Listen more than you assert, but send the pies with Aaron Lober | People are People | Ep. 06

Well, hey everybody. Thanks for joining another episode of the Influ2 people are people podcast type thing, where we talk to the people behind the accounts. And I'm I'm excited cuz today I'm not only am I speaking to someone who's really good at marketing, it's someone I've I've known for many years and I haven't had a chance to catch up with. So, I I asked Aaron if I could just hit record and we get some of the catch up on on this episode here. So, Aaron Lober, you're the VP of marketing for Civil Grid. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Yeah, thanks for asking me to do this, Doug. And I guess shame on us for not you know, getting together sooner given we're not that far apart. And I [clears throat] don't know if I can wear that mantle of of a really talented marketer. I'd like you know, I'm going to push back on that a little bit. At least in the spirit of

what what do people say? Under promise and over deliver, I guess. >> Yeah, I think that's smart. Well, I have a hat that says marketer, so that's pretty much all I need. >> Yeah, well, look, honestly, I you've always been a great marketer. Most of my best ideas come from my wife. So, it just sort of is what it is. >> Yeah, well, I I wore it for you because I I you know, the longest time I don't consider myself a marketer cuz I've I'm you know, I'm a communications guy. But ever since you and I had met, which was at a company called Procore, you know, I was on a really big marketing team. So, I sort of got a big old bear hug from the marketers and really you know, even there is where I learned about account based marketing. And I don't know if Was that the first time you ever heard of ABM? >> Yeah, yeah, easily. And I it was also at a moment in time where ABM, I think as a concept was kind of nascent. You know, you it's like you have to squint now to

look at what Procore was really doing and think of it as mature ABM cuz in a lot of ways we were doing a lot of programmatic batch and blasting uh and it was only around the margins uh maybe for the enterprise team and within specific tight teams to support like a launch motion that we would start doing real ABM. But uh there were so many brilliant people there. You know, it's like we kind of just figured it out. >> Yeah, there were a lot of first there. I I remember they started using uh Sendoso and it was before anyone's ever even heard of Sendoso. And I would always, you know, be banging on the keyboard trying to get something out and uh I'd have someone go, "Oh, I'm sending pies to people." I go, "Get out of here with this sending pies. I'm doing real work." And then of course like a week later we realized the pies worked. They were they got meetings. I think it was really kind of neat. >> Okay okay, so I I have to say this in light of the pies, right? Those have

traveled with me post-Procore as as have actually honestly like a lot of not a lot. I wish there were more, but a few critical folks who were with us at Procore. So I just spent the last two years working with uh Bridget Carroll and now Bridget Carroll Johnson, if you remember her. >> Oh, yeah. For sure. >> So she uh she spent the last two years running demand gen for me at uh at my last company and we absolutely sent pies through Sendoso. And so she she is the queen of uh I'm going to set up delivery alerts as soon as that pie lands, we're going to start a nice conversation, ask them how they enjoyed the blueberry or the rhubarb. And like this this shouldn't work, you know? It's it's like so yeah, it's so barefaced in its like attempt to leverage your hunger or your sweet tooth for commercial gain, but it it works. >> Yeah, it well, for me it kind of just makes you go, all right, you don't know

everything. And like even though I'm just you know, I grew up in New York on Long Island, so I'm always so quick to just criticize everything. This is you know, we just we like to complain about everything. And then you go, you know what? Maybe I have no clue and maybe this this does work, but um So, how come we haven't caught up in so long? I mean, are we just too busy? What happens? I this concept of work friends to me pops in my head a lot and I have a feeling since we're all working remotely these days, you I think Civil Grid's remote, although maybe yeah, so does that have something to do to it? Are work friends gone realistically? >> Oh, that's so sad. Uh no, I hope I hope not. I look, I can tell you for me um the last 4 years since uh leaving Procore, I've spent a lot of time on the road. Um I think I think my lived reality has been uh even though we're living in a remote work paradigm, you know, the um the ask

of the person who's going to oversee the marketing function is that you be ready to hop on a plane and flex into whatever destination requires you to be there either to pitch, talk to the board, attend a show. They're just in the startup space as you're trying to build businesses, you know, I I I think our our real value is probably in our uh knowledge and and experience in the way that that translates into being able to solve problems on the fly. So, so yeah, I'm just gone. I I get sent everywhere, man. But no longer an excuse. We got to get a beer. >> Yeah, well, let's do it. Um where are you traveling to a lot? Where does um I guess you just started at Civil Grid so maybe you're not doing a lot of travel for them yet, but like is it events? Is it on sites with clients? >> Well, right now it's mostly up to San Francisco as we're standing up the team. So it's been about two and a half months. And you know, I'm going through that

motion of building up hub or HubSpot instance from scratch, integrating it with Salesforce, making sure that we have scalable reporting paradigm both for the programmatic work but also for our ABM core, getting in place tools like Influitive which I mean thank God for Helen and the rest of our CSM and implementation team. Yeah, seriously. I I I would not have tried to bite off this piece without her help specifically. Um but it's mostly San Francisco. Eventually it's going to turn into um popping all around the Southwest which is a big focus area for us right now. You know, Civil Grid's business is sort of built on the backs of enterprise in large investor owned utilities. The most important of which for us are in the electricity and gas distribution space.

So you can think like for us it's SoCal Edison, PG&E. When you get down to Texas it's like Atmos Energy, CenterPoint. Um so that's going to be a big focus for us over the next couple of months. I'm going to be spending a lot of time in Texas, some time in Arizona, basically just trying to seed the marketplace as much as possible. >> Cool. [snorts] Well, I was writing notes down before we chatted to you know, I always like to you and I kind of know each other so we can catch up and let people know more about you in a minute, but when you're starting a new role, since you're only two and a half months in or two months in, what I mean, what are you doing? Like I I like how do you approach this, you know, you come in guns a blazing and saying we're going to do this or just I'm just curious how everyone takes this on. >> Yeah. Uh well, I'm not sure how other people do it. You know, I

so this is this will be the third time I'm overseeing or the third context in which I'm overseeing the full marketing function. And at least part of the story that I tell myself is like each time I'm doing it a little bit better than than the last. Um but I think to me the key to getting a marketing function stood up is to enter with clear perspective and strategy, but to do a lot more listening than asserting of what things will be in your first 90 days. Um obviously it's important to be able to build, right? So especially in the startup space, you need to have some thrust and some velocity behind the thing that you're doing. That's where the strategy piece comes in. So, you know, I I had some real conviction around we're going to run an ABM strategy based on the inputs

you guys have given me and we're going to need these tools and these people. Um so that type of building, you know, you just got to roll up your sleeves and get into it, but uh but it's a mistake to think that every series A, series B startup is so similar that you can get away with building everything that you want to without seriously listening and hearing the real like the lived reality of the people who are already there, because that's that's going to have an impact. It's going to evolve your your strategy and your tactics. So, I think that's the thing that I've done a little bit differently this time uh is really taking the time to extract fully everything that's meaningful from my counterparts who have been in seat here and uh not just having strategy on a page, but putting something into practice that is really effective for them on day one.

Uh and I mean we're seeing that. Like I think we've been able to increase velocity of pipeline generation in my first it's really, you know, 2 2 and 1/2 months here. Um more effectively faster than when I entered uh Blameless or or Caddy for that matter. So, I don't know. I uh we're doing something right. I also I like to be mindful that I'm just a guy. Uh so, uh there are probably there's probably greater wisdom to be garnered from from other people. My my whole thing right now is just try not to trip and fall on my face. If I am going to fall, you know, fall in a forward direction and then pick myself up quickly before anybody notices. And if I can do that, I can feel good about it. >> Yeah. Well, I think you you should give yourself more credit, but are you are you hiring right now? Is this are you building a team or is that too soon to think about? >> No, definitely. So, I actually I'm most of the way through

hiring my team in this first phase. The last the last outstanding strategic head count is a product marketer, actually. And uh I've spoken to some really talented people over the last couple of weeks. I think we've got some great people in pipeline, but it's it's also funny interviewing product marketers having been a product marketer for so long in my career, uh I find myself always [snorts] feeling bad for them that they have to be on the other side of me. You know, like you could have had it easier if I was from a demand gen or comms background, but you're really getting the yeah, the the full ninth degree. >> What what are those interviews alike? Do you uh do you love designing decks? That's pretty much the main question. I'm joking. Just I know product >> Yeah. >> [laughter] >> No, you know, I do have this perspective on product marketing that it's a strategic marketing function cuz that's that's what it was at Procore, right? They they empowered us to be sort of

like the general manager for a product line. Uh and for better or worse, that crafted me as I am today. Yeah, I think very seriously about the P&L. Um I also sometimes refer to myself as like a non-linear thinker when people are having a hard time following the thread of what I'm trying to lay out for them. And I can fall back on like if you don't get it, it's cuz I have just too many pieces on the board for you to conceptualize, but you will get it. >> Yeah. >> Uh >> No, I I agree. So I for my role, I I will always lean on our product marketing team as the you know, they're the truth, right? I ask them, "Hey, can I can I say this? Is this accurate? You know, what customer what are we up to?" You know, it's like they're my go-to. Um but I still think they love putting together decks. As someone who hates presentations, there's just something where I'm like, I don't care [clears throat] if I ever get good at this or not. Uh and then some people are so good at making slides.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there are I think about the people that we were working with there. Uh And I so these two things like uh Jim Sales, and I, who was running marketing for us at the time, uh for a large window of the time that we were there together, >> Yeah. >> uh took the whole product marketing team through this process of like, we're going to really learn storytelling. And it really kind of refined the way that everyone in that group thinks about how they build a deck. Um but in the, you know, days and weeks of working on the material and bringing it to Jim to be like, "Hey, look at what we did." And and having a very talented, smart marketing leader in Jim say like, "You know, I'm glad you did that, but that's not very good." Uh and like, just getting the kicked out of us over and over again over the quality of these materials, it definitely it it bred this like healthy distaste of of having to create that material and bring it to

stakeholders, but yeah, there's no getting away from it. For the rest of the rest of my career, I will be overseeing the creation of the pitch deck. >> Yeah, I I still hang with Jim every once in a while, which is cool. And I remember, I got a ton of Jim stories, but he would always, maybe it was a polite way to tell me to redo things, he would say, "Hey, can I get a couple alternative versions? Like of like headlines or something?" And I'd go And so, now I'm in the habit of I will just create two or three headlines or, you know, if it's a a release or something, I'll go, "You pick your pick your favorite." Just cuz you know, if you send one, it's like, "Mhm, going to need a couple options." Would you Would you want to give me a couple alternatives? I thought that was great. There, I have so many people like that who I think about now as sort of like seminal in my development as a marketer. Jim, uh Betsy Zicagos, Kevin Sturm, >> Yeah. >> um I mean, it's a it's a long list, man. Two Two Quarterman, just incredible incredible CEO.

Uh a great great leader. Uh but I Do you ever worry that you sometimes in like your current state, current company, you're a little too referential back to Procore or people are like, "Oh, that's just the Procore guy." >> Yeah. Yeah. Um I do. Procore feels further back for me. I don't know why, but I'm very aware of um I don't know. I don't like to say, "Well, when I did this at this company." or "When I did this at that company." cuz you know, like we were just saying, it doesn't Not all of it translates. Like the things you did there aren't going to work here. And then yeah, I mean, we were doing different stuff then. Like I I think that what we were talking about earlier today, like ABM was the first time I ever heard of it uh at Procore and the things that were happening. And now it's the people on my team that are running our ABM, they are just I mean, they're pros. They're like the level that they're at. I was like, "Oh, jeez. You You must have known this for a

long, long time." Um but yeah, I do try to almost like evolve myself in um you know, it's like uh if if you keep referencing it, like I'm 41 years old. So, if I was talking about how I was playing baseball in high school, people are going to go, "Hey, I don't think you can talk about your high school baseball days anymore with any sort of real impact." So, that's the way I think about uh Procore and LinkedIn and other companies. It's like that was a lifetime ago. And it's not you know, what have you done for me lately, but I'm you know, the type of things I'm doing in comms right now are totally different than what I was doing at a Procore and LinkedIn. And that's just I think you evolve as a you know, a person. I'm almost like starting from zero a lot of times again. Um Yeah, how about you? >> Isn't that interesting? >> Right back at you. >> Yeah. I know I I agree completely. The marketing discipline has just transformed so much over time. Um

you know, as as it's like as the as the whole technology landscape transforms. It it would it's such a cliche to be like, "Oh, AI has made things different." I'm like, "Yeah, of course it has." But um I don't know. I I think the way that because most of my career has been spent in uh vertical SaaS in one you know, form factor or another. Um so that's also a forcing function for me and the way that I see like marketing and its role in go-to-market. Uh and the playbook for verticalized SaaS has just transformed so completely. Like the business playbook from a you know, pre uh pre-COVID era idea of blitzscaling being the the core playbook. Like Pour as much gasoline on this fire as possible to sort of capture uh as much land as you you know, in this land grab as possible. Um and we'll figure out profitability later. And you know, post-COVID and and

really the cost of capital going up, it's like that playbook is gone replaced by we want to be as capital efficient as possible. And growth has to be healthy growth. And so now lighthouse customers that are going to you know, if I can acquire uh if I can acquire fewer customers at a higher ACV, that's really where the healthy business is built. And so I to me like that shift has totally changed the way that I approach marketing. And there there are still things that haven't they haven't principally changed. You know, the way that I like to storytell is still principally the same thing. And like it evolves as I find new stories I like to tell and and new tools and new methodologies become available. But yeah, as the as the marketing leader, I think the the tactical side of things is just like it it looks nothing like what we were doing really in 2018.

Um you know, segue there into the account-based marketing of it all, right? Uh and the the thing that I love about Engagio, too, I mean, there's a lot that I love about Engagio, too, actually, but the thing that got me to first buy Engagio too was this idea that we could take engagement data and sort of intent signals down to the individual contact level, um which I I don't know if you have thought about Well, I'm sure you have cuz you you work for this company, but um trying to do account-based marketing while just remaining at the account level is this weird exercise in determining like when there may be some interest here, but I still have to go dig out a thousand contacts out of ZoomInfo and and then spray and pray. Like, it's still spray and pray. It's just with a slightly smaller aperture. And uh sales teams hate it. You know, my my

marketing team didn't love it. So, um this is another evolution, right? It's like now that I can point to Steve, the project manager for >> [snorts] >> uh Black & Veatch, uh is uh interested in saving his team time in their records research process, and uh he's bidding on a very specific RFP that was put out by PG&E. Like, that's that is golden information I can use to design something specifically for him. Um you know, like this paradigm looks almost nothing like uh it it even 2020 when we were talking about like, all right, we've got a collection of 500 companies who have Googled the right key term and now we can pull a list and hit them all with an email campaign. >> Yeah. [snorts] Well, one I mean, obviously I agree with you. I'm a company man here at Inflection, too. But one of the other things I really uh

was excited about with what the functionality allows you to do. What everyone talks about sales and marketing alignment. And like, listen, sales and marketing will always hate each other. Like It's not They will. I mean, we're all trying to do our own things and everyone's looking, you know, like every once in a while you're going to go, "Yeah, same team. That was awesome." Um but if you actually have that information like you just said, like, "Hey, Steve clicked on this ad. This ad was about this." If you're going to reach out or if you're looking for a reason to reach out, and this is now me talking to my sales counterpart. And then she's like, "Great. That's exactly what I'm going to say." Like, are we actually creating this better, you know, working relationship between the sales and marketing org? And I always, you know, I'm a very I want everyone to like each other. So, I like that idea of, "Yeah, would this be awesome if we could, you know, actually do that?" And then sales is like, "Thank you so much." Like, "Boom, like I'm on this." Um I don't know. Maybe if you're seeing that yet, but I always like that story.

>> Uh yeah. I mean, in some ways my team has done that better in these first 2 months than almost anything else. So, I've got a a very, very talented young demand gen leader in my company, Colin Brooks, who uh when he first stepped foot in the door, I think that basically the first thing he set out to build was like a individualized uh signals triggered AI personalized mix max sequences for the reps. So, so it's basically like, all right, you care about these 10 people? Well, here are all the signals if they, you know, show any one of these, we're going to use everything we know about them to write some base copy for you using Claude, basically, and feed that up to you in MixMax. You can edit it, press play. All in service of, you know, allowing reps to sort of touch more people. I That is not an easy thing to do, candidly.

Uh but uh we got it spun up pretty fast and it is making a huge difference for the rep. We're getting a lot of really positive feedback from reps on like, yeah, okay, I love that message. Thank you for for offloading this part of what is maybe like medium to low value work for me. Um but I I chuckle at the idea of like marketing and sales will always hate each other. May Maybe this is true, uh but I'm with you, you know, I I want people to be copacetic. So, so I'm constantly reinforcing the we're one team. Uh >> So, you got people you're trying to hire. Uh it's summertime. If you were trying to hire uh someone right now and they said, could you describe your marketing uh program if it was an ice cream flavor, what would it be, Aaron? >> Oh my god. What's the worst an ice cream flavor? Um >> [clears throat] >> rocky road. You know, I I think there's Yeah, there's like a there's a really ripe double entendre

there given that we're like just trying to figure that >> [laughter] >> uh >> Is it rocky road because you got a little bit of everything in there or >> It plays both ways, right? Um you know, that like the double entendre is uh and I mean, this is anchored in like my philosophy about marketing is that most things in fact don't work. Uh or at least they don't work the first time. Um not purely my philosophy, by the way. That's that's stolen That's a principle stolen from Netflix and their leadership team. But, uh most things, the first time you attempt them, are are not going to net you the return that you were looking for. So, uh you got to be prepared for a little bit of a rocky road there. >> Yeah. >> Um also, you know, we are uh piloting a brand, uh relatively new brand, in a space that uh is increasingly competitive. Um you know, what there's a lot of investment being made, both public and private, into the infrastructure space,

because I think people have started to recognize that our societal flourishing, you know, the people being able to be happy and successful in their lives is often increasingly dependent on outdated, crumbling infrastructure. So, we got to do something if we want to keep growing as a as a country or a society. So, um now that that need has been recognized, a lot of people are rushing to the space. So, that you that land grab, I think, can can be competitive and bumpy, and a lot of people running with their elbows out to the side. >> Yeah. >> Um and it is a it is a grab bag a little bit, you know. So, our our marketing plan right now uh leans pretty heavily into physical events and uh and Influitive is sort of the uh the spine of our ABM campaign program and sales enablement. But, uh but we are supplementing that with a lot of different stuff, uh because there are a lot of opportunities, you know,

there's there's the email campaign about the product launch of our uh our the relaunch of our mobile app coming up. There's the uh pending press release about our relationship with PG&E. These things look and feel very different. There's >> Yeah. >> There will be a moment in time, Doug, not so long from now where I am likely wearing uh our mascot outfit dressed as who we affectionately refer to as Digs the Dog standing out in front of PWX asking people to pause p a w s before they dig. So, you know what? We'll do a little bit of everything. >> This is great. We have to end on that. But why why did Why is the mascot a dog? Where is this from? >> Well, it's part of our corporate Yeah, it's part of our corporate DNA. So, we're a very dog-friendly culture, right? You know, we've got a mission. We're trying to do a thing, but everybody in our company is is all in on

their dogs and uh Josh Mechanic, our CEO, is no exception. So, he envisioned Digs originally as So, Josh comes from uh the utility space. He was a project manager with PG&E for 10 years. And the product itself was really built to solve kind of his most annoying pain point while doing that work, which is uh the need to do exhaustive records research before you break ground or risking striking a utility, which can have some pretty devastating consequences. So, so a dog who also likes to dig in the ground um encouraging you to pause like press press pause, but of course uh misspelled before you uh dig in an area where you shouldn't is just it was it was too too ripe a metaphor for him to pass on. And now we've got a mascot outfit, which I uh I'm trying to bring anywhere and everywhere. So, if you see photos online, it's

>> Yeah, it just happens to be your size. So, they're like, "Okay, Aaron, I guess I guess you have to be the one to wear it." >> [clears throat] >> Uh you know, I don't actually know if it's my size. That's a real cuz if it's too small, I'm going to be real Well, if it's too small to fit me, it's going to be Josh. So. Yeah, this is the nature of startups, man. You got to be You got to be ready to roll up your sleeves. >> It is. I love it. I love that you have a mascot. Good stickers for laptops and all that stuff. >> I mean, anything and everything that you could imagine, right? That's the That's the rocky road. >> Yeah, it's awesome. Aaron, thanks so much, man. I won't take up any more of your time. I appreciate you uh talking to us and joining the podcast type thing. >> Thanks for asking me to do this, man. Anytime. >> You owe me a beer. >> So,