How AI Is Reshaping B2B Go-to-Market
Questions we will cover:
How has AI changed the way you approach marketing?
We’ll open by exploring how AI is reshaping day-to-day marketing work, from content and targeting to measurement and personalisation, to understand how each of you or your teams are experiencing this shift in practice.Historically, how do you balance demand creation and demand capture (top and bottom of the funnel activities)? How are AI and personalisation at scale influencing this balance?
This will look at how you manage the tension between long-term brand and short-term pipeline, and whether AI-driven targeting is changing where marketers invest their focus.If AI can now do most of what marketers once did to reach, engage, and convert customers, what’s the role of a brand in this new world? Do we still need to care about branding, or should we rethink our entire go-to-market approach from the ground up?
Here we’ll explore how brand identity and emotional connection evolve when technology handles much of the execution, and whether creativity, story, and empathy still matter as differentiators.What new skills and mindsets will marketers need to stay relevant by 2030?
To close, we’ll look ahead at how the role of marketers is changing, from strategic leadership to creative experimentation, and what capabilities will define success in the next decade.
Guests
•Himanshu Patel, Chief Revenue Officer, India at Magic Software Enterprises
•Rachel Clapp Miller, Chief Marketing Officer at Force Management
• Raphael Poisson, Head of Marketing, EMEA at Dialpad
Transcript
Joaquin (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing Futures. Today we are exploring B2B Go to Market in the AI era. AI is already influencing how organizations define their ICP, prioritize accounts, create content, interpret buyer signals and support sales execution. But moving faster doesn't necessarily mean moving in the right direction. We'll discuss whether AI generally improves TTM performance or simply accelerates.
Whatever foundations are already in place. We'll also examine how demand creation and demand capture are changing and what marketers and revenue leaders must continue to own as AI and agents take on more execution. I'm joined by a great panel. And before we get into the discussion, could you each of you briefly introduce yourself and and your current role? Raf, maybe would you like to start?
Raphael (00:56)
so hello everyone. I'm Rafael, but you can just call me Raf. I'm the head of marketing for international here at Dalpad.
and we help with business communication. we're playing in the unified communication space, the call center space and the agentics space. So we are all about
Simplifying communication, collaboration to improve business outcomes.
Joaquin (01:17)
Awesome. Thank you so much. Welcome. Rachel, welcome.
Rachel Clapp Miller (01:21)
Hello, my name is Rachel Clappmiller. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer at Force Management. Force Management is a consulting firm that helps B2B companies, many of them in the high-tech space, generate more revenue and drive improvement in the metrics that investors care about.
Joaquin (01:41)
Awesome. Welcome Rachel. And Himanzu. Welcome.
Himansu Patel (01:44)
Thank you. Thank you. First of all, having me here, Joaquin. I am Himanshu Patel, Chief Revenue Officer at Magic Software Enterprises India. At Magic, we are into a business of enterprise technology, basically around business process automation, data, AI, and all that stuff. We help industries to create,
outcomes basically related to creating the data-driven decision-making inside the organization. We create that kind of ecosystem by breaking the silos and all those stuff. I lead commercial strategy, profit and loss, and enterprise growth initiatives across the India, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East region, and recently the Australian and New Zealand market as well. And I come up with a simple belief that
revenue is not a strategy for me. I think it is, you know, outcome of creating consistent customer values, customer outcomes, business outcomes by making the good business decisions.
Joaquin (02:46)
Well, thank you all for those great introductions. Let's begin with where things are actually changing today, because AI is often discussed as a complete transformation of go to market, but most organizations are still using it in specific parts of the process. That could be account research, data enrichment, content production, or identifying which opportunities deserve attention. So
Would love to ask you where is AI already having the greatest impact across I C P definition, account prioritization, audience research, content, or sales execution? I don't know.
Rachel Clapp Miller (03:25)
I'll s I can s I can start walking in. I think for us it's really if I look broadly where AI is having the most impact in that go-to-market engine, it's really making us faster in a variety of ways. So kind of compressing time that it takes to do things, whether that's account research, content creation,
getting discovery anecdotes into the CRM, just that whole workflow process of how we operate our demand gen organization as well as our sales organization, everything has gotten faster, which allows us to be more productive, more targeted, and more valuable for the people that we're interacting with.
Raphael (04:09)
Yeah, I completely agree with this. That's also something that we've experienced. when we look at AI and all of the different things that it can actually bring to a GTM motion, you know, seeing, for example, some of the information that you would not necessarily have access to being enriched into your CRM is going to be extremely important to allow any salesperson to have some signals on when an account would be actually in the buying process. So
I've used in the past a company called Amplify My AI that is actually just looking at all of the different things that you are already doing in terms of outbounding, how you can improve it using AI. It's not necessarily just based on the information that you don't have, but it's also based on the information that you have. Sometimes you are sleeping on some information that is in your CIM that you're not even knowing that you have.
And when you just look at the overall picture, you can have some quick wins that is just gonna make it so much easier for any salesperson to know exactly who they should target and what they should target those specific accounts at a specific time.
Himansu Patel (05:09)
Joke and I have a different perspective on the same aspect. Everybody knows AI changes the speed of GTM execution. Everybody knows that. Everybody is doing that. So I have a question. Where is the difference companies are making? let's say AI is the new, let's say, for example.
When everybody will have access to same AI, same tools, same technology, everybody will do personalization, everybody will do all those stuff, right? So basically I'm trying to say AI is going to commoditize very soon, right? So then what is the difference? What is the differentiation companies can create around the GTM strategy? That's the important question to ask.
And that's the important question to think, right? Where should we create that differentiation? It's not about execution, right? As I mentioned, once the technology gets commoditized, everybody can do it. No great magic, right? Companies don't buy because we are using AI, right? That's the fundamental
Joaquin (06:17)
One hundred percent.
Himansu Patel (06:18)
question.
Rachel Clapp Miller (06:19)
Yeah.
Joaquin (06:19)
Of course. Yeah, Rachel,
Rachel Clapp Miller (06:21)
Well I
Joaquin (06:21)
you you mentioned like you you can compress time, you can you can do a lot more more more things. but yeah, I think Himansu's point of view, I think it's very relevant. Are we doing things differently because we have more time available or
Rachel Clapp Miller (06:38)
Well I think we can absolutely do more. And I think, you know, that that's a great point about technology not or companies don't buy from us because we use tech technology. But what is driving the technology is that foundation that you put in place that the AI acts on. And that is your differentiation. So you have to get to a place as an organization
Particularly if have a complex go-to-market motion where you're trusting the AI. I mean, AI can write emails all day. It doesn't mean they're good, right? It doesn't mean they're articulating the value and differentiation of your solution as it relates to what you heard in the last discovery conversation. so I think it's it when we think about how we differentiate how we sell.
as opposed to what we sell, the differentiation comes from really getting a foundation in place to drive your technology around the problems you solve for your customers, how you do that better or differently, the competition, your experience in doing that, and your proof of success. If you don't have that foundation, you're gonna work faster, but it might not be the right outputs, right? It's gonna be more of a commodity, it's not in tune to the buyer, it's
Everyone well I think the people can tell when it's AI. I think we're starting to reach that too when you get an email and you're like, all right, well this is AI. So it's not necessarily the the technology that makes the difference. It's how you're using it and the foundation that fuels it within your seller workflows, your go-to-market workflows that will make the difference, I think, for organizations.
Raphael (08:23)
I I completely agree with this because we can see AI slop, you know, it's it's a very important term, specifically in the last couple of weeks when we see that even LinkedIn now released an option to say, I think this is AI slope. So it's not it's not everyone's gonna be using AI, yes, and we're all gonna be very similar, but there's always gonna be need to be an oversight, and it's how can AI enable you to do your best job.
So if AI is gonna go to any salespeople and is going to tell them, you know, based on information that you feed the machine, hey, I think this account could be in market because they've looked at your competitors, because they have been looking in the news at some of the articles that resonates with what you think is going to be showing that they are in market. If you already remove that, then you focus on where human can add the most value. If we're going to have the salespeople doing some outreach,
Call them, you know. For so far, we've not seen a good AI that can actually do some outbound calls. So focus on all of the information that you have to make sure that you are as personalized as possible to that account. Make sure that you resonate with them and use the time that you have available, because AI has given you some time back, to make sure that whatever you do, you do it with a strategic angle to it.
You know, I'm not gonna go to customers and just give them all the same messaging. That should not never be the case. Know why you're going to a customer, which pain point are you fixing? And go straight to the point.
Joaquin (09:53)
Yeah, and and Jimansu, you you you're working in in in a market where segmentation and and local context are particularly complex. how has AI made it easier to identify and engage the right prospects or has it also created more information for teams? I don't know, what's your experience? What has changed with AI?
Himansu Patel (10:16)
Yeah, see, I think I would say, no, I have a belief or perspective. It's like, you know, I think AI is changing how organizations execute GTM. Okay. So in various processes, okay, like personalization, segmentation, based on the industry based on the customer segment you are targeting. But it is not changing.
what GTM is fundamentally trying to resolve or solve. It is not changing that. It is just changing the execution. Today you can collect information faster, you can execute it with speed at scale. Obviously humans cannot match that scale of execution. But what is the fundamental belief and what is the GTM, why we need GTM?
That's the real game or that's the real question. Whether it is in my industry or whether it is in any industry. That's the fundamental question. So at the end of the day, every GTM strategy exists to understand customers better, customers deeply. That's why GTM is there. That's why it exists. Creating values and building sustainable revenue growth.
So all those are the aspects why GTM exists. So at Magic, we operate in a market as diverse as India. So everybody knows how much diversity there in India. Nobody can claim that we know one market, which is India. It's a five different market in India itself. So one region, different markets. And where one generic
a GTM approach simply does not work. So, you know, let's say for example, you know, we define clear cut ICPs for us, right, which is again, agreed by all the departments and functions, right, working around business growth, whether it is sales, marketing, inside sales or research team and all everybody agree.
to one particular ICP, clear-cut definition of ICP. And then we further prioritize, basically, prospects based on different levels. So let's say, for example, if we are attending a conference, B2B conference, and then we got a list of participants from there, and then we try to segment them based on our ICP. Let's say, you know,
Somebody has just registered for an event, but not attended at all. Okay. That could be any reason. So then our outreach will become different. Somebody has attended the event and visited our booth as well. Right. And then had a casual inquiry, right. Try to understand what we are doing. So that's again, a different outreach for us. Another example would be somebody has attended an event, visited our booth, and then discussed the clear
problem statement of their challenge of theirs. That's again a different outreach. Right. So there are, you know, this kind of segmentations we do. And then we define various tiers of the prospects, like tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four. And then we try to, you know, build an outreach program for all these different tiers. There is no one formula or one single magic stick work around all the prospects. So that's our approach.
you know we tried too.
Joaquin (13:44)
Yeah, and I think I think it's pretty clear that AI can create speed, but speed is only useful when an an organization agrees where where it's it what it what it is going, right? You need that GTM foundation, you need to have those systems in in place. But have you seen any situations where automation improved execution but also exposed
weaknesses in segmentation, in data quality, or that commercial alignment.
Himansu Patel (14:16)
So obviously, you know...
You know, I personally see AI as an amplifier, as you mentioned, right? Speed, scale and everything. So it's an amplifier rather than a substitute. So it's good. It's not that, you know, not useful or something like that. It's good. AI is a good technology. It can be amplifier and not a substitute, but you know, it does not build a great GTM strategy, right? GTM strategy must be owned by
humans at the end. And
Joaquin (14:49)
Half the percent. Yeah.
Himansu Patel (14:51)
it's not, know, for me, if you ask me, my belief is again, it's not B2B, it's not B2C, it's not B2C. It's a human to whom. So for us,
Rachel Clapp Miller (14:59)
I think Joaquin,
one area of weak I don't know, weakness, I think it requires if you think about the go-to-market engine, the CRM becomes that much more important because you need the right data in there. And I think it as we've said, the human interaction is critically important, particularly when you're executing a complex sales process, you're multi-threading a deal, you're dealing with variety of people within the organization. And there's nuances that
The rep will learn as they go through that process that might not always be captured in a CRM. So what we found, we've we've do account reviews all the time. We pull in a lot of data sources. We say, okay, this looks like these look like the hot targets. And then you know, you pull up with a rep and say, no, actually that's not because XYZ happened, or in my last call, this happened. And I don't think those triggers are necessarily right. So that human judgment.
is really important to as we've said, but those AI insights that you have throughout your process are really again only as good as what's in the CRM and it and it will miss stuff if if it's not in there.
Joaquin (16:12)
Yeah, and and you really need those processes in place. Whatever
Rachel Clapp Miller (16:15)
Mm-hmm.
Joaquin (16:15)
whatever it is, right? If it's I don't know, inviting your current client to a coffee after they buy, I don't know, some simple things, but if if you just assume that salespeople or account executives will will manage that relationship correctly, you can't assume it. It must be in your CRM or your processes or whatever you you you have that those those processes documented, right?
And of course
Rachel Clapp Miller (16:41)
For sure.
Joaquin (16:42)
AI on top of that can help, right? It can help analyzing the data, can help with the outreach, with automation, with many, many, many things. Raf, you you were going to say something.
Raphael (16:52)
Yeah, I say that I think it's an interesting point because I think it also works the other way around, meaning that we need to make sure that we've got some feedback loops on how we can help improve AI for whatever we need. So for example, if we see that there's some data missing in the CIM or there's some
Issues with the data that we have that has been generated by AI. Let's say, for example, just the industry, company industry of all of the accounts that you've got in your CIM. If you then want to do some nurturing to those accounts but it's not in the right place, you need to have that information. So I do think that it's also quite important to make sure that we are aligned with sales as much as possible. You know, at the end of the day, we're here because we've got a global, like a common objective. so making sure that
we have that information coming through from the census to the marketing team and vice versa, it's gonna be extremely important. What is the data that you actually need to have in the CIM? And what is the data that is in the CIM but you think should be improved on?
Himansu Patel (17:49)
So Raf, I completely agree that alignment is critical. But then again, coming back to the fundamental question which Jopin asked, I actually think AI acts like a magnifying glass. And if alignment already exists, AI makes the organization more effective.
But if alignment does not exist, then AI simply makes that misalignment visible much faster. So if you have a great GTM strategy and we have a rock bottom foundation, then it's obviously good. Basically, it will amplify. But then if we have any problems in the foundation itself, it will expose it also as fast.
So both the sides, right? So that is why I said, you one of the biggest lesson I have learned is that customers don't buy because we are using AI.
Right. That's the fundamental thing they
Joaquin (18:47)
Cars.
Himansu Patel (18:48)
buy because we
Raphael (18:48)
Yeah.
Himansu Patel (18:49)
understand their business and we are going to, you know, help them to create quality outcomes. And that is why they buy. So that's the important point I would like to add.
Joaquin (19:00)
Yeah and
Raphael (19:00)
I don't think
any customer, any prospect or anyone is now now expecting companies to use AI to some extent. I think we all have that expectation that it's a new tool that has come in the recent years and people are just adapting to it. I don't see many companies not using AI regardless. So I'm just wondering how much that could have an impact on customer perceptions, really.
Joaquin (19:22)
And and what examples can you give about alignment? Because alignment sounds like a buzzword, right? Of course you need alignment, but but then when it comes to be aligned on your CRM, for example, in in my experience, putting some fields like mandatory whenever you move a a a lead in the funnel, right? That you force salespeople or marketing people to complete specific fields before you can move a lead in the funnel. That
creates alignment in my experience. Do you have any other examples of of alignment or misalignment between marketing and sales and and how AI is amplifying or changing things?
Himansu Patel (19:54)
So
I remember very well one particular example. And it is not just about alignment at a process level or let's say a data update level, even at the fundamentals. Let's say, for example, if marketing is generating leads, okay.
And that sales does not consider relevant. So kind of a misalignment between at a fundamental stuff, No clear ICPs agreed by sales and marketing. And then that kind of, you know, clashes and healthy debates happens among sales and marketing. Let's keep on happening. So AI may generate even more leads with greater efficiency. Right?
But you know, the problem is not lead generation. The problem is misaligned. So basically your GTM fundamentals of your GTM strategy. That's the problem.
And the problem, you know, so basically, as I mentioned, you know, if organizing organization marketing and sales have not agreed on a clear cut ICP is then these are the problems going to expose going to expose faster by AI to the outside world. And then organization will not have much greater impact in the market.
Joaquin (21:19)
One one hundred percent, one hundred percent. Yeah. And and what needs to be agreed before organizations begin embedding their methodologies into AI systems? What like do do you Ralph or Rachel, do you have any other examples of alignment or misalignment?
Rachel Clapp Miller (21:38)
Well, I think at the basic level, it's what we were saying, your ICP and what are the qualities of that ICP and role company, second layer, what are the market triggers that happen or what creates an ideal customer for you in terms of what is going on in the company related to the problems that you solve. So that feeds if you align on that.
Marketing can execute the right programs to bring in the right ICP. And then once the customer comes in, you have to have some sort of organizational agreement on the problems that you are solving for that ICP. What are the key business problems that you are solving and how you solve those problems better or differently than your competition? So your value and differentiation. And if you have agreement on that.
Marketing knows what to say, the customer message is consistent from you know awareness all the way through to close. Sales is able to execute based on the value drivers and differentiators that they have, aligned to the customer requirements that they learn about in Discovery. So at the basic level, I think that's really the solid alignment foundation that you need. And then beyond that, it's
What are the stages in your customer engagement process? Who does what when? Which organization is doing what? When are they doing that? What's the critical handoff or we like to say handshake between those stages to make sure that the buyer experience is great? And then also that you are continuously aligning to the buyer as things change in the sales process, which they do a lot. And then how are you qualifying those deals?
We need organizational alignment on what makes a good deal, what signifies that it's okay to move to the next date. So if I say this is in scoping or this is in proposals, everybody in the organization knows what that means and what's been validated, what hasn't, what's left to go. And I think it goes on down, right? and gets can get more specific from there.
Joaquin (23:47)
Yeah. And and again I think every ev every everything you've mentioned comes back to the ICP and the segmentation that you you must have at the start and through all all the funnel, right? You if you don't stick to your ICP, whatever you do after is biased and is contaminated.
Raphael (24:08)
I think it could also be about expectation management. So what I've seen at previous companies is when you decide to go and change the target, let's say you go upmarket, you decide that you don't want to serve commercial, you go more mid-market in enterprise. It's gonna take some time to then get into those. And so if
The sales people the sales team was used to have marketing work in a certain way. If you don't take them through that journey, there's gonna be a misalignment on what's gonna be delivered. So if you are still expecting to see the same volume of lead, the same way the leads were coming, that's something that's not gonna be working.
And I went through that in in a previous company and and we had to explain and to change actually all of the signals that we're giving the sales team, making sure that they were more involved in the decision and making them part of the whole journey, you know, explaining before we launch the program, getting their feedback before we launch the program, giving them the reporting during the program, and then checking after the end of the program what we actually brought. And as you start adding more and more touch points, because the the bio journey is becoming a lot more complicated when you're going for bigger companies.
Then you need to make sure that everyone is aware of the accounts that you're targeting, everyone is aware of the results that you had for some of the campaigns, so that it doesn't come as a surprise. One account, for example, that we wanted to have in my previous job did not actually
Replied to any of our outreach, and then we started doing some ads to them through LinkedIn. So very targeted ads on a very specific number of accounts. We saw that the number of impressions went up. We saw that the number of clicks went up. We obviously did not have the information on who clicked on that exactly. But we knew that our ad was getting in front of the people at the company at the right level. About two months later, we went to an event and they actually came to the booth, started talking to us.
So if you don't make sure that all of the the your sales team is aware of the efforts that you're doing and that you don't have like a tight feedback loop with them, they're gonna just assume that it's the last touchdown portito.
Joaquin (26:07)
Yeah. And usually it's the other way around, right? And actually, yeah, I would love to move the the conversation in in that direction, like moving away from the internal foundations of GTM to how organizations reach buyers. And AI gives teams more ways to identify signals and respond to existing interests. And at the same time, buyers are increasingly discovering companies.
through AI platforms, communities, content and channels that are difficult to attribute. How are paid media, content, ABM, intent signal search, and emerging AI discovery behaviors changing the way companies create awareness and convert existing demand?
Rachel Clapp Miller (26:49)
Well, I think i there's a lot of different changes that are that are happening and I think we're all trying to keep up with them. I mean the best marketing and the best demand generation comes from aligning to how your buyers research and buy your solution. And that is fundamentally changing for everyone, right? We are using AI, the chat more to find things
organic search is going way down. What was driving your search optimization before is now the AI optimization. How are you optimizing everything for AI? Which I think is also creating a stream of I don't know retro work where you go back and make sure these other assets are optimized for the new the new channels.
So I mean, that's been a big area of focus for us is just we have done a lot of content. We've been doing content marketing for years. And how are we making sure that that content is optimized for AI and that we are driving people to the right assets? I think that's uncovered a lot of things where when we do our site audits, that's old. We would rather somebody go to this this resource than that resource. So it's that
Auditing and constant assessing of the content that you have, making sure it's aligned to the buyer and how they're finding the material now.
Raphael (28:12)
Yeah, I I I think AI, you know, changes how any buyers is gonna discover information, but it's not gonna change why, why they buy. You know, it's it's been shown that brand is actually also something that is still relevant. You you cannot you cannot remove brand from what you're doing because buyer will choose a brand that they remember. So to me it doesn't you need to make sure that you will show on all of those platforms, but it doesn't change the fact that it's about the brand awareness.
And it's only one part of everything that is moving. So you need to make sure that you're talking to the right people. It's just adding more platforms to do that. But at the end of the day, if someone is going onto an LLM and is going to be looking for some keywords that are going to resonate with what we offer, then it means that there's some pain point that we can help solve.
Joaquin (29:02)
They are still searching for information, right? If th th what changes they are not searching on or you just don't appear on organic cert, you just appear on LMs and the way to appear on LMs is by putting content out there that speaks to your customers' pain points, right? Which it is what you have mentioned a lot, Himansu, right? Is if you if we don't understand their pain points, like then
What is good to market is is nothing, right?
Himansu Patel (29:35)
Yeah, so fundamental technology today it is AI tomorrow something else will come. Fundamentals
Joaquin (29:40)
Mm-hmm.
Himansu Patel (29:41)
of business will remain same.
Joaquin (29:42)
One hundred percent.
Himansu Patel (29:43)
Basics
are important.
Joaquin (29:44)
One hundred percent. Yeah. And and your approach Himansu combines event management, advertising, LinkedIn, email, customer stories. How how do you decide when an account needs further education and when is it ready for a more direct sales conversation?
Himansu Patel (30:00)
So I think we are talking about demand creation and demand capture, two different aspects. And I actually don't see both
Rachel Clapp Miller (30:10)
Don't see
Himansu Patel (30:12)
as a competing priorities, obviously. And at a larger level, I see them as two parts of same commercial engine. It's the end. It's two different parts of same commercial engine.
So basically demand creation is for long-term, Awareness, creating awareness and then trust and then future opportunities and stuff like that. Future pipelines, it builds on future pipelines. And demand capture again converts the existing interest into revenue. It's your current pipeline, you're running quarter on quarter and stuff.
So obviously organization needs both, right? Because sustainable growth depends on balancing long-term and short-term execution. It should not be on one single side, right? It is both side. And AI significantly, obviously, as we are discussing, improving demand capture, basically.
the short-term priorities through better targeting, obviously intent signals, we were talking about different signals, personalization and automation. So AI is helping a lot of things around automation to quickly reach to the prospects. So that's more or less of a demand capture side of it.
Joaquin (31:37)
Yeah.
Himansu Patel (31:40)
Obviously, AI is creating a tremendous efficiency, demand creation remains deeply human because trust is not something which can be created by AI. AI cannot create
Joaquin (31:53)
One hundred percent, yeah.
Himansu Patel (31:55)
trust. It's human. As I mentioned earlier, it's
Joaquin (31:57)
You can change you can change how
you view that trust, whether whether it's through reels or through a podcast or but yeah, but trust is trust, right? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Himansu Patel (32:06)
Yeah, at the end, it's a human relationship, right? At the end, it's a trust, right? And customers
buy, as I mentioned earlier, don't buy because we are using AI, they are buying because they have a trust in us. They have a confidence
Joaquin (32:18)
Mm-hmm.
Himansu Patel (32:19)
in vendor, right? Because, you know, making a customer decision for customer making enterprise decision to buy something, some products or some service, right? It's a risk for them, right? And they
Joaquin (32:31)
Hmm.
Himansu Patel (32:32)
always try to
mitigate that risk, lower that risk. And that only can happen through confidence in vendor and trust in relationship. That's all the basic fundamental aspects of demand creation.
Joaquin (32:49)
Hmm. Yeah, one hundred percent.
And and Raf, you you have experience expanding companies internationally and and moving companies up market as well. Based on on your experience, how should teams balance target account activity with with broader work required to build awareness, credibility and trust in in new markets?
Raphael (33:13)
I think it's all gonna be about knowing who you wanna target and why you want to target them. I think it's all about the ICP, you know. Why
Joaquin (33:21)
Mm-hmm.
Raphael (33:21)
why we going after some very specific companies? So I think you need to find the right balance in between doing some broader action, like for example, I personally see going to events as a broader action because you have less of control over who you are going to meet there.
You're obviously always gonna see a list of people that are gonna be attending. But some sometimes you actually don't have access to that data. So you should just see that the event is relevant for you and just go. You also are gonna be looking at some actions that are gonna be more on the paid media side. so if you are doing any kind of native advertisements, for example, that's something that's gonna be extremely important. you need to be able for people to find you and to discover you and discover everything that you're doing. But then you also have to have some other platform like LinkedIn.
is I think the main one where you can be extremely targeted. You can say, I want to talk to the people that are working at those companies that have those job functions, those job titles, and are at that level of seniority. So for this one, it's something that you need to have that feedback loop of sales. You need to be able to have a list of target accounts and you need to be also able to report onto this. If I see that a specific company is then clicking more on our ads and something is resonating with them.
The salesperson that owns that account should be aware of it so that when they are doing some outreach to them, they can use that information. You know? If they click on one of our white of our white paper ad and then they don't load it, it's it's a way in. It's not necessarily we do not go and try to sell straight away, but start building that relationship because it's something that's gonna take much longer. You've got a lot more of influencers and you've got a lot more of decision makers. So you need to make sure that you are
making sure that that company is aware of of you and the comp and the company just in general and everything that you have to offer. So that when they are gonna be in markets, they are gonna remember you. It's all about the relationship building.
Joaquin (35:15)
One hundred percent. One hundred percent.
all right, so we we've discussed systems, signals, automation, but every signal still requires a decision, right? AI may be able to recommend an account, draft a message, or identify a change within a business, but
It doesn't automatically understand the politics inside that organization, the trust required to progress a complex cell, or the difference between what is activity, as you mentioned, someone download a white paper and when something is genuine buying momentum. So yeah, I would love your your thoughts on which areas of judgment, creativity, strategic thinking, and and like will
remain essentially human.
Raphael (36:06)
I think a lot of changes was brought by AI in terms of all of the positions that we can see that are going to be, you know, sp specifically office workers. For me, in terms of marketing, I I don't think it's making marketers any less important. To me, you know, AI is great at generating options, analyzing some patterns, accelerating the execution and autom
like doing some automation on the repetitive work, but then the human is still gonna be responsible for the strategy, the judgment, the creativity, the customer empathy. And I don't think it's something that AI can necessarily take at this stage. I think AI can help. For example, I love brainstorming with AI. AI sometimes is going to have ideas that I'm gonna bounce on and then we're just gonna start, you know, just start jamming together and and come up with something that I would not have come up by myself that I'm quite proud of.
But the way I see AI is is something that is going to make sure that I've got more time to invest where I can add the most value.
Himansu Patel (37:04)
I would like to add something.
I
Obviously, humans should own the creativity. I completely agree with that. But again, I would perhaps broaden it slightly.
You know, I think humans should continue to own creativity, but AI can help us execute the strategy. And it should not decide what our strategy should be and why it matters. know, creativity is obviously important, then, you know, purpose, purpose is again, a more important aspect.
because it will help us to give a proper direction. So I would put it in a way that AI should increasingly own the execution, but humans must continue to own direction. As AI becomes better at automating research, content creation, account prioritization, workflow execution, our role
or a human's role as leaders shift from doing more work themselves rather than making better quality decisions, business decisions. And that's the reason I said I have a simple belief that revenue is not a strategy.
Joaquin (38:12)
Mm-hmm.
Himansu Patel (38:13)
It's an outcome of consistently creating customer values by making good quality business decisions. And by making
Joaquin (38:22)
Yeah.
Himansu Patel (38:23)
good business decisions,
You can provide a direction to the organization. So purpose, along with the creativity, and obviously judgment, because capability is not same as the responsibility. So AI can give you options, but humans own the accountability or responsibility for making the judgment or decisions. So that's a very important aspect.
And one principle I strongly believe is that, as I mentioned, capability is not same as the responsibility. And AI gives us tremendous capacity, right? Scale, speed, execution, but leadership again remains accountable, responsible for whatever decisions we are making, good quality decisions we are making for the good of business. And basically, you know,
When I say decisions, it's about deciding which customers to serve, that humans can decide, that AI cannot decide, which prospects to attend, when to attend, with which outreach strategy to attend. So all those decisions are human decisions.
Joaquin (39:31)
And how you attend them as as well, right? Yeah.
One hundred percent. One hundred percent.
Rachel, Ruff and Himanshu, thank you so much for joining us today and and for sharing yeah all su such practical perspectives on on B2B marketing. Today's discussion showed that AI may change how GTM is executed, but it doesn't remove the need for alignment, judgment.
genuine customer understanding. So in in many ways those foundations become even more important as organizations begin operating at greater speed and scale. So well thank you again so much and thank you to everyone listening to B2B Marketing Futures. We'll see you in the next episode. Thank you.
Rachel Clapp Miller (40:17)
think the attack is
