The Future of B2B Buying Experiences and the Role of AI in GTM with Jaleh Rezaei

The number one tool in there is to prioritize speed as a top value and priority of the team. So looking at what is the number one goal for us as a marketing team and are we moving as fast as possible towards that goal? You know, in your gut, if the answer to that is yes or no, you don't need fancy dashboards or anything like that. And if the answer is no, let's say you're trying to move up market as fast as possible. And then we say, okay, are we moving up market as fast as possible? If my life depended on this, like, would we be doing things differently? And if the answer is no, then you need to make some changes. And often that's a combination of restructuring, refocusing, maybe different type of technology. So the end customer experience and then speed remain the two principles that CMOs and marketing leaders can, can follow to set themselves apart from their peers. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Exit.

I'm Jali Rezai. I'm the founder and CEO of Mutiny. We help sales and marketing teams deliver truly personalized one to one experiences to their target accounts.

It's funny because you started so you started mutiny in 2018. Did you think, did, did you see this? Like, I mean, I don't know who did, but, but maybe I think about back to like my time at Drift as an example. I'm like, man, I wish we had some of the AI stuff that's available now. Back then my house would be bigger.

Yeah.

And I'm just curious like, you know, to, to talk to a founder who's, who's in the mix selling this, you know, in the sales and marketing. I think this is the most exciting time to be a marketer, but I'm biased. I'm curious to hear what, what the journey you've been on with mutiny since 2018 and kind of where the direction things are going, what the direction is that things are going in today.

For marketers, I definitely agree this is the most exciting time to be building for go to market teams. But in general, just this is the most exciting time to be a founder because we just got this amazing technological innovation that is going to make everything 100 times better. Uh, and so yeah, absolutely. I think it's a great time to give you a little bit of context on kind of my story and how that connects to everything that's going on right now. Um, you know, I started my career in go to Market in PMM at VMware and I was working with the sales team closing, you know, million dollar plus deals and that was a really interesting way of entering the go to market space. I didn't know anything else. I didn't know how the scaled version of everything was done. Right. So what I did was we'd work with the sales team and we would research every single account, we would look at their earnings announcements, we would look at their press releases, we would spend a bunch of time with the sales team to figure out what did they care about, what was important. And then we would Translate that into one to one decks and ROIs and roadmaps and all that stuff. Right? And then after that I went to Gusto and there, you know, we had a really low acv and so we had to really lean into the scaled model. And so for me, it was this experience of I had to trade relationships for scale. And that's just sort of what I needed to do to be successful and reach lots of, you know, small businesses at gusto. And I think that's kind of been the journey for a lot of go to market leaders. You've either you could either do the relationship centric, one to one stuff that doesn't scale, or you could do the scaled version that is not great for the buyer and sales doesn't like it. But hey, you reach a lot of people, right? And so, I mean, I started Mutiny to fix that problem. I saw a lot of opportunities for how technology could help with that. But to your question of what's going on now, I think the way we're using AI right now has made that problem like a hundred times worse. Because. And you know how this is, right? The V. One of any new technology is always very limited, right? We look at what are we doing today and then how do we apply that technology, right? Like when mobile first came out, Uber and DoorDash were not the first apps that were released, right. It was like the ruler app on your iPhone. And so I think when I look at what's going on with AI right.

Now, that's a great example, by the way. It's like there was a flashlight app, right?

Yeah, totally.

Now, like it's all baked in. That's. There's like a crazy parallel between what's going to happen with AI and SaaS, right? It's a good, it's a, it's a good example, right? You're. You're a marketer, is a good storyteller.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, and so like, what are we doing with AI today? We've basically taken that scaled model, right, that, that I was familiar with and, and you know Most sales and marketing leaders were using and we've 100x it more stuff faster, right? Hey, why have all these BDRs manually write emails? These kids are all out of college. Let's automate that, right? Why write thoughtful content and blog posts? Like, let's just use AI to power out more stuff, right? And so I think the, the V1 of, of using AI in go to market teams has been very much about ourselves and our own efficiency, right? Like how do I pump out more stuff faster? And I think if you look at the data, a lot of that stuff is backfiring. The outbound performance is down by 71% according to the latest report from Bridge Group that I was looking at. I was looking at another report that came out where 50% of people were. If they can tell that they're getting automated, you know, AI emails, they're less likely to recommend that brand. And I mean it's just, it just kind of goes on and on. Like we're starting to see the aftermath of just spamming everybody in the universe with more content. I mean, look at your own email, your own phone, right? Um, I miss calls from my doctor because I can't pick up my phone. Cause I'm getting so many freaking, you know, robo BDR phone calls.

Crazy. I just was saying to my wife, I'm like, let me, I need to. I'm going to change my phone number. And she's like, no, we just learned. We just know. We just memorized your phone number. You can't change it. I'm like, no, we need to change this phone number.

You know, that's not a bad idea. I have tried to have my assistant remove my phone number from so many different databases and it just doesn't matter. All day it rings, I can't pick it up. My email is the same thing. And so I think, you know, if I'm in, go to market, right? As a leader, these are not great trends, right? Because outbound used to be the primary way that we generated pipelines, especially in the enterprise, those larger accounts. And we're basically burning those channels to the ground because we're rendering them useless because they're just becoming spam. And so my point of view on the space is that we desperately need to refocus back on the buying experience and the buyers themselves, what do they want? How do we create a great experience for them? You know, like Jeff Bezos I think does a really great job of this with Amazon, right. Of if you want something to last for a long time you have to focus on creating the best thing for the end customer. And I think when it comes to go to market teams, that's the buyer. If we create an amazing experience for them that they want to come back to, that's the, I think that's the next frontier for AI. That's the generation of tooling that's going to stick around, that's not going to get saturated, because the more we have of it, the more it just raises the bar for everybody.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's like we're, we've, we've been given access to this unbelievable tool that allows you to infinitely scale copy and messaging, but we're using it in kind of the same shitty way that we. Or it's like we, you can't use it in the, like, 2009, 2010 context. It's like back then, just because you may have been the only brand that was like, doing a decent job with email. And I remember I used to be able to write emails that would have a crazy open rate because my emails would be like, I would use a lowercase subject line. I would use plain text, no personalization. You know, I would, I would. The subject line would be like, question about Mutiny. And nobody was doing that. And so I would guarantee to get an open from you, right? It's like, but you can't do that. You can't play that game anymore. Or you were the only company that had a blog and you're the only company writing about a certain thing. And so you rank for all these articles and you got all that traffic. Like, none of those plays work anymore. All that stuff has, all this stuff has gone away. And so instead we're just like sending crazy amounts of email, crazy amounts of noise. There's gotta be some, like, I love this trend because I think on one side, people see AI as like, ruining marketing and taking everybody's jobs. I see it as, it's actually gonna make marketing get back to, like, what really matters, which is, like, founders need to have a truly differentiated product, right? And it's not just marketing messaging. It's like, you have to, you're gonna have to place a stronger emphasis on strategy as a company, which is gonna make you better as a marketer, and you're gonna have to do better outreach. You're gonna have to actually have understand. You're gonna actually have to actually understand my business and then reach out to me, not be like, oh, Dave, I saw you went to Boston College. Go Eagles.

You know, book A meeting, right?

Yeah. Go do you don't wanna book a demo or. We didn't, you know, we did an event in Boston last week and I asked the audience like, you know, what's, what's not working? That used to work. And this is a perfect example of this that you made me think of is like the, the gift card play, right? 25, you know, cold email, like 25 to take a demo of Mutiny. And I'm like, I'd rather pay you. You might have the best product in the world. How about I pay you $25 so I don't have to take that meeting because I don't want to give you 30 minutes to an hour of my time like that. That worked 10 years ago, but doesn't work now. And I think going to put more pressure on you actually having to be remarkable and have to create interesting marketing that's, that's worth talking about.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I mean, being in this space, right, and building software, we have to make choices that are right in two, three years from now. Right. And so one of the principles that I use to, to kind of simplify things and be able to predict the future, if you will, is just apply the universalism principle, right? If everybody had it, would it still work? Because my goal is if I build something and it's successful, is that everyone has it. And so if it was a gimmick and it is not going to work once everybody has it, that's a really bad thing for me. Because even if I do a great job, then no one wants it. Right. And so I think where you build things with longevity is when you go to the first principles of who's the end customer? How do we build a great experience for them? And that always lasts because if everybody, all of the customers, if everyone has this better experience and you genuinely believe that, that'll just raise the bar and that'll become the new standard because it's so much better. That's how you end up really winning. And I think go to market teams can also think about things in that same way of, you know, not just the short term, you know, gimmicky stuff. Although, you know, I will say those things can work for a small team if you're trying to hack your way to growth a little bit. But ultimately, if you want to get really big and you want to have channels, you know, generating millions of tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in pipeline, that same principle applies. Like you have to be doing something that's actually good for the end buyer. Otherwise the jig is going to be up.

I want to talk about your. Your, Your backstory a little bit as a. As a head of marketing. So you, you had gusto. You. You were first 10 employees. Ish. There. You ended up growing the marketing team to 20, 30 people. Wildly successful run four years, you know, did what I did, get that equity vested and then leave total respect. That's the first time in life we have to figure out, wait a second, they're going to tax me, what, on the money that I haven't even earned yet. Which is a whole different. Whole different podcast. But that was, you know, that was like a decade ago. Ish, right? Roughly. Yeah, about a decade ago now. October 2013. We're getting there. Do you think the job is different today for the head of marketing who's at a, you know, let's say at the time you're at series A, series B, gusto. I'm just making things up. Like 50 employees, you know, seven to $10 million in revenue. Is the job the same or is it different? If you were taking that job now, would you be doing different things? Like, what does the world look like to you?

Yeah, I mean, I think there is certain fundamentals that. And first principles that stay the same. But I think that objectively, the job is much harder by. By almost every today, it's harder. The most important one being that we are not in a bull market. Right. If you zoom out and look at the numbers, everything was up and to the right. And that means that people were buying in a less discerning way. And there was budgets flowing and you could get deals, you could grow those deals to be big much more easily. And you probably gave yourself lots of pats on the back and you thought you were amazing, and you probably were. But, you know, the market definitely, definitely helped a lot. And so I think we're just in a very different market today where that's not the case and buyers are a lot more discerning. And so, you know, you have to. And then there's also just a lot more noise. Right. Everything that we talked about around what's going on with AI, Everyone desperately, in an attempt to try to make themselves more efficient, are just spamming the universe. And so channels that maybe before, to your point where you, you know, you could send a lowercase subject line and that was. That's all it took to break through. Through right now you have to kill yourself to break through those channels. It's just. It just doesn't work as well. Anymore. And so you have to think a lot more creatively. I think channels are getting saturated way faster than before. And so, yeah, it's definitely a very tough job and I think it's going to get tougher because of our misuse of AI in go to market today.

Because of our misuse of AI.

Yeah. I mean, to that model that we're talking about. Right. Which is just pumping out stuff faster as opposed to really focusing on how do I, how do, how do we deliver a better experience to the end buyer and then how do we make our, you know, how do we make ourselves faster in that process? I think if you can do those two things really well, you are well ahead of most people in marketing. And the reality is that most people are not really focused on those two things. I actually wrote an article about this. I don't, I don't know if you've seen it or not, but it was in first round, it was about how to speed up marketing.

Oh no, give me the, give me the summary. I like that headline. How does there. A lot of marketing needs that. How to speed up marketing.

Yeah, I mean, I share a bunch of tactics in there from, you know, my days at, at, at Gusto. And then I think it was also like early days at Mutiny when I, when I wrote that. But I think like the number one tool in there is to prioritize speed as a top value and priority of the team. So looking at what is the number one goal for us as a marketing team and are we moving as fast as possible towards that goal? You know, in your gut, if the answer to that is yes or no, you don't need fancy dashboards or anything like that. And if the answer is no, let's say you're trying to move up market as fast as possible. And then we say, okay, are we moving up market as fast as possible? If my life depended on this, like, would we be doing things differently? And if the answer is no, then you need to make some changes. And often that's a combination of restructuring, refocusing, maybe different type of technology. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think the end customer experience and then speed are remain the two principles that CMOs and marketing leaders can, can follow to set themselves apart from, from, you know, their peers.

Yeah, the speed one is a, is a good one. But I often, I love to go fast and I often realize that through my own team and working with other people, the marketing team is often really busy and everyone is burnt out and like there's, I never have doubt that, like, no, it's not that nobody's working. Right. But the challenge is it's like we gotta make videos. We need videos for LinkedIn. We gotta be on LinkedIn, so we're making LinkedIn videos and we gotta be doing ads and we gotta be doing webinars and we gotta go to this event. There's just like, there's so many things to stay busy.

Yeah.

And if you really take a step back, like, not all those things matter and not all those things actually deliver the results. And I think one of the challenges with speed is it's easy to say go fast, go fast. And I'm guilty of this too. And go fast just means doing more. When I've learned now through multiple companies that, man, it's almost always a strategy thing and like, we can go fast, but we need to all a go fast in the right direction. And we have to be clear about the things we're going to say no to. And it's usually only one or two big things that are going to move the needle. Right. I was at a company where we decided to go up market and that was the rally cry from the CEO and the board and the founders, and they presented it at the company. But half the company was still stuck in the old business world because the comp plans were still wrong. The incentive, the incentive for the execs were still wrong. I think this, you have to be aligned on strategy. And the question that I asked you earlier about like, you know, what would you, what would you go back and do you know what's changed? I think outside of AI, maybe this is just an experience. 1 My own answer to that is just like now seeing this game a bunch of times, I'm realizing how important it is to be aligned on the company strategy, to be successful as a marketer. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think one of the things I point out in that article, and this is years ago, is you want to start with the end in mind. Right. And so let's say you want to build a really successful partner program because you're already seeing some early traction around that. And by the way, this is something that I really believe in, that the strategies you should go really big on, there's signs of those already. You're already seeing a little bit of traction in the market. If you go and ask the last hundred people, how did you find us? You will start to see, you would start to see examples of that strategy. It's just not scaled. You haven't really figured out how to make it really big. You haven't made it easy. But consumers, like, typically when things are good for them, they like it, they find their way to you. And then I think your job as a marketing team is to figure out how to scale those things. Things. And so, you know, one of the things that, you know, that I would do with the team is the black hat strategy, which I learned from a growth PM that I used to work closely with. So you, you decide, okay, like, we want to build a big partner program, right? And we've got some good early traction. Even though we don't have partner economics and we don't have a partner program. We've already found a bunch of partners recommending us. And so we think this could be something that's really big. You then set a goal, and that is really bold and audacious. And I like to have a two to three year lens towards that goal so you can think really, really big. And so you'd say, okay, our goal is to get $100 million in pipeline or whatever through this channel in the next three years. And that means, you know, let's do some simple math. That means a thousand partners, each generating X number of referrals. You build that very simple how. And then what we do with the black hat is we write down, okay, now imagine that we have failed at this goal. Like, it did not happen. We got maybe like at most 8 million in pipeline, even though we really tried hard, what went wrong? And then everybody writes down, okay, it could have been this and this and this. And then you synthesize that into a very small number of levers that actually matter for building the program. And so one of them might be like, there are not a thousand partners. Right? Like, how many times do marketing teams get something wrong because the TAM is off?

Absolutely. How many times?