Aligning Sales and Marketing Leaders in 2024 with Dan Gottlieb

Dan Gottlieb: Every sales leader, they’re not talking about technology, they’re talking about culture. 

John Common: Welcome to Growth Driver. Where the best minds in B2B are redefining growth.

John Common: Welcome to the show everybody. John Common here. I am a CEO, I'm a founder, but most importantly, I'm a total B2B growth geek, which is why I am your host here on Growth Driver today. Alright, so I've been thinking a lot, quite a lot about B2B sales lately. You know, before AI, before the pivot efficient growth, I think the field of B2B sales has really been disrupted and really transformed by so many things.

But the three that come to my mind are major changes in buyer behavior, and that buyer behavior change honestly, often has taken our buyers away from wanting to meet with us as salespeople, number one. Number two, a rise in the number of different go-to-market motions that are impacting the B2B sales function, right?

So. We've got account based, we've got product led, we've got customer led, we've got partner or ecosystems. All of these things have, you know, implications to the field of B2B sales. But I think maybe the one that's most relevant today that we're gonna dig in together. The third major impact on B2B sales is there's been an absolute explosion really over the last 10 years, but especially over the last five years in B2B sales technology, data, and now generative AI.

So the question today on Growth Driver is what do sales and also marketing leaders need to be focused on? What's real, what's hype, bullshit? 

Now, I can think of no better person to unpack this topic than my friend Dan Gottlieb. I want to tell you a little bit about Dan. If you don't know him. He's a senior director and analyst at Gartner and specifically Gartner for sales leaders. Prior to that, he was a senior analyst who led research and also did some consulting, uh, in the sales practice at Topo. But what I like about Dan is he's just a smart, insightful dude. So Dan, welcome to Growth Driver. I'm so glad you're here with me.

Dan Gottlieb: Thanks so much for having me, and I always struggle with those kinds of introductions because I, but I really appreciate all those nice things.

John Common: Yeah,

Dan Gottlieb: Just a nerd and a student of the game. That's really all I think about. 

John Common: Yeah, man. Takes one to no one. But we did a little bit of looking into your background, as they say, and your bio, I caught something interesting.

Your bio lists standup comedy and improv as a key creative influence. Okay. I just gotta tell you, I find that is very interesting. So I've got a softball question for you.

Dan Gottlieb: Oh yeah. Here we go.

John Common: Here we go. What's the connection between comedy and B2B sales, Dan?

Dan Gottlieb: I, I think that there's so many connections between comedy and B2B sales, but, one of the most important ones is the intention that goes into how you present and organize your communication. It is one of the most direct and obvious ways when you think about in comedy, the close reading that goes on in interpreting how you communicate a joke or how you structure a joke, how you structure timing, how you think about your physical delivery.

It's a direct one-to-one impact only that in comedy you want laughs and in sales you want what you're saying to actually land with this group. In sales, it's actually way more complicated, uh, uh, as well as just this fear pushing through the discomfort and the fear of yourself out there in a sales conversation, in a selling scenario.

You know, those are, those are two very interpersonal parallels between comedy and and sales. But I will say, if you could open a meeting with the appropriate level of joke,

John Common: [00:05:30] Appropriate.

Dan Gottlieb: is a critical way to get started on the right foot.

John Common: I couldn’t agree more. So, okay, so let's dig in to kind of the meat of the topic today. Let's start with a flyover. Alright. So, I think you are so uniquely positioned in the field of B2B sales, obviously, which is what we're talking about today, but also just B2B go to market and growth writ large. So fly us over. of what are the major trends happening today within B2B sales? 

Take it any way you want. What's the state of play?

Dan Gottlieb: Oh boy. All right. Well, let me maybe, give some context on, you know, what are the inputs going into my brain right now? So at Gartner, I'm in a group called Gartner for Sales. And what we do is we provide advice and research to B2B sales leaders across a variety of industries and their lieutenants in sales ops and sales enablement.

And so what I think, you know, what matters there is that I've had a chance through this experience at Gartner to work with sales leaders across so many different industries about their sales organization, about sales technology and data and analytics and how they're thinking about it. And that has been super insightful.

I mean, I have clients that sell fire hydrants to municipalities. I've got clients that sell cement.

John Common: Right,

Dan Gottlieb: As well as clients that sell chips or, you know, in, um, all around Silicon Valley. You know, I, it runs the gamut. And so it's, it's been a really ex- I didn't realize how much I'd really enjoy that actually.

It's been, it's been very cool. So, with that point of view in mind, I definitely think that one enormous trend is this acknowledgement that sales is constantly leading through continuous change that change management. All of the playbooks that have ever been written about change management, really, I wouldn't wanna say don't apply to sales, but need to be thought about completely differently for sales, because there's constant tension the second you start introducing change.

Between the short-term priority of hitting the number this period and the long-term change we want to achieve. It's just in the design of change management against what my objectives are, and I think that sales has been hit so hard with change over the last several years. Not just the pandemic supply chain issues, inflation, these are all creating this now AI.

It's creating this scenario where I'm just constantly leading through change. That is the standard. It's no longer just this thing that's been happening. I think that that may sound kind of silly, but if from a sales leadership point of view, you know, I've never seen so much interest in leading through change

John Common: Yeah.

Dan Gottlieb: and identifying and thinking about how to reinvent, how you lead in that environment.

That's probably been one of the more recent trends that is a little less technical, but very human and very relevant to sales. That's one.

John Common: That's good. And it's obviously bigger than just sales, right? I mean, I'm interested in your take on this.

I feel like the rolling series of black or gray swan events that you just listed, you know, the pandemic, the Ukraine war, the supply chain issues, the rise in interest rates, the, the, the, the end of growth at all costs, the beginning of efficient growth. All of these things have I think brought some degree of true, truly new things that we have to do.

But I think there's also maybe a greater percentage by all of these changes where we're, we're needing to get serious about fundamentals in a way that we haven't had to get serious about fundamentals as leaders as as, as B2B growth teams. You know, and I could, I could list some examples about that, but I think there's been a lot of lip service, to the kind of fundamental change that now B2B sales and marketing teams absolutely have to go through.

Whereas before it was like, I strongly recommend you change. Now they have to change. What do you think about that?

Dan Gottlieb: I think there's a lot of pressure to change that is a necessity now, and it's manifesting in a lot of different ways. I think in some respects, you know, when you look at the, I mean, one of the most common trends that highlights this is how many heroic acts of selling are required to just get claw as close as possible to the number as possible, quarter in and quarter out.

And when you look at what those heroic acts of selling are, actually looking from a tactical level, you're realizing that sellers, it's not just about who can we get on the phone and what can we say to them, it's this way. More interestingly, multi-threaded and digital experience where reps are actually creators, creating videos as part of digital sales rooms to send to different groups in order to just get their attention to think about us, to get them on the phone.

These, when you think about the sales and marketing side, I mean, we have a lot to talk about there, but, um, you know, you're starting to see a lot more interest in the blurred line between top and middle of funnel sales activities, um, where you're relying more on these sort of technical marketing growth hacking type of skillset to make 10 SDRs look like 30 or more.

Right?

John Common: Hmm.

Dan Gottlieb: And so I, you know, we're, what's the, what's the quote? There's, there's a quote about this, there's something about necessity and invention. You know, the quote, somebody knows the quote out there,

John Common: yes,

Dan Gottlieb: right?

John Common: It's, necessity is the mother of intervention. 

Dan Gottlieb: That's it. That's the one.

John Common: Yeah. Right.

Dan Gottlieb: Yeah. You know, RICO, whatever.

John Common: Yeah.

Dan Gottlieb: That quote. I feel like that idea is what is happening in sales and you know, that there's so much, change happening at one time that there we're, we're in this incredible defragmentation process right now where there is no clarity on what the best is.

There's just so much happening that in the next three to four years is where we'll be able to look back and realize where this new playbook came from. But right now, where it's so splintered that it's hard to pinpoint exactly what the best thing is, if that makes sense.

John Common: It does, that's a neat way to put it. Put yourself in the shoes of an enterprise B2B sales leader, and maybe an enterprise B2B CMO. 

Dan Gottlieb: Mm-Hmm.

John Common: Going through that. They still have to hit their number this quarter and next quarter. They still have to create and capture and convert demand. What are you seeing in terms of these sales and marketing leaders? How are they navigating it? That's kind of what I'm trying to get at from you is what are you really observing with your dataset that you talked about at Gartner?

Dan Gottlieb: The folks that feel like they're in more control are doing some basic fundamentals that are different.

John Common: Hmm.

Dan Gottlieb: And this sounds, this will sound overly simplified, but they're planning together. Their cadence for how they run their quarters, and their half year activities, and their annual planning are a lot more integrated using shared data, and they're thinking differently about that.

And their meetings are more productive because their field marketers in a region are looking at pipeline coverage in partnership with the sales leadership team to talk about things that they can do together. Right? That's one example of, I think, where I see organizations handling this environment and doing better work.

I'll give you an example. A friend of mine is a sales development leader, and has been very focused on, they report to marketing, and they have a lot of sales development reps in this organization. It's a talent feeder to the sales organization and their EMEA field market. You know, he knew that he was doing a good job when the EMEA field marketing lead came to, uh, one of their key early quarter planning calls with ideas on how to fill pipe coverage gaps in two of the countries in emea.

And that's, as opposed to sitting, you know, you can imagine how those meetings typically go. Right? I think that that's an outcome of that shared planning, shared data approach, that I'm seeing.

John Common: Yeah. And that's a great example. And just to tie off is that, is the need or the strong recommendation for B2B go-to market teams to act like one revenue team, one growth team, not siloed, executors of a grab bag of tactics? Is that really new? We knew that before the pandemic. We knew that. This is what I think. We knew that sh*t man. 

But, as is often the case, not to get philosophical, but as often as the case with humans and human behavior. It's one thing to know something, it's entirely another thing to do it. And what oftentimes it takes to make a human, or a team, or a company, or a culture move from knowing it versus doing it, is that quote that you talked about.

You need, there needs to be often an external remover of excuses. Sometimes, you know, an external force that says, I know you know it, but now we're gonna act. We're gonna act like one team. We will align, because we have to.

Dan Gottlieb: 'cause we have to.

John Common: Because we have to.

Dan Gottlieb: This is manifesting in non-tech, verticals, in other interesting ways. So e-commerce, right? Introducing e-commerce portals. You know, a lot of large enterprise organizations that are really focused on margins. Every, a lot of organizations, we talk about profitability, we're talking about margins, but a lot of these businesses have been talking about margins for quite some time.

And so, one way that you see, traditional account management, we've got a client that sells paper products, you know, any kind of toilet paper or, you know, any kind of paper you may need to run a facility. And in this example, they're trying to shift from just the account manager working directly with their contacts and on that annual touch basis cycle for re-upping and reordering materials to having the sales reps introduce digital buying capabilities through e-commerce.

This is not a new idea, but the push for better margins is what is driving the top down interest in these initiatives. And so the sales leader is realizing, I can't, I can't own this myself. I have to partner with marketing, I have to partner with supply chain, and I have to really convince my frontline and teach them how to use this technology to change their meeting.

Because the meeting changes, right? It goes from how are you doing? Let's talk about your products. What, what's my reason to call you now? There are reasons to call, by the way, they're just not the same ones you are comfortable with. And as a sales leader, they're having to organize that particular, implementation.

They're having to organize their people, and they're having to partner with marketing to help them better understand what they need from them to even drive their clients to go to it, right? I need customer marketing's help to do this at scale. So it's been really interesting to see the sales leader's interest.

And their relationship with their peers as a top topic for us.

John Common: Yeah. You know, it, my feeling just to tie off on it, my feeling is, I am just glad we're here. Now, in a weird sort of way, there's another quote, from Rah Emanuel. Don’t let a good crisis go to waste. And I'm watching our industry use the crisis. Maybe it's not a crisis. The opportunity that we're in right now to improve the way we behave cross-functionally. Alright, so let's dig in to RevTech, which is an area that you are, one of the areas that you're particularly skilled in and have expertise. I wanna play a game with you. So let's play 2024 RevTech must have, versus RevTech nice to have.

Alright, so an enterprise B2B, of sales, CRO, you have to, you're under the mandate of driving efficient growth. What are the must have data sources, and analytics you gotta have? 

Dan Gottlieb: So I think you have to have more sophisticated data and activity capture capabilities, and then use machine learning to help organize those against your deals. So that you can look at and talk about your deals in a far more constructive way. And so let me give you examples of what that looks like.

The broadly categorized revenue intelligence. So tools that help with pipeline management, opportunity management, I mean the core fundamentals of what it means to run a sales organization, but enriching that with, activity data, engagement data, scoring, so that you can have, it's not necessarily just about having these conversations that you're already having, but actually so you can create a culture of self-accountability in your sales organization so that you can make it easier for one sale seller or one sales manager that manages 120 deals a quarter.

To better prioritize time. I think that is probably one of the most core needs is making sure you're spending time in the right deals, in the right ways. Or, on deals that we need to spend time on. We can think more creatively about what to do there instead of spending a lot of our time as sales leaders interrogating what is actually happening in the deal.

That's, it's, to me, an essential need. And part of that includes capturing voice data, capturing recorded calls. And this isn't to, I think that what we're in the middle of here and why I care about this a lot as a former sales rep. Right? I'll never forget you asking me to put data into the CRM and then you're just gonna kind of berate me about what is or isn't there?

I don't really like this very much. Right? 

John Common: Right. Right.

Dan Gottlieb: Any sales rep knows that I can control my narrative based on what I put into the CRM, but it's because of the way the information is used by the leadership team. What we're, what AI is gonna do for sales, what it's doing right now for organizations that have been using this tech really well–

It's funny, I ask a lot of vendors to introduce me to users, introduce me to clients. I want to talk about that. And every, every user that I've spoken to about revenue intelligence, this broadly defined group, I'm not just talking about it for using to manage your forecast, but really in this other more deal pipeline management way.

John Common: Mm.

Dan Gottlieb: Every sales leader, they're not talking about technology, they're talking about culture. They're talking about the way that they can set expectations for you to own your path, to your number. And so when you come to the call, I don't want you to go around in a circle and tell me what's going on in your deals.

I want you to tell me what your ideas are for what you're gonna do about it. And I want you all to trade notes on that. And that, I think is a really cool shift, and is essential right now in making sense of your path to your number in quarter.

John Common: Tell me if this is true, to make that happen, to make those conversations in the quote unquote, the traditional, no longer traditional sales forecast meeting. Instead of it being berating me about the data that I put in the CRM to make the quality of that conversation happen, go up, we need to capture more and better data and then associate it to contacts, opportunities, and accounts.

So what I'm hearing you say is we need to widen the way we capture and attach meaningful data to those things, to contacts, to accounts, to opportunities. 

Dan Gottlieb: Right.

John Common: Am I getting, am I picking up what you're putting down?

Dan Gottlieb: That's exactly right. I think it's a fundamental baseline, competency in every ops organization that can open up a lot of doors for how you can use sales tech in more creative and interesting ways– especially when we start talking about AI. But I, that capturing just fundamentally capture improving how we capture data and make sense of it at the deal level, for the manager and the rep to constructively focus on how they think about approaching their deals and prioritizing their time is such a baseline capability.

And it's not something that we often necessarily talk about that way? You know, I, and I, that's what I find. So like, we don't talk about it in the realm of culture. We don't talk about it. How does better insight affect culture? We don't really think about that. But that is actually what every CRO I've spoken to that's bought any of these products, wants to talk about when I ask them about it.

And that I think is exciting for us. It’s the more important story for us to be telling around why you capture better data. It's not for just accountability reasons. It's so you can elevate how you are talking about, and owning, and understanding your path to sales. And it's fun.

John Common: Let's make it more pragmatic though. So I think I understand the vision and the idea, land it in the actual, typical enterprise B2B company’s tech stack. Like they, they literally have, they have, you know, they have sales engagement platforms, they have conversational intelligence platforms.

They've got a, probably an MAP platform. They've got a intent data sources. They certainly have a CRM system. They have an account based platform. Help me. They have multiple analytics and attribution platforms to make that culture change, better insights that improve culture to enable easier, more consistent path to the number that you're talking about. 

What does that really look like? What does it, like, in specificity for me?

Dan Gottlieb: There are several ways to implement these capabilities today. I think this is what makes, is the heart of sales tech mayhem. There, you can do this through the sales engagement platforms of the world. You can do this through the revenue intelligence platforms of the world. You can also do this through your core CRM.

The challenge that you have, in determining this path, is the IT tech that you are investing in to capture the data and organize it for you. And so, you know, there's the, that's what makes this so interesting. There is no one best way to do it. I think that every sales tech vendor that is realizing they need to offer these capabilities and are. 

But I think that, you know, those are the specific capabilities and you have to think about it in two ways. As a sales leader, do I want to capture data into a third party tool and let them capture it and organize it for me?

Or do I want to capture that data into our CRM and then do that analysis ourselves, or with just a couple of those of those vendors. Those are two different structural approaches and differences. But in the everyday, I mean, that's what makes this heart of sales tech so crazy right now is, you know, I have clients saying, I have Gong, I have Outreach, and I have Cleary.

What should I, what should I do? Right? And the reality is what I just talked about, you can do in all three of those products.

John Common: Well, okay. This is a perfect, thank you for that. And I follow you, and this is a perfect segue. There is a tech reckoning sometimes shortened to tech consolidation, and there's a couple of flavors. Obviously there's, you know, there's vendor consolidation potentially underway, but there's also tool and or feature consolidation.

And I think what you just mentioned is a perfect, you just named three platforms. You said, I'm trying to accomplish said goal. I can do it. I think with any of these three or some combination of these three; or I can roll my own, so to speak, into my own CRM system. So how should I do it? Meanwhile, along comes the tech reckoning that I think we're in. So I want to ask you, do talk, what's your point of view? What are you seeing around that reckoning, around that consolidation and, well, let's just start there. What, what are, how real is it and how is it rippling through?

Dan Gottlieb: So, it's very real. I think the conversation I just shared with you, that example, ‘Oh, I have Salesforce Outreach, Clary, Gong,’ for example, among many other types of vendors, right? 

John Common: Yeah.

Dan Gottlieb: And, you know, what, what do I do right? Should I consolidate? How should I think about consolidating? And here's what's happening.

I think that the market, the vendors, their pressure to grow and show a path to growth is really what's driving a lot of this activity in the vendor community.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Dan Gottlieb: Clients are seeking less complexity, but are not necessarily, or have to take into consideration the change cost of migrating vendors–

John Common: Yes.

Dan Gottlieb: –given the market is at a position where we have vendors in one category that are adding on capabilities.

You know, one is more enterprise ready and another is just maybe getting there. And the same goes for each of these vendors in the market. So what it's creating is this scenario or a lack of confidence where safe buying, safe renewals, kicking the can down the road is really what's translating to a lot of customers.

But a lot of my customers are looking for, they want to know what's the net value add? Am I really saving? Is it really just saving money? Is it worth the few thousand dollars to save, if I have to spend a year switching right now?

I'm not sure. 

John Common: Of course CFOs probably wouldn't agree with me, dropping my total software licensing fee x percent per quarter or per year is meaningful. And it's meaningful because it's happening. I mean, you can quantify, it's easy to. 

Dan Gottlieb: It is.

John Common: And it's near term. Those are two things. CFOs love, easy to quantify and immediate, but that's not, I think what I hear you saying is that's not really the source of the bulk of the ROI, the source of the bulk of the ROI is, how do I hit my growth goals better? 

More consistently? How do I enable my sales team to have that path to the number, easier and more predictably? That's interesting. Hmm.

Dan Gottlieb: Yeah. And what's happening here, and this is the thing I'm constantly trying to espouse to my clients, right, is they're coming into those kinds of questions. And, you know, it's all obviously gonna depend on their situation, how they go to market, where the adoption lies, where's the wind blowing internally.

And what I'm talking to clients about buying sales tech, you know, I really want to try to get them to focus on understanding what their reps actually need and want. And also, how does that map to a few different design criteria, right? There are ways you can figure this out. We try to guide them on better engagement with buyers or better alignment to the key buying job to be done at these moments in time.

The second thing we wanted to focus on is, can you just reduce some friction for the reps here? A lot of enterprise selling is team selling, a lot of internal team selling, and we don't often think about how hard that is. And finding spaces for that kind of, uh, reduced, reduced friction. And can we help you adapt your tactics based on data?

What are the data points that you can adapt your tactics for? And instead of asking that generally, isolate very specific parts of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion process, and isolate those moments in time and ask those questions. And I think that what we're seeing from our clients is that their existing investments, they're not even thinking about them nearly as broadly as they can.

They're not thinking about maximizing the value. They're very focused on these niche use cases and just, you know, the vendor told me this is what I should use, use it for, and that's what I'm using it for. They're not as good at self-awareness or, out creating a vision about what's possible and then going shopping, if that makes sense.  

I think that's probably one of the biggest areas that we're focused on with our clients in sales tech. And so if someone were to say to me that question that I shared earlier, I've got these four vendors, which one should I use? I'd say, well, let's open up your sales process. Let's talk a little bit about it.

Let's talk a little bit about where your actual, you know, how dependent are you on prospecting for your account executives? How dependent on you are you, who are you listening to call recordings at all? What's your pipe and forecast management process like? Like those are some of the ways that we try to get it back to it.

It's less about your tech and a lot more about that culture that you're using it for.

John Common: What are one or two things the marketing function could do to improve the level of insights and to improve that culture, that selling culture that you're talking about?

Dan Gottlieb: Yeah. Okay.

John Common: One or one or two things.

Dan Gottlieb: Well, can we agree that we're gonna leave ideal customer profile analysis aside because it's too obvious,

John Common: Sure.

Dan Gottlieb: It's too, you know, like I think that's such a, if we're still talking about that, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say it. Anyway, let's put that aside.

John Common: Thou shalt have an ideal client profile, okay. Done. Okay. 

Dan Gottlieb: Yes. Okay. So two, I think more interesting things that would be happening here. I think the first one would be teaching the sales organization. Lending your marketing ops professional skills towards identifying opportunities where the sales team can benefit from automation. And that I think is, I think one, why marketing ops, why that skillset?

Because marketing ops is really one of the few skills where they not only have to think about the relationship between tech data and automation, but the audience level messaging, right? It's that last layer of connecting the data and segmentation that is used to the messaging that we can apply now with AI to selling scenarios.

And I think this is where one thing that marketing can try to be proactive, and you see this in some places, right? You see this in places where you're starting to see marketing move further, further down the funnel in terms of the role that they play in supporting the sales organization. But I think that that's one high level thing that we can do.

The second thing is, I'm trying to, you know, is understanding coverage, and how the pipeline management process works and incorporate those insights into planning. Having slack in your planning so that you are able to make some adjustments to your programs based on those particular, based on those insights.

And so, you know, you could, I think that's an outcome. That level of planning, that's an outcome to aspire towards. Something that may align to that is better talent alignment, meaning the way our orgs are designed are closer or more similar in resemblance. Meaning, we have marketing resources that understand the segmented nuances of the sales organization and beyond.

These are not new ideas. I think that they're just fundamentals that matter a lot more right now.

John Common: Yeah. Okay. That's great. You mentioned AI several times. I knew we would, let's take it squarely, we could talk about AI for hours and hours, but, and by the way, I would point out to our audience; Dan, I heard you give such a great definition and just some fundamental information in a Gartner podcast recently. So big shout out, always, to Gartner and that podcast episode, good. Listen to it because I don't wanna recreate that content that you already nailed about just fundamentals of AI. 

Instead through the lens of this conversation, looking out at 2024, what are a couple of critical use cases in B2B sales and maybe marketing, where you would say, look, here. Start here, y'all and the y'all is teams, marketing teams.

Dan Gottlieb: Whew.

So let me tell you a short story. I'm gonna answer this question. Okay. So I had been introduced to generative AI in 2022 through one of the cool parts about Gartner. You get to meet all these technical experts, right? And as someone who had done messaging consulting, I was intrigued by it.

So if you wanna sign up for a presentation in Gartner for a conference in May, you have to sign up in October, right? So, in October, 2022, I signed up for what I thought would be this way-out-there-weird-presentation at our conference called ‘Generative AI for Sales,’ a new kind of sales creative. And I do this masochistic thing where I invent a title, and then I back the pre out into the title and it got accepted.

And I was like, cool, I'm excited to do this. And then a month later, my friend sent me a link to ChatGPT. And my stomach turned inside out because I knew that this was gonna be an insane year. And so to make matters more entertaining, right after that, the Gartner Research Leadership Team kind of did a search and was like, well, who's been thinking about generative AI in the respective practices that we support?

I had just signed up for this preso, so there you go. That is how I was anointed the expert in our practice. So the imposter syndrome that I have felt for the last nine plus months has been insane. And it has motivated, that I just wanted to share. 

I only feel like I'm just a little bit further ahead than some peers because I've been tasked with having to learn and teach about it as fast as I can.

So I just, you know, I think everybody feels that way. I just, we don't talk about it that way sometimes. 

John Common: I appreciate you being surreal and authentic. 

I heard a, I forgot who it was from, but they said the distance between someone who knows nothing about AI and someone who is currently really knowledgeable about AI, that distance is never gonna be smaller than it is today.

Dan Gottlieb: Oh yeah.

John Common: Right? 

And so it's about to just explode. If you're feeling like an imposter, join the club. We're all working to have perfect knowledge. 

Dan Gottlieb: Exactly. It makes this conversation a lot easier to have. Okay. So,

I think it's a really, really wildly compelling topic. So there's two ways to think about how is this really taking place in sales today? And then there's, which use cases should we apply it to?

And so there's one way to think about it. So, to answer, how is this manifesting? You've got the bottoms up raw, I'm already using stuff today. I can go to ChatGPT, I can go to Bing. I can go to Bard. I can go to any of these apps and use it right now. And I think that not enough organizations are really acknowledging that is actually what's driving a ton of the initial gen AI habit forming right now.

And the other is top down enterprise investments and spend in gen AI programs and technology in our tech stack today. And those are happening in parallel, whether we like it or not. That is what's happening. They're happening in parallel. So that is I think my initial assessment of, okay, great.

So what should we do? There, you know, to answer the first, which use cases should we focus on? I mean, I think that what makes the sales use, you know, there's, I'll pick one for each, right?

John Common: Okay, great. 

Dan Gottlieb: For the bottoms up use the high level use case that we've been talking about is called generative value messaging.

And this is really about using research and accelerating and using generative AI to turn our research process into this, into atomic insights, and then examine those insights with a point of view, and then take that point of view and turn it into creative ideas for how to approach an email, a call, a campaign.

And I, you know, when you look at these prompt threads that reps are using for research, I mean, you can go to Claude and take an earnings call and have a really targeted thread. You can go to some of these apps that are plugged into the internet to have these really targeted threads where you're not just relying on the large language model, but you're relying on it as a composition engine.

John Common: Yes.

Dan Gottlieb: It is really a three step process. Manufacturing insights, right? What is this earnings call telling me about dot, dot, dot? Taking a point of view to say, why does that matter to people in this role or that role at an organization like this? And then to that third level, which is the really valuable part for the sales organization.

I mean, don't get me wrong, those first two are already valuable, right?

John Common: Yeah.

Dan Gottlieb: I’m accelerating my research process, but so you can dot, dot, dot have a more targeted point of view and a better engagement in your sales conversations. And so,

John Common: That drives personalized messaging, better offers, better calls, to action. 

Dan Gottlieb: Right.

John Common: That drives engagement, that drives better revenue performance. Totally.

Dan Gottlieb: Right. So that's right. So, it's that actually I think that last mile. So it's that last mile of applying it to your conversation of a specific company, a specific persona, a specific product, a specific scenario. And, you know, using it to collaborate is that creative process. I think we should, we need to nurture that because sales is such an unstructured workflow all the time.

Right? So much unstructured research, data gathering, insight gathering, and then as a rep, we synthesize and we bring it and present it in a conversation. And a lot of it is using external data that's already available on the internet. Right? So how, what does a program look like to support that?

We see companies investing in what we call generative AI literacy, which is, it's not just about using it in sales, but there's still these fundamentals of responsible use case. Then you talk about the basics of using it for prompting, et cetera. And, you know, that's really going on right now across a lot of sales organizations, smart reps, training each other, teaching each other, posting about it online.

And those are, there was a Boston Consulting Group. They released a study just recently, really, really cool stuff.

John Common: Yeah.

Dan Gottlieb: They basically tested it on their consultants, right. To try to understand it. And they, you know, the productivity gains were pretty substantial.

Just from a efficiency standpoint, there are obviously,

John Common: Mid or high 20%, wasn't it?

Dan Gottlieb: Yeah. And for the lower performers, it closed the gap a lot more than the top performers.

John Common: Right.

Dan Gottlieb: Very interesting insight.

John Common: Yes.

Dan Gottlieb: The point being it's immediately valuable. This isn't some ethereal, this isn't the metaverse this. Right? This is… it's already happening.

John Common: We're not trying to figure out how to make blockchain. Connect to market. Yeah, totally.

Dan Gottlieb: Right. Right.

John Common: Alright. That's such an interesting topic. I want to dig in, I gotta ask you at least one question about sales development.

Dan Gottlieb: Okay.

John Common: Is sales development still relevant B2B in light of bots, AI, et cetera?

I have an opinion. You are one of the true experts in this area, is it relevant? And if it is still relevant, how is it properly used in 2024 and beyond?

Dan Gottlieb: It is still relevant. It's just changing. So, there will always be a need for, and a feeder, a talent feeder for the sales organization. 

That has not always been, it's super funny. I've done a lot of calls with clients that are like, how do I justify the value of the sales development organization? And they're very focused on pipeline performance.

But I have, and if you ask them about how many of their reps they've lost to internal hiring, it's kind of this uncontrollable problem that a lot of, it's not a problem. It's not really a problem to the enterprise. It's great, but it's not quantified in its value. I think, so that, that will not go away.

Now what does that role look like? So, to answer the question more directly, they're still relevant in the pipeline generation value proposition.

John Common: Yeah.

Dan Gottlieb: There is a channel, there is at least one channel that still does really well. When it is performed correctly. And that is the phone. The phone is a very high converting channel for organizations that are able to design their programs around using it intelligently and effectively.

And the phone is also the original channel where we would use to train sales reps on how to prospect and create pipeline. And as long as that channel is still a converting channel, you need talent. That is the, a more direct answer to that question.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Dan Gottlieb: Now, however, right. And I, by the way, I have some clients that have shown me some very compelling dial to connect ratios, connect to qualification ratios today even 'cause it's bolstered by the quality of their go-to-market program around them.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Dan Gottlieb: They're not just loading it all up and dialing away.

John Common: That's the difference. 

Dan Gottlieb: That's the difference. Now I wanna highlight that I do think that the toll middle of the funnel is, it’s gotta be blown up. It is already being blown up, right?

These new and interesting titles, growth taking over more of the automated email sending, I think that the interactive demonstration software, I love that stuff.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Dan Gottlieb: But I, my stomach cringes when I see demand gen marketers celebrating how good that content was at conversions because, hello, do you remember what the best button used to be on the website?

Get a demo, right? You just, you are taking it over. We're– the lines are blurring of this type of, all of these moving pieces. So the sales development rep, I still think there's a place for the mid funnel product educator, the mid funnel customer, engagement, the customer collaborator, that there's still a place for that.

And there's still a place for those conversations. It's a separate skillset than the actual running and closing of deals that will be available. What that looks like in the future, you know, you're already seeing it in this, in the product-led growth world. Right. We're calling them sales assist or other types of roles.

I think that that is not going away. This quasi sales product, customer service and success skillset that is actually great for early career folks. 

John Common: Hmm.

Dan Gottlieb: So that's my,  it's not going away. It's changing.

John Common: Yeah.

Dan Gottlieb: As the whole buying process evolves with it.

John Common: I follow you. I agree. Increasingly I am thinking, when I hear the word or see the phrase SDR, I am increasingly replacing that with, this is gonna, maybe this is a weird way to put it, the human channel of engagement.

Dan Gottlieb: Mm-Hmm.

John Common: Instead of saying, Hey, should we use the SDR to do that? The problem with that is that it brings up the negative, and well-earned negative connotation of mercilessly, spammy untargeted horsesh*t. That's the abuse of the SDR function, the misuse, the technology enabled misuse of SDR. So instead of saying that, in my mind, I'm saying in my mind, where would be a great application of a well enabled human? And when you ask it that way, all of a sudden you go, oh, I need humans.

Yeah, but I need 'em here, here, here, and here to be

Dan Gottlieb: Right.

John Common: And well, and I, anyway, I dunno if that is useful.

Dan Gottlieb: It is useful and I think that the spam problem's only gonna get worse if you hand bot reigns over to growth marketing.

John Common: A hundred percent, man. Alright. Alright. Look, I gotta do lightning round with you. 

Dan Gottlieb: Oh gosh.

John Common: Alright. We're gonna go super fast. Don't overthink it. It's like an ink blot Rorschach test. Okay. So here we go. You ready? 

Dan Gottlieb: Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. 

John Common: Don't worry, it's gonna be wonderful.

Dan Gottlieb: I'm looking forward to this. 

John Common: All right. Don't overthink it. I know. You're super smart. So, what's the biggest mistake sales teams need to watch out for when it comes to AI?

Dan Gottlieb: Not focusing on positive reinforcement and behavior of using the technology or abusing the transparency that comes with it.

John Common: What's the most frequent mistake you see B2B companies make when it comes to how they manage their sales tech

Dan Gottlieb: Do you even know why you wanna buy this in the first place? 

John Common: Yeah, exactly. It's selection.

Dan Gottlieb: I had a client just complain to me about that last night, literally last night. This was a call I had earlier last night. Their CEO texted them a link to a random vendor and said, we should be doing this, dot, dot, dot. And I'm not gonna tell you the vendor was, but it was a bad idea.

But anyways, okay.

John Common: Oh… I have empathy for that. 'cause I have to, I'm the CEO in my company and I have, oh God, you just called me out dude. Everybody, 

Dan Gottlieb: No, no. I mean, I do, oh, self-awareness. Are you self-aware? Do you really feel like, you know, it is the number one thing. Alright. Keep the lightning round going.

John Common: Alright. So the absolute worst take about AI you have heard recently? 

Dan Gottlieb: Oh gosh. The absolute worst take about AI, is that it's gonna completely replace salespeople.

John Common: One great piece of advice for heads of sales, CSOs.

Dan Gottlieb: Focus on your end users when you're buying tech. 

John Common: Ooh, that's good. Okay. One great piece of advice for the leaders of sales development teams today.

Dan Gottlieb: Keep following your curiosity and keep sharing what the creative kids are doing.

John Common: Mm mm I still wanna double click on that one. Great piece of advice for CMOs, VPs of marketing. 

Dan Gottlieb: I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say don't sleep on the value of call AI data.

John Common: Mm, that's good. That's great. That's a great one. Okay. Just a couple of more. Where do many people turn to you for inspiration and education? Where do you turn for inspiration and education?

Dan Gottlieb: I try to approach my life like a journalist.

I try to call people that I know and trust and just teach me things. I also like to look at different disciplines for ideas. I actually go to other Gartner analysts that aren't in sales tech a lot as well. I think that they're incredibly smart people and I didn't realize how much that would influence me.

And I think every, there's always something to learn in any situation. And so sometimes sales Instagram is a really good source of insight.

John Common: Totally. Yeah. That's good. Hey, last question. What keeps you, Dan Gottlieb, energized and engaged about this thing we all do called B2B growth? What makes you keep showing up? 

Dan Gottlieb: I think, two groups of people feel like they do, that their partnership is adding mutual value to each other's lives. It's like this social-emotional currency that gets everyone paid, and I get to contribute to that a lot through the job. It's this very interpersonal benefit.

So, what keeps me motivated is, that the work that I can do can help improve. Indirectly how a lot of people approach and get to create that feeling for themselves. I think that's a big one for me.

John Common: It's awesome, man. There's so many people in our audience, Dan, who are naturally drawn to the technical stuff, tactical stuff, the numerical stuff. And I know you appreciate that and love it, but I think one of the things that separates you from a lot of your peers, if I can tell as a someone who knows you, is what you just did just now, which is you connect it to the human piece. I love that about you, man. You're really good for a lot of reasons, but that's one of the big ones. Don't ever lose that. 

Dan Gottlieb: I appreciate that, John. And if I was really motivated by the money, I wouldn't have left sales. You know. I did better in my twenties. And that's just the nature of the beast. But, that is the stuff that I'm gravitated towards. And, yeah, I'm just glad that I can use that at work.

John Common: Well, thank you for bringing all of this smarts and caring and expertise to Growth Driver. I really appreciate your time. I know how busy you are. You're very in demand. Thank you so much. I just wanna thank you for doing this today; and any final thoughts or tips or advice before we sign off?

Dan Gottlieb: No, I appreciate it a lot. Thanks for having me on Growth Driver. And, you know, to be included as a name amongst all these other amazing names in this list, for any user that's scrolling up and down on this podcast is, humbling. So I appreciate the at bat here.

John Common: Alright buddy. Well, hey, get back to it and we will see you out there in the world. 

Dan Gottlieb: Thanks, John. Likewise.

John Common: See you buddy.

Dan Gottlieb: See ya.