Jonathan Kvarfordt: The One AI Question That Separates Winners From Everyone Else

Welcome to Go to Market, a podcast for RevOps, sales, and marketing leaders to dive deep into industry insights and best practices. Go to Market is sponsored by Fulcast and Silicon Slopes. It is my pleasure to introduce to you today Jonathan Carford, VP of Go-to-Market Strategy and Marketing at Momentum, now Salesforce. How are you, Jonathan?

Amy, I'm so good. Thank you so much for having everyone to see you. Just appreciate so much.

Thank you so much. I have been looking forward to this ever since you said that you would say yes. So, thank you for coming on the show. Now, you don't just work at Momentum, you also have your own go-to-market AI following on your, in your own site. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah, real quickly, 3 and a half years ago now, I launched the GTM AI Academy and the GTM AI podcast. I've been talking about GTM AI stuff for 3 years and since then advised 10 different companies, either in AI or GTM. I've done several classes of AI strategy with go-to-market and CROs and leaders and And then obviously I've been in different companies helping them with their GTMAI stuff and more presently is Momentum where all we do is talk about GTMAI applications through the technology, through different companies. So it's, I live, breathe, eat, sleep, talk, teach, market AI all day long and I love it. It's a blast.

That's amazing. It's amazing. So AI, I mean, you are ahead of most. What made you realize, okay, AI is the way to go, this is the future? You obviously saw this coming.

Yeah, well, you know what's kind of funny? 3 and a half years ago when I first started this, I was, I come from the enablement space, enablement and RevOps. And I remember I had at least a dozen people when I first started posting about AI, like private message me and say, I can't believe you're doing this. This is such a fad. Like no one's going to use this. Like I got reamed by some people who I highly, highly respect. And I had to tell them, I was like, I appreciate your opinion. This is where we're going. Buckle up. Wow.

Oh my gosh.

But funny enough, I had two of them literally in the last two months reach back out to me and said, I'm so sorry. I know I critiqued you. I need some help. I'm really behind. I'm like, it's fine. So we've had a chat since then. It's been great. But it's just funny to scroll up in the messages and go, do you remember when you said this? But to be fair, that's got to be so vindicating and gratifying.

It was.

It was. I was like, ah, but I didn't want to like, I don't want to throw it in their face. Cause to be fair, like, At the same time that you had crypto and NFTs, like all this weird fad stuff has gone through, you know, so I can understand where they're coming from. For me personally though, I was at a point where before ChatGPT came out, I was in a company who had bought an AI technology and I was in charge of communicating to customers and internal employees what the heck AI is and how to use it. And so I got training from an AI pro. I'm not a pro. I tell people I'm a nerd. And I learned a lot from him about applications and that kind of stuff. And then from my own enablement background, I started to see the applications of how we could use it. Started to open up my mind. And he was on the blue team or red team or some sort of internal feedback for GPT-1, GPT-2, and GPT-3. So I knew it was coming before it came out because he was telling me about it. And then when it came out, he told me to go sign up. So I did with the rest of the planet. They signed up to ChatGPT. And I realized very quickly when people were posting on LinkedIn that no one had any idea what they're talking about. And I don't fault them because we've never been taught how to use AI. So it's like, we're all, we're all figuring this out, you know? But I knew then I was like, I need to start talking about this because this is what I'm seeing is not accurate or correct and not helpful. So that's when I started posting and talking about it. And my sweet spot comes from understanding the technological side enough, but also understanding the go-to-market side because I've been in there for 10 years and I've taught thousands of salespeople and CS people how to do things and help leaders and build programs and all this stuff. So when you mix those two worlds together, to me, it's like the perfect mix that gives me my super secret sauce, you know.

It is the super secret sauce. It's amazing what you've been able to do. Without saying too much, I became really enamored with AI in 2020 when I had a client that was doing some really interesting digital imaging that was solving some—

Oh yeah, you tell me about this. You can't tell me that.

I can't talk too much about it because it's still like under NDA. But it was some really interesting digital imaging in the healthcare space. And I saw very quickly that we were going to be able to diagnose better than we've ever been able to do before with AI. And I was watching the technology work in action. And so it was very interesting to come from the very beginning of AI, watch the doctors do the supervised learning, watch the AI learn, you know. And then I was part of an AWS consulting partner group. And so then I got to see like Amazon's take on AI from there too. So I, I'm not a technical person, but from an ancillary perspective, on a go-to-market perspective, I've seen what it can do. And so I think that, you know, you're a visionary and the way that you've been able to, you know, be seeing, see around corners and then be able to, to say, hey, I'm going to help people learn how to do this. Which is super cool.

Yeah, the challenge now is that I have no idea where the heck we're gonna go. Like, I have ideas where we're gonna go, but like, it's awesome and crazy and so fast that it's just, it's hard to keep a pulse on where we're going. 'Cause it could go 5 different directions. I don't know which one it's gonna go.

It could, it could. So tell me if you want to or don't wanna comment on this, but what did you think about, anthropic ban in the government.

Oh, that's, it's a dramatic thing. I might have to keep it to myself because I'm still gathering it from some sad inside.

We'll have a private conversation about that, but that happened.

Yeah, the whole OpenAI Claude stuff is fascinating, which I appreciate that they're doing what they can to keep privacy because I think that's going to be the next-gen thing of like, how do we make sure we keep privacy of our own AI conversations, that kind of stuff, you know, which is funny because like the Anthropic ban happened and then it came out that they still use Anthropic for the Iran attack. So it's just, whole thing's fascinating, but I'm going to hold my thoughts for now if that's okay.

Okay. So, yeah, I think that's wise, but for everyone listening, just that happened. So collect your thoughts and we can think about that. Tell me more then about what led you to join Momentum and then what led Salesforce to want to acquire Momentum?

Well, before I say anything, there's, I feel like I'm a crucial part of the Momentum lifespan. However, there's magic inside of the founders and the technology that was there, even whether I was there or not, you know, so like the part of it that I know I helped, there's another part of it that all comes from them that I had zero to do with whatsoever, you know, so they, they were so smart. They had this vision they originally created in 2020 to be like a Zapier for sales. And so they went deep into making sure they had integration into Slack, into Salesforce. and the original tech was an orchestration automation layer. So we could like automate things from Salesforce. You could automate from Slack into Salesforce. It became this very user-friendly environment. That's how Momentum started. And then 2022 came, they hopped on and got on the AI train and they were the first ones to do a summary of a call using AI summary. They're the first ones to create an email from a call. Like all the first things are like everyday things to us now. Back then they were the first. So The founders have always been pushing envelope and very forward thinking, and which I love and appreciate about them because again, this is why I wanted to join because the first call I had, I was in a company, which by the way, you okay in time? I'm just, some of this may take me some time.

Oh yeah, absolutely. This is fascinating.

The company I was with, I was the enablement/revops leader and I was tasked to get some technology. And one of the challenges we had is I had a team who was selling internationally, but they were selling in Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. But yet the problem is they're not native English speakers and our language in the Salesforce CRM was English. So the notes and everything we were getting inside of there was in 4 different languages and none of us had any idea what was going on 'cause it was all different languages. So I was like, there's gotta be, this is back in '23, I was like, there's gotta be an AI that could auto-translate this. So I was looking up technology, I found Momentum, My first call was with Santi, the CEO. And if anyone's met Santi, you just know that he just, people just fall in love with him because he's such a good dude. He's like wicked smart, very approachable. He gave me, you could tell he's not a salesperson because he's went through this process that was not like a normal sales process. He was like, what do you want to see? Let's go through it. And we just geeked on AI. I was like, I freaking love this guy and I love this tech. I know what it is, but I love it. And anyway, so we got, we eventually got the technology. And it was awesome at auto-translating it. So it auto-translated into English and forcing it into Salesforce. And the team like loved it 'cause they didn't have to do all this manual data entry and also retranslate in their brains to English, you know? So it was a huge lift on that level. And then sadly that company was based in South America. So a lot of the North American team was let go, including myself. And when that happened, it was right before they hit Series A, Momentum hit Series A. and I went to the founders, I'm like, and I at that time had been an advisor for the last year and a customer, so they knew me decently well. And I was like, I want to join the team, tell me what I can do. And they're like, well, we don't really need enablement RevOps, but we'll see about it. I'm like, okay, I can help with AI. Cause like I, my part was like I was pushing the envelope with AI prompting and everything else. So I'd be prompting and their team would come to me and say like, can you teach us how to prompt? Cause no one prompts like you do. I'm like, sure. So I went in and started helping them prompt. And so they knew that I knew what I was doing because of the prompts and the results I was getting. So I came in kind of like this weird AI product RevOps enablement. That's how I started as a consultant. And I, and through the process eventually came on full-time. I was still enablement and RevOps and we brought on a sales leader. And then January of last year, a year, month ago, we were interviewing for marketing leaders and I have an MBA in marketing and I ran a product marketing team, but my history is not marketing. Sorry if this is too long, but Ashley, the Santi's wife, Ashley is one of the other co-founders. And I was reporting to her, who was also just an amazing woman and someone who I highly respect and love and adore. Um, and she said, do you just want to run marketing? I'm like, sure. And I told her, I was like, you know, I've never done this before. Like, it's just, I had my theories on what we should do and I have my MBA in marketing, but I've never ran a marketing team before like this, you know?

Yeah.

So she's like, well, just, let's just try it and we'll give you 6 months. If, if you don't do well, then we'll get you outta there and we'll try somebody else. I'm like, okay. So for 6 months I hustled and worked hard and I feel like we were, I'm really proud of what we did this last year. And we actually got on Salesforce, well, I think we got on Salesforce's radar for many reasons, but the, I think the bigger ones were Kyle Norton's like a pivotal guy for us. So he got us involved. He was involved with Momento before I started and he knew a guy named Adam with Salesforce that connected Salesforce to him. And so they, Salesforce originally came in as a lead to buy the technology for their own team. Because we do what Salesforce can't do.

Yeah.

And then that sparked up the thing because we were in the middle of a Series B round. And then the conversation just went to, well, what if we went this option? And it kind of worked that way. And it helped too because at the same time, Kyle's also the guy who introduced Momentum to Jason Lemkin, who owns Saastr. Jason started using us and then he started to talk about us on 20VC when, when Mark Benioff was on the podcast with him. So he kept saying about this technology and Mark was Mark one time asked him on the podcast, what is this tech you're using? And it was Momentum. So that's where we came up, we came up in all these different ways. And Kyle's like the pivotal point of this. And there's like, I would say as well that all of them have said that they heard about us all over the place. So I know the marketing helped, but it was those key relationships, which again, I had nothing to do with, that opened the doors. And obviously the tech and the founders were the reasons why Salesforce wanted to acquire us and Here we are.

That's amazing. Huge win for marketing. Great job. That's incredible. It's incredible.

Well, I was, it wasn't really me, honestly. Like I, I feel like the, I created the social proof in the brand, but it was the relationships that made it happen. Like I wasn't the reason why it happened. I was just a sweetener. Sweetener.

So. That was very influential though. That's so exciting. So obviously it's an early stage. The acquisition was just barely announced, and it's so exciting. I've been in the Salesforce ecosystem for over a decade, and I love it. It's a great place.

Good people.

Yeah, great.

Very good people.

So what would you recommend? Back to the GTMAI, you've been doing this for so many years. What are some things that you see coming around the corner that other people may not? And what can people— I know that's a really tough question. What do you think we need to be thinking about?

Well, I've said this many times, I'll say it again though. I think that as we get more digitized and more things that are digital and now going into robotics, I think that one-on-one relationships and just relationships in general and that skill of building rapport in relationships is extremely important. In fact, I think that this year specifically and next year, live events is going to come back with full roar because again, that's the one way you can meet someone and touch them and feel their energy and get to know them and build some trust because everything online is all digital. All we get blasted with all day long is AI, you know? So that's one. Two is the teams that have done the hard work foundation building in 2025, and I'd say in 2026, are going to accelerate faster than anybody else. But it's the unsexy, non-LinkedIn-posting-worthy stuff that you have to do to get to that level. It's not like you can't just think, I can buy an AI technology of any kind, including Momentum, and think it's going to solve my problems and make all this pipeline and I'm going to have a close ratio of 10% more and blah, blah, blah, blah, all this other stuff. But real AI power, you will get benefits from the tech. Like, don't get me wrong. Momentum and our own full cast does this. You'll get absolute benefit from it, but you'll get even more benefit when you have your data in order, when you have your processes in order and you rethink things from the first principle thinking. So you think, okay, is this really the way we need to do it? Or can it be done better or faster, easier with AI? Or is there a whole new way we can do it? When you think that foundational and then you open up the doors, this whole new world to where you can accelerate faster than you've ever imagined, which is kind of fun. So I think it's just, it's just being willing to give you the space. 'Cause right now so many people are pressured saying, I gotta get AI. And it's like, you gotta slow down and be like, okay, let's, let's hold the phone here. Let's make sure we know what we're doing. I call it the slingshot effect. It's like you pull back a slingshot, so you're the stone.

Yeah.

And it feels like you're going backwards, but as soon as you release, you just, whoa. You just fly off and get going. But that pulling back against time is painful. Cause you're like, everyone's getting ahead of me and blah, blah, blah. I gotta freaking— it's, it's like, calm down. You'll, you'll accelerate and catch up fast. Just, you gotta do the, the not so sexy work before, and then it's really, really impactful at the end. So, yeah.

I love that. Those are both really great pieces of advice. For, do you, you know, with your GTMAI, do you do consulting on the side? Do you have consultants that you work with? How do you like work with people?

I don't have time to do consulting one-on-one right now. I've had to deny a lot of people. I do more kind of group setting type stuff. So I do a lot more of that. So I either go into communities and help with 7 people or I'll have a group call with 20 to 30 CROs come on. I'll, we'll talk about strategy, whatever the case might be. So I do more group stuff. I just don't have time for one-on-one stuff, sadly.

Mm-hmm. So, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you've got a few things going on.

It's a few things you want to include.

Yeah. Well, you are so clearly at the top of your game, Jonathan. Thank you so much for coming on. Um, what my last question for you is, how do you stay at the top of your game?

Oh, you asked this before and it's racking my brain since, uh, um, it could even be a yoga class in the morning.

It could be a coffee. What, what do you do that we can follow?

Good question. So I have boundaries. I'm an ex-life coach. And so one of the things I used to teach and I'm very adamant about is boundaries of time. So when it comes to be 4 o'clock, like I unplug so that I'm with my kids, I'm present and there's nothing else that can bug me. So I'll tune back in and I'll work later on at night. It's like, I work all the time. I'm on AI all the time. I definitely have boundaries of saying I'm unplugging and I'm not focusing on this so I can be present with my family. I think it's very important. So to me, that's one is like not being on it. All the time. Two is I'm really good at focusing on, even though AI can do so many things for us, it's being willing to take like a week, maybe two, on a particular technology and going deep just so I can understand a little bit. So like, for example, I had a friend of mine come to me and says, hey, what should I learn? I'm like, because of his role, I said, you need to go learn Clay. Clay has a free academy. It's very easy to go through it. Like Clay, to me, on a scale of 1 to 10 is like a 4 or 5 as far as complexity, but it takes time to understand. It's not just easy to understand thing. It takes some time. And that's the thing I'd recommend everyone else because I do the same thing of like saying, okay, let's take a new tech and I'll pay. I mean, I'm, this is just me. I'll pay $200 to have access to the ChatGPT Max or whatever, the Cloud Max, whatever. I'll pay that for a month and go deep and really understand like, how do I like this? Is it good? Is it worth keeping or not? Should I go down the $20? Do I go down the free? Like being willing to invest both the time and money into different technology, I think is really crucial right now. And then last question is, or last part of it I should say, is how I stay sharp is giving myself permission to ask the question, I wonder if I could do this with AI. And I give myself the space to try things and to be okay with failing because I fail way more than I succeed with AI, but all of the best stuff I've ever made with AI came from something I would go, I wonder if I could do that with AI. And I just, and I'll try for like a week. There's times where there's one prompt I made. This is back when, you know, prompting was still new, but I made this killer prompt battle card. So anyone could put a prompt in and get this really good battle card from competitors output. It took me 2 weeks to write that prompt, but it is killer, you know, and that work has been a foundation for me throughout the rest of my AI. Now I know how to prompt in a way that works, but it took me those 2 weeks to learn about it. To get there. Does that make sense? It's kind of like—

Absolutely.

When custom GPTs came out, I didn't get the fluff. I went deep. I wanted to understand like, how do I do custom GPTs and what's different with the gem and how's it different from a project? And I started at one place first so that even though it took a month and a half to understand it, now that we're a year and a half past it, I have more depth in that than anyone else did because I took the time for 2 weeks to go deep into that second one and understand it. Does that make sense?

And it gives you the opportunity to like have that that framework and then over the next year and a half you've gotten a lot better, but exponentially better because you understand the framework. That's interesting.

I'll say one more thing, which is no one has all the answers. We're all figuring this out. We're all pioneers. No one's ahead of the game. Everyone's behind. So if you're feeling like, I'm behind, like everyone is. Welcome to the party. This is Cory Armiag. I would say in that, be willing to be a pioneer because I love nothing more to see more people in GTMAI. I'm not the GTMAI god. I want to see more people talk about it. I love when, like in the podcast, you came on, you tell me what you do with your stuff. Like, I love when people come on and they tell me they're doing, because I'm like, oh, it's such a good idea. Like, it's just a, it's just such a cool—

we're all learning from each other.

Absolutely. Figure this out. So being willing to experiment and then sharing what you're experimenting, I think is fascinating. Because even if, like, everyone's so afraid about posting on LinkedIn, I'm like, who cares? Just post it anyways. Like, I've been posting every day for 3 years. I've been criticized once, and even then it was a good criticism. I liked it. I was like, that's a good point.

You're right. That's a very good point.

It's a good point. I mean, it's good. So it's like, take what you're learning and even if you feel like it's super rudimentary or basic, like there's always someone who goes, oh, I never thought of it that way. Because as your uniqueness, your like, your IP, your genius wrapped up in it. And if you can do that more, you're just serving the rest of us like me who are geeks. And I like to see what other people are doing, even if it's basic, you know?

Oh, I love it. I love it as well. You know what? There are several things here that I'm gonna take from this conversation and help up my game on my GTM AI. So thank you so much, Jonathan. It is such a pleasure. And I'm, I hope I get the chance to see you and talk shop soon.

Heck yeah. Let's do it.