Brewing Success with Jim Gilkey: Blending Creativity and Data in Marketing

On this episode of The Pipeline Brew podcast, host Matt Hummel is joined by marketing expert and fellow podcaster, Jim Gilkey. Jim hosts the podcast Account Based Beverages, and is a veteran with experience at massive companies like Salesforce and 7-person startups like trueU. Matt & Jim’s conversation covers topics including ABM, demand gen, sales and marketing alignment, and the current state of AI in marketing.

Jim argues that ABM isn’t just a rehash of demand generation but a strategic approach that aligns highly personalised campaigns with specific buyer needs. He provides examples to demonstrate how ABM can seamlessly integrate with demand gen strategies, creating a powerful marketing synergy. 

The discussion takes a practical turn as Matt asks Jim to share his wisdom on sales and marketing alignment. His advice is practical: listen to sales calls and identify common queries to tailor content that addresses real customer concerns. This approach not only bridges the gap between sales and marketing but ensures that messaging is both relevant and impactful.

Beyond marketing tactics, the conversation reveals Jim’s dynamic career journey and personal passions, including his love for bourbon and music. His firsthand experience as both a marketer and an account executive offers a unique perspective, making this podcast a must-hear for aspiring marketers and seasoned pros alike.

Having worked on all sides of the go-to-market team, Jim Gilkey is a dynamic speaker who pulls from his experience as a salesperson, account manager, marketer, and leader to give practical advice that GTM teams can leverage for immediate results. He has experience working for both industry giants like Salesforce and startups like Odyssey and trueU. 

Jim is passionate about unlocking potential in others, which he does through his podcast, Account Based Beverages, and through speaking at universities and conferences. 

[00:00:00] Matt Hummel: Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Pipeline Brew, the podcast that meets at the intersection of people and pipeline. We’re bringing you fun yet insightful conversations where you’ll not only hear from marketing experts, but also get to know them as well.

[00:00:22] Hey everyone! Today, I am super excited to be joined by Jim Gilkey. You may have heard of Jim before on his own podcast called Account Based Beverages, and Jim brings with him a wealth of knowledge from his time at companies like Salesforce, The Morales Group, and Terminus. Welcome to the show, Jim. How are you today?

[00:00:38] Jim Gilkey: I’m doing great, Matt. Thanks so much for having me. It’s my pleasure.

[00:00:42] Matt Hummel: So Jim, we like to kick off each episode with a little icebreaker to get the ball rolling. You may already know the question, but are you ready for it? Yeah. Let’s do it. Alright, what is your go to beverage when you need a little pick me up?

[00:00:54] Jim Gilkey: So Matt, I oscillate between periods of time where I drink one cup of coffee a day, and I’m pretty boring when it comes to coffee, I usually take my coffee black, but I also have periods of time where I see literally what is the physical limit of how much caffeine my body can take. I would say my guilty pleasure is probably the caramel macchiato.

[00:01:13] Matt Hummel: Interesting. Alright, so what determines You know, how much caffeine you drink and if you decide to go black coffee or your fancy drink.

[00:01:22] Jim Gilkey: Yeah. So most of the time it’s just black coffee. Try to keep things simple and as healthy as I can make, you know, the caffeine intake, but, uh, if there’s something that I’m celebrating or maybe a big day that I have starting off with a fun drink.

[00:01:37] Usually puts me in the right mood for that. And just the oscillation between a lot or a little, I think probably more driven by the projects that I have going, how late I’m staying up at night and working on those things and how much I need that to just give me back to like a normal level of energy.

[00:01:52] Matt Hummel: That makes sense. I used to love all the good latte drinks or mocha drinks. And then I was ordering one from a coffee shop called Summer Moon. They make this great latte. It’s like proprietary seven milks or something. And unfortunately they put the calorie count on the menu. And I’m like 750 calories for a coffee drink.

[00:02:14] And then I look at coffee black and it’s five calories like, Oh, you know, too old to be drinking 750 calories in the morning, but I digress.

[00:02:24] Jim Gilkey: Absolutely. I have one

[00:02:25] of those situations where I went to the doctor and. They’re trying to tell me I was gaining weight, but in the most politically correct way ever.

[00:02:33] So they said, how do you usually take your coffee? And I said, you have cream and sugar. Like, well, maybe we try to do that without so much sugar, just drink black coffee. It’s like loud and clear. I know what you’re trying to say. And I appreciate you not just going right out and saying that.

[00:02:46] Matt Hummel: Hey, Jim, you’re looking a little, uh, yeah, exactly.

[00:02:49] That’s awesome. Well, cool. Well, Jim, before we talk about what you’re up to today, I’d love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, your passions and your background.

[00:02:58] Jim Gilkey: Absolutely. My story is very unique. I originally went to college to study percussion performance. So as a music major, realising that being a percussionist doesn’t mean you’re just on stage in front of crowds, which I really enjoy.

[00:03:13] It means that you’re in a closet practicing for eight hours a day. It was something that was a wake up call for me that maybe this day to day was not what I was looking for. And so switched over to communications, got into sales. And I worked for a few companies before landing in a startup that was a sales and marketing hybrid role.

[00:03:35] And working there, I had always been a fan of marketing, always kind of studied it as a hobby. I’m really Really interested in why people do the things that they do or how to influence some of their decision making, which is why I like sales, but in that role, really fell in love with marketing. And so I had a friend that owned a company and he wanted me to come in and help bridge the gap between sales and marketing.

[00:04:00] So I actually moved from sales into a marketing leadership role at Morales Group and learned how to run this account based marketing motion that so many companies were starting. And a lot of what I had learned in that process ended up paying dividends. And with this company doing so well, I essentially worked myself out of a job.

[00:04:22] And so I went to a platform that we’re using, Terminus, and asked if I could come join the team while they were really excited, somebody to come over here, that was a marketer that used the platform before and jump into a sales role. So I was very blessed. To get into that and a lot of the same kind of questions that I had were coming up in these conversations that I was having with the individuals.

[00:04:47] That I was trying to sell to. So that was kind of the impetus for starting account based beverages is how do I help people answer the questions that I’m trying to find the answer to without immediately turning into a sales pitch from some vendor or some company.

[00:05:00] Matt Hummel: Oh, that’s awesome. And it’s funny you mentioned, you know, back to the percussion piece.

[00:05:04] Where you thought it was going to be one thing and it turns out to be another. I feel like there’s something there when it comes to marketing and maybe I’m making a stretch here, but I think a lot of marketers, when they think about their job, it’s almost like being in a closet for eight hours a day.

[00:05:16] It’s just behind the scenes. And, and there is, I don’t know if I would say being in front of customers is like being on stage. But I think what makes really good marketing is, yeah, there is all the legwork and the behind the scenes work, but then you’ve got to be out front and center, whether it’s talking to your customers or just being out marketing yourself within the organisation.

[00:05:34] So anyways, random, random connection there.

[00:05:36] Jim Gilkey: No, I totally agree. I think one of those moments for me, I was asked by my CMO to put together, you know, some updates of how our campaigns were performing. And for us, we didn’t have a really good tool of pulling information from all of our different vendors. So here I am going to drift and to Terminus and Google Analytics and HubSpot and trying to download CSVs and then merge them together with pivot tables and make sense of the numbers.

[00:06:04] I’m sitting there neck deep in this spreadsheet thinking, this is not why I got into marketing. I like the strategy side. I like the design and making beautiful looking creatives. But I think a lot of times marketers can get lost in the data and forget the part of the storytelling that goes with that, because that’s such an important piece, not just having the data, but helping to conceptualise that for somebody that doesn’t work in marketing, but is a leader in the organisation that you need to translate, here’s what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and really a lot of how that has changed some of the behavior of the people we’re trying to work with.

[00:06:40] Man,

[00:06:42] Matt Hummel: there’s so much truth there. I remember probably five years ago, I had somebody come up to me that this was when I was running demand for a pretty large company. And they said, man, you’re so, you’re just so data driven. You know, you’re, you really don’t have, it’s kind of like being at the doctor. They were trying to say nicely.

[00:06:58] And they’re like, basically what I took away was you don’t have a creative bone in your body. And it kind of struck me and I’m like. Man, that’s all I used to do. The first half of my career was really more around brand building and creative. And then as I got into demand, it just became all science. And I really, it was kind of a wake up call for me in the same way that now you only drink black coffee.

[00:07:17] Like, man, campaigns are only as good as the creative behind them. And it’s not just. You know, the science, it’s really capturing the hearts and minds of, of your audience too. So very cool. Well, your journey is fascinating and I definitely want to unpack that a lot more. Have there been any big lessons that you’ve learned over the course of your career?

[00:07:36] Jim Gilkey: Really the biggest piece and even building off of what you just said, we can get so into a project that we’re working on for marketing. That we forget that there’s a human on the other side of it. There’s a lot of data that shows what design would work or what messaging or call to action, or even some of the colors, but we don’t often enough step back and think, what would I feel if I went to this website and saw these pieces?

[00:08:02] Or if I, this ad came across my computer. And so for the biggest lesson in my career, it has come from learning empathy. And the empathy of putting myself in other people’s shoes and seeing through their eyes puts me in a place where I want to be helpful to them without any expectation of receiving something on the other end.

[00:08:26] And that wanting to be helpful obviously is going to build relationships as I’m helping others. And the relationships in my career have turned into many opportunities. Some people that I’ve done business with, some people that I’ve had on my podcast, some job opportunities that have come. And it is really cool to see the string looking back at how that all started from me just trying to put myself in their shoes and realising they have a need and then asking how I can help.

[00:08:52] Matt Hummel: I love that. I’ve had a few conversations recently around what I would call empathy based marketing and it’s. It’s something that is so intuitive and yet something that is so poorly done. And I think we often say, Oh, you’ve got to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, which I think the way that we translate that is you’ve got to know the words they use and you’ve got to know what websites they spend their time on.

[00:09:15] Reality is these are people. And you know, you’re not just competing with their competitor. I’m literally competing with everything else that’s going on in the world, personal, professional, and everything in between. And I think really being able to. Truly empathise is not only good for us as marketers in terms of helping drive growth within our businesses, but for the industry at large, I think getting marketing back to doing what marketing was meant to do, which is ultimately build powerful and differentiated brands.

[00:09:42] And I think make sales job easier. So. I love that. I love that. That’s been a big part of your journey. So speaking of your podcast, I want to hear more about account based beverages, one of the coolest podcast names I’ve heard of, and I swear I’m not trying to rip off your concept, but I think your concept is really cool.

[00:09:59] So talk to me about how did it come to be? What’s the show? What’s the concept of it for those who haven’t had a chance to listen to it?

[00:10:06] Jim Gilkey: Absolutely. One thing that. I dealt with, and I know many marketers deal with, take a look at the tabs open on your screen, if you’re listening to this at your computer.

[00:10:17] You know how busy you are and how difficult it is to take time away from moving forward, many projects that you’re working on to learn what is happening out there in the market. And one of the biggest needs that I had were real examples of marketing that works well at companies. And so I would try to listen to podcasts.

[00:10:40] I would try to watch YouTube videos, look at LinkedIn content. But so much of this was 30, 000 foot view, pie in the sky, in a perfect world, and that’s fine. And I started with many of those concepts, but you eventually get to the point where life slaps you in the face and it’s like, this doesn’t work because it’s actually not a perfect world that we live in.

[00:10:58] And so you go back to, okay, what do I do now? And so that cycle of constantly trying to look for more information, but not finding anything specific enough. Was really the impetus for how do I get people on a show that average episodes six minutes? So there’s really no excuse you can as you’re going to make a cup of coffee and come back to your desk Let’s do almost a whole show get them to hop on and share one piece of advice The caveat I always throw is you have to be able to take action at the end of this episode on whatever that advice was And then the beverage part of this I always Going back to, we market to people, we sell to people, the human interaction side is so important, needing a personal connection with each of the, um, podcast guests was, what is your favorite drink?

[00:11:44] And one of the things that I did for fun is I would always ship out whatever that drink was to the individual and I would get one as well. So we would both cheers at the end. And it was a great experience for me to learn all kinds of things from, you know, having ginger beer as. A mixer in a drink to just drinking ginger beer straight or trying matcha, you know, because I’ve never had that before.

[00:12:08] And all of the different guests seeing a little bit about their personality, who has alcohol, who has a caffeinated beverage, who has something in between. Um, just adds a, a cool flavor onto it.

[00:12:20] Matt Hummel: Well, I love that. Well, you’re really, you know, in that sense, practicing what you preach. I mean, that is truly account based marketing and it’s cool to see that you, you were able to translate that successfully to, to your own podcast.

[00:12:31] So congrats on, on that and the success you’ve had with this point. So with that in mind, you know, now that we’ve covered your podcast, I’d love to segue to, you know, from account based beverages, if you will, to account based marketing. So, Jim, you probably have run into this throughout your career, but if you ask 10 people what ABM is, you’re going to get 10 different definitions.

[00:12:51] How do you think about what is your definition of ABM?

[00:12:55] Jim Gilkey: Yeah, this is something that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. And many of the ways that, you know, I try to define is by thinking of what is this not, right? This is not DemandGen 2. 0, which many people are Demand Gen marketers that hear about ABM, that just try to go in and make ABM demand gen all over again.

[00:13:18] And then the other side of the field are these enterprise companies. I talked to somebody that was a head of ABM at Salesforce and they’re spending 25, 000 on a research report just to understand one of the buyers in a company that they were trying to sell to. And after they ran a hyper personalised campaign to them, they just kind of washed their hands of that.

[00:13:42] And all of that money and all of that research just kind of was sitting there. And so ABM is really kind of coming in from both of those directions and getting to a point where you have a defined list of companies that you know would change your business fundamentally. So it’s a new market you’re trying to break into.

[00:13:58] It’s a market that you’ve had a lot of success. So, you know, this could really 3x, 4x your business this year if we land all these companies. And personalising a buyer journey. So full cycle and then creating the content, distributing it wherever they are, kind of surrounding them with this message and making sure that it’s the same message when they come to the website, as they saw on the ad, it’s the same message that sales is sharing with them when they hop on a call with them.

[00:14:23] And everything that they know about your business is not generic, something that is kind of lukewarm in their mind. But it’s hyper personalised to not just a insert company name here. That was cool, like 15, 20 years ago, but it’s the thing that’s been keeping them up at night. It’s the thing that is the opportunity that I think that could lead to their next promotion.

[00:14:45] And that’s the messaging that we’re leading with. And that’s why it works so well.

[00:14:48] Matt Hummel: That’s a really cool and frankly, different definition than I’ve heard before. You mentioned, you know, ABM is not demand gen 2. 0. So a couple of related questions. How do you see. Different than demand gen. And with that in mind, can they coexist?

[00:15:05] Can ABM and demand gen coexist within an organisation?

[00:15:08] Jim Gilkey: Yeah, I think with my first example, ABM becoming demand gen 2. 0 for companies. I think that’s probably the biggest trap that many companies, especially in the mid market area, fall into and some enterprise companies as well. They try to use this as an upgraded version of demand gen.

[00:15:25] And so they stopped doing their normal demand gen and do a semi targeted demand gen to, you know, this group of accounts that could be good. And most of the time, especially coming out of COVID, it was, we understand that small businesses, there’s a lot of risk. Many of them are closing down. And so we want to move up market.

[00:15:44] We want to get into the enterprise space and how many other companies are also trying to move to the enterprise space. So if you’re just trying to target companies based off the fact that they’re enterprise, you’re probably not standing out. But it’s important for ABM to coexist with demand gen because you need to land and expand those target accounts that are going to have a significant impact on your business with ABM.

[00:16:05] You need to personalise to that specific company or, you know, in the example that I said from the Salesforce ABM team, they do some really great work on doing the research, but if I’m trying to target, let’s say. The chief technical officer at Target. How many of those same things, maybe not his alma mater or the things that he does in his free time for hobbies, but how many of the pains that he feels are ones that other technical leaders at a Walmart or other big box retailers will also feel.

[00:16:34] So maybe generalising some of that information a little bit and being really targeted to a small list of companies. Would be really great ABM, but ignoring the whole part of demand gen in my mind is like building a process to create pipeline on a consistent basis. So targeting a bunch of people with really good marketing that, you know, works well.

[00:16:56] Needs to continue to be a part of your business because that’s the run rate that keeps the doors open as you’re trying to chase after these whales with ABM.

[00:17:04] Matt Hummel: Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve been out in market a lot recently talking to organisations specifically about account based marketing and demand gen and companies looking to transition from demand gen to ABM and I share the same perspective, which is they can and frankly should coexist.

[00:17:19] But I think one of the questions I still hear a lot though is, where does demand gen end and where does ABM begin? And you’ve mentioned a couple use cases. There’s certainly the one to one examples, you know, the 25, 000 research project. There’s also, if you start to understand sort of a core set of use cases.

[00:17:36] Like accounts, where do you see the delineation between demand gen and ABM? Is it number of accounts or was it different types of motions?

[00:17:45] Jim Gilkey: Yeah, kind of going with the same way that I define ABM, let’s look at, you know, maybe what it’s not. If you are, you know, one of those companies that has. Uh, huge target market and a very short sales cycle, low price point.

[00:18:00] Demand gen is probably the route for you without adding on ABM. But if you have defined a segment of your business that you really understand deeply, and you know that you’re highly successful with keeping in mind, this needs to be a full go to market effort. So you need to get sales involved. You need to get product involved.

[00:18:17] You need to have the marketers there at the table and ops understanding kind of the, the technical side of how we’ll distribute to these. Target accounts. There’s a lot of data that will show companies, Hey, these are maybe not the targets that we’re going after today, but these are the ones with the highest lifetime value.

[00:18:33] The ones that close the quickest, the ones that refer the most business to us. And, When you look at doing ABM well, or delineating between where demand gen would stop and just putting out good messaging, trying to drive people into your business and needing the ability to be more targeted, it’s going to be those cases where maybe there’s a bigger buying committee and specific departments or individuals that you need to target and get their attention.

[00:18:59] And there are different messages that you could put in front of them. There’s a great example of a, a company that we worked with. Terminus, where they had an applicant tracking system. Well, if you work in HR, you know, what an ATS means. And if I use ATS in the messaging to you from a salesperson in an email or from an ad for the marketers, then they’re like, okay, they get me.

[00:19:22] If you’re talking to the person that’s a head of IT over at that company. They might not know, probably don’t know what ATS stands for, and you’re going to confuse them, and they’ll probably end up ignoring the message. When they click on that versus the HR person clicking on that, the HR person probably wants to see pictures of people.

[00:19:41] They want to see the success. They want to see the ease of what that ATS could do for them. The IT person wants to know, is this secure, is there some data behind it, and having the landing page differ between those two, where the IT person sees a lot of data, and it speaks to how they make decisions, and the HR person sees a lot of people and speaks to a lot of their passion, why they got into the business.

[00:20:05] It’s a great kind of example that illustrates why you would need ABM. You can’t just put out a message and try to get the company in. You need to speak differently to the different individuals because it’s gonna be a long sales cycle. We need to change the messaging as we go through from brand awareness, you know, problem aware, solution aware, to we need to build a case for ROI and get budget for this and deal with the implementation on onboarding.

[00:20:29] So understanding a lot of the complexities that ABM helps solve Also creates the framework for why you would need to add that into your business.

[00:20:39] Matt Hummel: I love that. And I’m glad you brought up the two distinct buyers within the same organisation example because where I see a lot of marketers go wrong with ABM is they jump to the tactics.

[00:20:48] We have a company list, we’re going to do personalised campaigns, we’re going to create customised landing pages, we’re going to put ads out with their name and their logo. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it’s certainly not right. It’s not the answer. And I think. Yeah. Marketers need to spend more time on understanding the buyers, their unique pain points.

[00:21:08] It’s going back to what you said at the beginning around empathy. Empathy is not a bad thing, it’s actually knowing your buyers at their core. And when you’re talking about the ATS example, you have folks in HR, they want to see the people side, they want to see that human connection and probably the user experiences where the IT folks, you have to know what they care about.

[00:21:27] That could be compliance, that could be security, that could be whatever. You have to understand that and then take the time to message appropriately. And yeah, I think as long as ABM has been around and it’s funny cause I think there are organisations out there who have said, all right, ABM’s dead. We’re onto the next thing, whether that’s ABX or now buying groups or whatever it is.

[00:21:47] The reality is ABM is still here and present. There are still major enterprise organisations who are just getting into it. They are piloting programs. And I think one of the best pieces of advice that you’ve given, and that I would, I would reiterate is know your audience and create campaigns that actually speak to them, the tactics they will come, there’s only so many tools in your toolkit, if you want to be successful.

[00:22:12] Personalise and know your audience. So I will get off my soap box, but no,

[00:22:15] Jim Gilkey: this

[00:22:16] Matt Hummel: is a

[00:22:17] Jim Gilkey: great conversation to build on because I could, if you imagine you’re walking through the mall and you hear somebody yell, Hey Matt, you’d probably turn and look, but if you didn’t see something that would continue to get your attention, you’re going to very quickly go back to what you’re doing.

[00:22:35] And the companies that focus on tactics are the ones that think if we just have this company’s name on our website, that’s enough. But it really isn’t. Here’s the homework assignment or the side quest, depending on, you know, where you sit on that messaging. Go onto your website if you’re by your computer right now.

[00:22:52] Go to your request a demo page and look at that. Try to look through that from the eyes of a buyer. So if I’m on a request the demo page with you, I am the closest I will ever be to converting and if you have paragraphs for me to read, if you have a form that is 15 different fields and I need to give you, you know, my first make and model of my car and my mom’s maiden name, that’s too much.

[00:23:22] How do you reduce friction when people are at the point of wanting to convert to skyrocket your conversions? And I think the exercise always starts from the beginning. If I was going through this as a buyer, what would I want and how would I feel? And if you need to break that a little bit more, have somebody else, a neighbor, somebody in your family, a friend of yours go to that page and they can give you probably just as good of advice.

[00:23:49] As a prospect or customer could.

[00:23:51] Matt Hummel: That’s great perspective. Truly outside, unbiased perspective, unless it’s your mom, because then she’ll say it’s the best thing she’s ever seen. Well, last question as it relates to ABM, and then I want to jump to our next segment, but you’ve done a lot in ABM and you and I share a mutual friend in Tanner, who I believe you worked with at Terminus, and he speaks the world of you and said your time at Morales Group was fascinating as you came in.

[00:24:16] And really taught yourself ABM and then transformed the organisation around it. So just kind of thinking through that, if you were to give marketers one piece of advice to start a new ABM program, not ABM philosophy in general, but. What’s your starting point from a program perspective, what would you say?

[00:24:33] Jim Gilkey: Yeah, it’s funny you ask Matt, because my advice, if I were to start at a company as an account executive, and my advice, if I were to start as a manager of ABM, is the same. As a salesperson, I would go through what are all of these deals that went closed, lost, or dead. Over the last year, maybe two years, and look at the reasons why those didn’t work out before.

[00:24:59] As a marketer, I want to go after that exact same list for building new campaigns and building out an ABM strategy. We called it Awaken the Dead at Terminus because these were ones that were close, but then somewhere died on the vine. And you think of the number of things. That would change in a business that would now make them a great candidate for working with you that maybe prevented them from working with you in the past.

[00:25:25] So just give four examples. If they didn’t have budget before, we’re getting into a new season in 2025. Many companies are projecting to IPO. That means there’s potentially businesses that are going to be able to get funding. And have budget that did not have budget in the past. Many budgets have been cut for the past couple of years.

[00:25:46] And if those funds are now unlocked with somebody that is on this close lost or dead list. Then they’re able to work with you through an evaluation and sign. Another example, if they just didn’t have a pain point in the past, how many more people now that the, the belt has been tightened a little bit on the business are now feeling pains that they haven’t been in the past.

[00:26:08] And maybe that’s enough pain for them to be able to move and want to take action. If there was a part of your business, if you have a technology or product that you’re selling, that’s Or maybe even a service that you didn’t offer before, or the product had a feature that was missing. If that feature has now been created and you won’t know until you go and look through the notes, that new feature would be the perfect reason to reach out, the perfect reason to put them on a campaign, and a really fast and easy way to get that business coming in.

[00:26:37] Last is obviously there’s a lot of data around turnover in positions, and so many leaders that were at companies are no longer there, and there’s new leaders that have come in. And so looking at those companies that maybe have new decision makers and new buying committees. Um, could be an easy way because, you know, a lot about the business already, you know, about the problems that they were facing, you know, about the things that they liked about your product or service or offering.

[00:27:03] And now you’re able to frame that up, not just with industry knowledge, but specific knowledge about this account that sales and marketing team was able to gather through a previous opportunity and drive much faster wins than you could with many of these other equally as good and equally as valuable ABM programs.

[00:27:22] Matt Hummel: Jim, that’s awesome. I think there’s, there’s so much to unpack there and, you know, marketers, frankly, sales, business boards, they’re always looking for, Hey, we need fast revenue. The reality is fast revenue is probably a misnomer. It’s not, that’s really, really difficult, but if you want to accelerate. I think this is an awesome example of these are potential customers who have already demonstrated that they are in market and have budget, you know, more than likely to buy a solution that you’re selling, but to your point, for one reason or another, they didn’t buy from you at that time.

[00:27:57] I’ve seen more and more tech companies are no longer, they’re no longer selling three to five year deals. So it’s very realistic that. Within a year or even, you know, two years at most that contract is done. And certainly within, if it’s, even if it’s a two year contract, within a year to 18 months, they’re already starting to look again.

[00:28:16] And so. I think that’s really smart. There’s, I think companies and marketers in particular get hung up on what’s new. You know, you’re always going after the, we need, we need to go after these new companies. Reality is if you want to grow your business, I think this is a perfect starting point and then take care of your customers, retain them, grow them.

[00:28:35] To me, that’s how you, you can accelerate the revenue growth. So I love that. And I liked that you said, whether you’re an AE or marketer joining a company, you have the same approach because. Kind of segues perfectly to the next segment that I wanted to pick your brain on, you know, you have experience both as an account executive as well as a marketing leader.

[00:28:54] So I’d love to unpack your point of view. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you utilise both experiences in your work and really why and how it’s helped you throughout your career?

[00:29:04] Jim Gilkey: Absolutely. I think one of the biggest ways going back to that theme of empathy. When you understand the day to day of a job, that allows you to get very specific.

[00:29:17] On ways that you will improve the way that that person operates on a day to day basis. Fancy way of saying it helps you reduce the friction. So for a salesperson, most of the friction that they are struggling with is what is this campaign that they were on that had some response? What does that mean? As far as how interested that individual or company might be.

[00:29:45] And what message do I lead with? So I run these sales marketing workshops where I help them get alignment on this relationship. And for the salesperson, those are always the main things that are holding them back. What are the signals? What do each of them mean? So what is this campaign where it has some sort of campaign name?

[00:30:06] There’s a tangent I can go on just about naming your campaign, something that would make sense to the sales team and not just help marketers organise the campaigns better. When they see the campaign response come through, whether that, and it could be an engagement like they showed up to a webinar, but it could also be they just showed up on your website or maybe they’re doing some research online about a specific topic.

[00:30:28] Okay. For me, that’s kind of the order that I would go through. People that have raised their hand and gone to an event, or requested a demo, or engaged with something that we had sent them, are going to be much easier for me to set a meeting with than people that were just on our website. But still, people that were on our website know who we are, versus people that are doing research online.

[00:30:49] But even then, people that are doing research online, Still have a problem that I can leverage as the way of personalising the message. So I have this concept that I talk about when bringing these two organisations together, sales and marketing called engineering serendipity. You want the prospect or customer on the other end of receiving your message to think, Oh my gosh, this is perfect timing.

[00:31:12] I was just doing research. In fact, I was on your website looking for answers about this. And your timing could not be better. Obviously the engineering part comes from there’s so much data and signal coming to us now that we can create these moments of serendipity because we are organising our data in a way that sales and marketing can take action.

[00:31:33] Marketing puts them on a campaign, sales reaches out to them. They’re thinking that God has aligned the stars for the two companies to work together. But really this is just data driven from both ends.

[00:31:44] Matt Hummel: I love that. So put on both your sales and marketing hat and let’s talk alignment. That is something that our data shows is a real issue and challenge that marketers are facing when you think about sales and marketing alignment.

[00:31:58] Is it simply marketing, making sure that they’re keeping sales informed or does it go beyond that to engage? Or is it really thinking differently that it’s not just marketing’s role? What, what’s your take on sales and marketing alignment?

[00:32:12] Jim Gilkey: Yeah, this for many years in surveys has been the number one issue for go to market teams, the alignment.

[00:32:20] And it’s because many teams are limiting themselves on the way that they define it and the way that they operationalise. Their alignment within their company. So as you said, Matt, most of the time, a marketer thinks that alignment is showing up to the sales meeting once a month or once a quarter and saying, here are the campaigns that we’re going to be running.

[00:32:40] And here’s kind of the goal and who we’re going to be targeting. And although that’s really great information, most salespeople are going to forget that very quickly. And at the end of the month quarter, there, I have no idea what’s going on. And back to some of the confusion I talked about a minute ago, the opportunity that’s way bigger that I don’t think anybody’s really leveraging well, is going the other way from sales to marketing.

[00:33:05] You’re talking about a group of individuals that is talking to every person from, I just heard of you and I don’t really know what you do, to, I have a problem and I think you might be able to solve it. To I’m giving you money because I have full confidence and I’m putting my own personal reputation on the line because I feel that strongly about how well we’re going to align as partners.

[00:33:29] And so one of the best pieces of advice I got from my podcast, there’s an episode where I host Yaak Ganesh and he said, ask your sales team or listen to recordings of first calls with prospects or customers and figure out what are those three to five frequently asked questions. Now, when you start to get that data from the sales team going to marketing, now you’re informing them of content that is meaningful to almost everyone that you could be reaching out to because it constantly comes up on these calls.

[00:34:00] So, if you want to create content that you know is going to have a huge impact right away, Why not create that content around those pieces that people are already asking questions about and what that can do for you. It can allow you to move some of these accounts that are maybe on the fence or maybe in the research phase further down toward wanting to meet with your team.

[00:34:20] Because a lot of the things that they are maybe trying to find the answer to, you’re already providing that for them. And if you’re the one that has the answers to their questions, you’re somebody that’s going to provide a lot of value in them meeting them. Because you’re the one that is driving so much value when everyone else seems like they are just interested in taking your money.

[00:34:39] Matt Hummel: Such great and practical advice. I love that. Thank you for sharing that super, super helpful. And I was, I actually wrote that down because we have our growth planning meetings next week with our sales organisation. And one of my questions has been around prioritisation of content. We’re a small team.

[00:34:54] We’ve got to be. Mindful of we can do anything, but we can’t do everything. Right. So I think coming in with that question of, Hey, what are the top three to five challenges, things that you’re hearing from potential customers? That’s whether a blocker or, you know, not, not allowing deals to move forward or we’re losing deals on, and then understanding that and then helping create messaging and good content.

[00:35:16] That’s going to help that. So awesome advice. Alright, Jim, last professional if you will, topic, because this would not be a podcast if we didn’t talk about – AI. So with that in mind, can you share your thoughts on, you know, the current state of AI? How do you think it will or is impacting marketers today and and where do you see it impacting marketers in the future?

[00:35:38] Jim Gilkey: Absolutely. There are many thoughts and feelings and worries when it comes to ai. I am not in the camp that thinks AI is going to replace. Anyone’s role, although I do believe that that Maxim that has come out, AI is not going to take your job, but somebody using AI probably will. AI is great for so many different use cases, and if you’re looking to get into this, I would recommend try to look at the manual tasks that you do, that they just take a lot of time, and they take a lot of effort.

[00:36:15] They might not be the hardest tasks, like going out and finding information. Most people can do a Google search. They can go to different sources, find the information that’s publicly available, and then put that into some sort of formatting. That’s going to help them for a business perspective. That’s the perfect example of where AI could plug in and really make the difference for your business.

[00:36:39] So the two examples I would give one would be in trying to qualify accounts that you want to be targeting, figuring out if they fit your ideal client profile or not. You can go out and there is actually another podcast guest that really breaks this down. Well, he looks on their website for content that they write talking about their own company.

[00:36:59] And depending on whether or not that content is present, He will give somebody the green light or red light on whether or not they fit into his ideal client. Now there’s another one that uses AI to do the research on the buying committee. And for them, they found that it is not just that you have a right individual in a company or they live the right size team.

[00:37:21] But what they found for one of their customers that they’re working with. There are individuals that if they’re in their first six months in a executive finance role, they’re probably not changing anything. They’re trying to learn the business. They’re trying to learn the ups and downs of their cashflow, and then they’ll start making decisions on, you know, where budget goes or budget that they could unlock for different departments.

[00:37:44] But once you get to two years in that role for an executive finance leader, you probably have relationships with vendors or individuals that you want to work with. So they use AI to go out and figure out when on LinkedIn did somebody start a job and how long have they been there and use that as one of their pieces in figuring out, does this company fit your ideal client?

[00:38:06] The other side to the other example is researching personalisation. So yes, many companies today are looking at researching using AI for what is a company talking about, maybe in a 10K report, the CEO just gave a talk, what are some of the goals that they have? Absolutely. That’s really important, but why not take it a level up?

[00:38:27] Many users and many practitioners, like a salesperson, for instance, they have trouble in meetings with executives because they’re all talking to the user of whatever they’re selling. Or the recipient of the service. They’re not used to talking about the business as a whole and some of the macroeconomic or market headwinds and AI could be really great for doing research on, Hey, I’m working with this account and here’s the industry they’re in.

[00:38:55] Can you tell me a little bit about what’s happened in the industry over the past couple of years and what they’re predicting is going to happen in the industry over this next year? And then they could pull from different sources that talk from the same sources that investors would use to figure out whether or not they want to invest in one of these companies.

[00:39:12] And when you show up to a meeting, when you start putting a marketing campaign in front of an executive, and you’re not talking about Hey, here’s a pain because it takes this user in your company X amount of time to do this task. And that’s too long. We’re going to shave that down. But you’re talking about, Hey, we’re going to position you as a leader in your industry because we understand the market headwinds.

[00:39:32] How much more likely is that company going to be your customer versus the competitor that has a very similar product offering?

[00:39:40] Matt Hummel: I love both of those use cases. I think what we’re seeing is AI has been primarily used around. And within marketing, content creation, content personalisation, which I think is to a degree what you just touched on, which I think is a great use case, much more so than the actual creation where I think it’s creating a lot of problems for marketers.

[00:39:58] And then the research angle is something I’ve heard from a handful of marketers the past few months. And I think it’s starting to grow traction. And I think the way that you unpack the use cases specifically around research are fascinating. At the end of the day, it’s, you know, making manual tasks more automated.

[00:40:13] As marketers who are dealing with smaller teams, higher targets, lower budgets, it’s not a nice to have. It’s a critical thing that we need to be unlocking. So great perspective there. All right. Well, similar to your podcast, Jim, I, I like to know my guests beyond just what they’re doing work wise. So I want to jump into our last segment, which is called what’s on tap.

[00:40:34] So what’s on tap for you, Jim? So at the top of the show, we talked about your favorite pick me up beverage. We’ll Which is black coffee, or if I’m remembering, was it a caramel macchiato? Did I get that right? Yeah,

[00:40:45] Jim Gilkey: that’s right.

[00:40:46] Matt Hummel: So you have the five calorie or the not five calorie drink. So if we flip that question around, what’s your favorite drink when you need to unwind?

[00:40:53] Jim Gilkey: For me, I’ve always been a fan of bourbon. I used to be a really big Jack and Coke guy until I got into sales leadership and I was managing a sales team down in the South. And they told me about a bourbon ginger. I found that ginger ale is a very similar taste to Coke, but it doesn’t have that really heavy syrup taste.

[00:41:13] So having a lot of Irish heritage, uh, the go to is probably a Jameson ginger ale.

[00:41:19] Matt Hummel: So you mentioned ginger beer earlier in our conversation. Have you ever tried that with ginger beer in place of ginger ale?

[00:41:26] Jim Gilkey: I have not. And that’s probably something that I want to try this weekend for sure.

[00:41:30] Matt Hummel: Oh, right on.

[00:41:31] Yeah. I, I’m a big ginger beer fan. It’s definitely got, you know, a much more intense ginger flavor for sure. So. Well, awesome. Well, I know you lead quite the busy life. You’ve got not only five children, which is amazing, but also a hobby list, you know, which includes things like, um, sports, church, working out music in your community.

[00:41:52] How did you do it all? I have two kids and I feel like I can barely get out of bed in the morning, let alone have a bunch of hobbies. So how do you do it all?

[00:42:00] Jim Gilkey: You know, I think probably, well, first I would be remiss if I didn’t say, you know, A lot of help from my wife. She is fantastic at managing our schedules and everything that we need to do and making sure that people are not, not just being present and showing up to a game, but being really intentional about how we surround the family to make sure that that child feels really encouraged by everyone.

[00:42:31] But mind you, it is absolutely crazy here. I think with seven people in one house, there’s absolutely no privacy. The best example for when people ask me, what is it like having five kids and we have, you know, I have a wife and two dogs and five kids. It’s, it’s absolutely nuts here. So when people ask me what it’s like, I say, there’s one time my daughter was using the bathroom.

[00:42:53] I remembered it didn’t see any toilet paper in a bathroom the last time that I was in there. So I ran to go get it all my way back to the bathroom. I hear a flush and I hear the faucet going and my daughter meets me at the door. This is when she was really young. I asked her, isn’t the bathroom out of toilet paper?

[00:43:11] And she said, Oh yeah, but it’s no problem. I just use your towel.

[00:43:15] Matt Hummel: That is hilarious. And is it disgusting? A hundred percent. But is it like the perfect example of kids where, A, they’re just resilient. They find a way and they have zero shame. Yeah, there’s no toilet paper, but you know what? I problem solved, dad found a towel.

[00:43:33] It may have been yours, but I used it and I’m not going to think twice about it. Absolutely.

[00:43:37] Jim Gilkey: So yeah, after finding a new place for my towel, I definitely make sure we always have backup toilet paper and all the rest. Well,

[00:43:44] Matt Hummel: that is amazing. My brother has five kids and he always says, you know, five kids.

[00:43:48] It’s really, once you have two. It’s no different than having three, four or five. And I’m like, I’ve, you guys walk around Costco with two flat carts and I guarantee you, your Costco bill is exponentially higher than mine. So I have no doubt that you’re in the same camp. Absolutely.

[00:44:06] Jim Gilkey: I

[00:44:06] Matt Hummel: didn’t

[00:44:06] Jim Gilkey: think that it was really that much more money.

[00:44:09] Cause everybody got him in the downs and sports didn’t cost a whole lot. But now that my oldest just started high school this year, I got a few in middle school, it’s really every other year down to my youngest in kindergarten. Um, And as these boys that are in middle school are getting older, man, they are eating a lot more.

[00:44:26] There’s no more ordering off the kid’s menu for them. And yeah, the cost has definitely gone way up.

[00:44:30] Matt Hummel: I believe it. Well, at one point in your life, you were a pretty active drummer, which would make you the second drummer that we’ve had on the show. So, do you

[00:44:38] Jim Gilkey: still play? I don’t play on a regular basis. I will mess around sometimes, especially when the kids are playing.

[00:44:46] are, are playing. I have a bunch of instruments in the house. I was a music major and I dropped it down to a minor when I was in college, but as a part of that I had to take two years of singing, two years of piano, and I happened to have a guitar because my brother played and I wanted to be like him and so I picked that up.

[00:45:03] So there’s a lot of instruments, a lot of sound here in the but, um, since I stopped drumming, I got a lot into Uh, music production, understanding electronic instruments, and that kind of led me into the audio production side, which was, you know, one of the reasons that I wanted to start a podcast.

[00:45:19] Matt Hummel: Oh, that’s super cool.

[00:45:21] Well, Jim, this has been an amazing conversation. It’s been awesome to get to know you both professionally, but on the personal front as well. And, I really appreciate you taking the time today, and I know our listeners will get a ton from this. So thank you so much.

[00:45:33] Jim Gilkey: Yeah. Thanks for having me. This has been a blast.

[00:45:35] Matt Hummel: Awesome. Thanks again to Jim for joining us on today’s episode of the Pipeline Brew. I hope you all enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Please leave me a comment with your thoughts and make sure you subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Once again, I’m Matt Hummel, and I’ll see you next time.