Craig Daly: Why the Future of Sales Is Human, Powered by AI

Business.

Business. Business.

Business.

Ah, that sounds all right.

Welcome to Go-To-Market, a podcast for rev-op, sales, and marketing leaders to dive deep into industry insights and best practices. Go-To-Market is sponsored by Fulcast. My name is Amy Cook and I am so excited to introduce Craig Daly, CRO of Nectar. Craig, how are you?

I'm wonderful, Amy. Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for joining us. It is so fun for me to get to chat with people who are true leaders in their industry. I know you personally, Craig. We share a brother/brother-in-law, which is awesome. We can talk about Greg and tell stories about him too. But today I'm so excited to chat with you about all of the innovations that you are doing at Nectar, kind of some about your background and what playbooks used to look like and what they're looking like now with AI. So Craig, give me a little bit about your background. How did you get started?

Yeah, I had a close friend that was working for a small little startup at the time, 50 employees called Qualtrics, which is now, you know, a multi-billion dollar success, but individual was crazy passionate about what he was doing there. And that was kind of the gateway to, to tech. Candidly, I went the next day and met some of the founders there, Ryan Smith, Jared Smith, and then built with them for 6 years. And that, that really cemented me into tech, how businesses grow, hypergrowth, just the constant day-to-day seemed fascinating to me. So now I've been in it for, Yeah, 15+ years.

Wow. So that's awesome. So after Qualtrics, then what did you do?

Yep. Took a role with another group called Podium local here in Utah and led up their, their strategic business unit. They were an SMB business primarily focused on local, anything from bike shops to dentists and retailers, and took them upmarket selling into more strategic accounts, hospitals, you know, large, large units and. Just, just more specialized selling.

That's awesome. And then from Podium, if I understand correctly, you ran the healthcare division. Is that right?

Correct.

Yep. Awesome. And then what led you to want to leave Podium and go to Nectra?

Yeah, great question. And one that was a hard decision at the time. Podium was vibrant, growing. I was doing really, really well within the business, 4 years in. Literally had just won the VP of the Year award at our sales kickoff. But it's, it felt at the stage that the innovation and the trailblazing opportunity for me was missing. And it more operating to the number, like you might experience at an SAP, Salesforce, just incrementally growing the business, making sure you have forecasting excellence. And I love the unknown. And so. I think as I saw my path ahead and contrasting within Podium, I got a really good run here. What's, you know, what, what's gonna like really engage me? And so I started seeking other opportunities in emerging technologies that I thought were relevant to, to businesses. And I had a couple runs with another, with some other businesses that went so-so, but they weren't near like the home runs that I felt like I had with Podium and Qualtrics and. Great experiences and they led me though to being very concentrated on a business that's incredibly healthy, running in a very efficient manner. You know, great team, still very innovative and allowing me to kind of apply my creative creativity to the go-to-market. And that's where I've now arrived at Nectar, where I feel like I've kind of got the full disband go in front of me where I can, I can kind of do it all, a really well-funded business that's growing, retaining customers, thriving. But also just has like this vibrant market opportunity that keeps us up at night and is exciting.

Oh, that's awesome. So I love what you said about, you know, wanting to find a place where you could innovate and your creative talents could be additive to the business. So let's go dive into that a little bit more. How are you innovating as the CRO? What are some of the things you're trying that you've never tried before?

Yeah, man, it's, I think we are, we're really good at testing and failing quick and trying to deploy when, when stuff works. I think with the introduction of so many variations of AI and, you know, intelligent messaging, I mean, even ChatGPT, there, there's so many accelerators that we're applying to the business. I mean, all the way down to trying to understand macro trends at a deeper level. We're plugging so much into chat and asking, You know, where are these problems most prominent? Just to validate our thesis of where should we be, you know, hunting or pursuing new customers? What is the biggest challenge with those problems in these specific verticals? We use AI a ton, just more for validation to make sure, one, that we have the right messaging, the right teams and the right customer profiles, all with the intent, obviously, that we can capitalize on revenue faster and kind of stack rank where we should be playing. Um, but a lot of that is AI driven. A lot of the work we do, if you're familiar with Clay, we do a lot of, you know, scraping and sourcing of different datasets and targeted messaging, based on intelligence and signals that we have. But we, we do a lot of marrying of data from ZoomInfo to Gong. I mean, our forecasting is purely AI based on behaviors that someone's manifesting on how they manage a pipeline or mismanage a pipeline. It's, it's individually weighting the forecast like we used to do manually as leaders back at Qualtrics. And intelligently trying to tell me, you know, what, what signals would be indicative of a, you know, potential relationship that we're going to lose, uh, what signals are indicative of relationships that we're going to win. There's nothing in our day-to-day where there probably doesn't have some element of AI involved.

Wow.

Kind of crazy to think about just how much, how intertwined it is literally from the opportunities, how it's listening to conversations, how it's recommending follow-ups. Down to like those pillars of literally where should we be pursuing in market? A lot of that is based on a lot of AI signals.

That is so interesting. So let's kind of go more into like the prospecting. A lot of people are trying to do what you've already successfully done, which is how do I know where to go in all of this? So can you give us a little bit of your secret sauce and help us know what are some of the AI tools that you're using to help you know where to go. Are you plugging it into an LLM? Obviously you're using Clay, which is very productive. What else are you doing?

Yeah, there's, there's a, some things we're testing right now that I think the jury's still out on to see if they are as impactful as we want. AI obviously introduces a ton of power for mass messaging. I'm still passionate that there has to be some level of like authentic involvement. I think where there is almost like this, it's not some ethical question, but where there's blend is post-demo, we work with a partner that will curate a very specific handwritten note using robots, but it's extracting from conversations that we're having and sending Amy a note expressing appreciation for the time we had to go through a demo of our solution. Again, handwritten, literal ink.

Amazing.

But it's just, it's somewhat of an automated process. The messaging that's on that card. So, so we really want to maintain some authentic interaction, obviously with our customers. We're not doing some deepfake demos where we're fully committed into AI, although that could be cool. But we're using AI far more as just, you know, almost like transitioning from a shovel to a bulldozer where it's just, it's surfing so many more insights for our pre-call planning. So I'm walking into a conversation with, you know, a moment's notice. I can be pretty informed about their business using some AI solutions. That are basically just scraping the web, like giving us just some, some sense of who we're talking to, what's important to them. So there's not like a specific solution. There's some partners outside of ChatGPT. And then, you know, like I talked about with Clay, I think we use probably 8 to 10 different solutions and it's a third-party agency that we work with that is handling a lot of Instantly and the other integrations that go into that.

That is awesome. One of the things that I've learned just from experience and also doing some survey research is that people love the AI benefits all the way up to the interaction. We're finding that people don't love talking to AI. They love talking to other humans. But when you can automate everything all the way up to there, like you're talking about, with all the research and the analytics and the call recordings and that intelligence, it makes that conversation between people so much more impactful. And I think that's amazing how you're leveraging all of that to, to make that conversation worth their time. I love how you're making AI work for you all the way up till that conversation between humans. And that conversation is so much more impactful because you've done the work with AI to make it more.

Here's another fast one. I know I'm kind of going on this tangent right now, but one that, one I think is fascinating for any go-to-market audience, which Fullcast obviously caters to. But we, we ran a pretty lengthy prompt within ChatGPT and uploaded a lot of our closing data of our account executives and basically just said by the tier of inbounds or outbounds by employee count, which is one of our, our levers, what is their close rate? And if I were to have rerouted these leads to individuals that maybe had a higher close rate or more, were more proficient in these specific bands. How could we have intelligently done this to maximize our revenue opportunity? But loading that model and having, you know, again, OpenAI or ChatGPT think through like this deep learning, it was able to come back to us and quickly say, look, the most optimal path to drive and maximize revenues would have been if you weighted your lead flow in said fashion, you know, and made the incremental adjustments, showed us, hey, this AE probably should have seen 3 less. This AE should be selling in this category because they tend to do really well with this type of conversation. But it basically had just curated this incredible adjustment that would've meant several hundred thousand to us just in a single quarter. So we, we use it kind of like almost like regressions and for different testing to say, is what we're doing optimal? And if my goals are these, what, what would be the most optimal way to maybe structure lead flow, where we'd route these accounts, how we ramp employees, but there's nothing we're not throwing at AI. Again, kind of for this, the sense of mainly getting validation on our thesis or thinking of, we feel like we should be doing these things. What changes would we have made? What would those amount to? But these things normally would have taken us weeks of tau— plumbing. I mean, you know, killing 7 different sheets and merging them together until you had some kind of data sets. So it's been really cool, like how fast we've been able to make decisions and also be very informed on is what we're doing working or not.

Oh my gosh. I think that's amazing how you have optimized ChatGPT and the other LLMs to work for you. That is amazing. Is there anything that you are finding that maybe are, you know, myths that are being perpetuated that are not true or things that people are doing that are really going down the wrong direction from your perspective?

Uh, there's probably a number of things we could discuss. I think the one that drives me nuts, which, which could be true, I'm not a believer in this, is, you know, cold calling's dead. I think there's for sure more efficient ways to do it. And I, I kind of hope everybody feels like cold calling's dead because that just means there's gonna be less calls and better ratios for my team to actually connect. But I just think the introduction of AI again is so many great things, but it also just brings a host of saturated messaging constantly.

Yeah.

And our, our connect rate seems to be really strong on our, on our dials. I think it's very much alive. I think one change that we've cared about or tried to transition is we're constantly trying to think of like revenue through a 2026, 2027 lens, like where, where do we need to be kind of skating to where the puck should be of what's, what's an innovative newer version of go-to-market. We focused a lot on trying to be better in top of funnel and not have that maybe be on the AE's shoulders like it historically has been just from an efficiency standpoint where we want them selling 4 to 6 hours a day on the phones. So we're doing a lot to tweak how we call, how we dial again, very much specific to who, but I think that's the one thing when I get on LinkedIn and everyone's like, AI's dead. Hey, here's this AI thing. Even in Clay, like I said, we're, we're fans of a lot of the intelligence that's out there, but I think completely removing the humans from it and kind of sitting back like Wizard of Oz and pretending that you're going to drive significant revenues, I feel like it's, you know, it's vaporware unless you're some PLG widget Google add-on, with a $5 monthly subscription. I, I think you still need some level of human interaction to feel confident in, in most SaaS solutions today.

I 100% agree with you. I could not agree more. It is, it really drives me nuts because there's a new prospecting tool every single day that's AI enabled, right? They can make you more efficient, they can send out more messages, they can, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? Unless this is done in a hyper-personalized way, and in my opinion, a human looks at it before it goes out, you just get crap in your inbox and you get crap in, in LinkedIn. And it's becoming so easy to tell which ones of these are prospects, like, are AI-generated prospecting messages, which just shuts down the channel. So then you have that, all of that stuff going on, and at At the same time, you've got Google and Microsoft deciding that they're going to just kill the free email marketing channel to drive more ads to their platforms. And you've got this like kind of mess. So you've got like all these messages where you're like, where people are saying cold calling is dead, email marketing is dead, LinkedIn messaging is dead, but buy this new AI prospecting tool and, and somehow we're going to cut through the noise. So there's a lot of shifting going on exactly the way you're saying. And I absolutely agree with you. Everybody decide cold calling is dead so I can cold call you and you'll take my call.

There's a narrative. Try to get, try to get the dials down.

That's right. Yeah, we should, we should perpetuate that narrative that cold calling is dead.

You and I, I'm sure we get, I, I get probably 10 to 15 emails a day at least. Uh, I would say 2 to 3 in-mails a day of just random people wanting to sell me recruiting services, this new tool, this or that. I never reply to them, and it's not that I'm taking the cold calls either. There are times I pick 'em up when it's a local number, and if somebody's got me, I'm a sucker for a salesperson, so I'll give 'em 10 seconds and see how the value prop goes or whatever the opening statement is. But I think people can curate some intelligent flow with the best messaging, and it just, it, it, I'm, I'm archiving constantly in my inbox and LinkedIn. Needs to be better channels. And again, I've bought technologies I've bought from cold calls in the last 6 months. I can't think of emails I've bought from. So anyway, not to say email's dead. I'm just simply saying, I think AI and the channels like you just articulated, it's so messaging and content heavy that you can look at a tailored message as a CRO or VP of sales and be like, man, this is so good. It's so targeted. I just, I think. People's attention span. They're so used to how saturated messaging is today that there's got to be other fascinating ways to pierce through the noise. Uh, like I mentioned, the little cards that are handwritten, and you can do this at scale where it's, it's not so archaic. But I think things like that that just stand out and they're a little bit different. You always have to be innovative in that fashion that's doing what the norm is not.

I totally agree. It's finding that white space. So what do you think, you know, I think that We've kind of gone to AI agents, chatbots, all of those things. You know, I love the handwritten messages at scale. That's a pretty innovative strategy. And I know what you're talking about because I've actually researched 3 or 4 different companies that do that. The gifting is interesting. Events are making a resurgence. What else do you see? Do you see anything else that's kind of up and coming? That you think might work really well for going to market?

Yeah.

Um, influencers. I wanna, I want your opinion on influencers.

On influencers?

Mm-hmm. Oof.

You know, depending on the market, I think there's a lot of power. We're in HR and, and HR, I think naturally gravitates to a risk-averse personality. And so influencers have a way, I'll call them in, you know, in our space, we're going to be more subject matter experts, but they, they are influencers that are talking best practices. I think people maybe to a fault gravitate like lemmings to those individuals that have, you know, fascinating hard takes on how HR is transitioning or changing. So we, we haven't invested a ton outside of a really key relationship with the association that matters most in HR, which is SHRM, the Society of Human Resource Management. And they play, they're a big influencer for us. We invest a ton in it. We attend their events. So I'm a fan of influencers, but probably through your more retail channels and maybe another like marketing technologies. It's a little bit softer noise, not as powerful in, in some spaces, but for us, HR influencers are a pretty big deal.

Interesting. Is there anything else that you think that people should be looking at avoiding or landmines that for people to watch out for other CROs that if you could give them any piece of advice, what would it be?

I mean, as far as tech stack, the, the, this is just, again, my gut coming from. you know, archaic solutions at Qualtrics that were innovative at the time and worked. I still think a lot of the same pillars and the thesis as I look at anything today exists. Like you kind of have to have a best of both. To my point about like a shovel and a bulldozer, back then I was using a shovel. Tech today should just be an empowerment. It shouldn't be a replacement. And I think I get a lot of conversations on replacing SDRs. Hey, you don't need SDRs. This one's automated, it's $3,000 a month. I mean, the economics are insane. You know, this team was able to cut half their team. I just think the outputs and outcomes over time don't have staying power still. So my advice to any future CROs or CROs listening is just, just treading lightly and looking maybe at solutions and technologies today, not as replacements for things that have been core functions within go-to-market machines. But how can it supercharge and empower? And you may be able to work with less. If I have, if I, if I can create a super SDR that is empowered with who to talk to, a super dialer that's really intelligent in its connection, I might be able to 3x the output of an individual. But I, I still feel today, at least for the foreseeable 24 months with how things are moving, you need some human kind of sign-off, like you said, that is steering the ship. But I think that ship and that, and its power that it can deliver to you is, is definitely, you know, changed and, and something that's exciting. So treading lightly on fully automated portions of the go-to-market machine, I think is, is a scary take for me.

I, I really love that. So we're looking more at like a Jean-Luc Picard cyborg than an Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator. Yes. I love it. I see. Awesome. Well, Craig, you're clearly at the top of your game. Thank you so much for joining us today. My last question for you is, how do you stay charged? How do you stay at the top of your game? It could be anything from reading a great book to, I don't know, working out. What do you do to, to stay?

Yeah. This is really weird, but some, I mean, what, what gets me charged is seeing growth. In individuals, and I'm not putting myself on some pedestal, like I just care about everyone else, but I, I get charged from seeing people have professional glow-ups, if you will, even, or life glow-ups, we'll call it. So seeing them realize potential that they didn't realize they, they had, and me serving hopefully in some fashion as a catalyst to, to help extract that opportunity. But I, something that I do a lot on the way in and the way home is I listen to a ton of movie soundtracks, a lot of classical music, and I'm always playing a movie in my mind and kind of living my life a little bit in reverse, thinking through how do I want to be known? How am I showing up right now? But it's, I, it's almost like I could crash at any time because I'm literally so deep in thought of how do I, how do I want to be known? What matters most right now in the business for Craig? And I think it always allows me to show up in a very collected fashion that is focused. So strangely, listening to the music and kind of living my life in a sense, like a movie, you know, subconsciously allows me to always index on the things that matter most to keeping my batteries charged. So kind of a weird philosophical take, but.

Well, it's almost like a meta communication where you're like seeing yourself more like broadly than in the moment. Like you're kind of taking a collective look at your life and saying like, how am I showing up for people? How am I presenting this way? I, that's, it's a fascinating way to do it through music. And I'm going to go try that today. I love that.

I'll send you the playlist.

Awesome. Thanks, Craig. I appreciate it. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It was so great to have you.

Yeah. Appreciate you having me.

Thanks, Amy Cook.