The Transaction

TT - 054 - Matt Heinz
===

Matt Heinz: [00:00:00] 80% of the companies I see are, doing random acts of ai.

We call everything intent signals, and most of them have nothing to do with intent.

Trust in relationships is going to be the differentiator.

We shouldn't be guessing on that anymore.

We should be using the agents to tell us how to improve

if I have more noise and less time, who am I gonna prioritize?

It's the people I enjoy. It's the people I trust. It's the people I like. That's gonna be a huge differentiator moving forward.

There's something evolving right now in how Go-To-Market teams use ai

Craig Rosenberg: so let's go back to the bats. so yes, I'm due next Thursday. So here's the deal. I've been dying to do like a Go-To-Market meetup in Austin, and so I was going, I'm going out there for the final four, and I'm like, and I want the kids to see the bat. So basically Sam, there's the biggest bat colony in the United States, is under the Congress bridge in Austin.

And so, so yeah. So no, I will not be dressing as a bat. Um, and making, actually I could do that where it's like, Hey, and I also [00:01:00] dress as a bat or Batman. I like to wear bat type Batman suits sometimes when I'm hanging out. Yeah. I mean, I'll just be like, Hey, you know what? You guys wanna go out.

Matt Heinz: That's.

Craig Rosenberg: Bat and bat is true.

Sam Guertin: I wasn't sure if, you know, there's a, a booming, uh, baseball bat industry in Austin, so that's,

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Well, there we

Craig Rosenberg: big time. By the way, I

Sam Guertin: not heard of the biggest bat colony. I'm sorry.

Craig Rosenberg: I just had to buy my kid. What's the, I forget the new bat. I just bought him. I don't know why I had to buy him a bat, but, um, he, uh, he, this kid, it's my youngest and he really wanted the new, that Arctic hype. I don't know if you saw that. The ice, it was like, it, they, they made limited edition. The thing was going for a thousand bucks.

And this kid's so spoiled. He's my youngest that he just can lobby me for days and get what he wants. And so he is lobbying, lobbying me. I'm like, I'll get you an Arctic ice. There's no way I'm getting him an Arctic ice. So we go to this baseball tournament and there's a [00:02:00] raffle and he buys a ticket, um, to the raffle.

And everyone knew 'cause he told everyone he has one ticket, he wins the Arctic ice. At the raffle. I'm like the luckiest man alive, dude, it was unreal. And it was his, it was like a what, 29 or whatever, and like, yeah. So there we go. Um, all right, so,

Matt Heinz: so real quick, since I know this is how you roll on these podcasts, please tell me you've seen the Bert Kreischer, um, you know, uh, auction raffle bit.

Craig Rosenberg: no,

Matt Heinz: Matt, you've seen this.

Craig Rosenberg: have you seen it?

Matt Heinz: Like,

Craig Rosenberg: is it?

Matt Heinz: so, you know, he's, he's the guy that does the machine, right? He takes his shirt off on stage, does a machine.

Craig Rosenberg: The guy's hilarious.

Matt Heinz: long stories that are like a bunch of jokes and there's a big payoff. He's got one about like some school charity auction and just, I'm not gonna give it away. I'm not gonna just go, go watch it. It's hilarious. He

Craig Rosenberg: I can't wait.

I He's got a new Netflix special. I,

Matt Heinz: does. He's [00:03:00] coming here in the fall. I can't wait for that. I've seen him in person. He's, he's awesome.

Craig Rosenberg: Let's do an event. Sam will wear his Batman outfit. Um, so

Matt Heinz: we should all go like with a theme. Can we be like the fantastic four,

Matt Amundson: There we go.

Matt Heinz: draw, draw straws on who's gonna be who. That could be fun.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh my God. Um, so, uh, all right. I, I, I knew this one was gonna be fun and so yeah.

Matt Amundson: Friday.

Craig Rosenberg: So it is, it is Friday. Wait, um, sorry I got distracted 'cause this guy's calling me who I was. I need to rip and I didn't get a chance to rip him before this

Matt Heinz: Put on, make a, bring them on. This will the best episode you've ever

Matt Amundson: phone a friend. Phone a friend,

Matt Heinz: ripping someone, a new one on air.

Craig Rosenberg: that would be the transaction.

​

Craig Rosenberg: [00:04:00] I just want to do a, a quick intro. 'cause Matt, you are officially, uh, B2B Go-To-Market famous. Right. Um, you're, you're out there. You've been out there the whole time. You've. Pretty much never stopped. Matt and I took, had little peaks and valleys.

Um, and, you know, you've been out there, you've got an audience of new folks, old folks, et cetera. It's been awesome to watch you. As you know, I jump on your, uh, show when I can with you and Brent. It's, it's early, you know, I'll be making breakfast and listen to it and it's fun. And so, um, but Matt Hines has been like, um, one of the thought leaders in the space for probably 20 years and, um.

You know, I've spoke with him and he complains that I talk too long when we speak. Uh, I've [00:05:00] watched him speak. I've been reading his stuff, listening to his stuff, done work with him, everything. He's one of the best in the business and he's fun. And we're gonna have fun. And everyone, the transaction audience, I'd like you to meet Matt Hines.

Matt Heinz: It is an absolute pleasure to be here. Craig, uh, I wanna point out to, to be here with the funnel Holic himself is just unbelievable. I do wanna point out though, that you were episode one of Sales Pipeline Radio six years ago, and so I'm not sure how I got so far down the list for this amazing podcast, but, um, it's a pleasure to be here.

Matt Amundson: Well, we had to, we had to build the groundswell first.

Matt Heinz: Okay, let's build the audience for me. Okay. All right. That's fair. That's fair.

Craig Rosenberg: actually. Yeah, we uh, that's a good point, Matt. Why why'd you choose Matt so late?

Heinz. Well, I mean, we had to, we had to normalize our audience that there's only one mat on this show, and I thought introducing a [00:06:00] second mat might be too many mats. Just, you know, I mean, it makes

Matt Heinz: Most shows are kind of a parabola, right? Like you don't wanna be on too early 'cause there's no audience. You don't wanna be on too late 'cause you jumped the shark and people are moving on to something else. So I'm hoping I'm right at the peak.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. You, you, you are here at the Apex Mountain

Matt Heinz: All right, cool.

Craig Rosenberg: right. Um, so

Matt Heinz: people say parabola your show, by the way?

What

Matt Amundson: That's a first. That's a first.

Matt Heinz: Okay,

Craig Rosenberg: Okay. Let's write that down. I gotta go look up what it

Matt Amundson: Put that in the show notes.

Matt Heinz: It's about Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Show notes. Oh, well then I have no idea what you're talking about. So the, um, the, so, uh, the other thing, by the way, the other thing as I ask this question is, um.

Matt, like, you know, us crosses all bounds and Go-To-Market. So, you know, I think you're known in the marketing side, but you know, you've always. Um, you know, been involved with sales and CS and executive looks and feels. So that is the show, right? We don't want to be one or the [00:07:00] other. Um, so let's start, we have two questions that frame the show.

One is, uh, the, which I will bring to you in a second, is the Matt Amundson, uh, feature enhancement 2.1 A, which

Matt Amundson: you by Allstate.

Craig Rosenberg: But if he kills it, if he,

Matt Heinz: Could be, could be.

Craig Rosenberg: but, but if Hines kills it, it'll be 2.1 B, uh, because we'll, he'll change it knowing that guy. And then the second one, which we'll get to is we, we want to get to your, what you see the big things are that are different and Go-To-Market today and what you should do about it.

We'll get to that in a sec. So the first one. Is just bringing stories up front, man. We want to hear like, tell us some Go-To-Market stories, funny, uh, heroic, whatever that might be. Uh, you can make fun of me. That's fine. Uh, it's actually better I

Matt Amundson: E

Craig Rosenberg: we look at ratings. Yeah. Yeah. It's a courage. Yeah.

Oh wow. Jinx. That's great. You guys have to wear, you'll have to wear the tight Batman suits both of you. Next time, next show. [00:08:00] Um, so. Yeah. So Matt, uh, we're gonna hand the mic to you and let's hear, let's hear what you got, brother.

Matt Heinz: Uh,

B2B Marketers are Terrible at Naming Concepts, Products, and Strategies
---

Matt Heinz: so one of the things I think I've been thinking about lately is how terrible we are as marketers at naming things in our industry. So let's go back in time and just highlight some things we've gotten wrong,

Craig Rosenberg: Oh let's start with. Marketing automation, right? Marketing automation. Is it automated?

Matt Heinz: No, it is not. But that's what we call it. Maybe that's what we call it. Because we wanted people to buy it. 'cause they thought it was automated marketing automation not automated. How about social selling? Craig? How much selling happens on Twitter? X, whatever. Like I get that it's a channel to engage people, but when I think selling, I think closing and I think that's terrible.

That's two, three. You ready? Account based marketing.

Matt Amundson: Ooh, something near and dear.

Matt Heinz: If it's just marketing, we've done this wrong, right? It's account based. I don't know. I hear you say you've always said account based, which I think is fine. A BX account based Go-To-Market. But when we pigeonholed [00:09:00] in marketing, we've made a mistake and my latest favorite that we have named that I think is awful is intent signals

Matt Amundson: Hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: Love that. That's number one.

Matt Heinz: We call everything intent signals, and most of them have nothing to do with intent. We assume because we've seen some signal out there. Ooh, that's someone that wants to buy. It's the 2025 version of they filled out a form. They must be SQL, so we must put them in front of a salesperson to call right now.

So just because you've got a signal does not mean this person is ready to buy right now. And yet, here we are again, naming things poorly and acting accordingly.

Craig Rosenberg: IF oh my God, that was the best fricking lead we've had. That was so good. But let I, we gotta do this. We gotta re-rank, because Matt and I both reacted intent data was, you know, oftentimes we name things and brand things that kill themselves. Intent data tells us it.

Matt Amundson: analytics.

Craig Rosenberg: It's, that's right. You were, that was your [00:10:00] fault, right?

That was Matt's fault. So I have two comments. So I would go, actually, I would put predictive, Matt, we Heinz, we gotta put predictive analytics on

there too. But it intent data was gonna kill itself by calling it intent data because it's a, it's a great signal. And as a, in a group of many things, it's powerful, but it's not telling you they're gonna buy content consumption never told you someone was gonna buy.

That was also Matt's fault 'cause he was at Marketo and they sold that to that, that, um, yeah, that to everybody. But I would go. Intent data. One. Predictive analytics. Two. Marketing automation. Three, account based marketing. Four, because I, I tried to attack account based marketing early, so I'm giving myself credit on that ranking.

I have one, one other comment. This is really interesting on what you just said, Matt, so nobody knows this, but when I was at Gartner, I was trying to find creative ways to create content. And so what I [00:11:00] did was I was prepping for this. I just could never sell it Internally. I had, I wanted to talk about. Uh, so the analysts there were starting to talk about revenue performance management, and I'm like, you guys, someone's already tried that.

So I went and I got, I did a call, I got Joe Chernoff, Steve Woods, and Jon Miller. So Eloqua and Marketo. Marketo, both folks that tried it. This is Revenue performance management. I will get back to marketing. Automate. So we're talking and we're doing all this like stuff, and then, um, Steve Woods gets on.

And he was walking and he comes off mute and he's like, guys, here's the thing with categories. You don't get to choose them. The market takes them and runs with them. And we were selling something nobody wanted to talk about. That's it. Done. And everyone stopped. They're like, holy shit. And then Miller goes.

You know what's funny is marketing automation is a terrible name for it, but the market took it and ran with it, and so we were then, [00:12:00] so that, you know, that's interesting, you know, for you to bring that up and, and you know, John's observation's, right? You know, John's very technical as you know, he is probably like, well, this isn't technically correct, but then the thing just took the market, embraced it, and ran with it.

Right or wrong.

Matt Heinz: Yep. And do you know what the commonality is amongst all those names?

Craig Rosenberg: mad, mad Emon did it, oh, sorry, go

Matt Heinz: No, it's, it's, it's optimism, right? It's, it implies it's gonna be easy to do something. Marketing automation. Social selling intent signals, predictive analytics. Right. So there's a, there's a word in there that the market glams onto.

Because it's what they want. It's not what it does, it's not what's possible in the laws of physics, in, in Go-To-Market. But it sounds great. I mean, you mentioned a few months ago, Craig, I, and I still think about this all the time, that in B2B, like it's a very hits driven business, right? Whether it's challenger or the waterfall from the, from Serious Decisions back in the day, ABM, like you find that hit, whether you define it or whether the [00:13:00] market says, I'm going onto that.

That's, that's where the momentum is. It's always fleeting 'cause there's always the next shiny object. Uh, but it's interesting to sort of watch and, you know, we've been, we've all been around for a while to watch those hits, come and go.

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: That's so, so good. Such a good reset. Matt, give us your rankings on Hines' List. Would you re swizzle that?

Matt Amundson: Um, so I mean, as a person who sold many of these items, or at least sold the dream of many of these items, uh, I can go through, I could go through what was financially impactful. I'd say predictive analytics. Uh, there was a lot of hype around it, but it was a weird category that literally died before it started.

Like just people were like, yeah, this is great. And VCs were pumping tons of capital into it and the valuations were crazy before valuations really got crazy. But like it was a thing that just never really turned into a thing. And basically everybody who ended up having some kind of success story of that, [00:14:00] like pivoted out of it.

So I would give that, how many items do we have here? Four or five.

Matt Heinz: we're at five now.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, we added predictive analytics.

Matt Amundson: I'll put, I'll put predictive analytics at, at, at five, uh, intent data, which was a thing that I also sold, like, I'm gonna put that at number one because intent data has caused so much harm to people in terms of like falling flat on your face as a sales rep going, Hey, as I understand it, your company is interested in buying a new CDP or.

Or a new CRM or whatever the heck else that they thought they were gonna buy, and people were like, um, I don't know who you are or what you're talking about, sir, please, kindly just lose my number and, and maybe lose your job. Uh, marketing automation, it's interesting because I think if you would've called that category email automation, you would've sold the, uh, those deals for around, you know, $10,000 at max.

And so I think. Upleveling, the naming convention there was probably pretty important. So while true, and especially given the fact that like the godfather of that space refers to it as like being incorrectly [00:15:00] named, I'll give that a three. Um, ABM, it was like debated the second it came out, so I'll give that a four.

And I think like for the most part, people got into the concept of either A, B, X, or account based everything pretty quick. Uh, you know, we just had Lars on, you know, obviously the godfather of account based sales development himself. Uh, so I'll, I'll give that a number four. And then what's number two?

Matt Heinz: You just gave number four. Sam, do you have any at keeping track this

Sam Guertin: I'm Yeah, that's number four. So social selling is, is also number four.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh

yeah. I forgot. I forgot that one.

Oh man,

Matt Amundson: So four, four and four.

Matt Heinz: well listen, uh, let, and just, just, and you can edit this out. This is too much like business answer, right? But like, I don't mind signals, I just don't like that. We think all signals are intent signals. Like when we talk to clients about this, I said, think about the journey your buyers, right? Like intent signals is late stage.

Great If you see them fantastic. Before you get to [00:16:00] intent signals, you have need signals. Where's the evidence that there is a need? That exists. Evidence that the need is understood that they're pursuing, trying to find a solution to that, maybe internal, external. So then there's need, but before need, there's evidence.

And that's one of my favorites, evidence signals is examples that there's a problem that the prospect may or may not know about, may or may not have quantified, may or may not have translated into a need, which leads to a commitment to change. And now we're going somewhere. But if you can identify, if you can define your ICP and define your targets better well enough so you can really nail that evidence signal, that's not a deal that's gonna close this month, but now you're in early, now you're actually engaging someone on their terms more earlier and earlier.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, I'm with you on that. Did we have this conversation? Because like it just seems like, I've heard you do this before and I'm totally down with it. 'cause I don't want anybody to think. That I'm not down with intent signals.

I'm down with signals because right [00:17:00] now the hardest thing in the world to do is engage. That is the hardest thing. And if I can have a signal, like an intent signal, that will tell me well. I got something I might be able to talk to them about. They're not gonna buy. That's the problem with the word intent.

I'm, I'm totally down with that. I, I get it. By the way, I, I wanted to give one example, uh, that Matt, I think Heinz, I think you'll enjoy was, uh, so at, I was with Topo, I was at EverString. We collided at a similar client. Matt's team was, I think, selling. My team was advising and they said, well, everting is here.

You should come. So I go to the meeting, and this is not Matt's team's fault. They were talking about it and AF afterwards, Matt's like, well, what'd you think? I said, well, you guys have a big problem. It's gonna end up being my problem. He's like, what? I said, the buyer is calling the intent signals leads.

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: Do remember that? I think you were heading, you were heading over to that amazing fajita place. [00:18:00] I'm like, bro, you got a problem. He's calling them leads and the sales leader's like, well, I want those. And I'm going, dude, like don't call them leads. You're, you're just screwed. I don't know. Did he keep calling 'em leads? 'cause that's not, that did not help the cause, I'm sure.

But, uh.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, I mean, I don't wanna name the company or the person, but that that person didn't work at that company very company very well. Alright, well there you go. If he's listening, it was because you called him leads. Um, all right, Matt, uh, thank you for not telling the

Craig Rosenberg: Sox story, which is one of your favorites. Um, when, uh.

It. Whenever I see people that have seen Heinz, he's got like a collection of 'em that he drops on it. Um, but uh, all right, before I go to the next question, 'cause that was amazing. Uh, yeah, that was the best we've had. Uh, any other things you wanna bring up before we talk about, uh, market changes?

Matt Heinz: the other thing I'm kind of rail, well, there, you brought up, uh, I think you talked about at, we [00:19:00] talked about predictive analytics. It makes me think about attribution. I got a whole rant on like, you know, that like the tools are getting better, but there's no way it's ever gonna catch up to the complexity of what actually happens out there.

And yet, you know, the CFO wants to know like, what did that channel drive? It's just, it's, it drives me nuts and unfortunately it's getting. Worse. Um, so there's that one.

Should CMOs Report Up to CROs in B2B SaaS
---

Matt Heinz: The other one that actually bothers me greatly is this increasing trend of CMOs reporting to CROs. And I realize there's situations where that actually is healthy and useful, but I think in at least four out of five cases, it's detrimental to the business short term and long term.

And we can get into that if you want, but that's the other thing that's sort of drive me nuts right now.

Craig Rosenberg: Well, let's talk about that. Uh, you're seeing that more,

Matt Heinz: I am. Yeah. And literally this week, just this week, I talked to two CMOs where A CRO was hired. They used to have a direct relationship between CRO or VP of sales and the CMO. Now someone brought 'em in and said, we want this person to run, Go-To-Market. So now sales, marketing, CS, account management, some cases product all reports up to A CRO.

Craig Rosenberg: Wow. [00:20:00] That does not sound good.

Matt Amundson: There are, there are places, there are places where it works well, but, uh,

Matt Heinz: There's places it works well if you have a CRO that understands how to balance those functions together, it becomes a challenge when you've got someone, I don't care what their background is. You could be, you could have a career in sales and nothing else, and if you become CRO and you're managing those functions, you can still value the exchange and the integration across those, across those functions of what they need to do happens too.

Is that everything serves the immediate pipeline need and so gone. Are any investments in brand, any investments in long-term awareness? Anything that drives? I mean, forget about budgeting things in 2025 that have 26 impact. Even if your sales cycles are like nine to 12 plus months, you only care about right now and you pay a premium for those immediate ready to buy leads if you need them just every month, every quarter, over and over, and that.

In the cases where it's not working well, not only does that not work in [00:21:00] terms of the performance of the business, but it the, the very structure is minimizing the role and the importance of marketing leadership, and it is leading great marketing leaders to leave the CMO role. And that is a real thing.

Matt Amundson: yep, yep. yep. And I, I see that quite a bit. I think. You know, one of the interesting things that I've seen just, uh, anecdotally is that, um, you know, in the, in the immediate runup after the sort of frothy, um, uh, times ending in like sort of during the pandemic is more and more marketers taking the blame for poor company performance.

And I think that this is a reaction to that, which is.

Craig Rosenberg: which is

Matt Amundson: Finance or, uh, executive leaders and maybe in certain cases, board members who are like, well, I want marketing to drive sales and that's the only thing I care about. And in order to do that, we need to make sure that sales is having, you know, kind of their finger on the pulse of what's happening.

So let's have marketing leaders report into CROs. [00:22:00] I think there are situations where it can work. You know, I think about, like

e
---

Matt Amundson: Ted Purcell, he, he manages the marketing function there and he does a, an awesome job, but he is. He's a little bit of a unicorn. He, you know, uh, I mean, obviously is the greatest head of hair in all of B2B.

I've said that

Craig Rosenberg: right? It's a true, wait, that was you that started that.

Matt Amundson: yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: Damn man. I yeah, yeah,

Sam Guertin: But how does it compare with Adam Robinson?

Matt Amundson: Adam's a, uh oh.

Craig Rosenberg: Let's do a hair ranking. Matt, sorry. You can't be in this one. Uh, yeah, he's I'm out. I'm out. well, this is three people that don't have great heads of hair, so I think we could, you know,

Matt's out. Matt just said he sound. I love it. All right. Purcell v. Adam Robinson, who has better hair. I

Matt Amundson: I mean, it's, it's, it's a blonde ambition thing, right? It's like, what? You know, what are you blonde, you brunette guy? What, what does it really come down to?

Matt Heinz: Are we only ranking the men or can we rank who we put women into women, side as well?

Craig Rosenberg: bro, if of that. There's lots [00:23:00] There's fewer men. There's fewer men in their fifties with great heads of hair that can sort of be ranked against

Matt Heinz: But now you have to be fit. You gotta be like an old guy now to, to be in this because are we, are we assuming that the younger go-to-market execs, by definition, have better hair?

Matt Amundson: yeah.

Matt Heinz: I'm just, I want the, I wanna set, I want the rules, right? If you're gonna rank these, and Matt, we know you're great at coming up with a ranking list, right?

Matt Amundson: Yeah,

Matt Heinz: Um, I.

Matt Amundson: Ted's, Ted's number four and Adam Robinson's number four.

Craig Rosenberg: It's a tie. It's a tie. It's a tie. Uh, you know what? Today I did a call with Anthony Ada, his hair in, oh man, that boy, he's got the hair. But I, I would still put him at three

Matt Heinz: See, I don't think that's fair.

Anthony's a young guy. Chris Walker's a young guy. Like you can't put the young people in 'cause they haven't gotten to this point yet. Right? Like you get, once you get to a stage, like it's just, it gets harder. And so at that stage it's rarer to have someone that's got the flow like that.

And it's, it's impressive.

Matt Amundson: True unicorns.

Matt Heinz: you I [00:24:00] was out and I can't, I can't stay out of it. I'm

Matt Amundson: But now,

Craig Rosenberg: All right, well,

Matt Amundson: in, you're in.

Craig Rosenberg: but Walker's got the whole thing going, dude. Like his, he's got the, the workout videos on Instagram. Dude's got, dude's got it going on. Is that bad? Is that bad that I've seen him? Uh, it's weird. It's weird. I to bring it up too, but I mean, that guy, I mean, he looks, that dude looks great.

I mean, not that the other guys with the hair don't look great. They do,

by the way, Matt, you know. Okay. Before we move on to the next thing, Sam, you've got to do an a set of AI hairdos on Matt for like, some of the promo. 'cause I just, I only know him like that and I think it looks good on, you know, the baldness is him.

It like, looks like him. I think he looks great.

Matt Heinz: Did you know Craig? I had long hair in high school.

Craig Rosenberg: We need a, we, we need footage

Matt Amundson: Yeah,

we're gonna need a senior quote photo.

Matt Heinz: There's a, there's a video that there's, so Brent and I talked about this like a few weeks ago, and Sheena who does our editing and like does some clips, [00:25:00] she has some pictures of me in high school. And so in that video it's on YouTube somewhere. She put up pictures of me in high school with the flow and it wasn't so here, and I'll tell you this 'cause I tell everybody this.

I was a musician in high school. I wanted the long hair 'cause that was the musician look. I was trying for like a Yani kind of a

look, but it really ended up being more Michael Bolton. So it's me with like the long hair and the curls and short hair up front, which we all know is a mullet. But that's what I was

Craig Rosenberg: what I was,

Matt Heinz: my senior year in high school.

Craig Rosenberg: wait a minute, hold on. We can't move on. I can't unsee this in my head. You had the per the permie mullet.

Matt Heinz: Well, I had, like it had, it was part of the middle. I had kind of a little puff thing in the front, but it was short. And then in the back I let it grow long and it was straight until it got to about here and then it curled all up. So it was this long curled thing on the back of my neck.

Craig Rosenberg: what is happening right now

Matt Amundson: On the transaction.

Craig Rosenberg: that I need to

see that

Matt Heinz: Sam will probably find it. I can't find the pictures, but [00:26:00] Sheena somehow had them and put them into that video, that snippet we did with, Brent. So it's out there.

Sam Guertin: They will be added to the, uh, video version of this, uh, episode, so go to YouTube and watch it.

Matt Amundson: you.

Matt Heinz: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: So, um, so let's go to question number two. That was epic, Matt, that that was, uh, that was a game changer on, on, on our approach here. Um, so, you know, when we, we start, we actually started the show because Matt and I, Matt was working as an EIR here at scale, and we were like, holy crap, my, the game has changed and we admitted to ourselves.

We'll admit out loud. We were like, we're behind.

Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: And so like, he's like, dude, we gotta go talk to everyone we can. And then we would. Go talk to these folks doing breakthrough things or struggling. Both things were happening. And by the way, some of the people struggling are some of the most famous demand gen people in the business.

The game changed in front of their eyes and the lead nurturing strategy [00:27:00] just wasn't the play. Um, and then we talked about it and we were pretty funny. We're like, let's start the pod and let's go take this discovery and bring it to the world. So the question we like to ask is, uh, you know, what's something that the market thinks they're doing right?

Today or yesterday, and they're actually, they're wrong. Like there's, there's a new approach, tactic, whatev strategy, whatever that might be. What are those, that thing or those things, and what should they be doing differently?

How Go-To-Market Teams are Using AI & Evolving their GTM Strategy with AI
---

Matt Heinz: Well there, there's something evolving right now in real time that I wanted to use an example of this, and I think it's like how Go-To-Market teams use ai and clearly the rules are changing like every hour with ai, given the technology, given the advance of the technology, I. But I still today, like 80% of the companies I see doing are, I mean, doing random acts of ai.

Just like we used to talk about random acts of marketing and it's like done in spurts here and there. It's like, oh, let's go do this thing with chat GPT and then ignore it for two weeks. Or let's go use clay and ramp it up. Oh wait, that's hard and expensive, so let's go do something else. Right? [00:28:00] What I'm seeing some companies do well, and this is like.

This didn't exist last fall, right? Is companies finally building an accountability chart for the jobs to be done and Go-To-Market. So not an org chart, not the people that are gonna replace, but the jobs that are gonna be replaced. I literally have seen CMOs show me an an accountability chart that shows by function, the jobs that are done, where somewhere in the middle, horizontally. The, the, there's people at the top, there's machines at the bottom, and with different functions. Maybe the machines take on more work than others, but in, this is where we have to get to. Immediately to be able to leverage AI on a day-to-day basis. In the strategy process, playbooks we're running in Go-To-Market.

Very few companies have built that process and workflow into their systems so that that accountability and output is happening on a persistent basis, and that's baseline. So that's where you start with now. And as soon as like [00:29:00] reasoning agents come out and as soon as deep research gets cheaper, then all of a sudden you're gonna see more of those jobs take over.

Now, I think there's all kinds of downward implications to this. We're gonna stop hiring interns, but then what do my kids do as their entry level job? If I only need to hire senior consultants and up, how do those senior consultants learn how to be consultants? 'cause now I got robots doing what they used to do.

So that's a whole nother story. But if you're a Go-To-Market leader today. Like break out the jobs to be done and be very clear about who the best resource is to do that and start organizing your resources accordingly moving forward.

Craig Rosenberg: Okay, we gotta dig in on that. By the way, on your comment on my kids. Yeah. My, my kid. I'm trying to make as much money as I can so they have money when Mad Max, beyond Thunderdome happens. 'cause it's going to, it's gonna be crazy.

Matt Heinz: I laugh only because it scares me too, you know?

Craig Rosenberg: Um,

so, uh, I, I'm not, I think I follow conceptually, but like, give, can you like, walk us [00:30:00] through the components of what you just said with, uh, examples in it is just a way to, or, or just like, just dig in a little bit, man.

'cause I think you're, I think a lot of, like, we just had a guest and he was like, use AI and was like, oh. Thanks. You actually have, um, a thought process and methodology here, and I just wanna make sure that the audience and me and Matt get it.

Matt Heinz: I mean, just, just, just go do it is not helpful. And if you haven't been doing it, you gotta find a few of those random acts just to kind of familiarize yourself with how the technology works. But like, take buying committee members, right? every company should have a set of agents that each represent a member of the buying committee and that they can talk to each other.

So you don't need focus groups, you don't need to go out and like get people together. Like you could still do user interviews and everything else, but you should have agents that you can ask, which of these headlines would you click on? What, how, what, what of these problems are the biggest for you?

Here's the messaging I'm thinking about putting in, given that you know, you. What am I missing? What have I not put in here? What [00:31:00] are the themes or the pain points that I haven't included in this conversation? I mean, this is stuff that's pretty basic, but when you've got copywriters, when you've got content developers, when you've got people writing sales development playbooks, we shouldn't be guessing on that anymore.

We should be using the agents to tell us how to improve

Craig Rosenberg: improve. That's brilliant.

Craig Rosenberg: That's a great, that's a great example, shit. Now are you seeing people do that today? Like the good one? So this where you want, you're trying to push them there?

Matt Heinz: I say, I say I say no. fun to say that way. I, I, I'm seeing

people

but it is the, it is like mid single digits at best in terms of percentages of

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, no, we, we just actually, Matt and I just did a, a little, uh, council with the scale community and there, there was elements of what you're talking about and really cool stuff happening. And by the way, primarily using open AI or,

um, you know, one of those, so, uh, perplexity, yeah. But actually, I'm not sure did, [00:32:00] maybe Boskovich talked about this, Matt, but I like what Matt's talking about, like the, the buying committee.

And testing specifically messaging against those. I think that's a new one for me. I don't know about you.

Matt Amundson: I have not heard that before. That is That is, yeah.

Matt Heinz: you still, you still have to apply art, right? I mean, I hear a lot of people saying, well, you know, the, um, you know, the, the robots are advancing so much. They're gonna replace, you know, the average, you know, worker doing copy or whatever. I think keyword there, to me, is the word average, right? If you want average shit, just like, you know, just go and look at all the content that's out there today.

The value prop for a lot of like AI driven outbounds right now is we're gonna do it faster. We're gonna do it cheaper, we're gonna do it with more scale. Guess who that benefits the seller? Guess who hates that? The buyer.

I can't tell you how many people in executive roles are saying like, yeah, you just wrote the perfect email to send to me [00:33:00] at the perfect time, and you spend a fraction of the time and cost doing it.

But now I have 10 times more emails to ignore. I had a CMO at a conference two weeks ago, like 1130 in the morning. She pulls out her phone and says, she starts doing this on her phone, says, see all this? And she keeps scrolling. She's like, those are voicemails this morning. Right? And half of those are these like outbound a d ai ad BDRs that are calling me.

It's like, just because you made it easier for the seller. Doesn't mean it, it actually makes it worse for the buyer. It makes it, it's a worse experience for them and they're more likely to ignore it. I mean, let's face it, guys like driving, you know, sales and marketing at the beginning of the funnel. When someone doesn't know you, it's like driving by someone's house at 35 miles an hour trying to throw something in the mailbox.

I mean, imagine you got like 20 times the amount of mail you got today. How much more likely are you gonna just throw it in the recycle bin before you even get in the house? Like that's. Right. So 1.0 of a of AI BDR tools. We got work to do.

Matt Amundson: So, so let me ask [00:34:00] your opinion, because I think this is something I think about all the time.

Marketing automation, good, bad, or, uh, naming whatever good or bad. Marketing automation made it so suddenly we're dumping way more emails in people's inboxes. Then sales engagement tools came along and we're dumping even more.

We're just like, cool. Now instead of having one marketing automation process, we've got 30 because we have 30 29 BDRs. And that had its real impact on email, right? Like at one point you would agree with me that email was actually a powerful tool in terms of education and conversion.

And today it's, It

still is, but, but it's much less.

It's much less.

Craig Rosenberg: less

Matt Amundson: As we start to proliferate more and more AI that can create more and more emails, how much worse is it gonna get? And I think the answer is a lot worse. And then how do we keep that from happening?

Matt Heinz: So what's gonna happen at some point, as the AI improves and the [00:35:00] technology approves, it approves, you're gonna continue to get a gabillion, emails and voicemails and everything else, but the technology is going to recognize who you actually have.

Craig Rosenberg: have really

Matt Heinz: Who you actually wanna hear from. And so my inbox today, like I've got like six inboxes in email, right?

I've got my primary inbox, I've got what Outlook thinks is my junk inbox. I've got, we have our, our IT team has a, we have a separate like spam catcher that like you have to go to that spam catcher to see if there's anything there. And then apparently we also have one from Microsoft that actually has picked, so I got four places where emails could go.

Craig Rosenberg: go.

Matt Heinz: Sometimes there's stuff that goes in spam that I want, like why Don? My pet peeves is like DocuSign stuff, always getting there. Guess what? I really want the signed contract. Guess what? I can never find in the spam filter, the frigging DocuSign. So like, it's a problem to even find the stuff I want and like we all get spam.

But you know what, sometimes spam is useful. Sometimes something in there actually is the right message at the right time. So how do, I don't wanna, [00:36:00] I, I don't have time to sit and sort that out. I need a robot. I need an agent. That knows who I actually have relationships with, that knows exactly what content I care about and will become the concierge and the filter for that stuff coming to me.

So the denominator then becomes like an equalizer is what? What do I actually care about right now? What do I actually need to know about right now? And who are the people? I have relationships that I trust that you have evidence all over the place to say, like we act. I actually take their phone call. We actually interact across multiple platforms.

That tech, that that integrated technology doesn't exist, but it's coming and it'll be here soon. That is now gonna say like, who do you have a relationship with? Who do you have trust with? Right? Not a robot, but a human.

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm.

Matt Heinz: So those are the invest in that. Now we're back to like that long-term impact of marketing.

Right now we're back to that long term impact of doing those value deposits with those evidence signals, creating some credibility. You know when someone drives by your house and like throws something in the mailbox, you recognize some of those cars and you're more likely to [00:37:00] check the mailbox 'cause of the car that went by.

That usually leaves good stuff.

Right? I think I might be done with that analogy now, but I think this is like trust in relationships is going to be the differentiator.

Matt Amundson: yeah. So I mean, in an environment like that, would you recommend marketers spend more time focusing on building brand?

Matt Heinz: Uh, building brand, building relationships between people. Uh, I see some companies doing a really nice job with communities, right? They're not, not just user communities, but peer-to-peer communities where you have that connective tissue that isn't always about the job, but sometimes about the people and people that care about and lean in for each other.

You know, you know, on hours and off hours. Uh, so I, you know, there will come a time when like robots sell the robots. And I think what'll happen first is like, you know, like, you know, you say like, I'll have my people talk to your people. We're just gonna have our agents talk to each other and they're gonna help filter those things out.

That's kind of what I was just describing in terms of all those, filtering it out. [00:38:00] Um, but I don't think we're close, especially in enterprise, especially with large considered purchases. I don't think we're anywhere close to taking the ELLA out of it. And so if I have more noise and less time, who am I gonna prioritize?

It's the people I enjoy. It's the people I trust. It's the people I like. That's gonna be a huge differentiator moving forward.

Craig Rosenberg: bam, you know. Um, that was one of the, uh, there's a couple analysts at Gartner that were looking at the, uh, AI selling into ai, uh, stuff, and, and you actually, there's some really obvious examples like the supply chain. You know, when you're out of ball bearings, it just takes care of it yourself. You take the humans outta the loop, like Georgia, Georgia Pacific will be like, you know, selling toilet paper and, and bath.

You know, they're going to, that stuff will happen automatically, you know,

Matt Heinz: more. You'll sell

Craig Rosenberg: I I agree. I agree. I think [00:39:00] enterprise software is that that'll take time. 'cause it, there's some uniquely human things that need to happen in order for that to. You know, uh, to effectuate transactions there. Um, and, um, I, uh, I, what are you laughing at?

are you

Sam Guertin: Oh, just you effectuating transactions. That's all.

Craig Rosenberg: transaction. This is, the show is called The Transaction.

Sam Guertin: I'm

just

Matt Heinz: So I'm I'm writing down effectuate under parabola now. 'cause the parabola, I know effectuate is a new one, so I'm gonna.

Craig Rosenberg: I don't even think it's a word, man. I used to have a sales leader who used to get, say, now let's get out there and effectuate some transactions. So me and Scott, we started as a joke, me and Alba, when we were doing Tip It early stage and then it just became a thing. So yeah,

Matt Heinz: Well, it means, so apparently this is, this is from like no click at Google search to cause or bring about something, to put something into put something, a back operation.

Craig Rosenberg: Uh, [00:40:00] yeah. Okay. All right. It works. It works.

By the way, Sam, I I, you can make fun of me on that one. I just, I was looking out to the sky, trying to think. And I heard you giggling and I just thought I'd react to that. Um, yeah. And I'm also now even more, uh, important that I, I teach my kids how to survivalist skills.

'cause um, this is, it's, it's true every time you sort of dig in with the AI and you watch how it's advancing every minute.

Matt Heinz: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's gonna be sooner than we know it,

Matt Heinz: I'm actually, I, I actually, I mean, I tend to be too much of a rose colored glasses guy, but I'm actually, I'm, I'm, I'm scared 'cause I don't know where it's going, but I think about all the innovation that has happened in my lifetime, let alone just, you know, in the last 15 years, the things that would've been scary.

Like I, some of you're old enough. Do you remember Mary Meer used to do the internet trends report? Right? And one of the things she wrote about years ago, she says like, there will come a time sooner versus later. When mobile will be the primary device, we will, we will focus everything on mobile [00:41:00] first and not laptops and desktops.

And I'm like, I can't, what language are you speak? I couldn't conceive that at all. I just couldn't understand it at all. And yet here we are and it's just something we take for granted. Here we are and it's just like, you know, all the things that I don't even take half the time. I don't have to have carry my laptop around.

I just have my phone. It does everything. Um, there are jobs that we are afraid of losing today that will be replaced by other more interesting jobs. There's a company, um, called Simbi Robotics. They sell robots that run around grocery stores and do inventory management, like they're just scanning the shelves and figuring out like what needs to be ordered.

Do you know any human that wants that job? No. If you really need money, fine. But like that is perfect for a robot to do. So. Back to the accountability chart. There's a bunch of things robots should be doing and robots can be doing without needing to get paid as much, but also without needing, without providing errors, it's gonna be a lot better.

It's going to free us to do the more interesting creative. creative. work.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. [00:42:00] And on your accountability chart, you know, uh, Gottlieb was saying, you know, and they're studying like when successful AI rollouts across the board, not just in Go-To-Market. Um, you, they spend six months documenting the work first because then they Go-To-Market on AI and they say, we need to fix this.

So like, you know, his example's always like, no, we need a QBR, an AI driven QBR that looks at all past transactions, anything happening out there externally. You know what I mean? And like you only get there if you figure out the work first, and then you come back to the market and solve it with ai. And, uh, you know, that, that, that is, I thought, really, really important.

So I've, and then he has a saying, which I've been using, which is, uh, to the vendors, sell the work first, AI second.

Matt Heinz: All right, so we had a, we had the third word here, Craig. And, and Sam, I saw you clock that 'cause I saw you look up under effectuate. I just just wrote [00:43:00] documentary.

Craig Rosenberg: Is that what I said?

Matt Heinz: That's what you said. So I think it was a combination of documenting and like a documentary is a documenting of something. So I'm not even gonna look that one up.

I'm pretty sure that's not a word.

Craig Rosenberg: what the hell? Wait, I, I'm gonna need to roll back the tape on that one. I Oh, yeah. Well, documenting documenting documenting

Matt Amundson: That, that's gonna be

a clip

Craig Rosenberg: yeah.

Shit. All

Matt Heinz: this?

I thought this

was all,

Sam Guertin: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: is the

pretty, why don't we start?

Um,

Matt Amundson: whenever you say.

Craig Rosenberg: alright. So, Matt, what else? Um, do you feel like. Uh, is our blind spot in the Go-To-Market world that we should be thinking about differently or you're seeing any cool stuff that people are, um, actually finding effective that was surprising to you?

Matt Heinz: Well, I mean, I mentioned attribution earlier and how that continued to be kind of a fool's errand, you know, to go after. And yet I still see, even in complex sales, in complex Go-To-Market motions, I still see companies saying like, well, what came from [00:44:00] that channel? And like, how much did that email generate?

And it's still looking at point solutions, and that works in the consumer world. That works in like. In very short sales cycle worlds like the, well, the company I went to when I left Microsoft, I went, it was a startup here in Seattle selling to residential real estate agents. It's about as close to B2B, B2C as you get, and you're still B2B, right?

Like we were selling to individual realtors and you could do a one call close. I could send an email this morning. They filled out a form, talked to a rep this afternoon and whipped out their credit card and bought something. Like it could be that clean, but that doesn't, that's not the reality for most of us selling, right?

There's long sales cycle, there's a buying committee, there's a buying journey. There's a lot of things that happen along the way and as, and one of the inconvenient truths that I have to tell people is like, you don't have a report that isn't gonna answer all that. And the, and what I try to help people understand is like attribution is not about the, as soon as you [00:45:00] start talking about credit, I'm out.

Right? It's already happened. It's a sunk cost. Like I don't care about litigating the past. What I care about is predicting the future. And why I care about attribution is I want to create a more predictable, reliable path towards the same result over and over again. And if we have that kind of a focus, it helps take politics off the table.

It helps, helps credit off the table. This is a team sport. Sales isn't gonna do it alone. Marketing sure isn't gonna do it alone. Right? And that's the most. Scary. That's the most mature Go-To-Market relationship we have talk about sales and or marketing and cs. We're way further behind on the maturity curve in terms of how those teams work together.

And yet when you're thinking about the, what I think of as not as a funnel, not as a bow tie, but the infinite loop of customer relationships. Of accounts that come and go of a CIO that has hired you three times because she's been at three different companies. [00:46:00] Like that's a repeat customer too, right? But like, you know, we use Salesforce to look at accounts and contexts and don't connect those dots very well.

So when I think about the future, when I think about that path, I just have to know, again, inconvenient truth. I'm not going to be able to measure everything. But I still want to drive the right behavior. I still want to have the right progression of actions that sometimes three steps is faster than one to get to that predictable, reliable outcome.

Craig Rosenberg: Mm.

Matt Heinz: So it's not, it's tools can help you, but it's not about the tool. If you're looking for an answer, answering the tool probably gonna frustrate you.

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: Matt, what's your reaction to that?

Matt Amundson: So this is, I mean, it's just something that we've been talking about on the last couple of shows, right? Like, uh, Sam's show went live today, and we talked about that quite a bit there, right? It's like if you are looking for the solution and the tool, you're bound to fail. You've got to understand what the solution is, and you've gotta buy tools that help you scale that solution.

Matt Heinz: And, [00:47:00] and the tools that do that well are those that look at as much data as possible, right? Like, you know, not a sponsor could be, but there's a company called Imperative. Imperative No E that is actually doing, I think is one of the best jobs at doing this right now. 'cause they look across all marketing efforts, they look across CRM, they look across buyer and seller behavior and make inferences about what they are seeing that is driving far better, more accurate, more predictable outcome.

It's not a reporting tool. It's a predictive tool to try to get to the out next outcome you want. And that's the perspective that I think we've needed all along to try to get

Craig Rosenberg: try to get.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: I, I'm a hundred percent, I, I'm going along with you guys on that one. no yeah. here.

Matt Amundson: I think that there is also a time and a place where it makes sense to go down this path, and oftentimes I think people want to get to it early, and I think that that's a big mistake.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah.

Matt Heinz: I'm not arguing against, like, when I, when I go on this diatribe, people say, so you must [00:48:00] really hate like the performance marketing role. No, I don't. Right? Like, if you're gonna use email, like send better emails. If you're gonna, if your audience is on a digital channel, go there, be there, be better at it, right?

Like, do your AB testing, get. Just don't assume that just because you're really good at one channel, that's where you should throw all your money and then that you can forget all these other channels. It's just, it's not that simple and it's just, it's really smart. People on the board, on the leadership team

Matt Heinz: that know how complex this is are still looking for those easy answers.

Um, and so that's, that's a journey too.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: I think what you're, you're right Matt, we've talked about that and then also, um, sort of in the past just with you in terms of even being able to look at these things, uh, you've talked about how Snowflake is a breakthrough has been, or like the cloud data warehouse for you. I don't know if you want, I mean, just in terms of being able, as Matt said, you gotta look at as much data as possible.

And I remember talking to you, [00:49:00] I'm talking to Matt Amon, and he's like, well, now that I dump everything into Snowflake, I see way more than I've seen before.

Matt Amundson: I mean, it's, it's outrageous. It's outrageous, right? Like for years and years and years as marketers, we were like, you know, we were putting people into different, um, segments. We were triggering activities based upon the simplest of information that we can get. What industry is it in? If it's healthcare, we're gonna write patients instead of customers, right?

Like if they've clicked on this white paper, we're gonna send them a complimentary asset. Once you start pulling data out of a cloud data warehouse and you're like, Ooh, imagine if you could start marketing to somebody who liked a tweet yesterday. In addition to, uh, seeing an ad on LinkedIn but not having clicked on it, and then they were browsing around like this bizarre, you know, this bizarre corner of your website where there was this very specific thing that they were looking for.

That's the type of shit you just can't get from what's stored inside of A CRM or what's stored [00:50:00] inside of a marketing automation system like. Just the sheer level of information that you can get, and this is just on the B2B side. Once you get to the B2C side, I mean, these guys have been deep into pulling this kind of data for forever.

Who buys what? When do they buy it? How much do they spend? Are they shopping for themselves? Are they shopping for a family member? Like, you know, do, when do they get, you know, they probably get paid this time of the month because they spend on these days. Et cetera, et cetera. Like there is crazy amount of data that's on there.

And like, if we can predict when their payday is, let's serve them an ad on Instagram on that day, versus serving them an ad on, uh, the day before they get paid when they're outta cash. Right? Like just unbelievable amounts of data. And I think B2B marketers are starting to tap into this. This is something we talked about quite a bit, uh, a couple months ago on the show.

I think AI like sort of just entered the zeitgeist and people stopped talking about this stuff a little bit, but if you're training models, you gotta have the most data that you possibly can, and it's stored in a cloud data [00:51:00] warehouse, not your CRM.

Matt Heinz: So let me, let me give an ex, and I know we're probably running outta time here, but let me give you an example of like how this plays, right? Like as marketers, we tend to do like a bunch of things at once to a bunch of people. Hey, let's, let's, let's send 25,000 direct mail pieces out this week. Hey, let's do a webinar next week and let's invite everyone to that webinar.

Right, like what you just mentioned is, okay, well some people get paid on the first, some people get paid on the fifth, some people get paid on the 10th, right? All those different need and evidence signals are happening all over the place to different people. So instead of sending 25,000 direct mail pieces this week, I should send 26 this week and four next week and 72 the week after.

Based on that evidence that you see.

Matt Amundson: Yeah,

Matt Heinz: It is really hard to engineer that at scale right now, but the technology is coming. It's coming fast.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Yeah. Craig's on a phone call. He can't talk to you.

Matt Heinz: Are you ripping someone someone now?

Craig Rosenberg: No, I, the bummer is the guy. He's called twice trying Little does he know. Yeah. Oh, that's right. [00:52:00] Callbacks. It's a, it's a new thing. Hey, uh, can I, can we just, for how much time do we got? We got a couple, you mentioned the word signals, you know, for a minute, Matt and I, I think the show signals and signal selling was like in four or five episodes in a row.

It's kind of slowed a bit, uh, but, uh. I'm trying to remember your take there. I mean, what I, what, what are your thoughts on sort of the use of signals and, and those things in the marketing sales

Matt Heinz: Oh, I'm, I, I think it's, it's the new coin of the realm. For Go-To-Market teams, we used to focus on our budgets and how much money you spent was everything. Now I think your access to and leverage of data. The, the data has replaced the, my, the media budget. And yes,

some of that data costs money. Um, you know, six Sense did a big review, big, uh, launch this week and they, it was the first time I heard someone use the tool, the term, uh, signal verse. I think that was pretty clever because it takes the intent out of it. [00:53:00] Right. And it's sort of a, like, there are all kinds of different signal.

And to your point earlier about people saying, I got intent signals, treating those as leads is just as bad as people saying someone you know, signed up for the webinar. Like let's treat that as an MQL. Like just because they came to the last three webinars doesn't mean they're qualified. They might be bored.

Right. That might be the opposite of qualified. So I think to know what signals you're looking at to know enough about your buyers, to know enough about the journey to know where in the progress, where in the progression that exists. To not treat it as, this is the other thing that I think is important.

Like we think of this as a sales process or a buying journey. Like I love that Brent Adams, Adamson calls this a don't screw up and get fired journey. Like the hardest thing we do is fighting the status quo. It is. It is way more powerful than we give it credit for. And most people, when they get your information, when they think about deciding on something, is like, God, am I gonna get fired for this?

Is this, is this gonna get me in trouble? Uh, [00:54:00] is this gonna be, is this gonna look bad on my performance review if this doesn't happen? I mean, if you don't think they're thinking that when they decide whether they're gonna spend money on you, you're not thinking about yourself and looking in the mirror and when you make decisions like that as well.

So I, I think the signals are underutilized, crazy important, but have to be put in context.

Craig Rosenberg: I couldn't have said it better myself.

Um, yeah, I mean, Matt, I just brought it back 'cause Matt, uh, Hines brought it up, but like, we gotta start like lifting that, that again because I, I think it's an important topic, you know, and it's like, we asked Al Bro, by the way, Heinz, we had him on the show.

We're like, well, what, you know, he's doing a ton of research on AI. And he's like, well, the thing I know you can use right now is signals. You could do stuff with that right

Matt Heinz: Yeah, yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: like it. Um,

Matt Heinz: yeah. Just I wrote down something you said, and please let's not make this a thing as like signal selling. It's, it's a, it's, it's a nice use of alliteration, but it's worse than social selling 'cause it combines what you just said, like signals as evidence of a next step [00:55:00] with a Let's sell 'em something.

Matt Amundson: I'm gonna put that at I'm gonna put that

Craig Rosenberg: number four. You know, and by the way, you know what's crazy?

Matt Heinz: Call back another one. So good.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah. Is, uh, I'm guilty, I'm guilty of this. This is what you just called out on. And I am freely using that phrase. I'm, in many ways, I leave this call not feeling that great about myself,

Matt Heinz: no, but, but you know what, but you know what Craig, I mean like, 'cause you're we're marketers, right? And so literally when you saw that, I wrote it down, I circled it, I put a little square to do next to it. I'm like, Ooh, that's good. I can see that being a book. I can see that being content. And my next thought was like, oh, that violates everything we just talked about for half of this podcast.

We Yeah. it. We have to burn it now.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. I love it. Okay. So, uh, Matt, this was an amazing show, so I don't you, maybe you and Amon have a talk that he, he didn't have you on the show for the first year. Um, it's, you know, I. I. said, Hey, we got again, we got [00:56:00] No, but actually it is true though, the infatuation of, but it, but on the Paraba thing, which I'll look up in a minute, but is, uh, like you, you were able to listen to this show and come on knowing that kind of how we wanted to engage and it made for an incredible show today.

It was the most fun I've had, um, in a while. So that, that, that's. That's enough to, for me to say this was a great show and now, um, now that we can pass through, Matt's like, it seems like a really difficult gate to get through. Like we can have you on the show. He is taking this so well. God damnit, um, trying to rouse the guy.

I'm just looking at him going, come on man, gimme something. Um, but anyway, great show, dude. We'd love to have you back honestly,

Matt Amundson: we want to have you back. this

was

great.

Craig Rosenberg: kind of conversation we wanna have. Okay.

Matt Amundson: Yep.

Craig Rosenberg: All right. That's the

transaction. Take the rest of the day off.

[00:57:00]