How GTM Teams Should Be Using AI

The Power of Community in Marketing 🧡

Jen Allen-Knuth from Lavender.ai highlighted the buzz around community in the marketing world and cautioned against creating communities just for the sake of it.

She emphasized the importance of understanding the needs and preferences of the target audience before building a community.

According to Jen, a community is a place where individuals can learn from each other, ask questions, and find support.

She cited examples of successful communities like Thursday Night Sales, where people came together to support one another and share honest insights.

Jen believed that marketers should focus on creating communities that filled a necessary gap and provided value to the members.

The Journey from Sales to Marketing 👟

Moving from sales to marketing, Jen shared her surprise at realizing that marketing and sales were essentially the same thing.

She believed that both functions were fighting the same battle of opening conversations and creating curiosity among potential customers. 

en suggested that marketers could learn from sales by understanding the natural conversations and problems that prospects were discussing.

By observing and participating in communities and social channels where prospects gathered, marketers could gain valuable insights into their target audience's needs and preferences.

Leveraging the Power of AI in Marketing 🤖

Jen emphasized the potential impact of AI in the marketing world.

AI could be a game-changer, offering marketers the ability to process vast amounts of data, automate repetitive tasks, and gain valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.

By leveraging AI-driven analytics, marketers could make data-driven decisions, allowing for more targeted and personalized campaigns.

However, Jen also cautioned that the use of AI should be approached responsibly.

While AI could bring significant benefits, it should not replace the human touch in marketing. Authenticity and genuine connections were key to building strong relationships with customers. AI should be used to enhance the customer experience and streamline processes, but it should never replace the emotional intelligence and creativity that marketers brought to the table.

One of the critical applications of AI in marketing was customer segmentation.

AI algorithms could analyze customer data to identify distinct segments and tailor marketing messages to specific groups.

This level of personalization could greatly improve engagement and conversion rates.

Moreover, AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants enabled businesses to provide immediate customer support and assistance. These AI-driven tools could handle routine inquiries, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex and meaningful interactions.

AI also played a crucial role in content creation and optimization.

Marketers could use AI to generate content, create personalized recommendations, and A/B test various marketing strategies to identify the most effective approaches.

Despite the advantages of AI, Jen stressed the importance of using it ethically.

Data privacy and security must always be a top priority. Marketers should be transparent about the use of AI and ensure that customer data is handled with utmost care and in compliance with regulations.

Episode Links

Follow Tara Robertson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taraarobertson/

Follow Jen Allen-Knuth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/demandjen1/

Check out Lavender: https://www.lavender.ai/

Follow Will Aitken: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justwillaitken/

Watch Sales Feed: https://www.youtube.com/c/salesfeedtube

Follow Todd Clouser: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddclouser/

Follow Chelsea Castle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseacastle/

Follow Will Allred: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamallred/

Follow Will Balance: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wmb1/

Check out GTM Partners: https://gtmpartners.com/

Check out: SDR Leader: https://www.sdrleader.com/

Follow Sam Nelson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realsamnelson/

Check out Refine Labs: https://www.refinelabs.com/

Follow Travis Tyler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-scott-tyler/

Check out PandaDoc: https://www.pandadoc.com/

Check out Salesbricks: https://www.salesbricks.com/

Episode Transcript

0:00:00
Tara Robertson
Welcome back to a new episode of Demand gen Chat. I'm your host, Tara Robertson, head of Demand Gen at Chili Piper. In this episode, I'm joined by Jen Allen knuth community Growth at Lavender. We chat about what has surprised her the most since making the move from sales over to marketing and how AI should and shouldn't be used by sales and marketing. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Jen. Jen, thanks so much for joining me on Demand and Chat.
0:00:25
Jen Allen-Knuth
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
0:00:28
Tara Robertson
So excited to have you here, especially coming from the sales side. US demand marketers know we need to work more closely with sales. We often don't know how or don't know how to approach it. So lots of our questions today will be around that. But really excited to get your take on things, just jumping right into it. I heard you have a marketing hot take that you want to share.
0:00:47
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yes, well, since you asked, I will happily share. There's plenty of hot takes I'm sure I could list off, but I think for me. So I stepped into the community growth role here at Lavender, and as a result, that's where my answer is probably going to lie, which is it feels like community has become the new buzzword for marketers because there have been so many successful communities. So it's almost become this check the box. Like, I don't care what we sell, who we sell it to, if those people even like being around each other, let's just create a community so we can say, we did it.
0:01:19
Jen Allen-Knuth
When I joined Lavender, actually, I was really grateful that our founders did not put pressure on me to stand up a community right away, which probably looks weird because I was hired to do community. Rather, what they said is go out, spend time in the communities where our prospects are currently going to learn and figure out what they like, what they don't like, where there's an unmet need. The last thing they said we want to do is just build another slack community so that we have a slack community.
0:01:48
Jen Allen-Knuth
So I think that is a temptation for many marketers right now because community is such a buzzword. But stopping listening, observing what's already going on, and making sure that your community truly fills a necessary gap is kind of the way we're thinking about it.
0:02:02
Tara Robertson
Here and kind of along that same line. I'm sure a lot of our audience is wondering what community is to you at Lavender. Can you touch explain a little bit about what that role entails? I mean, it sounds like you're kind of shaping it as you go, but ideally, what would you love to see the role turn into?
0:02:19
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah, I think for me personally, there are so many communities that exist out there today, like LinkedIn. Love it or hate it is a community. And when I came into Lavender, and I got access to our corporate account. It was wild to me how many people were talking about Cold email or emails and sales and tagging in lavender. And it may open my eyes to the fact that, yes, we could have these people in our own community, but in a way, isn't it kind of nice to have people talking out loud about that in public places where other people go, right. So I think community is any sort of place where you learn from other people about the jobs you have to be done in a way that isn't forced upon you by your manager. Right. So if you look at communities that we've had the pleasure of engaging with, one, for example, is a group called Thursday Night Sales.
0:03:11
Jen Allen-Knuth
I remember the first time I jumped on that call on a Thursday night and I was like, what is this? There's like 70 people on here, all different levels and roles and responsibilities. But everybody was so unified around the idea of supporting one another and giving honest answers that may sometimes be hard to hear. And so I look at a community like that and I'm like, wow, that is so rare. Normally you're afraid to speak up and afraid to say, like, hey, I don't know the answer to this stupid question, and it broke down those barriers. So I've always been really inspired by communities like that that allow people to have a safe space, to ask questions, to learn from one another in a way that's also just kind of fun and not stiff and boring.
0:03:50
Tara Robertson
Yeah, I think when people think of LinkedIn, fun isn't maybe the first. I think that's changed recently, but stiff is definitely probably more in line with what a lot of people think when they're scrolling their LinkedIn feed, right?
0:04:03
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah. And that's one of the things we're trying to change. Right. If you think about social media, LinkedIn is social media. We go there to learn, for sure, but we also go there to be entertained, to have a break. Like Will Aitken, who runs our social. When he was at Sales feed, he was one of my favorite people to see in my feed because I knew if I was having a tough day or I got a no or something awful happened, I knew their content would kind of be like a little bit of a bright light.
0:04:29
Jen Allen-Knuth
And it's not to say it was superficial or light. They did, I think, a great job of balancing helpful and then entertaining and fun. We've got to keep in mind that people are scrolling just as much to learn as they are to be entertained and it's okay to have a little fun with our presence.
0:04:43
Tara Robertson
Yeah, that's a really great point. And you mentioned, obviously, Thursday Night Sales is a community that's been great. I was just talking to someone earlier today about how getting people to show up to virtual events now is really tough now that in person events are back, just because obviously we're all itching to be social in person again. But it shows the power of a community like that, that people are willing to join a Zoom after work hours and collaborate, learn from people.
0:05:08
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yes, I think that's so true. I mean, you look at webinar, just the word webinar just sucks the life out of us, doesn't it? It's going to be gated. You got to submit your email. Everything about it is icky. And so I think people are getting really smart to the fact that there has to be more than just educational content, because educational content is everywhere, right? We just did our first in a series today we're calling Lavender Live, where we bring in people who we really admire on the topics related to email and sales.
0:05:38
Jen Allen-Knuth
And we do them in 30 minutes because they're during the day and people don't have an hour to sit there. And it's just focused on being fun, being helpful, being tactical, giving real examples. And I think there's just a higher bar for virtual events because of exactly what you said. Communities have set the bar high that it's got to be more than just, here's all of our smart stuff we have to share.
0:05:58
Tara Robertson
Yeah, and like you said, people are coming to LinkedIn and Communities for a break. At least that's how I use it. I have five minutes in between this recording and my next call, so maybe I'll scroll LinkedIn. I'm not looking to read a 50 page ebook necessarily. I'm looking for some quick, something quick that I can take away or maybe make me laugh and share with my team on Slack.
0:06:16
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah, agreed.
0:06:18
Tara Robertson
So you've touched on just at the beginning that you recently transitioned over to the marketing side from sales. I'd love to hear just in your experience, first of all, kind of what has surprised you the most and then anything that you've learned that marketers should be doing to support their friends in sales.
0:06:35
Jen Allen-Knuth
I think the thing that has surprised me is that marketing is the same thing as sales. I don't know why we have overcomplicated it so much and made it sound like there are these two different sides of the fence. I think what marketing is taking, or should be taking much more of an ownership in now is starting a conversation, right? Not, look at us, look at all the g two awards we win and look at where we are in the magic quadrant.
0:07:01
Jen Allen-Knuth
Nobody cares. Nobody cares. I'm sorry. Nobody does. Like, later in the process. It matters. You've got to validate that you're a credible trustworthy partner. But I think sales and marketing are fighting the same battle right now, which is like, how do we open a conversation? How do we create curiosity for someone who is not shopping to want to learn more about the problem that we solve? And so I think the number one thing I think marketers can be learning from sales is what are those natural conversations? What are those problems that people are talking about, searching for, hunting for, and where are they going to learn them?
0:07:33
Jen Allen-Knuth
I will say I think sales hand has been forced to get much more deeply involved in. Dark social, I know is like a stupid buzzword, but just being present where prospects are. So things like communities and slack channels and LinkedIn lives and things like that and they're observing, they're watching, they're learning. Marketing, I think, can take a nod from that. And instead of talking so much about ourselves, just deeply, deeply understand what are the things that our prospects are talking about, even if they're not related to our category or our space or our industry, we still have to know and understand them because those are the things we lose to later down the road.
0:08:12
Jen Allen-Knuth
So I think just definitely learning where prospects go to learn what they're talking about, what they're hungry for, learning for. It's not just marketing. Sales can get be better at it too. But marketing definitely needs to go deeper into that.
0:08:22
Tara Robertson
And you said something interesting, you said that Sales has been forced to go into these communities and look for people. Why do you think that is? Do you think it was just kind of a desperation to hit targets or is it really just trying to understand the customer more?
0:08:34
Jen Allen-Knuth
I think it's access, right? I think we just took all of these amazing tools that we have at our fingertips that give us reach and volume and just abused the hell out of them. And we're like, now we're just going to blast everybody with our message. And so I think as that's been happening, more and more people are seeing less and less engagement from their prospects. So they're having to lift up and say, well then, if they're not responding to emails, if they're not responding to cold calls, where else can I go to meet them where they're at? And I think even some of these slack groups that I'm in, it's wild. When you see the types of conversations that are happening, people will straight up say things like, all right, I'm looking at Panda Doc versus DocuSign. Like what's everybody's opinion?
0:09:18
Jen Allen-Knuth
Imagine being a Panda Doc sales rep and seeing that and being able to see, hey, here's what people really like about us, here's how they compare us. There's no better way to get closer to your target prospect than to learn from those types of conversations. So I think smart sellers are really using that to their advantage.
0:09:36
Tara Robertson
Yeah, some of the conversations I'm seeing are so it's almost like radical transparency where I'm seeing people literally sharing screenshots of here's what the vendor quoted me, can you guys tell me what you pay a month? And if the sellers aren't in there monitoring that or someone from marketing that can get really interesting to watch conversation.
0:09:56
Jen Allen-Knuth
And not to mention what a great way to find people who are advocating for you that you don't know about. Right? Like, one of the things I loved about Lavender when I joined was how much they promote and hype up their users. So you'll see a lot of people will tag Lavender in their social content because we share that stuff like crazy, right? And we're like, we recognize at least right now, we've got a lot of social currency. We're not taking it for granted. We know that can go away at any time.
0:10:22
Jen Allen-Knuth
But if we all chime in on a post from one of our users, that tends to help their reach and their engagement, that's an opportunity to give something for someone who's giving a heck of a lot to us. And so just knowing who those people are, being able to amp them up, being able to show our appreciation in a way that benefits them, I think is really just super important to knowing what our audience is even saying about us.
0:10:46
Tara Robertson
And in terms of social listening and the customer marketing side, are those kind of shared responsibilities right now at Lavender, or do you have dedicated people to each of those disciplines?
0:10:55
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah, great question. So Will Aitken is like, we don't have title normal titles here. Like, I'm community and Will is social and Tod is I was trying to.
0:11:03
Tara Robertson
Figure out who does what, and I came up.
0:11:06
Jen Allen-Knuth
He's like written content, I think. So it's more of our subject matter areas. But Will Aitken absolutely takes the lead on monitoring social. He obviously posts from our social channels, but he's also just looking for mentions and things like that. But I think one of the things that I admired when I started here is it's not like, oh, it's marketing's job to go engage with this content. Everybody here acts like a marketer in some way. Like will allred posts, every single morning. If Will Allred does not write a LinkedIn post, he has been hit by a.
0:11:40
Tara Robertson
Search for yes.
0:11:42
Jen Allen-Knuth
Like go find will allred. If he's not there, will balance too. And they're founders, right? And you could say, gosh, there's so many things a founder can do, but they recognize the importance of being present. Where our folks go to learn. It's the same thing with our CS folks, with our sales folks, and that, I think, is a difference maker. Everybody views the power of social. It's not just marketing's job.
0:12:02
Tara Robertson
Yeah. And I think for that to succeed, it has to start from the top. Like you were saying, founders have a lot on their plate and a lot they could be doing, but for them to make sure every day, hey, we're going to post. Maybe it's just one time. Maybe we get check in on the comments later. But that really shows the focus on, hey, we're all in this together. It's not just marketing's job to grow on social.
0:12:22
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah, and you raise a good point about comments, right? Like, I think the worst thing in the world is when founders or CEOs or whoever posts and then goes away and doesn't engage with well, you're not social is a two way conversation.
0:12:34
Tara Robertson
So don't even they probably scheduled it a week ago.
0:12:37
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah, they're like, oh, I posted something I forgot. So I think that's the other thing is not being too senior or too big to respond and engage with people who are taking the time to engage with you.
0:12:47
Tara Robertson
So we've talked about community, we've talked about social, but what at the super high level is the go to market strategy over at Lavender.
0:12:55
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah. So I love that you asked this question. We've partnered up with a company called GTM Partners. It's led by a guy, Sangram, who I think founded Terminus. And it's a phenomenal group. And one of the things they put up on a slide at their meetings is all of these different go to market models. And I'll be honest, half of them I didn't even know were options. So I've been thinking a lot about what is our go to market model, and one of the conversations that they had at a meeting last week was many people perceive it has to be a singular go to market model when in reality, most of us are pursuing multithreaded go to market models. So for us, obviously, our business started as a PLG motion where any user can come in, download it, and then we look to grow from there.
0:13:39
Jen Allen-Knuth
But since we've stood up the marketing team, I would argue it's also an event led go to market strategy where we're figuring out where are our buyers, our users going to gather with each other and being present there. It's also a community led growth model. So I think there's multiple different models that are in play here. But the thing that is central to all of them is the recognition of the power of our community.
0:14:04
Jen Allen-Knuth
Not our slack group or whatever, but like the actual human beings that exist in that community are by far our biggest growth lever because they're loud about us, they post about us, they share us. And so we're really fortunate to have that.
0:14:20
Tara Robertson
Yeah, I think you're right. A lot of companies, if they don't already, are shifting to having multiple GTM motions because all of a sudden, maybe it's tougher to succeed on outbound. So it helps to have a community angle or it helps to have PLG so people can play around on their own time. So I'm seeing that more and more, we're kind of the opposite, where we're rolling out a PLG now, so it'll be fun. But up to now, we haven't really had that motion.
0:14:45
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah. And I think a lot of companies are doing that, right? And the smart ones are asking, should we be doing PLG it's the same thing with community, right? It's like everybody's doing PLG, let's do PLG. Your business makes a ton of sense to do PLG. And I think as long as it's low effort, it's easy for the buyer to understand or the user to understand. It's a really smart play, and I think just testing and learning is a good thing. I would be deeply, deeply concerned if a company was like, we're only on one and that's it. And that's the one motion for us. There's just too many choices now to limit ourselves.
0:15:19
Tara Robertson
Yeah. And things are changing too quickly. It's pretty scary to rely on one motion or one channel to bring in your business.
0:15:25
Jen Allen-Knuth
Agree.
0:15:26
Tara Robertson
I'd love to just quickly talk about metrics for each of those. It sounds like some of them, like, the events piece might be a bit newer, but what metrics are you looking at overall to know that those strategies are working for the marketing team?
0:15:38
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah, it's interesting because one of my hesitations for ever joining marketing was like, I don't want to sit in these dumb meetings and talk about MQLs and just pat ourselves. I was like, Is that marketing?
0:15:52
Tara Robertson
I don't want to do that.
0:15:53
Jen Allen-Knuth
I'm pleased to say it's not right. This was a salesperson's point of view of marketing. There's a few that we care a lot about. So obviously, we've invested in events as a channel. And so we look very closely, I look very closely at making sure that those events aren't just driving, like, hey, that was fun, but actually driving education of the concepts that we want our buyers to understand about cold email and then also driving interest in looking at team opportunities.
0:16:20
Jen Allen-Knuth
And so the things that we're choosing to do are not necessarily like all the big name logo events, but they are places where we know the people organizing these events have the trust and credibility of their employees. So we're looking at leads coming out of that, genuine leads. Not like everybody gets assigned because someone attended an event. Like people who actually raise their hand. So that's one we obviously pay very close attention to. Social, the basic stuff that you would consider right? Like, just like, are we increasing followers and engagement and all that, but also, are we seeing more people, as I mentioned before, post about us share their lessons, what they've learned, what's the tonality of that post? Is it positive, is it negative?
0:17:04
Jen Allen-Knuth
That's something we obviously care deeply about. And then we do like a lot of companies these days, we have a free form field that just says, how did you hear about us? And not give them drop down answers, but just let them free form fill in the blank. So we're constantly looking at where are those leads coming from? What are we doing? What do we need to be doing more of? And it's wild. Like, if you look at our metrics for how did you hear about us?
0:17:32
Jen Allen-Knuth
I haven't actually done the math on them. We should, but it was like there was a huge category of just Will the first name. Will.
0:17:39
Tara Robertson
That's amazing.
0:17:43
Jen Allen-Knuth
That kind of stuff that we're like, okay, if we know that people are coming to us from learning on LinkedIn, it gives us the confidence to keep doubling down there. But even since Will Aiken took over Social, we're starting to see people come in from, you know, didn't really look like our normal user. So I think just being mindful of where people are coming from is a really big piece for us. And then any investments that we're making, making sure those are translating to interest.
0:18:07
Tara Robertson
And do you look at that self reported attribution? I'm glad you mentioned you don't use the drop down because you get the real answers that way. Do you look at that as a team? Is it every month, or is it something that you all just kind of know that you can hop in and look at whenever you need to?
0:18:21
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah, great question. We just recently talked about doing a standing monthly meeting to look at that as a whole now that we because we implemented it in January. So now I think we've got enough data to be able to be like, okay, this is cool. So we haven't formally looked at it like that yet. We do have a Slack channel that feeds all of the answers into it. So I'm always in there digging around, seeing, like, what are people writing?
0:18:44
Jen Allen-Knuth
But I think now that we've had it in place long enough, we should be for sure looking at it regularly as a whole.
0:18:50
Tara Robertson
Yeah. You're in the exact same place as us then, because we look at the slide channel, we tag each other and get excited. But I'm starting to figure out how can I get more visibility for the whole team to know what's working? Because it shouldn't just be a handful of us that are super excited in Slack.
0:19:05
Jen Allen-Knuth
It should be everyone.
0:19:06
Tara Robertson
Agreed.
0:19:07
Jen Allen-Knuth
Thank you for making me feel better about where we are. I'm at yeah, no, very close, very similar.
0:19:14
Tara Robertson
I'd love to know, I mean, you mentioned already that you're getting very consistent answers or some consistency in those self reported answers, but is there anything else that you've seen that's really working over the last couple of months? Obviously, a lot of marketing teams are either struggling, downsizing, cutting budgets, but what has been really working on your end?
0:19:35
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah, I would say the events have been a big driver for us because we've never had an issue. Never we haven't had much of an issue with getting individuals to want lavender, but obviously as we grow, we want to get more teens of people using lavender. And so in many ways, like, an SDR leader, like a Director of Business Development is a great target for us. But when you look at a lot of events and things. It's usually either VPs of Sales CROs and it's not that those are bad, but the people who intimately feel the problem that we face are often those SDR leaders. And so there's a group called SDR Leaders that Sam Nelson runs and it's just people that are that he does not get sucked into. Like, oh, a CRO wants to come, let me do it, because their title sexy. He's very true and honest to that.
0:20:30
Jen Allen-Knuth
And as a result, when we participate in those events, there's a meaningful output for us because those are the people that feel the problem the most that we solve for. So I would say you mentioned it before, but events are definitely back. People are looking to connect in a very big way, and I think we're pretty excited about what's to come there.
0:20:50
Tara Robertson
That's exciting. And I'm curious on the PLG aspect, it sounds like right now you have no problem getting, like you said, the individual sales reps checking out the tool. How do you typically, I guess, kind of upsell them to that corporate account so that their whole team is using it? Is there a strategy going to their leader?
0:21:13
Jen Allen-Knuth
We're candidly still figuring it out. I'd love to sit here and say we have all the answers. We absolutely don't. It shocks me that this was a team of six people before we joined in January. I'm like, how did you build this? This is insane. So we're newer on the spectrum. What I do think works very well is being able to isolate what that company is trying to achieve. Like, are they trying to grow enterprise segment? Are they trying to grow mid market segment?
0:21:37
Jen Allen-Knuth
Is there a particular vertical they're going after or region? Is there a particular product that they're trying to like a new product that they're trying to cross sell and then helping that buyer realize and understand that email, while it seems small and minor, is actually contributing in a big, big way to that problem. So obviously my background is in Challenger sales methodology. I spent my entire career there and I believe in it. And I believe that when you can go beyond just showing someone, here's our tool, do you think it's cool? Do you want people to use it and actually help them make sense of their priorities and their problems?
0:22:11
Jen Allen-Knuth
That's where I think the magic happens. So if you look at accounts that have gone far and wide with us, it is always companies who've been able to take a look at a big problem and map it back to saying the way we're doing our outreach is actually contributing to that.
0:22:26
Tara Robertson
I'd love to know, I mean, I know you haven't been at Lavender long, but is there anything that you've tried either yourself or just the marketing team has tried that you were surprised just really either didn't resonate with your audience or just really didn't work at all.
0:22:41
Jen Allen-Knuth
I don't think there's anything I would say hasn't worked at all yet, but we are still new. I don't want to make it sound like I'm like, we're perfect and we have no problem. We have plenty of problems. Plenty of problems. But I think because of the people so if you look at our marketing team, it's Todd Klauser, who is just brilliant. He came from Refine Labs, which is like a genius machine when it comes to marketing. You look at Will Aiken, who had years of experience standing up basically like a media company and creating content. You look at Chelsea, who came from your organization and is a phenomenal machine at knowing how to use written content in ways that are not the norm.
0:23:23
Jen Allen-Knuth
I think one of the things we're really lucky to have is just a whole hell of a lot of experience on this team and people who are not afraid to take risks and zag when everybody's zigging. And so I think talent plays a big, big role in that. And the fact that there's not one person at the top, we don't report into ahead of marketing, we report into our founders. And over time, obviously, that I'm sure will have to change as the marketing team grows. But it allows us to really bring different perspectives and not be filtered through one person's perspective. And I think, odly, there's something to that, right? It's like, trust that each of us in our lanes knows what we're doing, and as long as we communicate closely with each other, we tend to see that we each can chime in and help with it. But I wouldn't say there's, like, a big, big mistake we've made so far, but now I've probably just jinxed ourselves.
0:24:09
Tara Robertson
No, I think it's a great point that it's a small team, but you're bringing so much experience with you, so your instincts to try things are probably a little bit more fine tuned than some marketing teams that have grown super big super quickly, but aren't quite as experienced with the audience that you're selling to. So hopefully it makes a lot of sense. I'm looking ahead to the future the rest of this year. Is there anything you're really looking forward to, either yourself or just as a marketing team?
0:24:37
Jen Allen-Knuth
Oh, my gosh. I don't know about you, but the pace of AI related news is maddening to me. I can't think of a time. Right. It's like everybody and their mother now is like, we have an AI product and we have an AI product. And so I think that competition from everybody is going to drive some really cool things. And as someone who came from sales, I always believe in a human first approach. Right. Like, you will never catch me being like, oh, I just do my job exclusively through AI. But I think things like lavender, one of the things that brought me here is it's still. Focused on building the human skill. It's just using AI to help you do it faster and smarter. I'm super geeked about that. I'm not geeked about a world where everybody's putting content in chat GPT and just taking the outcome and saying, let's blast it. That's not cool. But I do think there's going to be really cool innovation in all of these spaces with how people are using AI to remove just some of the boring, unimportant time sinks of our job. Imagine being a seller that never has to go in and update your CRM. Imagine being a seller that can do research on account in 30 seconds versus reading in hours of annual reports. That stuff is cool and it's going to make us better as a profession if we're responsible with how we use it.
0:25:56
Tara Robertson
Yeah, I think your caveat at the end there is if we're responsible, is what's on a lot of people's minds right now. Just because, like you said, I've already seen people on LinkedIn clearly spamming people's comments with chat GPT, comments that are just very just clearly a bot wrote this like you did not. This is not a real comment. And I'm seeing that so much it makes me anxious for just what the future of just content marketing in general will look like, but especially on channels like LinkedIn where the early adopters get super excited about this stuff.
0:26:28
Jen Allen-Knuth
Oh my gosh. Obviously with AI being in our company name, and a big part of what we do, when I tell people, hey, we help sellers write better emails using AI, everybody's like, let me tell you what prompt I'm using. And let me talk about people are so geeked up and excited, which is awesome. But I think it'll be an opportunity for people who still take a human first approach to really separate themselves from the noise. Right. Just like when we were all able to start spamming people with thousands of emails and sequences and cadences, there were responsible people who said, I could do that, I'm not going to do that. I think we'll see that same behavior as it relates to AI and it'll be a differentiator which is cool.
0:27:07
Tara Robertson
Yeah, I think it'll be exciting to see what creativity it brings out, especially in, like you said, there's so much you can personalize in sales. So taking away that maybe the more boring admin side of things that I know a lot of sellers don't like, that'll be really cool to just imagine if you had all that time back in your day to just be creative with your outreach. Right?
0:27:28
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yes, that's what I'm saying. That, I think is the cool part. It frees up capacity to be more thoughtful and if we use it that way, that's a great lift for sellers and marketers.
0:27:39
Tara Robertson
Really?
0:27:39
Jen Allen-Knuth
Anybody cool.
0:27:41
Tara Robertson
So I'd love to move on to our quick fire round. Jen. So first, is there another marketer or could be a sales leader that you follow that our listeners should go check out.
0:27:50
Jen Allen-Knuth
Yeah. I'm going to give a person and then a company. So a marketer that I really like is Travis Tyler at PandaDoc. I like him because I think he does a phenomenal job of balancing the entertainment value with the helpful content. He's not afraid to be weird. He's memorable as hell, but he's not just doing it for laughs. He weaves in things that are related to their category really well. So I love Travis, and then as a company, I'm actually pretty excited by what Salesbricks is doing.
0:28:26
Jen Allen-Knuth
Salesbricks is going up against Salesforce, which I wouldn't wish that on. Right. Like, that's like the biggest behemoth in the room, and I think they realize they're not going to grow playing it safe. So they're doing a lot of really fun content, quirky content, and it's just memorable to me, that kind of stands out in a sea of same, so I'm excited by what they're doing, too.
0:28:45
Tara Robertson
And is there an under the radar channel or could be a tactic that your marketing team is loving right now?
0:28:52
Jen Allen-Knuth
I mean, this is not a sophisticated marketing professional answer, but stop being so serious, y'all. People want to have fun. This is one of the hardest times in the recent history that people have been working through, and I think we just have to recognize as marketers that sometimes we just need a break. Right? It's okay to incorporate humor. It's okay to have a strong point of view. It is okay to use your people in ways that highlight what makes them weird and interesting.
0:29:19
Jen Allen-Knuth
That's the stuff that people remember. It's one of the things I've always admired about Chili Piper, is, like, not afraid to do things differently. And I think even though in times like this, we pull back on risk, and risk avoidance is like, job number one. I think these are the times where we actually have to really lean into being a little bit more edgy and a little bit more risky. Obviously being respectful and not touching on topics we shouldn't, but if we want to cut through the noise, you have to be different. So stop with the 50 page white papers. My God.
0:29:48
Tara Robertson
Yeah, that's a really great point, especially coming off of what we were just saying, how AI is making it easy to create so much content that you have to find a way to stand out or else it's all the same. Yeah, that's great advice. Great. And lastly, where can our audience go to follow you? Where are you most active?
0:30:06
Jen Allen-Knuth
This is easy. I've only done one TikTok. I refuse to share my TikTok handle because it was a terrible video. So if you can find me, congratulations, you're a sleuth. I'm on LinkedIn. Jen Allen Knuth. I just got married. So now I've got my hyphenated last name K-N-U-T-H. But I live love. I love it there. I'm always down to take it to the DM, so that's where you can find me. Great.
0:30:31
Tara Robertson
We'll put all those links in the show notes you can follow, Jen, if you don't already. I'm sure a lot of you already do. And thanks so much, Jen, for joining me.
0:30:39
Jen Allen-Knuth
Thank you so much for having me, Tara. This was fun.
0:30:42
Tara Robertson
And thanks everybody, for listening. We'll be back in about two weeks with a brand new episode.
0:30:47
C
Thanks for listening to Demand Gen Chat. Demand. Gen Chat is a Chili Piper podcast hosted by Tara Robertson and produced by Me Nola McCoy. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It only takes 5 seconds and helps other marketers like you discover DemandGen Chats. Also, if you'd like to have a question answered in a future episode, you can connect with Tara Robertson on LinkedIn, send her a DM with your question, and it could be answered on a future episode.
0:31:16
C
Finally, if you've gotten this far and are wondering what Chili Piper even is, chili Piper helps B two B marketers book more qualified meetings for their sales teams. You can't afford to leave opportunities on the table, so let your lead self qualify and schedule a time with the right rep instantly. And that's just one of the many revenue impacting things that Chilipiper does. Visit Chilipiper.com to learn more, and thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next episode of Demand Chin Chat.

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