MarTech Interview with Krish Mantripragada, Chief Product Officer at Seismic

Krish Mantripragada, Chief Product Officer at Seismic chats about the latest trends in use by modern GTM teams while discussing more on the impact of AI across every marketing and sales process in this MarTech Series catch-up:

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Hi Krish – tell us about your B2B SaaS journey and more about being CPO at Seismic

I’ve been in the enterprise software space leading product & engineering teams for over two decades now, working at both Fortune 500 companies, such as SAP, First Data and high-growth technology leaders including Medallia and i2 Technologies. Over my career, I have helped create new product categories, scaled businesses, built global teams and have had two successful IPOs (Medallia NYSE: MDLA acquired by Thoma Bravo  and First Data NYSE:FDC acquired by FiServ).  All of this eventually brought me to Seismic, the global leader in enablement, in 2020. As Seismic’s Chief Product Officer, I am responsible for  the company’s product, design, engineering, cloud operations and support functions to make sure Seismic is delivering the industry-leading products that enable customers across the world to drive impactful business results.

We’d love to hear more from you on how GTM teams today are leveraging AI to drive growth and impact.

AI is already fundamentally changing every aspect of the sales process, from prospecting, to meeting preparation, content creation and personalization, followup, training and performance improvement. Both enablement and sales workflows are being reimagined to boost productivity and drive growth.

From receiving personalized recommendations, easily finding answers to their questions with simple natural language interface, getting curated feeds of relevant and compliant content, etc. AI is transforming how sellers Discover and consume Content. AI is also helping them Create new content automatically for their specific situation needs. By automatically creating pitch decks from prompts, lessons, multimodal learning paths, assessments from source content, personalized presentations and digital sales rooms, AI is redefining how GTM content is being created. AI is also helping GTM teams Automate and even eliminate manual tasks such as automating steps in meeting preparation, summarization and follow-up. For enablement professionals, AI is automating processes such as content tagging, data analysis, localization, publishing etc. And ultimately, AI is providing personalized Advice to GTM teams with next best action recommendations, proactively identifying skill & knowledge gaps, personalized coaching, among others.

Across the globe, GTM teams are leaning on AI-powered enablement to fundamentally enhance their daily activities and drive growth for their organization. When multiple teams are able to focus on powerful initiatives together, this is felt across the company. In fact, recent data found 79% of respondents agree that using AI-powered technology in the workplace boosts productivity, freeing up time to focus on revenue-generating activities.

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How is Seismic’s Summer AI Enhancements Release meant to change the game for end users?

Seismic recently launched several AI-powered tools to help customer-facing teams engage with buyers in an ever-evolving landscape. According to Gartner, only 5% of the buyer’s journey is spent with a human salesperson. The launch of these AI enhancements is helping sellers make the most of what little time they have with prospective buyers.

First, we announced the early availability of Aura Copilot, an AI assistant that can drive GTM efficiency for enablement teams by speeding up and simplifying the creation of critical content, including lessons, playbooks, and more. Aura Copilot is saving users precious time by tagging content and generating descriptions at scale. Sellers can now get almost immediate access to the insights and content needed to help close deals.

Second, to help reps better prepare for client meetings, we launched several enhancements to Seismic for Meetings to help reps better prepare for client meetings.  Updated workflows allow sellers to collaborate with their teams to define meeting goals and objectives, set an agenda, and personalize content for each unique client call, leveraging AI to drive higher-value meetings.

Third, our Spring/Summer Product Release built on our longstanding partnership with Microsoft and IBM,including improved integrations with Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 360 and IBM WatsonX. Additionally, Seismic for Meetings now integrates with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook, allowing reps to seamlessly leverage the tools they need right in their daily work flows – saving end users time from toggling between solutions.

With each new capability in our Spring/Summer Release, we aimed to help customer-facing teams excel at modern selling and make the most of every client interaction.

What are some of the biggest myths surrounding marketing, AI and martech that you’d like to dispel here today?

Even though many organizations have adopted AI-powered marketing technology, there are still a lot of misconceptions out there. Here are some of the most common ones:

AI will replace human creativity and relevance: AI enhances rather than replaces human creativity. It is really the combination of human + machine intelligence that will make the biggest impact. By processing large datasets, analyzing patterns, generating insights, etc. AI augments human intelligence to make smarter and faster decisions.

AI is only for large companies with deep pockets: It is a common belief that only large companies with big budgets can afford to deploy AI solutions. The rapid evolution of AI and Cloud technologies combined with rapid fall in consumption price points have made AI very affordable and accessible to companies of all shapes and sizes.

AI will drive immediate revenue success: It is very common to overestimate the short term with exaggerated claims and underestimate the long term impact of an emerging technology. While AI can have tremendous impact in every aspect of GTM motions, it is not a silver bullet guaranteeing immediate outcomes. Effective deployment of AI requires careful planning, design of business workflows, training, continuous refinement and change management.

AI tools are too difficult to understand and deploy: It is a common myth that AI is too complicated, only for the super technical and not appropriate for the masses. The technology has evolved significantly over the years making them very user friendly and accessible to non-technical users. The best tools effectively incorporate AI into their core workflows, making them intuitive to understand and effectively roll out.

For marketing and sales teams at the nascent stage of implementing and deploying new AI technologies to drive growth goals: what tips would you share?

For the marketing and sales teams just starting to look at AI investments, I’d encourage all of them to evaluate their current processes and make sure they see these investments through.

When beginning the search for AI technology, marketing and sales teams should examine their existing processes for areas they’d like to uplevel. This could include issues such as internal inefficiencies, a lack of communication, or process bottlenecks. By taking this step back, leaders can identify areas where AI technologies can truly make a difference and boost team productivity.

Choosing a new tool can be one of the hardest decisions an organization has to make. Organization leaders need to invest time into vetting different tools and making sure they have the capabilities needed to fix both today’s aforementioned inefficiencies and tomorrow’s. While no one can see into the future, it’s important to choose a platform that can grow alongside the team while providing all the capabilities your organization needs.

Something I see teams often overlook is training for new technologies. Implementing a tool isn’t a one-and-done effort, so before investing in this technology, ensure your organization has the ability to see it through. Providing a variety of learning and training experiences can help ensure all the components of the technology are being leveraged and that employees feel well-positioned to succeed with this tool in hand.

What’s the most exciting aspect about today’s AI powered martech and salestech niche?

The average seller only spends 28% of their time actually selling. The rest of their time is spent on manual tasks and processes. Today’s AI powered tools are ushering in a new age of selling. Research found AI-powered enablement is saving respondents, on average, 12 hours a week.

These new tools are allowing GTM teams more time to focus on revenue-generating activities, including aligning on initiatives, personalizing customer interactions, effectively preparing for customer meetings and improving forecasting efforts. At a time where teams are battling so many other priorities, AI provides leaders with the time they need to remain flexible in this new age of sales.

If you had to share five predictions about the future of AI powered martech and salestech: what would they be?

It’s exciting to think about the future of AI-powered martech and salestech because there are so many possibilities.

I anticipate we’ll see teams continuing to heavily invest in AI-powered GTM tools, including enablement. Data found investment in enablement tools is set to increase with 89% of organizations planning to retain or increase their investments. This is higher than the percentage of companies who were planning to invest in 2023, proving that these tools are no longer a “nice to have” but an essential component for any modern enterprise.

As Satya Nadella said, we’re in the “age of copilots.”   We know that when AI is enabled as a virtual assistant, it can impact organizations on a micro and macro level. Copilots designed for individual teams, like marketing and sales, often prove their return on investment over and over again because they were designed to solve specific problems right out of the gate. With 92% of company leaders planning to increase their enablement investment because of the promise of AI, the ways AI can be leveraged in our current tools feels endless.

We’ll likely see a push for Gen Z to adopt AI into their work day more. It may be surprising but recent data found only 70% of Gen Z viewed AI as a virtual assistant to them, which was lower than that of older generations. As organizations look to increase their AI investments, they’ll have to ensure buy-in on every level, including with the youngest generation of employees.

Going hand in hand with this push for Gen Z to leverage AI, we’ll also see a push for a variety of training practices for GTM teams. Right now, training is often viewed as “one size fits all” with the same training being delivered across an organization. While this may be an easy solution, it’s not a very impactful one – especially given the diversity of today’s workforce. Employees of different backgrounds, generations, and knowledge levels require unique training that fits their needs. Luckily, AI-powered training can adapt to the learner’s understanding and preferences, providing different formats, and revisiting important concepts to ensure every employee is able to adopt new tools and reap the rewards.

Lastly, personalization will become more important to buyers – and easier for sellers to prioritize – than ever before. According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions and 76% feel frustrated when they don’t receive that personalization. With AI, personalization will help businesses elevate each customer touchpoint and help them engage with buyers in a more personalized manner.

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