Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode of 'The Hummingbird Effect,' Wendy Coulter, president of Hummingbird Creative Group, and strategist Hanna Jernigan sit down with Nate Cook, VP of Product Marketing at ABC Fitness, to explore the hidden power of branding and marketing. Nate shares valuable insights from his extensive experience, discussing everything from the importance of leveraging data in marketing and overcoming internal silos, to the impactful role of AI and innovation. Dive into Nate's compelling stories of how small changes in marketing strategies can lead to significant business outcomes, and get practical advice on how cross-team collaboration can accelerate growth and optimize workflows. Don’t miss this informative and engaging discussion that’s packed with actionable tips for CEOs, marketing leaders, and anyone looking to make a tangible impact through strategic branding and marketing.
00:00 Introduction to Hummingbird Creative Group
01:33 Meet Nate Cook: VP of Product Marketing at ABC Fitness
03:22 The Role of Data in Marketing
07:09 The Hummingbird Effect: Real-Life Examples
11:42 The Power of Collaborative Culture
14:28 Transforming Messaging Strategies
19:28 Voice of the Customer: Insights and Tools
21:40 Leveraging AI for Data Analysis
22:18 Leveraging Basic Data Analysis
24:07 Understanding Key Metrics in Marketing
26:07 The Importance of Cross-Functional Collaboration
27:34 Innovative Approaches in Marketing
29:16 Utilizing AI for Efficiency
33:20 Engaging Teams for Better Outcomes
41:03 Final Thoughts and Contact Information
Creators and Guests
Host
What is The Hummingbird Effect with Wendy Coulter?
Welcome to "The Hummingbird Effect," a podcast dedicated to uncovering the subtle yet powerful ways that small innovations can transform your business. Hosted by Wendy Coulter, CEO of Hummingbird Creative Group, this show delves into the stories and strategies behind successful brand building.
For over 25 years, Wendy has helped CEOs and business leaders redefine their brands through innovation and compelling narratives. In this podcast, she shares the insights and lessons learned from her extensive experience, exploring how a strong brand orientation can significantly increase the value of your business.
Each episode features engaging conversations with industry leaders, business advisors, and innovators who have harnessed the power of branding to make a substantial impact. Discover how focusing on core values, mission, and vision can drive your brand beyond mere marketing tactics, fostering a culture that resonates with your audience and enhances your business's reputation.
Inspired by the concept of the Hummingbird Effect—where small, adaptive changes lead to remarkable outcomes—this podcast aims to help you understand and implement the incremental innovations that can elevate your brand and business.
Join Wendy Coulter on "The Hummingbird Effect" and learn how to evolve your brand, attract more customers, and ultimately enhance the value of your business through strategic branding.
36 - Hummingbird - Nate
===
[00:00:00] Hi everyone. I'm Wendy Coulter, president Hummingbird Creative Group, where we help CEOs and marketing leaders unlock the hidden power of their brands. For over 10 years, I've helped business leaders focus on marketing tactics, but really, really, um, help them learn that what truly matters is building a strong brand. Um, so the podcast is called The Hummingbird Effect, and if you've ever experienced that, it's like the co-evolution of the hummingbird and the flower. When small innovations in branding can lead to surprisingly big results in [00:01:00] other unrelated areas of the business, like it increased valuation, a stronger culture, or even an operational breakthrough. Um, this morning I'm here with Hannah Jernigan. Hey, Hannah.
Hanna: Hi, Wendy.
Wendy: Good to see you.
Hanna: You too.
Wendy: Him has been crafting to get ready for
this podcast to take her notes, um, and learn from Nate. So, um,
Hanna: Yeah.
Wendy: you, um, welcome, welcome Nate. Tell us a little bit about him and then we'll let him expand on what we've got to say.
Hanna: . So we are welcoming Nate Cook today to the podcast. He is the VP of Product marketing at a BC Fitness. Um, and so Nate, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do there.
Wendy: Tell us about yourself, Nate.
Nate: yeah. Well first of all, thank you for having me. This is a real pleasure. Um, I think you all do do some like in studio recording, so, um. But this is, this is fun too, to do it remote.
I, I think I chose the remote option because it's [00:02:00] easy to stay at home these days. Post pandemic. It feels like, it feels like an easy default. Um, but yes, VP product marketing at a BC Fitness just been here for like six weeks or so at a BC Fitness. Um, it's a really been a, a very gratifying experience.
Um, folks may not be familiar with a, B, C Fitness. A BC Fitness is really there to kind of help. Um, gym operators fitness studios, big box gyms help them better and more easily manage their business and then also scale and grow it. Um, it's, it's a really cool industry. I've never been kind of part of or adjacent to the fitness industry.
It's a really passionate group of folks who. Um, truthfully, like the goal of our software is to get the back to their passion space, which is helping people kind of improve their lives and their wellness. And so, um, our goal is to just kind of remove a lot of the toil that comes with being a small business operator or being, um, you know, you're more deeply involved in a larger business that has multiple locations. [00:03:00] You have other things you're trying to do, like grow and scale. And in add locations we kind of help remove some of the barriers that get in the way of that. Um, by just making that process of operations and management easier.
Wendy: Awesome. Well Nate, so I connected with you. Um, it's been over 10 years now, which, um, is interesting
because Yeah.
I guess you were SC data at that time and you know, just kinda looking at your background, um, you seem to, to come to the table with a lot of data background. Can you just talk a little bit about. Um, how data has played into your marketing journey, because I think that's, I
Nate: yeah,
Wendy: really interesting piece of your story,
Nate: yeah, yeah. Data's really important. It's funny 'cause being at SC Data was probably one of the jobs that I used data the least, despite the name of the company.
Um. It
is, got data in the name. Um, but from a marketing perspective, just I think [00:04:00] every year I'm using data more and more, um, to help kind of inform what myself and the team are prioritizing or where we're trying to, what we're trying to work and improve on. Um, if you look at like, just the past couple years, um, it's a lot of looking at the. It's the, it's, maybe the data is maybe one of the best ways you can better align yourself to the business. And if you're in the, the marketing side, and especially if you're in the product marketing side, one of the things you want to be able to share with other parts of the organization is. How you affect revenue and the best ways you can affect revenue other than kind of staying close with the other teams that like sales and operations, that are, that are part of driving that revenue is prioritizing the right things. And, and one of the ways that you learn how to prioritize the right things is looking at the data.
And if you are working on projects from a product marketing perspective, like a messaging project or you're trying to. To build an ICP for, for a new [00:05:00] product or a new segment that the product's gonna address, or, um, building sales plays for, for sales enablement and sales. You wanna make sure that what you're doing is actually gonna have a measurable effect on the business.
And so that means doing a lot of research. Like we were at my last role is really fortunate to have a great team in, in the rev ops side. That was, really managing, maintaining a really great centralized data source in Power bi. And we would often just kind of build out reports that, um, from that data that would show us like, where are we, where are we winning, where we weren't expecting to be winning?
What is the sales cycle look like for this product? How has it changed from quarter to quarter? And using that to kind of change how, what we were focusing on. So if we knew, for example, that. A product had a sales cycle that had increased over the course of that year. We knew that for us to hit our number in that year, we needed to move when we were building that pipeline than maybe we thought we would.
And so that meant having [00:06:00] campaigns ready earlier in the year so that sales would have an opportunity to close 'em with the, the kind of sales cycle that they were working with. So I think data is just really important to being better on the marketing side. And from a product marketing standpoint, I think it's really critical to stay close to it.
Wendy: Don't you think it's so cool how much we get to use data now compared to what it was? I mean, and I've been, the agency's been around 30 years, so I've
been doing this 30 years, but even 10 years ago, like I was trying to think through like, when was that? And it was just so different than it is now.
Um, the, the meaning of the word data was completely different.
It is now. So I just think it's so cool just how technology has evolved and that we get to have this insight into any aspect of marketing. Um, where before it, I don't, I don't think it was a guessing game, but digging into the data was so much harder, right.
Um, and so I, I love that [00:07:00] about how much the industry has changed and it's, it's really been a fun, fun journey for me with data and with the team here at Hummingbird. Um, so I'm gonna transition into Hummingbird Effect and we wanna hear a story. From you, um, about when a small change in your company's marketing or branding strategy may be led to a significant or positive outcome or result for the business in another area. If you have that story, um. And that could be increase in sales.
It could be a brand awareness, um, story, customer engagement, or a shift in culture, which we hear about a lot when it comes to these kinds of things. So talk to us about a hummingbird effect that you've experienced in your work.
Nate: Yeah. Yeah. Actually I'll, I'll, I'll bring up two examples if that's okay. 'cause I think they're both kind of different and fun. But, um, the first was, I was at a company, we had a, a version of the software that was really [00:08:00] popular. Um, that was basically going end of life where we weren't gonna support that version of the software anymore.
So folks that were gonna be using that software anymore, if they had an issue with it, they wouldn't be able to come to us anymore. And so it was really important for us to move them to the newer supported version that they'd be able to get support on if they had any issues. Um, one of the challenges, and it's just a, it's a thing that lots of people will experience, is sometimes those migrations or upgrades. Processes can be sort of painful. Um, as much as companies try to, to reduce the pain there it's just not always the most fun thing. So one of the challenges in doing that is always just like you've gotta get people kind of, um, willing to sort of accept the fact that this is gonna be a little painful, but there's a, a good output at the end for them. At any rate, we, we didn't exactly know all of the customers who were on this older version, so. It was a little bit of guesswork on our part of like, who's on this older version, how do we get communicate with 'em to let 'em know that they're going outta support and that they're gonna need to upgrade. [00:09:00] Um, so that was one challenge we had. The other challenge we just have as a goal, you know, we want people to be using the latest, greatest version of the software, so that creating all the benefits that we're talking about in marketing materials. Um, and so it's just kind of a, partly an adoption thing. And so midway through this kind of migration process, I got handed the project.
I hadn't really been working on it. Um. And so the changes that I implemented implemented from kind of a program standpoint was one, what other teams can we work with cross-functionally to get a better idea of who these customers are? Um, and what tools do other teams have at their disposal that will help us run kind of like little marketing campaigns to try to get in front of these folks to one, sort of educate them about. The fact that they're, you know, the software version that they're on is going out to support but two, how to do the upgrade process. 'cause it was, um, something that they could drive themselves if they were interested in doing that. And so, [00:10:00] um, it was basically just me kind of reaching out to some other teams who hadn't been worked with before on this project. And, and they were super excited to take it on. Like, that was kind of one of the fun things is they. Had they, one, they didn't know the project was ongoing, and two, they had all these really great ideas for how we could kind of extend our reach and better target this group of customers. Um, and so end result was we were able to run a lot of like basically no costs programs to get in front of these people and target, um, them via email and webinars and such. And we were able to hit our goal that we were trying to hit for the number of folks that we migrated to the, the newer version. Um, but it was really a lesson to me in just the value of looking externally, not external out of the org, but externally out of my team to try to find folks who would also, one, have, um, skills and resources that I didn't have necessarily. Um, and two, like a genuine willingness to help. [00:11:00] It's sometimes it's hard, I think, to, in a work environment to go out and ask for help. It can feel kind of vulnerable. Um, but the value is just, it's, it's enormous. Like it's it it's a real force multiplier for what you're able to accomplish yourself.
And so, um, I think making things like a team collaborative effort one, it's more fun, but two, the results were much better. So that's, that's one example that, um, was a lot of fun to work through.
Wendy: I love that. I love that. The idea of working with other teams that you don't normally work with and it brings such, um, different perspectives to the table too, um, when you do that. And so that just helps the ideas flow and, um, come
together so much better. Right.
Um, and also that is culture building.
Nate: Right.
Wendy: so can you talk a little bit about the culture build that happened from that particular project?
Nate: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. Um, it did improve kind of well, one, it just [00:12:00] it's a new group of, of people that you can then go to for questions and they know who you are. So just that rapport that you immediately have after having worked with someone on something. Um, but two then they would come out to us afterwards with like. Hey, I heard about this. Is this something that we can help you with? And so, not all the times did we really find an opportunity to make that work, but there were other times where it did make sense to pair up with them again. And just opening that relationship kind of created a pipeline. Where then there was the opportunity for us to work more closely together in the future.
And sometimes it, it takes that initial reach out, um, to build that kind of culture where they're willing to come to us then with like, Hey, we've got some bandwidth and we'd love to help support you on something else if you're working on it.
Wendy: So do you have any idea the business metrics, um, as the result on this particular project? Like what, what kind of impact did it have?
Nate: Yeah, so we were, um, I, from [00:13:00] a kind of like kept revenue perspective, I'm not sure, but from a, or I don't remember at least, but from a, a metrics KPI standpoint, we were trying to get 80% of the folks on this version. Um, moved to an upgraded more recent version and we were able to, to pass that 80% mark. So, um, we definitely weren't there when I started and we, we ended up being able to cross that finish line, so that was really gratifying.
Wendy: Love that. So what did you learn that you can take forward from this hummingbird effect?
Nate: Yeah, it, it is the, the multiplier effect of being able to reach out to other teams and, and work with folks that maybe you, you didn't expect to work with at the outset of a project. And it's also just. Not everything that you do needs to be kind of insourced from your own team. There's a lot of value in the experience and knowledge that other folks have on other teams, and the the worst they can say is no if you reach out and ask them for help.
So, um, it's not being afraid, I think, to, to to reach out, ask for help [00:14:00] and, and see if there are other folks who'd be willing to contribute.
Wendy: Yeah. And it sounds like you're really, really great at just making sure that you don't stay siloed and, um, I think that's, I think that's so refreshing. Um, marketing. Often feel siloed. So, um, just to be able to reach out to the other teams and find that support and be able to achieve more
Nate: Yeah.
Wendy: Um, so tell us about your other, what's your other story?
Nate: Yeah. The other one was it was just a messaging initiative and I, um. I'll, I'll name name, check my, my mentor, Brian Modern, who, who started this initiative, which was, when we looked at our own messaging, and I think other folks have have done this too, you find it's really feature led. Um, and he had recently read Emma Stratton's book make It Punchy, which is a really, really great book.
Recommended it to folks. But, um, what he wanted to do was then kind of take the learnings from that book and apply it to our own [00:15:00] messaging, um, so that we could start refreshing it. It's, it's such a simple change that Emma Stratton recommends in her book, which is just kind of reframing your message from being kind of feature led. Um. To talking about the benefits, and then you get to the value to just kind of inverting that order. So her whole thing is this VBF framework, which is you lead with the value at the top of the message. Then you get to the benefit that customers have if they, if they use it or adopt it. And then you talk about how the feature actually accomplishes that. And it, it sounds really minor, but it, it completely inverts how customers or prospects read these materials because rather than reading through a paragraph and asking the, so what question they're able to clearly see like, oh, I get it. This is what this does for me. Um, and then they read how the actual feature works and, and what it tries to accomplish for them.
So, um, it was a, it was a seemingly minor change of just kind of really. Like we did rewrite things, but it was largely just [00:16:00] moving things around, um, within a, a section of copy or messaging. Um, but it had a huge impact on how we thought about what we were doing when we were doing the writing process and the messaging, um, to just thinking like, what does this drive for the customer? Um. And that simple change, like it flowed through our message guides to, you know, other collateral that we were building to the website. Um, and that really is like kind of the, the hummingbird effect you talk about, which is just, it has this kind of cascading effect all throughout. Um, and just improved the, the way we talked about the products, um, and how we wanted to, um, just really bring the value forward whenever we're talking about them.
And so. Um, it started with the message guide and then just kind of flowed through everything else that we were writing.
Wendy: Are you able to share with us like what that top level message was when it was, um, very feature oriented, and then what it, how you flipped it and what the [00:17:00] mess, what the actual message was, and then what it changed to. Are you able to
Nate: Yeah. So, um, yeah, I'm trying to remember specific examples, but it would be something like, um. We would talk about how you can like refresh a report in ex Refresh your data in Excel. And so we think that's like what someone wants to hear. They want to hear that they're now able to refresh their data within Excel which is something you can't do with static data. What we know is the value for the customer is that they save time. Um, because they no longer have to go pull all these reports, so the value is that they save time or the value might be that they're able to focus on some of the other things that are a little more strategic to their department or organization. Um, and then the, the benefit then is just kind of a elucidating on the, the time savings. And then we describe that, hey, how you're able to save this time is because you can now refresh your reports in Excel. [00:18:00] And so just kind of flipping the order of those things means that folks don't have that. So what reaction to reading?
Any copy. Um, so that would just be kind of one example.
Wendy: Yeah. Love that. Love that. Um, so can you talk about metrics with that one? Like do you have any idea that really changed the impact of the marketing
Nate: Yeah. You know, the funny thing is I probably not from like a pipeline or MQ L'S perspective, but I will say you could just read. How much stronger our materials were when we made that change. And, um, it was something that we then kind of prioritized rolling out the changes too, and the other things that we were building.
So if we were, if we knew that we had a brochure, if we knew that we were updating a webpage we'd make sure to include those changes as we were doing it. So it, it did, some of that change was just our own internal process of like, how do we want to prioritize these now that we're making this messaging change? It sped up sort of how quickly we wanted to refresh these other things.
[00:19:00] Nate, have you ever used voice of the customer, like either? Um. Insight interviews or um, focus groups to figure out like that value really is. Did you guys do that to get a little bit further honed in on that message?
Nate: You know if for that specific effort, no, I think it, we do try to incorporate, like when we would sit in on customer interviews or that sort of thing, is, is bringing the, the things that they prioritize [00:20:00] and how they talk about the value they got back, um, into it. Um, but I think it's a great call out.
Like I think one of the challenges that I've encountered in my career is one. Taking the time to, to really do effective voice of customer work or just the investment, like if you want to outsource it, um, it takes, it's a fair amount of money to outsource. And so, um, finding ways to prioritize that I think is really important.
We're actually at a b, C Fitness. We're going through a voice of customer exercise right now. And, um, the amazing thing is like, as, as much as you. Think, you know, there are always things that are surprising, um, when you're digging through the data and talking to folks. So that's always kind of the, it, it shows how worthwhile that that exercise is.
Wendy: Yeah, it's, um, it's something that. We oftentimes do for clients here at Hummingbird, and we feel like it's so valuable,
um, because it goes beyond understanding the value and goes in digs deep into the language that they use to explain that [00:21:00] value.
Which is really what's gonna resonate. Um, and so that's just, um, that's just such a, such a great activity.
I wondered if you guys have delved into that, so that's great. Good for you for doing voice of the customer right now. That'll be, that'll be fun. Um, so how will you delve into the data? You know, talk to me a little
bit about how you will delve into data when it comes to, 'cause we're doing voice to the customer all the time and we are trying to find different ways and faster ways to like, dig into what we hear and make sure that we're finding those buckets, you know,
Nate: Yeah.
Wendy: um, different buckets of messaging and that sort of thing.
So what kind of tools would you use for that today?
Nate: Yeah. Well you know, it's funny because we're at a, a very real inflection point, I think for how folks are going to start doing data analysis and, um. I think largely for the better, but, um, there's probably some downsides to it, like AI kind of democratizes how you can sort of do data [00:22:00] analysis now and how you can work with pretty large data sets and come to some conclusions pretty quickly in a way that manually would take quite a bit of time. Um, so AI I think is, is one tool that folks can use. And, and I use, um, the, the other thing is it's, um. And I, I talked about this recently with someone who's just like, you don't have to be a statistician to get value from your data. Um, but it can be like a helpful tool, even if it's not advanced statistics or anything, um, to be able to know sort of how you want to poke at your data to figure out, um, kind of the different paths you might want to explore.
So one thing I remember doing. At my last job was we had a product that had a pretty short sales cycle, so it would usually close within a couple weeks of an opportunity opening. Um, and so that meant that basically the pipeline we would create within a quarter is pipeline We would expect to close within that quarter, with the exception of ones that [00:23:00] would, you know, open up right before the quarter ended. Um, so one of the things that I, I did was run some like really basic just correlation analysis on. How do we perform from a bookings perspective for at to attainment based on how we do from a, a pipeline build. So if we build pipeline, do we close it basically? Um, and then looked at that for a couple of different products. And the, the basic finding was that like for these products that have these sort of shorter sales cycles that were also like, we were really good with our, our ICP and the sales process. We were much, we had a really high correlation. For the pipeline that we built in a quarter and the amount that we booked for attainment where we could see some like problem child products was we'd say we build the pipeline. There's no relation to whether or not it closes in quarter. Um, and so it, it helps you sort of better understand where you need to focus your time. And so that just [00:24:00] basic like correlation analysis, which you can do very easily in Excel without even knowing how to do the math, um, can help point you in the right direction. But I think the, the other thing when you're coming into a newer org, as I am at at a BC fitness is it's like. What data is really gonna help me understand the story of what's going on. And I think you just don't know that until you've had a chance to kind of parse through different things like, um. Um, one thing I hear a lot of marketers talk about is like MQL to SQL rate. Um, and sometimes they use that as kind of like their shield to, I don't want to change this campaign because our M QL to SQL rate is x and X is really good for us. Like, let's not touch it. Um, but sometimes what you find is that, like the M-Q-L-S-Q-L conversion rate might be really great, um, but it's never closing. And so it ends up being something that shouldn't be. A vanity metric turns into a vanity metric because you're using that number to kind of defend your practice, [00:25:00] but it doesn't actually help you with what you're really trying to do, which is help your company close business. And so, um, it, it's like. Where do you want to look and what threads do you want to kind of chase? And so I think one of the things that's it's fun about starting a new job is what's all the data we have? What do I want to look at? And then where is it gonna lead me as I start investigating more closely? And so, um, what we, what we've started doing lately is just kind of looking at. Um, top of funnel to bottom funnel conversion rates and how that one like, you know, will affect some of the assumptions that we're trying to make for 2026. But, um, it's always, I, I think it's really fun. I know a lot of folks in marketing don't always enjoy this part. But my encouragement would be like, the closer you get to the data, it, it's not gonna hurt you.
So, um, for the most part you can, you can turn it to your benefit.
Wendy: So tell me a little bit about how these lessons, um, have changed your approach and what kind of advice you would now give [00:26:00] other people your role or similar role, um,
Nate: Yeah.
Wendy: forward.
Nate: Yeah, I, that's a great question. I, I feel like, and I don't know how you feel about this, but I do feel like there's a sense in marketing that you always kind of need to be able to explain to someone the value of your job. Because a lot of folks, they don't know what marketing is, um, or they're not really sure what its real value is. And so you need to be able to have something you can point to that says like, Hey, it's actually, it's this and this is where we play a role and this is how we help you. Um, and so the. Yeah. For folks in, in product marketing, I think especially, um, because product marketing can vary so much from organization to organization, I think it's the more closely you can be aligned to the things and KPIs that really matter for the business you're at, um, which is typically gonna be revenue, um, the safer you'll be.
And so my encouragement would just be like, work cross-functionally, like pair really closely with sales, work [00:27:00] with these teams. Um. A as, there's lots of like tropes about, you know, how annoying this other team can be to you, but. Truthfully, they're your path to your company hitting your goal. So, um, set aside whatever differences you may have and, and pair up with sales.
Like if there's something that they really need, it's worth looking at, um, for you to reprioritize. 'cause it might be something that makes a difference for the sale as annoying as it might be to produce. And so I think it's just like move closer to the, to the dollars in the company and align yourself to that. Um, is always helpful.
Wendy: So talk to me a little bit about innovation. How does innovation play a role in what you're doing at a b, C Fitness?
Nate: From a, from a company perspective or just from the marketing?
Wendy: Um, either way
Nate: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. From the customer standpoint, I think it's folks want to. And, and this cuts across everybody, right? It's not just folks in the fitness industry, but they [00:28:00] want to spend less time on the stuff that's not fun. Um, and the stuff that's not fun about like running a, a fitness studio or boutique is that you're doing a lot of manual work for very little gain. So if you're trying to chase after somebody because they're, they didn't pay their subscription, like that's, that's not fun. If you're trying to, um, make sure that folks show up to the classes really manually, that, um. Your coaches and stuff are running, like, that's not fun. So what can we innovate as a company that makes that just less stressful and takes up less of your time? So I think the areas that we can innovate there and show kind of proof that we are, we're helping reduce that toil and stress is a real value from a. a. marketing perspective in innovation. I think it's being kind of innovative in how we are looking to use or implement AI into our workflows. Um, I think a lot of teams are struggling with this, [00:29:00] right? It's, it's a challenge that you can't completely rely on AI for everything. But you can rely on it or should rely on it to help make you faster in some areas.
And so it's finding what those areas are that we really want to try to use AI for to make us faster.
Wendy: What's your favorite thing that you've done with ai or your favorite tool? Or just share something that you're excited about, that you've been able to accomplish with ai. Because everybody is in this space and I think learning from each other is so important right now.
Nate: Yeah, so for one of our product teams, they use notion is where they keep like product stories. So we connected the the notion MCP to our chat, GBT. So basically as they would update, um. Things when they're shipping, basically when features are shipping or when they're rolling out to certain subsets of customers, we can just kind of create we can just prompt against that for like a blog post that's like, [00:30:00] Hey, what are the features that shipped in this month? Um, and then because we also have a, a little copy editor, GPT two, we can then run that blog through that. Um, and so rather than just the. I mean, think about 10 years ago, that's a, you're writing that blog post for yourself, right? There's no, there's nothing else helping you to being able to get to like an 85% of the way their blog posts that you really don't have to do anything with to get to that 85%, that's a c change.
I mean that the time savings. So how are we then as product marketers spending that time savings what are we doing to make that worthwhile that we got that time savings back? Um, so I think that's, that's one area is just kind of automating. That process. But I think it's also, um, the, the way that I use it kind of personally is as kind of a sparring partner or something.
Like I, I'll bounce ideas off of it and tell it to think through, think through the perspective of the person. Maybe I'm trying to communicate something [00:31:00] to and have them kind of help me. Get to a better way of explaining or communicating something or to help me understand. A perspective that that might not come as easily to me. Um, it's really pretty good at, and so I sometimes will just use it myself as like, I'm trying to explain this concept to this person who has these specific concerns, help me understand their concerns, and then kind of coach me through sort of how I can better communicate this in a way that they'll be receptive to. Um, and that sounds like a, a kind of silly, way to use it, but I, I do use it for that. And it's helpful.
Wendy: No, you're not. You're not the only person I've ever heard. Use the word coach for their chat.
Nate: Yeah.
Wendy: For their chat, um,
Hanna: your emotional support that.
Wendy: So what are you doing with the extra time that you've saved because of ai? Nate?
Nate: Yeah. It is, it is getting closer to the revenue. It's spending our time on things that we think will help sales close deals faster and more efficiently. [00:32:00] Um, I think that's, that's the goal. Whether or not day to day and hour to hour we're, we're really doing, um. As much as we can. It's, it's, it's hopeful. Um, but I think the goal is to just kind of resource that time to, to get closer.
Like you just, there's so many opportunities to, to improve kind of the, the value you deliver to other parts of the organization that the, sometimes the struggle is just figuring out what to prioritize. And how you want to have different folks focus on for whether it's like, there's always challenges going on around like, you know, there are people that will leave the product and they're leaving their subscription behind and how do we get those folks back?
And we also wanna sign new prospects and um. You, you're just, it's it's a challenge to kind of figure out what to prioritize when, and add different segments too, like however you, you organize your business or the sales teams around the size of businesses they're targeting or specific groups of customers. Um, so it's, [00:33:00] it's doing that work to figure out where is our work and time going to be used most effectively. And I think that's the challenge is is finding the right way to, to apply it.
Wendy: I love it. Nate, thank you. Thank you so much. Well, Hannah, so as our strategist,
Hanna: yeah.
Wendy: been, I know you've been going crazy
Hanna: Good.
Wendy: on this one. So what have you learned today?
Hanna: Well, I learned that, um, as different at all as all of our brains are in the marketing world, we all are thinking the same thing. 'cause some of the notes I'm like, oh, I'm gonna remind, like, let's come back to that. You then got to it, but I wanted to see if you had an example of this. Um, so I wrote down as a reminder to leaders and anyone in the company to allow and encourage cross team training, cross team working.
You put it together really, really well. Move closer to the dollars, be transparent with your teams. This is our goal and this is how we're gonna get there so we can all work together to improve. But as I was writing it down, I [00:34:00] then started thinking like you were saying. You know, not everyone looks at marketing like, oh, they're doing wonderful things and getting us these sales.
So sometimes bringing people into a marketing meeting makes them feel as though they're not using their time the best. So do you have any advice or do you have an example or how you can kind of approach a situation where you want teams to work together and showing that it's worth, maybe you're on the development side and you're learning about.
The marketing piece, and you're not really passionate about it, but it is important
Nate: Yeah.
Hanna: to get where you need to go, like you said, everyone needs to be working together.
Nate: Yeah.
Hanna: Do you have an example? Can you talk about that any.
Nate: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. I think it starts with knowing what's in it for them and being able to communicate that. So if you're working with another team, you're asking for their time. Being able to explain to them what they get out of this time that they're spending with you and [00:35:00] why, and connecting that to what you know is important to them, um, so that it actually lands.
So, for example, we're in the midst of, um, 2026 planning, as I'm sure lots of folks are, or, or maybe the really lucky ones have already gotten all that stuff baked. Um, lucky you but the. One of our processes that we're incorporating since I joined is circling up with teams across the organization to figure out. Um, to hear from them, kind of like a voice of customer exercise. It's
like, what are you experiencing in market, um, for sales? We talked to sales, we talked to customer success, we talked to the onboarding teams. What changes are you seeing that you weren't that were surprising to you? What are things that you're hearing from prospects or customers? Um, but it's a time investment. We're asking for them to come to these feedback sessions. We tell at the top like, why we're doing this. We're doing this 'cause we want your feedback. This feedback that you give us, we are going to use in our messaging materials and how we run [00:36:00] campaigns and what types of campaigns we run.
So we try to connect back the dots for, you're coming here, you're spending an hour that you could be spending selling, right? Like this is a cost to, to me too, to have you pull away from that. Um, I want you to be able to spend time selling. I want you to be able to sell effectively. So that means that we're gonna take this feedback that you, you give us, and we're gonna make sure that our messaging reflects what customers are telling you or prospects are telling you about the things that are most painful to them in their process. Um, we're going after the, kind of, from a competitive landscape we're targeting. The right folks, the right ICP. So that means that the feedback you give is gonna change how we talk about our ICP and how other marketing teams downstream are gonna use that in their campaigns. Um, so I think it's, it's getting buy-in.
It's like the very political process of, of buy-in. And the best way to get buy-in is to show empathy for that group.
Hanna: Right.
Nate: and that means you, you have to kind of understand what their priorities are and then be able to reflect that back.
Wendy: You know, Hannah, we've
got, we've [00:37:00] got one client and I think there's 10 or 12 people on the call every time, right?
Nate: Yeah.
Wendy: it's. Sometimes obvious that everyone doesn't quite understand why
they're there. They don't engage that well. And so I do wonder if we could, you know, as an
outside agency it is a little different,
but maybe come to the table with that value proposition.
And engage with them and ask them to give us feedback
during the meetings instead of them just playing this role of listening. Um, how do we get them more engaged
to impact what we're doing? Um, I do think sometimes there's fear. Of saying the wrong thing in front of your boss,
because generally there's at least one member of the C-suite on those meetings.
But, um, you know, I think we could, we could learn a little bit from this as the, as the outside vendor of how do we make those meetings more engaging to give us internal insight. Like [00:38:00] we
talk about external insight and voice of the customer,
and we do internal insight generally when we first meet. You know, with a client and we're getting all their strategy in place and all of that, and when we come back around for new strategic activities, but I feel like they're. Not just working with the leadership team on that, but how we do that in regular meetings might be something for us to explore. So Nate, we, I really appreciate you just bringing that to the table. 'cause I think that could be a great thing for us to think about for 2026 of how we better engage with our clients teams, especially when. There are multiple representatives of different teams on the call.
They've been asked to come on the call,
and we need to make them feel like it's a
worthwhile use of their time
and take that on ourselves like it's not their bosses. Like responsibility only, like
we can help with that as the, as part of the marketing team.
So [00:39:00] I, I
Nate: I.
Wendy: And um, just really appreciate you coming on today. Hannah, anything else you wanted to.
Hanna: Yeah, I don't have my normal recap because I was really engaged in what you were saying and like taking personal notes. But just to kind of full circle, kind of literally going around my notes in the circle, how I kind of pull this all together, um, and what I learned from you starting off with. What you were telling us about the data, leaning in and helping you align to where you need to be.
I think that that fully supports everything else that you've said here. If we're all closer to the money, if we all know what the goal is, then we all can use and learn from the data a whole lot better, and it makes those decisions When there's a data point we absolutely love and are attached to, but it's just not doing anything for us, it makes that decision easier.
To transition from. Everyone's got that [00:40:00] insight as to why we need to make the change. It's supported by everyone and it also allows when you're telling that story, it's really rare, I would say, to have marketing and data teams working that close together. But if you are, I just feel like your result is going to be so much.
Better and just respecting and understanding each side. Um, so I think everything that you said was wonderful. It's just a really good reminder to use all the brains that you have around, you know, each other's strengths. Allow for people to speak up in a way that they might not think that they can or maybe haven't before, because they might have a little nugget of wisdom you didn't know that you needed.
So.
Nate: that's right.
Hanna: encourage that within your teams where you can. And thanks Nate for, for all of your wisdom and insight here. It was really to hear about all the things that you've been able to do.
Nate: Oh, [00:41:00] that was, that was very kind. Thank you.
Hanna: Oh.
Wendy: Yeah. Well, we so appreciate you giving us your time today, Nate, um, and exploring the Hummingbird Effect in action. This has been fantastic. Can you share your contact information with our listeners?
Nate: Yeah, sure. So my name is Nate Cook. You can find me on LinkedIn. I think I, I haven't done the thing where you can make your LinkedIn URL really clean. So it's like Nate Cook, but then it's got a bunch of random stuff in it. Um, you can also find me at so I do a podcast with my, my friend and former colleague John Miller. About the kind of ever shifting roles of product management, product marketing. So you can learn more about that podcast@productischange.com. Um, but yeah, this was such a great conversation. Thank you for, for letting me come on. It was, it was a lot of fun.
Wendy: Absolutely. Thank you and thanks to each of our listeners for giving us your time and energy today as well. I hope we have brought you some joy through this episode, and I hope you can take what you've learned and go find your own hummingbird [00:42:00] effect.