[00:00:00] Phil: ~In past episodes, I've argued that ~some of the best ~position ~roles in marketing and the most AI resistant are product marketers and customer marketers. Do you agree, disagree. [00:00:08] Jane: I mean, I, I definitely agree. I I've kind of shared before, like I believe that customer proof is sort of the antidote to mediocre content ~because again,~ you are bringing in that, That interesting perspective ~you're bringing in~ that like expert who has already had those experiences. That is not just your brand telling that story. ~And I think~ that's another area where people are going to need to continue to lean on is how much that helps them stand out in the market because of, the validity and the credibility that that ~already just sort of~ drives within a business. [00:00:34] ​ [00:01:01] In This Episode --- [00:01:01] Phil: What's up everyone? Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Jane Minio, senior Director Solutions and Customer Marketing at Gone. In this episode, we explore using AI to mine real customer intelligence from conversations why stitching research sequences works in customer marketing, how solutions marketing turns customer insights into strategy, and how gong's research assistant slack. [00:01:24] Bot delivers instant customer proof, all that and a bunch more stuff after we, super quick word from two of our awesome partners. [00:01:30] ​ [00:03:26] Phil: Jane, thank you so much for your time today. Really excited to chat. [00:03:30] Jane: Oh, I am thrilled to be here. And you know what? You caught me at a good time. If you were on my seven o'clock call this morning, there would've been my kids trying to beat down the door to get in here. So this is, this was perfect. I'm very excited to chat with you here. [00:03:41] Phil: That's awesome. 7:00 AM is pretty early, but I'm guessing Gong is pretty remote, right? Like you got folks kind of across different time zones. So 7:00 AM your time was a bit later for me. So I'm on the East Coast and you're on the West Coast, right? [00:03:55] Jane: Yeah, I'm on the West Coast. Yeah. And we are, we're global, so we, we've got people, [00:04:00] teams all over the world. Country is all over the world. And so, um, we, we go to meet with them where they need us to be. [00:04:05] Phil: Yeah. Time zones can be tricky sometimes, but that's where like the, the beauty of asynchronous work, like I discovered that midway through my career. How awesome it is to just get to like, do something on your own time as opposed to just like, we need to figure this out. Let's jump on a call right now. Do you have five minutes? [00:04:21] Do you have five minutes? Like, or I'm just gonna go knock on your office door to. Take you away from this flow state that you're in right now. I love async. [00:04:28] Jane: Totally. I know I was thinking about it like the classic, you know, software engineers who just like, their work is like late night hours and it's just like quiet. Heads down, getting the job done, and it's, uh, you just gotta do it the way you need to do it, right? It's like, get it done. [00:04:42] Phil: Yeah, exactly. [00:04:43] 1. How Solutions Marketing Turns Customer Insights Into Strategy --- [00:04:43] Phil: So when we first chatted about getting this set up, we were gonna chat about, uh, taking a deep dive into building gong's customer advocacy program. And that was a big part of your. Role at Gong earlier on in your tenure, but after we kinda chatted, you shared, uh, your role at, kinda shifted a little bit from just customer marketing to now focusing also on solutions stuff. [00:05:04] So maybe we can start by just chatting about that transition. Like what does the solutions team you run at Gong entail? Walk us through that. [00:05:13] Jane: So, um, yeah, I lead customer marketing and solutions marketing and solutions Marketing is really us focusing on sort of being like the, the sister org to our product marketing team, where our product marketing team goes incredibly deep into like each of our products and the product capabilities and the workflows around that. [00:05:30] Our work is to think a little bit more about our customer audience, and when we think about the different target audiences that, you know, we engage as a company. How do we best embrace their needs and where do our products, uh, best solve for business challenges that they're trying to accomplish? Um, so really it's a lot of like kind of working in, in hand in hand, but coming in it with a perspective of meeting the customers where they are and helping really drive them to outcomes faster.[00:06:00] [00:06:01] Phil: So I guess like there's a ton of, you know, overlap with customer marketing and product marketing, right? Like when did, did that team exist already and you kinda like took it over, it kind of morphed into your team? Or was that like a new endeavor that was kind of carved out? What hap what happened there? [00:06:19] Jane: Yeah, it's a good question. I think, uh, it's, it's a net new team, but I think it's something that we'd always, for a long time had acknowledged, uh, acknowledged that we needed that opportunity. And, um, a lot of this particularly, or a lot of our work focuses on really. Persona marketing. So how do we better understand the nature of different key personas? [00:06:37] Who are either the buyers and what that buying committee looks like or their end users, and how do we best embrace their workflows and interests? Um, and on the other side of it too, a lot of our energy is focused on supporting different verticals and industries. So how are we actually going to, um, tailor our message for our products based on the needs of certain customers in industries? [00:06:59] And then [00:07:00] be able to, over time, be able to refine our offer that we provide as a company, um, and having more tailored products and solutions for those businesses too. Um, so yeah, I think that for us it's, it's a new function and I'd say it's pretty interesting the experience I had coming into, you know, starting with leading with customer marketing here at Gong. [00:07:17] Um, at first I felt like I was like, I'd completely lost my superpower, my superpower everywhere else had been. Go be really close to the customer and then come back with insights to the business that you can bring back to the marketing team. So leading solutions marketing at a previous organization, that's a lot of what I'd done is I just really leaned in on understanding customers and their needs and use cases. [00:07:40] Um, but then I came to Gong and so much of that. Was already embedded in the business though the way the business operates of being truly customer first. I think this is probably the most like authentically customer-centric company I've ever worked for. Um, and a lot of that is based on like the technology that we have at our disposal. [00:07:58] So the, because [00:08:00] Gong collects so much of this voice of customer information. It doesn't have to be this sort of like coveted experience of only certain people who engage with the customers directly have this insider knowledge. It's really at everyone's fingertips. And so for me, that really shifted what I thought about in terms of what customer marketing's value could bring to the table at Gong because there were all a lot of those motions already in place. [00:08:22] And so, um, a lot of our energy is focused more on, you know, driving engagement with the customers or actually driving more storytelling back into the market. But now with more of the solutions marketing function, I think that's where we again, take that more concerted effort to how we actually better understand these customers for each of their areas. [00:08:40] And then again, doubling down how we are using Gong to maximize our ability to scale and drive like repeatable processes, uh, to bring a lot of that insight back into the business. And then again, back to our customers. [00:08:53] Phil: Hmm. Gotcha. Yeah. Voice a customer is something that, you know, every marketing team or even company like, says, you [00:09:00] know, we need to be more customer centric. We gotta be closer to customers. And it's easier said than done, right? Like, chat with more customers, it's. Like, what are we offering for them to like, take time away from their busy jobs to jump on the phone and just like, answer questions that are only helpful for us and like, have nothing for them. [00:09:21] Right? Like [00:09:22] 2. Using AI to Mine Real Customer Intelligence from Conversations --- [00:09:22] Phil: historically, you know, when we think of voice of customer and, and trying to like get more closer to customer, Lego was things like, you know. We lean heavily on intuition shaped by like limited data and anecdotes. And AI now kind of allows us, uh, to, you know, figure out patterns and, and evidence, but there's still parts of customer understanding that requires a lot of nuance and, and empathy. [00:09:47] And so we're gonna chat today about, like a lot more of that AI that's enabling you to, to scale and go faster and stuff, but. Maybe we can start off by chatting about like, how has AI shifted the balance in your own work [00:10:00] and, and where do you draw the line between like what machines can analyze and scale and what only human marketers can interpret and act on with that like human empathy angle, if you will. [00:10:13] Jane: Yeah. Yeah, it's, um, it's a really good question and I think that. For me, it's been a lot of how do we take kind of this hybrid approach to running things in like the traditional way of going out and doing our market research exercises, um, while also embracing yeah, the powers that AI can elaborate us to be able to drive those deeper insights or scale it up a lot faster. [00:10:35] Right. Um, so for us, we've actually sort of developed, um, like this new standard sort of process that we drive whenever we do go into like a new area of research. So whether that's a new persona that we want to go after or a new industry that we might be looking into, um, what we actually do is we start by going into the customer first. [00:10:56] And, uh, what we do is we actually don't have to engage [00:11:00] any customers directly. We take a lot of those insights that already exist within Gong, um, and we're basically just looking for trends and themes of what's happening within their experience that we might be able to bring back. So one of the things that we've done is we've taken. [00:11:16] Um, snapshots of insights. So let's say for example, one of the work streams we ran is I wanted to understand the dynamics of the CIO when they came into a deal and what things were they, you know, what kind of conversations were they having with our business? What types of, um, insights were they looking to glean? [00:11:33] You know, that might be different from some of the other core buyer profiles. And so we took. All of the conversations, calls and emails that had existed within, you know, a certain period of time between us and this persona. And then we took all of that at bulk and we were able to run a series of like 15 or so questions that talked about their buying experience and that those types of insights that we were really looking to gather. [00:11:55] Which gave us sort of a standardized output of all of this information, which they, [00:12:00] we then ran and synthesized through, um, some other, you know, a like AI systems to be able to be able to get the trends out of that information. Um, so for us that was like a very interesting, like phase one of being able to more quickly and, you know, and within a couple days, be able to have a ton of information across, you know, hundreds of calls. [00:12:23] That is otherwise like less scalable. Um, the other piece that we then did is we looked to what other market research. So again, that's kind of like our inward view and then we looked outward. So what can we do to understand, you know, more of the market trends across, uh, you know, traditional publications, the, the analyst insights. [00:12:42] And that's where for us, like yeah, using chat GBT to just be able to run recommendations on trends and then be able to get access to articles or insights at articles really quickly, um, helped us sort of scale up the, Hey, what's the recent sort of trends and motions that are happening with these folks, [00:13:00] um, related to our space or the insights that we can be able to sur surprise. [00:13:04] So that for us was kind of that like first phase of being able to. Look at sort of the outward and the inward approach of like, understanding these customers. Um, and just be able to grab a lot of insights more, more broadly. [00:13:17] Phil: Very cool. [00:13:18] 3. Why Stitching Research Sequences Works in Customer Marketing --- [00:13:18] Phil: Something you mentioned when we were chatting before this was this idea of like stitching sequences together, and so like you kind of described it as building standardized. Workflows for a lot of the research that, that you're doing on the solutions team and stitching sequences together to create repeatable systems. [00:13:37] Maybe unpack that a little bit more, like, walk us through what that looks like inside of Gong. Feel free to like, give shout outs to, to the product. Like, it, it's cool that you're, you know, dog feeding your, your own product there. And maybe chat about like how you've made ar ai research, like not just this one-off thing that you're doing, but a dependable part of the process. [00:13:55] Jane: Yeah. Um, yeah, I think that that's exactly it. It's, it's sort of this like [00:14:00] sequence of events where we kind of keep revisiting insights that we have, um, through Gong and then kinda like going back and doing these cycles of validation. But again, it's not. The same lengthy process that I would've taken New York like five years ago at a, at a previous company or, you know, experiences where you're, you're paying, you know, upwards of a hundred thousand dollars to get these agencies and firms to support you on this. [00:14:22] You could run pretty quick to get a thesis, um, sort of validated. So some of the ways that, yet again, we would do it is, is kind of take this like inward look at like what data and information can we gather at scale via gong, what can we do to actually take that and like test that against, um, any other market insights. [00:14:40] And then we take that a couple steps further and then we will actually look at. Um, trends and insights from some of our closed lost information. So what are we actually able to gather from some of these closed lost systems? Um, again, for us, we've brought on a, a provider, it's called Closed, which is really exciting because they are an agency who like basically goes out and [00:15:00] runs a lot of those interviews and then collates that information for you. [00:15:03] Um, and so we don't, again, have to have those cycles of chasing customers or reps even for those insights, we can, we can leverage a lot of the tooling for us to do that. Um, and then we can unpack that even further of taking a lot of those insights and. Actually, now that we have this sort of thesis validated, still running that traditional cycle of going out and running market interviews, right? [00:15:29] And so I think that's a piece for me that it's, you still glean a lot of information when you do take a moment to step outside of what the business already does know and actually go back into the market with some fresh eyes. And so I'll give the example, um. You know where, where it really comes salient is when you look at the conversation data that you have within your like gong instance or within some of these other systems, like close, right? [00:15:54] A lot of the work that you're getting is inputs specifically for the experience that they've [00:16:00] had of an existing buyer and the buyer's journey, right? But what a lot of marketers are always craving is how do I get that person's attention and bring them into the funnel in the first place, right? And so you have to look again, back to those outside resources to make sure that you are getting sort of that 360 view to be able to accomplish the, the pieces of the unknown of that, uh, like pre-buy journey cycle. [00:16:24] Phil: My mind was going in a bunch of different places on, on where to take this, because like the, the solutions role is really cool in that like, you're kind of like, I, I think like a sister function to product marketing. Right? And I know that there's like a ton of work and insights that you're doing to surface things up to the product team to improve the product itself. [00:16:42] But like you just teased out. The marketers also care about a lot of the stuff that happens, like at the start of that journey. Like what were some of the initial things that got you to even like, check out our landing page or maybe you saw a couple of ads, but like, what was that one thing in the ad? [00:16:58] 'cause maybe you saw like [00:17:00] 17 different ads and so Yeah, I, I think there's a lot of insights that, that come out of there. But one, one of the things you mentioned, um, that I think is the most powerful, uh, or [00:17:09] 4. Using AI Trackers to Uncover Buyer Behavior in Sales Conversations --- [00:17:09] Phil: one of the most powerful things was being able to, mine gong calls for. Insights that are very niche and like persona driven, like understanding how chief information officers or CFOs think about a problem. Potentially super different across personas. Um, maybe chat about, like in the product itself, like how are you pulling those insights together across like thousands of, of calls and, and what does that mean for the way you're then like, activating those insights? Like improving the design of campaigns or, um, you know, some of the GTM strategies, like walk us through that. [00:17:46] Jane: I think what a lot of marketers. Crave is trying to better understand what really is happening inside a go-to-market team's motions, right? And so again, a lot of the times our [00:18:00] traditional, traditional pathing has either gone to put the onus back onto our sales team to give us that information, right? [00:18:07] So again, for, for sales, like ti time is money, right? And so like any minute that you are taking them off the floor, not only is that like. A favor that you are asking of them, but like the business depends on them sort of being out, running their job, right? So I think, you know, how much we can try to alleviate that ask of them to have to provide this information back to like the business. [00:18:30] Um, so again, whether that would be like a marketer who I'm forging up relationships with the sales team and just like, Hey, can I get 10 minutes of your time to just like learn a little bit about like that that great, amazing deal you won? Um, or more holistically if it's them having to sort of. Fill in more CRM fields just so that the business gathers a lot of this information. [00:18:50] There's a lot of these sort of like old school ways that, you know, we've placed that burden back on our sales teams to have to help fuel the business [00:19:00] growth, um, in those ways. Or at the flip side, it's like we're taxing the customer, right? We're like going back to the customer and we're like running surveys to like understand what content they consumed and uh, you know, like what made them wanna buy. [00:19:12] And it's like, we already know these things. We just aren't very good at collecting them as like marketers, right? And so in the B2B world, it's, it's always kind of been a, a bit clunky in that way. So I think that's again, where like for me, it's very exciting to see some of these like new approaches that, you know, we can help drive into the market on like different ways that solutions of product marketers can be able to have a lot more insight at their fingertips. [00:19:36] Um, not so they don't have to build those relationships or engage the customers or engage the sales team, but that they can come in a lot more empowered with most of the information they already know, um, where they're just trying to get that next double click or like validate an idea. Um. [00:19:54] Within the product directly. Um, to give a few examples, at a most simplistic level, [00:20:00] uh, you know, what a marketer could do is they could go in and they could actually just start to like, look for certain calls, right? Where they might actually just search for different attributes of, Hey, I wanna look for calls where, you know, CIOs were engaged, right? [00:20:13] And so you're leveraging the combination of some of your CRM data against, um, some of those conversation insights. And then just be able to listen to some of those conversations. Right. So again, where it's, it used to be pretty tough for marketers to have to go, you know, task customers to get on the phone with them. [00:20:30] Um, you can now just have a lot of that information at your disposal to just, you know, jump in and listen to and just start to like, play around with, um. To take it a level further, let's say that you, you did uncover a couple, you know, calls or emails where there were some interesting insights and you're like, Hmm, this is now giving me a, a new question or a new hypothesis that I want to go solve for. [00:20:51] Um, you can leverage a few different tools that we have within Gong. So like, one that we love to use is called, uh, the AI trackers, where essentially you're going and you're [00:21:00] building a tracker that is listening against all of those conversations. Then surfacing the trends. And so the way that this is built is, um, not just on like the keywords actually, but actually the context of the conversation itself. [00:21:14] So the example like we like to use is, um, Or let, let me, let me talk through how the AI tracker actually works. Um, so the way that it's designed is it can actually look to. Understanding natural language to help better understand what to track for. So, um, not just looking at the keywords, but actually understanding the intent of the conversation itself. [00:21:36] So the example that we like to use is, uh, let's say you were setting up a tracker to understand, you know, deal progression and why deals are getting stalled out. And maybe you set it up and, um, in the conversation someone's actually seeing the word, something like. I apologize, but there is a delay and we're not gonna be able to move forward with the pilot. [00:21:56] Right? So that's a pretty like clear use of the word delay, [00:22:00] where the key word and is actually the right usage of the word that you would wanna be picking up in the tracker. Um, but delay can be used in a lot of other contexts as well. So let's say that. Um, there's another example of, Hey, sorry I was, I was, you know, late for this meeting here. [00:22:16] There was a, a delay in traffic today, right? That's an incorrect one, usage of the term that you wouldn't wanna be picking up for. So the AI trackers are actually like understanding the context of the information so that they are surfacing the right information back to you. Um, and so this is pretty powerful when marketers are looking to be able to better understand. [00:22:36] The nature of what's happening deals in deals or different trends that are happening in their buyer's journey is you can set up a lot of these, uh, listening mechanisms that allow you to gather a lot of this information, um, at scale pretty quickly. [00:22:49] Phil: Super cool. Yeah, I think the, the more context you can give a lot of these AI trackers, the more time it saves you. 'cause like, you know, when you think about the idea initially, [00:23:00] I'm just gonna analyze all these calls, search for this one key term, export, all of that, put all the summaries in in GPT, and then you start reading through it and you're just like, oh yeah, it looks like we've caught like 17 issues where we're talking about delays in traffic and this has nothing to do with what we're trying to do. [00:23:17] Um, I, I think like some of that comes to what you chatted about with before is [00:23:21] 5. How Standardized Prompts Improve Sales Enablement Systems --- [00:23:21] Phil: this idea of like. Standardizing prompts for repeatable insights. Um, maybe you can un unpack that a little bit. Like I, I was taking notes when we chatted about this the first time, and you built like systems or tools that allowed you to analyze discovery calls, but you were looking at like objections, even close one close lost deals. [00:23:40] How do these systems work in practice in. Maybe chat about like what kinds of patterns or trends, uh, you have uncovered through the work that maybe directly shaped some of the GTM stuff that you brought back to the team. Um, yeah, maybe, maybe chat about that standardized prompts for repeatable insights. [00:23:58] Jane: Yes. Yes. Um, [00:24:00] yeah. So the, the trackers is like one way that we will actually build that out. Um, again, like trying to build against gong. Um, and then. A lot of the work that we've done is how do we then create a lot of this content that we use to bring back to the sales team at scale? Um, and so how do we actually enable our sellers faster? [00:24:21] Where. We can then create a lot of our, you know, standard templates for the work we wanna create. But we've actually built, you know, custom GPTs where we can take a lot of those insights and then feed them directly into something that gives us a pretty solid draft on the asset that we would wanna bring back. [00:24:36] So, um, a couple of the examples that we would use is. Um, creating discovery guides or objection handling that are specific to different industries that we're going after. So, um, you know, when we're selling into financial services, how do we help make sure that we are. Leading with the right questions that work and perform. [00:24:57] And so again, a lot of our sellers [00:25:00] instinctually start to build this skill as they work through that, or a lot of their like team sharing capabilities. Um, but again, can, we can unlock that a lot faster by hearing it across the, the full spectrum of. All of those kind of buyer conversations. And so we can take a lot of that into, um, bringing the research back into a standardized, you know, FAQ essentially of the types of questions that, um, you may end up getting into is in your sort of discovery that are gonna perform well. [00:25:28] Um, the other piece too is Yeah, objection handling, right? In a similar way is, um, understanding the. The commonalities between the types of objections that you might get in any one of these sort of target industries or target personas. Um, and then being able to quickly. Leverage that where it's, it's, we're not, again, to your point earlier, you know, operating off anecdotes, we're not just taking a few examples that we've heard from the sales team. [00:25:54] We're actually able to do this in a more quantifiable way where we're understanding what are those objections and [00:26:00] then how are we handling that successfully That was moving the deal forward, right? So we can look to those best in class examples, uh, to be able to solve more in moving forward the, the pipeline. [00:26:11] Um. So I think those are a couple, like pretty interesting examples of ways that we are taking that data. Um, and then being able to produce at scale more of those assets that we can quickly bring back to the team. Or for us, it's like if we wanna be, you know, our bus business is moving really fast, right? [00:26:27] And especially anyone who's in sort of these like AI companies, the. The market is evolving really quickly. Our company's evolving really quickly, like the nature of how businesses operate today is moving very fast. So we wanna be able to be in that place where we can go and quickly tap back into our research cycles and. [00:26:46] Essentially like refresh based on the latest information and see has there been a change in the trends that we saw before? You know, and do we need to do anything different to address that? Um, so we can be pretty proactive in collaborating with our [00:27:00] sales teams, uh, versus waiting and listening for the internal anecdotes that come up of, Hey, this, this, this issue over here is, is like the number one problem? [00:27:09] Like, is that, or was that like just one, you know, big deal that. People are very like, hurt, hurt over. Right? Like, and that's a very real thing. But like, you're trying to parse out like the, the trends from, um, you know, the, the human aspect of the, the deal involvement there. [00:27:25] ​ [00:29:28] Phil: Can you chat about like, maybe you're already doing this or, or maybe it's kind of part of V two, but, um, I'm like starting to think of all of the. Like as a marketer, obviously like a lot of this stuff is great for sales, but like there's a ton of insights for marketers too, right? [00:29:43] 6. Building Messaging Systems That Scale Across Industries --- [00:29:43] Phil: Like the on the objection handling stuff on just like the nuances of that industry, like just being able to demonstrate to prospective buyers that. [00:29:53] You get them, like you understand where they're coming from. Like health tech just has to deal with like such a [00:30:00] different regulated body of work compared to, you know, a lot of, you know, SaaS companies and, and like FinTech is in that bucket too. Um, how do you like take those insights and, and you kinda. [00:30:12] Chatted about this already, but like how, how do we turn that into content? Like how do we give that to the content marketing team or the demand gen team folks that are creating stuff and building empathy and awareness with like prospective buyers? Do you think of that already? Like how, how can we kinda like push that scale to and distribute it to other departments also? [00:30:32] Jane: Yeah. Um, I definitely do. I think, um, for us, in terms of like the, the mark taking it back into the marketing side, I think that's such a, a great, a great call out is what we do as any one of these areas is, again, similar to product marketing, we build off of like our bombs, our bill of materials. And so we're creating these sort of standard kits of, you know, what are we gonna do to actually like, support the sales team and driving more deals to closed one. [00:30:56] Um, but then back on the marketing side, like how can we use this information [00:31:00] to better. Increase our, our funnel size, and one of the like first deliverables that we'll create as part of our bomb is actually a foundational messaging house. So where we've actually taken our sort of standard corporate messaging and then reapplied all those concepts back to how we should actually approach each of these. [00:31:21] Industries or personas uniquely with a differentiated message. And so we're keeping it standardized enough that it, um, makes it very easy for the rest of our marketing team to be able to leverage that. So it's similar types of pillars and structure, um, but we're actually making sure that we have a lot more of that refined language that will better resonate with those types of buyers. [00:31:44] Um, so from there, what we can actually do is we can learn, start to look at. What are our top performing assets today? Or what, what are these buyers already naturally coming into our funnel through that we wanna double down our efforts on and be able to scale up the content creation much quickly. [00:32:00] Um, a example that we'll use here is like some of our top performing assets that gong in terms of, um, lead generation have been some of our. [00:32:13] Our top line market research reports, right? Where we're actually going out and we're bringing back fresh, new perspectives into the market. It's, it's not, it's not gong specific, it's more just like the trends and that type of information, right? So your your classic top of funnel content. Um, but as we go out and, and run that, what we'll actually do is say, Hey, let's take a cut of some of that data and. [00:32:33] Actually slice it by the industry that we are going after and show and present how that is different, how the trends are different or, you know, does that actually inform a little bit more in terms of maybe the maturity, right? Like that's a big thing we think a lot about in, in times here too, is, you know, our, um, buyers in certain industries may not be at that same level of. [00:32:56] Maturity in the market as some of like our tech companies, right? And so [00:33:00] how do you make sure that we are meeting the buyer where they are, not just from the sales perspective, but also from how we are actually marketing to them directly too. Um, and so we can take a lot of those tailored insights that we would grab out of some of that kind of reporting. [00:33:13] Um, and then also be able to apply this like, refined language that makes those pieces perform at a, at a much higher rate. Um, again, the. You're looking at it in terms of the performance marketing side, right? Like how are you increasing the performance of any one of these assets into driving to the next deal stage versus the volume, right? [00:33:33] So that's a lot of the times the conversations I'm, I'm having is, yes, this may be, uh, a smaller audience for us to approach and, you know, we have to do the trade off of, is it so small that it doesn't warrant us to do the programming of the campaign? Or is it, you know, do we, we even have a large enough audience to actually target, um. [00:33:51] But you know, when we look at it against like, how does this increase the overall performance for everyone? Because each of those are converting to the next stage [00:34:00] faster and better. And so I think that's where it gets really exciting is that you're, um, taking a lot of this like messaging approach to helping elevate all these different groups within marketing to drive higher results in each of their regards too. [00:34:13] Phil: Hmm. [00:34:15] 7. How Gong’s Research Assistant Slack Bot Delivers Instant Customer Proof --- [00:34:15] Phil: Talk to us about the research assistant Slack bot that you're using internally. Your team has the Slack bot that basically allows people to, uh, open Slack and just query research or surface customer content on demand. Like no need to bother the solutions team for, do we have a piece that, uh, is for FinTech or do like, do we have anything around content for objectives for this or for that? [00:34:37] Like how does that work behind the scenes and what does it kind of enable the, the, the folks at Gong in terms of like. Speed and maybe creativity too. I feel like that that opens a lot of boxes too. [00:34:47] Jane: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I would say like for any. Marketer, the enablement side of the content we create and how that actually gets leveraged by the field. Um. [00:35:00] Again, tends to be a little bit black box, right? You, you send things over and like, did they like it? Did it work? You know, getting that feedback again, it's, it's hard for you to go back and get that feedback. [00:35:09] Um, and so at Gong we've been looking to a lot more of those sort of scalable ways that we can get the right content out into our, our sales team's hands. Um, and one of the ways that we've done that is by standing up and implementing, um, a Slack bot, which allows us to essentially surface all of our customer proof. [00:35:28] So we're using a provider, um, called Peer Bound, who's, um, sort of fresh into the a IC for customer marketers. Um, and their product. One of the capabilities is to actually create this bot that brings in all of the content that exists on your customer stories page. It brings in all of your, um, public reviews from sources like G two, um, and then also for us, we've got it integrated with our CRM, so it's sur up surfacing up which accounts are we have the marketing rights to reference publicly. [00:35:59] Um, and [00:36:00] so again, what we saw is we implemented this with our sales team about six months ago, and we just said, Hey, when you're looking for customer proof, you don't have to come to us or, you know, go out and search for it across like the, you know, four or five different places we've provided it. Um, you can actually just start here if you don't know what you're looking for or you don't know exactly that thing that you're trying to accomplish, you know, or if you just wanna move faster, just go ahead and like, use the slack bot to like query. [00:36:23] Um, and it's been taken off like gangbusters, so we. Have seen the volume of total requests starting to go up really substantially. Um, and the types of things that people are searching for. And as we looked at the trends in terms of what are the questions that people [00:36:39] are asking in here, what are they looking for? [00:36:42] 'cause again, this is where we wanna be able to know how do we better serve more of what we have gaps on? Uh, the number one thing, probably by like four x more than the next category. Um, 'cause we looked at, are they looking at. Looking for industry content? Are they looking for product content? Are they looking for compete [00:37:00] content? [00:37:00] Uh, the number one thing was industries by far. So, or in your regions, they were looking to see what customer content do I have in this space because they're trying to resonate with their other buyers, right? And that's so natural is that when sellers are trying to break into a new deal or a new account, uh, they wanna make sure that they can show that, um, that trend in the space. [00:37:24] Phil: Yeah, no, it's, it, it's super cool. And, um, you know, most companies maybe listening aren't gong's size and so like implementing something like this, you get a bit of insights and you can collaborate with, uh, some of the users there. [00:37:36] But I'm sure it's cool being on your side and seeing the volume of internal employees using this and kind of the output of that and that helping you steer like, all right, clearly industries is something that hits a note with a lot of our sales team here. Uh, make that. Maybe that's gonna be like one of our pillars next year. [00:37:56] And we're gonna focus on like, uh, working with the content team on doing a [00:38:00] ton of pre-made content testimonials with like, key big known brands in those industries. And then maybe we have like cool video testimonials that like our sales team can just use. Like all those are insights that, that are coming out of, um, you know, just that internal Slack bot there. [00:38:17] So, yeah. Cool. Shout out. We'll, uh, we'll link out that tool to, to folks there. Um, yeah. A couple other questions for you, Jane. Like, um, you know, you, [00:38:26] 8. Avoiding Mediocre AI Marketing Research --- [00:38:26] Phil: you chatted about a couple of these different, uh, AI use cases within Gong, uh, specifically on a lot of stuff for, for market research. Um, was there another one that like comes to mind that we didn't touch on yet that you're just like, if we end this call right now, uh, you would be sad that like you didn't share that idea with listeners. [00:38:44] Is there one left? [00:38:45] Jane: My, my perspective on leveraging AI to scale up your market research and again, make your marketing stronger, is at the end of the day. What marketers need to do is they have to have a [00:39:00] very clear position and strong perspective that allows them to be differentiated in the market. And so one of the things that for me in going through this, you know, full exercise of exploring all of these different ways that we can be using different tooling to try to drive this, is I pretty quickly realized that just using, you know, sort of standard, um. [00:39:24] Chat, GBT or like different ways for me to just like go out and like research faster or like come up with like content recommendations or messaging recommendations faster. What sort of stood out to me was I'm gonna end up being mediocre because this is already just pulling from existing thought and things that are already out in the market and so this is not going to help me stand out above the noise, [00:39:49] right? [00:39:49] And so. [00:39:50] Phil: with ai. [00:39:51] Jane: It's the see of sameness, right? And like, and we definitely see this within like content creation is that it all starts to sound, um, very similar [00:40:00] and right. And so that's where even a lot of these, you know, search engines are changing and they like, uh, a EO, it's, it's not focusing on as much of like the content volume as it is really. [00:40:10] The authority, the authenticity, the expertise within a lot of these materials, right? So that's again, for me where going back to like the research side, I need to make sure that I had a way to bring the expertise into my exercise so that I can cut through that noise. And so that's for me where, um, it's, it's looking to ways that we can scale up that research side, but not abandoning it. [00:40:30] Because I think that's still the art of marketing that gets overlooked. That if you are, if you're just leaning on having to execute faster. It may not perform because you are going to be, um, just on par. Right. And so I think that's where like my advice is like, you know, as, as all of us are looking and playing around with, you know, how do some of these AI tools make us a lot savvier, um, is just, you know, holding yourself accountable to rising above the mediocrity. [00:40:59] Mm-hmm.[00:41:00] [00:41:00] Phil: Yeah. So important, uh, important message here, like as an avid chat GBT user. Like every episode gets repurposed into a blog post, and I have this like. Chain prompt approach now where I'm like trying to do everything I can to make it not be vanilla, GPT. And I've got a process now where honestly it takes me less time to just edit things and just like at least a couple of introductory sentences, just put it in my own words than it is to try to make it not be vanilla GPT. [00:41:30] But I use it so much that like I'm just so good at spotting it now and like people that I respect deeply. Post on LinkedIn and I like, I just like spot the cringey vanilla Chad, GBT right away. And it's just like, man, like. Really like, yeah. So I, I love your message about, you know, standing above the noise and I feel like what you're doing is important because, like you said, we're not just like producing content. [00:41:54] A lot of our workflows are surfacing important insights across a bunch of [00:42:00] conversations we're having with. You know, past customers, existing customers, perspective customers, things that, you know, people obviously care about. So that is like bringing up the empathy, the authenticity in your content, and what better way to do it than like, mining words in sentences that like people have actually said in, in those calls. [00:42:18] So, um, yeah, I think, you know, maybe this episode is gonna be like a. A pitch to Gong leadership to consider marketing as like a more of a use case in the future for, for the product. 'cause like I feel like we touched on a bunch today. [00:42:32] Jane: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's exactly right. Like if you think about the difference of what AI technology has accomplished, it's the ability to understand natural language, right? And so it essentially has turned conversation and language into data and then that gives us that scale. And, um, yeah, Phil, I think that's like the perfect example is like, I don't mean to bash like chat GPT, like yes, I'm always on there. [00:42:55] Like that's constantly my workflow, but like. What you've done in that example is [00:43:00] exactly right, is that you have refined your workflows around how you're going to use that, and then you're coming back to a source content, right? Than just taking the things that exist on the market today and bringing a new perspective. [00:43:14] So, um, again, going back to that authenticity and authority and expertise, not, I don't know if I'm. I'm an expert here, but, um, you're, you're using a, a new source of information that helps strengthen that, uh, conversation of the content that you're creating, which I think is, um, where we'll see a lot more of this sort of trending is that, you know, we need to be actually having like clear and um, unique perspectives in a lot of our content going forward too. [00:43:42] 9. Why Customer Proof Outperforms AI-Generated Marketing --- [00:43:42] Phil: I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you a question about the future of content marketing and customer marketing and, you know, product marketing. Like I feel like you're playing in all of these areas. In your new role at Gong, but I know customer marketing and advocacy is, you know, really close to your heart. [00:43:57] It's, uh, a big part of your, your [00:44:00] career and, and a lot of the stuff you've built at Gong. In past episodes, I've argued that some of the best position roles in marketing and the most AI resistant are product marketers and customer marketers. Um, you know, rules that are requiring leap of faith concepts like derive from customer empathy, chatting with actual customers, not just using an LLM. [00:44:21] And you know, that's. Based on top of stuff that already exists today, like we just talked about, you know, folks that are dreaming up experiments beyond what AI can kind of come up with today, what are your thoughts there? Do you agree, disagree. [00:44:33] Jane: I mean, I, I definitely agree. I definitely think that all of the marketing roles are sort of reshaping, right? And I would say that, um, again, because of the art of product marketing, tending to generally be about not just the production, but again, that. Positioning and the strategy behind how you make that successful. [00:44:55] I think that's where it is actually, in a lot of ways, only gonna get more complex out there, [00:45:00] um, because you have to be synthesizing and moving just as fast as everyone else is moving. Right. Um, and so I, I do agree with that and I, I also say like I've kind of shared before, like I believe that customer proof is sort of the antidote to mediocre content because again, you are bringing in that, that. [00:45:19] That interesting perspective you're bringing in that like expert who has already had those experiences. That is not just your brand telling that story. And I think that's another area where people are going to need to continue to lean on is how much that helps them stand out in the market because of, um, the validity and the credibility that that already just sort of drives within a business. [00:45:41] 10. Why Rest Strengthens Creative Output in Marketing --- [00:45:41] Phil: Jane, you have an interesting background as a former professional track and field athlete, and I was curious to ask you if you have any lessons from your athletics career that translated into. [00:45:53] How you approach marketing and product leadership today? Um, you know, maybe like how [00:46:00] has being an athlete influenced your mindset in driving team performance or staying disciplined at work with like, all the stuff you have going on, pushing through challenges, like really curious to have you just riff on that. [00:46:11] Jane: Yeah. Yeah. Um, former is definitely the right way to term it. Um, I unfortunately don't have the time to do all of that anymore, but, um, yeah, I mean, I definitely think there was a lot that, for me, that helped really build like a foundational, a lot of these sort of skills that I've brought back into the workplace. [00:46:28] Um, you know, being a, like a collegiate athlete, full-time student, you know, working full-time on top of like everything for me, trying to drive balance in my work life. Um, became like essential to being successful in all regards. Right? And I think, again, in the workplace and for anyone, right? Like being able to find that strike in your balance is, is so important. [00:46:51] But where I, I think where my biggest learning was that, um, you're, you, whether you're thinking about what your body needs physically, um, [00:47:00] as like, again, an athlete fully training, you have to have those cycles where you're actually allowing yourself to rest, right? And so. When you are maxing out and you're weightlifting, you can't go and do that day after day after day because your body literally needs to heal those muscles to be able to repair and grow and be stronger. [00:47:18] And I think it's very similar on the work front and like when you think about how. Brains learn and how you form new neural pathways. And so if you wanna be able to grow and expand your skillset, you have to be able to have that time to process and to be able to rest as well. And so for me, I would say that, um, again, some of the biggest moments of creativity that I might actually have now don't happen when I'm sitting at my desk and I'm working or when I'm in meetings. [00:47:49] Right. It's usually when I've taken that minute for myself and I went out for that morning run and suddenly things start to click together, right? Hey, this initiative that's [00:48:00] going on over here and this like fun idea we've always had over here, those can actually come together now. Like, Hey, we could actually do this and make it something even bigger. [00:48:08] And like, that's pretty awesome. And so like I think that again, by taking those moments to sort of step back from the day-to-day of the work allows you to actually have that. Those leaps and bounds into being, um, those growth moments. So I would say for me, that's sort of one of the, uh, the things that I think about too is that you're, you know, that that need for rest or the need for recovery allows you to make those gains that you're really looking for. [00:48:33] Um, and something I like to try to drive within, within our team too. [00:48:37] Phil: Very cool. We, we call it here, um, basically going outside and touching grass and, you know, not just trying to focus on doing the work. But, you know, that's, that's where like a lot of things, uh, random moments of can. Action happen, like the shower thoughts throughout your day there. But yeah, I love it. Jane, we usually end the, the podcast by like asking this question, um, to [00:49:00] everyone, but I feel like you kind of teased that out already in your answer. [00:49:03] But I'm, I'm still curious to ask you like, if there, if there's anything else you would add there. Like one question we ask everyone on the show is, how do you remain happy and successful in your career and how do you balance everything that you have going on while staying happy? [00:49:18] Jane: Hmm. Yeah, it's tricky. Um. I definitely would say like, I'm a, I'm a happy person and finding, and like maintaining happiness is always work, right. Um, but for me, yeah, finding balance is like the best way I, I do that and I think for me, um, there's always more work you can do. There's always so much more to accomplish, um, that. [00:49:43] It is a lot of times taking those moments to, to do your pruning right is like, um, you know, if you, I'm a gardener too. If you wanna have nice roses next year, you actually have to do that moment of like cutting off every leaf. You have to cut off those, those [00:50:00] canes of the rose stems that like spend all summer growing out hard. [00:50:03] You have to like trim it back almost to nothing. Um, so that it can grow even bigger and bolder the next year. Right. So similar to, you know, pressure creates diamonds for me, I think about that a lot is like pruning creates beautiful roses and you have to be able to have that sort of discipline, um, to stop and look at things holistically. [00:50:21] Especially in times where things can feel very overwhelming or there's a, like too much on your plate is actually take a moment to stop and look back and say, okay, but like what's essential and what's nice to have and. Have that hard conversation with your leadership group of, Hey, this thing over here, you know, it can happen, but I can make this other thing over here better if I concentrate my effort. [00:50:48] And so I think that's a lot of times, um, not being afraid to have that level of conversation within your business. I think it's pretty easily recognized, but a lot of. People sort of, [00:51:00] um, shy away or they get frightened that that's gonna like, reflect poorly on them. But from my experience, I would say I've always had, um, leaders who really respect the fact that I raised something up to them and kind of came in with a clear picture, which it is always work, right? [00:51:14] To put together those cases and really think about the trade offs. But at the end of the day, I feel like that also helps you, um, kind of feel more accomplished in your work. And I think that when you're thinking about what makes you happy in the workplace. Um, it is really about people finding that, uh, sorry, I'm like, I, there's like a, a word that I wanted to use here. [00:51:38] Um, it's kind of that like, not like enlightenment. It's like the, uh, the gratification. There we [00:51:43] Phil: Right. [00:51:44] Jane: Um, uh, so let me just recap. Is that okay? Sorry, I'm like, kind of rambled here. Is it okay? [00:51:49] Phil: yeah, yeah. That's awesome answer, honestly. [00:51:52] Jane: Okay. Okay. Um. [00:51:54] Phil: I totally jived with the, when you said there's, there's, there's always gonna be more [00:52:00] work to do. Like, it's, it's so true. Like I'm such a. Productivity, not that like I have this list and I'm just like, if I just finish this list now I can like relax and I can chill. [00:52:09] But then you finish the list and you're like, ah, but I guess like I could start that other thing now and that, and that other thing. Like, it's just like, it's endless and it's so important to, to figure out a way to, to think about that balance. But, uh, yeah. I really appreciate your answer, Jane. I appreciate your time. [00:52:24] This is super fun. Um, yeah. Letting us step into. The Gong Machine internally, how you're using the own product for a lot of the, I dunno what we'll call this AI driven, uh, customer voice analysis, but there's just some really cool insights for, you know, sales GTM folks, but, but also marketing ops folks. [00:52:41] Jane, really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining us. [00:52:43] Jane: likewise Phil. Thanks so much for having us and uh, we'll chat soon.