← The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
Events, AI, and The Future of B2B Buying with Sydney Sloan, CMO at G2
00:55:54
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- [00:00]
A
Email, in my humble opinion, is still the greatest marketing channel of all time. It's the only way you can truly own your audience today. But when it comes to building those emails, well, if you've ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know just how painful that can be. I won't name names, but templates get too rigid. Editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever when it shouldn't. That's why we love knack here at exit 5. Knack is a no code email platform that makes it easy to create on brand high performance forming emails without the bottlenecks. If you're frustrated by clunky email builders, you need nac. If you're tired of hoping the email you sent looks good across all devices, just test it in NAC first. And if you're a big team that's making it hard to collaborate and get approvals on your email, you definitely need nac. The best part, everything takes a fraction of the time. You can see Knack in action@knack.com exit5. That's knock.com exit5. Or just let them know you heard about Knack from exit5. That's us. You're listening to B2B Marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt. All right.
- [01:26]
B
Hey. I just wrapped up an awesome episode of the podcast with City Nice loan. She's a CMO at G2. We talked a lot about AI, of course, what's changing with AI. But something she told me that's really interesting is how they're rethinking their team and the marketing org around outcomes and pods instead of the traditional kind of jobs and titles and marketing structure. Plus, we spent a lot of time talking about events, their event playbook at G2, how they do them, how to think about pre and post event. I actually we're doing a bunch of events with Exit 5, and I got a ton of notes from this episode. So if you're in marketing, you want to hear from an awesome CMO talk about events and AI, you're going to love this episode. Here's my conversation with Sydney Sloan. Okay, hey, everybody. Welcome Back to the Exit 5 podcast. I'm your lovely, friendly, kind host, Dave Gerhart, and I got Sydney Sloan back on the podcast. It's been a bunch of years since we've had her on. Palmer on your team was like, you got to have her back on. You got to have her back on. I was like, all right, I'll see what I can do, obviously. And Sydney is the CMO at G2 Sydney. Good to see you. How you doing?
- [02:27]
C
I'm doing fantastic. As I was just saying, off the road for a week. I was reuniting with my dog, so she knows who I am. That's good.
- [02:34]
B
You're like, do you remember. Do you remember the smell? Like, that's my favorite part about owning a dog is like, if I. When I come home from somewhere, the way he investigates me. Like, where have you been and who were you with Exactly. So you, you just remarked to me before we started recording that you've been traveling like crazy. Is everybody drinking from the events Kool Aid? We're doing this with Exit 5, where I'm still running high off of our event. You mentioned your event reach is coming up. As we're recording this, do you feel like there's still a. A frenzy around? Like, yeah, we got to get together in person.
- [03:03]
C
Absolutely. I think. And for us it's worked really well. We just wrapped up our road show. So we did a four city road show in the last. Over the summer and it was sold out at every stop, 250 people. It's not a bad number to get to, to register and show up. It was fun being at Inbound in San Francisco. That was different. But yes, I think not only is the in person back and it's all the things around it. So, like, we have Dreamforce coming up and breakthrough. Like, it's just. It doesn't seem like it's ending and it's this mix of large scale, but also like really small and intimate cool things. I definitely had FOMO for your event. I've never been to Vermont before. If you invite me next year, I'll come.
- [03:49]
B
I'll invite you. I know. I know a guy. I can get you. I can get you a code. That's great. Actually. I don't even care if you go. Really care if you go. But if you tell me that you have FOMO, like, that basically counts.
- [04:00]
C
Oh, 100%. Absolutely. All the photos, like Jen Allen Co and Devin, like two of the OGs, like, love seeing them and yeah, yeah.
- [04:08]
B
No, we had a blast. I think there's something really special too, I think we're feeling with our event is because we were trying to like, really dig into why and I think because it's built from a community, like an online community where people feel like they know each other now. One of the challenges as we grow this is. It can be kind of like clicky. If you already know a bunch of people, then like, how do you welcome in outsiders But I think that's kind of like the format that we're working with is like, we're doing a bunch of excursions and hikes and mixers, and we're doing these round tables. And the vibe in person has just been awesome because I think we're. I don't know if it's because we're all having this, like, deep down, existential crisis. I think the first wave of it was like, post covet, everybody was like, I cannot wait to travel again. Like, I was so burnt out on business travel. And then I'm like, all right, I gotta get out. I gotta go. I gotta go do something. And I think now we're all having this kind of, like, existential crisis. Like, I'm literally walking through the woods, you know, talking to my chatgpt, like, brainstorming.
- [05:00]
C
It's like, I just talked to her actually now. Yeah.
- [05:03]
B
Oh, yours is a her.
- [05:04]
A
That's interesting.
- [05:04]
B
I have a. I have a British. Mine's a British guy.
- [05:07]
C
Mine's British too.
- [05:08]
B
See, why did we do that?
- [05:10]
A
This is a marketing thing.
- [05:11]
B
Makes me feel like I'm really smart and creative and talented. I don't know. There's just something. There's just so much nuance to, like, hanging out in person. And it's maybe kind of rethink a lot of not rethink, but I'm trying to figure out, like, making space for the AI stuff, but then also in person. And, yeah, I don't know if it's. I'm getting older and caring about this stuff more, but I found, like, even in my personal life, I'm trying to, like, meet up with friends I haven't seen in a while, go hang out. Like, there's just that good feeling of talking shit and banter and hanging out in person that is very tough to replicate. Right.
- [05:40]
C
I think. I mean, like, we were seconded and we're, like, trying to still figure out how to come back into the human era. When you think about what life was like before the pandemic, for sure, I get tired really easy now, too. It's like, I was always an extrovert. Like, first one in, last one out, and I'm like, irish, goodbye. Like, see ya.
- [05:56]
B
Do you follow corporate bro or Corporate Natalie at all?
- [05:59]
C
I have. Yeah. Do they have one?
- [06:00]
B
She has this one video that it's like. It's like her. I forget what the exact caption is, but it's like her walking back. It's like going back to my hotel room for 15 minutes before. Like, after an all day after all day team activities before the 15 minutes of Team dinner and she just like collapses face first onto the bed.
- [06:17]
C
I have to do that, especially if I'm presenting. It takes too much out of me now. But I was gonna say though, on, on your community thing, I remember back when I was at Jive running customer marketing and we were, it was a community platform, so we got to bring in like customer marketers running communities. And that was that feeling because they knew each other because they were in the community together. But one thing that you might think of is to do a buddy program. And so like the first activity night or whatever, put a newbie with an og and that could be a nice way to get the blending to happen from the get go. And then that newbie will know one person.
- [06:55]
B
I love that. I love when people come on my podcast and give me great advice and I'm like, immediate slack message. No, that's great. That's a totally good way to do it. I think when you're, when you're there under like the guy, like it's a professional setting, it would be so easy to pair someone. Like, you know, Sydney is a newbie and she is in content. Let's pair her with tas, who's og, who is also in content. And then you have that like kind of shared thing which is really, you.
- [07:19]
C
Have to find the person. So that's the activity, right?
- [07:22]
B
Go find the person. They're hiding.
- [07:28]
C
Find your person. You pull them out of hat. Like if you're this kind, like put your names in this hat if you're this side. And then they'll have to go back.
- [07:34]
B
I don't know. That's a great, that's a great idea. You mentioned, like, you do these roadshows, right? So as a cmo, it's clear as a person you get the value of doing events. But like from a business standpoint, like, how do you think about. I guess everything always does come back to measurement at some point, but. And I kind of want you to say the answer because I know I feel the event ROI is harder. It's mushier than just sales. But where do they fit in? Like the marketing strategy for G2 to go and do four 250 person roadshows, it's a ton of work. There's no such thing as an easy event. So why do you do them and how do you think about it?
- [08:07]
C
Yeah, I mean, I'll be completely blunt and transparent here, right. G2 is not its own platform. We only work when we're integrated with other people's stuff. And so in order to tell the story, because I believe we're in this massive shift between marketing of the past and marketing of the future. And AI is such a central part of that that the bold idea is that you just kind of toss what you built and start over. It's going to be easier than trying to react retrofit your marketing automation system to the new way. And so that was the kind of the idea about AI in action is to like a clean blueprint. It was a blank page and it was really important for me who we told this story with. The quote kids, right? You want to put yourself in good company, you know, so bringing in Clay and qualified and Sixth Sense like was super intentional. New breed and HubSpot partner and then we used Infuse in the UK and so we got to tell the story together. And it was important for us, for me to make sure that we were having that conversation with the right person. So we called them the hands on decision makers. The people that we didn't want C suites, we wanted the people that actually design the systems and can implement it and give them the power of what that looks like. How do you actually think about taking a signal, connecting it to an agent, taking action, building AI orchestrated workflows? Imagine you don't have to worry, you just get to start fresh. And so that was the premise of it. And the reason I think that it worked really, really well. It worked really, really well. I was very pleased is because we spent a lot of time ahead of time building our story together with our partners. So the first presenter absolutely knew what the last presenter was saying. We rehearsed three times before we got on site. We still adjusted on site. I tried to keep the presenters the same because then the dynamic gets more and more personal over time. Sometimes you couldn't make that happen, but most of the time we could. And so I and we kept it fast paced. Every presentation was 15 minutes and had some kind of interactivity. And so at the end in the middle, like take three minutes and do this at your table. Take five minutes and do this at your table. So beginning to end, they started with a blank slate and they left with had drawn out blueprint of their orchestrated workflow and a prompt that we pre built that then they worked on. Hey buddy. That they could use right away. And that was the last session. So it was like high intensity, high value, hands on go.
- [10:35]
B
Okay, so I have a couple event specific follow ups. Just because this is top of mind for Me. So I think you mentioned they did three rehearsals. This is a lesson that we're learning with our events. I think pushing harder on the, like, let's really prep the content for this. And I'm trying to balance the, like, once you get to like a inbound Dreamforce stage, they're like super militant. They're like, nope, we don't have your slides need to be like this format. They need to look like this. They need to be due on this date six months before the event. And then we're trying to like build an event from the beginning. And so I'm trying to like, have more flexibility. And there is so many things that I'm learning that like, all events are not equal. And if you do spend more time on the content, that is what people are going to remember. I get in this obsession over, like, was the sandwich good enough? Was the food good enough? And it's like, the content needs to be really good, you know?
- [11:25]
C
Yeah. I always like to start with the end in mind. What is the one to two things that you want them to learn and what's the one to two things that you want them to do? There's actually a really cool framework I was taught back in the day by Lisa Steele. She was my CMO at the time. And it was a three by three. And so it was what do you want them pre, during post? So that's the top bar and then the rows are think, feel, do. For the bigger events, you can do it by Persona. So you could do one for VIPs, you can do one for developers, you can do one for your champions. So for each Persona that you're serving, what do you want them to think, feel, do before, think they'll do during, and think they'll do after after. And that's where kind of I like to start with the planning. And so for us in that example, it's like, you know, we want them to think they're not too far behind, but you got to get going now, you know, so you want them to feel a sense of urgency, but also empowered. And then what you want them to do is you want them to go back with their blueprint and run a similar workshop with their team. That was it. And then post is like, make sure they have the follow up. You know, like we sent out additional materials and so, you know, you kind of build that framework out and then collectively, I mean, I was the mc. Like, you're probably the MC at yours. And so, you know, it was my job to make sure that the Dots were connecting. And so in our pre runs where they did go through their slides, if somebody had too many slides, I told them they had too many slides. I'm like, dude, you need to cut 20 slides out of your 12 minutes, right? And pick three, six, and two. And you say this, this, and this. Like you can imagine me, but I do it nicely. That's what I was already like. You say you give feedback so nice, you know, I was like, but I'm direct and this needs to blend to that. When you guys are saying the same thing, who's going to say it, you know? Or like, what's the call to action? Right? You know, let's write a stronger question. Like, I'm just kind of trying getting it through. And then the event day of, like, I'm roaming around, I'm sitting at the tables, I'm, you know, we put a facilitator at every table. And they were trained as to what their role was. And they were responsible for the prompting session. They had to have it preloaded. They needed to kick off, you know, the topics. They needed to make sure that one person didn't talk the whole time. All those things were thought through to make a great experience.
- [13:38]
B
I think it's cool to hear you talk at this level.
- [13:41]
A
Clearly you've done this a bunch and.
- [13:42]
B
Have so much experience in running these. Because I think I'll see someone post in our community or whatever, like, ask about the ROI of doing events. And it's like, we did an event and it didn't work. And it's like, what I'm hearing from you, even just in a couple minutes, is like, oh, there's levels to this. There's so many different plays and how much you can make the details better. And it's like, why do people go to this webinar? But they don't go to that. Is it that webinars are broken? Is it that events are broken? Or is it like, no, did you. Did you put in a level of work to make all of the things better? And I love when things happen in marketing because they're good. You know, I mean, like, I love when things work because they're good, not because we found some, like, shortcut or hack. And it's like, oh, no, we put in a ton of work to like, we care about this craft and we want this to be amazing. And that actually ends up being the growth hack. It's not that, oh, you sent, you know, these three reminder emails at these specific time intervals leading up to the event. I feel like the 8020 of it is, is in this stuff.
- [14:41]
C
Yeah. And two other things. So one was like when the sales reps were doing their pipe gen Tuesdays, marketing did ours and we took responsibility for directly inviting people. I mean, Palmer Hutchins, as you mentioned earlier, like he was the highest recruiter, but I was dming like I already know. Like I have a model. It's like send an email, send a LinkedIn post. If I have them on text, I text them. Working hard to get the right people in the room because that matters too. The table you're at matters. And like when I'm introducing on the stage, you can see in the first working session who's really there to learn and who's not. It kills me almost want to go and go, hey, here's your swag bag. I know you were taking time off from work, but because not having the right people at the table fully engaged actually ruins the experience for the rest of the table. And so you kind of even have to manage that dynamic. And we put this is one of the things we did too.
- [15:31]
B
There's always that one guy who like snuck in because it's like he's like actually not a VP of marketing.
- [15:36]
C
Yeah, I call him the bagel guy. The bagel snatcher.
- [15:39]
B
Yeah, yeah, the bagel snatcher. He's like, you find out he's actually like the head of sales and you're like, wait, how did this guy get in here?
- [15:45]
C
Like, oh no, I'm thinking of somebody different like that. Trolls Eventbrite I forgot one of the other things that we did. We asked people their experience levels and put people with the same experience levels at the same table. So they were assigned tables just by experience level. So we had like a little code. And so all novices sat at the same table, all experts sat at the same table. So when they were having in the conversation, they were having it with people at the same level. They were. So it wasn't a waste of time for the super smart people. But we made sure that the table facilitators knew how to prompt and do all the things that we needed to do.
- [16:18]
B
Is that awkward when you have to tell like, all right, the dumb people are going to sit over here. The smart people are going to sit.
- [16:23]
C
And no, no, I mean they self we didn't tell them. They were the ones. They're the ones that said it for them themselves. And it was interesting how it changed city to city. And I, I don't think it was actually the cities we started in New York, then San Francisco, then Atlanta, then London. And it shifted. And it was like every other month. Every month. And then we, we waited like over the summer. But the audience got more and more. The shift of novice to intermediate to expert. But I think it was because of time. I don't think it was because of location. I think people are just getting more and more akin to prompting and using the tools.
- [17:00]
B
No, it's moving really fast. I've noticed a shift even like people in my personal life that had no interest in hearing about the nerdy ways I was using ChatGPT like 3 months ago are now like passing me.
- [17:12]
C
Yeah. You get into it. Well, you asked a question twice and I haven't answered it yet, which is the roi. So ROI of events. I have a favorite concept and I call it revenue in the room. So revenue in the room is how much prospect revenue and how much retention revenue. Because that's engagement. And it's as important for your existing customers to attend these events as your prospects. And so that's, I think, how you justify it. And when you're thinking about event strategy, you always want to have that mix because your happy customers are going to sell your prospects on the value. Otherwise they wouldn't be there. And so you could definitely. I think our revenue in the room in New York was like 6 million. Right. And by the time we were done with the roadshow, we had touched over 20% of our revenue. And then we did a, like a VIP event after in each city with sometimes it was C suite, they didn't attend the event. Sometimes it was people that attended the event. But that was how we kind of went deeper on the strategic accounts and we tested what worked better. I thought that was interesting. So we did like a sporting event, a dinner and a concert and sporting event was actually the most successful in recruiting and overall experience in my opinion. Cause I attended them all.
- [18:27]
B
What was the sporting event?
- [18:28]
C
Giants baseball game.
- [18:29]
B
Pretty good.
- [18:30]
C
Yeah.
- [18:31]
B
What time was it? Night game.
- [18:33]
C
The event ended at 1:30, but people could hang around. So some people like hang around till 2, 2:30 and then we would kick them out. And then I think it started at 5. So there was like a couple hour window between. And I would say that of the 12 guests, maybe four attended the event and eight did not. But we were going for C level people for the event and you know, director level people for the.
- [18:57]
B
Nice. I like that. Revenue in the room is super useful. Also, don't you feel like there's a bunch of maybe like intangible ROI percentage Points from events and I'll just tell you what I think they are and see if you can relate to. This is like back to the in person thing. When you have your ICP prospects and customers in the room. For every dashboard and spreadsheet we look at, man, how valuable is it to have like four conversations? I'm like writing in my phone, I'm like, I just talked to this person. They, they've like, I like to test little like bits of messaging. I'm not like hello Sydney, I would like to test my messaging on you. But you, it's like a stand up comedian, right? You're trying to like you have a message you're working on, you're trying to work it in or you're telling a story to someone and you realize that that analogy really hits. There's something huge about, about that that is like harder to quantify. But when you can be out there kind of socializing stuff I call it the other one is like shaking hands, kissing babies. Like I think there is just value in like knowing people and connecting on a personal level that cements something stronger online. And then the other thing is like just the perception of it. Like I think the picture like having amazing looking photos from the event, having FOMO recording all of the content, having that all be stuff that you can then use in your marketing later. Like that's worth some dollar amount. Like we're going to be here, we're going to do all this work to get this event. Like we better film all the content and like use it as a big chunk of our marketing in the Future, right?
- [20:16]
C
Yeah, 100%. And if that's the answer you were looking for, I'm sorry, I didn't say that. I would say for us, we were testing out a new product offering. So we do AI Voice reviews. So we had like a handful of people that got to experience the beta of giving a voice review and we had the product manager for that at all the events. But we could have done more. And I want to say I can't remember the name of sky that runs a CIO community. And it was like IVANTA but for CIOs back in the day. And he had like this awesome like you'd come off stage, you'd immediately be swept into a small room where you know, you got interviewed. And I just think that's so smart. We do it at our larger events but not the smaller ones. But I think that's really great to get like really good one to one content created. We'll do that. At our advisory board, we always like put up a video crew for that and that's happening. But you're right on the socials and if it's hard. But if you can convince your photographer to turn around at least 20 photos within a day, within a day. This is not two or three days later because it's too late. Right. So you want the next morning to be able to send the thank you note with the link to the library of photos that have your brand on them that then they can share and then you get that high quality visibility. You know the other option is like you do it and then people pull pictures off of your stuff. But I like the like we're doing this. We do like a kick. I consider the kickoff party for Dreamforce. So it's like sea level people on Monday night. You know, Dreamforce kicks off on Tuesday and we do that. So we'll have the photographer there. But that night even like we put it out and then we're like front and center people like sharing that they were at our party the night before. And you know, so we get that extra airtime. And so I think that's key. That's what makes a photographer work with it. If you, if you wait a week to send the, the pictures out, then it's too late.
- [22:15]
B
Thank you for all this free event advice.
- [22:17]
C
You're welcome. You know, I started my career at events so I can tell the level.
- [22:22]
B
I knew it.
- [22:22]
A
The level of detail.
- [22:24]
B
I'll tell you another interesting thing that we, that we learned. This is the first, first big event. Well, second year. But this one was much bigger. And you know, events are a ton of work. Super stressful. A bunch of the people on our team that worked really hard in the event. We said take the week after the event off. And that was a huge mistake.
- [22:42]
A
Because.
- [22:42]
B
And I've already had this conversation. I'm a toxic manager. Put clip someone. Clip this. Dave doesn't give people time off. Clip this. No, but what we realized is that like running an event, there's so much the follow up through the next couple days and like we were like oh shoot, lesson learned.
- [22:58]
A
Like we.
- [22:58]
B
For this operating system we actually you should work maybe till like Wednesday of that week and then, then go take all the time in the world you want off. But I think how much of like the post event stuff bleeds into that. Like sending out the recording, sending out the pictures, the, the n. Thank yous, the hey, do you have the slides for this? There was just a lot left over and I Just was kind of sitting there like at my computer, like I don't have the answers to any of these things. And you know, if you started your.
- [23:21]
C
Career, event post is so important, right? So all too often people think about the event as the event, not a marketing program. And the value is in the follow up. And you know that happens all the time. Like why don't event leads get followed up on? I like the leads to drop immediately, if not end of night to have the follow up the next day. Because again, the first person people are like, well they're not back yet. I'm like, I don't care. They're still checking their email and if we're the first to respond, that shows that we're on it. And so I 100% agree with you. 100% agree with you.
- [23:50]
B
The drop the leads the same night is a good one. Then this is interesting. Like I will have conversations with sponsors at event and it's like, what's your plan for follow up for the event? Ah, we'll figure it out after. And it's like, no, no, no. To do great marketing we have to think about, go back to your little matrix. It's like you could run this for all the exercises like pre during post, what do we want them to think, feel, do? It shouldn't be like the morning after the event we're like, okay, now let's switch to think about what our follow up strategy is going to be that that should be connected to the experience from the beginning.
- [24:18]
C
Yeah. And the feel is like, wow, that was quick. They're on it. Like that's the kind of partner I want to work with, not somebody who sends me a vanilla email two weeks after the event.
- [24:29]
A
Totally. This episode is brought to you by a team that I've personally hired twice. Compound Growth Marketing. And they're smart enough to sign up as a sponsor for us here at Exit 5. I work with John and the team at CGM, both at privy and Drift. And if you're trying to figure out demand gen, they're the team you should call. Especially in a world where so much is changing. With AI, they know what they're doing. They're grounded in first principles, but they're also fast and adapting to what's changing with technology today. They've managed over 50 million in ad spend for fast growing startups and public companies. But here's what really sets them apart. They don't just run campaigns. They build systems that scale. Compound Growth Marketing has leaders and consultants who've been in the trenches at companies like Hunt club, goto, workable, monster.com and IBM. So they show up like true operators, not vendors. They understand what it's like to have the pressure to hit pipeline targets and to be accountable to the sales team inside of your company. And the biggest unlock, they blend demand gen with something that they call GTM engineering. It's a mix of low code automation, AI workflows and systems thinking that helps drive more revenue. It's not just about leads, it's about building smarter, more efficient go to market machines. Most agencies are still stuck on cost per lead models. But Compound focuses on full funnel roi, pipeline creation and long term growth. If you want a partner that understands your goals, moves fast and can actually help you win, go to Compound Growth marketing dot com. That's Compound Growth marketing dot com and make sure you tell them that I sent you there.
- [26:04]
B
Okay. We could talk about events for so long, but I'm curious, I want to spend a little segment on, on talking about AI. You just have done this whole AI in action thing. So I'm sure your, your knowledge of AI has continued to grow. But the lens that I want to ask you this question from is what do you think is different? And are things different about being a CMO in 2025, 2026 because of what's happening in AI? And what's different than maybe it was in your last job or 10 years ago? What's changing? I know for you know, I talked to a lot of CMOs. I know things are different, but I'm curious to hear how you articulate like what's going to be different in the future?
- [26:39]
C
Well, 100% it's different. Carrie Lou Dietrich and we started a CMO AI club last January. Just a handful of people so we could learn together what's working, what's not, what tools you're using. And so that's been super, super helpful. And Lisa Adams is also part of that. I didn't want to not mention her. And so I think there's been these defined eras, right. Like I started before the Internet, so I've been around a while. You know, it's like, oh, the Internet, we can talk to people digitally. Like there's a form, what do we do with it? So you know, there's been big shifts in marketing over the years. And this is another one. And I mentioned at the beginning, like marketing automation was a huge time for marketers. Like we could finally digitize our experiences and get more sophisticated. And the science of marketing was way more than just the creative side of marketing with brand. And then everything could be measured, which I don't know if it was a good thing or bad thing, to be honest. And so now we're back at the starting line, and what's cool about it is everybody has an equal shot, except the ones that have been investing in brand all along. I think we have to go back to the basics and, you know, really figure out who we are. Establish the brand, which is like the narrative consistency. How do you want people, you know, what do you want people to think and feel when they hear about your company? You know, how do you show up? That's why it's important for me. Like, high quality, right? Like, well rehearsed. Like, I want every single experience to, like, hit the five senses. Even if it's digital or if it's in person, it doesn't matter. But that a G2 event, it always feels like something just above and beyond. So the next time they have a choice to come to our event or someone else's, they come to ours. Like our last. Like we did when I got here a year ago, we didn't do launch events. And so it's like, okay, if you build something, people gotta know about it. You don't want them just to discover it, you know? And so we started launch events like this last one. You know, we just keep raising the bar. We had a production like, you know, like, it was just great. And, you know, we use gold cast. Like, I know you're a fan of gold cast. And so quality matters. What do you want your brand to stand for? And then how do you uphold that is point number one. Then, you know, with AI, it's disrupting everything. Here's some fun facts. We. So we do a lot of buyer research at G2. And so in April, you do an annual survey at G2, the buyer behavior report. We've decided to do it twice this year because things are changing so fast. So we did it in April. And in April, the responses said that four out of five people used some kind of LLM in their entire buying process. And 29% started with an LLM four months later. So we decided to do it in August. The report's coming out next week, and that number went to nine out of 10. And 50% of people starting in an LLM. 50% up from 29. That's a 71% increase in four months. It's just like what you said, like, you were at the forefront. Now everybody's passing you as soon as people get in there. And here's what's crazy about it? They ask a question, they get an answer and they're trusting the answers. And the answers are way more than a keyword. Right. The answers are complex, not what's the best software for running marketing programs. They're saying, here's my icp, this is my current tech stack. Tell me where I've overlap, what integrates with this do I still need? It's levels of questions that are super deep and you have to understand now what people are asking and write your content for the answers to those questions. It's a total shift.
- [30:23]
B
The version of this like 10 or 15 years ago was like your marketing team would just basically write an article that's like if you sold a CRM, you'd write an article that was like the 10 best CRMs to use and you'd put like yourself like number three on the list or whatever, or do.
- [30:38]
C
Some kind of benchmark study that you know was wired.
- [30:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, that's wild. I mean that's the stuff that like really makes. You have to have some fundamental questioning about what does the future of marketing look like. Because I'm not great at brainstorming on the fly. But you mentioned a bunch of companies and I have them in my notes. And so you said Clay Qualified, Sixth Sense, New Breed, right? Let's just say that those are four companies that all sold the same type of widget just for thought's sake, right? Well, if I need to buy that for my company, let's say they make accounting software for small businesses like mine. This is how I buy. Today I'm going to go to my chat GBD and say, hey, my business is a $3 million revenue. Da da da. I've run a small business. We have a team of five. I don't like complexity. I have this much budget. I have this, this, this, this, this here's my ICP I'm considering Clay vs qualified vs six sense vs new breed. Can you please do the initial research on this and tell me the pros and cons of each platform and make a recommendation about what might be great for me. Then it's like, you know, think minutes or however. It's insanely fast and boom. Is the buying process over? No. But now I've done so much work where as recent as like three or four years ago, the process would have been like, go to each person's site, fill out a form, wait to hear back, have to go to some. You're Sidney Sloan, man. You're like a gangster, like cmo like, you have a ton of credibility, an amazing resume. There's something broken about the people reaching out to. You are 22 year old BDRS, fresh out of college. And I'm not pooping on that as a profession. I'm just saying, like, there's just no way that person is going to be able to know as much about marketing. And so we gotta like rethink some of that. So these are the things I'm like, huh, that's interesting. Well, what does that mean? What? This is what I lay in bed at night and think about. Like what happens to sales? What happens to marketing? How does this change? How does this change? There's like, if all this stuff continues to play out at this rate, there is going to be a lot of change in how we market and sell products, right?
- [32:28]
C
A hundred percent. I would say. You know, the biggest shift since then was like the whole idea of a digital strategy when everybody moved from the sales rep, you had a Rolodex and you'd run events and then it was like, oh no, there's a digital experience and they're going to come to your website and how do you design an immersive website and then connect that website to a form that will then send that lead to a sales rep who will never call them? Right? And that was it. That was 2005 marketing.
- [33:00]
B
Well, it's like honestly in the early days of all those games though, like you could win like just by having a website. I'm trying to find a piano in my small town. I'm trying to find a piano teacher for my son. And like there's only one person that actually has a website that works that I could like fill out a form and like get a response back from. So she's probably going to get our business and that's how it used to be.
- [33:19]
C
Or you go to Yelp, right? And so I think that's the thing, that's what the data says too, is those 50% are starting on an LLM and then they'll click into the citation and thankfully G2 is one of the inputs. Now the reason I was having a conversation with my ChatGPT partner who speaks in a British accent like yours. I call her Rain as in the Queen. And I was like, before this podcast with Dave, I want to make sure because all of a sudden Reddit influence is going down Wikipedia, because guess what, they made an algorithm change just like Google used to do to us all the time too. So I want to stay at the forefront of like, what is influencing the answers in these LLMs. And thankfully, Rain said that G2 is still an influence. We know that too, because we have the data to prove it. But I was just double checking before this. And so you have to understand what those influences are, which are the citation links. And there's technology out there now that's people are calling it GEO or aeo, Answer Engine Optimization or Generative Engine Optimization. And they'll show it to you. So then you'll get to see, okay, where is my brand showing up? What questions are being asked and what is influencing the answers, which is going to give you insight and then to kind of, what content do I now need to create and where do I need to put it in order to influence those LLMs? Because it also looks for confirmation by going to multiple sites. And so it's an advantage that G2 has. Sorry, I'm going to G2 prompt for a second. But because we syndicate our reviews to multiple sites like aws, Azure, Ramp, like all these different places, those reviews get confirmed citation, which is why we also have higher influence. So you want to think about that with your content strategy, the brand story you're building, the answers that you're drawing in for your Personas, how do you make sure that they're published in multiple places? So it's looking for that confirmation in order to deliver the answer that's asked. And I think that's where we're at now. But it's still going to radically change.
- [35:14]
B
Yeah, you're new at, I mean, relatively even the history of G2. You've been there for a year and a half. There's probably a lot of existential or company strategy questions that, that are happening because of G2 and SEO. SEO was a big part of how.
- [35:30]
C
We were built on SEO. We've been at this for a year and a half. Like we started seeing the changes a year and a half ago to our traffic and what content was influencing. And we've been in the depths of this for a while. The good news is, yeah, the traffic's rebounded. We understand it. We can show influence now. So we just launched a partnership with Profound that will show our customers how their categories are showing up. So our partnership is a category level. If you want more depth, you can go to one of the over 100 products that are now listed on the aeo category on G2. In April it was seven. Now there's over a hundred. How do you stand out?
- [36:13]
B
Because it's a gold rush. It's like everybody follow the money, all the Money, nobody knows where the search.
- [36:19]
C
Is changing and all you need is a prompt engineer and license, a cursor and you can build a product.
- [36:25]
B
I guess so, something like that. Yeah, totally. That's why I like what you said about quality. So much of the narrative is like just you can hack it together, you can hack anything together, you can vibe code, anything. And it's like, like, man, I've made a lot of bad things with AI. Quality does matter, you know. And so are you going through like a company strategy shift and you're having to like reinvent what G2 is in this world of AI? What does it mean at like a leadership level?
- [36:55]
C
Yeah, we did rewrite our vision last December, January to be the most trusted data source in the age of AI. And we made a conscious decision to put G2 everywhere to give it to the LLMs, not gate it like some of the other analyst firms have done. They've suffered for that. You can see Gartner's stock price, right? Like, and so we made that conscious decision as like, no, we want to syndicate. We want to put G2 everywhere where the buyers are and build our brand through still being that trusted source. And that's what we were doing last year. And then we've tried to make it easier now for companies to generate reviews. And so we've made, I mean, because we had the same like survey form for a long time and now it's like AI voice generated reviews. So you can be interviewed, you can take transcripts and have it curate a review from the transcript. So you just send it if you're getting off a gong call or a zoom call. We've embedded it into customer marketing platforms. So we're just trying to figure out all the ways to make review capture a lot easier for our customers and kind of modernize it as well. And then I would say the other thing that we did was if you haven't been on G2.com for a while, go and then interact with G2AI, you'd be amazed what you could learn because we trained it on all our data. And so you could go to the LLMs and ask, but you're going to have a more credible Source by asking G2AI. And so our goal is that you'll always get better answers from it than from the LLMs. But LLMs are good.
- [38:25]
B
So that's interesting that the strategic decision to like essentially make that information public.
- [38:31]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:32]
B
Because like, hey, we have such a stronghold on SEO and we have so much good data. Why hide all these Gartner Analyst reports Behind the paywall.
- [38:42]
A
Right.
- [38:42]
C
It's also under the DNA of Our founders want to support every startup, right? They're founders through and through. And so we want to have high quality offerings from every single startup founder to build their brand on G2. So we have like starter packages all the way into, like, building out. How do we help large companies like Adobe that have 500 products, how do we showcase them? And so I think, you know, we're also making innovations there. And the first goal is building your brand on G2 and how do we make that experience great for our paid customers? Because that is the second place they're going. They're going from there to our site. And so the more that they can craft the experience on G2, the better educated the customer will be, the more showcasing they can do. And so our campaign right now is building your brand in the LLM era. How do you build your brand and how do you use G2 to do that? Which we do help customers do. This is how you start. Yeah, yeah.
- [39:39]
B
There's an interesting play on trust there, which is like, even though I get answers from an LLM, like, I think if I knew who the answers were from, if it was like, oh, this is Mary, a marketing manager at a similar company to mine. She says this thing is legit. Like, that, that holds more weight in some ways. You know, it's like when I look for something on Reddit and I'm trying to be like, you know, my left ankle is bothering me from running. What's the issue? And like, I find I want to know that that person is like, similar body type or height to me. Or there's something there on like the.
- [40:10]
C
And you can ask for the citation, right? Like, you can either click on the citation or you can say, list your sources, list your top three sources. And then they click into that.
- [40:17]
B
Do people. People really leave voice reviews?
- [40:23]
C
They're longer and they take less time too. Isn't that great? Hey.
- [40:26]
B
Yeah, this is Mark from Boston. I just want to tell you, I really love Gainsight. Like, are they talking into their phone?
- [40:33]
C
Yeah. You could test it now if you want to go. Leave a review for your favorite platform. It's amazing and it talks back to you. Tell me more. Yeah, that sounds interesting. Go deeper.
- [40:45]
B
If it's not a British man, I don't want it.
- [40:46]
C
Sorry, I don't know if we have accents. I'll check on that. I know it's multilingual. You could do it in German.
- [40:53]
B
What do you think about your role in running a team changes, everyone's quick to say, oh, in the age of AI, you just need a CMO and ChatGPT subscription. But, like, that's probably not true, or at least not yet. Are you rethinking org structure, team, how you do things, who you hire?
- [41:11]
C
Yeah, it's a good question. That's going to be one of our deep dive topics at our executive advisory board, because I think that is kind of where we're at as CMOs. It's like, first of all, like, ah, what do you do with it? How do you get trained? What are the use cases? You know? And now what do you do with it? And now we're at the, okay, how do I design this into my processes? How am I thinking about the technology? I think it's, there's three levels in my mind. When you think about AI, there's AI that's built into the platforms that you already own. There's AI builder, that's a category where it sits across the top and you can orchestrate across the systems with the builder, or there's the LLMs themselves. And so it's like we just wanted people to embrace it at first. Now we kind of need to say, okay, what is the path we're going to take here? What is the right architecture for us? What are the systems we trust? Where do we want that basically agentic orchestration to happen? So I think you have to think, think about that across the go to market team. And so that's the process layer. And then you go, that's technology process. Then you go, people. And I do think you and Katie Shrivastnian had a podcast recently that I saw and she's@you.com or something like that now.
- [42:23]
A
Wait, you listen. Do you listen to my podcast?
- [42:25]
C
I do, yeah. I have FOMO from your events, Dave, and I listen to your podcast, Attribution Baby. Okay, there you go. Let's take that clip. And so you and Katie were having this conversation. It really got me inspired. You played it right before HubSpot. And I think I mentioned it to like every other person I talked to because I was like, oh my gosh, how do we think about reimagining marketing and our org design?
- [42:50]
B
And so, so what's interesting about her though is like, she's the benefit of like, she's starting at a newish company. It's like, I think it's going to be harder for the G2s. It's harder to like, unwind than it is to like. Yeah, of course, if you're starting from the beginning. It's, I think I'm saying that because I think it's just so easy to like online people dunk on like fire the whole team, do whatever. It's like that's just not realistic in most companies.
- [43:13]
C
Like, and you see too the, the org charts that are like your standard org charts and then you've added all these agents which are like task level agents. And I understand why people have done it, but I'm not sure that's the right way. And so based on that conversation it got me thinking and so I'm like, okay, this is really cool, let's think about outcomes. And I've done pod based work groups before but the reason I was doing it back then was like trying to foster cross functional collaboration because everybody was like working in like the brand team was working in the demand gen and they weren't talking to each other and they were telling us that and it's like, all right, well let's create projects because then cross functional teams can work on and that will facilitate collaboration. Now I think it's different and our product team has already done this. They've moved to like outcome based dev schedules. So they're picking a problem to be solved and orchestrating the team around that and like going after the problem. So if we looked at it in that way then what would we do? And so I, my starting thoughts here are we would have a team focused on building the brand relationship. What does it mean to be engaged? How do you influence people where they are, which includes LLM expertise. What are those industry influencers we want to have relationships with? How do we educate them? And so the outcomes in this team would be influence and signals that connect to agentic workflows. And so then I'm thinking like in that next layer it's like what are the people skills on this team? What are the agent skills? And let's get more specific on the KPIs of the outcomes. So that'd be team one, the team two would be on relationship building. I love this one because like I hate, I absolutely hate that we have teams that are focused on top of funnel to closed one and then a separate team that's focused on closed one. Post sale. It's one customer. Let's just have people that are responsible for relationship building that are Persona based. Right. And so it could be an account building team that's like a mix of deep research, AI, agentics and personalized communication, which is AI and people in coordination with the account owner. Which is the replacement. Right. And they could focus on new customers but also existing customers. This is where community lives. And so their outcomes is like meaningful connections, account engagement and the facilitation of those topics where a KPI could be referral. So that's the second team, like engagement referral. The last team I'm looking at is Product delight is kind of the working thought for this one. Their job is to connect customer challenges to product capabilities. So they're responsible for launches, building out education flows. Like an AI copilot for every customer kind of concept. They create these viral hooks that drive everyday value for users. So they're in with the product teams but also surrounding them and their outcome is product usage and shared value, really understanding what customers value. Because a lot of times too, if the product teams are going to be broken up, you still have to have someone that's looking at the overall customer experience and what they value, not the features or capabilities and being honest about that and how to track it. So like PLG people would be super experienced in this area, but why not have that same concept for non PLG customers? And so that's where I've stopped so far. Like I'm literally reading my notes on my, you know that I've taken on the concept, but it's like I'm teasing it out because I think it's really interesting. And then it's like we have different skills but you don't have a product marketing function. We break it apart and get to reassemble. And that's the beauty of like being able to restart. We're given the invitation to restart.
- [46:56]
B
The problem is if someone says that, if someone hears you say there's no product marketing function, they instantly jump to at least online.
- [47:04]
A
Boo.
- [47:04]
B
You're wrong.
- [47:05]
A
Like you still. What are you talking about?
- [47:06]
B
You still need product marketing.
- [47:08]
A
It's like, hey, you're doing the job functions.
- [47:10]
B
I actually really, I wrote this down. Cause I really, I really like it. Something that, that I've always hated about work is job titles. They matter because people need them. Like, look, I needed it as a status, like trying to grow my career. Like it mattered when I got promoted to, from director to VP for the first time. Like that title mattered. But so many things inside of the company are. There's just so much nuance and they're just so blurry and so like, what is Social Media manager? What does that mean? Customer Life Cycle Marketing Manager. But I love this idea of like let's steal from product. And it's like products always had this concept of like jobs to be done. I'm thinking, what are the jobs to be done? Well, in my business, I want people to subscribe to our newsletter. So there should be someone who owns that, that's the outcome or a team.
- [47:55]
C
Right? The team that owns that, that's a pod.
- [47:58]
B
A pod of people work on that outcome. I like that.
- [48:01]
C
So they're, they're writing the newsletter, they're promoting the newsletter, they're curating the topics, they're seeking feedback from people who read it. Like that is what they own, which is, you know, your primary method of, of communication. And I think then people feel ownership of the outcome. And I think of it as, you know, you always talk about the customer journey. And if we're putting customer front and center in this world, we put customer front and center, we put product front and center, and we put brand front and center. So there's still like these ideas that are the basics and foundations of marketing. But you're asking him to rethink how we work designing in where the agentic capabilities fit and what are the skills that the people need to have. And I want it to be a blend. I love this idea of like having a growth person and a product marketer and with let's see what that pod looks like and what they can accomplish. And yeah, it'll be hard, but you don't get great value if you don't take great risk. And we're all going to do it anyway.
- [49:01]
B
Yeah, well, it's much easier to continue to do the same thing that it is to like try to rip it up and try something new.
- [49:08]
C
We have to start. This is one of those moments. This is one of the moments you.
- [49:14]
B
Mentioned jokingly before starting your career in the pre Internet days and look amazing, you're doing great, so don't worry about it. But are there any comparisons? I'm old enough to have had the Internet and not. But I was in seventh and eighth and ninth grade so I wasn't thinking about it in a work capacity. I was like, oh, I can use this Internet messaging tool to Talk to the 9th grade girls in my high school. Like it wasn't a serious business thing. Can you think back to that point in your career? In my mind, I want to say this has got to be what it was like. People saying like the Internet is overrated, it's never going to replace it. Are there comparisons to what we're saying with AI now to that era of work?
- [49:55]
C
I think it's similar in that, you know, it was New things. And we had to figure out how to embrace it and use it to our advantage. And so I remember, like it was 1998. Brunel Cholwin was my. My boss. He was kind of a cool dude. He was at Netscape in the early days too. And my friend Steph had the website. We were just implementing Onyx, the CRM system, and I was running events and my friend Nikki, she was my wedding. Steph and Nikki are still two of my best friends. Nikki was running the SDR team, but we called it telemarketing.
- [50:27]
B
Sorry, sorry to go on a complete tangent, but yeah, what you just said, this is like such an important thing. I'm trying to think about, like my kids and work and jobs and whatever. It's like, I feel the same way. So many of my closest relationships are people that I worked with, like post college. And I hope we don't lose that. It's like, yes, you go to there to learn, but like you, it's just in your 20s, it's a certain point of life. And like, that's cool to hear that you're still connected because I think that's a, like a back to the people stuff. That's like an irreplaceable part of this.
- [50:55]
C
Yeah. And we were in the trenches figuring it out because there was no playbook. Yeah. And so that's what I worry about. I was doing a session yesterday, Pepper was running on Geo and was like, I don't. There's a reason I didn't give a playbook at the AI in Action roadshow and that it was blank, because I don't think we have one yet. And I don't think we're going to have one for a little bit. Right. Because innovation is too fast. And so I don't think we should be building Playbooks. Right. I think we should be testing, iterating and just be super agile and exciting and set our teams up for that. And, you know, maybe before, when it was a 70, 2010 model, like now we're going to do like 60, 2020, where experimentation lives so people aren't afraid to take risks and try new things and not get wedded to them, because it's going to continue to change so fast. And that's the difference, Dave, that is the difference is the speed of this change. Where before, like, you know, it took three years, like, you know, I don't know how to build a CRM. Oh, you wanted to connect it to the web. Like, you know, like someone has to build the, the wiring to make that happen. And like what? There was some bus, like Enterprise Services bus or something like, you know, like super techy. Yeah.
- [52:05]
B
The thing you shared at the beginning about the data from April to August is, is eye opening.
- [52:11]
C
Yeah.
- [52:11]
B
Okay.
- [52:12]
A
I don't want to wrap, but I.
- [52:13]
B
Have to wrap because I need to go to.
- [52:14]
C
I know you're late, I'm sorry, School conference.
- [52:16]
B
But that's okay. I'm late because I had an amazing time. Sydney, this is great. I'm reminded of why I enjoyed our. Our conversation in the past. If you enjoyed this episode, go find Sydney. Sydney Sloan on LinkedIn. I don't care about any ratings, reviews, whatever. I want you to go to her, LinkedIn, send her a message like, hey man, I. Well, hey lady. I heard you on, I heard you on Dave's podcast and you were awesome. And I got a bunch of notes. I love your events, playbook thoughts on AI and I'll probably see it at an event or talk to you in the future. It's always great. You're a great energy, great to be around. I appreciate you giving us some time and coming on the the podcast. Thank you to Palmer for floating this idea of having you on and coming out and I'm sure I'll see you soon.
- [52:56]
C
Awesome. Thanks, Dave.
- [53:01]
B
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you.
- [53:06]
A
To subscribe and leave a review because.
- [53:08]
B
I don't really care about that. I have something better for you.
- [53:11]
A
So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review.
- [53:19]
B
Go check it out right now on our website, exit5.com. Our mission at Exit 5 is to.
- [53:24]
A
Help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5.
- [53:30]
B
There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions again, getting feedback.
- [53:41]
A
From your peers, building your own network.
- [53:43]
B
Of marketers who are doing the same thing you are. So you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there.
- [53:49]
A
And get something off your chest.
- [53:51]
B
It's 100% free to join for seven days, so you can go and check.
- [53:54]
A
It out risk free.
- [53:55]
B
And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become.
- [53:58]
A
A member for the year.
- [54:00]
B
Go check it out, learn more exit5.com.
- [54:02]
A
And I will see you over there in the community. Hey. This episode is brought to you by our friends@customerio. Do you remember? I'm old enough to remember this. You remember when a personalized message meant slapping someone's first name into an email? Hello David or hello Gerhardt. Yeah. Well, those days are long gone in marketing. AI has raised the bar for lifecycle marketing because now you can deliver smarter context aware communication that actually feels personal. And you can do it at scale without hiring five more content people. Personal personalization today doesn't just mean using my name. It actually means having context about any previous interactions. But the problem here happens because even though this sounds great in theory, most teams aren't actually doing it. They're stuck with broken reporting, siloed data and outdated stacks. It's often easier just to keep doing things the way you've always done them right? Isn't that kind of the the norm? Default to the status quo? So customer IO they did a survey on this. They surveyed 600 marketers just like you and me to figure what's actually working and what's broken in. This is what we call lifecycle marketing and they detailed how the best teams are actually solving these problems. The report breaks down 2025 priorities, where budgets are moving and how to tame the measurement mess. Real world examples from brands like Notion and Monarch Money that use AI personalization experiments and understanding the next chapter of AI what's on marketers Wishlist right now and how customer journeys can get smarter, not just faster. It's packed with examples, data and strategies you can put to work right now. For if you want to get smarter about lifecycle marketing. This is a great free resource. So go check it out. You can get it@customerio exit 5 and you'll learn how to build lifecycle marketing that keeps up with today's expectations. That's customer I.O. exit 5.