Why AI Won’t Replace Teams — But Will Transform Them

Summary
In this episode, Brandon Schulte, VP of Sales and Marketing Tech at Xeris, shares insights on integrating AI into marketing, sales, and revenue operations. Discover how companies can leverage AI for measurable growth, align systems and teams, and navigate the evolving AI landscape.

Takeaways
AI and revenue operations integration
System and team alignment for AI success
Challenges and opportunities in AI adoption
Strategic AI planning for long-term growth

Soundbites
"Business moves at AI speed, not air net speed"
"AI is a catalyst for competitive advantage"
"Leverage AI as a coworker, not just a tool"

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Speed and Guest Background
03:06 The Unique Approach of Xeris in Integrating Systems
05:49 Core Challenges in Revenue Operations Today
08:16 Client Engagement and AI Strategy Development
11:19 Ideal Client Profile and Market Positioning
14:12 Challenges in AI Adoption and Future Growth
17:12 The Future of AI in Service Industries
19:45 Conclusion and Key Takeaways

Video

https://youtu.be/C0RrGNj7LSo

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome to AI Speed, the show where AI-powered companies talk about what actually works in the market right now. Business doesn't move at internet speed anymore. It moves at AI speed. And the people who figure out how to turn models into money will own the next decade. I'm Evan J. Chalfit, founder of Lux Hammer and growth partner to high-performing brands. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Brandon Chilte, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Tech at Strategic Alliances at Xeris. Brandon operates a really interesting intersection where AI marketing technology and revenue operations come together. He's helping companies not just implement tools, but actually align systems, data, and teams in a way that drives measurable growth. Brandon, thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Thanks, Evan. Excited to be here with you and have the opportunity to speak about AI and all the great things that we're doing with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Awesome. So you spent a long time working at the intersection of marketing, technology, and RevOps. What drew you into the space originally?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

So about probably 15 years ago now, read an interesting uh blog by Scott Brinker, who used to be the VP of uh ecosystems at HubSpot and went out on his own maybe about a year ago with the marketing technology group. They have a few conferences per year, and he really identified a space that was very interesting in the marketplace of someone who sat between the business side and the technology side when it came to all things applications. In my role at the time, I was working for the Gallup Corporation and we were really focused on, you know, kind of everything marketing technology, everything from our websites to our data lake where all underlying data was. We had both an e-commerce business and a uh B2B historical business around polling, analytics, strengths finder, and things like that. It really spoke to me and determined that there could be a career here as marketing and uh, you know, if you talk to the three customer touch points, sales service and marketing, in a lot of ways have as much IT spend as a CIO would today. So, really sitting on that side of the equation and figuring out solutions at that time for my existing company to figure out ways that we automate and use revenue technologies as a catalyst or comparative advantage in the marketplace. And then working with Xerous for the past six years, working with a host of businesses, a few hundred across, you know, the enterprise to mid-market to SMB space to really implement these core technologies and have them, you know, allow technology to be an advantage for them and align those people, processes, and systems. So there's new things happening every day. I get to work with a lot of wonderful partners, a lot of wonderful clients to ultimately drive value for them through their business through technology.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

That's great. So what makes Sears' approach unique when it comes to helping companies integrate marketing, sales, and data systems?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

I think one of the things that we really sets us apart being a solution implementation company, really the product we sell is our people. And then we work with great technologies, whether that be in the marketing technology space, your Adobe's, your HubSpots, your Oracles, your Salesforces, and a lot of the other ancillary products that have to be attached to those as well, whether it be ABM technologies, database technologies, other systems, webinar event, that type of things. One of the things that's unique about us is while we know all the technologies, our first and foremost goal is to work with our clients to ultimately provide successful outcomes for them. One of the things that we found over the years is that it's really important to put the right ecosystem together in order to be successful. A lot of companies will either try, like, hey, can we consolidate these tools into this platform? And sometimes that makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. The other thing you see is a lot of times maybe the buying power will be in different groups. So marketing will be doing one thing, sales will be doing something else, service will be doing something totally different. And those technologies really aren't going to align, or they're not looking to see what the upstream or downstream effects of are of their decisions, and then how to bring that picture together. So when you're looking at that complete picture of all the customer touch points, there's a lot of gaps in the process. That's where we come in to offer expertise, both is technologists that understand the tools, but also the processes and best practices to help align our customers for success. Yeah, awesome.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

So, from what you're seeing, what's the core problem companies are dealing with today when it comes to RevOps?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

So I think obviously AI in the space that you guys are in and highlighting the value of it. I think there's a disconnect between what the C-suite wants AI to be able to do for them and what the tactical users of those systems are actually able to do for it and where that need is. You've seen a lot of companies where their SaaS technology budgets are flat or even maybe a little bit down, but their AI budgets have gone up by 50, 70, 100%. And so the executive teams, like, how can we focus? How can we lean into this? And then the teams that are actually using it aren't really sure how to do it. There's a big disconnect of like they know they want to do something with it, but they don't really have a roadmap of how to get from where they're at today to where they need to be in tomorrow and how they compete. And then being able to do that at scale or the right cost. There's a lot of uncertainty around that. But that's the biggest problem I see with the folks that I'm working with. They understand that it's important and they see maybe pieces around the edges of where AI can help them, but that overarching strategy is missing. Each vendor is going to kind of have their own thought process on where that should be, coincidentally enough, that really involves leveraging their products, which is good in a lot of ways. But from a customer perspective, I think sometimes they want a third party that is unbiased to be able to cut through and help them direct based on where they're at, where they want to go, what what approach they should take, and how they go from today where they're at to where they want to be later this year to where they want to be in maybe that three to five year horizon as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Cool. Awesome. So in your role, where are you spending most of your time right now? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

So the most of my time, specifically working with clients in AI, is really doing something we call catalyst assessments, where it's going into the business, it's interviewing key stakeholders, understanding what the goals and objectives are from the leadership, all the way down to the tactical doers and really working with them to put together a plan of where they want to be. So I can give a couple examples of what we've done. We're working with an insurance company right now that uh is very stratified. Insurance is a unique business where they have multiple different contexts of customers. They have B2C users, they have B2B users that sell their policies, and they need to be able to come up with what is their strategy, both from a data architecture perspective, but then also how do they leverage leverage these tools like AI to enable their teams? So if they're looking at some of the big players on the market, they actually have a couple of them. Their marketing team uses one, their sales team uses one, their B2C team uses something else a little bit differently. So, really helping them evaluate the right approach for them and making recommendations. Um, at the process, we're we've interviewed about seven or eight key people on their executive team. We probably have seven or eight more that we're able to interview, and then we're making a pitch to their executive board here in about a month about the direction and approach and how we can get them to where they want to go. Um, we also did something very similar with a company in the healthcare industry that does a lot of remote care for their customers. So for folks that live in rural areas that can't see their doctor on a regular basis, they have wearable devices that are able to attract things like if they have hypertension or need a management to deal with diabetes, take those ratings and exhibit different health plans to be able to help themselves be healthier and live longer and thrive where they're at. We worked with them to put together an entire CX strategy that was focused on not only like bringing their tier one support in-house, but also leveraging things like AI, a global knowledge base that can work in the platforms that they use, like the EMR system that their nurses use to care for patients, but also from the customer success side to be able to leverage that information. Those are example of two situations where we got really hands-on with clients to come up with that successful AI strategy and really help them take the right approach to market and be successful long-term and use AI as a competitive advantage in their industry.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah, that can be a real advantage. So, who do you serve best? What's the ideal client profile that gets the most value from Cirus?

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yeah, I mean, I would say we do service kind of all the way up. I would say our typical client is maybe that mid-market customer. So that $100 million to billion dollars in revenue. Not to say, again, we don't have enterprise clients, we don't have clients smaller than that. Those companies where maybe they aren't, if you get to enterprise companies, normally they have somebody in charge of AI, they have somebody in charge of marketing technology, they have somebody in charge of sales enablement, they have somebody in charge of service desks. So they're able to really fund those positions if you're at an organization with a few thousand people, where those that organization with maybe, you know, that that fast growing organization with maybe 500 employees or a thousand employees that's really looking to take that next step. Some of those organizations that really, you know, drive business value, both in the marketplace, but also for investors. And then, you know, really from job creation perspective too. Like we really focus on those type of companies that bringing in a third party because they don't have the ability to have a specialized person devoted to this, or it's somebody's job is like other duties as assigned, and they're really overwhelmed. So we really come in and focus on those customers and help uh give them additional business value. And the nice thing about us, because we're technologists, we can not only give them a strategy, but we actually can help them execute on that strategy and be an extension of their team overall to generate the type of revenue, success, and outcomes that they're hoping and desiring from these different platforms that they're using.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah, definitely. So what's been your biggest challenge this year in helping companies adopt AI within their marketing and sales ecosystems?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah, I mean, I talked a little bit about it earlier, is that challenge between the disconnect connect between the exec team and then the the tactical users using it? I think you used to see this a little bit with, you know, if you go back maybe 15 or 20 years with CRM, you know, getting the sales team understanding like this is why I put all my information in there and the bigger picture, making sure people are putting information in. You saw that with marketing automation a little bit of kind of how sales and marketing work together to be able to ultimately understand that if I put something in, that means my my peer on the other team can be able to leverage that as well. So I think we're seeing the same thing with AI. So people are understanding the value of, you know, like, hey, if I have a question, I'm gonna go to Chat GBT, I'm gonna go to Gemini, um, I'm gonna go to Anthropic or something like that to be able to see that. I think what they're and then you see some things like some email add-ons or some ability, like whether in Gmail or Outlook, the hey, how can you make this message more professional or things like that? I think the piece that they're struggling with is to understand that that strategic value of AI. So it's not the tactical pieces of, oh, I can make my email prettier or I can, you know, maybe find a little bit of insight if I do that, but really understanding the strategy behind it. And then I think the other biggest thing that we've seen, one of the downsides of AI, is AI will take a lot of information in and then it will give you answers that are very sure of itself. That if they see A plus B and C, it's gonna say, well, your answer is D because of this, this, and this. And the way we'll write it is is so sure. Whereas a human might take that data and say, Hey, did was our sales volume really that high last quarter? Or did we really do that amount of that product? And so some of the things, if the data is in it wrong, AI will give you an answer that sounds like surefire, well, this is your strategy because this is this. But if one of your inputs was wrong, it's not necessarily always smart enough to say, hey, I have you haven't, you that's 300% your normal sales volume for a quarter. It just makes the inference based on what it sees, as opposed to you know, doing some of those things that humans kind of think of, like, hey, that doesn't sound right to me, or that that list that I'm sending to is way larger than it really should be because of this, that, this, and this. So, really helping companies understand that and work together with AI, AI can, you know, give a lot of value to people, but it's still that, it's still in a lot of lot of ways, it's kind of another coworker in a way. It's just it's the machine being your coworker. So understanding, like, you know, yes, it's important to allow it and leverage and give you efficiency, but you still got to kind of check that work just like you would an employee to make sure that, like, hey, are what they're giving me is exactly right. So that's another big thing and a challenge that we've seen across organizations, where I had one client recently that they had this big sales forecast come out and they'd ended up one of their data inputs was wrong and they didn't realize that until they were presenting it. Because somebody said, like, hey, are you sure that's right? Like, we haven't had that in terms of the sales volume thing. So that's where it's really important to use AI as a coworker and really have the right QA process in place in order to drive the amount of success that people want to see from AI.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Yeah, definitely. Um, and are you guys thinking about expanding into new industries or how does growth look like for you this year? Is it vertical or lateral, or what does it look like?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Yeah, so in terms of growth, I mean, we grew about 20% last year. I think our goal is to grow similarly to that um this year. So our fiscal runs July through June. So we're actually in the process of kind of forecasting for what our next fiscal year looks like. I think it will be good. I mean, obviously, there's always that macro environmental factor of what happens with you know all the craziness in the world and different things like that. But I think the good thing about our business being in SaaS technology, I think we're somewhat insulated from some of those factors, but not all of our clients are, right? So I think that's the biggest thing that that we'll see. But as far as industries that we've seen a lot of success in, we've been doing a lot of work in pharma, a lot of work in insurance. Um, some of the more highly regulated industries that want to be able to use new tools but are um somewhat um apprehensive about doing it. We've seen a lot of a lot of work in those areas. We'll we'll continue to do a lot of SaaS technology firms. We have a government arm of our business. So we work with a lot of state and local government. So I expect that to continue. I'd assume the tax base is fine. So that should continue to grow like it is and we'll we'll capture more market share. Um, and then some of the new things that we've added. So we bought the interactive media and video production company about a year ago now. So I think our hope is now that that company's kind of been absorbed in our overall infrastructure, our hope is that we see a lot of growth and a lot of cross-sergy between our different divisions. That's always an opportunity anytime you're a services company is, you know, if you bring company in a client in for, you know, product X or this practice, how do you cross-sell that into other ones? So that's something that we're really focused on this year. And if we can do that right, I think our growth will be really, really good. Plus, I think some of the the you know tailwinds like you're seeing from AI now, I think that, you know, that lends itself to be being successful from us. And we tried to make that pivot about a a year, year and a half ago, to really lean into AI with all of our partners as they're doing it as well. Uh, I know about you, Evan, but you can't go to a tech conference without the entire thing being about AI. It used to be about the product and the roadmap, and now it's you know AI 17 times before they talk about anything else. So the more we can lean into that with our partners, I think that that really helps us have a leg up, not again just against our competitors, but also to be kind of a true thought leader for our customers as we move forward.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm curious what challenges are you preparing for as AI itself evolves? Because it seems like things are changing every three months or so, there's a brand new product coming out.

unknown 16:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

So I think the unique things for our industry being a services company, and you you see this same thing in like the legal profession, um, the accounting profession with AI. Historically, our model has been based on like buildable hours, right? So when somebody says, hey, I want to implement technology X, you go through requirements, you say, okay, that's gonna be X amount of hours, this dollar rate. With AI that we use internally, that kind of changes the business model, right? Because if our folks are using AI, it means they're billing less hours, but they're still getting the overall value. So I think the biggest thing that's gonna come from our industry in the next few years is in really any services industry, like said the legal profession, you know, accounting, those type of things, consulting overall, we need to figure out how we switch to a value-based model that isn't based on hours. So we're we're leveraging what our humans are able to do or the people that we're selling, but also, you know, how does that person, when they're supercharged by AI, what does that look like? And how are we able to price for that in a way that keeps us growing and profitable while also leveraging the technologies and not getting antiquated where everything's still an hourly based model? So I think that's one thing that, you know, I think the companies like us are gonna grapple with over the next couple of years. And the ones that get that right, I think are gonna set themselves up for great future success as you know close out the the 2020s, which is crazy to say and enter the 2030s.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Absolutely. So if we were to have this conversation again in 12 months, what would you say needs to happen for you to feel like it was a big win for Zero's?

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah, so I think we need to continue expand expanding our thought leadership and ability to work with clients in the AI space across all of our divisions. So in something like service, where people have been used to AI for probably five, 10, even 15 years in some cases, like that's pretty easy to do. One of the partners we work with, they did 200 million ARR last year, which is more than a lot of the big tech companies that I mentioned, because they were able to do that right. But when you get to like security, governance, some of the development pieces and some of the things we're doing with data and analytics, I still think there's some opportunity there to realize what AI looks like. I think there's a perception that amongst software companies, but also amongst some of the customers we have, well, like in the future, are am I going to need companies that know how to do services? Because won't AI just like implement it for me and it'll be, you know, just like the old days where you downloaded a program and it's it's good to go, right? So I think being able to continue to prove our value proposition there and maybe overcome some of the ideas. I think at the executive level, you're still seeing people think that you know AI is going to replace people. But I don't necessarily know if it replaces people. I think it augments people. So as you're growing, maybe your head count doesn't have to increase as fast, but I don't think it means that you're gonna have mass layoffs, which I think is what the public at large is concerned about that, okay, AI is gonna take my job. I don't necessarily know if it's gonna take take their job, but be able to position it that it's gonna do value ads for you. So I remember back to one of the first conversations I had when I started in technology with a software architect. And, you know, his goal was like, I want to have me and my teams write code that put us out of business every two years. And I think that's where we really need to get to with AI as we figure out a way not to put ourselves out of business, but to create that next frontier of innovation for our customers. And I hope that in 12 months we talk about, we talk about like the next frontier and how we've been kind of leading that wave in terms of that and where that goes. Because it's not that the you put yourself out of a job, it's just that other things come come to be. At least that's what my experience has been, you know, working for the last 25 plus years in the market, that, you know, as things evolve, it doesn't mean that jobs go away. It just means that you're on to something else, maybe refine, and whether it's you know, marketing side, maybe it's better segmentation, maybe it's you know, better nurture campaigns, it's more personalized. So, like, how do we kind of get that next wave and grow with the software companies we work with and our customers to set them up for long-term success? So I don't know if that's exactly what you're looking for, but I think that's the vision that that I have. And the vision of where we're trying to go with Xeris is, you know, really be that partner with our company, uh, our customers every step of the way to get to where they're a leader in their industry, and it's because of the strategy that we've helped them develop.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Absolutely. Well, that's it for today's episode of AI Speed. A huge thank you to Brandon for sharing his insights into how companies can align marketing, sales, and AI to drive real business outcomes. If you're building or leading an AI native company or service business that uses AI under the hood and you care about revenue, adoption, and market share, make sure to subscribe to AI Speed. Thanks for listening. Until next time, keep building, keep selling, and keep moving at AI speed.