[00:00:00] ​Intro [00:01:00] Phil: What's up everyone. Today, we have the pleasure of sitting down with Chris Golec, founder and CEO at channel 99. [00:01:09] About Chris --- [00:01:09] Phil: Chris started his career in the manufacturing world, working at DuPont and GE where he moved from engineering. Sales and then marketing roles. His first startup he co founded was a supply chain enterprise software. [00:01:21] He also had the role of VP of marketing there. He grew the company to 75 people and raised 10 million plus in VC funding. And after only six years, he sold the company to I2 technologies for a pretty solid 380 million. After a few years, um, after that exit, Christopher did his next company. Demandbased the incredibly well known ABM platform along a 13 year journey as CEO, he would create and lead the category of ABM software, hiring more than a thousand people along the way and crossing the elusive 200 million in revenue milestone. [00:01:56] And today, Chris is on his third company, channel 99 and AI [00:02:00] powered attribution platform for BAB marketers. Chris, really an honor to have you on the show today. Thanks for your time. [00:02:05] Chris: Thank you, Phil. Happy to be here. [00:02:08] ​ [00:02:08] Phil: [00:03:00] [00:04:00] I just read through your intro and maybe we could start with a fun little one, like [00:04:12] From Industrial Paint Lines to Silicon Valley --- [00:04:12] Phil: the career background and something that kind of jumps out to me is the journey from Detroit to Silicon Valley. [00:04:18] You transitioned from chemical engineering to software and then also marketing as part of that software experience. What drew you to the tech world from the humble roots of, uh, Motor City. [00:04:29] Chris: It is definitely not a natural path. Um, So, a chemical engineer in Detroit is set up for a very boring career because basically you're going to be at an automotive company working on a paint line or in the hazardous waste treatment facility. So, I was always enthralled with innovation and so I looked for opportunities Where I could be part of an innovation team and I found a job opportunity with DuPont out in Delaware where we were DuPont [00:05:00] was bringing a technology From Europe to the US market and I got to be the product engineer that helped lead that and so that was a really exciting opportunity for me Um, so I did that for a few years in Delaware, uh, never met Joe Biden, uh, and, uh, ended up moving into engineering polymer sales, which is a fancy word for plastics. [00:05:22] So I, uh, moved up to Boston, uh, with DuPont and, uh, GE hired me from DuPont to do the same kind of job up in New England. And then, ultimately, I, uh, transferred with GE out to the west coast to head up their industry marketing for kind of the high tech use of plastic. So I was basically selling materials to Apple and HP and those were big global deals and right around 1995 1996 A couple of us from GE started supply base. [00:05:57] Um, and we didn't know [00:06:00] anything about software because we were all, you know, mechanical engineers or chemical engineers. And it was hard, it was really hard to raise money, but we did it. And, uh, you know, built up supply base into, you know, a real business with real revenue. And, uh, we sold it the day the market peaked on March 13th, 2000, thank God. [00:06:22] Um, And, uh, kind of the rest is history. But yeah, I was a frustrated marketer while at supply base because there was no technologies that really focused on B to B marketing. [00:06:35] Phil: Very cool. One thing that like came up in a lot of my research, uh, before our chat and like obviously diving into Demandbase is familiar with the name of the company. Um, I was a customer once, uh, and obviously like you guys kind of pioneered the ABM category. Um, this will probably come up a few times in our chat today, but [00:06:54] Why Top Talent Gravitates to Companies with Purpose-Led Culture --- [00:06:54] Phil: one of the things that came up a lot in my research was the company culture that, um, you [00:07:00] folks were able to create, uh, demand, uh, Demandbase and, uh, the. [00:07:05] The internal aspects of it, but also like the, the external perspective of what you're able to build in a way of like attracting talent, but also attracting customers, maybe talk to us about like the company culture and the role that that played in the success of Demandbase. Hey, [00:07:23] Chris: You know, that's a great question. Um, you know, building a great culture is It's hard. It takes years and you really have to invest in it. And so it was very early on. You know, I really wanted to be work with people. I wanted to be around, uh, and build a great culture. And I didn't know really what that meant. [00:07:42] And so we kind of learned along the way, but it does. It has such a huge impact and Attracting and hiring great talent, retaining talent, and, um, you know, it's not about free snacks on Fridays. It's, uh, it's about, you know, transparency across the company. It's [00:08:00] about having personal relationships with everybody in the company. [00:08:04] And, um, you know, when we would do team events, we would always center around like some kind of philanthropic activity. And that really brought people together. That was one of the. Really key differentiators. And so, you know, fast forward to, you know, from 2010 when we set on that mission to 2016, we were number 10 in the U. [00:08:25] S. on Glassdoor out of 500, 000 companies in terms of rating. So it really paid off. And, um, and then after that period, you know, every year we won kind of best places to work in the Bay Area. And. You know, you don't buy those awards. Those are all surveys and employee satisfaction, you know, reports. And, um, it, it was a huge accolade for everybody that worked at the company. [00:08:51] It wasn't, it wasn't me. It was the whole company that really, you know, invested in it. [00:08:56] Phil: give me an example of like one of those, uh, team events that had a, [00:09:00] uh, philanthropic sort of topic to it. I remember seeing a few of them, but what's the most memorable one? Maybe. [00:09:09] Chris: We hosted our annual customer event, um, at a baseball stadium. [00:09:13] Phil: Okay. Yeah, that's the one I saw. [00:09:15] Chris: Oh, is that right? And so, um, We got involved with, um, an organization called Stop Hunger Now that basically packages meals for developing countries. And so we had done, uh, an activity in our office where our whole company, you know, put on hair nets and you have to do all these hermetically sealed bags. [00:09:36] And we made like a thousand lunches, um, and everybody felt great about it. I'm like, so when we got to our annual customer event where we're going to have a thousand people, I'm like, Let's get the whole stadium to do it. And so we had everybody wearing hair nuts and making, but it was great. And what, you know, it's all marketers at our events. [00:09:57] And so a bunch of them ended up taking it [00:10:00] to their businesses. So this whole thing just proliferated, um, across. And, you know, I suspect that, Hundreds of thousands of meals were, you know, created and donated. So that was a fun one. And we also had one that was really interesting around, um, there was a movie being made, uh, about education for women in developing countries. [00:10:26] And somehow, uh, the producer got my name and wanted to meet with me because they, she thought I would get her connections to venture capitalists that would invest in the movie. And so I tried to tell her that, like, VCs are not going to invest in your movie. [00:10:42] Phil: it works. [00:10:43] Chris: I go, so tell me about, more about who you're trying to influence. [00:10:46] And she started to say, like, uh, well, we get a lot of contributions from, uh, big corporations. I go, we might be able to help there. So we developed an ad campaign to focus [00:11:00] on big global companies. And our company, just the employee base, loved it because it was so much bigger than B2B software, right? And, um, so that was really fun. [00:11:11] Um, so. I always look for things like that that had really big reach and, uh, you know, big meeting. And, uh, and we went on to do other things like, uh, Challenge Athlete Foundation we got pretty involved with. I got more engaged with that organization. But, um, it's really a good rallying thing for the company and the culture. [00:11:33] Phil: When do you think at like the stage of company, do you start to really. start thinking about investing in culture? Is it like a day one thing? How can we really like set ourselves up to be different so that we can attract talent? Is it once you've got like a bit of emotion, series A's in the bag, then you're starting to like think about that. [00:11:56] Like, is it a day one thing for you? Like walk us through that.[00:12:00] [00:12:00] Chris: Yeah, it's, it's so important to me personally. So, it is a day one thing. But, yeah, but, uh, To your point, like a series A is always a good opportunity because that's the time when you really want to start thinking about maybe an HR person around the hiring and recruiting. Um, but you know, when you're under 20, 20 ish people, you know, you just got to own it. [00:12:21] And, um, you know, life's too short. People want to be around people they'd like to work with, right? And, um, you know. It's we'll get toe kind of remote work a little bit later, but that back. It's a little bit harder when everybody's in different places. So you gotta make extra effort to bring people together at certain points during the year. [00:12:41] Why Remote Work Fails Junior Employees (And Soars for Veterans) --- [00:12:41] Phil: Yeah, maybe we can, uh, jump to remote work now. Like I'm, I'm curious to get your, your point of view on this, like getting to grow and build Demandbase pre pandemic, pre a lot of the world was remote and getting that experience of trying to make things work while a lot of folks were, were from working from home, like [00:13:00] personally, I'm an advocate of distributed work when done right. [00:13:03] I think there's a lot of ways of doing it very poorly. Um, I always thought I'd leave Canada at one point in my career to. Move to the Bay area to work in tech for the coolest us companies. But even before COVID, I discovered the possibility of working remotely, staying close to family and friends in Canada and having that flexibility to set my own hours and still work for cool, amazing companies in the U S so like, despite the successes of our own companies, like get hub and automatic and Atlassian Zapier deal buffer, like there's so many of them, like, there's still. [00:13:37] Plenty of failures along the way and companies that return to office or had like a hybrid policy after going all in on distributed work, what's, what's your point of view on, on remote work? Chris. [00:13:48] Chris: Yeah, you know, it's it's complicated, right? It's because there's so many different factors, you know, depending on the role. Um, like engineering talent. They often do [00:14:00] work independently. Um, I think Experience or age can be a big factor, like if you're just out of school and you've never learned how to run a meeting. [00:14:09] You, you know, don't know how to do presentations, all those things, those are factors. Um, there's also an important factor, are, is the individual good at working at home? Because, you know, there's a lot of people that screw off and, and are not very present. And so, You got to have individual desire. There's a lot of people that don't like to work at home. [00:14:36] Like I'm fine with it, but I prefer to be in the office. It was interesting just before the pandemic. At the band base, we did like an exec team offsite. It was one of these personality introvert, extrovert tests. And so when we talked about remote or back in office, it was split right down the middle. [00:14:54] Those of us that were more extroverted wanted to be in the office. And those that were more introverted wanted to be at home. It was [00:15:00] like, it was clear, um, which is fine. Cause you gotta have both, uh, types of folks and, um, and that, you know, the last piece of it, I think. It depends on the stage of a company, too. [00:15:13] I think it is really hard to start a company and have everybody be distributed. We can't get together at a whiteboard and map things out. Um, so I think there's some benefits there, but you know, our company is, you know, we have three or five of us here in an office in Sausalito, and then we have, you know, another half dozen to a dozen people in Seattle and in Utah. [00:15:37] And we're generally on the same time zone. So that works out. Yeah, [00:15:44] Phil: guys have regular times during the year where you'll all meet up in one spot? [00:15:50] Chris: yeah, exactly. We may move it around a little bit, um, and um, you know, we'll try and get together, you know, three times a year as a company. Um, and [00:16:00] then individual groups will get together more frequently. [00:16:03] Phil: I love your point about like remote work depends on the stage of a person, like how junior they are, how early they are in their career. And I take that for granted because like I spent the first like eight years of my career working in house, like remote wasn't really a thing in my city. Um, like especially some of the startups I worked at, like folks really valued like butts in seats. [00:16:27] Like you're being productive if you're like. Early in the office and you're like late in the office and you're like always huddled down and working on, on your laptop. Right. But I, I guess like I still did get a lot of value from that in person experience and growing up in that environment. And like you said, learning how to run meetings. [00:16:47] design thinking workshops and having that in person work, uh, like whiteboard and like the all team meeting, like actually physically in one place and not on zoom. And so like it does [00:17:00] help that experience now and, and I can bring it to a distributed workplace, but it's crazy because like some companies are. [00:17:06] Remote and distributed from day one. And what I found interesting is that like my first real remote, uh, remote job was with clothes, uh, clothes that I owe a CRM company. And like, they're famous for being like bootstrapped small team and remote first, but they don't really hire a lot of junior people. [00:17:26] It's all like 10 plus years into their career, their seasons, they're like expert practitioners, that one thing. You don't need to like hold that person's hand. It's not like an entry level gig, right? Like you're not teaching anyone like how to run a meeting. And so like, maybe there is something there to what you said. [00:17:44] Like it's, it's a tricky balance between like junior folks and not having that like experience of, of that in person work. [00:17:53] Chris: you know, I, um, it was, uh, Yeah. Yeah. People were just getting back to office after the pandemic and I was going out to our New York [00:18:00] office at Demandbase and, uh, the SDR leader said, Hey, Chris, would you mind doing a Q and A session with the SDR team? So I go into the office and I'm sitting around the table with, you know, 12, 15 SDRs and they're all meeting each other for the first time. I was like, Oh my God. And so as we were talking, they were like, so Chris, you know, do you have any recommendations? And I go, yeah, I'd get your ass in the office because I, I, but my reason was totally different than what we've been talking about. And it's, you know, you learn so much from one another as you know, kind of a newer STR and so many great relate relationships are formed. [00:18:44] Over the years, you know, socially, and like a person sitting next to me could be your best friend next year, and you don't even know it like, and so part of the, the value of the culture at Demandbase is we did have like such strong [00:19:00] bonds, um, and kind of that family atmosphere. And you don't get that if you're not with somebody. [00:19:06] In the same space. It's not the only reason to come in. But, you know, SDR teams also learned so much from one another, hearing each other on the phone and sharing, you know, different objections and how they handled it and things like that. [00:19:20] Phil: Yeah, the water cooler conversations and yeah, stuff that isn't easy to replicate on, on Slack, but, um, you mentioned hiring too and, and how that's different in, in a remote world. Um, [00:19:33] Common Hiring Mistakes That Even Seasoned Leaders Make --- [00:19:33] Phil: I'm curious to ask you about your hiring advice here, because you like clearly hire were a thousand plus people in your career. [00:19:40] Like probably just at Demandbase. Right. Um, we'd love to ask you like, uh, what's Don't have to name names of course here, but like, what are some of the most memorable mistakes that you've made when you were hiring and maybe some of the best decisions that you've made? And what were some of the commonalities between the mistakes and the successes? [00:19:57] Chris: Yeah, that's a good question. Um, [00:20:00] you know, mistakes, probably doing insufficient kind of back channel references on somebody. Um. You know, I had some challenges hiring, like, great VP of engineering, like, while I'm a chemical engineer, I don't have tons of software technology depth, and, you know, doing it all over, I would always, now I'll pull in, like, outside advisors that do have that depth to, to assist there, because having an engineering leader with, with great technology depth attracts talent, and retains talent, and, um, so that, that was certainly a mistake. [00:20:37] Um, And, um, I think successes, it's, you know, meeting people in person and making sure they're a good culture fit and, you know, you know, them personally, um, I think makes a big difference. Um, and it takes a little bit more work if you have to, you know, you want to meet everybody in person, but it makes a difference. [00:20:58] And, um, [00:21:00] You know, in this kind of remote world, you know, we went at Demandbase where you might hire one person with, Five candidates for a particular job and During the pandemic we were hiring You know one out of two and so like what happened like the quality of people just go up to X I don't think so. [00:21:24] So like, you know, what is that candidate quality? You know jeopardize when people aren't having those in person interviews. So I think that's still a key factor and people should really You know put some importance around that and that's of course, there's so much good You know reference ability on certain people or there's, you know, strong referrals [00:21:46] Phil: Yeah. What are some of your favorite ways to, to back channel those, those referrals? Is it just looking to see if you have a first degree connection, who's connected to a previous manager or like a previous [00:22:00] coworker that, that would have worked with that person and you just like ask them like, Hey, Is this person legit? [00:22:05] Like, how was your experience working alongside them or something like that? [00:22:10] Chris: well and I guess When you're as old as me You know a lot of people but you know just coming up through You all these venture firms, I typically, when I see where a person worked, I can get to that person, somebody that worked with that person up through the VCs and across the portfolios and then down into the company. [00:22:30] Or I might know somebody, um, direct. But I, I think those are really, really important to do. And, um, you know, it's a huge red flag when you can, you know, find something that, you know, Where somebody's willing to share something that, you know, doesn't, might not make sense for your company. And a lot of times, you know, it goes both ways. [00:22:51] You know, is the job the right job for the person? And they still might be great at a particular function. It's just not a good fit. [00:22:59] Career Strategies for Marketers During Economic Turbulence --- [00:22:59] Phil: What advice do you have [00:23:00] for marketers in this like weird job market environment right now? Like it's, it's no longer the COVID like era of people like leaving jobs and like the, the, they called it like the great resignation, like, you know, It's a weird job market right now. I have a lot, a lot of friends that were laid off that were looking for jobs. [00:23:20] A lot of people just like go on the fractional road and just like advising or freelancing. Some people like me are just becoming podcasters. Like what advice do you have for marketers in this weird market right now? [00:23:34] Chris: You know, um, this is just came up a couple weeks ago. I was at a conference with, uh, marketing leaders at Norwest, a large venture firm. So there's probably, you know, 40 people in there and people were joking about candidates using AI to generate their presentations and their materials. And. Everybody is so sensitive to it. [00:23:57] They immediately won't hire somebody [00:24:00] that just because they didn't try hard enough is kind of the gist of it. And so I think it's great to use AI. But, you know, make sure you put your own spin and effort to it. Um, because that makes a big difference. Um, and then just overall, I think it's really important for marketers to recognize, you know, And be transparent on what they're really good at versus what they're not good at, because it just, it gives a lot more credibility. [00:24:25] And I think certainly as marketing leaders, you know, I'm trying to think if I've ever met somebody that's really great at brand and also really great at operations that they're kind of two different people, right? So, um, and you gotta have both. And so a lot of times, like hiring CMOs, I was always looking for You know, somebody that could recognize those differences and, you know, at Demandbase, uh, I had the pleasure of working with Peter Isaacson, who's now, you know, moved on to a different company, but he was [00:25:00] fantastic. [00:25:00] Came out of Adobe, really sensitive to brand. It wasn't a designer, but he knew how important it was, and he was also good on the operations side, and he was able to build a team, um, you know, that was very specialized in all the different disciplines. And that's how, you know, marketing is so different than sales. [00:25:18] Sales, you're scaling on a, the same kind of function and abilities. And marketing, you scale based on specialization. It's just so different. And that's why I always think it's funny when somebody tries to hire an executive to do sales and marketing. Cause I'm like, oh my God, they're so different. [00:25:34] Phil: Hmm. Unpack that a little bit. Cause like a lot of roles that we're seeing today are like under the umbrella of like revenue operations, or you'll see someone like chief revenue officer lead the marketing and the sales function. Like why you said that like marketing is scaled because it's a game of, of specialties, but But sales is more like just scaling a lot of the same [00:26:00] stuff, but like, you're adding more people, uh, like more horsepower in a sense, like unpack that a bit more. [00:26:05] Chris: Yeah, I, I think it's, you have to have experience in both functions to do, to be able to. Both. Um, you know, I think like Latane at Sixth Sense is, is unique in that she has both of those sets of skills and is able to, to own both, both of those functions, which is great. It's just not very common. [00:26:26] Phil: yeah, definitely agree. [00:26:28] Why Marketers Who Share Failures Outperform Their Peers --- [00:26:28] Phil: One thing that comes up a lot on the show about this, like most important traits that makes a really good marketing operations or marketing technologist person is this idea of curiosity. And, um, It's not only specific to marketing ops. I think like this could be applied to a lot of other disciplines, but it's this like qualitative trait, like curiosity. [00:26:51] So easy to say in an interview that like, yeah, I'm very curious. Read a lot of books, follow this podcast or read this blog. How do you [00:27:00] assess curiosity within interviews? Like what a, what are some of the things that, um, you would recommend hiring managers or even people that are looking for jobs to like showcase that, that curiosity? [00:27:12] Chris: You know, I think it's asking examples of, you know, when a campaign or something wasn't going well. What'd you do about it? Did you just? Was it just a failure and you moved on, or did you figure out why and try and fix it? You know, so much of our business is helping companies improve their marketing, not just, not just measure it. [00:27:34] And, um, so I always look for that. Balanced marketer that's always has a passion for improving things. And you know, marketers like to celebrate success, um, but they also shouldn't run from things that aren't working or not, or not be transparent. Um, 'cause I do think it's really important to figure out why things aren't working and, and what adjustments can be made to, to make [00:28:00] improvements. [00:28:00] ​ [00:28:00] Phil: [00:29:00] [00:30:00] Yeah, let's dive into that a bit more. I find that interesting because I, I definitely have been guilty of that for sure. In, in my career, it's, it's easier to stand on top of, uh, like your successes and post that in general slack and everyone like celebrates that big campaign win. Um, but oftentimes there's this like culture of fear in companies that I've worked at, where there's a culture of fear in companies that I've worked at where there's There was this big bet that you wanted to do. [00:30:39] You told a bunch of people about it. You have the results for a minute. They're not great. And you're like kind of sliding it under the rug and hoping that not a lot of people are going to ask about that. Do you think there's like as much to gain? You kind of said this already, but like from sharing the failures and like. [00:30:56] The learnings across the company so that we don't repeat the same stuff [00:31:00] over again. And how do you foster the, how foster this culture of acceptance of failure so that people can share freely? Because a lot of folks, especially in this market right now, like I've got two campaigns that were a great success. [00:31:12] One that was bad. Like I'm gonna like. the two good ones and not the bad one. I don't want to lose my job. Like how do you foster that culture? [00:31:22] Chris: You know, that's a good question. Um, it's. I do think if you share the things that aren't performing well, it makes the other things that are much more credible because the reality is, is marketers are generally really good at repackaging bad results, right? I do it like when I go to, if I'm presented to an investor, like, you know, you want to present yourself in the best way. [00:31:47] And, um, but I do think when you say like, this is an area we need to work on or we have to focus here, it does give. The person in the company, uh, that much more credibility. [00:31:59] Phil: Yeah. Such a good point. [00:32:00] I think of like the meme where the marketing manager speaking in front of a boardroom and he's got like a bar chart revenues going up and the marketers is like, This is because of all the stuff that I did. And then the other bar chart is going down in revenue and the market is just like external events created this, like, this is not our fault. [00:32:21] Chris: External factors, [00:32:22] Phil: Yeah. [00:32:23] Transforming Paid Search into an Account Based Marketing Engine --- [00:32:23] Phil: Uh, let, let's chat about ABM. Obviously like we can't have a, the, so to speak the, the grandfather of ABM on the podcast with a chatting about this a little bit, um, Obviously ABM has evolved significantly, um, in the last like several years. I had a short stint teaching, uh, marketing automation class back in the day. [00:32:44] And I stumbled upon some of my class material. This is like five years ago, only five years ago. But I'm like cringing at some of the slides, like some of the early slides was like introduction to ABM and like why ABM is very important. It was like five years [00:33:00] ago and it's changed so much, uh, since Demandbases, early days, where do you see ABM heading in the next couple years, five years, and for marketers looking to make channels like paid search or SEO, like more account base, where should they start? [00:33:17] Like curious to ask you about that. [00:33:19] Chris: That's a great question, because people do think of ABM as a technology category, and they think of, you know, Demandbased or 6 cents or, you know, possibly a couple others. But the reality is, it, it's, account based is really about focus and, uh, quality, you know. When sales teams would ask me, like, what is ABM, I'm like, well, it's about focusing your marketing dollars on the accounts you guys should be selling to. [00:33:46] He goes, well, what the hell else would you do? Like, right? And so, you know, the challenge with so much of these technologies is that there isn't functionality where you can really laser focus [00:34:00] on a specific segment. And. Most marketers, most companies, I should say, they're only selling to two or three percent of the companies out there in the world. [00:34:09] So it's hard. B2B marketing is hard. And, and just because you're using ABM doesn't mean you're gonna be wildly successful. It's gonna help you. But there are ways to think about events in the company's world. Like looking at all the companies that went to the same event last year, what percentage were in your addressable market? [00:34:30] Yeah. Okay. It's not, you know, it's not ABM technology, but it's an account centric, you know, world. And I would say the same thing can be applied to, you know, look at your paid search campaigns and, you know, what percentage of those clicks are coming from your addressable market. And just yesterday, and this is real data, I showed a customer, you know, they were making big spends, um, on both Google Bing and Google [00:35:00] and one was. [00:35:02] 10 times more dollar efficient at bringing in companies from their addressable market than the other 10 X and they were spending a couple 100, 000 a month. So Like, wow, I never knew that. And so I think we can get to a place where you can then look at what are the words and key phrases that are driving You know your addressable market. [00:35:26] There's, there's so many things we could do here. Um, you know, going back, God, this must be I did approach Google, uh, about like making paid search account based and charging more per click. [00:35:39] Phil: Very cool. [00:35:41] Chris: Yeah, that's what I thought. But it wasn't a self driving car. It wasn't, you know, so they're just like, eh, you know, thanks, but no thanks. [00:35:50] Um, so we never got there, but, you know, I, I do think, uh, You know, being able to look at all these other channels, whether it's, you know, [00:36:00] LinkedIn or Reddit and Google Display and measuring them based on, you know, the engagement from companies. Is it turning into pipeline? What percentages and where the what's the dollar efficiency of doing that? [00:36:14] Um, lots of there's so much opportunity, Phil, to get this better and better. [00:36:19] Phil: Yeah. I curious to ask you, like some of the ideas there, like you, you, you just said it like [00:36:24] How B2B Campaign Performance Doubled With Age Based Targeting --- [00:36:24] Phil: B2B marketing is really hard. Like this year I'm chatting with a bit, uh, more B2C folks. Cause I definitely have more of a B2B lens in my career, but I agree with you. Like B2B marketing is tricky. Most folks are trying to sell into like one to 3 percent of companies out there. [00:36:42] And, and a lot of tech can't do that really well, but you just mentioned a couple of ideas there. Like there's, there is clever tactics that you can do to drive B2B traffic that folks aren't really thinking about other than like the traditional methods. What are some other clever tactics that [00:37:00] have been successful for you over the years that you don't think get enough, uh, light shined on? [00:37:05] Chris: Yeah, I mean, gosh, there's so many. We find ourselves even channel 99 kind of repeating the same. I'll call him plays with customers to improve campaigns and things like that. And those plays then train the AI. So It gets smarter and smarter. The more people use it, the more plays that are done. And just just the other day, this is a really interesting example. [00:37:29] But I was looking at our Google display program, and we don't spend a ton on Google display. But I noticed this huge spike in the businesses and the quality of businesses that were coming through. And I said, What happened on November 7th? And so I was talking to our product manager. He goes, well, why? I go, well, we literally just doubled the quality of what we're getting from a Google display. [00:37:54] And he goes, oh, I, I changed the age of the people we serve ads to [00:38:00] and the income bracket. So I stopped advertising to people between 18 and 24, and I raised the income bracket, which naturally drives more business traffic, right? And, um, that, you know, that, that's a simple play, but it had a great outcome. [00:38:19] And so, being able to map changes of spend or changes of campaigns to changes of outcomes, that's how you build kind of the future scenario planning and outcomes. It's not, it's not measuring visits and touches historically and thinking that's going to tell you the future. [00:38:39] Phil: Yeah. [00:38:39] AI Attribution Actually Predicts Marketing ROI: Inside Channel99s Bold Vision --- [00:38:39] Phil: I want to chat a bit more about, uh, channel 99, like you launched Demandbased at some point and you also created the ABM category, so to speak, like you were first in this blue ocean of opportunity, but at channel 99, you're focusing on marketing ROI and attribution. And it's essentially this longstanding [00:39:00] category that's evolved a lot for sure, but it's longstanding and there's a. [00:39:05] Very crowded vendor space. Why attribution as your third venture, Chris, and why a crowded space versus the blue ocean that you picked with the man base? [00:39:15] Chris: Yeah. Well, you know, I don't think I shared this with you yet, Phil. Um, the original vision of Demandbase was actually supply chain solution for marketers. Um, and so I had this vision of, you know, B2B marketers spend all this money. And they have no way to manage their vendors and channels and predict pipeline new. [00:39:36] So that was the original thing. And if you can imagine in 2006, it was just way too early. And so I'm like, okay, so I pivoted Demandbase. Like, how do we fix B2B marketing? That's kind of the whole genesis of, of ABM. Um, but fast forward to 2021, I'm like, you know, there is no single source of truth. [00:40:00] For B2B marketers and Like I think there's an opportunity out there But I don't want to be another one of these attribution companies that just aggregates data And puts it in charts like we gotta solve some of the big problems out there And it also has to be Predictive. [00:40:16] So I've I've been a little bit of an attribution hater over the years just because I thought it wasn't very useful and it looked at only 5 percent of the customer signal. Um, wasn't predictive. And so you know, we focused our company first couple years, you know, trying to understand what is the real source of all that direct traffic? [00:40:37] Because if you don't solve that, you're not going to get the right answers. Um, and then also, you know, anonymous identification. We wanted to make sure we could get that way more scaled. And so I think solving that, that data and signal challenge, you now then can come in with AI and really learn and synthesize all that data for [00:41:00] much better decision making. [00:41:01] So a lot of our focus is number one, it's how do we help marketers improve their. Financial performance. You know, that is the goal and and be independent across all the different vendors and channels. Um, so whether you're using six cents or Demandbase, but also, you know, LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, you know, Facebook ads. [00:41:24] It's really important to have, you know, a set of KP eyes that really matter. So you can look at everything apples to apples and make the right decisions. [00:41:35] Phil: is the thing that stands out there for me as a potential differentiator for you guys in the attribution space. Like there is. I think a lot of vendors that tell you what happened in the past, some do it really well, some do it poorly and some try to add incrementality as like the next lever on top of that, like helping you figure out how to run experiments and AB [00:42:00] tests and control groups so that you can say something added net number of incremental dollars to the ROI or like the, the revenue for the company. [00:42:10] Um, What you're talking about though is like taking that a step further and taking that historical data, the incremental data, and trying to figure out what will drive revenue. Like instead of doing something and seeing if it's going to work, we have enough data today to figure out what will be working. [00:42:29] Is that, is that a fair assessment? [00:42:31] Chris: Yeah, exactly. Phil. Um, think of having a log of everything that happened in marketing last year. Like all the changes of spend all the different campaigns a lot launched all the changes in instrumented changes that happened like that play and have a I sit on top of it so that you can ask natural questions like what were the two biggest things that impacted my pipeline in Q2 of last year? [00:42:56] Right now, that's a science project to go answer. And it doesn't [00:43:00] need to be, right? And so I think that's a huge opportunity for marketers. [00:43:06] Measuring Marketing ROI Through Finance Team Alignment --- [00:43:06] Phil: I think this like ROI topic, the measurement topic, there's a big, like you said science piece to that. There's also a tech. Piece to that, but there's a big people and process piece to it, right? Like marketers aren't coming up with this data by themselves. And usually it's the finance team or it's the founders that are asking for this data, right? [00:43:30] Like can't tell you how many times in exact level conversations I've been asked. What's the ROI of that going to be? What drove the most revenue for us in the last year or so? And you can't even have a conversation about brand building and long term horizons when the founders and like the, the exec folks are just like trying to measure every single thing. [00:43:52] What, how do you think about aligning marketing with finance and C level folks? Like what advice do you have to give to [00:44:00] marketers who are struggling to like align their efforts with finance teams and like justify their budgets? [00:44:06] Chris: Well, you know, if you think about the finance person, they care about customer acquisition cost, and they care about uncertainty. They don't give a shit about MQLs or SQLs or any of that stuff. So it's really about understanding what does it cost you to generate a pipeline opportunity. And what's your close rate. [00:44:30] Those two pieces of thing, those two things really help the finance team. And what most marketers might not appreciate is that generally 50 percent of your customer acquisition cost is in marketing program spend. Thank you. It's a big number. It's a really big number. And it's a big number because there is so much inefficiency and waste. [00:44:51] Um, um, and so I think you can get, you know, people, marketers measured on [00:45:00] pipeline, not necessarily just MQLs. Um, it's, it's, it's been a very slow shift. Um, I think you'll, you, you see change in results. Um, and. You know, if I'm a finance person and I know it cost me 3, 000 to generate a pipeline opportunity, I know I closed one out of four. [00:45:18] It's all I need to really focus on the budget and how much we need to spend. Um, and if we're predicting it's going to go from 3, 000 to 2, 000, Um, you got to have those reasons why. How, how are you going to do that? And, um, I always, this is a funny story at Demandbase. I We were doing a town hall, so there was, you know, maybe a hundred people in the office. [00:45:44] And I said, um, uh, what do you think it costs us to acquire a new customer? You know, people were raising their hands. I don't know, like 3, 000, maybe 000. And I was like, you know, I think it was about 80, 000. And people were like [00:46:00] shocked. Because if you roll up all the sales and marketing costs and program expense, and somebody, some wisecrack, goes like, why don't we just give people a Tesla to buy our software? [00:46:10] I'm like, I go, you know, if it works better, I'm all for it. I go. But it just generally, that's not the way it works. And [00:46:20] Phil: legal person in the room is just like hiding. [00:46:23] Chris: yeah. Yeah. Um, but it, you know, it is important to understand your customer acquisition costs kind of broken down into. Your sales and marketing overhead. You're selling variable selling expense, and then you have your big basically your variable marketing it. [00:46:39] And if you're not measuring that you should be. [00:46:41] Why AI Attribution Actually Works When Marketers Control the Keys --- [00:46:41] Phil: How do you see AI helping with that stuff? Like every company is AI powered these days and you guys are in the attribution space and channel 99 is AI powered in a sense, right? Like there's AI as part of that. We talked about the predictions and, and not just reporting on [00:47:00] past events and stuff like that. [00:47:01] Like how. How do you think AI is going to be leveraged to identify spend that doesn't contribute to pipeline? Like you just talked about and improves marketing efficiency. How are you guys thinking about that? [00:47:15] Chris: It's a good question. You know, I keep on finding I mentioned this earlier, like the plays like a lot of times we have customers if they're using Demandbase. They asked me, like, Hey, you know, You know, how would you, this Demandbased program isn't doing very well. What do you think, Chris? And I, if I dig into it to find out why it's not, I'm like, well, your audience is really small companies to really large companies. [00:47:40] I go, if you segment this audience and use Demandbased just for the larger businesses Facebook ads, you don't have to spend any more money. Both are going to be way more efficient. And. I see that over and over, Phil. And so that's an example where those changes get logged. [00:48:00] The AI learns from that and the next person that types in, how do I improve my Demandbased campaign? [00:48:07] It's going to go look and see is the intended audience. And that's, you know, it's all about who you're marketing and selling to so much. Um, so there's a lot of great technologies out there, but they're not great at everything. And, um, you know, I, I could see a future where I upload a, an audience of a hundred companies and the AI tells me what are the most effective vendors at reaching and engaging those, uh, those, those accounts. [00:48:37] I mean, it's coming, so, um, um, but there's, and it's, it's not just which vendors, it's if I put in another 10, 000 into, you know, LinkedIn, what, what can I expect? Um, You know, based on historical results and based on benchmarks and things like that. [00:48:57] Phil: Hmm. You mentioned that like [00:49:00] your first entrepreneurial venture supply base and like the first version of Demandbase was. Like too early for the market. Like you were a bit too early, like people weren't ready for it. Do you think people are ready for AI taking over a lot of these things? Like how, how do you foresee it? [00:49:21] Maybe you've already done some of these things, like in sales conversations where you're talking to marketing leaders and CMOs, and you're just like. AI is going to tell you what is going to happen with the next 100 that you put in LinkedIn or meta. Like, how do you deal with the objections of people saying like, I'm not ready for AI to like make those decisions. [00:49:41] Like, I don't know if I trust it yet. Like I've got a data team, or I've got a marketing ops team that's telling me differently. Like, how do you compete with those like objections in this like AI powered world? [00:49:52] Chris: Yeah, no, that's a good question. So, you know, within the marketing world, AI is being used for writing content, [00:50:00] right? But it's not as good as a great journalist, right? So there's some shortcomings. And I would say the same thing in design and power points. And, um, it's just not as good as a great designer, like, and If there is a place where it should be used, it's marketing ops because of the vast amount of data to synthesize and understand. [00:50:21] And so to your question, you know, the over word used of copilot is actually pretty appropriate because I do think people want the recommendation, but they want to understand why, you know, the AI cannot be a black box solution. It has to say like, You know, With your incremental 10, 000, we think you'll generate a 100, 000 of additional pipeline. [00:50:50] Here's why and have it generate the chart and show you the data that say you can cut and paste it and put it into your PowerPoint to present to the exec team. Um, [00:51:00] so I, I think that's going to be really important, but, um, you know, the speed at which you can also synthesize that data and get, you know, foundational. [00:51:11] Information and insights to make those recommendations can be really important. [00:51:16] Phil: very cool. I love the point about, yeah, I can't be a black box. If you can't trust that black box, I think like AI black boxes have been around forever. Like my first taste of it was, um, like AI powered lead scoring tools. And, uh, I think like mixed panel had one of the first ones and mad kudu and like, they couldn't tell you. [00:51:35] Why it was just like, just trust us, this is a good lead. And like, part of it was just like proprietary, I guess, and why it was a black box, but that, that helps so much with that objection of just like, we're going to tell you why, like, here's all the data points and here's the historical data on why those data points led to those conversions. [00:51:58] And I think that's [00:52:00] a really good step in the right direction for. Marketers and marketing ops folks working with AI tools. [00:52:07] Chris: Yeah, well, and we saw the same thing years ago at Demandbase where, you know, you would rank accounts based on intent and you score them on which ones to prioritize. And it was really important for customers to understand why did this score so high? And it's You know, it's fit, but it's also they have these technologies. [00:52:29] There's a trend in their company reading information about this and this and this and this is why If we would have just said the score it wouldn't have been good enough [00:52:40] Phil: Yeah, let me click on the score and uh, see the activity log and Ranked by like color what were the most like important features in that model? And yeah, I think that's that's the right way to think about it. Chris has been super fun. Um, I I usually ask this last question to everyone that's uh, that's on the show. [00:52:59] Happiness --- [00:52:59] Phil: You're [00:53:00] Obviously a three time founder, incredibly successful entrepreneur. You're a CEO, I think a marketer at heart, uh, throughout your career, um, and building tech for, for marketers. But you're also a father, you're an avid, uh, outdoorsman, mountain biker, skier, hiker, uh, you've got a ton of stuff going on in your life. [00:53:18] Uh, one question we ask everyone on the show is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? And how do you find balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy? [00:53:28] Chris: Yeah, good question, um, well i'm happy at work because I like I love innovation I love building things and uh You know, I always have something cooking, so, um, it is kind of that work hard, play hard mentality. And, um, the reality is startups are hard. And I'm sure everybody that might be listening at a startup knows that you go through lows and they're important because it's how do you come out of those and it's the lows that make the highs way much way better and so that can be [00:54:00] really gratifying and uh you know I just love kind of the building company thing because people couldn't believe it when I was leaving to start a new business. [00:54:11] Phil: Yeah, at first you announced it on LinkedIn, I guess I was looking through like old posts and then, uh, it was like only like two, three months after you're like, yeah, I'm, uh, starting something new. Believe it or not. [00:54:22] Chris: Yeah, well, you know, my kids are in college, like what am I going to do? The pandemic was hitting or was happening. So, [00:54:33] Phil: What am I going to do? Mountain biking all day? I can still do that while I run a company. Why not? [00:54:38] Chris: yeah, exactly. [00:54:40] Phil: Awesome, Chris. Great answer. It's been super fun. Uh, uh, yeah, plug, uh, channel 99 for, for the audience. Uh, we've had a lot of different attribution measurement vendors and conversations on the show. Uh, you talked a little bit about this already, but someone who's like interested in, in checking it out. [00:54:56] Um, what's, uh, what's your pitch for them? [00:54:59] Chris: Yeah, I, [00:55:00] I start with, we think it's super easy to try out. I mean, you can come to our website and, and get started for free. And, um, we'd like, we'd like to do, uh, a demo with the customer's data versus showing them. You know, a bunch of slides and, um, you know, we're solving a lot of the data issues out there first for customers like that direct bucket. [00:55:22] You know, we have some view through technology that really detects, um, where is that all coming from? And, um, as I said, you know, we want to be that source of truth. And this this whole AI thing is coming in now and layering on top of everything. We're not just another Company that's going to aggregate data, put it in charts. [00:55:44] It's, we really want to help people improve their marketing and make the right decisions. [00:55:49] Phil: Very cool. I looked at the, the site and I think the messaging that resonated the most with me was like uncover that direct traffic bucket. Like [00:56:00] if you were to just use last such attribution, I think for like more than half of B2B companies, direct traffic is the source of like all of your revenue. And what the hell does that mean? [00:56:12] Dear finance team, no one knows. [00:56:14] Chris: it's interesting because you know perfectly well that people are reading a white paper, they saw a social post or, you know, they saw your G2 profile and then came to your site. It wasn't, they didn't magically just type in your, your URL. And so we're. Doing a lot to peel that all back and it to me. [00:56:35] You cannot have an attribution engine and ignore the largest channel you just can't and So we're having some fun some fun with it. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been solved earlier [00:56:50] Phil: Yeah, uh, nothing that Google Analytics, uh, has solved yet, but they, uh, they love attributing a lot of stuff to direct traffic. Awesome. [00:57:00] Chris has been super fun. I really appreciate your, your time. We'll link out to, uh, the sites and, uh, yeah, encourage folks to check out, uh, channel 99. Uh, clearly you're, you're onto something interesting here. [00:57:10] Uh, last two companies have worked out really well. So, uh, uh, we'll keep in touch. Chris has been super fun. Thanks for being. [00:57:16] Chris: Thank you Phil. Appreciate your time