Sheel Gupta

Franco Caporale:

Hello, and welcome to new episode on the DemandGen Club Podcast. I'm your host, Franco Caporale. Our guest today is Sheel Gupta, VP of Marketing at Verse. Verse is the leading AI-powered lead conversion platform that helps companies engage and convert inbound leads into qualified sales-ready opportunities. The company has raised over $70 million of venture capital fundings and it's headquartered in San Diego, California.

Sheel is a result-driven marketing leader with a background in building revenue-generating infrastructures and teams from the ground up. She's passionate about sales and marketing alignment and in transforming the marketing organization into a revenue-generating machine. Prior to Verse, Sheel was the Chief Growth Officer at HumbleDot, where she joined as their first marketing hire. And before that, she led marketing and demand generation at CrowdFlower and Quantcast. So I'm really happy to welcome today, Sheel Gupta, VP of Marketing at Verse.

Franco Caporale:

Sheel, it's absolutely great to have you on the show today. Thanks again for joining us.

Sheel Gupta:

Thanks Franco for having me. It's really great to be here and it's good to be in touch with you again.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah, we've been knowing each other for a few years now, since you were at Quantcast.

Sheel Gupta:

Yeah.

Franco Caporale:

Tell us a little bit about your story. What were your previous roles, what companies, what were you in charge of and what are you doing today?

Sheel Gupta:

Sure. Well, after I graduated from Cal, I pursued acting for five years, but that's irrelevant to this. Then in 2008, I got back into tech and I joined a company called Ketera. And there, I basically did marketing operations. And so I implemented Marketo. I was actually one of Marketo's first customers. It was when they were just getting off the ground. And I did that for a few years. And then after that I actually joined Marketo itself, and that was a really great opportunity because at that time they were the thought leaders in demand generation. They were driving 80% of revenue from marketing. That was unheard of at the time. And everyone went to Marketo to learn how to be better marketers.

Sheel Gupta:

So to be a part of that demand generation team, it was a really great learning experience and I was basically responsible for the top of the funnel there. So lead generation, negotiating with vendors all day, picking the lead gen programs, evaluating them. And then from there I got the opportunity to join Quantcast and I was brought in to build out their global demand gen team. So I had a team in San Francisco that was responsible for the Americas, and I had a team in Dublin, responsible for EMEA. We did a great job. We got to the point where we were able to build a predictable growth model, drive millions in revenue. And yeah, that's what I did there. And then after that, I was a VP of marketing at CrowdFlower. And then most recently, I was the Chief Growth Officer at HumbleDot, which was an early stage startup. And I just started a new job. I'm at Verse and I'm the VP of Marketing here and I am on week three.

Franco Caporale:

Wow. So brand new at the company. Tell us, how's your team there and what are your responsibility at Verse?

Sheel Gupta:

Well, we have a pretty small team. There is four of us, including myself, and the team has been primarily focused on inbound. So doing a lot of content marketing, a lot of social media, and then also a lot of digital ads. And mainly because the market that we were going after was high volume, lower price point, and the strategy that they were using was really good. But as we're looking to move up market and enter into new verticals that are going to have a little bit more of an enterprise play, we are going to rethink how we do marketing.

Franco Caporale:

And so now you are looking to expand also like mid-market enterprise segments for the company. So what kind of strategy do you have in mind or are you looking to apply and what is the team that will help you do that? Like what kind of roles are you be looking to institute to support that?

Sheel Gupta:

We're going to continue to have the inbound model, because for some of our verticals, we do have a strong mid market. And I do think that the inbound model, the content strategy is actually pretty good for that market. But one of the things that we haven't done as a company is ABM, and as we start to move upstream, I think it's going to be more of a sales-driven approach and having ABM support the sales team.

Franco Caporale:

How big is the sales team today at Verse?

Sheel Gupta:

Oh God, I'm not sure. I think it's about 10 to 15. I'm probably off. Something like that.

Franco Caporale:

Okay. So it's pretty sizable team. And so are they currently set up from an account base or are they divided by target accounts or are they looking still in the territories but trying to move into more this ABM approach? How are you going to sync with them to implement your strategy?

Sheel Gupta:

I think the whole company is actually going through a transition right now. We've been selling to real estate and mortgage companies. We've had a lot of success there. So we have some AEs that are going to remain focused on that. And then we have some AEs that have been going into solar, and I think we're breaking that up between the mid market and the enterprise market right now. And then as we go into new verticals, we're going to be adding more and more AEs, but I do think right now it's in the process of a restructuring.

Franco Caporale:

And so how are you planning to combine this inbound strategy and approach that is currently the predominant one at Verse.io with this new ABM type of strategy? How the two things will play together?

Sheel Gupta:

Well, I think with the real estate and mortgage market, there is a really big mid market. So we're going to continue to do that while at the same time going after some target accounts with ABM. When it comes to solar, I believe it's going to be mostly ABM because it's either they're really, really small and we can't work with them, or they're really big and it has to be a little bit more of an enterprise approach. And then when it comes to the other verticals, we'll see.

Sheel Gupta:

I almost think of every vertical having its own funnel, but also I do think that as we try to explore new verticals and see which ones do well with our product, I may take a little bit more of casting the wide net approach. And just going after marketers who have a bunch of leads, who want the leads qualified for sales, basically anyone with a lot of leads can use their product and benefit from it. So maybe casting that wide net and see which customers do well with us so we know which verticals to go into next. And then once we do decide on those verticals, if it looks like it's mainly an enterprise play, then we'll stick with ABM. If it's a mid-market play, we'll do a combination of the two.

Franco Caporale:

What is ABM for you? Different companies doing many different ways. And some companies, they might set up a whole team just to go after one account like. I don't know. After Google or ABM. And then others, they do more like vertical type of ABM where they create sub-segments of accounts. What is your ABM philosophy?

Sheel Gupta:

Yeah. If we use the solar as an example, as one of the verticals that we're going after, we might say, "Okay, this quarter, we're going after two, 300 accounts." And then I would tier them. The big strategic accounts that we really want to nail, they would be like a tier one account where we might invest a little bit more into them. And then the tier two.... So, tier one might be more direct mail, sending them gifts... I don't know, having some virtual wine tasting. I haven't come up with what we're going to do yet, but it's going to be a little bit more of an investment. And then tier two is going to be maybe some direct mail, like send flyers and then also have a digital strategy, have like LinkedIn ads where we're targeting them directly. And then maybe tier three, be a little bit more of ads and email marketing. So kind of breaking it down like that.

Sheel Gupta:

And then if it looks like we're going to enter to a market that is going to be primarily ABM and almost no inbound, that's when I might consider making the 2,000 accounts that we're going after and then just doing it primarily digitally. So I haven't quite figured it out yet, but that's the way I'm thinking about it.

Franco Caporale:

And you guys go after a lot of different verticals, so you're going to have to manage the same process in parallel for multiple types of companies. Right?

Sheel Gupta:

Right, right. So it's a little complicated, but also fun.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah, sounds like fun for sure.

Franco Caporale:

Obviously, ABM means aligning whatever you're doing with your sales team and their structure and their processes. So how do you work today with a sales team and what's your relationship with them?

Sheel Gupta:

Well, again, I'm brand new to this company, but I have been working hand in hand with the VP of sales. I think whenever you're entering into a new vertical or even starting a company from scratch, if you think about the traditional funnel with brand and buzz being on the far left and then regeneration and in the middle it's database marketing, and then at the end, it's closing the deals. The way I think about building out marketing is the whole point is to help sales. And so starting with the bottom of the funnel and making sure sales has everything they need to be able to close more deals. So all the sales enablement piece like pitch decks, case studies, proposal templates, just anything that they need, or even like messaging and positioning competitive analysis, the strategic piece, just giving them whatever they need so they can close more deals.

Sheel Gupta:

Then the second step is making them more efficient. And that is by providing them leads so they could focus on closing more.

Sheel Gupta:

And so one of the great things about ABM versus say inbound, inbound takes a really long time to build out before you could actually recognize revenue. Whereas ABM is something that's pretty quick. You can start running the campaigns and you could start helping them immediately. And so while building out sales enablement and ABM, that's when I'm also going to be building out all the lead gen stuff, working on SEO, all the things that take a longer time to build out. So that way we could have quick wins, but still be setting up for the longterm for the hypergrowth.

Sheel Gupta:

I guess, my relationship with sales is usually pretty good because I go in with the intention of helping them.

Franco Caporale:

That makes sense. Do you guys share KPIs of goals or you have your own numbers and sales obviously has revenue as their own numbers?

Sheel Gupta:

I think once marketing is doing what it's... I think at the beginning, tying marketing to revenue, it doesn't make as much sense. But I think once you've matured in a market and you're actually working hand in hand with sales and marketing is driving a large percentage of the revenue, I do think that marketing should be tied to revenue. And not just from the... I don't believe that it should only be what leads they generated because it kind of gets marketers to not focus on the things that matter for the business. At the end of the day, you're just supposed to be helping sales drive their revenue. So if all you're focused on is what marketing contributed in terms of revenue, then you might not do all the other things that are necessary to help sales to hit their goals. So once a marketing team is a little bit more mature, I actually feel that their goal should be tied to revenue.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah. That makes sense. Especially it avoids also some useless type of discussion about who sourced what opportunity..

Sheel Gupta:

Oh my God. I feel like so many marketing teams waste so much time proving that certain things came from marketing and that doesn't really help anybody. So, it's best not to set the goals that way.

Franco Caporale:

I 100% agree.

Franco Caporale:

Obviously we talked about at the top of the funnel, you talked about the bottom of the funnel with the sales enablement and helping them closing those deals faster. Let's talk about the middle of the funnel, which is usually the most critical part for everyone. And is when the leads are handed off to sales or SDR, both coming from inbound or from an ABM type of play. How do you manage that aspect? And first of all, do you think the SDR should report into marketing or sales or what's your philosophy there?

Sheel Gupta:

Okay. Maybe I'll start with whether the SDR should be reporting into marketing or sales. And it's so funny that we're talking about this again, because do you remember when you did that panel years ago and we had the same debate?

Franco Caporale:

Absolutely, yeah. That got pretty heated too.

Sheel Gupta:

Yeah. It's funny, I was the only marketer up there who thought SDR should report into sales, but since then, actually my mind has changed and it's a little bit more nuanced now. I think with everything, it depends. I think in the best case scenario is outbound SDR reporting to sales, inbound SDRs reporting to marketing. Because when you think about sales, it's kind of an art and a science. And I think the art is more with the outbound SDRs and the science is more with the inbound SDRs. I almost think about inbound SDRs as an extension of automation. And so when marketing is bringing in these leads, it's good for the inbound SDR team to report into marketing because marketing is constantly looking at every step of the funnel and figuring out how to optimize it and doing A/B testing throughout every step of the funnel. And the inbound SDR should be a part of that A/B testing. So they should have a very rigid process and they could try different things so you can figure out how to best optimize that funnel.

Sheel Gupta:

Now, outbound SDRs are the ones that act more like salespeople, where they have these targeted accounts, and then they creatively try to figure out how to break into those accounts. I do think having inbound reporting into marketing and outbound reporting into sales is actually really, really great for career progression. I think one of the reasons why I never agreed to SDRs reporting into marketing is because a lot of them get staffing in SDR forever and they don't actually get to be AEs. But I realize that if you work closely with sales, you could have SDRs come in as inbound SDRs and maybe do that for six months. And then after they've done that, they graduate to being an outbound SDR for six months. Those are two very different jobs, and both of those are actually really important to learn to become a good AE.

Sheel Gupta:

And then after six months of doing both of those, six months of doing inbound and six months of doing outbound, that's when you graduate to become an AE. And if you can set up a system like that, I think it's really great because then you eventually become a company that is full of salespeople who understand marketing and have been trained really well and have been able to start as an SDR and then become an AE and see their career grow at that company. So I think that would be the best of both worlds.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah. This is a great point of view, but I also want to play devil's advocate because I see this played out a few times where a company starts with an inbound SDR, but then what happens? There are not enough inbound leads. And so they either now have the choice to start doing some outbound or what do they do? So for those companies that don't have like an enormous volume of inbound leads, how would you approach the same scenario?

Sheel Gupta:

Well, yeah, I don't think you should have full-time inbound SDRs unless you have the lead volume. So when it goes back to how I would build out sales and marketing, I would say when you're running ABM, you could be doing that with outbound SDRs. And while you're doing that, you're testing out lead generation campaigns and figuring out what's driving the highly qualified leads and you're doing database marketing and you're figuring out that whole piece of the funnel. And during that time, when you're testing everything out, you can have the outbound SDRs follow up with these leads. But once you get to a point where there is enough leads to have a full-time inbound SDR, that's when you hire that full-time inbound SDR, and then you continue to grow from there.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah. That makes sense. That's for the companies. Obviously they have a hybrid model of inbound plus outbound.

Sheel Gupta:

Yeah. And I don't think it's good to have hybrid, but I do think it's good just at the beginning while you're getting it set up to have that hybrid, but in a... Again, you're a little bit more mature in the market, you're a little bit more built out sales and marketing wise. I do think it should be two separate roles.

Franco Caporale:

Perfect.

Franco Caporale:

And so I want to talk to us about one critical part of that whole system, which is the lead handoff. Is there any best practice there that would help, because I see many times leads either get lost or they're not followed up on time, they're not followed up properly. How can you ensure that the system works well so that when you generate very precious and expensive leads, both in ABM or inbound, they get followed up properly?

Sheel Gupta:

Well, okay, I wasn't planning on doing this, but I'm going to do a little plug now for my company because that's actually one of the things that we're solving for. Is as soon as a lead comes in, whether it's in the middle of the night or a weekend, what our product does is we immediately engage with them with a combination of machine learning and humans in the loop. And it allows us to interact with them immediately and qualify them immediately for the sales team. So I know for us, we actually haven't started using our product for ourselves, but that is something that we're going to start doing. And it's specifically to solve for this problem that you just asked.

Franco Caporale:

So you think AI is the key to solve kind of quick and immediate follow up of any lead.

Sheel Gupta:

Yeah, but I think it's got to be done well because people don't like talking to robots. Like when you want to make an appointment, when you're talking to Verizon, you don't want to get stuck talking to a bot. You want to talk to a real person. So I think the key is being able to do it in a way where some of the basics are done with a robot, but having a human ready to go. So as soon as a conversation gets a little bit more complicated, there is a person there, as opposed to 100% depending on AI or ML.

Franco Caporale:

And for ABM, obviously it's different because we're not talking necessarily about leads, it's more like account engagement. Do you measure that differently? Leads, you have the regular MQL, SAL, SQL and all of that funnel. For ABM, is at the account level. So how do you track those things or how do you handle the handoff process in ABM?

Sheel Gupta:

Well, I have not quite figured out how I'm going to do it here. My thought is... And you're the expert here. So I'd like to hear what you think about my thinking. Is I would like to get the list of accounts that the AEs want to go after in advance, maybe like a month in advance. And then what I was planning on doing is getting the leads warmed up. So first off, coming up with a strategy who we need to be going after, and then start targeting them on LinkedIn, where you could target them based on company and job title and getting them warmed up, having the direct mail ready to go. And so when the AEs are ready to start selling to them, they're already warmed up through the ads, they have received something in the mail, and that's how sales and marketing can work together to close deals.

Sheel Gupta:

Now, going back to the whole thing, did marketing really have an effect or not? That's not really something I'm going to worry myself with. I think it's just going to be something where we work together to close these deals. How we measure it, I don't know. I haven't figured that out yet. And whether we should even measure it, I don't know.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah, definitely I don't want get too stuck into that because you want to know what part of your budget is driving results, but not getting stuck into... Definitely no. Ego contest between marketing and sales, definitely, definitely no.

Sheel Gupta:

Right.

Franco Caporale:

What I do recommend is to get the definition really clear of what do you define as an account to be engaged or an account to be an opportunity, because for leads it's easier to score, but accounts, you might have a meeting with a director of a large company. Does that mean that that account is warm? Not always, right?

Sheel Gupta:

Right, right.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah. So getting those definition is definitely what I would recommend and it's definitely different than the inbound.

Franco Caporale:

One last question I would like to ask you is what is top of mind for you now? You obviously just joined recently this new company. What is keeping you awake? What is top of mind that you need to solve quickly?

Sheel Gupta:

Well, I think what's keeping me up right now is making sure that we're entering into verticals that will allow for hyper growth and have a big enough market to where we could still be capturing the market five years from now. And so I think at this point, the high-level strategy is something that I'm thinking about a lot. When it comes to the execution, I feel pretty confident that we'll be able to execute on it.

Franco Caporale:

And so, very, very last question. What's going to be key in 2021 from a B2B marketing perspective and from your perspective?

Sheel Gupta:

Well, we're thinking about 2021 as a foundational year and 2022 as more of a hyper-growth year. So 2021 is figuring out who we're going after, how we can go after them, what works, what doesn't work, getting sales to be 100% dependent on marketing. Like whether it be ABM or inbound, marketing is really helping drive the revenue. And once we get there, that's when we could... When we know we're getting our marketing dollars worth, that's when we're going to in 2022 to start spending and really grow fast.

Franco Caporale:

Awesome. Sheel, this has been a real pleasure, really enjoyed the conversation. So thanks again for joining us.

Sheel Gupta:

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it Franco.

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