This tool will fade after the hype

Signal-based demand generation requires tracking the right data points. Nick Zeckets, Chief Fire Starter at Smoke Signals AI, brings expertise from two MarTech exits and building AI-first HubSpot programs. He identifies SEC filings as the most valuable signal for enterprise sales, revealing executive discussions about business risks, projections, and budget allocations. Executive hiring patterns at VP-level and above indicate strategic shifts and fresh budget priorities, while M&A activity creates 18-36 months of organizational change and new problem sets. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate.

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  Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

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  Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

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  If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  I'm Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Nick Zekitz, the chief firestarter at Smoke Signals AI, an AI-first HubSpot agency that helps B2B companies generate, capture and activate buying signals to measure pipeline, not vanity metrics. And today, Nick is going to share his process for redesigning demand generation from the ground up for the age of AI. What's the one AI tool or capability that everyone's hyping right now that you think is going to be completely irrelevant in 12 months?

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  Holy smokes, completely irrelevant AI tool.

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  Geez.

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  I think, I mean, I think we're living in a time where the, the answer is the tools are evolving so quickly that irrelevancy seems almost impossible to me. Um, I think rappers, I think all the rappers are dead, right?

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  Are we talking like Tupac and Biggie here?

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  Yeah, a hundred percent. They're already gone and it's really sad and I shut up here. You can see the tattoo that's here on the side.

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  I saw the PDD documentary too.

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  Yeah, it's a, wow, was that something else? The, so, so the AISDRs and the 11Xs and all those qualifies, et cetera. I, I don't see a future for them because as soon as organizations start to get comfortable with Claude code, either by hiring people who know how to do it, by reimagining how you staff a go-to-market organization, by having at least somebody who's a developer light onboard, but you really don't need one. Claude code does all that, right? Way better with way better resolution. And at some point, OpenAI is going to come up with theirs and Gemini is going to come up with theirs, right? And, and I think the competition on that front is going to get really severe over the course of the next 12 months.

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  But I think that if you're exporting your go-to-market process in full to the cold part of your market, one, I think you should stop immediately. I think it's a waste of your time today. But I think functionally, every organization is going to get to a place where they understand how to take Claude code and make it do what they thought those AISDRs were going to do for them, but actually deliver, right? And if you put that stuff on top of a major system of record like a HubSpot or Salesforce or what? I mean, Salesforce can't do any of this stuff. At least HubSpot lets you invoke Claude and OpenAI and all different LLMs in workflows,

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  right? That is an incredible unlock. And if people aren't playing with that, it's huge. But I think that if you're exporting that stuff to kind of like a boxed up tool, I think you're nuts. And I think they'll all be dead. And all the VCs that put in insane amounts of money into those tools are going to be scratching their heads in 12 to 18 months the most.

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  Hey, look, Qualified already took the cash. They already took the exit from Salesforce. And, you know, there's a large group of businesses that I think that are laggards that want to adopt AI that are not ready to actually build with AI. And I think that's what that universe of tools is for.

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  It's easy.

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  For me, I appreciate the rappers. I think that it is the hype cycle around things like Claude Bot, or I think it's Molt Bot is what they renamed it to, where there's an agent that's going to come in and can sophisticatedly run your entire computer and do everything for you. Like, that's a proof of concept that will... I'm already seeing the messages now. It's like, look, I created this thing and it can run my entire computer. And oops, it bought a Porsche for me and booked a vacation to, you know, and it's like, hey, you might not want to give it the keys to the car and your credit card right away. But I think that that goes away because more sophisticated developers and

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  companies will build that technology so it is protected for people that are using it. Like, the full agentic stack where you can just talk to your agent and it will go do things will be built out by sophisticated companies, not bootstrapped. So that's my answer.

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  I think that's right. Yeah, I think that sounds right.

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  All right. That wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks to Nick Zeckets, the chief firestarter at Smoke Signals for joining us. If you'd like to contact Nick, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com. Or you can visit his company's website. It's smokesignals.ai. And if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge and your pod Podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or subscribe on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed every week. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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  Thanks for listening to the MarTech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iHearEverything.com.