dollar in revenue a quarter, and when I left, we were doing about $5 billion a quarter.

So it was a $20 billion run rate. Uh, we used to call Google Cloud as the world's largest startup. Uh, you know, coming from a startup, Zscaler, going to a world's largest startup was an amazing journey. But the problem, the transformation that we were trying to solve for is, okay, we have 140 plus products.

We have six or seven verticals that we want to go after. There are two segments that we want to cater. There is A SMB or the startup, or the, uh, tech startup world and the enterprises. So how do we actually position

ourself? And

that's where, it's not that you're building a new company altogether, but creating a framework for you to actually connect with the customer.

And it's basically connecting four things. You connect the product, the customer, the sales, and how you market to, uh, the customers and how you position

your personas.

So what we, the way we started building our narrative was. We want to take campaigns to the market. And now you, I know you and I have talked about campaigns and programs too, but the way we wanted to take the campaigns was if there are three personas in a given company that we are targeting and they're in the cafeteria, or they're in a conference and they're talking about our company, they all should know something about a company which is more relevant to them.

And that's the key thing that we kept in mind to build the framework. And the framework was very simple. You connect the brand with the demand and the campaign, you say, what are you trying to solve for? What is your brand platform? You connect that with the themes that resonates well with the CXO audience.

And when you think about a campaign, you build your campaign narrative around those themes and, um, you land specific messages to the CXO. and Then you start building, not because CXOs don't buy products, they don't even buy solutions. Uh, they always try to optimize for cost or innovation or transformation or sustainability.

Um, and that's what they care about. But when you go and talk to directors

and VPs, they

want little bit, know more about how a specific solution would help them today and maybe three years from now. So our VP director level messaging was

more solution

focused. And when you go to the developers

and practitioners,

it was more in line with, uh, the actual product and

the how's.

So you connect with why, what and how. And that's

the framework

that we've built and that kind of helped us, uh, tremendously. And the way we've transformed the way we did

marketing at

Google Cloud, that framework

is still

being used. And there was a time that, uh, you know, I was also managing Google Cloud next, which is the annual user conference of Google Cloud and my CMO of Google Cloud.

in fact, you know, a

couple of other leaders, the question that they posed me was, what is Google Cloud next? Is it a campaign? Is it a program or what? What, what is it? Uh, are you gonna run it as a campaign? Are you gonna run it is a program? Let's help try, identify that and then land that narrative and connect with the customers.

It was a difficult question and I worked with my team and I said, it's not a campaign. Campaigns are a message that you wanna take to the market. It's a key moment that lives across every campaign that we run. So fast forward, just to answer your question, you know, just building that framework, understanding the customer, understanding the product, having that GTM clarity and building that framework to get to the customer is not, one message does not fit all.

You really need to think about different layers, but it's one campaign that ties everything together. And it's not about how many campaigns you take to market. And I generally don't, you know, think about, okay, I need to take five campaigns to the market. It starts with what messages do

you

want to. Lead the market with this year?

Are there two messages or three or four messages

that you

wanna lead with? And then you connect those messages with what you wanna do in marketing.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so much, uh, great stuff in what you just shared. Uh, so I'll try to take us in in a few different directions here. Um, I think first, just as you were talking about the approach to, uh, to transformation, um, and you talked about kind of reflecting, uh, internally, uh, which I definitely agree with, and I think a lot of, uh, folks in my ecosystem, and I'm sure our listeners, uh, are in that kind of, uh, kind of soul searching.

How do we wanna evolve? How do we wanna transform? Uh, mindset. The piece that I think about is, yes, you wanna reflect internally, then you wanna analyze externally, and then, right, like bring, bring the two together and see kind of what is the right, uh, path forward. Um, I'm curious to bring it back to, uh, kind of what you, what you did as part of this, like Google, uh, kind of marketing transformation.

Um, how did you look at the different kind of stakeholder audiences? How did you kind of validate, um, I guess on the, on the external side, on the, the customer and prospect side? Um, what was, what was resonating and kind, what needed to change, um, from maybe any hypothesis going in.

Sajag Chikarsal: Yeah. Uh, great question.

Let's kind of try and dive deep a little bit. So in a more practical environment, when I joined a campaign, there was no campaigns

team at

Google Cloud. And a campaign was generally a set of five or six emails that we plan to send to a customer. And it was one message, uh, irrespective of whether you are a CXO or a

VP or

a developer or a practitioner.

Uh, so one thing that, the first

thing that

we tried building around was not just launching another campaign, but what are we trying

to solve

for? And those were the days, I'm talking about 2018, so I'm trying to refresh my memory. I think a brand platform at that time was, let's get solving. So this was a brand team that was sitting, you know, in a, in a separate function.

I was, uh, leading the enterprise marketing or the

integrated campaigns team.

and trying

to build

the A BM, uh, programs, if

you will. But the

first order of priority was how are we taking Google Cloud message to

the market and

how are we connecting it to the brand? So we started working with the product team, product

marketing team,

uh, and everything starts with the customer.

I'm preaching to the choir, but you actually really wanna know what are you trying to solve for, for a customer. And it's not just one thing, but

what do

they think about Google Cloud? Like what do CXOs

think about

Google Cloud? Why do they wanna implement or move to Google Cloud, if you will, from Amazon or maybe, you know, from um, Microsoft, if you will.

Um, what do VPs and directors care about? And what are the wins? Where are we winning and where are we losing? And

if we

are not losing, why are the deal cycles getting lengthier? Or if they're not getting lengthier, how, how can we close them faster? And just trying to understand, first of all, building all these insights, working very

closely with

the product and the sales team.

Once you've got all those insights,

It was very

clear to us that we started framing the problem into three or four things. It was very evident that for Google Cloud

to make

its mark, it's very important for us to get into enterprise or enterprises. And if you wanna get into the enterprises where the sales cycles are probably 12 to 18 months, and these are probably multimillion dollar deals, you really need to get in front of the CXOs with the right message.

So

what we said was, okay, CXOs care about four things, or let's say five things. And I think I touched on it. They talk about cost optimization. They talk about profitability. They talk about sustainability, they talk about transformation, innovation. If you're in Europe, they also talk about sustainability, uh, at scale.

Now, how do we connect the brand platform with what CS CXOs care about, right? Because

you need

to bring everything together internally, and then the output is gonna be amazing. It's just gonna be a music, um, that, that you really wanna listen, right? So what we said was our first campaign would be, let's get solving for cost optimization.

And

this is the message that we wanna lead with, uh, when we get in front of the CXO. But is it the same message that we want to tell the developer, or let's say the director of the company who are more curious about solutions? So let's double down on what do we mean by let's get solving for cost optimization.

How can you optimize your cost? So for at the solution level, this may mean like modernizing your infrastructure, you're transforming your workplace. So these are the solutions. And each solution packages a bunch of solutions, or sorry, products, uh, is like, okay, you're moving your workloads from Hana, SAP to Hana, or you know, to, to GCP.

Um, and there were a lot of

these things.

So the way we kind of crafted the story was we connected the brand, oh, sorry. Starting with customer pain points. We tried understanding what is our brand, what is the message, what is that one line that we lead with?

What

is our brand platform? How do we connect it with a pain point, which is the theme.

So you start with the themes, you land those themes, and then you

try to optimize

how are you bucketizing your

solution within those

themes, and then how are you bucketing your products within those solutions. So that was the framework that we built. So once we built that integrated campaigns framework, it was very evident that as we launch a campaign, we are probably targeting three personas in parallel, but with three different messages and different channels to activate each of these personas.

For CX O it may be a round table without any PowerPoint presentations and maybe, you know, with some of our champions, um, at the solution level,

these may be

webinars or maybe round table series, maybe you know, more in-person events, if you will, for developers and practitioners. It can be hackathons or some other, you know, high touch programs.

So we not only looked at

the messaging,

we looked at the channels and how are we optimizing the channel, and like I said. The way I've always run marketing is if, let's say, Natalie, your company's my target customer. I only don't want to target Natalie, but also, you know, some of the folks in your team. So when you talk to each other, what is that one line that you know about my company and everyone should know about my company, probably in the three to six months timeframe.

So that's the kind of framework that we built. And once that was built, we then started building our A BM programs.

More

campaigns, more events. Everything that we did in marketing revolved around that integrated marketing strategy.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. What I really like about what what you're saying here is really talking about a lot of the foundations, right? And getting those in place. And I know sometimes that can be, uh, kind of the, the unsexy side of marketing. Um, but I think it's so important and right, having that brand clarity, the messaging clarity on kind of the ideal client profiles and the different roles within the organization that you're reaching out to.

Sajag Chikarsal: I just wanna,

sorry to interrupt. I, hope I missed saying something very important. There are aren't some heroes in marketing, the marketing operations or the

analytics team

When you go for any kind of a transformation, specifically something like this.

Okay, you've built the strategy, but do you even have the database, do you even have the tools to support that transformation? So in parallel, as we were building this, we were also trying to understand how big our database is and can we segment our database by the key personas? And then also, do we have the right tools to kind of fast pace our campaigns to market?

Like, can we take like three campaigns to market? Can we also activate our partner and train our ecosystem, not only our partners, but also our sales team. So that marketing operations and the enablement becomes very, very important whenever you try and transform anything. But, uh, sorry to interrupt. Uh, please

Natalie Nathanson: No, not at all. I, I'm glad you brought up that point. Um, where I was going to take us next is, uh, shifting gears into ai. And I know that's something that, uh, both of us have been, have been very hands on on and that has very much changed. Uh, a lot of what we're talking about, um, which I think closing out the thought with the, the, the unsung heroes in marketing operations, I would agree with that though.

I also think there's more, uh, kinda recognition and understanding right now. So hopefully they're not forever the unsung heroes, but are starting to get more of that, uh, the limelight because I think, uh, it's, it's just so, so critical to, you know, how uh, kind of marketing and go to market is evolving. And, you know, to start us off with a question here, uh, for you would love to ask, you know, how you see AI changing, uh, you know, how companies should approach go to market

Sajag Chikarsal: How is AI changing the GTM strategy? I would probably let, let me touch a little bit on just the AI adoption, um, just to, you know, connect with the audiences here, but understanding it,

AI is actually being adopted at a

faster

faster pace. I'll give you one data point, um, just to, to help us process this information.

Uh, I was

reading somewhere that, uh, it took television about 25 plus years to reach 50 million users.

Internet

did that in seven years, and I believe smartphones reached 50 million users in four years. So from 25 to seven to four, and let's talk about ai. One single chat GPT application, which is a consumer AI application,

reached a

hundred million users in two months.

That's the adoption of ai. Now, what does that adoption do for us in a

GTM role?

Whether you're a marketer or a salesperson or

a product

person, you feel overwhelmed. And what I've, I've, I've recently been invited to host a closing keynote at AI for Marketing Summit, you know, a couple of months before. And My talk was around AI and GTM and how you can use AI to harness your GTM engine.

And, and one message that I kind of led with was this adoption is creating a challenge for all of us, which I call this accidental ai. You are just implement for any new adoption. Whenever you're adopting something new, you are adopting it without any intention. You're just adopting it and it becomes accidental.

And what does it mean is it's ungoverned and unmanaged use of ai. So when you talk about AI and GTM, what's happening these days is you are a marketer, or whether you're in sales, you're trying to adopt a, the feature set of the current tech stack that

you have and

you're trying to use AI features. But every there, there's a study, I think Boston Consulting Group, they did a study which said about 75, 72 to 75% of employees have started using ai.

Now that number may have

gone to 85%,

but only one third of those employees have said that they have received any formal training to actually use ai. So if I think about, if I have a hundred people in my company, how many people are actually interacting with one or two or three LLMs? So whether it's chat, GPD, Gemini or CLA or whatnot, and how many of them have actually asked their IT team?

What can I input into my ll s? No one is asking, and it's ungoverned use that is creating a lot of problem in the GTM space.

Um,

but

my.

my belief is AI is the new operating system for your GTM if done right, it can actually move all those scattered pieces of GTM engine into a beautiful art, into a beautiful Mosa art.

And, and that's what's the power of GTM, uh, or a

AI in the GTM world.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I think that's a great, uh, explanation. So I'm really glad you brought in some of the, the data points around the behavior too. Uh, because the other thing you're making me think of is, you know, the buyer behavior feels like it's changing faster than most organizations can transform. They're go to market, and I'm not talking about right, putting out a piece of content or a campaign, but really like the sales behaviors need to change.

The marketing mindset needs to be in a different, how the tech stack operates, right? And these things don't happen overnight. And companies also wanna build, uh, in such a way that, uh, they're not doing something that they're gonna have to undo, you know, three months, six months down the line. Uh, so you're kind of planning around a moving target.

And I'm curious in the work that you're doing with, with clients or in kind of maybe conversations you had at that conference, uh, if, if that theme came up and kind, how are you thinking about that?

Sajag Chikarsal: Um, that theme definitely comes up and, you know, everyone wants to first of all know like, Hey, I wanna really.

Implement ai. So the first thing is, what is AI

adoption for you?

That's the number one question. Are you just adopting AI by just using one or two LLMs? Um, and if you've used LLMs, are you just using AI for generative AI capabilities or are you also trying

to transform

where you're trying to be an advanced user of AI and you're

trying to

now create your own GPT in chat GPD, you know, your custom

gpt, or

now you're creating your gems and Gemini, or you've even gone one step further and you have now started building these AI workflows and people call about AI agents, so it's very important for a company.

When you think about the GTM, first of all, having that understanding of

G TM clarity,

what segments are you going forward to? What is your data stack? What is your current tech stack looks like? What is your operating model? If I were to kind of thread the needle, the first thing it's, do you wanna be AI native or do you now trying to solve for like, how are you adopting ai.

That's the number one question. Where are you in the journey? And generally it starts with like

the top three

or four things that I have in mind when you try to adopt AI for

GTM. The first

question that you wanna solve for is what is your operating model? Who

owns the ai?

No one owns the AI in your company, but who is that champion?

Um, I was at a round table, uh, couple of weeks before and I talked to a bunch of people from a project management company. I will not name them. I think we all

have

used that company in our

previous likes

as a marketer. And it was interesting to see that that company has actually created AI product managers and there were marketing operations people who are now moved into that AI product manager role.

And they are now reporting into the IT organization.

So what

was clear is that company. Has it, or the CIO owns the AI narrative. So they don't only own the

tech stack, but they

also own the data and how the data will be fed into

these LLM. So

that's the operating model for your company. It's very important to understand is the AI a rev ops leader's responsibility or a

marketing operations,

person's responsibility, sales ops, or does it sit in a, uh, you know, CIO world? Once that is resolved, you really wanna start building that

data stack

or the data hygiene layer.

You know,

I, uh, I think I've shared this with you. My first role was not a marketer. I was

actually teaching cc plus

plus

and operating

systems. And back in the day when I was teaching operating systems, it was, uh, in the first chapter it said input process output.

You know, like, uh, how you move the information and how the information is processed and once processed becomes the output. Um. That's the same thing with marketing too. If you don't have the right data, your output is always gonna be garbage, garbage in, garbage out. So you really wanna build your data layer.

And what are the different sources of data? You have marketing data, you have customer data, you have product usage data. Is that data talking to each other? Is it integrated? And if it's integrated, uh, how are you feeding that data into your AI layer? And what kind of insights are you running? So that's the third piece.

So the first was, who is the operating model where the AI sits?

What

is the data sta stack? Do you have the data hygiene in place? And is someone in charge of data hygiene? What are the guardrails? Now

the second

thing is, third thing is what guardrails as a company

are you

putting around that data and around your ai, um, infrastructure, if you will.

And then the final thing is the change management. When you do all of this as a company's leader, as an executive leader, or even as an employee, are you first as a leader? Are you. Empowering your team to get trained on AI and the training of AI doesn't mean just go to Coursera and take a course. Sorry, I didn't wanna name any company, but, uh, you know, go to all these, they cannot just take these siloed courses.

They have to understand what AI means for their company and how are they gonna adopt the AI and what phase of the journey they're in. Is it just the initial stage or are they ready for building these workflows and AI agents? So when you think about these four things from the operating model, the data and what are the guardrails and what is the change management process?

How are you training and enabling your teams to get on the AI bandwagon? I think that's very important. And once that's done, building AI is just a reflection of how are you're gonna take your stuff to GTM and you know it's gonna simplify your GTM processes.

So what I tried just explaining was how you think about AI adoption in a more g TM setting and what is a core example of how you can actually do that.

Natalie Nathanson: I'm curious to ask you, um, thinking about either, you know, smaller or younger organizations, so whether it's kinda a startup or just an established smaller business, what do you think become the, the harder components of kind of the framework? Uh, that you just mentioned. And do you have any recommendations there?

Because I know a lot of our listeners are in kind of, you know, smaller, uh, lower mid market size companies.

Sajag Chikarsal: Um,

I think there is no right or wrong answer, but in it's my, having worked in both startups and bigger environments and bigger companies, I think if you're a startup, you are more agile and you can actually start using AI much faster than a bigger company.

Uh, but as a startup, the problem that you're gonna lead with is, or that you're gonna run into who owns this AI narrative in your company. And, uh, if you really wanna. When that conversation, you need to start having that discussion with your, uh, with your ex executive team. First, you need to have a champion in the executive team to, to run the AI initiative.

Um, irrespective of which department

of function

runs it, if there is an executive championship or if

there is

a buyer, there is an ex sponsor, I think your AI adoption journey is gonna be much faster. So if I'm a startup, the first thing that I would do is I would sit with my executives and I would ask them, how do you want to run AI initiatives within the company and have a budget assigned to it?

And it can be an experimentation budget. And when I say experimentation, people just generally think what new tool that I need to use. There are probably 2000, 3000

tools out there

that you can use. It's not about the tools that you're gonna use, it's about understanding your GTM or how are you going to market

looking

at your current tech stack.

Then

activating all the features that you can within that tech stack and then using AI principles to, just in a more simplistic way, how are you gonna run insights? That's the easiest way to start adopting ai,

Um, you can use things like NA 10, you can use lovable. You can use a bunch of other tools to start creating those workflows. If you're a startup, you really need to start investing in how you look at your data and how you run insights.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah, I think for the, the smaller come. Companies like, yes, it can move faster, can make decisions around tech stack for kind of where things are today and where they believe they're heading. Uh, we were talking earlier about some of those, uh, foundations that you need to be able to kind of think around this of, you know, what is your, your brand position, your ideal customer profile.

I think that is the place where, at least from my experience, I see companies trying to kind of fast forward too quickly from that, for the, the sake of trying to, uh, kind of get things in place and needing, of course to start driving results. Um, but I think then you end up, it's easy to end up kind of scaling in the wrong direction or putting kind of too much, uh, too much power and manpower in, in a direction that ultimately, like you don't have the, the product market fit or something isn't resonating.

Um, and it sounds counterintuitive, but then needing to kind of backpedal, uh, in inefficient way. I don't know if you see that.

Sajag Chikarsal: I, I do, and I would probably give very practical advice, something that you can do today. Um, if you're in your roles, whether you're a sales or a marketing leader, or you are, you know, in, in

the executive

seat, I would say it's always good

to start

the AI Council or

a committee within the

company that meets every

other week, if

not every other week, every month.

And you give them one task. Pick whatever work that you're currently doing and how can you make it more productive using ai? And uh, the work that you can give, the homework that you

can give

to your team is creating these, uh, prompt libraries within the company that can be shared across

the company.

So, for example, I can train an LLM on my brand message, brand tone and whatnot.

And once that is built, I can just create a custom GPT, um, that

I can then

share with my company that's

not gonna

be shared

outside of my

company. And I can keep asking questions and it can convert

into scripts

or emails and

whatnot, right? It's

a very, very simple example, The

core action item is if you're creating that AI committee, what you need, the output from that AI committee is two things.

What is the AI journey that you wanna be on, and how fast or slow you want to adopt ai? The second thing is start creating these custom gpt or prompts and save these prompts. Because if you've created that prompt once, you don't want everyone in the company start, you know, creating their own versions of it.

And once you've created those prompt libraries, keep it in a

centralized location

and say, anyone can use it. If, okay, if it's probably for email creation, use

this prompt.

If

it's for, uh,

searching, which events do we need to go in 2026, you know, use this prompt or, you know, whatnot. So creating those prompt libraries is probably gonna be a very

good action

item for all the companies to start thinking about now.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Uh, you can't see this on the podcast, but I was smiling when you said that because my colleague, uh, rolled that out for us, uh, internally, uh, a number of months ago. And, uh, it, it took a little time for everyone to start going there. And now it's the amount of things that have just continued to get added to it has accelerated.

Completely. Because it is one of those cases where you have to slow down to speed up, right? You have to take that moment to kind of put it in the right place, get it in the right format, uh, but then it has such tremendous, uh, impact. So I would underscore your, your recommendation there. 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

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 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 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 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 agents.

Natalie Nathanson: I love that. I think those are, uh, three great ones, uh, for the audience to take away from this. I think those. Kind of insights on the data. You can take that in so many different directions. I know my personal new favorite is we've loaded all of my podcast conversations into Notebook lm and being able to chat with that and, Hey, what was that conversation a year ago that we talked about this?

And how do I bring that back to the discussion? Um, and that's, you know, one of maybe, you know, a, a dozen or two dozen, uh, kinda use cases out of that. Um, so it just shows how much the, the possibilities are endless, and it really becomes about that, that clarity of where do you need to focus and kind of what's gonna move the needle for you.

Sajag Chikarsal: Yeah.

Natalie Nathanson: I'd love to, uh, shift gears here and talk a bit about, uh, kinda you and your journey. And, uh, you touched on this a little bit earlier, but in, earlier in your career, um, it's, you started, uh, outside of marketing and wanted to hear, you know, how did your, how did you get started in your career and how did those early experiences shape and, uh, how you think about your, your current.

Sajag Chikarsal: Yeah.

Nothing too fancy here. I was, uh, I wouldn't say I was, I'm proud, but I was a nomad early on. I, I,

did

a bunch of things. I, uh, did my, you know, marketing, uh, specialization. I, I

did my MBA,

but I also did CCNA. I, uh, first of all, I wanted to be an animator. Let me just go back. I did computers and I did, uh, you know, whatever education that I wanted to complete.

And after that, I wanted to be

a professional

animator. Never got the chance because I, um, I'm from Chun Deger in India. Uh, you know, it's, it's, uh, further north of like, uh, new Delhi. There was no 3D Max Studio. So I never got that kind of guidance how to, uh, be a professional animator. So I thought, okay, you know, if I cannot be a professional animator, let me start thinking about some other avenues.

Uh, and this is where I tried bunch of things

that I

started working in, uh, you know, more call centers environment that helped me to be a better leader and also data-driven. There was a point in time that I was managing about 300, 400 people across five different centers. And though it may sound like, oh, you know, I was in a call center, but those were the days when we used to get measured on RPD registrations per day, or, you know, sales per day SPD revenue per hour.

Those were the metrics that we used to get measured. So every hour that you were dialing, you are dialing for revenue. And I still remember, you know, most of my team used to generate about 10 to $11 per hour. So if there are 300 people dialing in a given day and everyone is generating about $10 per hour, you can actually see how much revenue we were generating each and every day.

Um,

so that's how I started, you know, getting more into the data and leadership early on. And that actually gave me the first break to be in marketing. I never,

um,

never thought of myself being in marketing, honestly. Speaking, uh, my, I started my career in teaching and then I went to sales B2C, and then I went into B2B sales.

And

because I've experienced all of this, I, I. Um, you know, back in 2006 I met J Arthur three, who is the CEO and founder of, uh, Zscaler Today. Uh, back in the day he had another company called Cipher Trusts, and he was in India. He was trying to, you know, build, uh, uh, find a leader to build his marketing function for Cipher Trusts in India.

And that's how I met him. Um, and we started building, uh, you know, the team for c Citrus. Citrus got acquired by Secure Computing, which further got

acquired by McAfee. And that's

what, that was the beginning of my marketing journey or as, as

a marketing leader.

But during those startups, I was, though I was on a marketing role, but I was always very curious to work with sales

and customers

and whatnot.

So I never let that aspect of my, uh, my profile go away. So though I

was doing marketing,

but I was also working very closely with the sales team on a lot

of things.

So my career progression, if I were to probably sum it up in three, I turned from a teacher. To an operator, to be a GTM executive. Um, I love that.

I'm in marketing. I used to call myself as someone who loves marketing to humans. Uh, that was my tagline on LinkedIn a while back. Uh, I've just recently changed it, but I still believe that, um, there is only one function in a

company. And this

may be my bias, and I apologize to all the audiences. If you're in sales or other departments, there is only one function in the company that has full visibility of the customer lifecycle or

the customer journey.

And that's marketing. And that's the reason I love marketing, because you understand the overall journey. You know how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. You can orchestrate

it much better

than any other function, but not without the input from other functions.

So, um,

Yeah. Yeah. With Zscaler, and, and I know you've talked about Zscaler.

I was the first marketing hire there. I don't even remember the first,

I

don't even remember how much pipeline we had, probably sub. $5 million in pipeline to hundreds and hundreds of millions of pipeline. When I left Zscaler, I got the opportunity to lead enterprise marketing at Google. I was there for about four years.

Just

loved everything that I've done. I think,

you know, marketing makes

you a better leader and, uh, and just a better person in my, in my opinion.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yep. I love that. I'm a bit biased, uh, but I, I tend to fully agree and I think that full visibility of the, of the customer journey. Uh, is such an important piece and especially given all the kinds of things that we've talked about here from kind of those like strategic market insights and what you already know about the customer from the data, and then how do you activate that across sales and marketing and channel.

So, uh, I am right there with you and would love to ask you before we wrap up, um, you know, if there's one thing that you wish more CEOs, uh, truly understood about go to market, what would that be?

Sajag Chikarsal: There's a lot that can be said on that topic, but I would probably, if I were to summarize in one sentence, I would say GTM is not a campaign. GTM is not one initiative that

is,

that is run by a specific function. I, I believe GTM is, is the narrative that the CEO should own. And I've seen time and

again

that once you give the GTM narrative to a given function, like, oh, you know, okay, the, the CRO or the CMO or what, it doesn't go well, the CEO should own the GTM narrative. They should own end-to-end. They should own all the, um, all the bets because they know where they wanna take the company. Yes, they should use all the inputs from their, you know, from their executive team. But if I, one message that I want to give to the CEOs is number one. They should own the GTM narrative and they should empower their teams to now further build on that narrative, uh, and also provide suggestions, if you will.

But they should define what that strategy is gonna be for first year, second year, third year, or, you know, five years from now. And then the second thing that I would wanna leave with the CEOs is it's okay to ask for ROI on any initiative that you run, but it's, it's my personal belief that ROI is just the output.

Uh, you need to start focusing more on the foundation. So if you know, right now we are all talking about AI and you can easily say, oh, you know, I want to invest in ai, but what is gonna be my, my ROI ON AI in the next three months? I would probably shy away from that question, at least in the short term.

And I would say, I really need to build the foundations first. And if the foundations are built. Um, and if I've done it the right way, RO is just gonna be an output

and we

will all love the ROI conversation

afterwards. So

focusing a lot more on building the core foundations with the right people and the right team, uh, is gonna be the priority specifically.

And now with the tech stack, uh, you know, that AI is asking for, uh, so foundations and owning the GQ narrative.

Natalie Nathanson: Beautifully

said. So thank you for that. And as we wrap up today's conversation, can you let our listeners know how they can reach out? They wanna get in touch.

Sajag Chikarsal: Oh, yes.

Uh, you can always, uh, reach out to me

on my

LinkedIn and maybe Natalie can share my LinkedIn profile, uh, or the link to my LinkedIn profile.

Uh. Yeah, I am right now trying to be more active on the AI front. There was a time that, uh, you know, just the round table that I attended last week

or the week before,

um, they had four cue cards. And, uh, the four cue cards were, are you a AI beginner? Are you AI advanced? Are you not focused on ai or are you an AI maestro? And everyone had to wear, like, where do they think that they are? And I thought I would probably pick

the AI

mastro, but I just added two words in, uh, you know, as a suffix. Uh, and I said, AI Mastro in

making, I'm not

an AI mastro right now, but I'm AI Mastro in making. And if you have any questions on adopting AI or, um, you know, building AI agents or you have any suggestions on problems that you're trying to solve and you want to

create a workflow for

that, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.

I may not have all the answers, but I can guide you well in, in a way that, you know, you can start your journey at least.

Natalie Nathanson: Wonderful. Uh, well, thank you so much, Saja.

Sajag Chikarsal: Thank you. Thank you, Natalie. Thank you so much for having me on the show and uh, it was great talking to you. Uh, lemme know if there's any other question that I can help answer.

Natalie Nathanson: That's great. That's great. Uh, and it was, uh, so nice to hear, uh, all of these great insights from sja, from the frameworks for transforming with ai. Uh, a lot of the pragmatic, uh, you know, hands-on recommendations like the three custom GPTs every organization should have. Uh, so thank you for that again, and thank you for everybody listening.

If today's conversation sparked something for you, uh, and I'm sure that it did, please pass this along to another leader in your network. We know that these are the kinds of conversations and insights to help us scale smarter, build stronger, and create more resilient go-to-market engines. So thanks again, Saja, and this has been another fantastic conversation on Shift and Thrive.

I'll see you all next time.