Scaling your sales outreach
The personalised sales approach can be a winner, but when you’re scaling at the same time, campaigns can become too impersonal. In this episode of the XTech podcast, Winnie Palmer, EMEA Head of Marketing at Seismic, discusses her career and shares the secret of effective marketing for so many disparate deal factors.
“I really think we have reached a defining moment with AI that is fundamentally going to change everything.”
When you’re scaling up your sales approach, there’s a risk of making the message too broad and impersonal. But our latest XTech podcast guest knows how to stay laser-focused, with confidence in the supporting tech – and the professionals involved.
Winnie Palmer of Seismic joins Debbie Forster MBE for an exciting look at her career path, and the challenges she has faced along the way to create effective marketing for so many disparate deal factors.
Transcript:
Announcer:
Ready to explore the extraordinary world of tech. Welcome to the XTech Podcast, where we connect you with the sharpest minds and leading voices in the global tech community. Join us as we cut through the complexity to give you a clear picture of the ideas, innovations, and insight that are shaping our future.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Hello and welcome to the XTech Podcast by Fox Agency. I’m your host, Debbie Forster-MBE. I’m the CEO at the Tech Talent Charter and an advocate and campaigner for diversity, inclusion and innovation in the tech industry.
I’m delighted to be working with Fox Agency as the host of the XTech Podcast and as curator for the XTech community. Today, I’m really delighted to be joined by Winnie Palmer. She’s the EMEA Head of Marketing at Seismic. Welcome Winnie.
Winnie Palmer:
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Debbie Forster MBE:
So, Winnie, to start off with, our listeners love to hear how people get into tech. For some it was born with a laptop in hand. Others it’s a bit more wiggly getting into tech. How about you?
Winnie Palmer:
How did I get into tech? It was actually not that straightforward. I started with a master degrees in epidemiology, which has nothing directly relating to technology as we know today. But I think at the time, thinking about what I want to do, technology just really resonated with me. I’m not what people would call a digital native, even though I have a digital marketing childhood, and I’ve been in the technology sector for more than 20 years. I’m actually a Gen X, and one thing about the Gen X is that we are the stewards who manage the transition from the analogue world to the digital world. Arguably, we were the original in the beginning of the waves of digital transformations in the decades following. And I just really love technology though. I’ve been always being inquisitive, eager to learn how new technologies can help solve real problems for people. And I guess it is that curiosity and that thirst for innovation that has got me into tech and still keeping me here.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Fantastic. And I love that I’m Gen X myself, and I love the idea. I’m always sceptical about digital Native, but there are people like my daughter, were born not knowing anything different. But the idea of us as stewards as having been there through that transition is a really interesting way of approaching it, and I want to embrace that. I like that idea of a stewardship mentality. And I think hearing about your curiosity with people and problem solving, that’s something I think when we look across tech, a lot of my guests, there’s an even split really between those that were fascinated by the machines and the gadgets themselves and wanted to take them apart. But then there are those of us who were fascinated by the problems that the tech solved. And what we’re seeing then as employers and companies, if they’re looking for great talent in tech, it’s not just about looking at what their degree is. It’s looking for what you were describing, that curiosity, that problem solving, that can actually end up making great people in tech.
Winnie Palmer:
Yeah. And did you notice we have now actually in the workforce four generations together?
Debbie Forster MBE:
Good Lord.
Winnie Palmer:
Yeah. We have the Boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z, right? So the point is not so much how old we are, but the behaviour attitude that we are seeing many of us are adopting is the digital first attitude.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Absolutely, fantastic. How did you find yourself into Seismic?
Winnie Palmer:
How did I find my way to Seismic? It is quite an interesting story. Actually, at the time I was running my own business as a consultant. Seismic was a client of mine, I was doing something around the innovation sector, helping firms to scale and to grow. But then COVID hit and suddenly businesses are now looking for growth. They’re looking for business sustainability. And just luckily enough at the time, I’m really grateful the Seismic CMO at the time, Michael Londgren, he just invited me to join Seismic as a full timer to help scale the business internationally into Europe. And I was the first marketing hire really in Europe, and I’ve been there four years now. It’s been a long journey.
Debbie Forster MBE:
What a wonderful four years. I mean, it’s interesting that moving across the table from consultants to rolling up your sleeve and doing it, but to do it in 2020 is a crazy time. There was an acceleration of all manner of things. So when you joined Seismic amidst the lockdown, what were the challenges? What were the opportunities for your role then?
Winnie Palmer:
Yeah, so I joined Seismic during the time of COVID, and it is a weird time. If there’s one silver lining about COVID is that it changed the way we work and all the businesses had to switch to virtual selling pretty much overnight. And to be able to sell virtually effectively, you need to have some sort of tools, content, data tools, intelligence, et cetera, delivered to sellers and automated in personalised fashion. So your sellers can then in turn create personalised binary experience at scale to compete in a very suddenly super noisy digital selling world. So I think that was an opportunity.
At that time, sales technology firms like my company had a boom time actually as our customers suddenly needed to rapidly beef up their technology infrastructure to enable their digital first go-to-market motions. But you know what? Two years ago when I joined, I didn’t meet anyone in person at work. We were all in lockdowns, wearing pyjama pants, maybe doing conferencing calls. And I remember camping in my back garden with my children. And honestly, trying to work full time while doing home schooling is not recommended.
Debbie Forster MBE:
No, absolutely.
Winnie Palmer:
But the thing is that all our customers were in the same shoes. So you asked about challenges. So that’s the thing, we were all stuck at home and overnight, not only the sellers had to learn to sell differently, buyers had to learn to buy virtually too.
Debbie Forster MBE:
And I think that transformation of, and that’s not gone away, but COVID did give a different generation. This is a whole new world both for selling and for buying. And I don’t know what you found, but I hear often people talking about even if I’m a B2B buyer, I want a B2C experience. So how does tech help that?
Winnie Palmer:
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. We probably all do a little bit of that now. We’re so used to receiving personalised experience that we now take it almost for granted that all the interactions delivered by a company should be based on my interest, my desire, my need. And as a middleman, we’ll expect that, please don’t send me a generic proposal that doesn’t tightly aligned with my business context and my business requirements. So let’s just imagine if you are on the other side of the table, not as a customer, but as a salesperson, right? Imagine if you are a seller, you own dozens of accounts or more, and in each account there are multiple stakeholders to manage and you need to, and you want to tailor your content and your conversation to each meeting, each person, so you can deliver highly compelling, personalised interaction every single time to advance your deals and improve your win rates ultimately. And very quickly, you just imagine that your day becomes super complex and unwieldy.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Absolutely. Because a whole lifetime and you have much greater scale on all the things you used to learn, I guess, over golf games or coffees over drinks. But you’re expected to do that now at scale and at speed.
Winnie Palmer:
That’s right. That’s right. And that’s why you need to have technologies to help you get organised so you can be more effective and efficient. And you know what? The sales enablement is something I can speak to, and maybe I just use that as an example.
So sales enablement actually started with this precise use case. So you want the companies takes the responsibility in the operation to deliver personalised content to the sellers based on the deal factors and the buying persona at that very given point in time and customised to the specific need with accurate data, case studies, pricing, or even, what I love the most is, a snackable just-in-time training for the specific skews that the seller is selling.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Fantastic.
Winnie Palmer:
And things have evolved even more since. I mean, now with AI, I would have to throw in AI.
Debbie Forster MBE:
No, of course, no conversation on the bingo card if you haven’t said AI, you’re not talking tech.
Winnie Palmer:
Right. So that’s throwing AI and that really well to not talk about AI until now. You can have a personalised AI assistant with whom you can now practise your messaging and receiving feedback directly from your personal AI.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Fantastic.
Winnie Palmer:
I’ll give you an example. When we have product launches, I learn all the details and then I need to learn also how to deliver it. And the way to practise my delivery is I do it with my personalised AI and I upload my, not even uploading, I’m just practising with my AI within environment. And AI would tell me if I have included all the keywords. Did I say too many filler words? How about the speed of my delivery? And all these can really further help me improve the quality and effectiveness of my customer meetings when I go to see them.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Fantastic. So your own personal coach, your sales coach?
Winnie Palmer:
Yeah.
Debbie Forster MBE:
And does that help in interactions? If I’m talking to someone online, like more and more sales calls are happening now, do I get that same helpful little voice in my ear queuing me along?
Winnie Palmer:
Yeah. Yeah. You would be surprised to know this is actually a real use case is what our customers are using already. Because during conferencing calls like this, you don’t really know how many screens the person you’re speaking to actually have. So all this additional assistance actually can be quite discrete.
So imagine if you’re in a conferencing call situation, if you are the seller, before you even get into the meeting, your artificial intelligence assistant can analyse all the content, your learning, your own personal learning, and engagement data from all the previous interactions, and instantly identify gaps to recap it to you, tailor training to help you accelerate your knowledge before you even get into the meeting. So you’re prepared. And even a checklist based on the learnings you have completed or not, right? So your skills and context of upcoming conversation is analysed and prepared for. Now, of course, while you are in the meeting, all these little recommendations I say, as the conversation goes by, your customer asks a question and that question contextually will be analysed, understood, and you’ll get a prompt of the answer. No more the situation where you have to say, “Let me check and come back to you.” Because all the answer is on the screen instantaneously delivered to you in that moment in time.
Debbie Forster MBE:
And that’s a powerful way. I think as we’re all getting ahead around how AI, machine learning, generative AI can help us. The scaremongering talks about how it replaces humans, but what’s the really powerful use cases are, that’s when we augment humans, make them better. So we’re not replacing the skills that a salesperson has, we’re giving them, we’re feeding that so that they get even better at that and can do that at speed in real time. That makes it really, really powerful.
Amazing. I mean, is there anything else that you think is happening in terms of that virtual experience? Because I think when people think about AI, if we lose the human, we lose the empathy, that real life relationship. What would you say to that?
Winnie Palmer:
Yeah, I think it is a pull and push. There is this business requirements almost that firms are looking at how to adopt AI to drive more efficiency and productivity into their operations. If you look at the data, for example, 80% of sales leaders expect that on average, maybe around 23% of revenue growth from AI utilisation over the coming five years. So that’s a lot. On top of that, nearly 70% believe companies have failed to incorporate AI into their go-to-market processes effectively will fall behind their competitions by 2026. So there is a huge momentum being created because the benefit of AI offers to us really.
But on the other hand, the responsibility and the whole thing around ethics certainly is critical. And as a marketer, I look at how to adopt AI to help me remove barriers to my performance so I can be faster, quicker, more effective. But I also know that I have the responsibility to select, prioritise and work with vendors who are responsible in terms of data, in terms of security, in terms of representation. And we are all learning at the moment, every single one of us, to find a more, I guess, responsible path forward when we adopt this technology. And there are some other situations, not just in sales enablement.
Recently I come across a business as a German firm. They are in the engineering simulation space. Now, what they offer is a production-ready, cloud-first easy access to engineers. In other words, they scale access to simulation software at low cost, which in turn helps accelerate innovation and engineering solutions to help build a better future for the humankind. So that sort of stuff really excites me, how technology solves problems for humans and if we chart a responsible path going forward and really look at how to adopt these technologies in a responsible, but I also beneficial way. It is actually a brighter future, and I’m quite hopeful about that.
Debbie Forster MBE:
No, don’t apologise at all. And I love because that golden thread, again, of your interest, both the curiosity, what tech can do, your interest in humans, but also what I heard that you were talking many is again, that stewardship mindset. So if we stop thinking about it either at the extremes of as a threat or this is the gold rush, go for it.
I like what you were saying is how can we use AI machine learning, Genny AI, to remove barriers, to enhance, to grow, to enable us as humans to get better at that. But there is that stewardship piece. How are we ensuring that we have data security, that we have an ethical use of data, etcetera, but in that space with the curiosity, but the steward mindset, that’s where great use cases, that’s where great innovation’s going to come. And you’ve got some startling stats about companies. So if you’re on this podcast and you’re sort of sitting back or your boss is sitting back thinking, “Well, let’s just wait until the dust settles.” If you wait until the dust settles, you’ll see your competitors at the horizon. And you’re right, you’ve been left behind.
Winnie Palmer:
Yes.
Debbie Forster MBE:
I mean, looking at in terms of the horizon, if we’re seeing the horizon, is there anything that’s particularly grabbing your attention at the moment?
Winnie Palmer:
Oh, it’s got to be AI.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Well, I might’ve been surprised, but I think given what you’re talking about… So what’s coming up the horizon via AI that you think is really exciting or interesting?
Winnie Palmer:
Yeah, generative AI burst into the masses consciousness last spring. And it has exploded in terms of the range of applications incorporating Gen AI’s capabilities. And I really think that we have reached a defining moment with AI that is going to fundamentally change everything, how we go to market. And we talk about meetings just earlier. And salespeople who have a strong first meetings with prospects, we found from the research are 2.5 times more likely to close a deal.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Wow.
Winnie Palmer:
So how do salespeople prepare, implement, and follow up on customer meetings with the help of AI for all the meetings that they have to deal with day in, day out, that is going to really make their life easier and their whole experience more compelling as well for their customers.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Fantastic. That’s really great. Look, Winnie, I have really loved talking to you. And one of the other things that our listeners love to hear is what might you be reading, doing, seeing, listening to that is most valuable for moment? What’s bubbling around for you?
Winnie Palmer:
Most valuable? I might be bucking the train a little bit here. I’m doing Shakespeare right now.
Debbie Forster MBE:
That’s amazing. How? What? Tell me more.
Winnie Palmer:
It is a little fun fact. I belong to a village drama school in Blackheath, and every Monday I have this little artistic date with myself and my fellow actors to learn about Shakespeare and to play. In my very humble opinion, who best to teach us about humanity than the Grandmaster Shakespeare himself.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Couldn’t agree more. I love that idea of an artistic date with ourselves. And there’s so much research that shows when we’re developing those other sides of our personality, of our brain, of our creativity. And the more that we can create spaces and time to play, that’s where the great ideas come from.
So now I’ve got a mental picture of you doing some Am-dram on Shakespeare. What are you working on at the moment?
Winnie Palmer:
We just performed Midsummer Night’s Dream a couple of weeks ago. It was absolutely ridiculous and great fun.
Debbie Forster MBE:
That’s the great fun of that. Everybody wants to be bottom or is afraid they’re bottom. I’m not sure which one it is, etcetera. But fantastic.
Winnie, I really appreciate you taking time from your very busy life and your artistic dates to talk with us here at XTech.
Winnie Palmer:
Thank you so much for having me. That was great fun.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Thank you for listening. If you’re a tech innovator and would like to appear as a guest on the show, email us now at [email protected]. And finally, thank you to the team of experts at Fox Agency who make this podcast happen. I’m Debbie Forster and you’ve been listening to the XTech podcast.
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