The Transaction

TT - 032 - Tricia Gellman - Full Episode 2.0
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Craig Rosenberg: [00:00:00] by the way, everyone, you missed the, um, rundown of Tricia's trip to Italy, uh, which we probably should hit record on so that you could all be as jealous as we were of it,

Tricia Gellman: Yeah, I highly recommend starting a new job, being in seat for four weeks, taking a two week vacation, and then coming back to really start your job.

Craig Rosenberg: just practice. That's actually something the market doesn't know about is the best practice. I,

Tricia Gellman: It actually is a best practice. It allows you to take no responsibility in the first four weeks of your job, because what are you going to do while you're gone for two weeks? And then now, like, I have the knowledge of what's happening, I have knowledge of what I might want to do about it, and I can just jump in and go.

Craig Rosenberg: that is incredible. I love it.

[00:01:00]

Craig Rosenberg: all right. So, uh, we today have Trisha Gelman. Normally I do the lead in, but like I had to lead with your name because of your background. Is amazing and it's Mm-Hmm. . It's a real one. Everyone. So that, that's, that's worth noting. But, um, uh, Tricia and Matt and I, um, worked with, uh, each other at scale venture partner. She was a, uh, EIR with us. And I actually had, Matt and I had both heard of you, Tricia, be, you know, before you started, of course. And then, but I hadn't worked with you. And then. You know, we worked together for a while and you were amazing. And just so, you know, it's funny, cause everyone asked me, I'm like, well, rule number one is we don't have anybody currently working with me on the show.

We wait until they leave. So the minute for her to free up, like, okay, so we're going to have Tricia on the show, but I think like, you know, [00:02:00] one of the things that, uh, we always talk about is like how, um, we see folks doing these amazing things, you know, so like. You know, we'd heard about you a lot. You know, drift was like a big one, sort of for yourself brand, right.

Where we heard, we just, we heard a lot about you and then we meet you. Um, and you know, you, you fell in that cat, you fall in that category for us. You know, you spent a lot of time at Salesforce. I think you did checker in between that and drift. Right. Yeah. And, um, you know, uh, now you are the CEO. CMO of Box, which is amazing and advisor to a ton of companies.

But, you know, the thing I, I did, I really appreciated about you was, um, you in core, you, you were like leadership. You advised folks on every, you know, the gamut, the full stack, including things like leadership and just how to engage. With the team in the organization, all the way across all the, the [00:03:00] crazy amount of, functions and responsibilities in a CMO's portfolio.

It, Matt and I were just talking about it with another guest the other day. If you take a step back and look at the things that the CMO is responsible for. It's nuts.

Tricia Gellman: Yeah. I mean, I think this is, like, one of the fundamental challenges of CMO is that it's such a broad remit and most founders and CEOs don't really understand it, to be honest. And I think as a CMO, that's one of the biggest challenges of your job is how do you simplify it for the people that are grading you on like, are you doing a good job or not?

And also how do you clearly articulate what you're going to do and what you're not going to do?

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. Another skill set of Trisha's.

Tricia Gellman: Yes. I'm always working on it, but

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, yeah, of course. It's a work in progress for all you guys. You know what I mean? But like, yeah, that was incredible. So everyone, the transaction welcomes the legendary Trisha Gellman. Currently sitting in the box and thank you for coming on. We are going [00:04:00] to kick this off with the big question that we have and warning for everyone.

Matt has a really good question. He called me nine o'clock. I'm sorry. I had to give it out because you were so excited. Um, we'll figure, he'll figure out how to loop in it.

All right. So here's the big question, which is, uh, you know, as part of the pod, just a little bit of context for everyone. We're, we believe that the, the go to market playbook you know, it's always evolving, but it's, it's changing a lot right now.

So we're trying to figure out from guests like you is like, what are, what are, what is something or things that the market thinks they're doing, right? Whether it's an approach, methodology, tactics, et cetera, and they're actually wrong and they should be thinking about doing it another way. What is it? And what should they go do about it?

Okay,

Tricia Gellman: all right. So when I was at scale, we kind of, um, advised across a lot of companies, different sizes, and I've also worked public and [00:05:00] private. It doesn't really matter what size you are. I see consistently that people don't build the right relationship between marketing and sales. And they don't anchor on sort of like the right metrics and how they manage those metrics and specifically pipeline.

So when I was at scale, we wrote like a little one pager or multiple pager on this pipeline management and how it can like doing it well will help you bridge marketing and sales together, which then gets you the velocity you need. And, and what people do wrong is they think, Oh, we're managing pipeline.

And they talk about pipeline all the time and they have emails and they have like, Pipelines are and they have all these other things and it's like great that we have all these dollar signs here because that's what matters But in the end of the day, it's so muddy But they're not gonna achieve any goal.

So what I mean by that is like, oh pipelines great Well, guess what? Like 99 percent of the pipeline you're tracking is Expansion within your current customer base. And [00:06:00] so if that's all you're looking at, you're never going to add enough new customers. You're never going to be able to expand customers later.

Like you need to break these things apart. Or like a conversation that I heard recently was, well, like the pipeline looks great, but actually that's because we don't need as much pipeline as you think. We have an SMB business and it creates. Creates and closes in quarter, right? That shouldn't be the conversation.

The conversation should be like, here's what's happening with enterprise pipeline and we need five X coverage. And here's what's happening with S and B pipeline. And we need two X coverage. And by the way, like the two X coverage is only at one. So it is red and the five X coverage is at six. So like, that's great.

Okay, perfect. You know, or like how many deals are in that pipeline? Like enterprise pipeline is at one point. You know, it's 150 percent of where it needs to be. But guess what? We have like the biggest deal that ever happened in the history of the company in there. Like, no, we're not going to make the number and 80 percent of the reps are going to like, Mr.

Quota for the [00:07:00] quarter. Yeah. Like only one person is healthy and hungry.

Matt Amundson: took a big, deep breath to talk about it.

Craig Rosenberg: go ahead first. And then I, I want to dig in.

Matt Amundson: So one of the things that you're talking about here specifically is like, you cannot look at pipeline as a lump sum at the very least you need to be separating it by new business and expansion. And definitely you need to be expanding it by the segments. So if you sell SMB, if you sell mid market, if you sell enterprise, you need to be looking at those separately and having a blanket goal from a, uh, from a coverage perspective across all of them doesn't make sense because SMB deals close faster.

Maybe you win more of them. Maybe you lose more of them. Enterprise deals close slower. Maybe you win more or less of those. Uh, you really need to go a level deeper into this stuff, especially if you've got like big outlier deals that are like, Hey, our average deal size is 50 grand and we've got this one in there for a million bucks.

So let's all take a vacation because, uh, [00:08:00] you know, we got all of this great coverage from a single deal that may actually end up taking us 12 months.

Tricia Gellman: Yeah, and when the end result of it is you talk all quarter about how pipeline looks great And then all of a sudden you miss the ARR number, right? And everyone's like, oh, well, it's not so bad because it just pushed by three months and you're like, um, hello We missed the ARR number Yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: so there's the visibility, but then one of the things you talk about is just how you manage each other on these things. So like, and that's, by the way, that what I was talking about, like Trisha skill sets, it's not. Like part of it is like real management advice, like how you go through these things.

So I always liked this part. So it's like, we just, you know, like the visibility thing is important, but like, if we're, were you in sales and channel and like, do you meet on a regular basis or, and then like,

Tricia Gellman: I mean I think the first thing is that you have to understand your business and [00:09:00] to what Matt was saying SMB might close at a higher or a lower rate Enterprise might close at a higher or lower rate. The other thing to factor in there, and the reason why I think this is so important for creating business growth velocity, is that who does what is going to vary as well.

In enterprise, you may have the reps doing more of the pipeline creation, and then in, and then you have other roles that are assisting, like maybe BDRs, whereas in SMB, maybe like marketing's doing 80 percent of the creation, and the AEs have no help and they're just closing it directly. So I think that's like an important thing that you understand how your business functions, understand what you're requiring of everybody, so that everyone can have the right conversation on a weekly basis, at a minimum on a bi weekly basis.

And, um, and then you have the right people in the room so you can evaluate, like, where are we toward our goals for the coverage we need, as well as the pipe gen we're doing to create coverage in future quarters. [00:10:00] And then you can, like, as leaders say, you know what, like, we're clearly not going to hit the PipeGen number for this quarter, but like, more importantly, we need to hit the ARR.

So what can we do as a team to, like, revive the dead or do whatever else it might be to, like, really double down to focus on just the ARR number and not the PipeGen number, whatever it might be. And I think this is where Like you can build that rapport between the two teams and everybody has to be focused on the company goal and not their own little like check box of like what's in it for me.

Craig Rosenberg: but do you guys feel like, let me, so do you feel like, so there's two things that I feel, feel like I hear one is. The amount of, I was going to say negotiation, but I do feel like arguing about deciding how the, the pipeline number would be, uh, divided.

Tricia Gellman: Right.

Craig Rosenberg: So I want to talk about that and cause you're, cause one thing you said is [00:11:00] that's how, like, we can work together, but like, actually when we, I hear a lot about just trying to, Get people to sign up for other numbers that that is a true argument slash negotiation.

Tricia Gellman: Yeah. A hundred percent. So I think there's a couple of things. Like one thing is that I think in the companies I've advised and been in, The default is that marketing has their own dashboards and numbers and sales has their others. So that's why I'm such a big advocate on like meeting with finance, creating the numbers, everybody agreeing on them and going through this negotiation that you're talking about.

Because if I'm looking at my pipeline and saying, Oh, my goal is, you know, 200 K or whatever it is. And then sales is saying, Oh, we don't have enough pipeline, but I'm saying I met my goal. Like, Nobody wins. Right. You know, like that's just a lose lose. So you have to get to a place where, as a company, you are looking at the same numbers, the same dashboards, and you're functioning off the same thing.

Like, that has to be a number one goal.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. [00:12:00] And then do you use past data? I'm not worried. I'm not talking about this from a marketing perspective. I'm actually, cause like when I look at how you would look at things, right, which was actually, it looked complex, but it was simple, right? It was, , For example, I'm actually most concerned.

I feel like the biggest issue I see from like, uh, a CMO is sales, like sales pipeline generation, right? AE is doing it for themselves. And I know that in your enterprise use cases, they would sign up for that. That's where I think a lot of the tension lies. And I'm trying to figure out how we could best help people figure that out.

Got

Tricia Gellman: I think it has to be like a go to market management decision. Honestly, like I've been in different companies where like sales leadership is kind of has it approached. Like we don't need marketing, you know, like we know how to generate pipe or like a hundred percent [00:13:00] enterprise driven enterprise AEs know that they have to like go out there and go find their business.

They have their territories or, you know, even individual account names and they're going to go do it. And I mean, I would say that's a very short sighted vision. I always kind of hate it when some sales leader stands up and says that because, you know, I mean, marketing has to build the brand. Marketing has to build the thought leadership and like, yes, AEs can go knock on doors, but in the end of the day, like the productivity for the reps is going to suck if that's what's happening.

So I think you have to agree that. From a go to market motion standpoint, you need to invest in some level of brand and thought leadership to help everybody achieve anything. And marketing is probably not going to get a ton of credit that's ultimately visible there, but like. As a company, you have to fund it.

And I think like there's studies out there that would show like, you know, 20 to 30 percent of your budget from marketing should probably go into that. But anyway, we could debate that at the day, then you can break out and say, [00:14:00] okay, like, what is each group doing with like their pipe targets and numbers and like some companies would say, We are going to fund AE headcount and that's just our premise and some founders like, you know, they've read all the reports.

Like every time I add a head, it adds a million dollars in revenue. So like, that's what I'm going to do. If that's the environment, then you have to divide the math and say like, we're going to have more pipeline from AE. So you have to decide with finance, with, like, you know, CS, whatever your, like, expansion people are, whether it's AMs, AEs, whatever, you know, everybody has a different role, but, um, like, how is this going to happen?

And then make targets that are reasonable based on what you're funding.

Craig Rosenberg: it. Because like the second part to my question is like, one of the things we've heard for the last two years is everyone's trying to get the AEs to prospect again. Yeah. And then they put out a number and it's like 40 percent of the pipeline has to come from the AEs and these folks haven't prospected in 10 years.

[00:15:00] Can we make that a build out? And, and if we look at things the way you're talking about, we can say, well, like in the near term, SDRs outbound and marketing is going to have to do 90%. But in the next two years, we want to get it to, you know,

Tricia Gellman: The 50 percent or something. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the smartest thing to do. And like, ideally you have numbers, right? There are companies out there that are going to be hearing this podcast. They have no numbers and they just have to like decide what are they going to do and what are they going to shoot for?

And my advice for those people or the other group of people are just going to be able to say like, well, we have tons of data where we don't believe any of it. And it all sucks, which is everybody's problem. But you just have to say like, I'm going to put a stick in the sand and this is what we're going to do.

And we're going to do it for a minimum of six months. And if we consistently missing it, we're going to then be able to say like, Hey, we tried to do this. This is why we had this problem. X, Y, Z. Like let's adjust. Maybe A's don't have as much, maybe [00:16:00] marketing like overperformed, whatever it might be. Um, and then just go from there.

But saying you can't do it cause you don't have the data. It's just a cop out.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. The other problem I see from a lot of smaller businesses is they are extending the definition of opportunity. Uh, to artificially inflate their pipeline number. And what I mean by that is when I rewind the clock back to my days at Marketo in the early 2010s, in order for an opportunity to have been created, you needed a demo request or an outbound meeting scheduled by an SDR.

That SDR had to qualify it for a set of criteria. Then that SDR had to hand it over to an account executive for that person then to verify that there was a deal that was real and there was a timeline and all that stuff. And then, and only then did it become an opportunity. And what I see now is like demo request occurs.

It's an opportunity. SDR books, a meeting, it's an opportunity. And so I think what we're dealing with, like writ [00:17:00] large is a lot of organizations that have very loose definitions around what pipeline is. And what I'm seeing consistently from earlier stage or startup businesses is. Hey, our pipeline number is huge, but our win rate's super small.

And if you look at the root cause of that, it's because we are calling something that we used to call a meeting or a sales qualified lead or a, or something else. An opportunity. And that is negatively impacting what's happening out in the world right now because marketing is then like, well, I got my opportunity, so I'll move on and build and go get you 10 more that look just like that.

Yeah. The reality is none of these are real cycles at all.

Tricia Gellman: Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I actually had a client that I was advising that kind of fell into that. They went to the board meeting and marketing is like, Oh. Awesome. And meanwhile, like the close rate for the business was 7%. And so like, you do not want to have that be like your way of functioning as a CMO leader.

You want [00:18:00] to realize that like, if the close rate is that low, then either in your case, you're saying like, people are like naming things, the wrong thing. And yeah. you know, or there's like bad management. I mean, there's a lot of companies that just have opportunities and it's like, well, how long have we had this?

Well, it pushed eight times and it was started two years ago. And it's like, it's not an opportunity. Like just, I mean, let's agree. Like it's dead. Um, and so I think you have to pair. Um, opportunity management, like stage management, like what's the get into, get out criteria. And you also need to pick something that's real.

Like a lot of companies say, Oh, well we had the meeting, the meeting took place. This is really an opportunity. And then there's zero dollar. Right. I mean, that's also a difficult thing to manage to because there's zero dollar, but like, maybe it doesn't make sense to add dollar. So you have to figure out where is the right place at Salesforce, which kind of shaped a lot of the way that I think about this, we had like a stage zero [00:19:00] where like STRs and, and sales would be working the opportunities and then we had, um, Stage one, which was like to hold the meeting.

Stage two is what we built all our reporting off of because that's where eighties were really committed that they were working in opportunity. And so to build close rates off of that made the most sense. Also close enough to the action that marketing would take that you weren't waiting like six months to a year to see what would happen because that's also the risk is if you move your reporting too far up the funnel in terms of the deal close, then like, you can't really take the actions.

To fix anything because it's like It's too late once you get the data.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah. My recommendation here is one, you know, your organization has to get really tight around the definitions of what is an opportunity and what are the stages of opportunities. Two, uh, you have to, as a marketer, and I've been advocating for this for the last year, you have to look a lot [00:20:00] further down the funnel than you traditionally have.

And I don't mean that from the perspective of running campaigns that are built to accelerate opportunities. We should all be doing that. If you're not, please get on that immediately to get a sense of what your real impact is. You have to understand how things are progressing through the funnel. It's not enough to just say, Hey, this channel performs well delivered, you know, 40 opportunities in a quarter.

If those 40 opportunities are never getting out of the first stage of opportunity, then the reality is that they were entirely worthless. And sure, you may be writing down someone's, you know, demand gen quota as a result of that, but it's really not having a material impact on the business. And so for years I've advocated for marketers to get closer and closer to revenue.

I think that we're in a time right now where that LinkedIn post. But it's actually essential to run a successful go to market motion.

Tricia Gellman: Yeah. And I would say too, um, especially in the past couple of years where everything's been tighter, things have been moving slower, deal cycles have gotten [00:21:00] longer. I think marketing has to be more aware of what's working, what's not working. That's where like a weekly bi weekly conversation, you shouldn't show up to have the conversation of like, what does the chart look like on the numbers?

You should be showing up to have the conversation of like, what's working, what's not working. Why is it not working? Like in the case of my client that had these really poor close rates, They were fielding lots of great opportunities in an actual ICP. But the problem was that there was no, um, action, whether it be on the marketing side or the sales side to surround the account.

Yeah. And so what they were finding is the person in the opportunity was the wrong person and then they would just dead it out versus saying, Oh, well, we know that in order to close a deal, we need five to seven people to be involved. So what is marketing's role in doing that? What is sales's role in doing that?

And how do we actually like use these, what we were previously calling opportunities as more sort of like intent within an account so that we, as a team surround the [00:22:00] account.

Craig Rosenberg: you know, it was wild when back in the Topo days, we don't, we had a SDR practice and a demand gen practice and people would bring us in and say, well, I mean, there was folks where they weren't creating any, anything, but then like, I would say 65, 70%, they'd say, well, the SDRs suck. Then you come in and fix it.

And then we'd look, and the opportunity definition was not Like codified. Meeting definitions weren't codified. And so like, of course they were going to fail. We had one rep who's like, I'll take everything and I'll clear it for you. Instead of us saying, no, like we're trying to create opportunities that fit this.

Right. And that, you know, that honestly like sounds like, well, how would that solve? It's, it gives everyone a North star. Now, Mark's doing SDR, they can go figure out. How they can create the right type of opportunity. [00:23:00] But when you just say, if you don't say anything in the SDR set meetings and whatever, and, you know, marketing creates this, uh, great amount of activity that gets translated into meetings, but they don't convert farther down the line.

So. It typically comes down to folks not saying, well, look, if this has this, that it's an opportunity. Uh, if you don't do that, man, you're just going to have everyone's personal preferences in play and you won't know. Right. So yeah.

Tricia Gellman: Well, I think like one of the things here to just call out is. Everybody works to their goals. Like it always works. Like whatever the incentive is, that's what people work towards. So if marketing's incentive is number of opportunities, you're going to know a high volume of opportunities. If STR is, you know, incentive is number of meetings, you're going to get a lot of meetings.

I mean, in the end of the day, you got to think, what are we trying to do for the business and how do all of these things align as well, because if marketing's goal doesn't align to the sales and the STR goal or whoever, you know, the You know, it's touching things. It all breaks down.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, for [00:24:00] sure. And I think, you know, for years people would ask me, What is your definition of an opportunity? Or what is your definition of a meeting? What does it take to progress something in a cycle? The reality is, is every business is a little bit different. The, the goal here is not to say, Hey, our definition should match.

Salesforce is or boxes. It should be what's appropriate for your business. And the thing that I tell people is like, these definitions are, they're kind of like dieting. As long as you stick to it, it's going to work. It doesn't, you know, it could be keto. It could be intermittent fasting or it could be whatever.

But whatever you stick to will work. And to Craig's point, that provides everybody with the North Star so they know what they should be working towards. It may be Bant. Uh, and I know I haven't heard Bant in probably half a decade, but that may be what's appropriate for your business. And if you're in something that's a little bit more velocity, uh, where the deals close really fast and, you know, hand raisers turn into, into contracts within, you know, a manner of weeks, it [00:25:00] might be something that's a little bit looser.

So it just depends upon your business. And I think like looking to someone for a best practice, the best practice here is just have definitions, codify them and make sure that everybody's playing by the same rule book.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. Yeah. Be like, because you said it's about where you are as a business. Cause I met a couple of reps, hung out with them at, At Dreamforce from your enterprise. I don't know a lot. Uh, yeah, I love hanging out, you know, uh, they were, you know, enterprise ish, sales reps and AI is how you will expand for, for these guys.

They're like, well, we're in a weird spot because for years, the company has the categories built, they can do band. So they would say, look, if they don't have, if there's no project or deal here, I'm cutting bait. But now that they're trying to sell AI and you've got buyers who are trying to sort through everything, you can't cut bait.

No, because you have to [00:26:00] build on that. And like, that is a change in the business that needs to change the North star and track things. Right. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah,

Tricia Gellman: Yeah, that would dramatically impact the criteria of like, how do you move something from one stage of an opportunity to another? Like, maybe the company meets all the ICP and the person said that they, like, have a problem that you know you can solve. But then at the end of the day, like, how long is it going to take?

To move through and what is really like a late stage opportunity versus not. I mean, if you don't have a company you're selling into that has an AI approval process and you haven't met that criteria, you're not selling any AI. I

Craig Rosenberg: right. Yeah, that's right. All right. So, uh, I'm going to help, I'm going to help trend transition here. Normally we'll just keep digging in. I do have more questions, but I do want to make sure. Because it's, it's aligned with the theme. Matt, [00:27:00] I'm going to transition to your big question for Tricia. Okay.

All right. Actually, honestly, to everyone listening, I'm actually excited to hear her answer.

Matt Amundson: Oh, all right. There's so much pressure here. There's so much pressure. All right, Tricia, you've been a CMO before and, uh, in the, in the weeks leading up to and in the opening weeks of starting a new role, whether it was a drift or whether it was a checker and now here at Box, Um, there's, there's an amount of preparation that you get into.

There's data that you look at, there's customers that you want to meet. There's, uh, there's peers within the organization that you want to align to pretty quickly. What is different about your approach to coming on board at Box in 2024 than what it was when you were maybe coming on board at Drift or when you were coming on board at Checker?

Because the landscape has changed, so is there new data? Are there new personas that you're aligning to? Is there new levels of, [00:28:00] uh, of research that you're doing as you're coming on board? And some of it may just be, you know, your own personal growth, but, uh, but, but is it different in 2024 than it was, say, in 2017?

Tricia Gellman: think because of where Box is like the opportunity at Box is to take. The content management category, which is not a fast growing category. And let's just agree. It's like not the sexiest thing and transform it with AI. So like Craig's comment about AI previously is highly relevant, but. There's a lot more I feel like I need to do in understanding the product and meeting with the product team and understanding the roadmap and understanding like what is the customer adoption and the customer feedback.

Like I think it's really important as a CMO that you meet with customers and you really hear firsthand like why do people like your product but even more so now in this role I feel like our opportunity is to totally disrupt the space with AI [00:29:00] in the category of content. And so are we really delivering?

Like, is the product roadmap, like how we checked like two out of 10 features are, like, where are we and how is this really folding out? Um, with the product team, I think has been really important for me to understand, and then not just like, what are the customers saying that are using it or thinking about it, but like, what are the metrics that we're looking at for that versus the metrics for like a true marketing metric of like, are we driving pipeline, et cetera?

It's like, do we actually have active users? And if not, like, what are we doing? And do I own that? Or does someone else own it? Like, where does this all sit for the overall business success?

Matt Amundson: You know, it's a go ahead, Craig.

Craig Rosenberg: No, because Matt has been huge about talking about product and, uh, tell you about how buyers now are, you know, Their, their needs to really dig into the product or, or like we used to, I mean, I remember when I [00:30:00] first started, everyone's like, Oh no, I can't talk about that. Yes. First, let me ask you all these questions and then do all these things.

And then you can see the product and now that's moving farther, farther up and like, but also how we market, et cetera. Like Matt, Matt talks a lot about like, no, I'm like deeply embedded with the product team. So is that new?

Tricia Gellman: I don't think it's new. I mean, so I believe, cause like, you know, I feel like my Salesforce career, like I worked for a while in marketing before my Salesforce career, but in my Salesforce career, we were creating the whole category of sales. And, and I've done a lot of category creation and I think if you are trying to change a full on paradigm in a business, you end up having to talk more about your features and your product and what it does, because like just talking at a fluff high level, like people aren't going to move.

And so people have to see it to believe it. It's kind of [00:31:00] like if you're creating a new category and you're doing something dramatically different, you have to look at like the crossing the chasm. Um, Like no one's going to go across the chasm and even your early adopters are going to act more like they have to cross the chasm because you're asking them to change and look at like, what is it that I need to do?

And that might mean like talking about product more. I think AI is crazy. I don't know. It's all like in its own category because AI is so noisy. And so I think then you end up as a marketer and a salesperson trying to figure out like, what are you going to do? I mean, there's, I could go on the street in San Francisco right now and ask five people, like, do you understand what it is?

And probably five out of five. But if I ask them, like, do you know what, you know, like a natural language processor is or something, they might look at me like I was speaking in Chinese. Like everyone [00:32:00] feels like AI is here. So they have to say, yes, I get it. But in fact they don't. And so if you're trying to market yourself as like this disruptor with AI, or like we add you all this value because of AI, it's so noisy and you have to figure out how can you Get the message through because if you just say AI, AI, AI, then also no one hears you.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah. So this is an interesting topic. Uh, not, not AI specifically, but the pro but the topic around, you know, a deeper alignment with, with product. And it's, it's, it's kind of not new, but it is new because it's just, it's, it's different. I've always tried to align myself with the product leader just because, you know, to get product marketing fully up to speed, to understand roadmap, to understand product launches, etc, etc.

But today, I feel like there is this, This thing that's sort of, it's on the tip of everyone's tongue, but not everybody's necessarily saying it out loud. And that is if your product is just fundamentally better than your competitor's product, People will [00:33:00] buy it and they don't really go through your funnel.

There's this thing that's sort of happening where, you know, if I'm looking for say, you know, Hey, I'm not, but like if I was looking for the next great marketing automation platform, well I just call you and Minnie and Maria Pergolino and Sidney Sloan and just be like, Hey, what are you guys using for this?

Right. And it's like, I wouldn't go through their funnel. I just find out from you guys, what you were, what you're using. And you'd be like, Oh, this it's, it's awesome. It's a better product than what, you know, maybe Marketo or HubSpot are. I'd be like, okay, cool. I'm going to go through a sales cycle and go evaluate it myself.

And it's this weird, it's not a dark funnel. It's like a non digital funnel. Whereas like there's a reputation of a product and like the users of the product are advocating it for a way that's very different from the way we thought about like customer advocation or customer champions in the past. It's like, They're not getting on LinkedIn or [00:34:00] X and saying, Hey, this product rocks, but they're having these conversations amongst their peer group and people are seeking out their peer group for answers because either they don't want to go evaluate five or six vendors or they just want to cut to the finish line immediately and just say, yeah, just give me the best one.

And I don't want to worry about learning about

Tricia Gellman: I think this is new and this is different. I think since COVID and maybe it's because of the, the evolution of the technologies and things like that too, but like everyone's holed in their little space during COVID. And then we couldn't do in person, we couldn't do anything. And then now I think post COVID, there's a lot more networking and influence that's happening.

Like, Not going onto the sites, not being marketed to, not being in the funnel, but just like, okay, this is what's happening. And if things are really working and the product's really performing, then you get a lot of this sort of actual word of mouth, but it's word of mouth at it's like C suite level, it's not [00:35:00] just like, Oh my God, everybody in the world is talking about things.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah. It's C suite. And I think it's also board level. Like I've never, like I experienced in my last few companies, like the board being like, Hey, have you seen this product? It's really great. Your metrics around this aren't great. This could be super helpful for you. I'm like, okay, cool. I'll go check it out.

Tricia Gellman: Yeah, I agree. And I think like, this is back to like, we have this huge conversation about brand, I mean, about pipeline and measurement and these dashboards and sales and marketing, but like. This is where brand matters a lot.

Matt Amundson: A hundred percent. I

Tricia Gellman: like in my work at Drift, like we really played on this, like Drift had a great brand, but it wasn't with the C suite.

And so we basically changed how we talked about the brand to move it to the C suite. And then from that, we unlocked like an entire enterprise go to market.

Craig Rosenberg: By the way, when did the industry start using the phrase C Suite? Cause it, it's so used now, but it was, when I first heard it, I'm like, that is incredible. I remember Ted [00:36:00] Purcell, you know, he's got that big cackle laugh. He's like, the C Suite, man! He's just laughing. Such a killer term, but anyway, sorry, I digress.

I think that's actually, you guys are onto something really interesting.

Tricia Gellman: Yeah. I mean, I would like, you know, I haven't worked at either of these companies, but I would say that this is how Sixth Sense has disrupted demand based.

Matt Amundson: completely agree with you. I completely agree with you. They have a physical community of folks that go to their events, and they have their C level event that they run, and it's like, it's not this big public digital display of what's going on, it is Thank you People who have been brought together in physical spaces and have a real network, not just like, oh, you know, I get together every now and then like these people are very friendly with one another.

And Sixth Sense lies in the middle of that. I think, you know,

Tricia Gellman: And it basically came out of COVID. It's so bizarre, but it did come out of COVID. And like, by doing that, they created this like conversation that's [00:37:00] happening at like a true trusted level across CMOs that demand based just didn't like whether they have like equal product or not, or whatever, back in the day, et cetera, like they missed the boat.

Yeah. Um,

Craig Rosenberg: So one thing that, uh, if I, if I may, that I think is really interesting in your role now, Tricia, is that if you took what you guys just described from, um, Sixth Sense, there's a function, though, that's like, you can narrow that thing down. You're a box now. And everyone can use it.

Tricia Gellman: yeah. I mean, this is my challenge at Box. We do like 100 percent PLG self service buy for one person all the way up to large enterprise and you have to figure out as a CMO, like, what are you doing for who and where? Um, which is really interesting.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, it's so different, you know, I, I feel like when, um, there is this hidden, you know, I used to say vertical sass has [00:38:00] the hidden advantage because, well, not hidden, but they have to like, dig so deep into one vertical that it allows them to be the marketer and the salespeople to be real experts. But I would say the same thing about companies that are built around a function.

Function. That's another advantage because now when you build community and you build these, uh, referral loops, uh, you have, you know, a set of people that you can literally say that, you know, the CFO for, uh, like, you know, NetSuite and Intact, you know, it's like maybe you knew exactly what the stakeholder map look like.

I think in the case of Box and Notion and, you know, some of these other folks where it's like, Uh, sort of wrapping your hands around that and creating real, uh, network effects with, you know, a particular group is much more, it's harder. [00:39:00] Yeah.

Tricia Gellman: It's harder, but I think like that goes back, I think to one of the key roles of leadership across sales and marketing is like really being clear on who are we going after? Why are we going after it? And then like, how are we going to go after it? Back to my drift day again. It's like when I got there, like they were unequivocally the leader in conversational marketing.

They created the category. Yeah, the person who was buying the product was like not even a senior manager. It was a manager in a marketing organization, like three to five levels down from the CMO. And then there was a lot of churn. And then you're wondering like, well, why? Because actually you're selling a product really low in the organization.

You're selling at a price point that's really low. compared to like actually the value you're delivering. So no one believes that it's delivering that value. And you're not having a conversation with the right people. So like really aligning between sales and marketing, like who do we need to go after?

What do those people care about? And how do we reframe the conversation was like the key [00:40:00] pivot that we had to drive.

Craig Rosenberg: Huh. That's so interesting.

Matt Amundson: reminds me of a conversation we just had, Craig, where the discussion was around the concept of a blueprint. Uh, uh, that everybody on the executive team could get aligned around. Not only what is the product that we sell? Who do we sell it to? But what is the, what is the customer journey? How do we go take it up?

Uh, in the organization, what are the steps towards expansion, et cetera, and just giving it, getting everybody on board with that. And then sort of mapping for an earlier stage company, but mapping roles and responsibilities and how you're going to go higher around that. I thought was a, it was, it's an interesting conversation.

Tricia Gellman: Yeah. But even, I mean, at Box, I think understanding the customer journey, because like now if we want to sell AI, I mean, content management, like the senior leaders in a company, like they kind of approve everybody to use everything. But if you have the advantage that you have unique AI and the ability to unlock information out of your content, it's not [00:41:00] just like, Oh, I need to store my content now.

It's like, how do we actually drive fundamental process and decision making in a company? And so it might be different buyers. It may be like how you like, wrap people into the buying process. And so, you know, we need to look at that. That's one of the things we're doing actually is what is the journey and who's in it and are we messaging to the right people and do we have the communities for the right people?

Um, so that we can be successful.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, but, I mean, but I, in the time we have left, if I took this, like the way we started this conversation, which was what, what that, so we just identified, this is different. Yeah. But like, so Matt's gonna start something new, Trish you're starting, so I'll put it to both of you, like, what will you do around that, if that's one of the most important ways that we get Deals done.

Like, I think we just had the, you know, we just talked about the, the community building and those things, but [00:42:00] like, how would you a identify that going in be like, set yourself up to foster that going forward as you guys go start new gigs at, as CMOs at new companies, like what would you

Tricia Gellman: I think partnering with CS is more important than it used to be. Oh, that's a good one. Because I think like you really have to understand like how happy is your constituency? Like, yes, we have product market fit. Yeah. We're like selling things off the You know, the doc like super fast, but why do people like the product?

Do they really like the product? When you go out and meet with them, can you consistently get them to say something that is truly valuable? And if not, like, how do we rally the forces of like sales, marketing product and everyone to like, make sure we double down and build the thing that like people really are going to go talk about,

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Totally agree with that. Uh, for me, I think like one of the things that I want to get off [00:43:00] the ground as quickly as possible and we sell to very high level people within an organization is to do everything I can to start laying the tracks for a physical community. Just because I, you know, look, I've always respected the work that Latine's done at Sixth Sense.

I think that there is something truly magical to that. Uh, that I would like to try to replicate. Also, you know, things that Craig and Scott did at Topo were really magical. And I think that there's, there's something to learn from that. Um, because that was true for, for Topo as well, Craig, like people talked about Topo and the brand was sort of known as the place where you go to get information.

Not just from. You know, uh, from, you know, your team, but from the other members of the community, there was a reason why when you guys put on your annual summit, people like flock to it and you're like, advisory firm and there's 1600 people coming out to an event in San Francisco, right? Like it's [00:44:00] because there was this, this cool factor and this community factor, not just, Hey, I'm going to go get, you know, sort of shuffled into this little space and get a sip of coffee and then try to get out of there as quickly as possible.

But because I'm going to go there, it's going to be a great experience. I'm going to meet some really interesting people who have really interesting ideas that I can learn from. So that's what I'm going to try to pull off and it's going to be really hard, but, uh, all good things are hard to build.

Tricia Gellman: yeah, sounds great.

Craig Rosenberg: Look at you guys. Yeah, we'll have to check in and see. I mean, that's ambitious. I love it. Um, okay. So if we, in the, in the one minute we have left, if there was anything that we didn't cover, we won't be able to cover, but it would be interesting to hear because it feels like we figured 15 minutes. Uh, and the way I think about it was like.

Uh, is there anything [00:45:00] that's still like, we just uncovered some different stuff. Is there anything else that's different that we need to account for that we could bring up with 30 seconds left and talk about next time we hang out? Okay. Buzzer beater. Go Trisha.

Tricia Gellman: I mean, I still think like product marketing and the way that you message is like, you have to get it right. And I think it's even more important now than it was before.

Craig Rosenberg: See, you were, I mean, that was the bomb drop. That's great. Can I just add to that? Why is it so hard to hire product marketers?

Tricia Gellman: I think

the role definition is like too wide and I think like what you really need, people need to be clear on what they really need.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. Wow, look at that. Two, two tidbits in 37 seconds. Yeah. Patricia Gellman, folks. Alright, this was awesome. It was great to catch up. By the way, I It Yeah. I mean, it was fun and you got, it was a really good conversation. That's what we're trying to do here at the transaction. So thank you. Thanks for making this happen.

So amazing. Thank you, [00:46:00] Tricia. All right. Yeah. Great to see you. We'll see you soon.