🚨 Why AI Is Failing Your GTM Strategy (And What Actually Works in 2025)

The Revenue Reimagined crew breaks down why haphazardly bolting AI tools onto a broken Go-To-Market strategy is a recipe for disaster. Buying random AI bots without a clear integration plan leaves sales reps acting as prompt engineers and creates a siloed, ineffective mess. To actually win, leaders must return to the fundamentals—nailing their ICP and messaging—before using AI to intentionally scale those efforts. The job market has fundamentally shifted back to employers, with a major caveat: AI literacy is now the ultimate hiring filter. Candidates are being asked to live-demonstrate how they use AI to solve complex problems, proving that basic knowledge work is becoming commoditized. Furthermore, the days of scaling wide are ending; hyper-verticalized SaaS businesses are growing significantly faster by solving niche problems deeply rather than going broad. Looking ahead, the spray-and-pray AI outreach playbooks will inevitably destroy domain reputations and burn out prospects. The future of GTM relies on 'Craft AI'—human-powered, highly intentional AI usage paired with massive pattern interrupts like physical mail and hyper-personalized relationship building. Customer Success is also stepping up to the plate, completely shedding its support-only reputation to become a hardcore revenue engine driven by NRR and expansion.

Discussed in this episode

Why slapping standalone AI agents onto a broken GTM strategy creates siloed inefficiencies instead of measurable ROI.
The fatal flaw of forcing account executives to act as ad-hoc prompt engineers for disjointed tech stacks.
How the job market has flipped to favor employers who demand live screen-share proof of AI literacy during interviews.
The pivot in Customer Success from tracking CSAT and NPS to owning core revenue metrics like NRR and GRR.
Why hyper-verticalized SaaS startups are outperforming generalized platforms by leveraging AI for rapid prototyping.
The impending collapse of domain reputations due to automated, AI-generated spray-and-pray outbound campaigns.
Using 'Craft AI'—human-directed, intentional AI workflows—to augment rather than replace human connection.
Reviving analog pattern interrupts like direct mail and in-person visits to cut through the noise of AI-generated spam.

Episode highlights

0:00 — The AI paradox in modern GTM
4:30 — The missing tool integration layer
9:15 — Building a proper AI foundation
14:00 — Shift to employer-driven job markets
19:45 — Proving AI literacy in interviews
24:30 — Customer Success as a revenue engine
29:00 — The rise of hyper-verticalized SaaS
33:15 — Craft AI and analog pattern interrupts

Key takeaways

Fix foundational GTM strategy before adding AI tools.
AI literacy is now a mandatory interview requirement.
Customer Success must transition to owning NRR expansion.
Hyper-verticalized SaaS wins by solving niche problems.
Human-guided 'Craft AI' beats automated spam campaigns.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of The Bridge the Gap podcast powered by none other than these three gents at revenue reimagined and we do not have a special guest for you today. I mean, we do. Jake's here, but he is part of revenue reimagined. You're stuck with the three of us today.

We are going to talk it up. We're going to bullshit around. We got some good topics to talk about. We're going to talk about all sorts of things.

Uh but yeah. No one else. We're going to power up by ourselves. Jake, thanks for hanging with us, man.

Dude, it's always it's always a bust. Great to actually be doing this together uh for the team and and just sharing some insights together. Yeah, I mean, I I I feel like we've spent, so the backstory here, y'all, we we've spent the better part of the past two days together. Um we are all in different rooms now.

Uh I think at one point or another, we all wanted to kill someone out of the three of us. Uh but we'll talk about what we did for the past three days and why that's important because it all ties in to what we're going to talk about today. And let's start with this whole notion, and I see it on LinkedIn every day, you guys see it on LinkedIn every day. Go build or go buy this general AI bot and holy shit, it's going to transform your business and save the world.

Yay or nay. I say nay. It's not going to save the world. Is it going to save your go to market?

Not going to save your go to market either. It actually will mess up your go to market. Crap in, crap out. Uh this is the age-old question of like, let's just download a template.

Let's put it in. We're going to generate tons of leads and we're going to generate derivative content of your marketing assets and we're going to build these great uh outbound sequences with all this great email content and like, it's going to be ultra personalized. That the thing that people are not realizing is like, that small piece of downloadable code that you get from all these iPass vendors or this ChatGPT thing that some of these ChatGPT experts are giving to you in this go-to-market is like one little piece of an entire execution strategy that people don't have their their go-to-market strategy built properly to begin with or they're struggling with ICP or they're struggling with like what is my real messaging we need to do. So, we're going to put we're going to generate a bunch of these generic emails or we're going to create a generic blog based on some crappy GPT prompt and then we're going to push it out and then I wonder like, oh, our response rates are like spam.

What do you think, Jake? Jake, yay or nay? Generalized AI bots can transform your go-to-market. Can can I say yay and nay?

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's a yay to intentionally investing in AI initiatives in the business, but the keyword there is intentionally. It's a nay to executing it the way that 90%, 99% of the market is is doing it today, which is getting people into this what's being called now like the AI paradox, right?

Where there is there is a basic understanding of the of the discussed ROI of AI initiatives, yet very few B2B SAS companies and startups are actually experiencing or benefiting from the actual results of of what that actually means. And I think that's the challenge is are you investing in a proper um intentional AI initiative that has an execution that actually gets you the results uh versus just, you know, trying some cool tool out like everyone else is right now. So, let's piggyback off that, because we spent a good amount of time talking about this this week. There there's some awesome AI tools out there, right?

There's some really good bots or agents that I think can do a lot of things. But I think one of the areas where people don't think this through is I'm going to go buy an agent to write me that blog post, Dale, that you talk about. But let's just say it's a great agent and it's a great blog post. And then I'm going to go get another agent that's going to handle, you know, crafting my ICP.

And then I'm going to get another agent that's going to handle my discovery. And I'm going to get another agent that's going to do this. How the fuck are you tying it all together? Yeah, there's there's there's that that integration layer is not happening.

Um there are some things that are happening in the space, the model context protocol, MCP is being developed. But we were talking to somebody today and they had a great analogy. It's like the Netflix analogy, right? And so you have Netflix, but then you're buying Paramount, and you're buying HBO, and you're buying like, you know, ESPN Plus and you're trying now all of a sudden you started with like an $80 streaming subscription, but you're up to like $175 in other subscriptions.

They don't always They don't always tie back in together, right? So you have like four different logins, of four different apps and like that is the way that a lot of these go-to-market strategies are being built out with writer here potentially or using a Jasper. And now they're using, you know, uh Reggie.ai and they're trying to blend it into HubSpot that has AI and now like they're overwriting each other, so it's like, which one's really true?

And if you have to, if you have to go back and figure out where the problem is, like, is it the point solution? Is it something in your infrastructure? Is it something in the LLM? Did you prompt it wrong?

Like, where is the problem? And I can tell you from my time of coding, like, getting into the debugging of that could take up more time than it's even worth and then people will just shut it down and say like, this AI stuff doesn't work. And or or I've seen this great video where all this AI stuff worked and now like, I'm not going to even give it up I'm not even going to give it a try because I can't get the results that this other person got. Yeah, and you're talking about like, how how are they stitching it together, right?

How how are people out there stitching it together? What I'll tell you what I'm seeing, right? It's it's, you know, with some of our clients, I'm, you know, we're in Slack channels with all our clients and the sales teams, like we're part of the teams, right? And I see a founder or a leader of of the team coming into Slack thread saying, hey, team, saw this recommendation on LinkedIn.

Every day. you guys see this post? Looks really cool. They're using this tool.

Which of you wants to try out or sign up for a trial? We should try that. Then one rep takes the lead. Signs up, just most recently I saw like like I think there was like, you know, the lavender's new emailing like tool, right?

And and so like the the the stitching together is actually being placed the burden of the sales reps to figure out how to prompt engineer or how to figure out the integrations with these tools and they're and they're point solutions along the way. And so there's nothing feeding the context. There's nothing feeding the the the the the insight which needs to then drive what is derived into the output that drives the actual efficacy of the application of these different tools. And so like these these little agents are operating in silos trying to accomplish the same task while not communicating with with each other.

and and and and in the end they're they're asking the sellers themselves to be the ones who are the prompt engineers behind all of this. And it's just it's just kind of wild that um that like this is how it's being deployed and then, you know, 30 days later, 60 days later, it's like, ah, that really didn't work for us. Like, let's move on to the next one. Yeah, I I I hear you and I feel you.

I'll take it one step further. That I think is a good way, and and by no means good, but compared to what some other things I see where founders and CEOs are seeing these LinkedIn posts and without even, in my opinion, truly reading it, copying and pasting it saying, go try this, team. Like, it's not even relevant to you in any way, shape or form, but go try it. Like, no data, no like even looking at it, no who's our customer, like just go go try this and figure it out.

What's the solve, y'all? Like, what what is the solve to tying and and stitching it all together to have a proper AI playbook? I'll take a first crack at it. I don't think it's any different than the way we've been building go-to-market for ages and ages.

Like, it's got to be solid foundation, fundamental things that we're doing where we're looking at our ideal customer profiles, we're looking at our buying personas, we're pressure testing the value propositions, and we're looking at it holistically. Once you have these foundational elements down, you can then start implementing AI to generate derivations of your content, your e-books, your LinkedIn messaging, but without doing the foundation like sales 101 type work, which is what people I think are, I don't know if they're scared of doing. They just don't want to roll up their sleeves and do the pick and shovel work. Um without doing that work, these prompts that you're putting into GPT and that you're pasting from like YouTube and you're getting from Reddit and you're like pulling them from Twitter and you're like, I'm just going to try this this messaging and you and then you look at it and it doesn't even relate to any of the business work that you're doing.

Um so the answer is looking at your go-to-market strategy holistically and trying to figure out where are places that you're trying to solve for and trying to understand what you're what the what the starting with the end in mind and then working backwards to the to how you would actually implement and execute the the AI platform. Jake? I mean it it starts with first going through the exercise of understanding what is the problem we're trying to solve. And and and and and asking that question first, then understanding what parts of the problem that we need to solve can we solve with with automation or AI.

Then it's exploring what tools, what processes can uh can we use to then automate um the problem that we have identified that we want to solve with AI and then what are the dependencies of that and how are we going to execute that? And and putting that all together as a plan so that when you start when you deploy, you have a clear problem identified. You have clear context for the problem. You have clear context for for for providing, you know, AI for the like what you're looking for on the task.

And and then um there's an intentionality behind that. Um that like and and you're not operating in silos. I mean, that's I think that's a big key here too is that you're using you're using you're using deep context to inform these tasks. And you're doing using deep uh information to inform what it is that you're seeking for the intentional output.

Yeah, I I agree 100% and I think then having a documented system of stitching it together. Um and we've talked about this a lot, but that's where I think it all goes wrong, right? You can't change one thing without expecting to change the rest. Um and I think there's some pretty exciting stuff coming down the line on that.

Let's uh let's piggyback off this for a minute. So I think AI is fundamentally changed some things. So we uh it used to be a employee world, right? Would you all agree that for the past couple of years up until recently, employees controlled the job market?

I think employees were setting salaries. I think employees were able to be fairly demanding. I want to work remote, I want this MacBook, I want this, I want that. Um and employers really had to capitulate because they needed these people.

Are you do you agree, yay or nay, that there's a fundamental shift and we are now back in a 100% employer driven job market. Jake, you first, man. I I think this is a hail yay on this one. And and here's why.

As much as I like, I I struggle with these topics, um because I I struggle with the power control of this thing because I I I I always feel like it's never works in the favor of the employee. I I I think the employees always on the shit end of this thing. But here's what's interesting to me. As as we were talking about AI, I think as that's pendulum has shifted so far and swung so far in the in the direction where now we're starting to see, you know, a lot of people struggling with getting ROI from all of the initiatives.

One of the realizations that has come from this pendulum swinging so far is we can acknowledge that knowledge is a commodity. Information is a I guess information is a commodity. And um the ability to automate basic tasks or administrative tasks is something that people are figuring out. And if if I can't at least improve my day-to-day efficiency and my day-to-day output, um then then I'm failing somewhere in the market because like this is like a subscription to to OpenAI or Claude, it's going to cost me any more than 20 bucks a month, right?

So, point being, if if employees are not getting more efficient, are not getting better at delivering, you know, basic tasks and basic output, there is a fundamental question that's being asked now is what why? And why can't you why can't you improve the work that you're doing and why can't you um, you know, I I I can hire other people to do this work or I can, you know, there always is going to be a question is like, what part of your work can we automate? And so I I think that there is a fundamental shift in in the thinking that has occurred probably over the last even two like year and a half to two years. It's not been long, but I I'd say this specifically in the last year, you are I think you're starting to see founders think like, wait, I like you should be producing at a higher output than you have in the past.

couldn't agree more. Dale, do do you agree? Is it a yay? Is it a nay?

Is it somewhere in the middle? I I think the employers do have the leverage right now. However, I would say except for the workers that have AI literacy and can prove out AI literacy from a productivity perspective. So, I think we've we've swung the pendulum so far to everyone's trying to build these bots, trying to deploy these bots.

I can let go of my BD staff, for example, and I can just put in a point solution, I won't name any of them, or I can have AI generate it or I can hire somebody to start building these things. And they're not seeing the results they need to see back to challenges just in general in the demand generation world. Um so then if someone comes in from an AI literacy perspective and can prove out AI literacy from a macro level, they'll have a leg up in the competition of the people that are looking to to get jobs. But, I agree with Jake, in the last 12, 18 months, like it's kind of swung into the employer space, but that will also start shifting as well.

For example, if leadership isn't AI literate, they haven't been playing around with ChatGPT or LLMs or whatever, like that mid-market manager is going to be let go as well. So like, now you're going to have a pool of people that are out there trying to get jobs. And like, who's going to get the job? The job's going to be people that are AI literate, can have conversations, can articulate how the AI first space or the AI native space will help generate more productivity and and work like execution.

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I think that the employers absolutely have the leverage now. Um I think that when you look at the ability to drive efficiency amongst the team and arguably get a, you know, one and a half to three and a half X return on what you used to get, um the stake is higher. And I can tell you, I've spoken with three founders last week who as part of their interview process, very specifically are digging into, hey, Jake, tell tell me how you use AI to accelerate ABC. Walk me through how you would use AI to solve this problem.

And I think what you're seeing now instead of exercises that used to be um very time and resource dependent to prove that you could do the job, the exercise now how quickly can you do it? Here's your exercise, screen share and show me how you're going to use AI to solve X problem. Um and if you cannot do that, you are not going to get hired. I don't think AI is going to mass replace every role out there.

I think repetitive roles are. But if you can't articulate how you're going to use AI to be really good at your job and be better at your job, I think you're going to have a big problem. That's a dangerous slippery slope. Like share share and show me how you're going to like solve a problem with ChatGPT or Claude or any of these other platforms.

Like I think that becomes a slippery slope down to copying someone's personal IP. Something like that or exposing risk or I don't know. There's But but if you if you work for me and you're doing it, it doesn't then become my IP? I that's what I mean.

I'm not saying I agree either way by the way. I I think it's a uh I think it's a trap question, um because I think you're being asked to do something that they probably do not want you doing when you're actually working for them, but they're going to ask you to do it during an interview process. I call bullshit on it. Yes and no, though.

I mean, I think every founder, every CEO is going to want you to use AI to your advantage. It it's how much to your advantage. But think about all the bullshit tasks people used to be asked to do. Like, I can tell you, I interviewed for a CRO role and that I was asked to build a five-year revenue model.

Like, go F off with that. Like, that that that's like a lot of work and a lot of time. And I know damn well if the three of us are interviewing, you're going to ask all of us to put a model together. You're going to take what you like out of both and there's your model and we all just gave you free work product.

I think I think what Dale like something Dale said earlier, I think is the key in this thought is whether it's right or it's wrong, the thing that people need to be mindful of is that it's happening. And then here's why, right? There are there is data proving that like employers are are are planning to reduce 40% of their workforce with initiatives around AI. Like that's just that's just where the trend is.

It's not it's not that it's right or it's wrong. It's that that's where the the sentiment or the, you know, the the the thought or the trend is going. You know, Benioff the other day said, you know, like less employees, more AI. And there like that's not just in sales.

Like that's like that that was part of a discussion around dev too. It is it is the it is the hype, right? And and because that is the hype, people are going to make the, you know, founders, leaders, teams are going to make the mistake of leaning into that and making those choices. And that will affect the the like the employment market.

I I think things will balance, but you just got to keep that in the back of your mind. So like Dale's point earlier is, if you are not part of that team that understands how to use AI, how to add value and contribute to the team's efficiency and output because you have a skill in AI, you are putting yourself on the chopping block, not because you're wrong, but because you are you're gambling with the mind of a founder who might lean in to the hype. Totally agree. Could not could not agree more.

All right, let's uh let's shift gears a little bit here. Let's talk about customer success. So, historically, in my opinion, customer success has been seen as kind of this like afterthought, right? Like, your job is to like, sort of make sure our customers are happy.

If they call in and they have a problem, like, make sure they're taken care of, um and to try to prevent the leaky bucket, which we can certainly talk a little bit about. Yay or nay. Customer success is no longer an afterthought and is now arguably being considered as much revenue producing responsible as the sales team. Dale.

Yeah, definitely yay. Like, I think I've been pounding on this drum for a year and a half. I like customer success is super important and I'm seeing a lot of like front-end sales people, BDs, wanting to move to an A uh an AM roll, a customer success roll versus a pure play sales roll top of funnel. So, I'm seeing a lot of that movement happening.

Um the good customer success uh people that are in the space have not traditionally had the sales chops to be able to identify opportunities, uh drive a deal, uh make sure that they're listening for the the key moments in a conversation to identify the deal and bring it through the funnel. Um even though that's a lot less expensive to do, the cost of sale or the cost of, you know, expansion is a lot lower and a lot less. Um but, there's just this mindset shift shift set happening where it's making sure that you're a revenue generating organization and while being a customer advocate. So, I 100% agree.

I think I don't believe any any organization is not doing that. In fact, with a customer success mindset at the jump of the sale is going to survive. Jake, yay or nay, man. Yeah.

Yeah, this is this is also a big yay right now. Um look, like with the economic pressures that we're seeing in the market plus the the added expectations or or or the thinking around efficiency, naturally, again, you're going to see founders thinking, like, what more can I do with my sales team and my revenue team to drive greater output? And one of those is like, how can we drive more efficiency out of customer success? It is no longer going to be thought as a support arm of the business, but a revenue engine for the business.

Um and and how can that happen, right? Um so I absolutely think that this is going to be a a a continued conversation. This, you know, we have this conversation 10 years ago with marketing and sales. Now, like we're just having this conversation now with customer success and sales.

And it's becoming a greater reality with the with the pressures and the resources and the tools that we have. So, like you got to get this figured out. You have you got to understand that it's coming. Like don't fight the thought.

So, lean into and understand what it means because what I'll say is, the post-pandemic world learned that we could survive and stay alive if we invested in customer success and retention. And in that investment, we realized that we could do more than just retention, we could grow. And so like, that's the reality. I I I'm a a hard yay on this.

I think you both brought up good points, Dale. Like, I've seen more AEs be willing to go into like AM expansion roles than I ever have in my career. Um and Jake, to your point, post-pandemic, it's not just about retaining. Retaining is table stakes.

If you are not retaining, expanding, growing, cross-selling, upselling, um you're you're not going to have a holistic revenue engine. And I love that you brought out the point about marketing, right? Because we we we just had this conversation, you and I with a client this week. Like, let's stop talking about how many MQLs you're creating and let's start talking about the amount of pipeline you're creating that actually converts to revenue.

Everyone in the go-to-market org is responsible for revenue. And I, for one, am thrilled to see that customer success is now going in this direction. Like, when was the last time you heard a CS team that you worked with talking about CSAT and NPS as like the exciting North Star? That like a healthy CS team or a CS team?

Yeah, because versus the direction that you're seeing more of the CS teams you're working with, we're working with, talking about needing to focus on NRR and GRR. Yeah. Every every healthy CS team that I think we speak with and that we're a part of, listen, don't get me wrong. CSAT and NPS are are important and absolutely should be tracked.

Uh but the North Star, how are we successful? What am I bonuses paid on? Revenue. NRR, GRR, expansion, period, hard stop.

100%. And and and I think it if it feeds back like we've been talking about, as we said, integration between sales, marketing, CS. But but the closer all these departments can get together and understanding what the customers are really wanting because the other the other thing the other underlying problem that we're seeing kind of back to the leaky bucket syndrome is that there's um these zombie products or products that cannot put additional work into the product and yet we're still trying to to sell it to customers. And so, there's product challenges that companies are having and those product challenges are not going to go away.

And it's like, do you invest more in the product or do you generate a cash cow? And so those, uh, those decisions are having to be made and then they're cutting to the bone all the way in the organization. And so, um, don't wait till it's too late that you're losing customers. Not anything than that.

Like if if you're doing that, you're losing. If you're not shifting your thinking to focusing on not just retention, but now you the focus of your CS organization now is how do we directly impact churn, contraction, upsells and cross-sells and proactively working towards that then then you're you're already like making a mistake. So I I guess it's you got to set you got to set your your sights on what are we actually doing to impact revenue through the exercises around preventing churn, contraction, driving upsells, expansion and and retention. 100%.

All right, shifting gears again. Yay or nay, if you want to be successful 2025 and beyond, verticalized SaaS is the way to go. Jake, you're up first. It's this one's interesting.

I don't know if I have a strong yay or nay. But I what I am seeing in the market, What what are you seeing? is I am leaning I am being I am being compelled that this is a this is a yay and it's a consistent yay. And something that I hadn't seen in the past.

For example, what like what we're seeing is verticalized SaaS businesses are being are are are able to take advantage of micro trends that are occurring in the market. As an example, we have a client who is hyper verticalized in the veterinary space. And they provide a very niche service to a very niche persona, but has a pretty decent TAM. They grew to close almost 5 million in revenue and ARR in just over one year because of this hyper verticalization.

Another another unique scenario that like compelles me is you look at you look at industries like healthcare, for example. And and things that drive the drive the forced behavior around compliance with HIPAA regulations and other things. These hyper verticalized compliance driven niche markets are are making tools a requirement and needs to have not a nice to have. They they're what keep the lights on.

It so like these they're there's healthy data out there supporting that, you know, hyper verticalized uh uh SaaS startups are growing at 10% faster than than their peers in the industry. Dale. This is an interesting one for me as well. I'm I'm on the fence with it right now, but I'm going to tie it back to some AI stuff.

I think the reason why it's getting so much traction as well is because you can create products in the SaaS world from AI very quickly. So, people can spin things up on a super verticalized, you don't even need a huge TAM. But you can spin up a product fairly quickly with some of the AI platforms and generate a soft and generate a software to test it out and to see if you get traction in a much more compressed time frame. Um and then if you do if if you're getting traction, you have that that um if you have that that you're starting to see product market fit, then you'll actually go out and build the rest of the product out.

So, you have this you have this methodology of building rapidly, like rapid prototyping and then getting product market fit potentially, yes or no in a much more condensed space where where it used to be like 18 months to 24 months. Let's do it in three months. See what we're getting for any kind of revenue. And then if that's making sense, let's like double down and and really and really build out a enterprise type solution.

Like think exactly. Like think about like this, right? When we talk about product market fit, we talk about selling the same thing, the same way to the same persona, over and over and over, right? And and instead of what everyone's eagerness is to do right there is like, okay, now what else can we do to to break this and throw more product at it or throw more personas at it or throw more vertical at it so we can scale, scale, scale.

Essentially, the argument here is, forget all that. Now go deeper. You're selling the same thing, the same way, the same persona. Now like, how do you capture that?

Right? How do you stay stay in that space for a minute and go and go longer? Yeah, so I I do think that a lot of the successful orgs that we're seeing right now are either hyper verticalized or attempting to be hyper verticalized. But I think part of that Dale to your point is it it's it's easier to do that with the advent of AI.

Um there's so much that it accelerates. Um but I think there's always an argument to be made that like know what you're really good at and let other people do the rest. Um and I think that in my opinion as the market continues to evolve, we're going to start to see more um divesture if you will, and more focus on being hyper verticalized and knowing what you're really good at, which will then lead to consolidation, um in the verticalizations. Um is my two cents.

All right, we got a few more minutes here. Um as we start to wrap and I feel like the three of us could yap forever. But where's go to market going? And I know that's a broad sentence, but we asked this the last time the three of us got together.

We tend to ask it um on every episode of the podcast. But I don't know that the three of us really like ever sit down other than like relevant to our business. But where's go where where's go to market going? What's the future of go to market?

I used to say over the next 6 to 12 months and I feel like I can't say that anymore because who the hell could predict that far out. Where's go to market going over the next quarter, Dale? Yeah, I think there's going to be um I think we're going to start seeing a lot of the companies that were that are trying to do top of funnel, getting top of funnel. They're going to have to try a different place.

So, I think we're struggling with the the outreach, the top of funnel. I actually think it will lend ourselves back to the days of like snail mail and outreach and personalization with somebody opening something. I think I like what a lot of what Dale Dupree is doing and while that's worked for a long period of time, I think exponentially it's going to work because people just aren't responding to other people. You we need to do pattern interrupts into what's happening and with the advent of AI, everything is looking the same.

So, like it doesn't even matter if you have great subject lines or things are like, it's it's almost too much and our brains from a human perspective can't take it. So, we need to do a pattern interrupt and I think that pattern interrupt is more on-site, more in-person, more uh personalized from like a not like, hey, you went to college, but like let me send you something that you really care deeply about because I saw you talk about it on LinkedIn. So, I'm going to go opposite of AI. There you go.

I like it. Jake, what do you think, man? I I mean, I actually build on it and and say that it's it's like human it's it's it's AI-powered humans, right? So, it's as as the early majority swung this pendulum, they're realizing that didn't work.

And and I so I think over the next quarter or two that the the effort is going to be, how do we how do we start doing what I'm calling like more craft AI initiatives, where we are we are being more thoughtful about our our craft and what we do well and what has worked for us to to do more of that with AI powering that level of intentionality and the craft work that goes into it. So that we don't lose the human in it, but that we can do more of the good as opposed to what I think everyone has figured out is accelerating more of the suck that they've done, right? And and I think that the the the laggards are going to continue going down this path that everyone's figured out and like I think there you're going to continue seeing people struggling for the I think for the next several quarters with filling top of funnel with um with driving pipeline and and and like mass outbound campaigns that aren't working. I think you're going to see like a continuing challenge of people damaging their domain scores and like just like we have we have come full circle on even like the outbound initiatives where companies like outreach years ago were warning us about not making this mistake of spamming your TAM, we're doing that right now.

Like that's what's happening. When people are so eager to adopt AI, they're doing that. And so I think I think it's going to swing back to um, you know, those who understand the the importance of AI and are are are ahead of it and and are are um the leading I guess I guess the leaders in this space is is craft AI like human-powered AI initiatives. Yeah, I agree.

I think um for me, the age of the LinkedIn guru is going to end. The 399 playbook is going to go away. People are tired of being burned by the same BS that they've seen for the past year. I agree, Jake, that people's domains are going to go in the toilet.

Um and the problem is they're not going to be able to fix it. Um and that's what I think is going to happen over the next quarters. it's it's they're not listening. They think they're smarter because AI tells them that they can do this.

Um and they're going to do so much reputational damage that they're not going to be able to come back from it. Um I do think we're going to see more of the verticalization. I think we're going to see some consolidation as well. Um and I love the term craft AI.

And I'll double down on that. I think that if you are using AI in the right way, um and balancing it with a human-centered approach, that's going to be the key. Having AI and just hitting a button and letting it run by itself, I think is going to destroy you. I think if you mix AI in the mix with a human touch, if you use it responsibly, um and if you really focus on where AI can and should help, those are going to be the folks that become the domain expertise and and really start to grow.

And then lastly, and this is one that we didn't talk about, I think we're going to continue to see uh the advent of social selling become even more important because while AI is great, I'm a big believer that people want to buy from people. 100%. Couldn't agree more. Final take.

Dale, final words, final last words. Um, just getting It's good, Jake. No, I'm kidding. Just get back to basics.

Like like we're trying to make things too complicated. Like there 101 reach out, have be humble, understand what you're trying to that like you we all have value that we can deliver in the process. Align to your buyers, understand what they're trying to accomplish and drive impact versus trying to do all these fancy things that aren't working. Yeah.

Yeah, I I I guess my kind of final words is is um, I think the companies that are going to win are just adopting new tools and and new, you know, new AI. They're adopting a new mindset. I think that's the key. And efficiency is just uh, it's it's it's the means to an end, it's not the end game itself.

It's just it's the launchpad. So like I guess the idea here being if if you're if you're building for the future, you need to ask yourself, are you playing by last year's playbook or are you are you actively building the playbook of the future as you're iterating in the current market. I I I love I love that. That that's the question right there.

Are you playing by yesterday's playbook? Or are you playing by today's playbook? Which one's going to help you win? Dale, Jake, we uh we need to do this more often.

We don't do it enough. I would say thank you both for joining, but it's not like either you had a damn choice. Um but it was awesome to spend a couple days with you to everyone listening. If you have questions about anything we spoke about, if you disagree, if you agree, ask Adam.

Ask Adam. That's right. Ask Adam. Um, please reach out to us.

These are the topics we love to talk about. Uh ping either Jake, Dale or myself, Dale's cell phone number, no kidding. Um, but yeah, y'all. Have an awesome rest of the day.