Kelly Cheng: Building Buyer Trust Before They’re Ready to Buy

I'm sorry for any of the BDRs or SDRs that are listening, but I've had so much more success having this AI agency send messages on my behalf as the CMO. I've gotten so many more responses than somebody with a sales development title. And that's just the nature of it. And those things that we would have never learned if we didn't have that growth experimental mindset. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And today's conversation is with Kelly Chang. She is the CMO at Goalcast.

And this was a really cool conversation because I've been having a lot of conversations recently about the sales marketing alignment and how it's always been broken and will be broken. Is AI going to save that and everything else? So that's kind of part of what this conversation was about, but it got a lot deeper. Because we started with, first of all, her background as always, and she comes from a unique background, living in Hong Kong, I think it was, for the first 14 years of her life. And being a self-proclaimed rebel and actually finding out that she got it from her dad, even though she didn't realize it until later in her life that he was a rebel too. So that's always fun to find out. But then we dove into what she calls mind share marketing.

And it's the whole idea of being top of mind, right? We all hear the stat that some about only like 5% of our addressable market is in market for our services. And that's where everybody's focused, right? So the intent data, the trigger events, all that fun stuff. But the other 95% of people are at some stage of zero awareness versus awareness. And the key is, is that when somebody is ready to buy, you're the top of mind, you're the one, because I forget what this stat is. But if you are the first person that somebody thinks of when they need it, and they get their, you know, list of vendors, their top three, the first one, I think wins the deal. So like 57% of that is something ridiculous. So the idea of brands is so important moving forward, especially with AI and all the authenticity issues going on out there.

But the problem is, is there's, it's almost impossible to measure the ROI of brand. So therefore, it's very hard to convince leadership to invest in brand and also individuals. You know, most of my career, I've been teaching, trying to teach sales reps how to build their personal brand, but there's no short term benefit to it. So when you're getting yelled at to hit your numbers, brand is the last thing. But I'm telling you right now, it's one of the most important things if you're planning on being in this industry for a while. So we talked about that, we talked about attribution and the frustrations with that, feeling duped by AI and how we can address that, SDR agents, her perspective on that, and how I still think that all of SDR, BDR should roll up under marketing, and we should get rid of attribution, quite frankly.

And then we talked into her specialty, which is obviously video, and using video, and my curiosity about how AI video is impacting the game as well. And quite frankly, AI influencers too, which I'm a little scared of these days. So anyways, it was a cool conversation. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Kelly Chang, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. How are you doing today? Good, good. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited for this. Yeah, thanks for coming on. This is going to be a fun conversation because I have been having a lot of conversations about the marketing and sales alignment these days. And quite frankly, I'm a little worried for sales. We're going to get into that here.

So but Kelly, CMO over at Goldcast, before we get into any of the fun stuff that we're going to talk about. Love to hear your origin story, right? We usually start not the stuff on LinkedIn. Everybody can find that stuff out, right? Those are cool things. But what made you you parents growing up? How'd you get the bug to be a CEO? You know, all that fun stuff. So talk to us where you're coming from. Yeah. So I was actually born and raised in Hong Kong. And I lived in Hong Kong all the way through until high school. So about 14 was when I moved to the States. People don't typically think this of me, but I was a huge rebel growing up, especially in a Chinese style education. I did not want to conform, was not all about the memorization.

I rebelled a lot. I was a huge, huge pain in the pain in the ass for my parents. But I think that's really, you know, where I became who I am and really, really found that spark in marketing where creativity is, you know, where I shine the most. It's a combination of creativity and analytical thinking. But creativity, I think, is really how you stand out. And so that's really where I got my start in life is, you know, I was always kind of fucking up and messing up in school, doing everything that I was told not to do. You know, I think back to one example where, you know, every single week I had tests at school. And there's this type of test called mental math. And this really started in the first grade.

So we can kind of give you an idea of how rigid the school system was. But one of the questions was, what two months out of the year, consecutive months out of the year, have 31 days. And the school wanted one particular answer. They wanted July and August. I gave the answer of December and January, and they marked me as wrong. And so a lot of people think that's a very creative answer. And that's not your traditional answer, but it's still a correct answer. And so, you know, I think back to that example when, you know, you have to think outside the box. As a marketer, you have to be extremely creative. As soon as you get something right, you know, you're going to have to reinvent the wheel and think about something else because those trends are going to pick up and they're not going to work anymore.

And so I think about that a lot from just being able to think of new answers, new ways to answer questions, new ways to get people to think about different things. And I think a lot of it is marketing messaging. Nice. Now, do you think that was a nature or nurture thing for you as far as your rebellious attitude? Like, were your parents like rebellious in any way or were they pretty much the standard like, nope, you got to do this, right? Because sometimes we're just born with it and like we got to break boxes no matter where we go. Other times we get it from our, you know, from our parents. So when I was growing up, I always thought it was probably nature because I always thought my parents were perfect.

Now that I have my own kid, my dad actually told me that like, this is revenge because they're going to be just like you. Because apparently I was just like my dad. My dad was a huge rebel. He used to, um, you know, play hooky from school to, to go bowling. Um, and so, um, I definitely took after my dad. There you go. I like it. Yeah. It's, it's funny how you don't really realize your parents, like their, their superpowers until you become a parent and you start looking at things from a, from a different standpoint. Cause I had the same thing, like growing up, I was like, oh dad, you're a nerd, you know, all this other stuff. And then the more I'd learn about it, I'm like, oh my God, like you were the most rebellious, you know, why, why do I always like feel the need to break whatever box somebody puts me in?

Well, if I look back at my dad, I'm like, oh, well, that's the reason. So, and you, you take a pretty interesting, I mean, you've had some pretty cool roles, uh, you know, getting to this, getting to this point. So why don't you give that, that context here? And then we'll jump in here for everybody who hasn't gone on. Yeah. Um, so I, uh, you know, like I said, I grew up in Hong Kong. I went to high school in the States. I went to school in Boston. I'm, I'm local in Boston, 30 minutes outside, just North of Boston. And, um, it's the smallest town in Massachusetts. There's only 3000 people that live here. So, um, I grew up from being in a big city like Hong Kong to just like the smallest beach town in the state.

Um, but, um, I always knew that I wanted to be in marketing. That was something that I, um, you know, went into college knowing that was when I wanted to study, made sure that all of my college internships lined me up for a good marketing job after school. And so after college, I got my start in, uh, on the agency side. So I worked with, uh, media planning and media buying, uh, really, really understanding, uh, where audiences are. So I worked on small agencies, middle-sized agencies, big agencies across, I want to say like 30 different verticals. So B2B, B2C, uh, B2B2C. Um, I worked on insurance. I worked on consumer packaged goods. I worked on printers. So really, you know, everything out there.

Um, and I, I really, really loved my agency experience because it allowed me to pack in a lot of learnings in a very short period of time. Within five years, um, I have been in rooms presenting to different CMOs at Fortune 500 companies. So I've really, really been able to get a lot of good experience. I was burnt out like, like crazy from working on agency life. Um, but it was definitely worth it. And so after working at three different agencies, my final one, I worked at Havas Media, the largest agency I worked at. And my main client was Fidelity Investments. So, uh, doing more on like the, uh, commercial and retail financial marketing, but also institutional. So more on the B2B side too. Um, I've always kept B2B in my back pocket throughout my entire agency journey.

I've always had clients on the B2B side. That was when like account-based marketing was really, really coming up and being like a big buzzword. And so when I decided to leave agency and go in-house, I have like a portfolio of different brands and industries that I've worked with. And so I decided on, you know, sinking in and going all the way, all the, all in on tech, um, and decided to move out to San Francisco. And so that's where I joined a company called Pager Duty. Uh, actually, John, I met you at Pager Duty, uh, years ago. I don't remember, but I had, I was like, did we meet there? Yeah. We met at, you came and you spoke at our company kickoff. Oh, we had a Napa. So I remember, um, you know, being in your session cause I worked really closely with our SDR teams.

Um, but I, I ended up at Pager Duty, um, Pager Duty was very successful. I did growth marketing there, really helping both sides of the funnel, the self-service funnel, um, that, you know, was actually 30% of the revenue business at Pager Duty and also helping feed the sales team on the enterprise and mid-market and commercial side. Um, so really, really working both, uh, you know, hybrid funnels of self-service and sales led, um, and eventually, you know, moved back to Boston, um, married my husband who was long distance with me that entire time. And yeah, that's, it was, it was tough. It was three, three and a half years of long distance. And those three hours of time change are, it's a lot harder than you would actually think about.

Um, for sure. Um, but that's really when I moved back to Boston, that's where I got into the world of marketing to marketers. Um, and I, you know, my previous role before Goldcast, I was, um, doing growth marketing at Wistia, which is a video hosting company, a video marketing company. And when I got my first taste of marketing to marketers, I just didn't look back because it was something that I finally understood very well. It's basically selling to myself. Um, so it's really trying to understand if I would react, how would I react to this messaging? Would I respond to this type of cold call? So it was a lot of fun for me and it still is today. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far.

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Now let's get back to the conversation. Yeah, I love that. And that's a kind of when you find your travel, it's, it's funny when you find when I say speak your language, right? I don't mean like French, French, English, English. I mean, just from an, I remember growing all the way up, I was in, you know, as an IT services and I was the one sales guy within 50 engineers. And I, again, I just, I communicated with them well, but I just, I didn't feel like I fit. And then when I, when we sold the staples and I then started with this sales training company called Basho, like I walked in the door and everybody spoke my language. Even the CTO, the CTO came up to me and said, Hey, how can I support you?

And I'm like, wait a minute, what? Like you're the CTO. Like you should hate me. Like, like I've never had a good relationship. Like, and it was, it was, it was such a refreshing. And that's why I always couch myself a little bit when, when people like, cause I talk about brand building and we'll get into this and everything else. And they're like, well, how would I do it? And I go, look, any influencer sales trainer who talks about brand building, be very cautious of what they tell you, because I, I sell crack to crack heads and I'm a crack head. You know what I mean? Like it's really easy. I won't say nothing's easy in this world. It's a lot easier for me as a sales trainer who sells to sell to sales reps and tell them to boot.

You know what I mean? It's just easier. But if I now have to go sell to a, you know, CISO in the manufacturer, you know what I mean? Something like that. It's like, that's a different language. So you building your brand in that is a little bit different, which is, which is, I think a good, you know, transition to, to the conversation we're going to have here. Yeah, absolutely. Cause, cause I think one of the things you, you bring up a lot, you know, I was going to start different, but I think we'd dive into this right away, which is the mindshare marketing. And, and, and how do you do that? I think we can do, you know, there's two angles here is business wise brands that, that we want to talk about, but I also want to talk about individual brands because I am, I am really worried for sales reps right now.

Um, because marketing is coming so far down the funnel now. I mean, you, we've all heard the stat by the time somebody comes to us, they're already 60 to 70% of the way through the sales process, blah, blah, blah. But now it's real right now, because AI, you can literally answer any question that you want with AI. And so, and a client would rather talk to customer success, engineering, anybody else other than sales, because of the lack of value that we bring to the table. So we need to, I, a lot of sales reps, I think need to take on the marketing mindset of building their own personal brands. But how do you coordinate, but let's start here. How do you coordinate brand at an organization from the corporate standpoint and the individual and empower the individuals to build theirs that compound with the, with the corporate, right?

Cause that's the key. Like so many marketers don't want their reps because they want to control the message. They want to make sure that, right. So how do you balance that with controlling the message? So you don't have a bunch of sales reps just putting out random shit and it's bad and whatever it is versus using it to be a force multiplier and helping the rep develop themselves. Yeah. That's a great question. Yeah. I recently had a conversation with the CMO at DataMiner. Her name is, is Deb Wolf. And she and I were chatting about sales and how hard it is to be in sales these days. And she actually said, you know, I, I feel bad for any salesperson in the room that doesn't realize that the way people buy is no longer the way that they sell.

Um, things have changed. There's been a shift and there's been a gradual shift, but I think over the last couple of years, we've, we're seeing that shift become just like a much larger gap. Um, and I, you know, I think mindshare there's brand marketing, there's demand marketing, uh, mindshare marketing isn't either, or, um, in my perspective, the whole concept of mindshare marketing is about being top of mind before any buyer even knows that they need you. So, you know, there's all these stats out there, you know, 95% of your target audience is not in the market to buy only 5% is at any given time. I think that stat maybe varies industry to industry, but, um, you know, generally speaking, big chunk of your TAM is not currently in the market.

And so what happens to that 95%? Like if those intent signals are firing for that 5%, are you completely ignoring that 95%? Because that's the, that's the audience that is up for grabs right now. Their mindshare is up for grabs. So by the time they do become in market, they already have that short list and you're on that short list. So it's how do you build that runway for pipeline to be generated way before you're even being considered? And I think that, you know, you, I, you, you talk about a really, really big challenge of marketing being more full funnel these days and sales being very, very, very bottom funnel. But when I think about brand and mindshare marketing, it's not about assigning attribution.

Um, I think we can get lost in a lot of that and just, um, you know, go down rabbit holes that are not productive anymore. Uh, when I think about mindshare marketing, it's about consistency of a brand touch point throughout the entire funnel. So mindshare marketing also happens on the customer level for, you know, advocacy at Goldcast, a big metric that we're looking at is expansion and renewal. Um, and that requires for customers to actually have that mindshare even after they convert. So it goes beyond like the, the pre-sales aspect of it into post-sales. Um, I think that, you know, a lot of the trends that I'm seeing these days is that people don't buy from brands, people buy from other people.

And so when you're asking about how do sales reps, you know, build their own brand to help to match and coordinate with the brand that they're selling, I think it's working really closely with the marketing team, really understanding your audience, your audience's pain points, your ICP's pain points, what they deem as valuable, making sure that your name, um, is recognizable. So you're, you're building that relationship in that email inbox that you're never getting responses from, but at least they recognize your name and the company that you're from. Those are all touch points that help build mindshare. All those tactics that are being used today. Like I, I make fun of this all the time. Um, I, if I look in my email, I look at my LinkedIn in mail, I'm getting bribed on the daily, like a hundred dollar gift card for 30 minutes of your time.

Um, and those are not effective, not unless you already have my mindshare. And so it comes off as desperate. Um, and you know, I think there needs to be a pivot of like, look, not looking at that short-term result, but more of that long-term runway. So for each and every sales rep, that's looking to build their own pipeline, build your own personal brand, align yourself to that brand. So, you know, you become that go-to resource and say like, Hey, I need sales training for my BDR team. I know John Barrows. I'm going to look him up and I'm going to reach out to him because that's in the moment of need right now. Yeah. I think that's going to your point of like the bribes, right? I always roll my eyes at that, you know, the $5, the $10 gift, you know, I'm like, do you understand how insulting that is?

I'm like, you're coming to me saying 10 bucks for 30 minutes a minute. So you're saying my hourly rate's 20 bucks an hour, huh? Uh, you know, so it's actually, I think it's worse in a lot of ways than even doing it at all. But to your point, like the, the, the, you bring up, um, you know, brand, I think is everything, especially in AI right now, because nobody's going to know who to trust. So, you know, if you have a solid brand that people trust, you know, that's everything. But the one, the one word you brought up, which is, I think the bane of sales and marketing alignment in every way, shape and form is attribution. How do we get away from attribution while still incentivizing sales teams to do what they need to do?

Right. I, it was, if it was up to me, I'd remove attribution altogether because I don't give a shit what, you know, we'd hear all bounds. I don't give a shit where leads come from. Like Morgan, you bring up more, like when Morgan, um, Ingram was on my team, he would do a ton of outbounds to these target accounts. Right. And then we were only a small two person team. So when an inbound would come, I would get every inbound and I would inevitably look at, you know, Salesforce and I'd look to see it. And it, it was never the person that he was reaching out to, but it was the company. Like I'd look at the company and the activity level into the company was off the charts, but the person that reached out in the inbounds was never somebody.

So if you put the line in the sand and said, well, you know that you, you never reached out to that person. So therefore you don't get credit. That's a marketing. That's an MQL. That's not an SQ, right? That would have taken away that, that, that there's no way that you could argue to me that, that his effort in that didn't create somebody to tell somebody to tell somebody to go do that. So giving him credit for that was the right thing to do. So have you been able to, in the, in the organizations that you've worked with, have you been able to address the attribution issue while still motivating the different groups to do what they need to do? So I think this is a really, I think a really hot topic because all, there's many different people that do care about ROI, which you should, you should definitely have a pulse on your CAC and your ROI and all that good stuff.

It's, it's only when you over-index on it. And I think that that's where it's on the strategy level of the leadership team. Your CEO, your founders, your CFO needs to understand that there has to be a budget that is not going to get a return. That's your brand budget. When you have a brand budget on the marketing side, you're not expecting that brand budget to turn into pipeline into three quarters. That's the leap of faith that I think a lot of people had lost because over the last couple of years, especially in tech, we've, we've had a rough go. We've had a lot of resources being cut, budget, head count. And I think that's why we've over-indexed on those intent signals, only focusing on those intent signals because that's the short-term you return.

But I think that we have to start swinging the pendulum on the other side and start planning for that long-term runway. And that requires that leap of faith, that strategy from the get-go of leadership, having buy-in on this is how your budget on the marketing team works. There's a demand budget, there's a brand budget, and there needs to be connective tissue throughout because that the customer journey is fluid. It's not, it's no longer that, you know, linear funnel. I was talking to a marketer at Atlassian, her name is Ashley Faust. And the way that she explains the way that she sees the funnel is that it's no longer, you know, this like serious decisions, waterfall type thing. It's, it's like a playground, like, you know, at an, any organization, like you have the slide, you have the swing, you have the seesaw and any point in time, just because I'm on a seesaw, it doesn't mean that like I'm, you know, have super high intent.

It's just another touch point. And, you know, you have to take all those touch points into consideration. And honestly, for me, I don't give a shit, you know, who gets the attribution for who sourced the pipeline or that revenue. As long as we get it as an organization, that's a huge win because we all work together. So I think it's, it's having this sort of that leap of faith mentality and that you can't track everything and that's okay. Totally. And I think what you get me thinking of is, you know, remember the name, uh, I actually might even do this post after this is, uh, you remember the game shoots and ladders? Yeah. Like that to me is, is the buyer journey, right? You're like, you kind of chugging along and then you're like, you hit a ladder.

It's like, Oh shit. Yeah, we need this. And all whoops. Nope. We just hit the pit. Now we don't need it anymore because priorities changed. Um, so it is, it's about meeting the client where they are. I think you're right. Cause they come in and out at this whenever they want. And, and I think, you know, the other thing about what you're talking about with mindshare marketing and being top of mind is, isn't, isn't there a stat I got to find it, but there's some stat of like, when somebody, if you're the first one, somebody think like when they have an issue and they get down to that short list of three that have their mindshare because, Oh, we need this now. Let's call the ones that you just said mentioned, right.

For the chat thing. Isn't it something like the first one in gets like wins the deal, like over 57% of the time or something ridiculous like that? Yeah. I've heard that stat too. And the thing is, um, it's important because we're being inundated with like hundreds and thousands of different types of software that basically do the same thing. Um, the only differentiator is the brand. And, you know, that that's, that's where, you know, when you have two, two software companies that check all the same boxes, they're around the same budget. How do you make that decision? What is that decision-making factor? And I've talked to a lot of, you know, marketing leaders, um, at least for, you know, marketing software that we buy, it's about relationship and about the trust in the brand.

And if you have this, you know, history of creating, you know, high quality, authentic content where, you know, is actually valuable, um, to your ICP that you serve, you build that trust over time through content generation, through marketing, um, coupled with, you know, more one-to-one sales type relationship. But that content piece is really important because that's really consistent. A lot of people are not being hand raisers anymore. They're consuming their own content on their own time at their own formats. We have to, as marketers be everywhere all at once. Like we have to be on video, we have to be on blog. We have to now figure out the AI search models and everything. And so how do you do all of that when your resources are being cut, when your budget is being cut?

Um, and so that is the big challenge right now is like, how do you fill that funnel with content experiences that are authentic, that are valuable because it's so easy. It's so easy to lean on AI to create shitty content these days. Um, and that's really, that's, that's going to be the difference maker of like, what's a, what builds a good brand and what builds a brand that people forget. Yeah. Yeah. The AI stuff is scary to me right now because it's taking away authenticity and it's pretending to be, and that's the scary part. I, my theory on AI right now, well, I got a lot of theories. The fact that we're living in the matrix, but that's a different one. But, um, uh, but my, my, my, my thing is, is if I know it's AI generated, I actually have no problem with it at all.

And I'll actually, and I'll actually pay attention to it and I'll, and I'll respect it as a matter of fact, if I know it's AI, but if it's, if it's pretending to be human and I even sniff that it's AI and I feel kind of duped, if you will, I'm done. And I, and I actually, I'll bring the, the drift example that you brought up. Like that, that to me is a perfect example. When chatbots, remember, remember when chatbots first came out, right. And they pretended like they were human. And the first time you were using when you're like, Oh my God, this is the most like responsive customer success person I've ever seen in my life. Like this is holy shit. Right. And then after like the third or fourth, you know, tech, you'd be like, wait a minute, this isn't a, and then as soon as that happened, I don't know about for you, but as soon as that happened for me, I'm like, you know what?

Fuck this, this thing, this piece of shit. Cause I felt duped, but then drift came out. And the first thing that that chatbot did, it raised its hand and said, Hey, I'm not a human. I'm not a human, but I can get you pretty far. If you want to, if you want to go on this journey, then it was like, wow, this is incredible. Right. So I think it's the same thing with content. Like, I don't know about you, like you get tons of emails. I bet you probably look through LinkedIn and all the comments. The most personalized email I get, the most personalized comment, I can still tell that it's AI. And I don't know other than to say it, it just doesn't have a soul. And I don't know how to describe it. I don't know how to objectively measure it, but I just can tell.

And I guarantee you, I'm going to be able to tell for at least the near future here. Are you on the same page? Yeah, I'm completely with you. I think that, um, what we always forget is that the consumer is actually a lot smarter than we actually give them credit for. Um, that they can't be fooled because they're just like anybody else. Um, like we think of like the buyers or the B2B buyers as like this, you know, anomaly or this, this, you know, non-human person, but it's really just like you and me. Like if, if I'm creating content with AI and I can give feedback to AI and say, this is garbage, this is shit. Like I can also, you know, sniff that out in a heartbeat, um, by just like reading the first sentence.

I think that's the, that's the big challenge is like, you know, where does AI come in? And, you know, cause I think AI is opening so many people's minds to personalization at scale. Um, at gold cast, we use tools like clay to help us, you know, do enrichment through AI and all that. Um, but it's really trying to figure out what's the best application for it. I've been seeing a lot of trends, um, of like AI SDR agents. And I, I don't know how I feel about that because I, I just don't think it's like a rip and replace situation. Um, but yeah, it's, it's really just every organization figuring out what's the process of getting a job to be done and how AI is either generating that or making that more efficient.

Well, let's talk about those AI agents. And this is kind of my theory on this is, is why I think demand gen is, and I'm, you know, you're seeing it probably too. It's a, it outbound is almost a marketing function at this point. It almost has to be seen as a marketing function at this point. And I'm sorry, you know, for those, you know, old school sales reps that think, Oh, I'm going to make my dials today and jump into a sales cycle early on. The likelihood of that happening, I tell people this all the time, like the likely, if you're, you're setting yourself up for failure right now, if you think that a, you're going to have the right contact information, B, you're going to be able to talk to anybody with a pulse and get through a connect rate.

C, you're going to talk to somebody other than a gatekeeper, right? So you have to go through that gauntlet first. And then you think that you're going to jump on a call with somebody and, and, and say some magical thing that's going to get them to go, Oh, you know what? All those strategies and all that stuff that I've been thinking about for the past, you know, six months and building towards and everything else, you know what? I'm going to dump all that, jump right into a sales process with you. Cause what you said was magic. Like, if you think that's going to happen, you're out of your mind and you're setting yourself and your team up for failure. So, but if you look at it as a marketing function where that cold call and that voicemail leaves an impression point that then might lead that person to then go look at your email, to look at your LinkedIn profile, to look at your website.

Now all of a sudden I can justify it. I can't justify it as a pure, I can't justify outbound right now as a pure independent entity in an organization from a value standpoint. I just can't. And I don't know too many companies that can. Are you seeing the same shift? It's interesting that you say that because about six months ago, we did a reorg, um, at Goldcast, our sales team, and we moved the BDR function under marketing. Um, because I have the same point of view as you is that I believe that the outbound function is essentially another marketing tactic and channel that is plays, it plays together with everything else that we're doing. It plays together with all of the weekly demos that we do, the monthly webinars that we run.

It all comes together. Um, and you know, the outbound tactics, the emails, the cold calls, that's just another touch point for you to build mindshare to make that first impression. Well, that's, that's why I think it's so my answer to the attribution is take away because commission is sales. Like, like I'd love, I remember when I was growing up in sales, like I didn't need all the fluffy shit. I was like, just give me a territory, give me my quota and get the fuck out of my way and let me go. Right. Um, now that's not nearly as much of a motivator anymore. Right. Yes. People are money motivated, but there's a lot more to it as far as job satisfaction learning and all those things. So why, why don't we, as a, as a, as a whole organization or, you know, group here, SDR should not be commissioned period.

Give them a decent salary, maybe a bonus at a quarterly basis based on team targets, but take commission away from SDRs and VDRs. I'm sorry. Give it to the AEs, but that, that way you take the stress away from them as far as hitting that, like a certain amount of numbers and you allow them to be marketers. You allow them to build brand, you allow them to engage with customers to learn about empathy and, you know, use cases and all that shit. And then the ones who decide they like the, Hey, I want to work my ass off and get paid. And I want to be like, great, go into sales. Otherwise stay in marketing, go to customer success, whatever. But I think that I'm, I'm almost going to start a petition now to stop paying commissions for SDRs and VDRs.

Cause I don't think it's sales. I don't think sitting behind a phone and your only job is to push buttons on a sequence or make generic cold calls. I don't understand why people are still paying for that. Yeah. That's an interesting perspective. Have you, have you shot that idea around and gotten any feedback? No, I usually get a lot of, well, I, yes. And I get a lot of, well, yes, I get a lot of positive feedback from old dogs like me who, who, who are, who are like, yeah, cause this isn't sales. You're like, like the, the old school sales reps, right? I'm, I'm, I'm almost 50. It, you know, there's a disdain for this predictable revenue model. And I think it, a lot of it has to do with jealousy in the sense that we never had that grow.

You know, I never had a sales rep making cold calls for me and setting up meetings for me. I had to do the whole full cycle. So I think that the old dogs are like, yeah, like that's not sales. So why should I pay it for sales? Um, I think the new guard is whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know what I mean? Like, Hey, that's my, that's my career is an SDR and I've made a bunch of money. It's like, okay, good for you. But that was, it was great when grow at all costs, predictable revenue, money was free. And I'm sorry that what, I mean, I piss a lot of people off with my keynote these days. Cause I tell people straight up, I'm like, if you got it, I'm, I'm, I positioned 2010 to 2022 as the golden age of sales.

And I tell people straight up, if you got into tech sales after 2010, sorry, hasn't been that hard. Hasn't been that hard. We we've been able to get away with blasting out template emails to anybody, right? Setting up disco calls with anybody with a pulse, asking dumb ass band questions, droning through demos and offering a discount. Like that's literally been sales for the past 10 years. And now that it's hard and I actually, and I don't blame these kids. It's actually our fault, the older generation's fault for over operationalizing sales, over tech, over processing sales and not teaching fundamentals. We now have a whole generation of sales reps that fundamentally don't know how to sell. That's so interesting.

I, you know, I think that you, you give a really good perspective just on like the sort of generational, uh, point of view of sales. Um, because I, I mean, I started in, you know, in-house tech and like the, like 2016. Um, and so I was kind of riding that wave just as you were talking about of just like, oh yeah, we just funnel the leads to sales and sales just makes it happen. Um, and now it's just like, it's, it's, it's not happening like that. Like what used to work is no longer working. And, um, anything that we try that works will work for literally a day and then it won't work anymore. And so it's just like this impossible conundrum that we're in right now where, you know, I think it just takes a lot of people with a growth mindset, with a lot of resilience, a really, really strong understanding of what you're selling, um, to really make it happen.

Cause it's, it's really not for the faint of heart. No, now more than ever to, you know what I mean? Like, cause to your point, it is, it is frightening. If, especially if you don't have a, if you let's go nature nurture again, I don't know how or why, but I think I've always had this growth mindset and of like always looking forward. Like I know I, I, I have this concept that I suck at history and my memory's horrible. And I always used to beat myself up for that, but I'm like, actually, I think there's maybe a nature component to that where I don't give a shit what happened in the past. I'm just going to keep moving forward here and I'll make my own mistakes. I don't care because I need to keep iterating and testing and learning.

Cause that's the way I learn. I learned by making mistakes. I don't learn by reading books or history lessons, even though I probably couldn't have made a lot less mistakes in my life. If I had just paid attention to a few people who had been there, done that before me. But I think it's scary right now for the, for the fixed mindset people, for the ones who are just want to be comfortable. Cause if you're, if you are trying to be comfortable in today's world, sales, there's no place for you. Go get out, like get out now. Marketing sales, any GTM function right now is, is, is my shit. I'll say any function, but I think that's the, that's the scary part for a lot of people is that we, we, I think inherently everybody knows we're living in a legacy model and we're in this transition phase, but nobody knows what the future is because it's moving so fast.

And so what's that bridge? So I guess that leads me to a question for you as you make decisions, right? Cause you're a, you're a move fast, break things, you know, go, what's your threshold for, or do you have a process or a mindset of a structure that you use to test something and, and know when to kill it? Right. Because it's, because sometimes like you kill it too soon and you just didn't let it like sit for the brand is a perfect example. It's like, Oh, this brand shit isn't working. You know, we got to do something else. Right. Cause you spent three months trying to build your brand. Yeah. So for you with any, could you explain maybe an initiative that you've done that you thought was like, shit, this is going to be the bananas.

Right. And then you were like, Holy shit. Nope. As awesome. And as much work as we just put into that, we got to kill this thing right now. Cause it's going to take us down the wrong path. Yeah. Let me think. Um, I think when you, when you use brand as an example, um, it's really hard because brand, the whole essence of brand is that requires time. Um, and the whole idea of brand is that you have to have consistency. Um, and so if you kill it within a month or two of launching a brand campaign, you're really not seeing your returns yet because that's a long-term play. So when I look at experiments in that growth mindset, I'm looking more for the short-term, um, you know, short-term returns. And the example that I can think of right now is to de-risk because you know, every single team, every single marketing team, every single sales team is strapped for resources.

Um, just to do like the bare minimum, just to check the boxes off your strap for resources. Experimentation is another layer that you're adding on. That's like a nice to have. It's nice to have experiments that you learn from. Um, but what I like to do with my outbound team, um, my BDR team is that we actually work with an agency. Um, and that agency is kind of like a clay agency of sorts where they run a lot of automation or automated outbound plays on our behalf, like using my inbox or, you know, our, one of our founders inboxes. Um, and we run experiments, maybe like two, three days of like messaging testing. Um, once we see the response there and we see like, Oh, we're getting replies, we're getting conversions.

We bring it in-house to our actual BDR teams to actually make a bigger impact into like actually operate operationalizing a play. And so we have experiments with our, you know, AI agency to do a message testing at scale. Um, and once, as soon as we see an indication, it's, there's a return within a couple of days, we operationalize that in-house to scale that even more. If we're not seeing that response within a couple of days, cause you know, within a couple of days of like outbound messaging, if it's not working, we kill it. Um, and so that's really the layer of growth mindset that we have right now, because at Goldcast, we started out in the event tech world where we're really targeting event and field marketers.

We've expanded, we have a whole product platform. Now we target upwards of like five to seven different personas now across many different industries. And with every single persona, you have to speak their language, like you said before. Um, and so really, really testing out what that look at looks and sounds like. And an experiment that I learned actually, um, is that I'm sorry for any of the BDRs or SDRs that are listening, but I've had so much more success having this AI agency send messages on my behalf as the CMO. I've gotten so many more responses than somebody with a like sales development title. And that's just the nature of it. And those things that we would have never learned if we didn't have that growth experimental mindset.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the, you know, and that's, again, goes back to brand and, you know, title is a part of brand, whatever, but you kind of usually earn that. And, uh, you know, it's hard to have the conversation these days with sales reps about brand because there is no short-term benefit to it. Right. So it's the same thing with organizations. And I was going to ask to back up a little bit about, you know, how do you, I mean, I've, I don't know if, I don't know what leadership has looked like for each one of the organizations that you've walked into, but how have you been, or what advice do you give to a CMO, a VP of marketing who understands the importance of brand, all true, but they have a skeptical leadership.

And from a budgetary standpoint, they're trying to convince them that we need to work on our, our brand as an organization, but there's like, like, okay, what's the ROI of it? And I can't tell you, it's just, it's important. So what's the, what's the conversation like with a skeptic, uh, like a CE, like let's do the CMO, CEO, right? Your brand new CMO. And you have a CEO who brought you in because you definitely need to up the blah, blah, blah. And so I want to know metrics and all this other stuff. And you come in and you say, no, no, no, brands more, more, I'm not, I'm just, you know, making this up, but you're like, no brand is really where we need to focus. And I can't tell you exactly how much it's going to cost.

I can't tell you exactly what the ROI is going to be, but trust me, it's going to pay off in the next three years. If we do this, right. Like, how do you have that conversation right now? Yeah. It's, it's, it's hard because everyone's looking at the bottom line. Everyone's looking to survive. Um, and so I think those are, those are really tough conversations. I've been lucky enough to work at brands that value brand that have brand as a differentiator. So have been actively investing into it for people that struggle with getting, you know, buy-in for brand and brand investment. My advice would be dumb it down to your leadership, your CFO, your CEO who doesn't get marketing. That's the hardest spot to be in is to work with a leadership team that doesn't understand how marketing works.

I'm going back to something I said before, is that like the way that people buy is no longer the way that we've been selling. And so we have to change the way that we sell to match the way that people buy currently or else every, all the tactics that, you know, we spend a lot of money and investment in this just never going to land. Um, so something has to change. And I would, I would say, make, um, you know, make a case for one brand investment to start with, um, see the success. There's ways to measure it. You know, you can look at funnel lift, you know, uh, you know, you can do some geo targeting based off of like states or cities or areas that you're, you know, most saturated in and see if there's like a lift in your funnel and your brand, you can look at different search metrics on the marketing side, you know, brand searches, organic website traffic.

Those are all indicators on whether or not your brand campaigns are actually making an impact. Cause if we're talking about like, you know, showing proof and attribution and all that, it's really making sure that you, your leadership understands what metrics is the brand budget actually held accountable to, uh, versus pipeline, which is what the demand budget is all about. Um, so I think it's, it's a lot of like internal education, internal campaigning. Um, I think as, as, you know, as I've learned moving up in management that it's managing upwards and also managing downwards and more often than not managing upwards takes a lot more effort because it's, it's how you get the buy-in to do your actual job.

Yeah. It's, you know, it's funny as you talk, it's all these questions, right. You know, and I can help with all of it, right. If you're like, Hey, I'm a CMO right now, I'm brand new. I'm trying to, when my CEO has a skeptic, I got to convince them on brand. What are some statistics, what are some ways that I could have this conversation with me? I see. Yeah. It's, it's amazing how ridiculous it is right now. If you're just curious enough to, to start to start to be curious, right. To, to be like, huh? Like, Oh, I wish I could call a CMO friend of mine who just did this blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, you have a CMO friend right next to you. It's literally, so my biggest hack and I've been sharing this with everybody.

It's not even like a secret anymore is voice notes. I'm obsessed with talking to AI. Like I have a, a little, um, Chrome extension that basically like translates every, like transcribes everything that I say to my computer. And I just talked to you at GPT. I talked to Claude and my favorite thing to do, I prefer Claude over GPT, uh, just cause when you're in marketing, Claude is just much more creative. Um, but you can actually have Claude code in react, like a slide, a slide deck, like a fully branded slide deck. And you can just say, help me put together a slide deck to convince my CEO that we should be doing brand campaigns and it'll just do it for you. So there's, there's a lot out there that people just need to kind of unlock to really get the use cases of how to get AI to work for you.

It's just bananas. Um, all right, let's finish up on this. Your, your specialty in video, right. With, with Goldcast. Um, curious your take here on all the AI video that's happening versus human video. Cause I was, I love video, you know, let's before AI, I thought video was great cause it showed authenticity. It showed I'm a human. It, it brand wise, there was authentic, you know, whatever. And I really railed against a lot of the, I won't name them, but you know, the, the platforms that did the whole mail merge bullshit where your name, you know, showed up. It was like, Hey Kelly, you know? And then when you open, I'd be like, Hey, you, thanks for opening up. Right. And it was a pretends going back to feeling duped.

Right. That was bullshit. Like video is meant to be authentic. That's the whole point of it is 835, 57, right? There's 57% of the way that we communicate is body language. So that's why video is such a powerful tool. But I just logged into Hey Jen about a month ago. I created an avatar of this, of me in this setting. And I made it speak Spanish and Portuguese and Chinese and Japanese, you know, like I, and it looked exactly like me. And if you didn't, I didn't connect to the level 11, uh, you know, the voice was at level. Yeah. It's level. I didn't connect the voice. So the voice was a little off with the Hey Jen stuff, but I showed it to people who knew me and they were like, wow. But I still can tell it's not you.

I showed it to some people who have never known me before. And they were like, Holy shit, you speak Spanish. And that's really not, that was like, that's, and I, so I guess my question for you is this is where it is video from where you sit. Is it in danger because of AI is the human element of video in danger because of AI, because of how good. And, and as we speak, it's the worst it's going to get today. I personally don't believe a single thing I see online anymore because of it. So where are we with this? Yeah, that's a, it's a great question and kind of like a thought exercise. Um, because I, I think video, when we're talking about mindshare, uh, video in my perspective is the most powerful way to build mindshare.

Cause like you said, it communicates authenticity. Um, I think when we're thinking about AI and video, a lot of people automatically go towards AI generated video, uh, which is, you know, you know, Sora and, you know, using HeyGen to actually like use a prompt and then create something. Um, I think that while the quality is, is getting really good, um, like you said, it's, it's not fully there. I think that things are changing so fast. Like honestly, tomorrow they can come up with an update that makes it look so realistic. I don't know, but I think for, for B2B marketing and sales, uh, where I see AI and video work is video has always been a really, really difficult medium and channel to crack for the marketing teams at least, because it requires a very specialty skillset.

You have to know Adobe premier pro you have to have all the gear and it's expensive. You have to hire freelancer or have an agency and it takes a bunch of time. Um, the way that I see what AI does for video is that it speeds things up. Um, I don't have to hire somebody to manually transcribe things. I can literally upload it and AI will transcribe a video for me. That's part of the video production process, that transcript, um, taking, uh, you know, a podcast like this, an hour long podcast, clipping it up until like, you know, short clips for YouTube shorts and all that repurposing it. So you make the most out of that long form video that used to take weeks and out and months and lots of money to do now.

They're AI tools that actually help do that. And so I think the best way for B2B to think about video is think about your source video. Cause that is the most important part of it. If your source is garbage, all of the rest of your output is garbage. If you have my source video, clarify for me, like the long form video, like the video that we're recording here right now. Um, as long as that's authentic, you're using your subject matter experts to actually know what they're talking about. They're providing value in that source content. You can repurpose it into so many different things into video. Um, those short clips, no one listens to, you know, unless you're, you know, actually listening to a podcast, no one logs on and watches a webinar on demand.

That's like an hour long. Um, they'll watch clips here and there that might get served as ads or like on social, but those are all part of the process of building mindshare. Um, so rather than, you know, constantly churning out hour long high production videos, having a webinar calendar that you can continuously repurpose and fill that content funnel up using AI to make it more efficient. Um, I, I think that's where there's the most potential with video and AI together is that keeping that authenticity intact, keeping that key message from that source, original content, you know, consistent and highly valuable. Um, I, I don't know where things will go with AI generated content. Um, I, I, I'm like you, I don't trust it.

I feel like all the time I'm looking at videos on LinkedIn, like talking head videos, being like, is it AI or is it not AI? Most of the time it is AI. And so as soon as I figure it out or clock that it is AI, I've written it off. Um, and so I think there is that stigma right now with AI generated content, which is why I think it's really important for, you know, B2B marketing teams and organizations to lean in more on the authenticity side. Yeah. Last question. This is going to be very selfish on my part because I'm curious on this. Um, so you, you understand the influencer marketing world, obviously, better than I do. Um, I've, I've been, you know, B2C versus B2B. Uh, there's a ton of AI influencers out there right now that are making so much more money than regular influencers are because, and, and the way I, and I guess the position somebody had, I forget who had said this, but it's these AI influencers are coming strong.

I think it was actually maybe even Gary V who was talking about how influencers are in trouble because somebody like, so I'm a, you know, sponsor, I get sponsors, all this. Look, I have my own schedule. I got other shit to do. You know what I mean? And sometimes I don't agree with the, with the post that the, that the client wants me to post because it's not my voice and I have to redo it. You know, I don't post it exactly the time that they want me to write that, that type of stuff. So I'm a human, I'm a pain in the ass, right? I mean, I try to do my best to, to, you know, work together and make sure that everybody's happy. Right. But inevitably you can't tell me what to do. You know what I mean?

Going back to put me in a box, I'm going to break it. You can tell an AI version of John Barrow's what to do whenever the fuck you want it to post whatever you want and that type of thing. So I guess my question is, is do you think that there's a future where corporations, because right now we're in this, we're in this B2B boom of influencer marketing. Like there's a little bubble right now that I'm trying to take much advantage of as I possibly can here in the, in the next few years. Right. There's this little wave, but I'm, I'm wondering just like what's happening in the B2C world. Cause it's almost like B2C influencers started going like rogue and, and less trust because they started repping everything.

You know what I mean? It's like, Hey, my t-shirt, my hat, my scars. And you knew they didn't use any of that shit. You knew they were just drinking Pepsi cause they were getting paid to drink Pepsi, you know, that type of thing. So I think the AI version now comes in and says, okay, it doesn't matter. It's not authentic. Cause it's not a real person. And I like that brand and it's cool as shit. It's fun. And it's doing some interesting things. So I'm wondering if you think that that is going to companies like Goldcast are going to create your own AI influencer channels to, to, to engage with your audience as opposed to looking for quote unquote, you know, influencers like me to invest it. Um, I think about this in, in two different ways.

So I think that there's, um, B2B influencer strategy and the, the value of a B2B influencer strategy is, um, influence word of mouth. Um, you know, I think in order for an influencer strategy to work well, there has to be a good match with the brand or product with the person that, you know, is influencing. If it doesn't make sense, if the audience, you know, the followers of the influencer don't make sense to the buyer of the product, it's just not going to land. It's going to be a waste of an investment. So I think just table stakes, you have to have that like reliability of, you know, the influencer being a good match with your brand and product, like actually understand the value prop, understand what problems you're looking to solve.

Uh, because, you know, if you don't have that as a baseline, you have nothing. And so that, that's how I see influencer marketing. Um, and you know, whether or not, you know, they post at the right time, that's kind of just like extra, like a more, I care more about the influence of like the impact, like what's the actual engagement. Do we do the actual, does the actual engagement turn into conversations? That's really what I'm tracking when I'm looking at influencer strategy. I think AI generated content that includes influencers. I'm thinking more of it as like a user generated content. And so say, you know, you, John Barrows, you don't really that much align with, you know, what I'm trying to sell at Goldcast, but I want to use your name and like list anyway.

And it's more of a transactional thing. Um, so I'm going to have you create an AI generated video, maybe through HeyGen of talk, seeing exactly what I want you to say. And you obviously have to like, okay, it because it's using your name and likeness. Um, but I'm going to take that video and I'm going to own it. I'm going to post it on my LinkedIn and it's not on your LinkedIn because anything that's like posted on your personal channels, it's really coming from your voice. Um, and you really have to be the owner of that and you have to have that buy-in. Um, I think that's really the crux of influencer partnerships is like making sure that's that right fit. Cause if you don't have that right fit on the brand level, the product level, the value prop level, it doesn't make sense.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm, that's where I think again, going back to authenticity, right? I think my big, my big fear in general is that, and I don't know how you, how old you are, but you know, I think we, we grew up with people like you're a lot younger than me, but, but we still grew up like engaging with people. Um, so I, I feel like there's a certain line in the sand, wherever generationally that there's always going to be that desire to have that human connection, that human conversation. Right. But I look at my daughter who's 14 and she grows up in this world and this world, even her, even her friends she talks to on this. And let's use this as an example. You and I are having a live conversation right now.

It's a, you know, it's, it's a genuine, real conversation, but this is still a digital representation of you. And you are looking at a digital representation of me. Now we understand that because we've lived our lives. We've engaged with people, but for kids that grow up here with their best friend being a digital representation and AI video getting so fucking good that eventually it's going to, you, you will not be able to tell the difference. And you have an AI version of somebody who is thoughtful, empathetic, caring, and then you have their friends who pick on them, talk shit about them, stab them in the back. I worry for the future generation of, of the human, the, the human elements being reversed because we are flawed as humans, period.

That's kind of our biggest strength and our biggest weakness is that we did the point, you know what I mean? Like we're a disappointing species at the end of the day. So I don't know. I'm just, I guess that's, I'm trying to figure out how we get, how we introduce the humanity factor of this. Well, or we keep the humanity factor of this as we race towards all this automation, this AI stuff, this, you know, these, these worlds that, that are just different. Yeah. I mean, I, you, this is a very philosophical point. And I think like, I'm very good at compartmentalizing professional Kelly is so excited for AI because of all of the possibilities, but like personal Kelly, I'm like you, I'm terrified for the future generation, how AI is going to change the world, how we mismanage AI, like we mismanage different technologies, how that's going to impact the world for the longterm.

Uh, yeah, try not to think too hard on those things because it, you know, pipeline keeps me up at night, but that's, I'm never going to sleep again if I start thinking about that too deeply, but yeah, it's, it's, it's polarizing for sure. Well, and that's kind of the, you know, the matrix conversation, right? Um, so that, and that's a totally different, that's me smoking weed later on. We can have that conversation. So awesome. Kelly, it was a bit of fun conversation. Where, where can people, um, where can people find out more about what you're doing, what Goldcast is up to and, and all the fun stuff? Yeah. Um, connect with me on LinkedIn, um, just LinkedIn, um, slash Kelly H Chang and, um, learn more about Goldcast at goldcast.io.

We started out as a, an event tech company, but we are now an AI powered video content platform, helping companies create engaging video, uh, through webinars, events and podcasts, and then use AI to transform that content into smaller bite-sized, um, assets that really drive engagement and help fill that buyer journey to win mindshare. Um, so learn more about Goldcast and check it out. I love it. Awesome. Kelly. Well, thanks so much for coming on. This has been fun. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And everybody hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And as I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you can make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day, just like you go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today.

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