The Antidote Ep 3 - People-first GTM with Nick Bennett

📝 Episode Summary

In this episode of The Antidote, Alex Olley is joined by Nick Bennett, Co-Founder and CCO of TACK, to talk all about being people-first. Nick discusses the need for a change in the way GTM teams work, and the necessary move from a company-first mindset,  to a people-first one, that focuses on meaningful interactions and relationship building as a way to drive business results. Nick reflects on the rise of the creator economy, as part of the people-first ecosystem, the lessons he learned throughout his career, on how being a father of three positively impacted his journey. 

🤓 What will I learn

✅ Why GTM teams need to shift from a company-first to a people-first mindset
✅ How the people-first approach, focused on building relationships, can solve B2B sales and marketing teams' key challenges
✅ What is the role of modern partnerships within GTM strategies and why should companies focus on establishing the right ones
✅ How prioritizing people can revolutionize business results

👀 Key Insights

1. The People-First Approach

For Nick Bennett there are five main reasons why B2B go-to-market strategies have to evolve: the need for algorithm-optimized content, the saturation of “traditional” channels leading to lower ROI, the proximity of the cookieless future, the shift to remote work, and the advent of AI.

While these five things can pose a challenge for marketers, there’s a new approach on the rise, that will help B2B leaders guarantee their long-term success: people-first GTM, a strategy focused on meaningful and high-quality interactions and relationship building.

“I think people still believe that the company first mindset is the way to go. And they're okay with it being transactional. (...) But is that going to scale long-term? I mean, I'm a huge believer of no. And I think people have been doing this whole people first mindset for years without calling it that. It's all about relationships. We understand that people buy from people. It's just like, how do I take that to the next level? (...) So it's all about meaningful interactions. It's all about the quality of your leads that come in. It's not a quantity game. It's all about how do you create demand? How do you build relationships human to human the way people actually buy today? And how do you go to market partnership-centric?”

Make sure to always ask yourself: is my buyer/customer at the center of this process? Are their needs being met? Are we treating them as actual people and not just potential revenue? 

A decade ago, no one was really sure what partnership teams did or what value they brought to their business. Often, they were just seen as the ones that hung out at events. But fortunately, today things are different.

Modern partner marketing teams should be focused on co-creation: either of content, events or event brand campaigns. Leveraging existing business connections to amplify what your company is doing and fill resource gaps is key to business success and efficiency - both for you and your partners.

“When I think of people first go to market it's a business strategy that uses relationships and partnerships to create, capture, and convert demand into revenue. And it's designed to put people at the center of every interaction and experience.”

3. The rise of the creator economy

There are a lot of predictions and trends out there, but Nick bets his chips on the rise of the creator economy.

Goldman Sachs estimated that the creator economy is worth $250 billion, which is set to double by 2027. B2C companies have been relying on creators to achieve their aggressive goals for years now. It’s now time for B2B businesses to take advantage of this trend and growth with it as well.

“I'm doubling down on this whole creator economy in B2B, because I still truly think that creators and influencers used in marketing and sales are going to be the future. And we're about two to three years away from mass adoption.”

▶️ Watch the full episode on Youtube:

📖 Transcript

Alex Olley (00:01.33)
Nick, welcome to the antidote man, how are you?

Nick Bennett (00:03.66)
I'm good, thanks for having me.

Alex Olley (00:05.45)
Good stuff. Well thanks for joining me. What's been keeping you busy, man?

Nick Bennett (00:08.22)
Yeah, so I have an eight-month-old twin, twin girls, and I have a five-year-old. So three kids, it's keeping me way busier than I could have ever imagined.

Alex Olley (00:17.80)
Oh wow, that sounds like you've got your hands full there.

Nick Bennett (00:20.62)
Absolutely.

Alex Olley (00:22.06)
Good stuff. Well, thanks for hopping on with me today, mate. So let's go straight into it. Obviously here on The Antidote, what we're trying to do is we're trying to help people solve some problems. And everyone has a big challenge they're trying to solve. We call this their poison. And what we want to do is give listeners the antidote. So talk to me a little bit more about the big challenge you're on a mission to solve.

Nick Bennett (00:44.31)
Yeah, so for me, B2B go-to-market needs serious help. It's clear that we're at a major inflection point. So B2B marketing and sales need a major makeover. If you think about brand spam is rampant right now, the quality of content has plummeted, nothing works the way that it used to, and there's a better way to grow. But companies are so stuck in that company first go to market mindset, which is like the old way. So it's all about lead quantity.

It's all about going to market on your own. It's all about transactional. It's very much a, hey, I'm gonna sell you this. I'm gonna go on my way. Let me know when you need me to buy something else or let me know when I'm gonna bombard you with boring emails that are gonna try to get you to buy something. And it's just a mindset that is so old school and I see a lot of companies still using it and there's a better way to do it.

Alex Olley (01:37.35)
Okay, interesting. I'm sure a lot of people listening are thinking, oh God, maybe that's us. So I'm sure they're keen to know what the solution is. So tell me more about your antidote to this.

Nick Bennett (01:47.94)
Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's first important to cover why B2B Go-To-Market has to evolve. There are really five things. So number one is content explosion. So the algorithm of optimized content is a big piece of why companies must evolve. The second one, channel saturation. There's more competition, there's lower ROI. If you think about even in your own business, the channels that you used to use even a year ago.

It's probably way more saturated than it is today. And just think about how that's going to evolve as we kind of go forward. The third one is the cookie list future. Everyone's talking about this. Privacy, first-party data, how does that play into this whole thing? The fourth one is a connection crisis. Again, maybe you guys are a little bit different. I know you have some offices and stuff, but the shift to remote and hybrid work has changed how people connect.

And for me, I've been remote for the last eight or 10 years. So I don't care. I don't even want to really see people. But there's a connection crisis. And how are you going to solve that? The fifth one, and this is what everyone's talking about today, is the convergence of AI. Now, how do you use that to be more efficient? How do you use it to automate? The marketers that understand how to use AI. Like people talk about, is AI going to steal my job? No. But the marketers who understand how to leverage AI efficiently and how to automate it to do their job better.

Those are gonna be the people that are gonna steal your job. There's a new way. This all kind of pivots to that new way. So it's a people first go to market. So it's all about meaningful interactions. It's all about the quality of your leads that come in. It's not a quantity game. It's all about how you create demand. How do you build relationships human to human the way people actually buy today? And how do you go to market partnership-centric? It's not, you can't go to market alone. You have to have a partnership-centric mindset for the entire ecosystem.

Alex Olley (03:41.34)
Nice, wait, this sounds very cool. So partnerships for me, I've been in SaaS for nearly 15 years now. And partnerships to me, like 10, 15 years ago, those were the guys like partying, not really ever sure what they were doing. Tell me more about how you think about partnerships integrated within the strategy. What's the difference between perhaps the old way and the new way you're thinking?

Nick Bennett (04:04.34)
I just think there's a way to co-create content, to go to market, and do events together with people. You know, the perfect example, so we just created a media network. And so we went to basically market with Audience Plus for distribution and Share Your Genius who's helping us produce a lot of the content. So like we could have done that ourselves, but like why not leverage a lot of these people that already understand what takes to get there. And even in your sales and marketing efforts, it's like, I've run events virtual and in person for years. And it's like, yeah, you could do your own events. But is your sales team going to drive people there? Is your BDR, SDR team going to do that? You’re gonna actually have an email database that's worthy of it? Why not partner with a few people, especially in person, save money, leverage a higher distribution list, and figure out a way that everyone wins. 

And I think when I think of people first go to market it's a business strategy that uses relationships and partnerships to create, capture, and convert demand into revenue. And it's designed to put people at the center of every interaction and experience.

Alex Olley (05:11.97)
Oh man, I love that. So this sounds awesome. Now, what I see in this day and age is a lot of people can have too many partners and they're not sure which ones to work on. How do you think about this? And perhaps what advice would you give on which partners you should be going to market with and how to choose them?

Nick Bennett (05:29.58)
I think it's understanding a belief system. You have to have a belief system as a company, as a founder, a CEO, or whatever it is. Within your belief system, there's going to be others that have a belief system that are similar to yours. When I think of People First, for example, people are like, oh, okay, People First. This just doesn't have to be B2B SaaS, for example. It could be your local butcher shop, for example. They might have a very People First mindset where they're friendly. They work. They...

Partnership-centric throughout all the different vendors that they maybe have come in, different types of things like that, there's a lot of ways to think about it. And it's really, there's three channels, there's three types of offers, and there's an overall partnership strategy that plays into this whole thing. But it all ties back to a belief system. And each channel is designated, or more so designed, to create and capture and convert those demands at the different stages of the customer journey.

And it's kind of like a maturity model to a certain degree. And each people, each company is going to be very different on where they stand, but it gives the business infinite ways to create value and build trust with your buyers and customers.

Alex Olley (06:35.86)
Okay, nice, makes sense. So you're seeing this, it sounds like you're seeing a lot of success from it. Where do people go wrong when they're trying to do this?

Nick Bennett (06:43.74)
I think people go wrong when they try to take on too much. Just like you mentioned with the partnership side of it, I don't think that you should go and create a partnership with everyone, but it's figuring out maybe the three or four companies that are worthy of partnering with you, because again, you both align really, really well. And I think going back on like how to get started, there's really eight things that I think you need to do to be able to get started here. It's like, all right, you create your story. So it's like, what do I believe in?

Why do I believe it? That's more of like the belief system. Second piece is talk to your ideal buyers. Yeah, it's so funny to me that like marketers still don't talk to their buyers, customers, whatever. I don't know, it's mind blowing to me. Third piece is how do you use that feedback to identify who your story resonates with? You have to have a point of view. You have to have, again, a belief system. You have to stand for something. From there, all you're doing is defining a set of principles.

So it's like, all right, cool. Here's our principles based on what our buyers want. We use that feedback. You're building an asset, which is basically the catalyst for distribution for audience building. You're finding a partner, which is basically the power of distribution. You're building an email list, because again, owned media is the way of the future. And then you're amplifying that asset through everything that you do. Again, that partnership ecosystem, all of these people that you have supporting you.

And I think it's important to know that you have to do all of this before you launch a new product. And it's like, all right, you always build an audience first. Once you have that audience, it's OK to then take these eight steps and move forward with it.

Alex Olley (08:20.13)
Nice, so you've got a system here. So obviously it sounds like you've tested a few things along the way. What shocked you whilst you've been on this journey?

Nick Bennett (08:27.61)
Yeah, it's been. I think the amount of people that aren't a believer in this new mindset, they're still a believer in like that the company first mindset is the way to go. And they're okay with it being transactional. They're like, yeah, hey, you know what? It's transactional. I don't care. It's driving revenue for the business. But is that going to scale long-term? I mean, I'm a huge believer of no. And I think people have been doing this whole people first mindset for years without calling it that. I mean, if you think about everything that you've even done, you put people at the center, both internally and externally of the company, of what you do. It's like, again, it's all about relationships. We understand that people buy from people. It's just like, how do I take that to the next level? And a perfect example of this is transparent pricing. When I look at companies that I want to purchase tech from, I go to their website, I check out their pricing page. If the pricing is not transparent, I usually immediately write them off the list. And that's one of the easiest things that you can do that shocks a lot of people that's like, oh, I didn't even think to put like pricing on our website. And you don't have to put exact pricing. I mean, you could put like a list price or whatever it is, but there's things that you can do that are very, very simple that people just, I don't know, they just, they don't see it as this is a thing that I should be doing.

Alex Olley (09:50.65)
Yeah, because what they wanna do is they wanna get the sales demo booked, they want the salesperson to do that. Yeah, it's a classic gated approach, isn't it? And so on this journey that you're describing, or people based go to market, who do you need involved? Who would you need? If you're recommending people to do this themselves, what kind of people would you need on your team to be able to pull this together?

Nick Bennett (10:20.33)
Yeah, I mean, I don't think you need a big team, a big team at all. You just really need people. You need one sales and marketing or go to market team alignment. So like anyone on your revenue team, that could include product that includes CS, includes your sales and marketing team. But you really just need to switch a few different things. There's about like 20 things that I can think of off like the top of my head that you could switch to be more people first mindset. It's like another thing is like when you send your marketing emails.

Do you send it from marketing@xyzcompany.com? A lot of people still do. Why not send it from a real person? Or if you write an ebook for your company, why not have an about the author page that contributed to it? Because again, it showcases those people that work for your company that can do a lot of these things. Plus, it connects with those prospects and customers that read it on a deeper level of understanding those people.

Alex Olley (11:14.82)
Nice, very cool. Well, it sounds very exciting. Speaking of people, I kind of want to get to know you a little bit better. Now, you and I have met a couple of times. You've been very successful in your career, Nick. How did you get to where you are today?

Nick Bennett (11:30.67)
I think it was from learning. A lot of people are like, you need a mentor to be successful in life. And I don't think that I had a mentor up until maybe three years ago. I just did everything through learning, through failing, through taking those lessons forward, as well as trying to leverage all of this value that I have in my head and putting it on LinkedIn. I think that was a huge piece of why I have been successful as well is I've done this for four years. I've hopefully added enough value to people's lives that again, they trust me. The authority that they believe in me is there. I mean, it's played a huge piece into previous companies that I've worked for and being able to drive real business results from like a revenue perspective is this and I'll be honest. I mean, it's a reason why I get hired at some of these companies is they wanna tap into the audience that is already there.

But again, I've just done it all myself, and it's like, I don't know if that's the right way to go about doing it. I do have a mentor now that, again, it's very informal. And I think of it more as like, hey, how can you have a trusted cabinet of people that you admire, that you value, or that you wanna bounce ideas off of? And I think that's a better approach, at least for me, to continue the growth on where I've seen.

Alex Olley (12:50.93)
Nice one. Yeah, I mean, personally, having a mentor changed the game for me. And people were asking me, they're like, where'd you get these ideas from? Like, these aren't my ideas. I'm basically stealing them from other people. None of this is my idea. Um, but like, you've been successful by grit, determination, you know, can't have been easy the whole way. What were the worst parts?

Nick Bennett (13:13.3)
Yeah, I mean, I've been laid off multiple times. I've been laid off now three times. And like, again, that messes with someone's mind. Like, is my work not good enough? Am I not being valued enough? And I mean, I was laid off two times early on my career. One time when I was right out of college, and then maybe about four years later. And I was like, the first time I was devastated. Second time I was like, ooh, I was like, all right.

Is this like, is this a me? And then I was actually laid off from Air Meet about like seven months ago. And at that point I was like, you know what? I don't even need to work for a company at this point. I've been wanting to do this on my own. And this is actually just the perfect opportunity to do it. But I think it's, you know, there's lots of challenges that I've faced, lots of campaigns that I've failed, lots of things that I've tried that.

I've been pointed the finger at because it didn't drive the impact that it should. But I think it's important to know that what do you do with those failures that you take forward? And I think that's the piece that often goes unnoticed. If you think about LinkedIn, everyone talks about a beautiful world. It's like everyone's successful. We're all making tons of money. But what about all those campaigns that failed? Before you had a successful campaign. People don't talk about all those failures, and I'm an open book, I'll talk about those failures all day, because I think it's who it made me today, those failures turned into successes over time.

Alex Olley (14:37.73)
Nice man. And then from those failures, that's where most of my learnings have come from. Do you look back and think, hey, you would have done anything differently?

Nick Bennett (14:46.67)
Yeah, I mean, there's lots of things that I just feel like there would be things that I would try later in my career. I mean, I've been working in B2B tech for about 12 years and obviously things earlier in my career. What happens now is I would try a lot of different things, different approaches, different channels. Obviously things change, like the playbook changes. What you used even three years ago, it's not the playbook that works today. And it's being like, how do you tailor those to where you are within your journey, I think that's important. It's like, for me, I'm doubling down on this whole creator economy in B2B, because I still truly think that creators and influencers used in marketing and sales are going to be the future. And we're about two to three years away from mass adoption.

Alex Olley (15:35.49)
Nice, love that man. Well, look Nick, we've reached the quick fire stage of the antidote. So I'm gonna rattle through a few of this, that's okay. So part of this is to get to know you a little bit more behind the scenes. Like if you could have a drink with anyone in the world, who would it be?

Nick Bennett (15:53.60)
Well, I'm a big sports guy, baseball in particular. And so like, you know, like a David Ortiz or any Pedro Martinez, like anyone that's like a, you know, old school, like Red Sox player, like I would love to just like learn from them because baseball and like that whole mindset that athletes have actually translates over to marketing and sales really well.

Alex Olley (16:12.53)
Nice man. So talking about marketing, what's the dumbest thing you think marketers are doing right now and what should they be doing differently?

Nick Bennett (16:21.13)
I wonder if I'm allowed to say this, but I don't know. I feel like this might offend some people, but display ads, like, maybe it's like these platforms that are still pushing display ads. I don't know, I just think it's the dumbest thing. Like when these companies are like, oh, you gotta run display ads. Like that's the biggest waste of money that you'll ever spend. And I can't tell you the last time I ever clicked a display ad. So please, please stop doing that. It is, they're telling you to do it probably, but it's not the right way.

Alex Olley (16:47.22)
I'm sure you're offended a couple of people, that's okay. Having a point of view, as you said, is important, right? Okay, now again, come back to you. What's the biggest mistake you think you've made in your career as, let's say, a marketer?

Nick Bennett (17:00.15)
Yeah, so I have sent a email out to the wrong people multiple times. So like I sent out, it was like a 10,000 person email, and I completely sent the wrong email to those 10,000 people. And it made a lot of people angry, people were calling the company. And I was super young in my career. And like I was still trying to figure out how to use Marketo at the time.

And like there was no guardrails. I don't know people gave me access. I was clicking buttons I didn't have any learnings and I definitely made a mistake there that Probably caused some people to churn at the time

Alex Olley (17:38.27)
So I laugh, but I'm sure you look back on it and think, well, you're supposed to be allowed to fail, but that's amazing. Now, is there a company you're watching right now that you think could be a future game changer?

Nick Bennett (17:51.80)
Yeah, I think there's a lot of companies that I'm trying to figure out like, hey, what's their path forward? And just, I love the companies that are leveraging owned media within this. How do you take, for example, like Hockey Stack and Lavender and like all these companies that have really cool, not only educational, but edutainment type of content in the way that they're bringing stuff to market. I think it's so interesting to me, because again, I think that's the way people are learning. Like I would much rather watch a TikTok video or a YouTube short, then read some, you know, 2000 word blog post.

Alex Olley (18:29.59)
Yeah, spot on. I think those guys are doing an amazing job. If those listening or watching, if you haven't checked out Hockey Stack or Lavender, you definitely should. I think they call it Lavenderland and they're a genius. And I think we've kind of touched upon this a little bit, but is there a go-to-market trend that you're just totally fed up with? And what's one that people are perhaps missing out on?

Nick Bennett (18:48.64)
Yeah, so I think, you know, obviously the company first mindset definitely has to go away. I think one of the ones that people are missing is aligning your marketing team and specifically field marketing team under revenue. I've been thinking about this a lot and you know, so many times, this might be another like weird hot take, but like Sales. So sales is taking credit for what marketing is doing. And, you know, listen, I get it. Sales is closing the deal. But why is marketing not being compensated the way that sales is? I've been a huge proponent of this for years, that marketers and specifically revenue focused marketers should be paid compensation like salespeople, accelerators, kickers, like, why not? Like, they're the ones that are sourcing a lot of this revenue. Why can't they be comped under the same model? I don't know.

Alex Olley (19:41.89)
Mate, that's how we do it here at ReachDesk. We changed that years ago and it just drives the right behavior, right? Marketing's calling me on the last day of the quarter, being like, how are we doing against the number? They care about the revenue number and they're thinking about the things they can do differently next quarter to be able to help with that and help drive revenue. So I'm totally with you on that one, man. That was one of the biggest changes that I made many, many years ago. Okay, well look, Nick, we're up for time. Thank you so much for joining me. Just for those who are listening, where can they find you?

Nick Bennett (20:18.69)
Yeah, absolutely. LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. Shoot me a DM there. You can also check out the media network at tacknetwork.com. And the last place is I have a membership model, clubpf.co, if you want to check that out. We have about 100 different processes, frameworks, all these templates that we're giving away for cheaper than a Netflix subscription per month. So.

Alex Olley (20:42.34)
Okay, man. All right. And then I'm going to ask you one final question then. We've been talking about the recipe of like people based go to market. If you could share one sentence, some advice with other marketers, let's say, trying to break through the noise, what would you tell them?

Nick Bennett (20:59.75)
Yeah, partnering with people is at the heart of this model. Again, partnership-centric, the partnership ecosystem, and again, you have to determine what partnership means to you, but you can't go to market alone in that you have to put people at the center of every interaction and experience.

Alex Olley (21:17.6)
Love it, man. I've really enjoyed this. Thank you for joining me on the antidote and for everyone, I think we'll catch you next time.

Nick Bennett (21:22.61)
Thanks for having me.