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No BS news about B2B Go-To-Market.
This is GTM News Desk - the show that keeps you ahead with marketing and sales strategies that win and clarity on the experience buyers want.
Mark Kilens and Natalie Marcotullio give it to you straight - what you’re doing wrong, what you’re doing right, and how to level up your GTM game. They dish out the latest trends, buyer behaviours, and proven plays you can put into action now. From aligning sales, marketing, and RevOps to closing deals at a clip you didn’t think possible, this podcast gives you B2B’s greatest playbooks and lays out the ‘tactics’ to avoid like the plague.
Mark and Natalie take their decades of collective experience working with top B2B brands like HubSpot and Drift and combine them with the GTM expert insights you need to create an impactful GTM strategy for your business.
Produced in partnership with Share Your Genius - we handle full-service media production: managing the process, people, and growth. Find our more at www.shareyourgenius.com
Rachel Elsts Downey (00:00):
Your job is to continue learning as much as you can about the thing that you've decided to be the master of so that you don't become, what's the word? Extinct.
Mark Killens (00:09):
So many businesses are trying to find a magic bullet to growth, to distribution. Focus on education, focus on the fundamentals.
Courtney Sembler (00:20):
I believe that achievements still need scarcity. You cannot badge everything because then you just dilute the value.
Mark Killens (00:32):
No BS News about B2B go- to-market. This is GTM Newsdesk with me, your host, Mark Killens, and my co-host for this season.
Rachel Elsts Downey (00:41):
Rachel Elts Stowney. Mark, what's on your mind?
Mark Killens (00:45):
What's going on, Rachel?
Rachel Elsts Downey (00:47):
It's a new year, Mark. Happy New Year.
Mark Killens (00:49):
You as well. How long are you allowed to say that? Happy New Year.
Rachel Elsts Downey (00:52):
No. I think you can say it through the month of January. Wow. Why not? No. It's still the first month of the new year.
Mark Killens (01:01):
I think today is the day that you can no longer say it after today. Today? Five days into January. After day five, it's like no.
Rachel Elsts Downey (01:09):
It's over. Well, and it's the first full real business day I feel like of the new year. So I think we're allowed to say it today. I think that's 100% fair.
Mark Killens (01:19):
Yeah, yeah. You can say it today. Tomorrow, no.
Rachel Elsts Downey (01:22):
Okay, fine. Okay. Well, we are recording this as of January 5th, 2026. So I am leaning into the Happy New Year vibes. And I think for our conversation today, we didn't want to do too many bits or things like that. We really wanted to hone in on some of the things that were predicted in the past that are still true for today, especially as we're going into a new year. And I think the guest that Mark, that you connected with Courtney is such a perfect guest for this because she has such a amazing background and experience and can kind of speak on what was true then that is still true today. And I think that's a fair way to get things started. Would you agree?
Mark Killens (02:01):
Yeah. Yeah. She and I had a pretty awesome conversation. For one reason, Rachel, she and I worked together at HubSpot for a long, long time. She took over HubSpot Academy after I left HubSpot, like you said, has done incredible things since basically 2018 to she left HubSpot just at the end of 2025. And yeah, looking back, there's a lot of things that have changed, of course, but there are just fundamental truths that have not changed. And in some ways, Rachel, we have lost focus on these truths when it comes to B2B marketing, B2B go to market. I think educating your audience, educating your customers and buyers is one where I think we maybe have lost some of that focus, but in some cases, businesses have never had enough focus on that.
Rachel Elsts Downey (02:47):
I love how you say we've lost focus. I think we can all agree there's been a lot of noise, a lot of opportunity for distraction, a lot of bright, shiny objects that make us feel like almost scarcity in a way and sort of chaotic. And I think what I love about the conversation with Courtney is that it anchors us back on the truth that allow us to do what we do so well, which is the craft of marketing, of community, bringing people together so that they can ultimately benefit from the products and the services that we build and offer.
Mark Killens (03:14):
Yeah. I mean, one quick thing that is very interesting that's happened that is news related. This is GTM News desk at the end of the day. You
Rachel Elsts Downey (03:21):
Got to give it news. You're right.
Mark Killens (03:23):
I mean, the Cvent acquisition of two pretty significant players, Goldcast and ON24 within the same month, December 2025, that is a pretty big sign that consolidation and M&A and liquidity events are going to continue to accelerate into 2026. The other sign though is from an event standpoint, someone who technically coined the term event-led growth, which was inspired by product-led growth, that term, and that whole approach, strategy. I think events online and in person are going to be such a pivotal thing to make part of your go- to-market strategy because it's, like you just said, community plus content, plus engagement. It's all these things. Plus it hits really at the thing that we've been drowning in, which is AI. It hits it in a way that is the opposite. It's not about all this AI tech or stuff, LLMs, data, whatever. It's about, yes, getting back to what is most important, which is building trust with people that could use your help and ultimately become a customer of yours or stay a customer of yours.
(04:33):
So I just think as a quick aside, events and the whole idea of educating people through live experiences is just a massive thing I would lean into in 2026.
Rachel Elsts Downey (04:45):
Well, I think to that point too, history always repeats itself. And so that's the whole point of us studying history is to learn from it, right?That's kind of the basics of that. But I would say the thing that is so exciting to me in thinking about that is that I think all of us have leaned into this idea of people first. We want to be together. We want to learn together. A, there's trust in building that relationship that you can't fabricate. We're talking about synthetic creators. We're talking about all of these things that are just not real. And I think it's fair to say that we are hungry for realness, authenticity. I know that's a buzzword that you hate, authenticity. But I think to your point, events are going to be a place where they're validated, where they're like, no, this is somebody I know, this is somebody I like, this is somebody I trust.
(05:29):
And then the content that comes from that is also way more authentic because it is coming from a place that people can verify. There are witnesses. "I know Mark did this because I saw him do it. "So I think there's some a lot of cool things to come with what's happening. And obviously I come from a very content production viewpoint and this idea of synthetic creators is very top of mind. This idea of mixing AI with real humans and things like that and how people are going to handle that. Again, all of that to say, it's interesting to see the roles that events are going to play because there's no faking that connection.
Mark Killens (06:02):
Yeah. I mean, Courtney experimented with that stuff at HubSpot because obviously a lot of their content and education is delivered through video, through actual people teaching. And yeah, I mean, you see podcasts now that is just completely synthetic fake podcasts, right? You
Rachel Elsts Downey (06:18):
Don't
Mark Killens (06:18):
Have a real person
Rachel Elsts Downey (06:19):
Talking. You're going to see it with video. Yes. There's a surge of just creators who are not real humans creating content for money.
Mark Killens (06:27):
Yeah. And we talked about this in one of the past episodes around the bifurcation of the internet, being like the internet that's public that's really made for the bots, the agents, the scrapers, and it's just recycled garbage versus the one that's closed off hidden where the actual humans are really participating a lot more. 2026, I do think is going to be the year things start to stabilize a bit, not fully, not even close. This is a massive decade of change. Just like 2000 to 2010 was a massive decade of change. I mean, yeah, there was every decade has changed, but I feel like there's some decades that are more transformative than others. This one is super transformative, especially the first five years. And this gets to Scott Brinker's predictions he made, which is in the show notes back in 2020. And I think he made these even, it might have been right before COVID or right after COVID, but he made these five predictions and ironically, most of them have come true in a significant way.
(07:25):
One of them is around this idea of citizen developers, like no code required to build something great. He never predicted or thought that it would be because of AI. He was thinking of the Zapier type situation, the ability to integrate systems seamlessly, making it, you could say more like Canvas style type experiences, like Canva for this, Canva for that. But now with just natural language, which is now the new type of coding language, you don't need to really know a coding language. You can just code using, in this case, English, that is exploding the potential and is also impacted at four of these other predictions he's made, which gets to your point on synthetic actor, synthetic content. Anyone can create something now for the most part.
Rachel Elsts Downey (08:08):
Anyone can and everyone should. Everyone should. But you're going to hear Courtney double down into really the approach that you and I always talk about, which is still people first, but also outcome driven. Too often people come to the party with a modality already picked and they shouldn't. Some people are not video people. Some people are not podcast people. Some people should be writing. I think too often we're still thinking of check the box as opposed to people first and define the outcome, which Courtney's definitely going to hit on, which again, I'm just going to double click and clap on because people too often are still going, "I have to do it because everyone else is doing it without having the actual business case in mind," which is such a waste
Mark Killens (08:46):
Of time. Yeah. I mean, it is getting really hard to grow using one or two or three channels. I mean, even if you just do LinkedIn really well, in six or 12 months, that channel will start to not be as efficient.
Rachel Elsts Downey (09:03):
Yeah. Yeah. You're constantly having to evolve and create and adapt. And I think even leaning into the Scott prediction, so you talked about the AI and everyone should be creating. I think the other trend that you could sort of tail into this is that great app explosion and talk to us about how you see that, how that's come true.
Mark Killens (09:21):
I mean, it's all these micro apps that are going to probably be built inside companies. That's what Scott talks about and I agree with that. It's like, "Hey, we're going to build an app." And I've heard this from many founders recently where like, "Hey, we lost a deal because they think they can build it in- house." Okay. But again, who's going to maintain that? Who's going to support it? Is it best in class or is it just good enough? That's where I still think we're going through a big transformation of what do you need to buy for software versus not?
(09:49):
And does software just become the cloud?That's one thing with these apps. The cloud was a big thing we talked about in 2000, maybe up until 2010 maybe, but Benny off and he was a big proponent of the cloud and all these on- prem hardware companies and now it's all doing the cloud, AWS, et cetera. Now no one talks about the cloud per se. Is that same thing going to happen to software? It seems like it's trending in maybe that direction and it's not like software apps. It's just like it's something else now. I don't know. What do you think about that?
Rachel Elsts Downey (10:28):
I always go back to you're going to hire great companies because they're great thinkers.
Mark Killens (10:34):
And
Rachel Elsts Downey (10:34):
So when I think about companies who are building apps and things like that and feeling like they're going to turn into a dinosaur, I think that there's a good chance of that. I think just in general, when you think about economies, people are going to think, I want to control both supply and demand, so I'm going to build it in- house. Why not? Except they don't always know how to think about the thing that they didn't like homegrow. And so I think that's the thing I always go back to when we talk about AI, et cetera. It's like, if you're a human thinking about where do I fit in the mix, it's like your job is to continue learning as much as you can about the thing that you've decided to be the master of so that you don't become extinct. AI is, yes, a curator of great ideas.
(11:13):
It is the internet of things coming back at you, but you have to know how to comb through it. And that only comes from experience and experience comes from, or it only comes from wisdom and wisdom only comes from experience. And so if I am a leader, which I am, and the things I'm thinking about, it's like you have to be the one leading the conversation with education, banking it all back on what am I trying to achieve and make sure that everything I say is in support of that.
Mark Killens (11:39):
I agree. So I will leave you the listeners with one other thing. And Rachel, if you've read this, let me know. It's in the show notes every.to, so just every.to. It is one of my favorite publications talking about AI. They do a fantastic job. They built a lot of these low-code, no-code type app experiences. I've tried a couple out. Yeah. I mean, I think practicing this stuff and always learning about it and trying it and reading it, they did some great summaries from like looking back 2025, like, here are the things you could be trying, here are use cases. It's not technical, it's like practical. So check that out as well. So Scott's predictions, every.teo, that's two great resources, I think.
Rachel Elsts Downey (12:26):
The last two thing on Scott's predictions, and I think let's get into the conversation with Courtney, is this idea from big data to big ops, which we've already touched on. It's just like understanding workflows and making sure things are actually connecting. It's more about that, I think, than it is just about data. And then the last one is harmonizing humans and machines, which is so fascinating to me that he wrote this in 2020. And these are the things that we are talking about right now actively is this idea of harmonizing these things and leaning into big ops. I mean, you and I talked about the big surge of the chief revenue officer, but then also now there's rev ops and that's an entirely new category that was not around in 2020, I don't think. So it's fascinating.
Mark Killens (13:05):
It was emerging. It was around. It's now, I think, prolific because of what we've seen in the last five years. And now there's the GTM engineer that clays evangelized. Yeah, I think it's proliferated because AI is only as good as the data, but it's only as good as the data in the way in which you orchestrate it and then use it. I think that's kind of what Scott's saying around, it's not about the data, it's about maybe the orchestration ... What did he say? What did he call it again?
Rachel Elsts Downey (13:33):
It's big ops.
Mark Killens (13:34):
Big ops. Yeah. So it's how you operationalize, orchestrate the data. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel Elsts Downey (13:40):
And I think that the perfect moment to segue into Courtney, which is what I know that you fully believe you should probably get it tattooed, is none of this matters if you're not people first. And so you can have all the tools in the world, all of the tech figured out, all of the predictions in place, but if you don't have the people to implement it, the people to curate it, the people to coordinate it, you're out.
Mark Killens (14:02):
Yeah. And if you don't have the right ... It's three things, storytelling, relationships, and engaging in the right networks, right? People are always going to continue to trust and buy from other people. So yes, it will get more augmented more and more through the stuff we talked about, but it comes down to us that we cannot forget that. We cannot over-index too much in the other direction. So yeah, let's listen to the conversation with Courtney. All right. What's up, Courtney? How you doing today?
Courtney Sembler (14:33):
I'm good, Mark. How are you?
Mark Killens (14:35):
I am good. You and I go way back.
Courtney Sembler (14:37):
I know. I've known you now for a lot longer than I would even care to admit. I was thinking about it the other day. I was like, wow. I was like, Mark met me at a very different stage of my life than where I am today.
Mark Killens (14:51):
Okay. Let's start right now with today then. So what are you doing today? What's going on?
Courtney Sembler (14:55):
Today, I am actually not with HubSpot anymore and I am working with a friend of mine in the customer ed space. So we're doing advisory and consulting and it's a little different than when we worked together years and years ago.
Mark Killens (15:09):
Yeah, we worked together for a long time. I mean, you're doing the same kind of play that I did for a year and a half, two years, something like that after I left Arameet. That was two jobs we were moved from HubSpot. But yeah, you and I, what was that teamed up 2013,
Courtney Sembler (15:24):
14? 2015? 15? Yeah. Must've been 2015.
Mark Killens (15:29):
I thought it was before then. So folks listening, Courtney has a immense amount of wisdom and knowledge when it comes to using education and storytelling, because they are very much related, we'll unpack this, throughout the entire customer life cycle. If you're a longtime listener of this podcast, you know we're all about storytelling and using people first, go to market strategies like relationships and partnerships and a lot of things that can scale, but usually start and they don't scale. So Courtney, you were at HubSpot for like 11 years?
Courtney Sembler (16:10):
Just shy, yes.
Mark Killens (16:12):
Why did you end up wanting to join the academy team? Let's just start, let's go way back now. You're doing something amazing now with customer education. I know that's a very up and coming and more than up and coming. It's own category now, right? Customer education? Oh yeah. But I think it's limiting at the same time. You and I have debated this over the years. It's not just customer education. It's education for everyone.
Courtney Sembler (16:34):
Yeah. I think that's the interesting part of like, we could call it education, but I think that inherently is confusing because there's so much that we call education now, but it's like customer education, I think it needs ... I like to say a glow up. It needs more. It needs to expand its wings a little bit. You could call it customer experience, you could call it a lot of things, but I like to say it's like customer education is in its full maturity stage. Companies, when you say that, they know what you mean. Whether or not they're doing it, they at least understand like, "Okay, yeah, sure. You can use that for retention, onboarding, acquisition." Not all of them are doing that throughout the customer life cycle, but they understand it, which 10 years ago you'd say customer education, people are like, "You mean university training?" You're like, "No, no, no, this is actually what it is.
(17:25):
" And I mean, I got into customer education I think a lot of the way people do, which was totally organically. I liked to train. I liked to help people understand concepts and I did that for HubSpot when I first joined. I was a customer support rep and I loved the one-to-one. They'd get it. They could connect their email calendar, whatever it was and that aha moment. And luckily for me, HubSpot Academy was really starting to blossom internally and I was like, "Oh, there's people over there that do this at a massive scale. I want to do that. " And the lore goes, and I don't know if you've ever heard this story, but I attended Inbound that year for HubSpot and I was a TA for one of the inbound professors and he got offstage and what can only be described as like bull rushed him of like, "What is your job?
(18:24):
How do I get your job? And if you don't like your job, can I have it? " And he was like, "Well, funny enough, I'm leaving this job. The job rec is opening tomorrow. Here's Mark Killens, go talk to him." And I was like, "Yes, thank you very much." And that became a nine and a half year journey with HubSpot Academy.
Mark Killens (18:47):
Okay. We're going to unpack a lot of this. I view education as a very important value add to the actual thing you sell because you hinted at this where you could use a pre-sale, you could use a post-sale. At the end of the day, more and more things will continue to get more and more commoditized, but one way that you can add value outside of just the actual service or product that you sell to people is through how good you are at teaching them at not just using the product, but critically thinking about their business situation, the product you sold them or might sell them, and how to connect those two things together to ultimately make their business more profitable and/or efficient. I think that's a big point that people miss Courtney.
Courtney Sembler (19:31):
It's a big point that people miss too, because I mean, look at what happened this week or end of December, Udemy and Coursera have decided that they're going to merge together and they're going to be this one giant platform. And what I find really interesting about it is like, great, they can do very generic education. Introduction to this, introduction to X, Y, and Z. They can do some skill-based training, but what an organization can do is the contextual learning with their business, product, service, et cetera, with the knowledge of the market to provide that. I like to call it value realization moment. Maybe they can see value through your product, using it, talking to a CSM, but when you're able to educate them, that realization moment belongs to them and that's what gains the trust between you and your customers or your prospects that it's like those light bulb lightning in a bottle.
(20:30):
You get on the phone with them and they're like, "Yep, I'm ready to go. " And that is so missed, I think, in a lot of organizations because they're like, "Oh, education's just like product training."
Mark Killens (20:40):
Yes. So this perfect segue into my next question. In your point of view, you've done this for a long time, what makes education delivered by a business to its customers or potential customers good?
Courtney Sembler (20:56):
One, I love the question because part of me wants to be like, "Oh, good is so general." We can talk about so many different ways that good looks. To me, there's this really lovely combination and we used to talk about it, right? It's like the one plus one is going to equal three, right? What are going to be the things we build together? Good education for your customers is going to include a couple of things. I'm not going to get into microphones, video, blah, blah, blah. Good education is going to change the hearts, minds, and hands of your customer. They need to feel like they can do it, right? They're competent. They know how to do it, and then they're able to translate that into usage. You used to use the framework like the why, how, and what, of why do they care? How is it going to work and what's it going to look like?
(21:55):
I've sort of brought that in of good education is going to change hearts, minds, and hands to be able to take what you think you know, get confident in it, show how it's going to work, and then be able to turn that into usage.
Mark Killens (22:08):
Like that framework a lot. You make a good point about good though. We used to talk about this idea of execute with excellence, which I still talk about my current teams and life execute-
Courtney Sembler (22:17):
I'm surprised I don't have it tattooed on my arm at this point. I
Mark Killens (22:21):
Got to give Frank Ozer, who was my mentor and former boss at HubSpot way back when, the credit for inspiring me with that, but execute with excellence. So yeah, you don't want just good. You want excellence. You want excellent education. And I think the way you just broke it down, hearts, minds, hands helps people say you got to inspire them, right? You got to get them to feel something, like believe in something. And it doesn't have to be a crazy, big, aspirational thing, but at the end of the day, because there's so much sludge and slop coming out now through the machines that are creating all this nonsense, you're going to need original storytelling, original thoughts, original research. But I think education is one of those things that can be part of that equation to not just get someone's attention and keep it, but like you said, value realization.
(23:16):
How do you deliver value to them even before they might buy your product or service? Because if you could do that, you're building trust maybe faster, but you're definitely building probably more trust, which is like the ultimate thing these days. It's all about trust. So that's something we used to talk a lot about, right? Courtney, it's trust. What's your take on ... Let's unpack both sides, pre-sale versus post-sale when you think about this customer education stuff. Yeah.
Courtney Sembler (23:40):
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's in there with trust too is the human connection and the ability to show that you care. I think one of the big trade-offs we're making right now with AI produced education, content, et cetera, is that you're not able to have that bidirectional care. I'm not being trained by someone who put effort in. They just wanted to check a box that they educated me. And that was something early days we talked about, which was you were going to bring your full self into the education, which means you were going to create the content, you were going to review it, you were going to make sure that you know what you were actually talking about, which shows that deep connection from the human side. And pre-sales, that's really, really important because it is providing value before you extract value.
(24:34):
What's the number one thing that happens in a pre-sales motion? You get on a call with a sales rep who you know wants to sell the crap out of you. They're like, "I got to make this deal." You know they don't necessarily care about you, but in a pre-sales motion with education, we're able to actually deliver that upfront. And often it's education about everything but your product. What are the methodologies, philosophies, frameworks, strategies that yeah, you could probably use your product to deliver, but we're not there yet. We're talking about the framing. I like to think about it as like, you can go build a really nice kitchen before you build the house, but you need the four walls outside before you're actually going to invite somebody in. And so how do we build those walls? How do we create that trust and that virality of like people sharing your ideas before they're even a customer.
(25:29):
That was the magic behind some of the early days of the inbound certification, which was like we had all these people who were certified in inbound. It's like, are they even customers? It's like, no. There are people going around doing marketing for us because they're like, "I'm certified and I feel great and confident about this. " And then that sales rep who initially might not have cared as much as you want them to is now pretty invested because this is an educated customer. They know what's up, they're asking better questions and you're actually able to have what I like to call the quote unquote real conversation where you break down the walls because you're both on the same side of the table. No longer is it, you have the information and I have to get it. We both now have the information we can have a better conversation about it.
Mark Killens (26:15):
Educate with passion is another thing we talked about. That is definitely what you're hitting at. The people that are truly passionate, and you can tell it's very hard to fake passion. That is not just from like a education standpoint, but when you think about good marketing, good selling,
(26:33):
You need that spark, you need that fire, you need someone who's passionate, who cares. Love that. We actually just created a simple framework for Easylana, we're just calling it the EasyLAMA employee training framework, super simple, not trying to overcomplicate it, which you don't have to folks, by the way. You don't have to create a category like HubSpot. And we're just laying out, we think that every business should start with compliance and then security training and then job training because compliance and security training are the ultimate things that from a legal standpoint, a financial and reputational standpoint are the things that will protect your employees and business and customers. You really need to, in some cases, you have to do this. So when you find that, to your point, that way to describe the importance and convey that in a way that doesn't feel so product marketing or like just positioning or messaging crap, but like say like, "Look, I'm going to teach you a really important thing that either is fact or we believe it's fact for these reasons, these macro reasons or these business problem reasons." And you can explain it in a logical way that gets people to understand it.
(27:37):
And then to your point, apply it. That is a huge value add in the sales process. You brought up certifications. I want to quickly pivot before we talk about post-sale. Do you believe in certification still?
Courtney Sembler (27:49):
It's interesting that you say that. There's two points that I want to make on this is like the first is if we were to update today like the educate with passion, I think you're nailing something that we haven't been able to communicate prior, which is you need opinionated passion. You can't just have passion, you need direction for it. And every organization can be opinionated about something. You don't have to go invent something. It's just what is your organization uniquely positioned as your product, your service, your ideas, and it's often already written in your internal memos, in your internal value proposition, et cetera. You just have to find the language that's going to take it out externally. And that intersection between opinions and passion, I think is directly where often pre-sales education should live. And trust me, you don't have to be some crazy influencer. Some of the best education that Academy produced was that of like, we believe, just to your point, we believe this thing about how to do marketing and we believe it in this way and here's this two, three, four, five step structure that makes it possible.
(29:01):
Now let me tell you about it. Now, the spicy side of that is, do you have to certify someone on that to make it valuable in the market or to make it as recognizable? I believe in achievements. I believe that achievements still need scarcity. You cannot badge everything because then you just dilute the value. A great example is when I first got my Peloton bike, I was obsessed. I wanted all of the different milestones. I wanted to have the hundred days of the cycling, et cetera. Now I get a badge for every single thing I do on the platform. I logged in the other day and it was like, "Congratulations." And I'm like, "I've done nothing. I haven't been on my bike in months. This is ridiculous." And so if you're going to go the certification route, I think it is still really valuable, but you have to have the intersection between opinions and passion and something that's Actually worthwhile to certify in.
(30:03):
Spicy, not spicy. I think OpenAI is actually going down a really dangerous path in this by being able to say, "Oh, we now have OpenAI for educators, OpenAI for veterans, OpenAI for this, and you can get certified." What does that mean? How am I an OpenAI veteran certified? I think if you can't say the sentence of, "I am inbound marketing certified, which provides X, Y, Z, you probably shouldn't be certified." And no hate on OpenAI. They're figuring out like everybody else, but I think there's a really dangerous motion in there of, "Well, we have to have a certification, so let's just do it.
Mark Killens (30:44):
" A certification these days, you need to have a larger business reason to do it. HubSpot, the whole reason was it started with actually the partners. The agency partners, they were like, "We need a certification. We need a vote of confidence from HubSpot and you're going to tell us that we're legit." And then that sort of the compound, but then it became, wait a minute, no, this whole idea of marketing is so new, the category, we should make sure people know how to use it. Salesforce did not create it. Someone else before Salesforce created this idea. But Salesforce did a good job with the developer type certifications way back. What was that? 2002, three.
Courtney Sembler (31:25):
It was very early days of Trailhead, Salesforce, and it was powerful.
Mark Killens (31:30):
Well, I got to say Trailhead came out after HubSpot Academy. I will say that. And they did a good job. They've done a good job with it. I think you've done a better job. So getting back though to education, so we talked pre-sale. I think post-sale makes more sense in a way, but we should unpack it because you made a point, but you didn't exactly say it. When it comes to education, it's about doing things more efficiently almost, because if you do educate you right, it's not just going to be a one-to-one type thing.
Courtney Sembler (32:05):
Yeah. And the post-sale journey, I think that's actually a big element, which is it can start, one, your post-sale journey starts before they become a customer. Just keep that in mind. Your customers don't see the handoff. They don't see the trade-off. The second you start talking to them, your renewal starts at day one, not at day 350. So don't forget that. And with education, that's actually, when I look at the whole customer journey, education is the underlay for every single element of it because there's a value add at each of those different stages. Pre-sale, sure, there's a lot there that we can talk about. But as they make that migration into being a customer, onboarding, early usage, like upsell, cross-sell, all of these areas are an opportunity for you to educate so they see value so that your business gets the intended outcome that you are looking for and your customer is looking for.
(33:12):
I love the idea of talking about education plus your business outcomes as the and motion, not the or motion, which is a lot of organizations. I still hear this rhetoric, which is like, "Well, we really need to drive retention." And so we can't really invest in education. And I think about it as or. It's like, oh, we either educate or we get KPIs or business value. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. Just because it's a long tail play and you're going to see it in a couple of months versus right in the moment for your customer, that's not the right way to think about it. We want to think about the short-term value, usage, getting a customer in, learning, and the long-term value of retention so that when you're talking to CSMs, account managers, now even agents that you're deploying for the post-sale motion, they have the right tools, education, information to supply in those different areas.
(34:14):
And I will add, if you are doing any sort of agentic agent elements, your education, as it can train your customers, can also train your AI models. Don't sleep on the fact that you have all of that information, hopefully ready to go and package in language that still speaks a human output, not a, "This is your answer. Is that right?" You still have that human element that you can deploy in an agentic way.
Mark Killens (34:44):
What's the best way then to deliver education today? If you're thinking about format, delivery, modality, what have you seen in your days at HubSpot? You were around a lot longer than I was. You're consulting a lot of businesses now. I feel like a lot of things you're putting on this AI comment you just made. Lots of things are changing. How do you know which way to best deliver the education?
Courtney Sembler (35:10):
Yeah, it all starts with your intended outcome. There's no one silver bullet. Education is valuable in all of its modalities depending on what you're trying to solve for. And I think people get that equation inverted. One of the best conversations I'm ever a part of is like, "We just need short and dirty, quick content." I'm like, "Cool, to do what? " And they're like, "No, no, we just need it to happen right now." I'm like, "Great. What are we trying to do? Are we trying to move a usage number? Are we trying to use an adoption number? What are we trying to achieve? And let's marry the outcome to the right modality and format." Now, there's a lot out there that you can pick from. Some that are going to be at the top for you to choose from no matter what is short form content.
(35:58):
People like, they're always going to like the short version. They want to get things done and you can bleed that into longer versions. One of the best things Academy ever done was when we moved to modular content where we thought about the big picture, but we made everything in bite size pieces. One, it made it a hell of a lot easier to update. Keep that in mind. Your product's going to update. It probably just did. The second is you can then break it out and put it together. So if you need to embed the 30 second version, great, but there's a longer version for someone who might need it. The second element is for me, there's a lot of research out there that's going to be very pro video and very con video.
(36:43):
You're probably somewhere in the mix. I don't think video is going anywhere. I would say that video is changing now probably more than ever because it's becoming easier and easier to make videos at scale with some of these AI tools and we need to be cautious about that. Education and content and marketing materials, while they live in the same realm sometimes, they're different. And if you just upload something to a AI video platform and it spits out a video, please do not call that education. Education requires you to have an outcome, an intention, something that you're guiding somebody to and video can be really easily commoditized in that way. It's like, "Oh, it's a video. It's education." I'm like, "Is it though? Are you actually taking someone from point A to point B or are you just spewing ideas at them?" Which might be valuable depending on your outcome.
(37:46):
I'd say the last element that gets slept on a lot is the interactive element, which is whether it's a quiz, like a word matching, something that somebody can do, particularly in a demo format. That type of education is often the most contextual and where you're going to see the most upside, even if it's a little harder to build, but nowadays, use lovable. Use something where you are just vibe coding these great interactive elements, even if it's not built into your LMS natively.
Mark Killens (38:19):
I wish my co-host, Rachel, was here for this interview because she's got a new, I don't know how new it is, but she's got a great framework that's person media channel. So you start the person, you apply the media that makes sense for them, and then you look at that in the context of the channel that you're going to deploy the media on or to. So it's like, that's pretty good. I like that. Very people first, person, media, channel. And I'm like, Rachel, you got to put a name to this. That's very important, positioning and messaging. But the reason I bring that up is how do you teach someone to go from what they're doing today to an approach like that? Because a lot of people today, from a marketing standpoint, think channels. I got to use this channel to drive demand or awareness and then I'm going to create some stuff and then they probably don't even think about the person.
(39:08):
It's like, well, they think about the audience maybe, hopefully, like who's supposed to be the intended viewer, consumer of the message, of the media, but they're not thinking about, well, how do we best deliver that? And I say all this because video, yes, deepfakes. I just did a webinar about cybersecurity and impersonation, deep fakes. I mean, who knows? Maybe you're not even real right now, Courtney. Maybe it's a deep fake
Courtney Sembler (39:36):
Word. I was like, am I real?
Mark Killens (39:37):
Yeah. But the idea of video evolving is spot on. We have been trying out a few new AI simulations or scenarios. I call it basically conversational learning. So the idea is, and I'd love to get your take on this because I think it's more advanced, but maybe not. Maybe it's an easier way for a business to get started with education where they take their knowledge base, their wealth of education or content or whatever it is, and they give it to a simple LLM and that LLM gets trained through humans helping it. And it's able to create a two-way dialogue and teach someone about the idea of starting with people, then media, then channels, versus just someone reading something or watching a video. So have you done anything with the two-way interactive educational experience versus more the ... It's not passive, I'm listening, but it's like not interactive, I guess, to your point.
Courtney Sembler (40:33):
Yeah. And I actually think that's what AI is enabling us to do, which is for so long in this space while you were a customer ed leader, L&D, doesn't matter. We've been eager for that, how do I reach through the computer and connect with you? And now AI is saying, "Hey, we actually have these tools that enable you to do that, " because that's exactly it. You want to facilitate a conversation, get the customer also to give you the information that enables you to build better content, because if you have a two-way interaction, you are now using that as a data source for your next round of content that you can have because they might ask a question you wouldn't have thought of that you can now build into the model. And there's a lot of tools out there that can do that. One example is OneMind where they were initially using it for BDR type conversations and they're entering into a new space where imagine if you had Fiona, I think is their main personality and you train her on your entire course and you say, "Okay, Fiona, Mark's going to come in and ask you a bunch of questions about this framework and you're going to talk to him about it.
(41:43):
" Now, there's going to be different places you get stuck that in a passive or video-based text-based experience, we'd have no idea. We've been able to hypothesize, "Oh, Mark dropped off after video two. Maybe it wasn't engaging or it didn't give him the answers he was looking for, but we've never been able to know. " But now if you're responding and you're saying, "Fiona, that makes no sense to me. " Say it again, give it to me in a different example, et cetera. What I love about where we're headed is it actually mimics ... It's a funny analogy, but it resonates with me, which is it sort of mimics like a spelling bee. Someone asks you to spell a word, you ask for its definition, can you use it in a sentence? Can you give me an example? And that's exactly what we're now able to enable for folks is it can be contextual for their experience because we have access to the information.
(42:44):
How many times did we try to create the quiz when someone comes into your learning platform? It's like, "Tell us all about you and we'll contextualize the learning." Yeah, you ask for job title, where they're located, that's not enough. But if you can now have a two-way ... And it doesn't have to be fancy, big avatar, it doesn't need to be human-like. It can just be a way for someone to speak, text, et cetera, live with something that you're able to capture data in.
Mark Killens (43:13):
Yeah. So you feel that is inevitable or no?
Courtney Sembler (43:19):
I don't think it's inevitable because at the end of the day, it's still to go back to your business outcome. You're starting with the people, you're starting with your outcome, that is where you have to start. And in some cases, it's not going to be enough or it's going to be too complex. You try to explain in that way, like complex security, GDPR or some crazy framework like that, it might not translate. You might need a little bit of the video-based education, but that's where we're headed is the combination of these things, which to the point of how we start to reframe this for a lot of folks is one of the things that I've talked with folks about for years is convincing your leadership, whatever it is, that education is the right formality, et cetera, for what you're trying to do. The executive team is always going to lead with numbers, tell me what it's going to be able to provide.
(44:19):
And so often we lead with the feeling, right? We lead with like, "Well, it'll be good for people. It'd be good for our customers." And we actually need to take a little bit of the playbooks from sales and marketing and lead with the outcomes that it can deliver. And then we're almost like, if you take that framework of people, media channel, it's like outcome, people, media channel of if you thought about this like a flywheel and your business cares about the outcome, but in theory, every business outcome should have a value for the person on the other side or the value actually doesn't end up coming back around for your business. So we start with outcome, we also were thinking about people, then we can deliver, I think of maybe even like a brand chain of like, what's the media, what's the channel? Great. We can now create this like one plus one is going to equal three for our business, for the person, and we can stop wasting time using modalities that don't make sense anymore.
(45:22):
You need to evaluate that for your customer base. Some customers, if you lead with the AI education, the lack of trust they will have with all the other content you deliver to them, you're never going to be able to come back from that.
Mark Killens (45:36):
I think you have to, if you do AI education, especially now, you have to disclose that, number one. I think you have to. And I just don't think it's good enough. And I think it can be good enough, but you still need to disclose it and you're just going to lack the humanness required to build trust at scale until we're so trained, which will probably come at some point, right? Who would've thought social media could train us like it did, but like- True. ... to kind of just know that's like a normal thing or whatever. But yeah, I mean, look, we could keep going for good hours, sir. No joke folks. Courtney and I could riff on this stuff for a long time. I think the last thing I'll kind of bring up with the outcome piece, it's got to be both ways though. The outcome just for the business, yes, but also, I don't think you're not saying this, but just to clarify, it's the outcome for the customer.
(46:24):
What's the value- The
Courtney Sembler (46:24):
Customer.
Mark Killens (46:25):
The customer needs, right? It's both. It's both.
Courtney Sembler (46:28):
Yes. And if you're able to put that in front of your executive team connected, which is, I always like to lead if we're having a controversial conversation is like, "Hey, let's align first of, you and I both agree that we are a customer first organization, right?" We say that publicly. A lot of organizations say they're customer first. How can we be customer first if we don't lead with the value to the customer
(47:00):
You can't, that equation isn't going to equal. Yes, I know we need to hit business metrics. How do you hit a business metric if it's not valuable to the person who's purchasing it? You can easily keep rounding that conversation back to the customer using the language that resonates the most with people who are CEOs, founders, et cetera. It's just going to take you asking some of those uncomfortable questions initially of like, "Wait, I thought we were a customer first organization." Or, "Hey, I thought this was about delivering value to the customer." Okay, here's the way that we do that, that becomes an and a multiplier, not a subtractor. And building that momentum is going to take us kind of having a hard look at what we actually believe our product or service is going to deliver to these customers.
Mark Killens (47:50):
Well said. Courtney, always a pleasure. Always, always a pleasure. I think this is one of the most important things a business can invest in. So many businesses are trying to find a magic bullet to growth, to whatever, distribution. Focus on education, focus on the fundamentals.
Courtney Sembler (48:13):
Yeah. And focus on, and it sounds kind of silly, but being excited about delivering value to your customers because they will pick up on that. I still remember early days of academy being at Inbound and having people come up to me and being like, "You're a real person. You're not a contractor. You're not like a paid actor." And those people still today, I got one in my inbox yesterday or like, "I was just watching some videos from you from a while ago and I just wanted to thank you. " You're never going to have that if they don't see the person. And that's where it can be tough to unpack. And we can talk about that at another point of like, I'm not saying you have to be a personality or an influencer, you just need to be real and to also admit that you are.
(49:02):
There's a value being like, "I had to once upon a time learn this and now that's why I'm helping you. "
Mark Killens (49:07):
Yep. Yeah. Super well said. Genuine and authentic. You got to be genuine and authentic. Okay. All right folks, that's another episode of the news desk. Hope you enjoyed it. Courtney, thank you so much.
Courtney Sembler (49:19):
Thanks so much, Mark.
Mark Killens (49:20):
Thanks for joining us on this episode of GTM Newsdesk, presented by TACK and produced in partnership with Share Your Genius. For more newsworthy GTM content, head to tackgtm.com and join our community at thegtmlibrary.com. Until next time.