In the last part of our coverage of the amazing Revenue Summit, we catch up with Tony Yang, Vice President of Demand Gen & Marketing Operations at Mintigo.

Tony Yang is a tech-savvy and data-driven marketing leader with deep experience in both large enterprises and startups in the B2B, software-as-a-service (SaaS), web/enterprise 2.0 and IT services space.

He possesses a unique blend of high-level strategic planning and management skills as well as the ability to execute on a tactical level as an individual contributor.

What was your impression of the event?

Revenue Summit 2017 was a solid event. Lots of great presentations and I saw many of the same thought leaders that I’d expect to be there. Participating in the event was also a part of our official launch of Mintigo’s Predictive Sales Coach where we were able to invite our customer from Oracle to speak in a case study session where Geet Dhillon shared the benefits and results of utilizing predictive analytics and AI for sales success.

Would you encourage more Sales and Marketing folks to attend these events together?

Absolutely. Sales and Marketing need to work closely in order to succeed in any organization, and with hot topics such as ABM on the rise, it’s ever so critical for these functions to work together as one. The sessions in many of these events address topics that helps with aligning the two teams.

Would you attend next year? Which session did you enjoy the most?

One of my favorite part of attending events like this is to hear how other people are doing things that I’m interested in. For example, there was a case study session on how a particular company measures the success of their ABM strategy, which is something we’re setting up internally as well. So yes, I would attend Revenue Summit next year. In fact, we will be participating in the next Sales Hacker event called Sales Machine 2017 in NY. Hope to see you there!

What’s the biggest challenge adopting ABM?

I’d say one of the biggest challenges is due to the tremendous increase in technology tools and access to data that’s available to, and purchased by, marketing and sales teams to execute ABM. While there are certainly great technology vendors that are offering capabilities for ABM execution, the marketer/sales person is often left with the challenge of how to piece all the tools that were purchased into a cohesive system.

This challenge is more than just integration – it includes the need for, and understanding of, data to flow between these systems as well as how the use of these tools affects workflows between marketing, sales, customer success, etc.

How did you get to driving Marketing at Mintigo – what’s your background?

We have a lean but mean marketing team at Mintigo. I primarily drive demand gen and marketing ops, but also wear other hats such as analyst relations, some content marketing, website management, etc. I suppose that’s part of the fun of working in a startup company — my last few companies have been startups as well… even smaller and earlier stage than Mintigo. You can check out more of my background on my LinkedIn profile – I’m generally happy to connect to anyone wanting to network with me.

What development at Mintigo you are excited about?

We’re really focused on how we can bring predictive and AI to marketing and sales organizations to help them see greater success in engaging with prospects and customers. As I previously mentioned, the recent launch of our Predictive Sales Coach was an exciting addition because it helps extend the benefits and value of predictive beyond what’s normally in marketing’s domain with targeting, segmentation and campaign execution to sales by giving them the insights to engage with prospects more intelligently.

We have some other exciting capabilities on our product roadmap for this year, but you’ll need to revisit with us to learn more about them!

What’s your take on AI in Marketing?

AI is a hot buzzword these days, but as with many terms that represent new technologies or methodologies these days I believe there needs to be greater market education before it becomes widely adopted. Don’t give into the hype, but understand the value that AI technologies can bring to your organization, whether it’s in marketing or sales or customer success.

Don’t view it as a single silver bullet that will magically solve all of your problems. But rather, learn how new technologies can utilize the vast amount of data that’s now available to you to help you make better decisions, such as who to target or which messages will resonate to which prospect. Once you understand this, then you can automate it.

A single everyday productivity hack you’d like to share with our audience?

One of my pet peeves is when I’m deep into working on something and when I get constantly interrupted by people to discuss something that ends up sucking up a good chunk of time or breaks my chain of thought. Now don’t get me wrong and think that I’m an anti-social grouch – I love bouncing ideas off of my colleagues or talking things through, and I realize that sometimes I have the answers to quick questions from my nearby colleagues.

But there are instances where I just need to hunker down and get stuff done without posting up in one of our in-high-demand conference rooms at our office. So I do two things – block out time on my calendar, and then just simply put on my earbuds and listen to music that doesn’t distract from my concentration. I do this whenever I need to put together a presentation slide deck or do a coding session to crank out web page content or marketing emails. This helps me be productive in chunks of time to get stuff done without the risk of getting constantly interrupted.

A single shining quality that has enabled you to excel?

Something that I do every day is read. Every morning before I get into the nitty gritty of work, I check out my sources of content that I subscribe to and try to learn more about topics that I care about — ABM, marketing and sales operations, startups, etc. This keeps me up-to-date on these topics and also helps me know who are the experts in these areas so I can connect with them. I often re-share these on my social networks, so over time I build relationships with these influencers and form my own point of view, which builds my own presence as a “thought leader”. At the end of the day, we’re all learning from each other so why not take an active part in the community?

Thanks for taking the time and sharing your insights Tony, we hope to catch up with you at Sales Machine 2017 too.

Also Read: Is AI All It’s Cracked Up to Be, or Does email Already Have the Answer?