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1-2-3: People First GTM with Nick Bennett of Tack

1-2-3: People First GTM with Nick Bennett of Tack

1 Idea, 2 Resources, 3 Collaborators For This Week.

Jared Robin
February 17, 2024

Happy Saturday!

The Collab now has 3,900+ subscribers!

Yesterday I was able to put some collaborative growth ideas into action with a truly collaborative LinkedIn Takeover for RevGenius.

We had 100+ people post on LinkedIn excitedly for our ‘Next’ campaign featuring a soon-to-be-released curated list of emerging creators and startups in SaaS GTM.

I’ll share my early learnings in a future issue as it plays out a bit more. But, the early results are extremely encouraging.

But for this issue I wanted to sit down with a good friend, Nick Bennett.

I’ve been friends with Nick for almost 4 years now.

I’m intrigued with what Mark Kilens and he are building around ‘People-First GTM’ at Tack and had the opportunity to dive in with him for this issue.

There’s some incredibly collaborative aspects of the movement they’re creating.

Excited to share our conversation.

The Big Idea

People First GTM with Nick Bennett of Tack

I'm joined by Nick Bennett, co-founder of Tack GTM.

Jared: What is Tack?

Nick: Tack helps businesses create, capture, and convert demand into revenue by putting people at the center of every experience and interaction. So you've probably been doing people first go-to-market for a while. It's very relationship driven. It's what a lot of people talk about, but there was never a name behind it.

If you think about your local butcher shop or seafood shop, those people are very people first, or even a coffee shop is another good example, like a small, non chain coffee shop. They care about the people, they put the people at the center of everything. If you think about the company first mindset, which is where a lot of people were, it's very transactional. It's all about just going to market by yourself.

But why I think this is such a great conversation is people first is a very collaborative environment. It's about the ecosystem. It's going to market with others versus just yourself, especially in how busy today's economy and how terrible the economy is, why limit yourself or cut yourself off at your kneecaps when you can do more with others?

Jared: I love that. And you pretty much described what ‘People First’ is. Is there anything you'd add to the definition of people first?

Nick: I think the big thing is, you know, B2B go to market needs serious help. Like we're very much at a major inflection point where if you think about the brand spam, it's rampant, the quality of content has plummeted.

Channels are super crowded. Think about LinkedIn. It definitely doesn't work the way that it used to, and nothing works as well as it used to. If you think about that. So people first transitions from a company first operating model by using three channels, three types of offers in an overall partnership strategy.

So each channel is designed to create, capture, convert demand at the different stages of the customer journey. It offers a business infinite ways to create value, value, and build trust beyond like just. Kind of like the surface level stuff with your buyers and customers, then each channel becomes more efficient when you partner with others.

So each offer should ideally be crafted through a partnership with other people or businesses. And so again, partnering with people is at the heart of the model.

Jared: Can you give a real time example of a campaign or a longer strategy that maybe you've seen in the market or you've helped one of your clients do and some of the success and results around that?

Nick: We have these core principles that like to do people first, you have to do these really six things to be able to do it. And funny enough, they spell out ‘people’. It's like, alright, so the first thing is you start with the people. So how can you be collaborative and supportive and all of the campaigns that you do?

And it could be as simple as, hey, you're marketing emails. Why are you sending them from marketing at XYZ company? They're probably going into a black hole.

So you start with the ‘People’ both internally and externally.

Second piece is ‘Empathy’. How do you be kind and thoughtful in everything that you do from a

People first mindset then it brings it to ‘Originality’.

How can you be your authentic self again? Like when you're doing email from a real person. Don't just copy and paste from chat GPT or something like that. How can you write it so that it comes across as like you're being your authentic self?

And then the next one is Presence. How can you be in the moment?

How can you again, show your humanity that you are there. That you're there to learn with others.

Which brings us to the next one, ‘Learning’.

How can you be the student and the teacher? How can you educate? But how can you never stop learning on top of that?

And then the last piece is ‘Experience’. How can you be memorable?

No one signs up for an event or a webinar or whatever it is. If it's just like, Oh, you know, you're just just running the same playbook that you ran everywhere else. How do you create an experience that's memorable that it's not that it doesn't have to be. Never done before, but it's like, how can you create something that people want to go to?

They create FOMO of like, oh man, I'm gonna miss out because all, all these amazing people and this experience that this company's putting on, boom. Like, who's exemplifying that from a brand standpoint?

I think there's still a lot of education that's going around out there, we're helping a few companies with this right now.

One is in the event tech space. We've helped build them a maturity model and just kind of redefined how they go to market. Around people, and there is a LinkedIn component to it. There are webinars and experiences and all of these things. And so there's never been a maturity model that's been built in this event tech space before, and so we're helping them build the first ever that actually comes out on February 21st.

Jared: I love that. What's an easy way to start and lean into this to get some quick wins?

Nick: I think, you know, there's really like how to get started in like eight steps.

That's super simple. Anyone can do this but you have to first create your story. What do you believe in? Why do you believe in it? Again, you have to have a belief system to be able to be effective. So create your story, whatever that means for your business or yourself. You have to add a point of view to it.

Your second piece is you're talking to your ideal buyers.

Tell your story, get their feedback. Pretty simple. If you're not talking to your ideal buyers, there's obviously something bigger that is wrong.

The third piece would be to use that feedback to identify who your story resonates with. I've seen this a lot where it's like you talk to a founder and it's like, they think their ICP is something, but it's actually something else.

So again, you have to use that feedback to identify who it resonates with.

Then you define a set of principles. You add your point of view to those principles that will hopefully start to really shape that story. Once you have that story built with the principles, you build an asset. So maybe it's like an event, content, a product, something like that. It's the catalyst for distribution and audience building, ultimately.

Then you find a partner. Again, that whole partner ecosystem. The power of distribution is through collaboration. And then you build an email list. How can you create ways for people to subscribe? And maybe it's a newsletter, maybe it's a blog, maybe it's some type of gated something on your website, whatever it is, you have to then amplify your asset.

How can you create micro content from it? How can you create a short form? You have your asset and you have like all of these like eight to 10 different things that can come out to amplify that asset. Now, those are like the things.

But one thing that I want to mention is you always, always, always build an audience first, do this before you launch a new product.

Because if you launch a new product before having an audience, it's not going to be as successful. But if you have that base, then build a product. And I feel like I'm a perfect example of that. You start to see a lot more success.

2 Resources

I. People First GTM Playbook

It’s clear that we’re at a major inflection point. Brand spam is rampant, the quality of content has plummeted, channels are super crowded. Nothing works as well as it used to. Read more about the People-First GTM model.

II. How Google will use Gemini and multimodal AI to “flex its AI native muscles” in 2024 – and why it could seize Microsoft’s market lead

Google, like industry counterparts, has been playing catch-up to Microsoft in the generative AI race over the last year after being blindsided by the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. But that’s all about to change, analysts believe. Read more about it here.

3 Collaborators

I. Jane Serra

Jane is a marketing executive with 15+ years of experience leading marketing teams across demand generation, branding, events, content, and communications. She has a strong background in building out marketing teams from the ground up, working within various industries like SaaS, recruitment advertising, digital marketing, and outsourcing/ manufacturing. (follow her on LinkedIn)

II. Shannon Curran

Shannon is a business creative at heart. She love strategic and measurable storytelling that makes an impact on the business and on people. As a recovering PR person she loves the art of the well-crafted pitch and tailoring content for the end user. She’s passionate about businesses and products that are changing the way we work and live. (follow her on LinkedIn).

III. Josh Norris

Josh has worked with top SaaS companies on GTM strategy, sales development, sales team productivity, upskilling reps, forecasting and reporting, and strategic accounts. Today, Josh advises and consult for early stage startups (pre-seed to series A). He offers fractional leadership and GTM advising services. (follow him on LinkedIn)

1 Action to help the Collab Grow

Reply to this email and let us know what you’d like to see more. And a big thank you to all who made it to this point.

Until next week,

Jared