GTM Unfiltered

[00:00:00]

Judd Borakove: Woo! We're back, guys!

Matt Amundson: Hey, Heyo.

Judd Borakove: for this one. Yeah, I obviously had way too much eggnog. Not. If you guys watched the last episode, we don't drink that. But, we're excited, guys. It is, you know, New Year's time. Great things going on. And, uh, You know, this is one of the few times where everybody's not super pressurized with work, things are a little bit slower, so this is gonna be a fun one.

And, uh, we've got some cool topics to go on. Uh, Craig, my, one of my favorite backgrounds going on here. I mean, you can't go wrong with Bruce Willis and it kind of leads us into one of the fun topics that we want to hit on today. We'll see which direction we go, but being that it's, it's kind of end of year, new year kind of time figured that we might talk about either and you guys can, we can talk about this right now and figure out which way to go, but hey, either favorite movie of the year.

And we had some big ones, you know, you had Barbie Heimer and all that going on. But Bruce Willis is still my favorite. And we also had, what GIF, like GIFs, guys. [00:01:00] What'd you get?

​

Judd Borakove: so, you know what, Craig? I, I want to go to you, man. Whatever direction you want to go. You, you got Bruce in the back. According to you, you got some good GIF stories.

Where do you want to go with this?

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, stop it. I have no good, but, but before, even though I, we talked about it with Anna, let's just do it quickly. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie,

Judd Borakove: I'm a yes. I'm automatic.

Matt Amundson: Man, I'm on the fence. I'm on the fence. I recognize both sides, and for a long time I was like a big time, it is a Christmas movie, uh, and then, does making it a Christmas movie cheapen it? Because there's so much good stuff that came out of it, like the, the high powered villain, [00:02:00] uh, of Alan Rickman, was a paradigm shift in the way, you know, we made, Uh, movies, and heroes and villains and whatnot, and I, I just, I, I don't know.

I loved it.

Judd Borakove: I will say on the Die Hard part, um, I think Die Hard 1, Christmas movie. I think Die Hard up to 47, whatever it is, not so much. Uh, you know, like they tried to do two and make it kind of like just a follow on.

I don't know if it hit the same, but I'll go back and watch one. Anytime we get into the month of December, and I think it holds up every time.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. I ride for Die Hard 2, but I don't think it's a Christmas movie.

Craig Rosenberg: I watched Die Hard 2 last night. And there's one thing I want to mention about it. So it actually, the story behind it is the studio got a stand alone script about That with that plot line and whatever and then the studio heads like this is Die Hard 2, so it wasn't actually Developed [00:03:00] initially as Die Hard 2.

It was a standalone and they they crafted it to that fun fact

Matt Amundson: No, that's, that's a, that's a great

fact. Oh

Judd Borakove: background? I want you to just say, like, that's Bruce Willis, right?

Craig Rosenberg: Correct he's in the air air conditioning duct with the lighter One of the most iconic viewpoints ever. So anyway, but I didn't see I'm actually when you asked about the movies I, I don't, I, I honestly saw air. I think that's it in a

Matt Amundson: Mmm. Mmm.

Craig Rosenberg: and it actually brings up a different point, which is movies are pretty obsolete.

I mean, like, I would rather, I, I watch, here's the movies I'm watching now, and don't judge me of co I watch Liam Neeson, Jason Straham movie, like

Matt Amundson: Oh, jeez.

Craig Rosenberg: I'm sorry

dude, but like, if I wanna watch something intelligent, I need six episodes, minimum.

Matt Amundson: Mm. Mm.

Judd Borakove: And that goes to the [00:04:00] whole episode, like, are movies even dying? It's like every superstar now has a show or multiple shows. Are we moving away from movies as

Craig Rosenberg: No, I mean, you gotta, I don't know. I mean, I don't know enough about the, uh, but, well, let me put it this way. Matthew McConaughey. Remember him?

Uh, I would say True Detective. Like, these guys, when they pick the right show, it can be like a game changer for them,

Matt Amundson: Yeah, oh yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: so, like, I don't know. I mean, for me, I prefer now.

The, the, the longevity of like, uh, um, you know, a six, uh, uh, you know, six episodes, even four of just something of just a little bit more in depth and sequential. I don't know, man, I've been trained now from on streaming and I didn't stream for a long time. And then like three years ago in the pandemic, I streamed Breaking Bad and then it

was all over. all I do now is stream. I literally. People be like, hey, you want to go out? No, I'm busy. I got to take care of the kids, but I'm actually going home to [00:05:00] binge a show. And

Judd Borakove: Everybody remember that.

Craig Rosenberg: and right now I'm re binging Narcos.

Matt Amundson: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Judd Borakove: one. Well maybe, maybe it's not even movie then, and I will say it doesn't matter if it was in theater or out although they said we're 20 percent down year over year for movie uh, income, so is it that? Who knows, but show, movie is there anything? Or, hey, what'd you watch over the, over Christmas?

What, what was your, your, your watch over Christmas that made you go like, Oh, I have to go watch that.

Matt Amundson: So I didn't watch anything really over Christmas. Uh, um, and I know that, well, maybe we're talking about our favorite Christmas gifts, but I've got, I've made a commitment to, to, to read more and I did receive a Kindle. Uh, so I have been actually reading, uh, I've been reading for pleasure. So I haven't been reading any business books.

So, so nothing to comment on here. Uh, I am, like, a real dork around, like, high fantasy and sci fi, so I've been, I've been reading, uh, some, some Brandon [00:06:00] Sanderson, which is, uh, fantastic. I think the real story on like movie or TV front, honestly, was, you know, the, the, the strikes that occurred and the impact that it had on business.

And I know we did an episode a couple of weeks ago on consolidation and you want to talk consolidation that is coming in a major way. The streaming services will be consolidating. Uh, Max, uh, what, what, what do they call Max

Judd Borakove: It's HBO Max. Now it's just Max.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, so Max, uh, which is run by David Sazlov, uh, sat down with Paramount, uh, for the first time this week to have a preliminary discussion and I would assume that you will see Paramount Plus and Max, uh, consolidate.

So that's going to be interesting. Um, And I think that you will see more and more of those, obviously, like Disney's acquisition of Fox means that Hulu and Disney plus are all one streaming service. Although I think most of us who have both are still paying for both. So, uh, it, it will get interesting. The impact that it's going to have on entertainment, I think is interesting.

But one thing that I think we [00:07:00] can learn from this in the sort of the straightforward B2B is that, you know, companies. Tried to get into streaming and it was the right decision. A hundred percent, because that is the direction things are going. You know, cable is, is, is largely going away, but a lot of these companies were really good at creating content.

They weren't really good at building technology. And I think that they've taken sort of their focus off of content creation, a lot of, you know, kind of. Lackluster movies and shows have been produced as a result. And then apps that are not quite as good as Netflix have been developed and launched into, into the world.

And so one thing that I think we can all take away from that in our day to day B2B lives is. When you try to bite off more than you can chew because you see a direction that things are going, you can be, uh, not even a jack of all trades, but like maybe a seven of clubs of all trades, uh, and, and end up creating stuff that people aren't all that [00:08:00] interested in and an experience that they don't really love.

So stay focused, stay with your core competency, and beat that into the ground until you're sick of talking about it.

Craig Rosenberg: Wow, look at you. By the way, I'm reading this right now. Did you guys see this? This,

uh, Busting Silos by, about Snowflake.

Travis Henry and a woman I don't know, Hillary Carpio. So I just

started

this.

Judd Borakove: I know her.

Craig Rosenberg: So, um, on, you know, on a business note. By the way, on another business note, on what Matt just said, you know, in the episode with Anna, that was her big thing, was like, uh, figure out who you serve.

You know, and what pain you saw for them and stay maniacally focused because right now what she's seeing and sort of going out there and working with founders and CEOs is, uh, people have lost their focus, right?

And like, you just get all, for the history of time, you get all these reminders of, Uh, you know, of these, the theme of focus.

[00:09:00] And so, um, and you're bringing it up with the, in the entertainment industry. So that was, uh, that was a, that was my tie in.

Matt Amundson: Wow.

Judd Borakove: yeah, I,

I love it.

too. Um, I, I think, you know, you talked to consolidation aspect of this, and I kind of look at the bundling side of it, like pricing and packaging, things like that, where we're starting to see some of these organizations actually work together, even though there may not be an acquisition or things like that to try to create better opportunities.

So, for example, it used to be Netflix and chill,

Matt Amundson: right?

Judd Borakove: Now it's, well, maybe I'll watch Netflix, but there's only three episodes, so I got to go to another streaming platform. So now they're trying to bring it all together. And I see that, and maybe the tie in here is, Let's see. It seems to be a strategy that a lot of people are going after that you're seeing a lot of packaging and pricing changes as kind of the strategy for growth.

and potentially churn reduction, right? It's like, hey, you know, do I stay on this platform or stay on this, with this product when I need three? Can I [00:10:00] find somebody that gives me everything or do I really have to go in between? And this kind of goes back to one of our episodes where we talked about like the super app or that unification of all the applications in one place.

What do we think guys? Is this, is this kind of like the move now? I feel like we've, we've, we're not sure what's next really. But it does seem to reduce the amount of churn and give a better value, better product. People are going to this better pricing, packaging, bundling type of approach. Do you guys see this or what are your thoughts, takes?

Matt Amundson: I can see, I can see people shifting towards it. I don't have a good handle on whether or not it's, it's successful. It's natural. It makes sense. Um, I have always long believed in, You know, Scott and Craig talked about this on Scott Brinker's episode, the concept of composability of always having best of breed systems and not leaning into like the one specific like mammoth thing that does everything kind of medium well.

[00:11:00] Um, and that's just from my entrance into, into Silicon Valley and working in the tech space. I've always sort of believed that it was like Marketo playing off Salesforce and then a bunch of other applications playing off of the combination of the two. And I always thought that that was the best way of going about it, rather than saying, Hey, I'm going to buy Salesforce CRM and then I'm going to buy Pardot.

And then I'm going to buy a high velocity sales or whatever. Um, I don't know that there's ever been like a real success story around. somebody utilizing everything Uh, at least not one that people are, you know out winning awards for or anything like that I'm sure there's companies that sort of that they do it for the cost savings.

Um, and maybe for the simplicity of it, although Let's be honest, most of these, uh, uh, business applications that larger companies buy to sort of jam into their packaged offering are acquisitions. They're, and, and they never fully integrate into that core product anyway. So, I like the sort of rise of system integrators, folks who are like, [00:12:00] Hey, I know how to put these five things together and build this really great process for you.

And I think a lot of companies are, are leaning into SIs for support with that. And they really always have on the enterprise side. Um, uh, so I think that there's a there there, but I don't have enough evidence to suggest that that is definitively the way to go forward.

Craig Rosenberg: Entertainment though is different, right? Because it's

a library of content.

And so, uh, but yeah, I mean if we're gonna tie it back to tech. I actually agree. There's this, everyone always goes, ah, there's big consolidation. And someone just asked me that is there's going to be one sales platform. It's like, there's zero proof of that.

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: Zero. And like the key, and that's distracting by the way, for the vendors, because, um, they're going to, Pitch or build on that. And so [00:13:00] yes, like the when you go to a CFO's office or whatever They're like, well, we need to consolidate as Scott said that to really eliminate if if you nobody's going to use a suboptimal for the sake of consolidation, it's just not, I mean, it, it's just not there.

The big thing though, the message for me is less about that, which is that sort of, you know, what's happening in the market type of thing is the key for these, for a successful tech company is they, they have. An entry point unit of one, this one thing that they could sell over and over. You can expand.

It's not like Salesforce doesn't sell support products or Pardot, right? But people don't go to Salesforce and say, I'm going to buy it because it could do everything. They buy it for the SFA and the sales people go back to that. They should, right? You, they, they always have this thing you can go back to.

So you go through the sales process. Someone's like, yeah, and then we've got all this and they're like. Well, you know, [00:14:00] really, I just want the SFA. No problem. Let's go. Everyone, you need that thing. So like, you know, I was just talking to a woman who's coming. It's like their pitch. They've got this pinwheel of all this stuff.

And it's like, yeah, but like at the end of the day in sales tech. GONG records calls and they're going to go do more stuff. HighSpot holds your content and they're going to do more stuff. SalesLoft and Outreach, you can send your communications, track it, and do it better. Yes, they're going to have more, but at the end of the day, someone buys them for that really specific Right, uh, one functionality, that one thing that you can always lead with.

Like, for me, it's like you go in and, you know, for years, it's like they say, Well, the sales team, they only want to sell this. And it's

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: Let them. Let's get people in SAS, get people in the door, figure out the rest later. It's like,

uh, It's like, win the election first and then save the world after.

And um, and so, but it is something to really, like, [00:15:00] you know, if you look at all the great it's like they had a target user that they could always sell to. I know everyone's like, oh, there's this big stakeholder map. There is, but like, there was always this one person that we could sell to over and over and we always had that unit of one, that thing that we were known for that allowed us to sort of.

Sell that and sales reps are wholly efficient. They never get good at selling You know, maybe the SAP, Oracle, Enterprise sales rep, Salesforce reps now They can sell the big picture, but they don't need to initially We need this thing where people can do this over and over and that can't get lost in this whole Consolidate because everyone's gonna be all and then they're all gonna do I want to be the platform for this and it's like Sure, but just remember that thing, that, that entry point has to be yours and you have to win that

and you have to stay focused on that.

And so, anyway, when I think [00:16:00] about consolidation and what you were just talking about, it's like, and even Marketo is my favorite. I, years ago, I remember I was in front of a MarTech company. I'm like, look, the truth is, let's just be honest. Marketo is to send emails.

I know we've got all this other stuff.

And I remember this woman in the background saying, No, it's not true. You also use It was some ridiculous customer experience thing. I'm like, dude, you seriously? If I went and grabbed 200 Marketo sales reps, yeah, they've been indoctrinated into product marketing and all this, but like, at the end of the day, the person they're selling to wants to send emails.

Right? And it's like, you know, it's just you gotta embrace the suck. You know, you just gotta say, man, that's our thing.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Judd Borakove: So I want to jump in on this because I think that actually leads us to a really interesting point, which is the core product, which obviously, you know, most of these companies go to somewhat of a land and expand motion when they start building out that ecosystem, right? But that core product is the thing that still kind of like [00:17:00] latches everybody in initially.

But even to today's standard, are we seeing these companies lose focus on core? So, for example, I find people nowadays don't love Salesforce. They buy it because, one, there's so many pieces that are automatically integrated to the ecosystem of it over just the overall utilization. Yes. Is it better than competition?

A lot of them. Sure. But I think that over time, they've lost focus. And, and to that point, there's a lot of companies that I think that's happened to. Do the, are, are we seeing like, because of the, the push for growth, new products, new offerings, extensions, are these companies losing that focus? Are they not keeping up?

Because in my opinion, opinion only, like Salesforce, who is the juggernaut, I don't feel like, and I use the, the, I use. You know, their CRM, I don't feel like it's evolved. I don't feel like they've given a lot back to the people who keep telling them, but I want this part [00:18:00] of it. They just go, Oh, it's in the ecosystem.

Don't worry.

Judd Borakove: You guys seeing that or, or, or do you kind of just feel like,

Matt Amundson: I,

Craig Rosenberg: don't Is there another example? Because that one, the, the reality is, is, you buy Salesforce, and they, why would they care? I mean, if you're still gonna buy it, and there's nothing competitive that will solve for it, then you don't do, then, they're, they're, it, like the leads to accounts thing. Benioff has known about that for years.

And so, well, why didn't he change it? Sure, by the way, there's a huge lift to change it. That, that's, let's just put that aside, but if people still buy it, and they all buy it, except on, you know, HubSpot is doing a great job on the, uh, S& B market. I don't, you know, I don't know if that's, you know, for me, that's different.

Like, that's, why change?

Judd Borakove: so, uh, very good point, very [00:19:00] good point. So I think if you think about it though, they're still in what I would call more of a heyday where it's everybody gets Salesforce, but that used to be everybody buys Oracle, everybody buys SAP. Eventually those things erode because they don't keep up with the core products.

They're the. The core of why you initially bought them disappears or minimizes or competition comes along and gives you the things that you always wanted. so to me there, there's a point of, and I get your point, like why do it right now? Well, the reason I would say to do it is one, you, you, you stave off potential competition who you're giving opportunity to.

And two, you're reducing potential churn later when these opportunities come. Just general business, the way I'm looking at it. And, and also the fact that then down the road when you have tons of tech debt you've got to deal with, you have to buy, you have to, you have to build faster or buy and try to integrate when somebody does come along.

It makes, The run longer, because what I keep seeing [00:20:00] is all these companies who are juggernauts eventually are not the juggernaut anymore. And they're, they're usurped by somebody else. That's just the way I'm looking at it. But like I, your, your point is really valid. Makes a lot of sense too.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, I, I would say the Oracle example would work if But, but, maybe not. Like, there's, there's like, Oracle, the, what are we talking about, their core products, the relational database, which nobody rips out. Um, but like, the game changed. The only way Salesforce will break is a massive technology change. It will not be a feature, it will not be based on today's CRM new features.

It will be AI could break, AI could break them. But it has to be a completely new And that's what, you know, on Oracle's side, on some of the infrastructure products, there's been like massive C changes left and right against that. It's, I, I don't know, you know, uh, I've, [00:21:00] I mean, do we feel like Microsoft is a good example of someone who's iterating really well with Office?

Which is, you know, I don't know. I mean, I, I think they've done pretty good. You know what I mean? So like, I, I, I get your point. I'm, I'm not sure. So like, let's take a, um, a younger example, um, that might work, which is Marquetta, we just talked about him. They are ripe for disruption,

Matt Amundson: Yeah. And I think they're, I think they are getting disrupted. They're getting disrupted for sure.

Craig Rosenberg: By who? By

Matt Amundson: HubSpot, HubSpot.

Judd Borakove: I'm just not

for sure.

Craig Rosenberg: I

do, I

do

Judd Borakove: talked to, I've talked to a bunch of their reps, their, their enterprise reps, and they're selling hard and they're selling in the enterprise space. So maybe they're not obviously at the level of Marketo yet, but the fact that they're now seen as an enterprise use case. Where that was never the case before, right?

It was like, it's Marketo and maybe one or two [00:22:00] others. Um,

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Yeah. I think your point about Salesforce is very true for, for Marketo, which is like, I think Marketo stopped innovating. I think HubSpot kept innovating and HubSpot has eventually come for that market. They were very comfortable for a long time working down market in the SMB space. Hey, this is an easy platform to get onto and get your marketing started.

And then most people operated under the assumption that at some point they would sort of evolve and migrate off of HubSpot And I just think fewer and fewer people want to do that. Some of it has to do with. You know, the, the, the innovation that HubSpot has brought, but also some of it has to do with like the reduced impact of utilizing email.

And to Craig's point earlier, these products send emails. And emails at its least effective that it's ever been. Um, one interesting topic might be to chat about the, the Google pulling back on, on their new policy that they were going to launch in [00:23:00] February. I don't know if you guys saw this,

but,

um,

Craig Rosenberg: back?

Judd Borakove: before you go there, in case people don't know, what was the policy,

Matt Amundson: okay. So essentially, yeah, I, the exact statistics, if you were sending more than 5, 000 emails a day, if you had a. Spam rate above 3, you are going to get blacklisted, and you are going to lose your ability to send email for some protracted amount of time, six weeks or so. Don't quote me on that. They eventually pulled back and said, Oh no, uh, we're not going to do that for corporate email.

We'll just do that for people who are just sending to people with an at Gmail address. So originally the, the, the language was anybody who was using a Google workspace, which as we know is such a tremendous amount of people that like. It became very scary. Now, nobody should be spamming anybody, but there, we all know that there's plenty of people who will get an email from you, even if they're opted into your marketing and they'll just hit spam because, uh, [00:24:00] within a Gmail client, that's the fastest way to get rid of somebody.

But I think what happened was a lot of. Very, very influential Google customers were like, yeah, this ain't going to fly. And they were like, uh, okay, well, in the spirit of what we're trying to do, we're trying to ensure that consumers weren't being spammed too. So we don't want our at Gmail customers, even if you're paying 0 or the 1 a month fee for their product, uh, weren't getting spammed.

And I think that that's, that's, that's what they're feeling comfortable moving into, but, uh, a lot of people were up in arms about it, freaking out. This felt like, uh, It felt like a privacy law on steroids because it was such a short amount of time I mean they announced this in November and it was gonna go live in Feb.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, that didn't, it was like this big hubbub and then it went away.

Also led to lots of LinkedIn pontificators

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: uh, if you want to get a thousand comments right about [00:25:00] email,

quote unquote personalized email, which like most of the people that comment are consultants that send four emails a day.

Like, you know, the. The scale of what people need to get done to drive billions of dollars worth of pipeline, we, you know, is like, it's just a different story. But anyway, uh, I, I, just going back on the HubSpot Marketo thing. I, I, I do think, I don't, HubSpot is doing well. So I, I, I do think that's a good point, but I wouldn't argue that Salesforce Like, they will get disrupted, they won't get disrupted by another CRM vendor.

I think the Marketo, the Marketo one is interesting, but you guys can't tell me that it's innovation by HubSpot that

Matt Amundson: It is

it's it's

it's [00:26:00] it's HubSpot getting their product closer to being on par with Marketo Now the thing about HubSpot it's Yes. The thing about HubSpot's always been a very easy system to use, but there have been some challenges with like triggered workflows and things like that. That's been, you know, one of the things that's really held it back.

In addition to that, your capacity to write that information back and forth between the CRM that you're using, if it's not HubSpot, which as we, you know, mentioned is most likely Salesforce. So a lot of that stuff has been cleaned up and it's a lot faster and it's a lot more advanced.

Uh, than what it used to be, which, like, I always thought of it as like a grown up male chimp. But it has really grown into being more of a junior Marketo, and some of those advanced capabilities of Marketo are just not as necessary or as, uh, interesting to marketers as they used to be. So, more and more people are feeling comfortable saying, hey, instead of Coke, I'll have Diet Coke and I'm comfortable with that, like, I don't need the full feature.

In fact, maybe I don't want the full [00:27:00] feature. And like the one thing that I can tell you after having been a Marketo employee and liaised with, you know, hundreds of, of, of marketers who are running

Marketo is like,

Craig Rosenberg: he is.

Judd Borakove: Good word. Good word.

Craig Rosenberg: Thank you for liaising.

Matt Amundson: told you I've been reading, um, is most people still never got those advanced Marketo features off the ground. Most people never got a good handle on how to do scoring in Marketo. Most people did not get a good handle on how to do trigger based events inside Marketo. So in a lot of ways, they sort of had the Lamborghini and they never got it out of third gear.

And now people are like, why are we trying to fight to do this when we could just use a simpler system? That's going to do 85 percent of what we need it to do. It's going to cost us a little bit less. And we're going to be able to find a lot more marketers to hire that can use this. So. I think that, you know, innovation is probably the wrong word because there's nothing that HubSpot can do that Marketo can't.

But there's starting to be less and [00:28:00] less that Marketo can do that HubSpot can't. And that's the real change.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, but like, I'll just, I don't know if you guys want to keep talking about this.

It's

Judd Borakove: The only thing I'm going to say. Yeah, we can. That's fine. One thing I will say, though, is doesn't that kind of put HubSpot in a place that they can evolve their CRM to a level? It doesn't have to be Salesforce. That maybe they can disrupt them without AI, without the innovation. Because at this point, if marketers are coming in, if I can connect directly, if I have an easier integration point, if I have a similar ecosystem, isn't an option.

I'm, and I'm

not talking about rip and replace, because rip and replace, we already know the, it can be too costly. Let's say growing companies, things like that, you know, the change over years, is that a direction people can go?

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, but the original question, yeah, the original question was not competition. The original question was neglect of the core product. And when Matt was talking about Marketo, I don't [00:29:00] see anything Marketo would have done. It wasn't neglect, right? And in the

Judd Borakove: now,

it?

is

now because if Adobe hasn't really done anything with them,

Craig Rosenberg: But what, but yeah, but like, so, but if they don't use I, I mean like, that, I didn't hear anything that tells me Tell me a move Marketo should have made to hold off HubSpot.

Matt Amundson: they need to dramatically improve their UI.

Dramatically. It is

Craig Rosenberg: UI.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, it is still very challenging to use. It is a system that most people will have a steep learning curve. So as new marketers enter the workforce, that is challenging and Marketo still has very expensive training. So getting people up to speed on that is, is difficult.

I think that there's been, uh, more marketers entering. Uh, into the workforce, utilizing HubSpot and getting comfortable with that platform because it has a larger footprint than what Marketo [00:30:00] has. And so Marketo needs a facelift on its UI, 100%. It needs to improve its speed. It's still a very slow product, like you're building a list or a segment in order to run a program.

It's, uh, it's still going to take you a tremendous amount of time. It's much, much faster in HubSpot. Uh, and then when you look at the sort of suite of tools that HubSpot has put in that sort of wrap around it, including like the new CMS that they, that they launched, it just makes the whole HubSpot experience extend a little bit further.

So you can manage what's happening on your website, what's happening in your programs, and what's happening in your, in your ads in a single platform. That's very simple. Not only to set up, but it's very simple to manage long term. And now I found, now I sound like a freaking HubSpot salesperson. So I apologize for

Judd Borakove: It's great. No, no. I, and I love that. Your, your point though, you work for one, you've used the other. At least you have a perspective that a lot of people don't. So

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Well, and I've done, I've done, uh, [00:31:00] deployments of Marketo at literally every other company I've ever worked for in my career since leaving Marketo. So like, it's a safe, comfortable place. It's just, I just don't know that the juice is worth the squeeze anymore right now. And that's, and that might change over the course of the next couple of years.

But for right now, their lack of innovation, their lack of a focus is, uh, Uh, on the core product is I think hurting them and HubSpot's innovation and focus on their core product is helping them. Now to answer Judd's question on like, can HubSpot display, uh, Salesforce CRM? The thing that I'll tell you is like marketers will never pull a company through the keyhole.

And what I mean by that is like, if you're like, Hey, I love HubSpot. Why not just make this our CRM? Nobody's gonna be like, yeah, great. We'll just change everything. Cause marketing likes the marketing automation so much. Just, there's no chance of that happening. [00:32:00] Um, but I mean, possibly they disrupt on the, on the, on the ultra SMB, which I don't think Salesforce would.

I don't care all that much about, but I just think that the hot entire apparatus around Salesforce is, uh, is too much for people to say loud. I'll make concessions around my ERP system or my billing or whatnot. Like CFOs aren't having it. CTOs aren't having it. I just, I don't see it.

Judd Borakove: of course, that's, I'm sure what they said about Salesforce before they disrupted the big boys.

Matt Amundson: No, no. I hear you. I hear you.

Craig Rosenberg: but, no but but again, there is that's the Seismic Shift. I'm tell you, I still by the way I'm not convi, I, I think it's a go to market. I don't, look, SAP is a dominant ERP, but nobody's going Oh my god their UI is amazing! The truth is, Adobe He doesn't care about the mid market,

or the mid markets define differently, and I think we're talking from a mid market lens.

On Salesforce, remember, like, the disruption was [00:33:00] SaaS. That, what, that's what I'm talking about. There

has to be a seismic shift in approach in order to take those guys down. Um, there will be in The case of Marketo because marketing changed.

Uh, but like, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, like I still like I, and by the way, just to be clear, like if you listen, almost HubSpot is a wonder to me.

They're amazing. they're

they're the engine that could, but like. Uh, I mean, if you're Adobe and you care about getting a seven figure deal out of CA, that's a little different. Like, they're, they're willing to, you know, they're, they know they're going to spend on consultants. It's, again, like I said, it's not like people are just

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: I don't know. I mean, I think, I don't, I'm not trying to pooh your point, but in my opinion, like for some, the market leaders are a different story. The only way you take, you take, you can't, they can't get taken down, but it has to [00:34:00] be a complete change in technology infrastructure that drives that change.

Not a, feature parody necessarily. And by the way, it is weird. Like HubSpot's been around for 20 something years. So like, it's just a little bit different, but like,

you know what I mean? So like, yeah, like the core, but, but here's the thing is like, um, the, the core product issue, I didn't mean to, I didn't want to poo that.

I think that's really important, but like in the case of Salesforce, They could sell the SFA now. They should buy other solutions to put on top because their expansion sales are really good. It's just what they, I was talking about what they lead with. Speaking of which, they bought, you know, they bought SPIF.

I don't know if you guys saw that.

Um, it was

Matt Amundson: Did they pay good money for it or no?

Craig Rosenberg: well no, it didn't look like there was a number. If there's no number, [00:35:00] it's under

20, you know.

Judd Borakove: Yeah, under the big guys. One thing, guys, I know we're getting to time, and I want to be really thoughtful of that. Let's leave our people with something fun, guys. What's the one takeaway this year you want to leave people with? You know, I think we've done a good amount of shows now, you guys. We've got a great audience, great people. What's your takeaway this year to leave everybody with for us to kind of like end on a high note for the year?

Matt Amundson: Whew. I'd say focus. I'd Alright, Craig, go ahead. You had

Craig Rosenberg: No, no, I didn't. No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. hear his question. I was paying attention. I got, I was trying to text my son to say get ready. Uh, one takeaway from the year. Okay, Matt, go with it. I like where you're going.

Matt Amundson: Focus, focus, do what you do and do it extraordinarily well. The temptation to, to, to build around something, uh, too early is always going to be there. We always get bored with the products that we create. We get bored with the messaging that we create, but the market. Uh, is much bigger than what we think it is.

And there's people who haven't heard it. [00:36:00] You got to beat those drums and you got to make a product that is truly amazing. Uh, before you start building other products, people have to love it. People have to need it. People have to understand the value of it and then start laying stuff on top of that. And quite honestly, look at like some of the most successful companies on the planet.

They didn't do that until well after the fact that they were. A known entity, a proven entity, a successful business with really no doubts about that. So I think people have this, uh, uh, this drive to, to, to get horizontal way too fast. You got to go as deep as you possibly can on, uh, on the product that, that, that you initially set out to build.

And then, and then you can, start to, to, to build new things afterwards.

Judd Borakove: Craig, you want to go or you want me to?

Craig Rosenberg: Go ahead.

Judd Borakove: Um, I'm going to take the exact opposite approach of Matt, but from a different perspective

being, test your butt off. And this is not around your product. Test a lot of stuff, especially around your go to market. [00:37:00] Um, we've seen a lot of things that used to work really well, not work anymore.

And that's okay. It may work for your industry, it may not. When people say something's dead, it may be bad for them and great for you. That's fine. Don't listen to all of the people out there just talking and saying this is dead, or that's dead, or this is working. You need to get out there and test it.

Your industry may be different. Your product may be different. Your competition may be different. The systems you have may be different. There's no playbook that works for everybody, so get out, have fun with it. Try new things, experiment, A/B test, like your life depends on it, because at this point, with the way jobs are churning it probably does.

Um, and don't be afraid to try old things that used to work and stopped working too. They may work now. So that's my thing for the year.

Matt Amundson: Like it.

Judd Borakove: Go ahead, Craig.

Craig Rosenberg: I think that the focus thing is a really interesting and important part of things. I would say that, like, I wasn't sure, by the way, my hesitancy is that, um, um, [00:38:00] we fired a lot of people

in the industry. And I was trying to think of how I would say, we got to just stop firing people for a minute and let people dig in.

Uh, I I don't know how to say it because there's obviously a reason for that and that's not a bleeding heart take. That's actually, uh, things are really hard right now and if you take what Judd said Uh, we have to figure new things out and can't keep doing it. There's literally nobody you hire that has the answer right now.

That's the key, because you can't bring in the old playbook like it used to be, like two years ago, say, for sure, go get that person that was generating X number of MQLs per year. For sure, they've proven it. They can walk in, hire their people, run the playbook. But right now, all the playbooks are broken, and so like, uh, you know, your execs are going to struggle.

Your people are going to struggle and we but we do need to sort of dig in and and and solve for it Please don't [00:39:00] write me about the fact that they're not working hard or whatever. Those are different. That's not the same thing This the thing is is if you hire good people We have a lot of things that we got to go figure out So I was I just wasn't sure how to put it right I'm

not

Judd Borakove: that was great, honestly.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. I was going to say, speaking from the marketing side, what I will say is like, I know this is going to sound self serving because I don't want to get fired and no marketers do, but marketers are always at their most effective in year two. And like, you shouldn't have to wait for them to deliver value, but if they're, if like year one is good, year two is going to be great.

So People need to understand the cycles of the way the business operates on an annualized basis. They need to get really clear about, you know, their customers and their category in the space. And it just takes time. You need to be able to iterate on things a few times. And I can tell you just from my own experience, like my year two, my year three, it's like, wow, like the momentum just really starts to flow.

Year one is [00:40:00] always the hardest for marketers because they're doing the things that we talked about. They're experimenting. They're trying to focus. They're trying to experiment. There's a lot of stuff that happens in the first 12 months. The years after is where the value really starts to pay off. Don't fire your marketer.

Judd Borakove: guys,

yeah, great takeaways, great stuff, great year. Guys, thank you so much for being a part of us this year and helping us to grow this. You know, we're loving doing it for you. And if there's stuff you want us to talk about, if there's things you want to see us change or add, Let us know. Send us some messages.

We're also experimenting with taking some of your stuff. Send us the questions. Let us answer them on, you know, uh, live and do this. So let's have some fun. Have a great year. Thanks.

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