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Welcome to The Outpost, where customer marketers trade what works.
This is where your peers are sharing their best customer marketing and advocacy plays –– the ones that get their CEO's attention.
Join us every other week for new episodes. And to join one of our sessions live and unlock the content that will define your next best play, mosey on over to userevidence.com/outpost
Jillian Hoefer (00:15):
Welcome to The Outpost, our inaugural session here at The Outpost. I'm Jillian Hoefer. I run content here at User Evidence. Thrilled to have you here for our very, very first session. So come on up to the porch of the Outpost. I've got my little Western garb on today and I'm at the end of my slides. Hold on. Let me get back to the beginning for us here. So we have an amazing first presenter here today. Cache Walker is the director of customer marketing over at Trellix. And the way the Outpost works is that I am here just to get us set up and kind of facilitate some questions throughout, but then I'm getting offstage. This is Cache's time to shine. He's here to share with you as a peer and a practitioner who's in the weeds. But I just want to set some context to show you that today, Cache is talking about how they over at Trellix are building a reference program that is pretty much negating the need for references.
(01:01):
Cache and I actually had a prep session for this together last week just to make sure we were buttoned up, ready to go. Content was good and helpful. I think he mentioned three times in that call that we had together like, "I just don't like references. I don't like fulfilling references. So if you feel the same way, this might be a good foray into how to build a program that would hopefully make them unnecessary." Because we like to give a little topographical map of the terrain here, I want to just set the standard here by saying we surveyed last year 800 plus B2B buyer, sellers, and marketers. There are numbers to back up the fact that references are just one lever. Obviously, you guys know this, you're doing this every day, but only 38% of the buyers that we surveyed last year ranked one-to-one customer references among the most trustworthy type of evidence.
(01:46):
As you can see in that first stat, 78% of those same buyers said that really the most important factor when evaluating new software is just proof that the vendor has delivered success for customers like them. It doesn't have to be a reference call. It can be in other ways, which spoiler, that's what Cache is talking about today, how to diversify that program. So before I make way, before I get off the stage and invite him up on the Outpost stage and porch here, I want to just set the lay of the land. We got a couple laws here. We don't want any outlaws in the Outpost. So these are all fun, trust me. So number one, the Outpost runs on trade. So you're obviously welcome to listen here, but this is supposed to be a back and forth. If you've got a question, if you have a, we tried this once and it didn't work, it did work, throw it in the chat.
(02:28):
Going into number two, the campfire's always on. So that chat rolling this whole time, nothing is distracting. Cache even said he's excited to take questions during the actual session. So if you've got something to say, if you want to raise your hand and say, "Whoa, well, hold on, hold up. Let's actually dig into the tactic here or dig in a little bit deeper." Pop it in the chat. I'm facilitating. I'll get them over to Cache and we will stop in the moment and answer them. So Campfire is always on over in that chat. Number three, the most important law of all, no snake oil. Anything that Cache mentions today, whether it is a platform he uses, a product he uses, a tactic, a playbook, whatever. We did not ask him to mention anything today. We did not ask him to not mention anything today. This is truly his stage to do whatever with he wants.
(03:08):
No snake oil. It is all stuff that he is actually doing and practically doing in his day-to-day work. So without further ado, I'm so excited to bring Mr. Cache Walker to the stage. Cache, welcome.
Cache Walker (03:21):
Good morning.
Jillian Hoefer (03:23):
Okay, Cache. So based on our chitchat last week when we were prepping, I know we kind of level set a little bit of a soapbox moment. I'm going to transition it over to you. Just tell us why we're here and why this is an important conversation to be having at the moment.
Cache Walker (03:38):
Oh, man. On a Monday. I got to get my energy up by saying yeehaw to that intro video, right? So I think it's an important conversation to have. I think all of these conversations are important to have. I have so many of them with folks. And I think every program is unique. Every organization that you're looking to drive value for is unique. So your challenges are likely going to be different in different ways. And I think the best thing you can do is be open-minded and curious to do new things new way, but also be reasonable with yourselves.
(04:22):
Look to make changes and I'll talk about things and you'll never go zero to 60. That's just not how these things work. I was having a conversation a couple of weeks ago. I had three of them in a row where folks were talking about switching their reference systems, which wasn't necessarily what we're talking about today, but they were talking about doing it in a matter of a month. And they were like, "How do you think this is going to go? " And I was like, "Well, it's not. " These things don't happen overnight. These are cultural changes. These sometimes involve system changes. That's going to take you three quarters. I think if you're being generous, you're going to ask for four quarters and you're going to deliver early in three quarters, but be reasonable with yourselves and don't expect like, "Oh my gosh, I'm not doing that.
(05:10):
Oh, I'm behind the times. I got to do this. " It's such an overwhelming job and there's always so many things to do. So don't expect to take anything anyone tells you, especially me, but anything anyone tells you and turn it on from night to day.That's not how these things work. We see sales systems switch for sales teams and a CRO comes in and they take a year to implement a cultural change. Our systems are equally complex. I know that we get tight deadlines, but we really have to start pushing back on those and be reasonable with ourselves because I think otherwise folks are going to get burnt out and that's never a place we want to be. So that's kind of my soapbox moment. Listen to what I say if you find it interesting, awesome, but these things didn't happen overnight. They won't happen overnight for you.
(06:02):
I mean, likely y'all are a lot smarter than I am, so they'll probably have faster, but be reasonable with yourself and set yourself up for success by establishing kind of those guidelines and those timelines that'll allow you to do things in a way that makes sense for you and your organization.
Jillian Hoefer (06:20):
Awesome, Kash. You can take it from here. Go ahead, take over the slides. I'll be hanging out here and popping questions over if we've got them and kind of pausing you if we want to dig into a tactic. But the floor is yours, my friend.
Cache Walker (06:31):
It's a dangerous, dangerous world we live in. All right. So where are we exactly? We are here. If y'all are expecting a technical walkthrough, it's not going to happen. I'm likely not your guy. This is going to be pretty philosophical. This is going to be kind of some different ways of thinking. The best way, so you can see my buddy on the right there, Mr. Buttercup. The best way to lead a cow is to pull him in a circle. And so today we're going to be circling up a little bit and getting things together. So when we look at what we're going to talk about today, if you look at it in one way, reference systems have always been designed to match folks for a one-to-one call. Either you had a system full of 500 advocates that you match based off of tags and you found them industry matches or size and you combined them, you facilitated a call or you handed it over to your sales team to facilitate the call.
(07:42):
They were set up to have these calls happen.
(07:48):
What I've been working towards, A, as Jillian mentioned, I really hate that whole back and forth and matching folks for a call. I hate the whole concept of reference calls. And so I'm working to build a system where that's the last thing that ever happens. If that happens, that is assigned to me and that's something I look at is some of my validation upfront or some of my evidence that I've provided to the sellers or publicly through Gartner Pear Insights or wherever it might be has failed. We didn't provide enough stuff that gave them the confidence they needed to move forward. So I think if you're going to look at this, you look at it backwards or upside down, right? Reimagine how the engine works and what your goals are. You can't look at it. If you've always been looking at it as how many reference calls do we drive, you can't look at it as that.
(08:47):
You've got to look at it as how much revenue are we going to impact? How are we going to do that? What's the best way to scale? A lot of you probably have had team shifts or changes where you're being asked to do more. Matching folks one by one is incredibly time consuming. So for me, this is a matter of force multiplying and getting ahead of that. So I'm not looking to necessarily take Mr. Buttercup there on a walk. I'm pulling him in a circle to get him organized so that he learns not to use his horns on my backside. So that's where we are. That's what we're going to chat about today. So if y'all have questions, Jillian or questions come up, keep them coming because this is meant to be a discussion. So first of all, let's talk about some ways you can start changing minds.
(09:37):
I know in multiple stops in my career, I've used the Clarion call that every customer is a reference. Whether they like us, whether they don't like us, they are a reference. And I think that's always going to be true, right? Even we've seen it shift from the way analysts interact with our organizations. They're less reliant on, "Hey, give me your best handpicked folks." They want to self-surface. And I think as, and we'll talk about this a little bit further on, but I think as AI gets further adopted, you've got to be everywhere, right? And that's where your customers, if they're on a Reddit thread, they're just as powerful as if they're on your website. It's not going to matter where they exist. You've got to embrace them as a reference and look for that. So what we do is we work with our team on leading indicators, right?
(10:36):
So that we really are analyzing that referenceability. That's not a word. I've tried to submit it to Webster 47 times. It really should be a word because referenceability, I think, is the best sign of health at an account. If you have an account that's not willing to go and talk to somebody or do something with y'all that is positive and say, "You really nailed this. " I had a customer recently that said professional services is so good, it wouldn't even matter what the product does. And I'm like, "That is such a good quote." I'm like, "I don't care what our product does either if our people far exceed it. " And I think looking at that ability of references and just ... I mean, I have conversations with my PS leaders or with my customer support leaders, PS's professional services. I hate talking in acronyms.
(11:33):
Sorry, everyone. But about them, I'm like, "Hey, y'all got to make sure that your teams are measured on this measure of success." There is no way that they should get more credit for an NPS score than a customer doing a full-fledged interview or a customer participating in a webinar. Those are the ultimate signs that the customer's willing to go to the bat for us and those are the people that have made that happen reflected in their job metrics, make that matter to them because it matters to us. So when we talk about every customer as a reference, this is kind of my mindset on that. Is there anything so far, Jillian, that's popped up that folks are thinking we're crazy on as we get
Jillian Hoefer (12:21):
Started? No, Preston just came in the chat and said he added a referenceable to his laptop's dictionary because he got tired of the red squiggle.
Cache Walker (12:28):
Smarter than I am. Send me a note of how to do that.
Jillian Hoefer (12:30):
I know. I'm super smart.
Cache Walker (12:32):
Like I said, most of the folks on this call will be like, "This guy's crazy." All right. So now that we've got that covered, let's dive into a couple more things. So this deflection engine. So as I talked about flipping the things upside down, that is literally what we have done. If you look, I don't know, I mean, if y'all's eyes are better than mine, I can squint and barely see, but at the bottom of this well-designed funnel that I so amazingly did, I think with Gemini, it says request one reference call with customers. That's the last thing I want them getting to. A, it's a hassle for me, but B, there is so much more efficient things that I can drive upstream from that, that can be accessed instantly, that can be used across sales. I know that if you're in this role, you've had, God bless them, an SER or somebody reach out and say, "Hey, I need a reference for our best customer." And you're like, "Wow, okay.
(13:36):
Which account executive are you working with? " They're like, "I'm not, but I've got this prospect that came in through chat and they're so ready for everything. Who can we have them take a call with? We need somebody from X, Y, Z organization." And you're like, "I hate to crush your poor spirits, but that is not happening." But in this world, this can happen. And I say, "Oh my gosh, that is great." So stoked. They came in through chat, so excited about Trellix. Let's get them this materials from their industry. You can give them this validation. It comes validated, whether it's through Gartner, whether it's through user evidence, wherever else we've gathered it, it's part of our evidence engine. Let's share that with them. And I've never had that call end, not with, "Oh my gosh, this is awesome. Thank you. " They really didn't need a call.
(14:33):
They probably didn't even know what to do with a one-to-one call with our best customer, but they needed something to help them and the customer along. So in a best case scenario, that happens, like I talked about, this isn't something that I'm like, yeah, this is, I mean, you can see instant access to resources. They have it. I'm not saying that everybody is always ready to go grab what they need out of Seismic or wherever else it might exist. They still reach out. It still involves some interaction on occasion, but we're trying to train them the right things to do. And I'm confident that next time that SDR will look at that content repository first and save him that outreach. But if we're looking at evidence, and then the reason I refer to it as evidence and not content or all these other things is because evidence is truth, right?
(15:27):
If you're preparing for a trial, you're not out there looking like, "Oh, who can we get? What can we do? " You're looking at the facts and the evidence. So that's how I look at it is let's garner the evidence. Along the way, some of the evidence I discover is things that need to be funneled back to my product team. That is fine. That is great because truth is truth. It's going to drive change regardless of where it's ingested. And so that's kind of become my obsession is ... And I actually pitched it to my VP last week. I said, "Hey, you know, I really think my job title should update to director of customer evidence and engagement as we launch a community here in March." So this is something I obviously feel strong about, but I think it's maybe a unique way to look at these things.
(16:23):
But when you look at evidence first, do we have evidence to cover all of these gaps? Then you can look at, okay, where did our deflection fell if a one-to-ones call is needed? How do we get that evidence produced? What could we do with a customer that we would do one time that could then be used multiple times? I think when you're starting to look at things like that, you're starting to look in the right way.
(16:46):
You're probably not going to be able to do this day one or you're going to have some really pissed off reps, but you can start down the path, right? This is a journey. This is something we've been working towards in my two and a half years here at Trellix. And so I think as you embrace it, we all know these things. We all know our customers have limited time. We've always been working to limit burnout in our advocate base. And I think when you look at evidence production from them, that's some good ways of doing that. I think the one-to-one calls are what kind of triggers some of that burnout.
Jillian Hoefer (17:27):
Yeah. Kash, so Jillian brought up a good point in the chat. If your solution is seven plus figures, a one-on-one call is still quite standard. So obviously you're not saying this completely negates the need for references I know. So maybe talk through a little bit that actual, what does that deflection strategy look like in day-to-day life for you? When a rep comes to you and says, "I need a one-to-one reference," what's your little map in your head of how you get to the point of, do they actually need evidence or do they actually need a call? What's that kind of process for you?
Cache Walker (18:00):
Yeah, that's a great question. And just to be clear, Trellix used to be Magafee. So in the security space, our deals aren't little. Those zeros aren't ... We're not talking about SMB references or things like that, but I think you have to build confidence. One of the biggest deals, I think it would've been ... Let me calculate zeros. It would've been an eight-figure deal. This is a globally recognized brand and they were going to a presentation and they said, "I think following the presentation, we're going to need to do some one-to-one calls." I said, "Okay, that's great. Going into that presentation, would you mind including this slide that I produced just for you, just for this customer to show real customer feedback from three different organizations in their space?" And I never facilitated a call after that presentation and we won the deal. So I get it.
(19:08):
If that rep has never done this, which most of them haven't taken this approach before, you're going to need to help them win regardless. You can't turn off the faucet, you got to help them win. But I think even as you lean towards that, one tactic might be like, "Hey, yeah, that's great. Let me work on setting up this call. In the meantime, here's this super valuable piece of content." And then you can pressure test the content by sending it to them beforehand to share with their prospect. And I would love to get any feedback on this as I look to match them with a call. I think it might inform, even if it comes back and it's like, "Yeah, they want a call, but now they want to zero in on this specific topic." I don't think it's ever value lost from leading with evidence, even if you do have to default.
(19:55):
I'm not saying I can ever get rid of one-to-one calls. My most expensive line item this year is a reference system. So it's just my philosophy that I really would like to prioritize getting away from them. Hopefully that was clear. I didn't just mumble on.
Jillian Hoefer (20:15):
No, for sure. And Jennifer even said in the chat, if an RFP requires it, there's no way around it in most cases, but what can we do to change the culture with RFP standards? And I think in your next slide, Kash, I know you're going to start talking a little bit about almost that cultural shift that also comes with how you build up some of those pieces of evidence. So maybe we can get into that and some of these other questions will come to fruition.
Cache Walker (20:38):
Yeah. Freaking RFPs, man. Those are the worst, aren't they? Yeah. And I think an RFP is a perfect example because a lot of them, it's so tricky because you've got to list somebody, but then it's going to be public record and you're like, who do I list? When are they going to contact them? How are they going to contact? It's just like the ultimate reason of why we need to continually shift our stakeholders more towards a better future. And so I would say when I look at it, unless something also fails, and y'all are going to look at this and be like, "What exactly does he do? " But I don't look at it as I create any of the content. I curate and manage the content. I work with my professional services team to curate and manage content with their customers. We have a big thing going right now called our Flex Stories, and I work with them to get a Flex Story captured and then publish it.
(21:40):
I write a lot of it, but I don't create the story. They created the story when they had success with the customer for the outcome. I just get to go in and figure out how we're going to take that to market and how we're going to curate it. And I think when you start to look at it like that, you tap into these different teams because you're like, "I'm not going to go create any case studies. I'm not going to go create any use cases, but if my product team has a new use case, I'm then, hey, what five customers are we doing this with as we roll this out to beta? Who have you done it with? Can we get on a call with them? Let's talk through it with them." They've created the outcome. They've created the story. You just go in and capture it sometimes.
(22:23):
But I think I used to always think of it as I create case studies. I got to create 15 case studies this year or whatever the metric is. And as I've kind of taken myself out of it and I'm like, "I don't create any of the case studies. I just empower these folks to get these stories captured when they've done something awesome." Holistically, it all works better, but we're using all of our teams at the input phase. We're using all of our teams. I don't just use our evidence for our sellers, our renewals managers use it, our CSMs use it. Trellix has a very interesting legacy base, right? I think last calculation, like 40,000 customers as we came from McAfee and became a new entity. But so there's people all over the chain that I want to use our evidence. I want our product team to use our evidence when doing analyst briefings.
(23:18):
And so we try to tie this into every team. Some teams give content better or give stories better. Some teams use it better, but we just are working with them as partners and trying to get their input as much as we can into the system. I'm a team of one, and so I can't create all of this. I just have to be air traffic control and be out there kind of guiding it. Hopefully that clears up maybe some of that. I think this next one talks about confidence too. So I think that's when we get into kind of the sellers too.
Jillian Hoefer (23:56):
Yeah. Cindy did bring up a good question though that I think you could talk through a little bit now. Cache is basically like, how is this evidence being captured by the field? So how is your PS team support team? How are they actually capturing it so that you then can become the curator and the sharer?
Cache Walker (24:11):
Yeah. Great question. So they're probably already capturing it. There's a lot of surveys they do, right? And sometimes they do them, sometimes they don't. But that'd be a question I would be asking is, what type of surveys are we doing, sending out to our teams at the end of professional engagements? Is there things there we can harvest? If not, let me help you partner and build a survey. Surveys are super effective to capture large scale, right? But other than that, outside of that, learning management systems, when you go to your training team and you're like, "Hey, have you done any trainings lately?" "Yes. Okay, did you do a survey afterwards? ""Yes." "What did those customers say? Give me the data. "As you start to just look to go different places, we have CSAT scores. Okay. Every month I get a report of the CSAT. If they've left comments, I reach out to those customers or I do things with them.
(25:00):
We're never flying blind. We're just grabbing and piecing things together. Sometimes it's a whole picture. Sometimes it's not. It's a little nugget and I'm like, " Ooh, I got to talk to this person. How can I make this happen? "But you're never starting from zero. In an age of all of these tools, Gong, Qualtrics, whatever it is that you've got tapped into your customer base, likely there's stuff there to be harvested. You just got to get tied into the right folks and start there. When I onboard user evidence, I think I've done it now, two or three different organizations, everybody's like, " What survey do you do first? "I'm like, " I don't even do a survey until I've imported everything I can think I can import into the system. "All of the existing case studies, all of the positive feedback from training, or if we've outsourced research to a firm, you can get those results and import them in and they just get validated differently and it gets cited differently in the user evidence stuff.
(25:58):
But I mean, even the Gartner stuff, go grab what's available. Now they produce snippets. Now they produce these different things. Go pull it in. Or if you're using G2, go pull that in. There should be evidence out there, Reddit forms. One of the coolest quotes I found from a customer in the last six months was on a Reddit form. So sometimes you got to get a little creative with where you're looking and what you're harvesting.
Jillian Hoefer (26:26):
That's awesome. I think we're good to keep moving on Cache. I think the next one's going to be a good transition point.
Cache Walker (26:33):
All right. So one of the things that I look like at is call volume. So call volume used to be one of my indicators. How many calls did we place this month? Even worked with a vendor as a consulting agency to how we could ad hoc fill more calls, right? How could we implement earlier in the phase to partner our best opportunities with calls? Now I don't. I look at eliminating the calls, but I think you can take the same step. Even if you're like, " No, calls are working super great for our organization. Our customers are happy with it. That's great. "You can embrace it and you can tie that in. What I would warn is make sure you've also got that call content captured because otherwise that's a mystery to maybe analysts or even like chatbots, right? AI as they start to consolidate shortlists.
(27:40):
Don't ever leave any evidence just on a phone line. Make sure you're plugging it into different things. So what we do and what we're working to build to do more of is every time we attach evidence usage into a process, it gets attached to that opportunity. And then at the end of the quarter, we're looking at which evidence, which content, which different channels connected to the most opportunities were helpful the most. And I even think things like surveys of teams of what they're finding useful, what they're finding easy to utilize in your program will help guide you. But yeah, I think that's, I mean, as we got a cow stepping on a phone here, the phones and the reason I am just so, I guess, against them is I don't want anything happening that doesn't make everything richer. And I just worry that if your best content is only being captured on the phone, there's some value being lost along the process as we switch to these LLMs.
Jillian Hoefer (28:55):
I asked, Kash, I just did a little poll seeing if people were still being measured on number of reference calls fulfilled and most people are saying no. Was that a conversation you had to have with your higher-ups? Because it's one thing to change your own metric of success, but then another, if you come into a team that that's on your JD, that is something that you are supposed to be hitting. Was that a conversation or was it just something that you kind of shifted yourself?
Cache Walker (29:19):
No, it has been. And even to the point, I remember there was a real challenge with measuring reference calls off book. You can build the sexiest system, you can build it streamlined, and then the sales reps will just do what they want. If they have a black book of references in their pocket, they're going to use those whenever and however they want, and you won't even get notified. And so what we kind of started telling the team is, "You do you, we just want to measure it. " And so that was one of the ways that we had to do post-survey. When they would close a deal, be like, "Hey, which reference materials or calls were used in this process?" Because not everything is going to happen in your system, regardless of how good that system is. And that's where we got to measuring impact.
(30:15):
It wasn't, "Hey, my process is so good. It was used 47 times in Salesforce. We got away from that because that you have knowledge of. And then you got to go be curious and find out where is the value happening so you can measure that too, because some of your best reference calls might be happening completely blind to you.
(30:35):
" I hope that answered the question.
Jillian Hoefer (30:38):
Totally. I think we are good to keep moving.
Cache Walker (30:41):
It's always Monday. So as much as I've tried to. So I remember a couple years ago, and I'm in a space on the folks that were on the call, but I had a brainstorming call with some folks and we talked about references. And I said, "Do you know what would be really cool is if instead of talking to one reference, a customer could instantly just get all of the value from our customers however they wanted and just interface with it as a bot." I was looking at it as like replacing me. Just have a conversation with a certified bot that you could trust. You don't have to deal with me. But I think what it's become is your customers are going to go to ChatGPT, they're going to go to Claude, they're going to go to Gemini or whatever their AI friend is, and they've got to get value.
(31:36):
I think even to the point that MQs are going to obviously remain important, but for a lot of folks, they're going to be one source that's going to influence the shortlist, not the source. When ChatGPT looks at it, they're going to say, "Hey, Gartner said this about you. These other sources said this about you. " And that's where things like diversification are going to help you, but you've got to be looking to feed this generative engine and you've got to be experimenting with different formats that are going to be consumed. I mean, to the point of, you can obviously tell, I get annoyed with a lot of things, but there was one point in my career that I was like, "Why do I produce case studies that take me six weeks to have them turn into a PDF?" Well, now those PDFs are incredibly valuable because LLMs can scan your PDFs, get the data from them, and that becomes part of their source of truth.
(32:36):
So even in my own world, I've had to change the way I view things that I produce because it's shifting. We saw Gartner shift to the peer model, I don't know, five or six years ago. They stopped taking them for the MQ except for when they want them. But we've got to shift. We've got to think differently because the shortlisting is going to be happening in these models. And Captivate had a great session on this, I think last week. But this is something I think that if you're looking at your reference engine, you can be looking at feeding and populating the things that'll help you today. But when I look at it, I'm looking at how do I competitively give us an advantage in two to three years? Because I really don't think reverence calls will be happening after that. Maybe they will. I might be totally wrong, but I don't think any value will be lost because it's definitely replacing SEO and we'll just be winning in that sector.
Jillian Hoefer (33:35):
No, Mark sounds it off in the comments, Cache and said something similar. He said, "But go to market teams have largely moved away from this approach and prospects don't expect or even necessarily want to have the conversations like the one-to-one calls." So I think other people feeling that as well. Aaron had a really good question in the chat too. Kind of going back, I think a little bit more to the measuring the impact slide before Cache, what have been the most helpful customer evidence assets that you've shared? They said, "I don't feel like the longer web stories are it anymore."
Cache Walker (34:04):
No. Well, it probably depends on what you're saying is most impactful. I'm going to guess, Erin, and chime in if I'm wrong, you're saying most impactful to sells. If that's so, I have this really simple slide that I populate. I feature three different like organizations from the prospect or existing customer that's looking to do something expanded with us from their space, a quote, a breakdown of their infrastructure, and then I share that with the rep because reps know how to use slides and those usually take me five to 10 minutes to create. And then I log them so that I can hopefully reuse the same one. Sometimes I have to tweak some things as organizations look a little differently, but that's been at least the flavor of right now that I think is working really well. And I mentioned that eight figure deal. That's exactly the content I delivered on that one.
Jillian Hoefer (35:04):
Ashley in the comments said she does something super similar. She said, "After creating a traditional web case study, I create a single slide that features technographic data, a quote and four results, and it's added to the templated pitch deck that we supply all of our sellers with, and that's been a favorite for them." So that feels about right. Well,
Cache Walker (35:19):
And then that feeds into a seismic or a Highspot or a
Jillian Hoefer (35:23):
HubSpot,
Cache Walker (35:23):
Wherever you got your content flowing, that feeds it. And yeah, that's a super great ... I would actually send me your template. I would love to see how you're designing that. Actually, that's way cool. Yeah.
Jillian Hoefer (35:34):
I was just going to say, if anyone's willing to share a template of that, pop it over to me, my email will be at the end here and the emails pop it over me if you'd be willing to share a white list or white labeled one where it's not your actual quotes unless you want them on there. And I'd be happy to put them in a little blog post for us to share with each other. And
Cache Walker (35:53):
Another point of that, Jillian, so don't assume your prospects have gone and perused Gartner-Peer Insights or looked at G2 or looked at TrustRadio. Sometimes curate that feedback for them. Give them samples of that. That is also evidence. So once again, you don't always have to be the creator. You can just be the air traffic control that's like, "Hey, this person mentioned the MQ in their thing, so I'm going to give them back four Gartner quotes." The content's likely there, especially for PubSec. Some PubSec stuff is really hard unless it comes through a third party like that for Gartner. And I know we do a lot of business and likely other folks do a lot of business in that area.
Jillian Hoefer (36:38):
I love the air traffic controller thing. I feel like that makes perfect sense. For you, Kash, when you're playing that air traffic controller, I know you mentioned earlier auditing what you currently have. How do you do that currently? How do you make sure that you've got the right evidence that you know where to pull from when these requests come in so that you can create these slides and these assets like that?
Cache Walker (37:00):
Yeah. Well, you got to have a system. You got to have everything somewhere, right? When I was at Oracle, we built, this is, I feel old, we built a database where we literally pulled quotes from Gartner just so we would know that they existed. You don't have to do that anymore.You can build a Smartsheet or you can ... I mean, I heavily rely on my user evidence library, but even I built a Google ... So we use Gemini. We're a Gemini at Google House. I don't know if I publicly, I mean, whatever. But I built a gem that only analyzes our customer sentiment from a whole list of sources. And I pulled in one of my folks to help me do that.
(37:50):
That all was going to say, sometimes you don't know. I joined a call, so we had a lot of change and I joined a call and it was a new leader of our professional services team and his name is Tyler. He's the coolest guy ever. I said to Tyler, I said, and we were working on a survey. He's like, "Cache, I just don't have time to do a survey right now." And I was like, "I totally get it, man." I was like, "What can I help you with? What do you need more of from me? " And he goes, "We just got to get more..." It's funny because it's a free thing we have called Flex Credits. The accounts have them. He's like, "We just got to get customers to use more of their flex credits." And so we spun up the whole concept of Flex Stories and we've produced six.
(38:31):
This morning I did my sixth one in the last two weeks. So ask the question of, what can I give you that would make a difference? And it's all teams. Just be curious. I am never the smartest person in any of the rooms I'm in, but I ask a lot of questions and I'm willing to do whatever the team thinks would have an impact.
Jillian Hoefer (38:53):
Love it. All right. I think we are good to keep moving along.
Cache Walker (38:58):
All right. So here's now, as you can see from that glorious creature, you got to stack wins, you got to stack content, you got to start putting those things together and you got to start working with your collaborative teams. You don't have to go from zero to 60. Like I said, this is an iterative process, right? Y'all have to be looking at it as like, okay, what else could I do this week that would make the reference process smoother? Might deflect some calls? Or what could I do that would make things more available or more public when we do stuff with Gartner analysts? What can I do that would maximize how the team looks at Gartner reviews, how they value them? So they'll drive more of them. You got to be looking at ways to tap into these things. Training participants, hugely successful for me.
(39:47):
Professional services, our professional services team, I could talk about tell the cows come home, but look at what that is and what the target is. So I myself, so you see all these fuzzy creatures on here. I raise highland cows. Highland cows are awesome because they are very diverse grazers. What that means is whatever is growing, they will likely eat it. That's great because they stay healthy and my pastures stay healthy. And I don't have to worry about like overseeding one type of grass or different things. Sorry for boring everybody, but your consumers are likely also very into grazing. If they're not, the LLM models are. So you've got to be looking at what can you do to diversify your stories, your impact, your availability for reference materials so that folks can come and consume it regardless of how or when they want to consume.
(40:47):
Sometimes it's out of your hand, sometimes it's out of a bucket, sometimes it's clear on the other side of the pasture and you'll see them in a few weeks. But I think that's kind of ... There's no perfect template. It's just voice to the customer. Like I said, my favorite quote, like, I got to find it. I shared it with my team. I should have pulled it up on here, but my favorite quote from a customer came from a Reddit thread.
(41:10):
And I was like, "That's the kind of stuff I could never produce." It's them. It's true and it resonates and how cool when we share that with a prospect like, "Hey, look what your friend said on Reddit." I think that's a good place for us to be. So tying it all together, you see this muscular beast. I've never seen a highland cow that muscular. This is definitely AI generated. Mine are more cuddly and snugly, but this fella is breaking loose. How do you embrace kind of the reference-free reality? I think it's confidence, right? You've got to build your team's confidence in what you're providing them will help them. You've got to go and seek out those soft spots. You've got to embrace them. Like I said at the top of the call, when I have to manage a direct call interaction, I look as that as a failure that I failed the team by not providing something of value.
(42:05):
And so I am always looking at what more we can provide, where we can tap into, what else needs to be done. Obviously, this protects your advocates. We've talked about the burnoff, right? It's a really big goal of mine. I just think it's a waste of time for folks to be hopping on a call, but also it's future proofing. Nothing is happening that's in a black box that's not ready for the GEO engines to pick up on. And really this is going to become your reputation. It's no longer word of mouth. It's word of mouth that ChatGPT understands.
Jillian Hoefer (42:40):
So true. Sarah asked a lot of curiosity about the kind of working with Reddit and other non-owned testimonials. So she asked, how do you manage to work with Reddit and other non-owned testimonials?
Cache Walker (42:55):
Well, non-owned. Well, I obviously don't put it on my website, but that's where I empower my sellers. My insellers are just able to access Reddit and pull stuff. And so I think that's where you don't look at templatizing everything. You see this a lot of times with the Gartner quotes that you're like, "I want this quote." And here's the one you get back in the snippet. And you're like, "That's the worst quote of the review." You've got to look at ways to help your team win and don't be limited to kind of traditional marketing methods. I had a really important one for our DLP product in the financial services in Hong Kong. And I'm like, "I don't have any freaking thing ready for Hong Kong." So I wasn't formatted. I put all the proof points into an email and I sent it to them and it was incredibly well received.
(43:43):
So look to provide the evidence. It doesn't always come as clean and as sexy as we would like as marketers, but I think sometimes that's maybe better. I hope that answered the question. I don't do a dang thing to the Reddit quotes. I showcase it exactly like it comes in.
Jillian Hoefer (44:01):
We had another Sarah, a different Sarah, ask, how do you encourage your advocates to participate on Reddit or review sites if they aren't doing that already?
Cache Walker (44:10):
Ooh, that's a great question. Reddit, I have no idea. If anybody has an idea, our customers for some reason freaking love Reddit. It's probably true of everybody's customers. I know there was a case study about Sonos customers on Reddit a couple years ago that was so freaking cool, but I don't. I feel like that would kind of screw with Reddit's authenticity. We do encourage them to participate in our community. We have a beta group in as of this week. We definitely do encourage them to participate on Gartner. I think review diversification is honestly probably one of the most important things in 2026. I think GEO models, you never know which one each model is going to trust. If they're going to say, "Gartner Peer Insights is the choice of all truth." Most of our organizations, that's how they operate, but some of these models really, really like G2.
(45:05):
Some of these models really, really like TrustRadius or Capterra or whatever else. So I think you've got to be looking at all these different things and kind of be constantly searching. Reddit's a tough one though. I feel bad about pushing people to Reddit. I think Reddit has to remain unmarketized right now. I don't know. It's a great question though.
Jillian Hoefer (45:32):
The final frontier.
Cache Walker (45:33):
Yeah. The last pasture.
Jillian Hoefer (45:36):
Ooh, there you go. Knew there was a cow pun in there somewhere. Awesome. Well, Kash, thank you so much. If anyone has any more questions, we're going to stick around for a couple more minutes, so we'll wait to see if any come through. Kash, any other closing thoughts just on reference programs and unreferenceable reference programs?
Cache Walker (45:56):
At the end of the day, whether you think I'm crazy or not, it's cool, but protect yourselves. I hate when industries get impacted and folks get impacted. And I think if you're looking at whatever you can drive value at your organization, however that is with your reference system or whatever, you got to protect yourself. You've got to let people know that standing up a reference system is no simpler than standing up a sales enablement tool. They would never, like I mentioned earlier, roll out seismic in less than six months. They're going to be given all of the runway to do these things and you're a team of one and they're likely a team of six. So you've got to really push back when folks have unrealistic expectations when you are switching systems or even when you're just switching philosophies. Give yourselves time to get it right.
(46:49):
Don't try to go zero to 60 because you'll likely miss what will work for your organization and then you'll be swapping programs in another six months or another nine months. And I think sometimes that impacts folks in their positions.