Vendor Flexibility Versus Custom Builds

The immense hype around AI agents is positively palpable, but is there value in adopting an army of AI minions today or is the promise of agentic AI still fictitious pulp?

Here to help illuminate and elucidate the role of AI agents is Gabe Larsen, the Chief Revenue Officer at Signals and the former Chief Marketing Officer of Kustomer. 

Gabe joins co-hosts Matt Amundson and Craig Rosenberg for a deep dive into how agentic AI coupled with signal-based marketing succeeds in go to market where Account-Based Marketing failed in its execution. We get into whether startups should build or buy the tools they need, which new metrics your board might be looking for, and what customers really want to hear about from vendors.

Plus, Gabe bids goodbye to the age of software tools while welcoming in the AI-powered teammate economy.

Also, Craig vehemently denies accusations of scowling, Matt shares his preferences on the intricacies of the English language, and Producer Sam asks a dumb question.

Critical Takeaways

• Agentic AI tools need to provide omni-channel execution in order to offer real value and impact to sales and marketing teams. 
• The combination of Signals + Agents outperforms Account-Based Marketing in the way it has been traditionally deployed. However, the core ideas of ABM, such as Ideal Customer Profiles, Target Accounts, Personalization, etc., still hold true. In fact, the advances in AI-powered martech have now made the original promise and vision of ABM possible.
• In the build vs buy debate, much of what has been built and is being built in-house is far too brittle to accommodate the regular use of a revenue team. You don’t want your whole custom-built workflow to break every time someone makes a minor change to something as small as an email subject line. However, the solutions that are going to succeed and ultimately be bought must be capable of handling the custom needs and workflows of the users. If the available tools are too rigid for customers, then they will look to build their own workarounds, solutions, and eventually, replacement tools.
• As the “customization economy” takes hold, go-to-market teams should seek vendors that offer flexible, customizable solutions rather than rigid, templatized products. From the vendor side, take note that buyers are gravitating toward platforms that allow them to tailor workflows to their unique needs, and if you fail to provide this flexibility, you will be left behind.
• Customers crave real guidance from vendors, not just hype about the new features you added. The most successful vendors will be those who offer clear, prescriptive playbooks and best practices (Think HubSpot or Marketo).

Chapters

00:00 - Episode Preview

02:16 - Introducing Gabe Larsen, the Chief Revenue Officer of Signals

04:53 - Learning The Costly Difference between Michael and Michelle 

09:23 - Catastrophic Sales Kickoff Stories

14:26 - The Dim Sum Disaster

17:29 - Why Signals-based Marketing + AI Agents are outperforming Traditional Account-Based Marketing

26:15 - Builders versus Buyers & Why Tools are Out and Teammates are In

31:56 - The Role of AI in Modern B2B Marketing

45:01 - The Future of AI-Powered Workforces

48:14 - An AI Vendor's Perspective on Pricing for AI Tools & AI Agents

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Epic Quotes

• “The market’s separating into builders and buyers and I think we’re establishing more buyers.” - Gabe Larsen
• “ Tools are gone, teammates are in.” - Gabe Larsen 
• “This is the customization economy” - Craig Rosenberg

Connect with Gabe

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabelarsen/ 
• Signals Website: https://getsignals.ai/ 

Shoutouts

• David Boskovic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dboskovic/ 
• David’s Boskovic’s episode: https://open.substack.com/pub/thetransaction/p/building-an-ai-first-go-to-market

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