Deep Funnel for the Week of Sunday, April 21st, 2024
All summaries are written by humans, not generated by AI, to delve into our perspective on the most insightful content we've come across this week.
This week: Will SDR Autonomous agents take over the SDR function? An anonymous (but highly followed Twitter account shares his observations on rolling out an genAI support agent, the upcoming bloody war in GTM. An interesting update on SFDC/Informatica and finally the Truth About Sales Training
1. SDR Autonomous Agents
Nicolas always has and viewing and understanding the market. He provides his analysis on “SDR/BDR Autonomous Agents” (the category has yet to be defined) - even though we have the promise of automated inbound, many times that is HEAVILY curated by marketers or consultants. I like that Nicolas highlights the “black box” nature of these tools – and I would like to point out 2 items related to that. Every foundational model either has drift or is updating so frequently that mistakes can happen (or even more mundane, it just gets less articulate and starts just spewing jargon laced answers. It is often important to point out the downstream effects, which Nicolas does highlight: that if you break any small covenant, you will be put on a SPAM list. Also, the business is liable for any emails that are sent out on it’s behalf, so if it does get screwy or offers a massive EOQ discount, as of now, the business must absorb those losses
2. Random observations from our implementation of generative AI for scaled customer support
Anonymous Twitter/X accounts that build their accounts with very honest and specific takes are the new court jester of speaking truth to power. I think it has been inferred several times, but the mixture of support is probably completely wrong and that will be evident quickly and that product is starting to find real nuggets being found in the support data that is driven by real data and not anecdotes or a very opinionated VP.
3. The next 36 months, the bloody war over GTM
Sam is know for saying fiery if not controversial takes on LinkedIn. I wish the algorithm would highlight more of the comments because for a certain few the comments are gold. SalesLoft, Outreach and Clari all were focused on high growth SaaS companies (or hybrid companies like PANW). Groove (acquired by Clari) was one of the few had broken out and sold into the large financial vertical. SaaS has such a unique and many of those companies were built on a very specific sales motion that may be somewhat antiquated and many industries do not force a tech stack onto their sellers like we tend to do in SaaS. I do think the winner(s) will be determined by who can (re)define their ICP and execute flawlessly
Update from last week:
Why SFDC should buy Informatica
While I highlighted the SFDC and Informatica acquisition last week (and rumour has it has already broken down) Matt Garratt who used to run Salesforce Ventures highlights why SFDC would want to purchase Informatica with some degree of specificity. However, the part that I liked the best, is that he calls out SDFC can target SMB/MM customers with a monolithic data strategy (e.g. Hubspot/Apollo) - so they need to go even more into the enterprise and make consultants happy as well.
Other things we like
The Truth About Sales Training
If you have subscribed or even seen TikTok influencers or influencers on LinkedIn, it always seems like they have all the answers - this carries over from older in person sales training where the trainer was very good at giving the “gotcha” answers. These guys do a very good job of saying they don’t have the answers or “it depends” For instance they dig into Discovery Calls. Discovery calls are important, no doubt, but are they more important in SMB vs Strategic Enterprise? This episode talks about that and also what discovery guides can and can’t do for Enterprise rep. I like content that has a wide lens, but then I absolutely enjoy hearing about (the hosts with humility) with very specific scenarios.
Thanks for reading,
Neil
P.s. I have absolutely loved hearing your feedback and for you taking this journey with me. I took a long walk yesterday morning to reflect and will be implementing out some new content and some changes. If you want to chat go to market, I will always jump on a phone, zoom or text. As the Luke Combs said “I'd still be doin' this if I wasn't doin' this”, thank you for making it worth it (and give me your favorite article/podcast)