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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#803: Apollo.io CMO Marcio Arnecke on agentic Go-To-Market approaches
00:20:08
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Marcio Arnecke
The agile brand.
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Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to Season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast.
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Podcast Co-host
This season we're going all in on.
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Greg Kilstrom
Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind.
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The brands you know and love.
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I'm Greg Kilstrom, your host and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of martech, AI and marketing ops. Hit subscribe or Follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can.
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Find us as well.
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And make sure you check out our.
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Sponsor Tech Systems, an industry leader in.
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Full stack technology services, talent services and real world applications. For more information, go to teksystems.com now let's dive in. For years we've heard about AI transforming software development.
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But what if that same level of agentic AI driven collaboration could be applied not just to writing code code, but to writing your entire go to market playbook? Agility requires that your go to market teams operate at the speed of insight, not at the speed of manual data entry and fragmented workflows. This means empowering them with tools that don't just provide data, but automate action based on strategic intent. Today we're going to talk about the concept of an agentic go to market platform where AI doesn't just assist, but it actively collaborates with sales and marketing teams to automate entire workflows, from strategy to execution.
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To help me discuss this topic, I'd.
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Like to welcome Marcio Arneke, Chief Marketing officer at Apollo ISO. Marcio, welcome to the show Rag.
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Marcio Arnecke
Thank you so much for having me over.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, really looking forward to this conversation. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Apollo.
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Marcio Arnecke
Absolutely. So I'm Marcio, CMO here at Apollo. As you can tell, I have an accent, so I'm Brazilian born, but I've been working in marketing for well over 15 years, mostly in the Silicon Valley. So we've been working with AI for at least the past five years to be honest. But my focus here at Apollo is to translate Apollo's product innovation, especially around AI, into real go to market strategies. And I've been here in the world now for at least 10 months.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, great, great.
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Greg Kilstrom
So yeah, let's dive in and want to start with the strategic view here and just this idea of this shift to agentic go to market. And so Apollo's CEO said that until now, GTM or go to Market has been too disjointed, too complex and too manual. So from a strategic standpoint, what's the Fundamental flaw in the traditional go to market tech stack that an agentic platform is designed to solve.
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Marcio Arnecke
It's a great question. The core flaw, honestly is fragmentation. Traditional go to market stacks are built as collection of tools. You have CRM here, you have engagement there, you have data somewhere else. It's all held together by people doing manual work. And that makes go to market slow and reactive mostly. An agentic platform changes that. Instead of humans stitching systems together, the systems understand the intent, the context, the goals, and actively help execute other projects. It reduces the complexity by not adding another tool, but really by orchestrating the work end to end. And honestly save dollars as well. Because having the maintaining the tax stack is quite expensive.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, well, and including that term agentic in there certainly implies AI as an active participant, collaborator, not just a passive tool. How a shift like this, how does it shift the strategic role of a human sales or marketing professional? And you know, what do they stop doing and what do they get to focus on instead?
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Marcio Arnecke
Yeah, you know, even before I talk about agent tech, you know, I, I always talk to my friends, you know that at this stage, if your entire organization, sales and marketing are not enabled, at least on AI 1.0, which means, you know, everyone is using AI to buy content, to manage their projects, emails and so on, we're really behind. And from there you go to the AI 1.5, which is agentic, which really helps with the focus on low leverage coordination work, pulling lists, updating fields, stitching workflows together, checking whether something has happened or has happened. Right. And that said, teams can actually focus on strategic and creative work, which really help drives more innovation, ROI in how it really drives business to, to drive revenue to the next level. Agentic means, you know, the AI is handling the how and humans are handling the direction at this stage.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, yeah, got it.
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Greg Kilstrom
So let's talk about then putting this into practice. So I will confess, I'm a bit of a Vibe coder myself. Been playing around probably too much lately with some of those things you've talked about. The idea of Vibe go to market or Vibe gtm, drawing a parallel to things like Vibe coding for developers. Can you walk us through maybe a practical example, you know, how does a sales leader translate a strategic idea like finding more accounts that look like our top customers or things like that into an automated workflow.
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Marcio Arnecke
Sure thing. Imagine if a sales leader says, find me more accounts that look like our top 10 customers. A very, very, you know, often asked by our sales, you know, leaders and, and friends in a traditional Stack that might take hours of analysis, filters, exports, handoffs and likely a few meetings through the day. You know, to pull the list together with an AI assistant or an agentic AI approach the leader can simply state the intent and the agent is able to pull together, analyzes the top 10 accounts, identify behavioral patterns, build a target list and actually launch a campaign aligned to how has worked historically. Which this is quite of an. It's absolutely fantastic for a market that's been doing this for a while. You know, an amount of work and people that you needed to have in place to be able to achieve this in a matter of minutes but not hours and back in the days. Honestly days and even weeks.
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Podcast Co-host
Right.
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Marcio Arnecke
And most interesting thing all of this is that the agent continuously refined your campaign and engagement based on outcomes. So for me that's what vibe go to market is, is expressing intent but not spending hours building the actual workflows.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
And you know to, to that end your platform Apollo unifies outbound inbound deals and data. So a lot of the things that you're, you're talking about here and more you know, how do AI agents work across these often traditionally siloed functions? You know, for instance, what does an AI powered handoff from an inbound lead to an agent assisted deal cycle actually look like?
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Marcio Arnecke
So the key share context. For example, an inbound lead comes in the AI evaluates intent and feat, enriches the account using data, decides whether it's sales ready or needs nurturing, connecting to previous outbound efforts and handles your sales with contacts. Why this lead matters, why they, why they should care about and how similar accounts have converted. Which means sales is not starting from zero, they start mid conversation. That's the connection that we can see now connecting inbound and outbound motions by creating this thread and this contacts for the sales organization.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
Well, yeah and I mean that's, it's, it's a challenge when the human teams have, have silos. But I, I can imagine you automation if that context isn't shared, it's going to be. You know, it's hard for the AI to explain itself when it's confused.
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Right.
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So I mean having that context is.
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Podcast Co-host
Going to be key.
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Marcio Arnecke
It's going to be key and it helps you with conversion, it helps you with roi. There's many benefits there that helps you just accelerate your overall pipeline, you know.
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Sponsor Voice
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Greg Kilstrom
It up and engineering says yeah we'll get to it.
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Sponsor Voice
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Podcast Co-host
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Sponsor Voice
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Podcast Co-host
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Greg Kilstrom
So let's let's talk.
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About measuring success here and proving roi. Certainly, you know, going to be top of mind for any organization. So some of the testimonials for Apollo for instance, mentioned saving hours or even a full day's work, you know, beyond even, you know, with considerable time savings. What are some of the key performance indicators that marketing or sales leaders should be tracking to measure true business impact of an agentic GTM platform?
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Marcio Arnecke
Yes, absolutely. I mean time saving these days is table stakes. It goes back to my this is AI 1.0. The real metrics, you know, that you should be tracking is pipeline velocity, conversion rates by stage, ACV and expansion win rates, rep productivity per head. So a gentech E go to market should show up in better economics across your sales organization or your sales cycle and business and not just through faster execution at this stage.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
And so another key thing here is improving results over time. So, you know, it's great to get those initial results but you know, executive stakeholders keep wanting more for some, you know, boards keep wanting more and shareholders keep wanting more. Right. So what kind of feedback loops are built into a system like Apollo to again continuous improvement and really lean on AI to help in that regard as well?
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Marcio Arnecke
I think this is where things are becoming very interesting. The system leans on outcomes. So what converts, what stalls, what closes, what expands and now any learn from itself quite fast, more fast and I think humans could do at this stage. But transparency really matters. Leaders need visibility into what signals AI is using, what recommendations, is making, what those recommendations might map to results. Right. So trust come from seeing the feedback loop, I believe between the leaders and the agents, but not treating just AI as a black box. However, the outcome from all this connection and all this integration, it really supports this acceleration of production that becomes incredibly interesting and nowadays more faster than ever.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
And I mean to your point, the volume of the data in many cases is so much that human teams, they could do their best to try to make sense of it. But this is one of the areas where I've seen AI be incredibly helpful for all the press that the content generation part of things gets. I would say from the AI perspective, I think crunching the numbers and just making sense of large volumes of data can be incredibly helpful.
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Marcio Arnecke
And you see nowadays, you know that your analyst teams are much more leaner in a sense, they're much more strategic, they can do some very interesting work. And back in the day, it's not too far back actually you needed quite a large organization to be able to digest the amount of data that was available to you. So I, I believe this is one of the fundamental changes, you know, that everyone should be using and applying their organizations is how to, to be able to do better analysis in a much faster pace.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
So then building on, on all of this, everything from, from the, you know, the speed and the efficiency gains, better insights, quicker insights, all of the, all of the above really. How do you see the relationship between sales and marketing evolving? You know, in this world where AI agents are doing a lot of the.
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Marcio Arnecke
Heavy lifting, the line between sales and marketing blowers, AI can manage large parts of the top of funnel targeting, engagement, qualification. While humans focus on complex conversations, value creation and closing. Marketing becomes less about volume. As you know, marketing has always been about driving massive volume and sales becomes about, less about admin work. So both align really around growth outcomes. So the line definitely becomes a little more blurry over time.
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Sponsor Voice
Yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
And I mean that, that's a pretty fundamental shift of, you know, I know I've done a bit of sales in my life, but a little more marketing. But it's often referred to as a numbers game. Right. Which literally means let's throw a bunch of stuff out there and see what sticks. Right. So what you're saying is, and what I hope is true as well, is that yes, we're reaching out in compelling ways, but not to so many people who are not either receiving or wanting to receive the message.
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Right.
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Is that, is that kind of what you're saying?
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Marcio Arnecke
Yes. You can be more targeted, it can be more personalized, it can be more efficient in your campaigns. You can go a little deeper to find that buyer in a way that you haven't been able to do before.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah.
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Marcio Arnecke
Basically the gentic approach that you have in marketing. Right. And the sales organizations who are normally burying tasks and admin work can really focus on the conversations, especially high value MQLs or customers and prospects at that stage. That's a fundamental change that is moving really fast.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
So for those leaders out there listening and certainly all of this makes a lot of sense and is the direction to move in. What's a maybe first or practical step that they can take to move things forward to adopt agentic sales and marketing?
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Marcio Arnecke
I see a lot of friends getting lost on this AI agentic and trying to push what's best in class in the organizations. And I tell my friends, listen, start by simplifying. Don't try to blow the ocean or move too fast here, you know, from a 1.0 to a 3.0 take the right steps, you know, forward, pick one motion, for example, let's say inbound qualification or outbound targeting and let AI on end to end. Really get good at it, right? At the same time, invest in change management. Help your teams understand why this shift matters and why high value work really is going to help them move forward together as an organization. Between those two things is I think where leaders, especially in large organizations, will help them to really make changes in how they think or apply AI.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah. Yeah. Love it.
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Greg Kilstrom
Well, Marcio, thanks so much for joining today. I've got two last questions for you before we wrap up here. The first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
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Marcio Arnecke
I think now we're still talking a little bit about AI features, to be honest. And in a year from now we should be talking about AI operating models. Companies won't be asking if you use AI and go to market, but we'd be asking how gentic your full system really is at that stage.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah.
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Nice, Nice.
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Greg Kilstrom
Love it. We'll have to talk about that in a year then. That's great. Well, again, thanks so much for joining today. Last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Marcio Arnecke
There's three things that are really important for me to stay close to customers, to the product and to the team. And I listen constantly. I test ideas very quickly, I fail very quickly and succeed, you know, quick as well. And I try to stay curious. I don't think agility is about speed alone, to be honest. It's about being willing to change your mind as new information shows up very quickly.
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Podcast Co-host
Yeah, I love that.
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Greg Kilstrom
Well, again, I'd like to thank Marcio Arnecke, Chief Marketing Officer at Apollo, for joining the show. You can learn more about Marcio and.
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Apollo by following the links in the.
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Show Notes.
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This Episode this episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more@teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you liked the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free. Free to reach out, just visit GregKilstrom.com that's G R E G K I.
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H L S t r o m.com.
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The Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay stay agile.