GTM Crossroads Podcast Ep3: The Truth About Intent Data and Using It

In episode three of GTM Crossroads, the hosts discuss various topics related to sales, marketing, and intent data in particular. Brendan, Harris, and Zach discuss the challenges of attribution in intent data, the distinction of demand capture and demand generation, and the significance of understanding the buyer’s journey.

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Disclaimer

Please note that the GTM Crossroads Podcast is co-hosted by Harris Kenny (Founder, OutboundSync), Brendan Tolleson (Co-Founder & CEO, RevPartners), and Zach Vidibor (Co-Founder & CEO, Octave). Each episode features discussions on go-to-market (GTM) strategy, revenue operations, and sales execution from industry leaders.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individual speakers at the time of recording and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of their respective organizations. Statements made during the conversation may be speculative, evolving, or based on personal experience rather than company policy.

This transcript below is provided for reference and accessibility but should not be interpreted as official guidance, policy, or endorsement by any company mentioned. 

Transcript

Brendan Tolleson (00:02.174)
All right, gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Go To Market Crossroads. My name is not Kimberly, my name is Brendan. But Kimberly, if you’re listening to this podcast, it was a pleasure working with you and I hope you’re doing well. But anyways, back to the program. Harris, Zach, good to see you guys again. This has become a fun little weekly event. And as we did last week, I thought it’d be fun again to just, hey, what’s been going on last week? What’s something that’s caught your attention or something that’s on your mind?

Zach Vidibor (00:16.376)
you

Brendan Tolleson (00:30.015)
It could be anything from something going on in your internal company, something you’re seeing on social, peer groups, et cetera. We’d just love for the audience, to invite the audience into the mind of a founder, co-founder, and what you’re thinking about within your own respective area. So Harris, Kenny, or, Harris, Kenny, that was not good. Harris or Zach, either one, feel free to jump in.

Harris Kenny (00:53.823)
I can go first as Harris Kenny, as both of those names. You know, think the thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last week is we’re pushing out a bunch of new Salesforce features. And, you know, I think that we’re just seeing a lot of this growth hacking movement is growing up. And, you know, we have agencies who are now having to kind of reconcile their process with

Zach Vidibor (00:55.544)
Brendan Tolleson (00:56.222)
Yeah

Harris Kenny (01:21.231)
Salesforce admins, you know, and for mature organizations running HubSpot, not only do they have the sales team, but they actually are running like a single connected platform. So it’s also going to affect service and marketing. Um, and. You know, to me, it’s just, it’s just really different. It’s different than where this conversation has been. And I think this is kind of where we’re talking about, the CRO seat and like, what does it look like for a CRO who has, you we talked about previously, like 18 months to get it done and just like the data model.

And like everyone’s like very excited about AI and automating things, but just like this underlying really basic data model of like what properties or fields need to be complete. What’s the like formatting or the type of properties or fields? I think that like the year to come is going to be less fun. Not to be like a bear of bad news, but I think it’s going to be less fun than the last year in this world, because I think it’s like, it’s this really frankly, monotonous.

work of making sure that things are like formatted and structured and going in the right place and in the right process order. I think it’s like a healthy part of the process. that’s what I’ve been thinking lately. Just lots of email threads, customer support threads, conversations on calls. Even like in WhatsApp groups, people are being like, hey, does anybody know how this works? You one of my customers was asking about it. So that’s kind of what I’m seeing right now.

Zach Vidibor (02:42.988)
Yeah. That’s awesome. Shout out, Kimberly, again, if you’re listening. I think maybe some breaking news, slightly different, but Clay, who I think we’ve had in this conversation a lot and talking about this new paradigm we’re entering, they just announced this morning they’re doing a community equity offering.

Brendan Tolleson (02:47.874)
You

Harris Kenny (02:48.299)
Sorry.

Harris Kenny (03:05.965)
Yeah.

Zach Vidibor (03:06.476)
which I think is a really cool development. like, think, you know, like this is almost like a topic for its own of just like community and like, you’re gonna slap me on the wrist, Brendan. I think we’re talking about the tactical practitioner and like the go-to-market engineer and like, we’re like, we’re starting to develop like this new function and this new practice and like community is gonna be a huge part of that. Cause like this thing is kind of like.

evolving and it’s a living breathing like we’re kind of defining this as we go and there’s a lot of different pieces of this new stack that are kind of coming together and I just think community is going to be a huge part of that and I think like you know kudos to clay for like making a big move there and like trying to cement themselves at the center and like be a part of it and let their customers and partners participate in that way so like I thought that was pretty cool to see and I think yeah just like

I think it’s gonna be a big part of like, I think we’re trying to do a little bit of it here, like start a conversation. We all gotta figure this out together. There’s gonna be a lot of puzzle pieces that come together to ultimately make us, our customers, and everyone successful. And so, yeah, was excited to see that.

Brendan Tolleson (04:20.252)
Yeah, think they, mean, Clay has definitely embraced the user generated content with a community led go to market motion. And I mean, basically the community is their sales team. And so it kind of makes sense that they are embracing that and like just doubling down. So I think it’s a really cool approach. And I think even here’s what you were just talking about too on the, you know, it’s funny guys, I’m not cheating on you, but I do have another podcast and I was talking to Sangram this morning from go to market partners.

And he had this thought and I’ve been thinking about it and so that was redundant, but he shared an idea that I’ve been thinking about, which is he said the rev ops is the second most important function behind the CEO in the organization, which I don’t know if that’s true or not yet, but it speaks into what you were just describing Harris, which is at the foundation, you have a data model and someone needs to be able to be the translator of taking that data. And then how do you really action that and weaponize that and drive alignment between

all phases of the organization from sales, marketing, CS, but also finance. And so there’s an interesting take that I’ve been thinking about. I can use that as one thought. The second thought that I’ve been pondering is, gosh, other podcasts, I was talking to John Dick, SVP Customer Success at HubSpot. And one of the things that he was really alluding to is, if you know HubSpot’s flywheel, the last phase of it is delight. And he said, actually, I’m thinking there’s an evolution of delight to deliver.

And this paradigm shift and this new world that we live in, that we constantly have to be delivering if we want to keep customers. And so this idea of retention is really around usage and adoption and making sure that we put heavy focus on that piece. And if we lose sight of that and we don’t serve the customer, they will no longer be the customer. So as all of these things are starting to change with go-to-market, some things never change. And it just a good reminder, and we even talked about this a little bit last time, is this idea of the experience and the trust and the value we create has to stay front and center.

with anybody that we serve. So that was a good reminder for me.

Zach Vidibor (06:23.094)
Yeah, it reminds me, it sounds a little silly almost now, but as a former proud dropboxer, we had like one of our company values was actually Cupcake, which sounds really foo foo, but it really stuck with me of like this idea that like there is that like…

X factor like the sum is greater than the parts is what it was like meant to mean of like you need to delight you know through your your service your product your experience your you know the fit and finish of the pixels like those things all like communicate to your customers and your partner like can you trust us are we being thoughtful about the details and like i think yeah that that like concept of delight like that actually it really speaks to my heart and like what we’re what we’re trying to do and i think what companies like have to do like especially in

like this era where it’s going to get much much easier to like spin up the like

the POC MVP version of a tool, it ain’t gonna be too long until you just chat with, you know, Lovable and you go like, give me this app and it’s like, all right, it looks like it’s got all the buttons and knobs I need, like, know, does it, you know? And like, are, I think, where we all have to focus of like, yeah, we need to beat that and exceed that and like, that means trust and polish and care and thought and like, that leads to delight and hopefully that flywheel.

Brendan Tolleson (07:48.186)
Yeah, internally we have a principle, it gets into this idea of the cherry on top. like I even saw it this week with yesterday, we closed a deal and the VP of sales proactively wrote our VP of sales and essentially just raved about the experience with our sales rep. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. It was nuts. But I think that is just like that experience matters. And I think we know that, but it’s just…

Zach Vidibor (07:53.07)
Yeah.

Zach Vidibor (08:07.47)
So.

Zach Vidibor (08:13.518)
All right.

Brendan Tolleson (08:16.185)
it’s becoming even more important in this age of AI. So, all right, back to the regularly scheduled program, guys, but that was good to just catch up on what’s on your mind. We’ve done two episodes so far. We talked a little bit about email deliverability. We also talked about the content and the copy to use for the audience that we’re going after, but let’s kind of rewind, because I think there’s a point we didn’t talk about at the very beginning, which is this idea of what are the buyers doing, the of the word that’s become…

Zach Vidibor (08:19.736)
Totally agree.

Brendan Tolleson (08:45.562)
that people galvanize around is this idea of intent. And so maybe a good starting point. So there’s really three things I want to talk about. It’s like, how do you collect the data? And then how do you analyze the data? And then how do you action the data? So those are kind of the three anchor topics that we’ll talk about. But before we get into those three, let’s actually clarify what the heck intent data is. I think some people know it that are more on the go-to-market engineering side. But for those that are…

know, CROs that are kind of embracing this new world that we’re living in. How about one of you guys start us off with what the heck is intent data and like what are the different ways we can think about intent data?

Zach Vidibor (09:26.079)
I think Harris is going to do a better job than me, so I’ll let you start and I’ll fill in.

Harris Kenny (09:31.887)
Yeah, totally. Well, I think the thing is it depends. There are a few different ways that think that different companies are kind of pitching this idea of intent. I think that in theory, let’s just start like economics, right? In economics 101, you’re like, supply and demand, the market works perfectly. And then every other day after that, you’re like, and here’s where weird stuff happens. So I think in a perfect world, have these…

buyers that have done something to like indicate that they’re raising hands, but it’s like, what are we doing to capture things before a conversion event where they like they fill out a contact form or they book a demo. There’s like this kind of like above the funnel area where historically you just had this like broadcasting marketing activity. And now it’s like, look, should sales be active earlier? And then like, or should marketing be more proactive earlier in the funnel? And if so, how, why, what are they looking for?

at either a contact level or an account or company or firm a graphic level. And so I think that like, that’s like, you know, and I think the biggest thing about it is that everyone’s trying to get right is that it’s about continuously monitoring for signals rather than, and like when something happens, like a trip wire, you know, goes off and, and then we do something as a result of this, this event that occurred, this thing that happened.

And so it goes from this kind of blanket messaging and approach to more individualized at the company or account or maybe even at an industry level. So I think that’s what people are trying to do versus before building big lists and just kind of broadcasting out. So I don’t know, that’s how I would define it. It’s like before the person raises their hand all the way, when their hand’s coming off the desk, seems like teams are trying to capture that. And a lot of different companies are selling different versions of that, like Six Sense and RB2B and Warmly. And frankly, I have some issues with some of the intent.

stuff. So I think it’ll be interesting to talk about because I think it’s really complicated. But I don’t know, that’s kind of my initial reaction.

Zach Vidibor (11:33.516)
Yeah, I think that’s spot on and maybe like carrying that thought forward. think

One thing that maybe gets lost in the conversation a little bit that I seem to pick up is like, intent is a very like, that’s our language. Like the customer is not necessarily feeling like, I’m showing intent right now to buy.

new endpoint detection, or name something, right? Like, they might just be like, hey, I happened to hit a page with a cookie on it that’s tracking me and somebody else has interpreted that as like, high intent, they’re researching, they’re in the market to buy the solution. So I think like, that’s one, like there’s really incredible signals out there, but I think like, again, it’s like the rare scenario that like, you know, the true hand raise intent, like,

That’s somebody comes to our site and raises their hand. Then you’re dealing with this spectrum of what is that signal, what is that activity, and all intent isn’t created equal. So I think that’s where the companies that I see that make the most use of these signals, they have an understanding of where in the spectrum are they? Are they just poking around? they like?

oblivious but like we’ve picked up on something that you know we can weave into a story a little bit and see if there’s a thread we can pull on or is it something a little more tactical that we can really message around and then where you have to start to be careful is like you know obviously everybody now like there are these like

Zach Vidibor (13:11.2)
I would say more like commodity signals, hiring, job changes, know, roles you’re posting for that you’re hiring. Those things, again, like really powerful, but like everybody can see them.

everyone’s pouncing on them. Like you need to really have like, I think a like clear interpretation of like, what does this mean to our business? Is the fact that somebody just got promoted, is that really meaningful to like what we sell and what we do and the story and the value, or is it just, we’re using it as a hook for something real time that is like this proof of work, hey, I saw something and I just want to pounce on it. And so yeah, that’s where, yeah, maybe more to discuss there, but I think yeah, the intent language I think gets,

lost a little bit, like that’s our language, that’s not customers showing necessarily, I have intent to buy.

Brendan Tolleson (14:03.229)
Right. Yeah, I like that way of framing it. Well, meaning that we need to be mindful of…

Harris Kenny (14:03.439)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan Tolleson (14:11.243)
who we’re solving for, not who we’re selling to. And I think just take a step back even, if we just think of what’s going on from a go-to-market perspective, or at least we talked about this a little bit, but the buyer has more control than ever. That’s one of the things we’ve alluded to. And the data suggests that, mean, or validates that rather, not just suggests it, in terms of how much the research is being done before they even engage with the sales team. So that’s what’s kind of created this whole idea of intense signals. And as you were just describing, Zach, there are like, I want to kind of…

define this for some of the CROs and VP sales or whoever may be listening. Like the idea when Harris mentions before they engage with the contact us form, for example, there are different type of signals. And so there are, and you guys feel free to chime in here, but you talked a little bit about this, Zach, with even like hiring. Like there are gonna be things that people are posting about, like in terms of jobs, but there’s also like social. There’s things like G2, which is more on the, I’m looking at a software and application. It could be that I’m in a community that I’m talking about.

These are just examples for the audience to be aware of. When we say intent signals, those are the places where they are researching or they’re engaging with that would, for a company to say, they are in the market potentially for my product or service. So I just want to kind of set that foundation there. And Harris, I think where you were going, which is probably a good next step is, okay, what are some of those tools that you already mentioned, like a six-inch or RB2B that allow for companies to…

capture that data. So maybe we’ll go to that as the next step. we talked a little bit about what intent signals are, where they reside, but like how do you collect that? So Harris, you want to expand on your thought of, or it like you had an opinion here. So I’d love to hear the opinion on what you like or dislike about not only that category, but maybe some of the tools that you’re seeing.

Harris Kenny (15:56.911)
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, uh, to be honest, I don’t know. This is like a pretty technical area. So I know a bit about it, but not a ton. Um, the way most of these tools work is you have like a JavaScript snippet of code that you put on your website through like a Google tag manager. And you know, they’re, they’re taking site visit, the, vendors are taking site visits, and then they’re using it to kind of, um, they have their own data and they’re, they’re kind of matching it off and saying, listen, like these events occurred.

we, you had a site visitor, we’re going to de-anonymize that visitor. We believe that visitor to be this person. I think all of these companies are trying to solve problems for people. have no like beef with any of the people or what they’re trying to do, but like my general.

skepticism is, you know, I feel like, I feel like the answer I haven’t heard really well answered yet is why do you get credit for this conversion? Yes. Yes. You identified this, this intense signal, but like, it’s almost like they’re front running. It’s like, like a parade is happening and then it’s like a parade is like about to leave. Right. And then they’re like standing by the door and they like jump out out of the door in front of the parade. And then they’re the one like holding the baton.

Zach Vidibor (17:03.438)
Thank

Harris Kenny (17:13.679)
and being like, look, see, look at this lead we just brought in. And it’s like, well, yeah, but like you were just the like kind of the last one to touch it. You kind of like, it’s like front running ahead of where the normal marketing attribution would have picked up and said where the lead came from. I’m like, well, actually this is, you know, this is, don’t want to mention any like specific names, but this is a Toasty lead, you know, this is a Toasty lead that came in. And so Toasty gets credit for finding the Toasty lead or whatever. It’s like, well, yeah, maybe, I don’t know. So, so I’m not, I’m not saying they don’t deserve any credit for what they’re doing. I just haven’t heard a really compelling argument for like,

Where’s the value add like prove to me that had you not been there, this wouldn’t have happened anyway. and so that, that, that’s like the, most skeptical take on it is like, look, these are, these are people that are just taking their time bouncing around up here and normal marketing is doing its thing. And then, and then they come through and they come through, but, these intense signal, these intent tools are taking credit for it when, know, and, and, and again, like, I’m not a deep expert in this, but I’ve used a number of them before. And that’s just kind like my general, my general take on it. Tell me if you tell me if you guys think I’m being unreasonable or if that’s like uncharitable.

Zach Vidibor (17:52.622)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Vidibor (18:15.062)
I’ll take the counter maybe just to keep it going. I’d say like I agree with the like attribution is messy. I guess their argument would be to stick up for them and be like, well, you were gonna miss this, right? Like the alternative is you don’t know anything. And so are you better off having again, messy data and attribution problem, who gets credit, blah, blah. What’s the ROI?

Harris Kenny (18:16.717)
Yeah.

Zach Vidibor (18:40.866)
Totally agree, but I think the argument would be there are new tools emerging that give you, you you’re getting a peek around another corner. And again, they might have been coming in another channel eventually anyways, but hey, if that gives you a leg up on, again, even if it’s just, I think there are like really cool things, you know, that some of these, you know, I’m like.

Harris Kenny (18:49.561)
Yeah.

Zach Vidibor (19:06.552)
you know, shout out to the koalas and common rooms and other players like that, that they are trying to help give sales teams an edge as well of like, okay, I know this person was like crawling through our API docs. Like that gives me like, all right, mindset shift for this person I’m going to talk to.

Harris Kenny (19:19.991)
Mm-hmm.

Harris Kenny (19:24.953)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Vidibor (19:25.622)
technical, they want to get in the guts, like, let’s cut the BS with them, you know, versus like, all right, they’re, they’re floating on a solution page and looked at a case study, you know, like, I might orient myself a little differently. So like, there’s some cool stuff happening there as well that I think is, they would argue like, there’s an offline benefit of just like, helping you get a little smarter.

Harris Kenny (19:30.148)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (19:37.368)
Yeah, yeah.

Harris Kenny (19:46.445)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll steal, steal man, your argument against myself for a second here. I mean, it’s kind of like, okay, let’s just say, let’s say we don’t know if it works or not, but let’s say your competitor is doing it. Well, okay, well now you kind of have a problem. Because if your competitor is doing it and you’re not, and they’re the one that are getting in touch with them, that’s where I think we know for sure that it’s more likely that they’ll go with the competitor if the competitor is the one that’s being more proactive about reaching them. And so, yeah, I don’t know.

Zach Vidibor (19:52.024)
Yeah.

Brendan Tolleson (20:15.411)
I’ll share a few thoughts on this one. This is not a political podcast, but I’ve heard people use this idea of like, take something seriously, not literally about certain candidates. And I would take the same approach about attribution. I think we have to be mindful. Like it’s helpful to know from an attribution perspective, but I don’t take that literally. I think there is the…

Harris Kenny (20:15.875)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (20:23.235)
You

Harris Kenny (20:27.651)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Vidibor (20:32.258)
Thank you.

Brendan Tolleson (20:41.652)
there’s a path to conversion, there’s a point of conversion. And I think there is a very important distinction to make there. There are a lot of things that influence the buyer, as we talked about, they’re doing a lot of activity before they engage with your team. I do believe that they will engage with your team, probably eight to nine times out of 10, regardless of these tools. And so I’m a firm believer in path to conversion. And I will argue that to the death. I mean, we’ve had RB2B, no offense, but we have not seen a lot of success from RB2B. That could be an user error, but like that’s…

We are definitely testing because we think it’s an interesting idea and we want to be mindful of it. I think it kind goes back to what you were just saying, Zach. If you are like the desperate boyfriend that’s calling the girl like nonstop, or at least trying to pursue a girl that has no interest, it’s probably going to be a bad outcome for you. So I think there’s ways that you need to it right. I think another example, Harris, that you just mentioned that I think is actually a very valid one, that I’ll give an example of what we are doing at RP. We are saying, hey, let’s test Reddit.

Like we’re seeing that there is a lot of engagement within our category within Reddit. There’s a competitor of ours that has really gone after that space really well. And it’s like, hey, if we’re not going to engage there, we are going to lose out on conversations. And so we’ve done integration between Common Room and Slack where we get alerts for different HubSpot type of topics that allow us to now get into a conversation that we otherwise would never have the ability to get into. So I think there are ways that it can be leveraged really well. But the execution is just as

Zach Vidibor (22:12.6)
Totally, yeah, think, yeah, I like that idea of the path to conversion. that’s gonna look a little different for every business, and all those signals you’re taking in, they aren’t all created equal. And your processes kinda dictate, are these things we pounce on right away, or are these things that kinda compound to that journey and we’re…

accruing that knowledge somewhere we can act on it, you know, X point where it we decide it matters and we have something meaningful to say but I think yeah, the the mistake is like All intent is good data if we can find a way if we can trace that back to a person like they’re ready Let’s start hammering them. Like that’s when it like it’s you’re you’re not gonna see the results you want

Harris Kenny (22:43.183)
Mm-hmm.

Harris Kenny (23:03.863)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan Tolleson (23:07.218)
was about say something about, are you about to?

Harris Kenny (23:09.641)
just like a quick thought on like, but so is this demand capture or demand gen, right? I think like with intent, it seems like it’s demand capture, right? Like you’ve got some existing funnel stuff and we’re capturing it. And so to me, I think that’s like an important distinction. So it’s like, if you’re looking to like drive net new growth, like, yeah, some of these, they’re gonna help like improving your conversion rates, but they’re not necessarily gonna like necessarily grow your funnel overall.

So that’s like a little piece that I feel like is missing. But I think it’s like, what are you gonna do about it? I like what you were saying before, Zach, about like, okay, if they’re on this page, I’ll say this. If they’re on that page, I’ll say that. That’s where to me it starts getting like more like, okay, we’re doing something here with this data and we’re more likely to win. The Reddit example is a great one too, Brendan. I think that’s a really, really, really good example of, or like a parallel to think about, of like, look, if you’re not here, you know, it’s gonna be harder to win, basically.

Brendan Tolleson (24:03.121)
Yeah, it’s interesting. I agree that’s a demand capture function. We’ve actually separated our marketing team into demand gen and demand capture. And so one is focused on the brand reputation and getting organic traffic. And the other side is focused really on how do we capitalize or convert on what has been generated from a top of funnel. I’m not fully convinced it’s the right approach, but we said, hey, let’s test it. I do think it speaks to a broader…

Harris Kenny (24:10.169)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan Tolleson (24:28.401)
problem around this whole idea of intent data, point of conversion, path of conversion topic. It’s just, I think this goes back to the old playbook and how we had a very segmented and siloed departments. We’re marketing did this, sales did this. And there’s a finite budget. Everyone’s fighting for that budget. And their KPIs are really based off of certain things that just are not aligned with the current buyer journey. And if we don’t fix some of those key fundamentals, then none of really matters candidly.

I say none of it matters. just we are going to be fighting for these, these, these victims, I guess is the right way to frame that. And it’s like, that’s, we have, that’s kind of goes back to the, Hey, here’s the new playbook. This is like a tool that everyone needs to be mindful of and likely take advantage of. But how do you set it up? What are the right realistic expectations and how do you drive the coordination between demand, gen demand capture, and ultimately the SDR sales to ensure you can actually execute this campaign.

Zach Vidibor (25:23.438)
Probably, yeah, if we’re still fighting about, marketing says this is a website lead, because that’s when they finally said, contact us, and sales is going, well, I emailed them six times, and blah, blah. If we’re having that argument, we lost the plot to your point. You need to have orgs that are aligned around, all right, guess what? Good news, we’re talking to them now. Let’s figure out ways to like…

Harris Kenny (25:24.28)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (25:39.371)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan Tolleson (25:47.185)
Yeah.

Zach Vidibor (25:50.922)
make the right marketing investments and right mix, but let’s make sure it’s always, we’re aligned as an org where we’re not competing for the OKRs that have us in that argument.

Harris Kenny (25:54.383)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (26:03.927)
Yeah, yeah. I, I, I want to give you guys credit for repartners.io. I’ll plug it. Go to the site. I really like the model that like left to right, the six squares. sorry, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t remember all the like names of it, but I really liked that visualization that you had on the RP site. And so to me, cause to me that really lays out where this fits to me. intense stuff is adjacent to customer success and onboarding. And so to me, like if it’s competing for budget, that’s what it’s competing with. It’s like.

Okay, yeah, we can convert these site visitors better, but we could also onboard better and improve our like first 30, 60 day activation. And so to me, those are like the closest to each other. It’s not necessarily competing to like these far further out. If I’m, if we’re using that RP like horizontal, if you’re, if you’re listening to this on audio, I’m it doesn’t make any sense, but Brendan, you can probably explain it, but, but that, that model that you have on your site, to me, this makes a lot more sense when I think about it from that perspective.

Brendan Tolleson (26:59.185)
I appreciate that. Shout out to Colt, because Colt is the one that really designed that. Thanks to Sasha for designing it. I’m going actually put this point at you guys, and we can wrap this up for this episode. I think this will help flesh this whole idea out around 10 signals. Why are you doing this podcast?

Zach Vidibor (27:24.734)
Great question. think we are all, I mean maybe it goes back to a little bit about the community point earlier. think like, ironically, we’re charting into this territory more AI, more tech, but people are hunting for like authenticity. Who am I doing business with? Can I trust these people? Are they building in a smart way? think for, I guess, yeah, just to speak to me, I think it’s important that

people know kind of what we’re about, what we’re building, how we’re thinking, how we’re seeing this like crazy foggy future play out. that’s.

how smart customers make investments is they go like, all right, I know there’s something on the truck today, but like I’m entering into a relationship with a vendor and a partner that like, hopefully they continue to grow and evolve. And like, I wanna know where they’re thinking. And then I think, yeah, I think where you’re going with this like mechanically on the back of that, hopefully this is driving people to our sites and places where we might be able to detect those things. But I think, yeah, we’re trying to.

put something out that people can react to.

Brendan Tolleson (28:32.335)
All right, here’s how about you.

Harris Kenny (28:32.877)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess for me, I’ll say like, don’t want to call out any vendors, but I had two different intent tracking sites and I just, tools and I just pulled ripped about after they’d been there for like nine months. I just wasn’t getting anything out of it. I think that like, I know that people are using them. Well, I’m maybe just not big enough or smart enough or have enough funnel to take advantage of it. But like, so those are just kind of my closing thoughts on the, like the whole intent thing. I know that people are finding results with it. I just think it’s, don’t know.

in terms of the podcast itself, like, it’s, not necessarily to, to, generate, demand and then hopefully they landed ours, maybe our site and find us like, then we, and then we reach back out to them. I mean, to be honest with you, like a lot of times I make decisions on vibes. Like I just, both of you individually, some of our, some of our smartest partners are using Octave. And, I think RP is like one of the most, it’s hard to compare, but one of the most innovative hotspot partners in the hotspot ecosystem for.

You know, period. And so it’s like, look, if I get to talk about these things with you too, I think that my overall thesis is that I think that this is a market, this, where we sit and go to market is a, is specialization. I don’t think that this is broadly going to be available to everybody. If there are fewer people working in go to market roles in two years, I would not be surprised at all. And I think that those fewer people will be paid more highly and be doing much more productive, efficient work. But I don’t think that this category is growing in terms of like headcount spend. I think it’s going to reduce in terms of headcount.

and so to me, it’s like, talk to the smartest people that I can find and learn from them and build cool stuff with them. Because I think that like the smart teams and, and aspiring people out there will find that content. but so yeah, kind of more of a vibes based thing than any, like, like marketing budget. am going to spend my time? I just, yeah, to be, that’s how I make decisions. So maybe, beware of making decisions with me, but yeah.

Zach Vidibor (30:23.886)
Yeah.

Brendan Tolleson (30:27.627)
I like the idea of buying on good vibes. That would be a… But I think the reason why I asked it, I appreciate what you guys share. I think it gets into, yes, I think there’s an element of community growth. I mean, there’s an element of upskilling ourselves and learning from each other and creating a fun dialogue around important topics that the market cares about. But I do think there’s this idea going back to dark funnel path of conversion. It’s like people are seeking…

Zach Vidibor (30:28.173)
No, I think…

Yeah.

Brendan Tolleson (30:53.967)
content that educates them, that’s value add into their business. And I don’t know who’s listening to this or when they’re listening to it or how it impacts that, but it really speaks into this idea of the path is more important than the point. And these intense signals are certainly valuable and we should be tracking, we should be monitoring it. And I think, Harris, to your point, like if it’s not set up properly, then it’s probably not going to be effective. But that’s why we need to be doing things like this because to where Zach was going to is…

what is the buyer looking for? It’s not just like, don’t sell to me, give me something and like create that connection where I can trust you and I wanna engage with you. And so I think it’s just a good reminder for us and for the audience. Like these type of things are ways to drive not only brand affinity, but can drive demand. And if we had the intent signals set up properly, we can actually convert those to have a relationship as opposed to transactions.

Zach Vidibor (31:32.141)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Vidibor (31:48.024)
Yeah. Amen.

Brendan Tolleson (31:49.262)
Alright gents, any final thoughts as we wrap up for this episode?

Zach Vidibor (31:57.39)
I really like this topic. I feel like we could almost do another episode on this one and maybe a thought for next time for us is there’s lot of people selling intent. I got a truck full of intent, do you want to buy it? And to this point of, is it demand gen or demand capture? How do we help people think about like…

craft your own signals. Like what are things that are really specific to your business that you wanna go hunt for that they aren’t just on the truck or something. It’s harder to do, but like those are really interesting. Hey, somebody launched an app in a new country that needs a local, I don’t know, I’m riffing here, but I think there’s this other concept where it’s starting to emerge of like, how do you create your own signals and then go hunt for them and like get really crystal clear intent on things I think could be a cool thing for the future that was just going in my mind.

Harris Kenny (32:56.823)
Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. My, my last thought is I just think like the teams that are using these, well, they’re, they’re building machines. Like a lot of my perspective in this episode has been just from my own company and like we’re three people, you know, I’m, I am the entire go-to-market function. think the teams that I’m seeing using this effectively, they have like orchestration happening. They’ve got a rev ops function happening. They’ve got a lot of resources and sales reps to follow up and make the most of it. So I think that’s like the biggest thing is I think that with intent, you know,

You’ve to have the tools to collect the data. You’ve got to have the people and automation to analyze it. then the, you know, ultimately like the tools to like action it. And, so that’s been my impression and like, we’re an SMB basically, I mean, we’re three person company. So I think like in the SMB space, I think it’s like a lot harder to make use of it. I do think it’s, it’s more of a tool for the bigger players that have the resources to make the most of it. I’m not, I’m not like, and so, yeah, I think, I think it fits into this puzzle that we’re talking about, but it’s, but it’s definitely for.

well-resourced companies that have smart people that can deploy it. Because this stuff is not, not, not easy, in my opinion.

Brendan Tolleson (34:00.461)
It’s not easy, it’s not cheap. And I think to your point, if you don’t have product market fit or even getting into the platform market fit, may not even have a need for it. And for RP, just as an example, we’re about $10 million business and we got to $10 million. And this is literally our phrase, just make a butt ton of content. So I appreciate Harris, you enjoy how we create stuff, but that is literally the tagline. And so it’s these type of things

So if you’re a smaller company you say, hey, I can’t afford a six cents because it’s freaking expensive. But there are other ways that you can do that to create content and create demand without leveraging the 10 singles because here’s this point, if you don’t have the team behind it, you’re really just putting software on the shelf that’s going to die. Sorry, six cents for calling you out. But that’s my comment for the last thought for the day. So gents, thanks for joining for another episode of Going to Crossroads.

Zach Vidibor (34:53.688)
Right.

Brendan Tolleson (34:59.373)
This will be the last time you see Kimberly in here, but she enjoyed her appearance and you guys have a great rest of the day.

Zach Vidibor (35:06.03)
You too, man. Let the good vibes roll. See you guys.

Brendan Tolleson (35:08.364)
See ya!

Harris Kenny (35:11.375)
Thanks guys.