A Go-To-Market Perspective | Podcast on RSS.com

A Go-To-Market Perspective

A Go-To-Market Perspective

by Robert Karel

Management Marketing

Season 2

Can the CRO Trust the Data? RevOps, AI, and the Insight Gap

RevOps has always been the team that produces the dashboards. And CROs don't just want data. They expect insights and recommendations. They want to understand pipeline health and velocity, sales rep performance, and forecast accuracy. And RevOps is expected to use AI to deliver these insights at scale. The problem is that AI alone isn't delivering on that promise. Sales leaders are uploading spreadsheets to AI tools and getting different answers every time. Agents and bots are being built on top of a data infrastructure that was never designed to support them. And RevOps teams are caught in the middle - under pressure to deliver intelligence while working with data that's inconsistent, ungoverned, and increasingly coming from everywhere at once. In this episode, Rob sits down with two guests who have lived this problem from different angles. Darwin Singson, Global Revenue Enablement and Sales Automation Lead from former companies: Salesforce, Informatica, Automation Anywhere, Eventbrite. He has spent years building the AI-driven workflows and automation systems that RevOps teams need but rarely have. Naresh Govindaraj, CEO and Founder of AIdeaBlocks, is building infrastructure specifically designed to address the trust and data quality gap that sits between AI tools and the reliable insights GTM leaders actually need. If you lead RevOps, Sales Ops, revenue intelligence, or GTM strategy - or if you're a CRO who's still not sure whether to trust what your ops team's AI is telling you - give this episode a listen.

Operationalizing AI in Marketing: Reality vs. Hype

Sure, everyone says they're operationalizing AI for marketing, but inside most B2B organizations, there’s a lot less transformation going on and a lot more chaos. Shadow AI, talk of AI governance without an understanding of the processes being improved, and board pressure to show efficiency gains before anyone has figured out what good looks like. In this episode, Rob sits down with John Schneider, VP of Platform and Ecosystem Marketing at UKG, to separate the reality of AI-driven marketing transformation from the hype surrounding it. John brings a practitioner's lens to what it takes to move from experimentation and shadow AI to a genuinely empowered, AI-forward marketing organization - and why the heart of that transformation has less to do with tools and more to do with people enablement, process redesign, and a strong partnership with IT. If you're a marketing leader navigating board pressure, shadow AI sprawl, and the very real challenge of building an AI-forward org without losing what makes great marketing great, be sure to tune in to this one.

Product Management in the Age of AI: Master It or Get Left Behind

Product management is the connective tissue between company strategy, customer insight, engineering, and go-to-market. From early-stage startups trying to find product-market fit to scaling enterprises managing complex portfolios, the PM is the role most responsible for ensuring the right things get built for the right reasons and are brought to market effectively. But the role is being disrupted. AI is accelerating engineering velocity, adding pressure for PMs to move faster on customer research and discovery, and creating new expectations from boards, investors, and leadership about how product teams should operate. The PM's job hasn't gotten smaller, but it's getting more complex and urgent. In this episode, Rob sits down with Chris Mann, Founder of GrokAI and a seasoned product leader with experience at LinkedIn, 1Password, You.com, and Bizo, to discuss why product managers must embrace and innovate with AI every day, and figure out how to smartly apply it when aligning product strategy with company objectives, driving inbound research and customer discovery, and working cross-functionally with engineering, sales, and marketing to activate and launch. If you're in product management, product marketing, or leading GTM strategy, this episode is a grounded look at what it means to be a high-impact product leader today in the face of AI transformation.

The Trust Gap: Why Most B2B Brands Play It Safe, and Lose

In B2B marketing, everyone talks about differentiation, bold storytelling, and building memorable brands. Yet scroll through your LinkedIn feed, and it’s hard to tell one company from another. In this episode, Rob sits down with Skott Bennett, Senior Director of Brand at Qlik, to unpack what may be the most overlooked constraint in modern go-to-market strategy: trust. Not trust in data or dashboards, but trust in people. Specifically, the willingness of leaders to empower experienced brand and creative teams to take risks, make bold decisions, and stand out. The conversation explores the narrative tension between brand and product marketing, the fatigue with the “measure everything” era, and why an overreliance on metrics may be driving B2B marketing toward a sea of sameness. If you're a CMO, founder, or go-to-market leader trying to break out of safe, forgettable marketing, this episode is a candid look at what it takes to build a stand-out brand.

Beyond Translation: What International Expansion Really Demands of Marketing

No matter what country your B2B business is based in, there will come a time in your growth journey when you must evaluate regional or even global expansion as part of your go-to-market strategy. In this episode, Rob speaks with Angela Troccoli, head of marketing at Revecore, who shares real-world insights from her experience as an American marketing leader working for companies headquartered outside the U.S. and helping organizations expand across borders in both directions. Angela explores the cultural and organizational challenges of international marketing, from being expected to unlock the U.S. market to translating strategy, expectations, and execution across global teams. She explains why international expansion is never just about translating content. It’s a full cultural and operational shift that requires the right marketing foundation, investment, and leadership alignment.

Season 1

Event ROI for Early-Stage Startups: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

There's no single right way to do events. But after three years of experimenting with conferences, dinners, and online community gatherings, Philippe Boutrous has found plenty of wrong ones. In this episode, Rob sits down with Philippe, cofounder of GetWhys, to get candid about what early-stage startups get wrong when they bet on events as a growth channel - from expensive conference sponsorships that go nowhere to in-person dinners that miss the mark. The conversation gets practical fast: whether to sponsor or skip major conferences, how to design events that generate real pipeline, who to bring from your team & who to leave at home, and why online community events are more valuable than most founders think. If you're a founder or early-stage marketing leader trying to figure out where events fit in your go-to-market, this episode will save you time, money, and at least a few awkward dinners.

Leveraging AI to scale marketing from 0 to 1

AI is rapidly changing how marketing teams are built, but scaling from zero to one still requires judgment, creativity, and human leadership. In this episode, Rob speaks with Jakki Geiger to explore how she is using AI as a force multiplier across the earliest stages of building a modern B2B marketing organization, from brand and messaging to demand, competitive intelligence, and thought leadership. The conversation looks at practical ways Jakki and her team are using AI to synthesize voice-of-customer insights, sharpen ICPs and positioning, support distinct executive POVs, and augment SDR capacity - while keeping humans firmly in the loop. Rather than chasing an “AI-first” mandate, it’s all about an AI-forward opportunity: designing lean teams where AI and people work together to move faster, learn quicker, and scale impact without replacing the roles that matter most.

Attribution: Post-mortem or Second Act?

Attribution has always been one of marketing and sales' favorite ways to argue. The age-old debate of first touch, last touch, multi-touch, and everything in between hasn’t quieted down. In this episode, Rob sits down with Nadia Davis, VP of Marketing at CaliberMind, to cut through the noise on one of B2B marketing's most overcomplicated topics. Nadia challenges the all-too-common pattern of companies calling themselves data-driven while using attribution to hunt for answers rather than validate a strategy they should be defining in the first place. From the customer journey’s dark funnel of indirect touchpoints to the question of whether multi-touch attribution is nirvana or a rathole, this conversation gets honest about what attribution can and can't do, and where human judgment still has to lead before AI and technology can accelerate anything. Nadia also shares the findings of a comprehensive market study (2026 State of Attribution Report) conducted by Scott Brinker, the father of MarTech, and Frans Riemersma from MarTech Tribe - the two prominent MarTech gurus - on the state of attribution in 2026. If you're in demand gen, marketing ops, or leading GTM strategy, this episode is a grounded reality check on where attribution stands today.

AI Can’t Build Relationships: Rethinking Analyst Relations Amid Market Disruption

Analyst Relations has always been a relationship business; it’s not all about dot placement. In this episode, Rob sits down with Alyssa Stone to unpack what actually makes AR effective in 2026: earning analyst trust, building real executive relationships, and knowing which individual analysts truly influence buyers and sales cycles. They explore how AI is reshaping AR workflows (from research to briefing prep), where automation genuinely helps, and why AI can’t replace experience, intuition, or human connection. Alyssa also shares a candid look at the disruption hitting the analyst ecosystem itself, including declining market values and layoffs at firms like Gartner and Forrester, alongside the rising relevance of independent and second-tier analyst firms. If you lead AR, comms, product marketing, or GTM strategy, this conversation offers a grounded, real-world playbook for navigating both AI transformation and analyst market upheaval.

Product Marketing: So much responsibility, so little authority

Product marketing touches so much, from positioning and product launches to sales enablement, competitive intelligence, and analyst relations. Yet, many product marketers often feel they have little direct ownership of execution and results. In this episode of A Go-To-Market Perspective, Rob Karel sits down with Beth Barach, VP of Product Marketing at Brinqa, to explore how to build and scale a product marketing team empowered to drive meaningful results. They cover where product marketing fits in modern GTM orgs, the most common cross-functional challenges they face, what skills matter most at different company stages, and how leaders should think about building (or evolving) the function. Beth also shares how AI is reshaping her day-to-day work and what that means for product marketing teams in 2026 and beyond.

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