From ABM to AI-Scaling B2B SaaS with Mark Bliss

Overview:

In this episode, Mark Bliss, VP of Marketing at Sutra AI and host of GTM After Hours, breaks down what modern go-to-market success really looks like. He discusses the transition from doer to enabler, how shared compensation fuels sales-marketing alignment, and why “wake-the-dead” ABM campaigns should be every marketer’s starting point. Mark also unpacks the real role of AI in marketing, the underestimated power of podcasts as a sales tool, and why creativity beats credentials in today's hiring landscape. A must-listen for modern B2B marketers navigating lean teams, evolving buyers, and AI-driven change.

Transcript:

Mark Bliss 0:00

Yeah, how many marketing leaders does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is more than one. No, I didn't. I didn't actually check the light bulb.

Elijah Drown 0:09

So anyway, that friend wasn't Charlie, G, P, T, was it? It was not?

Mark Bliss 0:13

No, it was a actual friend. So the embarrassment was real.

Elijah Drown 0:22

Our guest Mark has some serious night moves. This VP of Marketing creates a foundation for bridging sales and marketing teams to be solid. Some say, like a rock and five-time GTM leader, he doesn't just turn the page when learning about ai demand, Gen SaaS, and cybersecurity; he became obsessed long before these industries called it cool. Now he's leading Sutra AI, a fast, fast-moving and groundbreaking AI solution, which some may even say is moving as fast as a silver bullet, right mark. And if you really want to learn about Mark's passion, you should get on his podcast, GTM, after hours, at least listen, because it's a safe space for honesty, transparency, conversations and just being all around cool about marketing. Besides, it's lonely when both of us are talking about GTM, but good thing we've got tonight. Thanks for taking time to spill all the tea, Mark. Appreciate you and allowing me to dive into the only thing that I associate Detroit with, it's Bob Seeger.

Mark Bliss 1:20

I feel like I'm kind of cheating on Bob Seager after that intro, because you're just dropping hit after hit after in a Steve Miller Band t shirt.

Elijah Drown 1:30

So that's probably a better brand

Mark Bliss 1:33

at the moment, but

Elijah Drown 1:36

One hit wonders or something, or whatever it is, and still are bull. Silver Bullet took them to town while we're staring in the background. That's the coolest thing ever. While I have zero interest behind me, what's your favorite piece of work behind you?

Mark Bliss 1:49

So I love, I love the albums. All three of those albums were actually my dad's that he bought when he was between a senior in high school and a senior in college. So love that usually changes them out. It's something important to me, and frankly, I got really good advice before everybody went remote, so a couple years before the pandemic, that in your home office, when you're doing every demo virtually, have things behind you that you can tell a story about, that people can connect with you on, you know, and that that's something that I will typically advise my sales team to have, you know, one or two things behind you that you can tell a story about. I'm a bit of a maximalist, if you can imagine so. I've got like 300 things I can tell a story about, but minimum, to have a painting behind you, record something that you care about.

Elijah Drown 2:44

Kerry is usually doing the Tea Time. I figured I should maybe tell people, in case they're coming in and showing up. There she is, ASMR in training, doing the smoke signals from the producers angle, because her chest infection got infected, and so did her vocal cords. So I'm here trying to do my best. Mark Bliss is here talking about all the things that I wish I knew, and we're going to figure out maybe I'll get like, a crash course in GTM in like 30 hot minutes. So this will be pretty good. Mark, you have a lot of things going on, but I want to start with something fun, if I may. So I'd like to play a word association. I'm going to hammer some terms and things that I hope you know, and then, quick, don't think about it, just blurt out something that associates with this, either emotion or a response or something, the first word that comes to mind. You ready?

Mark Bliss 3:31

Sure, if the first one is Bob, the answer is Seeger.

Elijah Drown 3:35

You read my mind. Okay, that's the let's get to the second one about GTM,

Mark Bliss 3:41

An overall approach to make sure that your company is seen.

Elijah Drown 3:47

Okay. ABM, good marketing

Mark Bliss 3:48

Good marketing

Elijah Drown 3:51

cybersecurity, complex, chatGPT

Mark Bliss 3:54

Not as good as Gemini.

Elijah Drown 3:57

Um, I'll skip Gemini. There you go. Notebook. LLM,

Mark Bliss 4:02

Uh, built off of Gemini, so I love it.

Elijah Drown 4:04

Perplexity.

Mark Bliss 4:11

Man mops, essential,

Elijah Drown 4:14

Demand. Gen , underrated, LinkedIn,

Mark Bliss 4:19

Critical, Facebook,

Mark Bliss 4:23

Not as critical

Elijah Drown 4:25

Face, just well done. Podcasts,

Mark Bliss 4:29

Essential, directors.

Mark Bliss 4:33

Do you say directors? Yeah, I mean, they're people too,

Elijah Drown 4:41

marketing, VPS,

Mark Bliss 4:44

mostly people, too, at least 20% cyborgs.

Elijah Drown 4:48

I thought you were gonna say Mark, but that's fine. Sales,

Mark Bliss 4:53

Best friends

Elijah Drown 4:55

SO you can be best friends with somebody that's a rookie. Yeah, that's trying to figure out how to get to Leadership Excellence. They're just starting out. They're having fun. They're having a great time. But even for mistakes made in transparency form, marketing leaders like Kerry like to admit that in her first year of fractional marketing leadership, managing the CEO and internal communication, that was a little bit of an issue, because she got stuck on relaunching the website, and then figured out that it's doesn't always have to be pretty and then nothing gets done and you just kind of cry in a corner. So are those kind of things that you help teach people when they're rookie marketing leaders to get to that director level, or is there anything particular that you try to coach people on when they're trying to succeed and kind of do better and figure it out?

Mark Bliss 5:44

Well, it's a few things. First, I think the biggest transition that you have in your career is jumping from doing every day to inspiring and enabling. And that is a very big shift, and people sometimes have a hard time letting go of the doing and that stands in their way of having success. I mean, I know it stood in mine. You know, my my first VP of marketing role, I was so deep in the weeds that, you know, even as I was enabling my team, I was still personally owning several different functions within marketing, and sometimes you have to do that, but what you also have to do is you have to step back and actually Pay attention to the strategy. Good enough is good, so ship it. You can always learn from it. But if you're spending hours and hours debating, you know, color schemes or two words on you know your corporate home page, that issue is now taking you away from actually determining what you should be doing from a strategic standpoint. So I always say step back. I also tell people that the data can lie, because it all depends. It depends on the attribution model. It depends on historical data, like, for example, I was VP at a company for the previous two and a half years. Their MQL definition was basically, does this person look like they're alive and breathing? They're an MQL and so if you go with that, is the data. Now you know your MQL numbers might drop down. Your conversion rates would go up, but your your historical data is going to be an issue. And so how do you normalize that? Also, if you're looking at a first or last touch model, it's always going to be flawed, because you're always leaving behind and leaving out all of these important touches all along the journey. And so if you met them at a trade show two years ago, and you run a first touch attribution model, the trade show gets 100% of the credit. You're not allocating anything to, you know, the webinars that they've recently attended, the ads that they've been clicking, any of that stuff. And so I always tell people the data can lie. So you want to make sure that you're first aligning all of that data, finding where those weaknesses are, and identifying what you can fix versus what's not worth fixing, like the historical data change I would just make, put an asterisk there for previous years, it's not worth going back and refiltering all of those MQLs through whatever your new methodology is, but just really, really lean into what's going you know, what are the key targets going forward?

Elijah Drown 8:57

Theresa Potratz came on the podcast not too long ago, last year, and she talks about the denial of people because it seems unreal, unrealistic that people have perfect data. Is that what you mean, especially in stealth land, when you're just starting up to try and figure out, okay, if this is messy data or it's incorrect, just throw us an asterisk at it. Move on and learn from it. Or do you try to focus on just getting it right?

Mark Bliss 9:25

So you'll spend an entire year getting it right, especially if you don't have a strong mops hire in place. And we can talk about hiring because that's a critical component of, you know, being a first-time marketing leader. But I think the big thing with data is just making sure that you have whatever your baseline is to compare against. You can always improve from there, but as long as you have a baseline and you're comfortable with what that baseline is, then you're good and you're golden. I would also say, you know, work back on your model. Funnel for the year. Work backwards, you know what, what is your target? And then work back with all of the you know, conversion rates across the funnel to be able to identify, you know, how many MQLs and SAOs you're going to need in order to hit that number. And then, if you can take your CAC, and align it there. Now you know what your budget should be, and that's a great first exercise for a first time marketing leader coming in, because I would bet you that not only is the goal target completely made up by somebody in a boardroom, but the method to which you're going to achieve it will absolutely change dependent upon where you're putting emphasis on improving conversion rate. So if you're really trying to, you know, improve your conversion rate, maybe late funnel SQL proposal stage, then you're not going to need as many deals in the funnel, sir. That's where something like an ABM play comes in, versus your traditional inbound.

Elijah Drown 11:10

So, where would you draw the line and push back on unrealistic KPIs? Is there a spot as a leader in marketing? Would you push back on the directors or just go, Okay, guys, we have series A or VC happening, and we need to please them. Let's just make it happen.

Mark Bliss 11:28

I mean, at some point, you have to, you have to pick your battles. The old adage of, you know, it's not a hill to die on, is, is very, very critical and relevant for marketing leaders, particularly in B to B SAS, because things move so quick that, if I can just spin off a report, and it stops me from having a back and forth, I'm going to do it every time. But, you know, I don't know if you know, historically, the, you know, it's not a hill to die on. It was because, you know, they were battling. And then every time that they would retreat, they'd retreat to the next hill to get higher ground as they keep going backwards, until finally, there's the last hill before the village with all of their families in it, and so that's the hill to die on. Everything else, you can strategically give it up and it doesn't affect you.

Elijah Drown 12:28

I think that's how I'd look at Everest. Just look at it go up halfway and then start going backwards and go Not today, not today. So that's what makes me it's with ABM. You want to hit accounts, you want to be specific. I don't know if your permission, your white glove. I just want to go and give steak dinner to one person to feed the army, if you will, or customer base, or if you're going to a lot at once, or somewhere in between. And with that strategy, are you focused on demo requests, contact forms, measuring downloads, referrals, clicks, all that stuff, or is there something specific that you try and hone in on so you don't go bananas?

Mark Bliss 13:07

Well, with ABM, I first I want to say ABM is not Demand Gen, innate like it's not your traditional inbound. I think where people fail with ABM is they try to treat it like this, top of funnel channel, yeah, and it's just not like that, that that is not what it's designed for. You want to look at, you know, the percentage of engaged accounts, and you want to look at Pipeline velocity, so your speed to close, and then, of course, closed one revenue. And so with ABM, if we're looking at a much smaller amount of accounts, and most of the time, these accounts are folks that have already engaged with you in some way. And so my favorite types of campaigns are things like wake the dead ABM campaigns. That's the one I always recommend that people do first, because these people have already seen what you do, they've already seen demos. They've already told you no and or ghosted you or just fell off the face of the earth. And so one of the coolest ways that you can prove out yourself as a leader, as well as your ABM program, is closing deals that couldn't be closed before. And so it's a really, really great start to any ABM program doing awake the Dead campaign. Because the reality is, half of those deals could be because there were, you know, a couple of bad, you know, or poorly trained reps. You could have had an issue where there was a feature that wasn't present in the in the software back then, but it is today. And so there's, there's a lot of good reason to do it, and so I always tell people to start there, but equally, pick, pick a trade show that you're coming to and do an ABM campaign around ideal client profile accounts that are going to be at that trade show you. I'm sure you can come up with, like, 20 or so sure target accounts at minimum. And then, how many meetings do you book? And then you can walk into the trade show already knowing that you're going to meet with, you know, five to 10 of your you know, ideal client profile accounts. That trade show is already going to be a success. You've already set it up for success. And so I tend to think of ABM more as pipeline velocity and engaged accounts than I do top of funnel net new.

Elijah Drown 15:32

So you already grab stuff, contacts from CRM, or data you've procured from somewhere, and you have Warren leads and almost middle of the funnel stuff going on from an outsider. That's kind of how I see it. Is that close?

Mark Bliss 15:46

Yeah, I think so. And I think it's kind of letting go that pure top of funnel until you're ready. That is a great ABM play going with a targeted list of 100 accounts who's never heard of you, but are are in your ICP, absolutely do that. But to build up to that, do the other ones first have pipeline, different individual pipeline campaigns, so like an you know, top of funnel, mid funnel, late final, each of those have different ads, different pieces of content tied into them, and it really, truly helps you to prove out the success of the program before you're just straight up. Here's a brand new account. I'm gonna go after it, because that's what most people do. They buy the $100,000 ABM platform, and then they drop another 100 to 200,000 into the ads and and direct mail and all the accessories, and they go after a bunch of brand new targeted accounts that are on the salesperson's wish list. You're just setting yourself up for failure. You haven't proven out the program at that point. And so you know that is the hardest ABM play to run. So why start there?

Elijah Drown 17:08

Is there a particular format of campaigns that you do like to utilize when you are targeting the warmer clients, the people? Maybe it's wake the dead. Maybe it's already people in there. They've tried your stuff. They're like maybe. Do you try to take a campaign that shocks people, surprises them, and just captures them, their emotions, or do you just go straight to the facts? Here's we are, here's who we are, like it or love it.

Mark Bliss 17:35

So I love big, innovative, creative campaigns in a previous company, we did away with all the traditional like trade show swag, and, you know, put a bunch of that budget into doing like a comic con style autograph signing experience, and we were giving away things from a local comic book shop. Cool. It really fit our ICP. It gained a lot of attention. And it was great. I mean, really great CTA for, you know, for all of our ABM accounts, because if they took the demo and they were qualified, we'd send them out either a Marvel or a DC pack. And that was pretty fun. But I think ABM isn't as much about the creativity as it is about knowing the folks that you were talking to, understanding those prospects. And you know, AI really makes that so much easier. Nowadays, you could take that the the transcript from, you know, the three calls that you've had with them, pop that into a trained model around your ICP, have it evaluate those transcripts for opportunities for custom content, and then it can feed you two or three topics on custom content that you should generate for that account. And then you could do one of my favorite plays, which is a fake in our where you record the webinar, but it's literally just you and your your subject matter expert, walking through a particular topic, and then the sales rep gets to be like, Oh, hey, Mr. Mr. Prospect, yeah, we actually did a webinar on this topic not too long ago. I know you mentioned it in in our last conversation. I wanted to pass this along to you. Yeah, it never existed before. And so the biggest benefit to that is, like, it's very custom. You're answering the specific questions that your prospect is, but you're doing it in a generalized way that won't make them feel like, very awkward that eyes are on them the whole time

Elijah Drown 19:36

It you make it seem like it's an element of surprise. Be like, here we have all this great content. I thought about you, and then everybody feels like it's natural, whether they care or not, doesn't matter. At least you're trying something different and something a little more organic, which is pretty cool.

Mark Bliss 19:50

Well, and if it resonates, there's no reason why that can't be then spun up as an on demand webinar on your portal, like so. So it makes it really easy, if you start in that one to one approach, to turn it into something that's more one to few or one-to-many.

Elijah Drown 20:08

Email lists, whatever you can chop it up however you want. So totally cool. Do you prefer more of an outbound sort of campaign, sort of marketing play the ABM, GTM, or you prefer to try and grab people inbound. Or are you going to hit me with the ultimate It depends?

Mark Bliss 20:26

I mean, I have to hit you with the it depends. But you know, the way that I have traditionally structured that is, if the average deal size is under 50,000 an inbound model fits best if the average deal size is over that, particularly if it's 150 to 200 it has to be an outbound model.

Elijah Drown 20:51

And Kerry's asking to ask questions, because she's asking all them currently. And we're, we're kind of diving into it, which is pretty good. You mentioned Gemini, you mentioned AI, and that really helps is, is it still accurate enough to get the data you need, or do you just want a starting point to kind of get an idea, to take, like, I don't know, 60, 70% of the research out of your time and your day, to just start hitting the ground running?

Mark Bliss 21:13

Well, I think it's first and foremost understanding what AI is and is not. So what AI is, is going to be great for research, and it's, it is great for that starting point. It's, it's great for understanding and analysis. It's, it's great for, you know, taking a bunch of disparate data sources and summarizing them and giving you, you know, goals and targets. But what it's not, it's not going to create something that wasn't already there before. And so, you know what I tend to tell people now is it used to be, you know, for better or for worse, people would hire based on experience. Experience is the main threshold if I wanted somebody who's going to run Facebook ads, because obviously that's the most important thing to ever do, then I'm going to hire somebody with that specific experience. Now I tell people I'm much more interested in their base level of creativity than anything else you know, because that's the thing that AI can't give me. And so there's all sorts of tools that exist in the world that are going to be able to, you know, run ads, do SEO, you know, even, even just, frankly, get you up to speed on a particular tool, or, you know, campaign methodology, but that raw, I have an idea that nobody else has had can't be done by AI. And so I think building around that, where you're able to say, Okay, so these are the things that AI is going to do, and these are the things that we're going to do as a team. And if you do your brainstorming and your you know creative workshops and you really can align on your your brand and your messaging, and every everything to do with your your personas and your key messaging guide, like all of that can then be fed into AI to give you a really strong output, yeah, but you have to have some creativity at the top to be able to, I guess, understand what questions to ask. I also think people where they fail all the time with AI is in the prompt because they expect it to be like this magic fortune teller, like, I know you ever seen the movie Big with Tom Hanks, which is problematic nowadays.

Mark Bliss 23:46

That movie does not hold up to modern standards. But the entire, you know, premise, he walks up to this fortune teller thing, and it turns him into an adult. It turns a kid into an adult. And so I think people believe that AI is that, is that magical fortune teller, and, you know, it'll pump out something that's, you know, a fully formed Tom Hanks. And you're not going to get a fully formed Tom Hanks unless you work on your prompt. It's not magic. You have to have very detailed prompts. I once spent like two and a half hours on one prompt to get the output that I wanted

Elijah Drown 24:30

But it'll save you 2030, 100 hours totally worth it. Exactly.

Mark Bliss 24:34

I don't have to do it from scratch, but people aren't willing to. How do I put I will say most folks that I have talked to that are failing leveraging AI, it's because they're not taking enough time with the prompts. They're they're not learning. There's so much education out there on how to write great prompts, and even just. Understanding how the AI works. Most people don't know that. It's literally just guessing the next word. I mean, that's the entire the entire baseline of AI is it's just guessing. And so what direction you can give it to make it guess better? It's all on the prompt

Elijah Drown 25:20

So now that you have training for basics, you have your fake webinars, as you call them, for maybe in her house, L and D, and then you have how to prompt, brought to you by Mark the expert. You have creative and you need humans. Would you rather hire me, who's like a zany, Corky maple syrup, dripping whatever, creative? Or would you hire somebody with experience like Kerry, who has experience and ideas based on marketing?

Mark Bliss 25:49

So when I say creative, I'm not necessarily saying in the, you know, Persona and somebody's personal brand, you know, like I have white glasses, I must be creative. No, that's not what I'm looking for. I actually do this rapid fire round in every interview, where I say, Okay, it's time for us to go into the lightning round. Usually I do this after we've gone through their background, some previous job history, while they're still super nervous, and so it's part icebreaker. But I'm asking questions like, if you had a theme song every time that you joined a Zoom meeting, what would it be? And I don't care what the answer is. I mean, if it's a song I haven't heard in a while, I might put it on. But what I want to see is how quickly somebody can think about the answer. And so I want to see, you know, how how their wheels turn, what they're defaulting to in some of these answers. And I'm really just looking for how creative are they, how quickly they can respond to me. And so, yeah, I'll do things like that where I'm really just ascertaining, are they creative not? Oh, they look like they're creative because they have cool glasses.

Elijah Drown 27:01

Instead of what type of animal would you be in this particular situation if you didn't have three legs? You want the goods, the good stuff. Can they react on the on their feet, on the fly? And can they prove themselves without just going through a checklist on the resume?

Mark Bliss 27:16

Well, yeah, and those questions are much easier, like at first, when I started doing this, I did it with questions that somebody proficient and had experience in whatever that role was would know, but I found that it didn't really give me the answers that I was looking for, because people were so hung up on trying to tell their story and look good doing it, that I wasn't really gaining how quickly they thought on their feet, and so I changed all the questioning to, you know, more broad things, like, you know, superpowers and, you know, the theme songs and all that kind of fun stuff. So that way I could really just get to the heart of, do they think, well, on their feet? Do they come up with things when there's a little bit of pressure? And, you know, that's really, really been a game changer.

Elijah Drown 28:12

I had a whole bunch of questions to line up, but Laura Kenner's live, she's in the comments, and she's changing up things for me, so she just kind of wondering the alignment for sales and marketing. This is like your bread and butter, your dream question to figure out how to get on the talk together. Is it shared goals and responsibility? Are we talking about deals? One, is there a rev ops model that they kumbaya over? Do we have sales enablement trajectory to marketing, or do we have something else that could really it sounds like she's an interview question that she needs your help. You got any ideas?

Mark Bliss 28:45

Okay,so Hi, Laura, what's up? I think for me, it's this intersection of compensation and compliments and aligning those two things. Oftentimes, marketing is not compensated when a deal closes, like what their sales counterparts are. And so if you can do that, even if it's in like a quarterly bonus or variable comp type of model, but if you can structure it to where when something closes, marketers make some extra cash that alignment on closed one as the key metric. Really, really sparks. And then the other thing is the compliments, because marketing is traditionally kind of left in the shadows, while you know sales is celebrating a closed one deal, and you have to pull them out of the shadows. You have to have them be a part of that celebration. You need shout outs from the C suite specific to marketers. And you don't often have that. And so I think if you could do. Those two things, it makes it much easier for sales and marketing alignment, because everybody's has the same goal and same target, and everybody feels like they're a part of the same team. I think where the animosity grows is when you know marketers, for example, see, you know the sales team as you know, getting all the glory, and then that can build up some resentment. And I think the flip side is also true, and this is why compensation is so important. You cannot have the sales team feeling like marketers only care about leads. And so if you can align those two things, the majority of the time, you're going to have a really great relationship between sales and marketing.

Elijah Drown 30:46

Do you think it's a big bonus that marketers should actually try, at least, I don't know, a week in the life and sales just to get a feel? Or do you prefer maybe just do a sales job if you have yet not jumped into marketing in a leadership role like you did before you were in sales. Did it help?

Mark Bliss 31:03

It was I was and it does. I like the prospect of having a marketer be an STR for a couple of hours every couple of quarters, depending on your team structure, that really helps, especially if it's the folks who are creating the content. So if your email marketing manager is is an SDR for the day, you were going to see some big dividends in in how they message after they've had to send those emails out and get the replies. So that's definitely beneficial. But it all depends on, it all depends on your team. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have somebody who is more of an introvert that would never do that. I'm not going to force them on the phone Sure. You know, yeah, that would be terrible for morale, and we'd end up with some really terrible phone calls and emails coming out. But yeah, for those that can I think it is really valuable. I think there's a level of empathy that needs to exist, and it's the same reason why when a sales team member has an idea for a piece of content or something, I always ask them to give me the first draft, even if it's like a back of the napkin drawing or something like, I've had people just take a picture of a whiteboard that they wrote some notes on, but some sort of a first draft, because I also want them to understand how difficult what they're asking for is like, if you want a blog, it's not just as simple as you know, pop it into chat GPT, and then an hour later, you have a blog. There's a lot that goes into these things, and I want them to start thinking about that, so that way they you know, the sales team also has empathy for how hard of a job marketing has.

Elijah Drown 32:53

the balance between AI automation, automated emails, and the exact human, fully scripted email that goes out with their, you know, two fingers, or whatever it may be. Is there a balance somewhere? Do you try to lean on either side of the scale, or do you just try to avoid it and say, just write them.

Mark Bliss 33:13

The colder the prospect is, the more personalization you need to do. I think as you progress in the sales cycle, you've effectively earned the right to use a little bit of additional automation, plus the AI can be trained with all the conversations that you've had with that prospect. And so it's going to put out a you know, it's a better output. You know, that email copy is going to be better, but if it's cold and you've never talked to them before. You know, use AI to inform what the email should say, but it's not going to put out anything that you'd want to copy and paste and send out.

Elijah Drown 33:50

Do you feel that there's a major shift modern buyers engaging trying to figure them out? And do you think maybe B to B teams just haven't quite figured that out? They're not adapting fast enough or or, do you think everything's fine?

Mark Bliss 34:04

Well, everything is never fine. I feel like the the world of B to B marketing is like that. You know, everything's fine while everything's burning around them meme. I feel like that's traditionally what it what it always is. But I I think that because of AI's real sudden emergence just into the day to day and status quo, mixed with, at the same time, a reduction in workforce and team sizes all across I think those two things are making teams have to rely on AI, but they've never taken the time to learn and train and how to effectively use it, so it's just creating a lot of stress all the way around. You have senior leadership that thinks it's really easy and you can just pop it into. Chat, GPT, and all your work's done for you. So of course, I can assign three people's worth of work to one person because, of course, they have AI, right? Yeah. And so I think that there's a disconnect there. And I also think that there's a disconnect with, you know, the traditional folks on the ground in marketing also thinking maybe AI is a little easier than it actually is.

Elijah Drown 35:24

What's your favorite outbound channel? And maybe hit me with as a follow-up question, your favorite opening line, like the guys on Instagram try to say, would you hate me if do you pull that stuff? Or do you try to just be cool? And, you know, hit the ground running.

Mark Bliss 35:41

So I would say LinkedIn in mail is my absolute, absolute favorite. And I think you go with a podcasting play. Everyone wants to be a thought leader, everyone including me, yeah, and so it's so much easier for me to message someone asking them to be a guest on our podcast. You know, I saw you posted such and such. You see this comment, you know, whatever it is, but you direct it to something that that prospect has said or written or something in their background. You're like, I think you'd be a great guest. These are the topics that we've recently talked about, I think it aligns with your background. Would love to have you on the show, and the majority of the time you're getting a reply back, even if they're like, I don't really want to do a podcast, they're still replying back to you. And you've got an in and then if they do the podcast a you've got some law of reciprocity working for you, because those are folks that are going to want to give you the opportunity to pitch them, because you've already done them, done them a favor by, you know, amplifying their voice as a thought leader. But what you're also doing, because you're tagging them in, you know, any of the post-show materials now you're engaging with their entire network. So, you know, this post goes out, you know, you're tagging me in it all. All of my network, you know, Kerry’s benefiting from because everybody's seeing that, and I see, you know, in the B to B world, it's the same thing. The podcast play is probably the strongest ABM play that's out there today, until marketers finish ruining it. Why do you because every time, every time something good happens, and it's really easy for a little while, marketers find a way to ruin it. And I'm guessing that's going to be from really, really terrible AI in mail messages.

Unknown Speaker 37:40

Wow, it's coming, if not already, definitely,

Mark Bliss 37:42

It's definitely coming. But in the meantime, run this play. It's so simple and it works way more than it should.

Elijah Drown 37:52

Can you take me from podcast to closing a deal like, where is the how can we get the inner confidence, the the experience that Mark has to kind of go through when's the right time to kind of follow up, to pitch them, to sell them, to kind of have that take it, take them up on that reciprocity.

Mark Bliss 38:14

Well, the first initial podcast pitch that you're going to do top of the funnel, and so that that is in that MQL stage. You know that they're a good fit, and you know you're empowering the SDR team to go and reach out bonus points, if it's coming from whomever is the host of your podcast. Absolute bonus points there. But what you can do from there is, once that is finished, you're going to, you know, sign off with, you know, we'll let you know this is going to post in in a week or two. I would never let it go beyond a couple of weeks, right? Whatever you have to do, post it as quick as possible, because you don't want them to forget that they talk to you, yeah, post it, you send the email, and you tag them and everything. And then once that goes out, you wait about, I don't know, six hours. Say, Hey, the reception we've been getting is, is really good. You were such an excellent, excellent guest. Can we get, can we get coffee and continue the conversation?

Elijah Drown 39:23

Do they think with them right into there, will they see through that by chance, or would they care? Be like, yeah, you're nice. They don't even check. I

Mark Bliss 39:28

I you've already built a relationship. You just spent an hour with them on a podcast, yeah? So that's a huge benefit. And then you've also now gained a ton of great data about their business, how they look at the world, how that specific person thinks. And so the all of that could be fed into our good friend, AI, yeah, to help surface additional topics, additional things that you can you know, be. Bring them into the fold on, you know, maybe there's an element of your product that, when AI reads a transcript, it's like they would really benefit from such and such feature. And then your follow-up when you have that coffee meeting could be, you know, as you were talking about it, all I kept thinking about is how much you'd benefit from this feature. Can I show you this really quick? Yeah, like, Yeah, sure. So good, so helpful, and again, incredibly underutilized right now, for as much attention is paid to LinkedIn and posting and your personal brand and all of that, there's still this huge opening for this podcast play because people, as much as there are a million podcasts out there nowadays, most people will only be asked to guest on one, maybe two in an entire year. And these are C-suite executives. They are not getting pitched for podcasts as much as you probably think that they are.

Elijah Drown 41:02

Really so. So there's never a correlation between director ROI and podcasts and and what you said, the magic behind getting in the door people just are they sleeping? Are they behind a rock? Do they not get out much? Do they not listen to your podcast and your advice and heed this like they should get out there tomorrow? Or do you think there's a disconnect somewhere that people are like, Man, I don't need this. I'm just gonna go on the phone and, you know, say stuff.

Mark Bliss 41:31

Well, I think the disconnect is it takes a lot of work to put a podcast together. Fair, that's, that's the disconnect, you would know, right there. Yeah, yeah. It takes, it takes work. It takes a host, preferably one who still has their voice. Kerry.

Elijah Drown 41:48

Yeah, not. You need an army of people.

Mark Bliss 41:52

Army of people in the back and all of the editing. You know, you're going to want this on video so you can put out a video clip on social. Sure, all of these things take time and resources. They don't cost a lot of money, but they cost a lot of time. And so people will traditionally lean towards things that are easier plays, like your traditional inbound like, we're gonna, we're gonna run a sponsored post on LinkedIn for a webinar that's coming up, and that's going to be the play, because it takes no time and no effort to do all the SDRs are sending out the same message about the webinar coming up. It's not as personalized. It doesn't take as much time, but if you run this podcast play, it's all personalized. It takes a lot of time, and even if you have good tools, like you're using a stream yard or a riverside, like, if you've got these good tools in place, it still takes a ton of time and effort and a lot of skills to be able to do.

Elijah Drown 42:53

So you mean, you can't just get boomers on TikTok talking in Gen Zed lingo and hoping that you get a million hits and lots of phone calls, is that what you're telling me?

Mark Bliss 43:03

I mean, I wouldn't say it wouldn't get a million hits on TikTok, but convert you have no idea what's ever going to hit. And this idea that we should play and strive to go viral is the most ridiculous thing, like some C-suite person is going to see this, and they're like, but why can't we? It's so easy. All these other brands are doing it, and I don't have any desire to go viral. I don't care if only five people download that podcast episode. If one of those five is my target buyer, I'm good.

Elijah Drown 43:41

That's still 20% conversion, like salespeople dream of that stuff.

Mark Bliss 43:45

Yeah. So don't, don't judge based on metrics that don't matter to your business. Judge things based on revenue and pipeline and pipeline velocity, like it is, does the deal move quicker? Because in my experience, it does. It will move quicker. If you've done a podcast with that prospect.

Elijah Drown 44:05

Can I put you on the spot and ask about GTM after hours and ask if you've got some deals last year or any time through your podcast?

Mark Bliss 44:14

I did, yeah, yeah. Well, I was, well, I was freelancing. Was able to pick up a couple, and a couple of my guests were actually hired in part from, you know, their their appearance on the podcast, you know, sharing that, you know, the hiring manager asked, Oh, well, what do you think of, you know, fill in the blank marketing function, and then they're able to say, Oh, I just did a podcast episode on that actually, let me send that to you. Which is, which is, which is very important. And honestly, that's why I came up with the GTM after hours podcast idea in the first place. Is I feel like we all are so good at telling the story of our brand, whether you're in sales, marketing, CS, we're really, really good at pitching whatever. Company we're working for, but we are just absolutely terrible about sharing our knowledge, and this is particularly important for folks that are not, you know, the directors and above, they often don't get asked to ever share their experience on a podcast, and they're the ones that we really should be listening to, because they're the ones who are actually doing the work.

Elijah Drown 45:22

The middle managers, right? They're figuring out all the campaigns and what works and what doesn't, round the troops. And they just want to talk to people because they want a promotion, absolutely,

Mark Bliss 45:33

exactly. So highlighting, highlighting their stories is a big part of it, and it also builds up quite, quite the awesome transcript log for me to train my AI.

Elijah Drown 45:49

I think you've had a lot of practice with AI models, especially when you went from fractional to W2 with Sutra. You also just got a stealth in February, so you must be going through a lot of scrutiny or rapid-fire questions or things like that. Has it been everything you expected? Is this just kind of for you sleeping with one eye closed? Or do you do the stuff in your sleep? Or how does this kind of work out for people who aren't finding a W2 job and just want to spin up a startup, so to speak?

Mark Bliss 46:20

So the how do I put the the interesting about thing about sutra is this is now my, my second AI company, and it's the same founder, and so the same founder, who, who hired me as marketing hire number one at a previous startup through the series, hired me as marketing hire number one at this one, both AI companies and and so that's part of what has been, you know, making me very introspective lately, of like, how far I've come, and the things that I failed on as a first time VP. Because I'm, I'm now, you know, it's like, I'm working for the same founder, but with my current skill set versus my older skill set. And it's not even just a talent thing. I think it's just understanding what's actually important, what is worth stressing over, and what is not; all of those things really, really come into play. And so I think labeling us coming out of stealth was so critical because, you know, I needed to tell the market that like we're here and we exist, but it also buys you an amazing level of empathy and forgiveness, because you're not going to have your stuff together. And I don't know, is this a is this a podcast I can curse on, because I would have used a different word there.

Elijah Drown 47:48

But you have the glasses that prove that you can do whatever you please there.

Mark Bliss 47:53

Well, I don't know, you always have to ask, but yeah, I think the idea behind coming out of stealth is it does it frames things in the way that it's like you're new, you're up and coming, and so you don't have to have all of your shit together. And so I love that, and I love the idea of even reframing, if your company is not coming out of stealth, have have a coming out of stealth quarter, a foundational sprint to do all the things that you decided that you weren't going to do earlier on. You know, I'm looking I'm looking at all of my demand gen friends who put no stock at all into any of their product marketing. And you know, it's better to do it early than to do it late. But if you can do a level set with with your internal leadership team that you know, we're we're going to treat this like we're brand new for this quarter, and we're going to go on a sprint, hugely beneficial, I would say the same thing for for mops and your your data and systems, because there's not a single person listening to this that has perfect data and is getting everything that they can out of their tech stack.

Elijah Drown 49:07

What's the biggest failure that you told your second-time manager, boss, CEO that you learn from and that you're going to do better?

Mark Bliss 49:19

So for me, it was always like, I'm a very impatient person. So I have, I have an insane bias towards action. I don't want to discuss anything. I just want to put it on I want to put it out in the world. Run a run an ad on it for with a couple 100 bucks to my ICP, and if it resonates great, put more thought and effort into it, if it doesn't, didn't lose any time. But I think that that bias towards action isn't really relevant until you've built the foundation. And so like, like many other folks who have a demand gen background that get into that VP slot, you. Is you have this bias towards, you know, I'm going to run ads, I'm going to spin these things up, like a bunch of new content, a bunch of new campaigns, full ABM program and tech staff, and you haven't really identified who's even buying your software yet. Ouch. And so, like you might have a one-page a one-pager on your brand and a few battle cards or something, but you're basically just rolling with gut. And I won't put all of that at all of that blame on the on the feet of that marketing leader, because it's also coming top down, because you're getting weekly requests for how many more leads, how much more pipeline? What are you doing to drive pipeline? And so, you know, pushing back early on and setting the expectation that the work that we do now will benefit us in pipeline is so important, and it's just, frankly, a discussion that a lot of folks don't have. I will say the reverse is also true. The folks who came from the product marketing side and found themselves in that seat they need to spend a lot less time in meetings talking about minor changes, and they need to just run something in an ad. So it works both ways. And I think the lessons that you learn, the more that you do it is you just realize where your weaknesses are from, depending on where you came up as a marketer, to be able to get into that chair and understand what that weakness is and really diving into it. And the good news for me is, you know, not being a product marketer by trade originally. You know, I come up from the sales side. I was a demand gen marketer through and through. The benefit of having AI like I had an entire conversation with with my ICP on my phone, train, train to model, and I can have a voice chat with them, and it's, it's really, really powerful to be able to do that type of thing, to be able to get in the to the head of your buyers, and you can do that now in a way that you never could before. And so that helps a ton. And I would say the reverse is also true for the product marketing-centered leaders. Y'all can take advantage of all this great technology that's going to do a lot of that, you know, heavy lifting for you, if you're just like, Okay, well, we need to run this as a test. There are so many tools out there that are just going to run that ad for you without you having to do much, if any, work. I mean, you don't even have to design the damn thing now. Yeah, AI can take care of that for you.

Elijah Drown 52:49

And it's the modern version of talking at a mirror, only you get a sense of an actual, real person on the other side, which is kind of nice. I always have a bias for action, for joy. You're not only a marketer. You're not only born in the demand gen era, and you're not only a Steve Miller Band fan, anything in particular you want to share that brings you joy today. Mark.

Mark Bliss 53:09

So as weird as it is, because I am, I'm a tech marketer. I'm absolutely obsessed with all things AI and technology, but I love to listen to old eight-track tapes. I restore them. I, I love listening to them. I find it as a nice stress relief and a balance from the chaos of of modern world and technology to just throw in a 1970s eight-track. And the cool thing about eight tracks, they will play on repeat until either it breaks or you take it out. And so I don't have to ever worry about my decision fatigue. Ever I just put in a track. And so I always tell people, find, find what your eight track is like. What is that thing that's going to center you and get you to calm down at the end of the day, because we are so overworked nowadays? You know, team sizes, I think I saw a study that they're down like 40% from their pandemic-era peaks. And so you're doing more with less. You have less budget, you have less team. Somehow, it does not mean you have less stress, shocking. And so find that thing, something that's going to balance you, that is kind of the yin to your Yang, whatever that is. And do that, you know, if you're a go, go, go, kind of person, maybe meditation is, is the vibe. You know, after your 17 cups of coffee in the day, maybe you need to have some some meditation, if it's the reverse, if you're very if you're a chill person during the day and you're very introspective, maybe you need to take up kickboxing or something.

Elijah Drown 54:52

Or call Mark. How can you be biased to action and go crazy? I don't know.

Mark Bliss 54:56

Yeah, I don't find something that balances an area of your personality. That work isn't balancing. If you can do that, you're going to be a lot less stressed, and you're going to do a lot better work. In fact, some of my best creative work happens at night after I've thrown on an eight track or two, usually something like, like, bat out of hell, or, you know, Hotel California, yeah, something like that. I'll throw on, gets me in a chill mood, and then I'll have an idea or something that comes to mind, and some of my best work has been done after that.

Elijah Drown 55:30

It's semi-Sonic closing time, which always does it for me. I don't know why. It's just kind of, it's just that cool. We're going home. We had a good time. It's, it's all good, and then it's all good for Mark, because now Kerry and I got to talk about the strategy of how to podcast 101, and get people in the seat and get them going, and maybe we can dadify it and get spreadsheets going. You'll be excited. Who knows, it'll be a nice time. Hope you, Oh, she talks, whoo. She came out for three words, folks, this is great. Chest infection. This is good. You sound great, and AI will help you sound better. It's fine until you feel better. All right. Mark, this has been great. Thank you for making time at happy hour before you have to feed your family and spill some tea. We'll have some clips, as Kerry likes, and maybe we'll be able to, I don't know, meet up at a carnival podcast in the future. But really appreciate this. Thank you.

Mark Bliss 56:20

Sounds like fun. Thank you both for having me bye.