Why do so many industrial companies still sell like it's 2005, while B2B software has built a whole cookbook of go-to-market recipes? Ed Marsh sits down with Brian C. Reed, Chief Market Officer at Corsha, to explore where tech marketing and sales meet traditional industrials. Brian has spent decades in software and cybersecurity, and now helps manufacturers secure the machines, robotics and physical AI that power modern production lines.

They cover why communities beat SEO content farms, how to tell stories that stick, what physical AI means for the plant floor (and its security risks), how AI is changing sales, and how a mid-market manufacturer should build a GTM team from scratch. Brian closes with a challenge: what if you spent 2–3% more of your capital budget on professional go-to-market instead of that next quarter-million-dollar machine?

In this episode:

• Why being part of peer communities (Pavilion, TMA, CMO Coffee Talk) makes you better at building communities for your customers
• Lessons from "unreasonable hospitality" and why service beats selling
• Harry the Hair-on-Fire, Paul the Proactive Planner, and Carla the Compliance person: three buyer personas found in almost every market
• Mapping the "communities of influence" around your ICP, and why you should join existing communities rather than build your own
• How to find worthwhile communities when engineers mostly lurk
• Information fragmentation: why the 20-page white paper is dead and snackable content wins
• Making your content GPT-friendly so AI tools recommend you
• From Duke BME/EE to CMO: learning the business side after a startup failed for lack of sales and marketing
• Storytelling as the brain's native format, with the OT ransomware story as an example
• Using AI as a writing and ideation companion without producing "AI slop"
• What physical AI is and how it will transform inspection and quality in manufacturing
• The security downside: constraints, fail-safes, and IT/OT/cloud convergence
• How AI is reshaping sales, and what makes the best salespeople (empathy, team sports, hospitality backgrounds)
• Marketing vs. sales: why you can't have a one-sided coin
• Specialization vs. full-cycle sellers, SDRs, and high-low selling
• Building a GTM team from scratch for a mid-market industrial manufacturer
• Defining go-to-market enablement: people, process, technology and content
• Why tech marketers should consider a move to industrials

Links:

• Brian C. Reed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancreed
• Corsha: https://corsha.com
• Email Brian: brian@corsha.com
• Ed Marsh Consulting: https://edmarshconsulting.com

Mentioned in this episode:

• Pavilion (and the Pavilion podcast)
• Technology Marketing Alliance (TMA)
• CMO Coffee Talk
• Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
• StoryBrand
• SANS Institute
• ICS Village at DEF CON
• Mike Holcomb (OT security educator)
• OWASP
• All Day DevOps
• Dragos
• ARM Institute
• GridRaster
• John Barrows
• April Dunford
• Podcasts: Nerd Talking Good, StoryBrand, Prof G, CMO Confidential, Hard Fork

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, share, comment and subscribe, and pass it along to someone in your industrial network who'd find these ideas useful.