I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin

Remember when marketing was about gut feelings and Rolodexes? Those days are long gone, replaced first by data-driven automation and now by something even more transformative: AI-powered buying agents.

The marketing landscape is broken. Pipelines are down, sales math doesn't work, and marketing channels are saturated beyond effectiveness.

In this eye-opening conversation with tech industry veteran and founder of Zeer.ai, Santosh Sharan, we explore how AI agents may soon become the buyer's first move in the discovery process.

What happens when your prospective customers deploy AI to evaluate options before humans ever enter the conversation? When your carefully crafted pitch lands in front of an algorithm instead of a decision-maker? This isn't science fiction. It's happening now, and it's reshaping everything we know about marketing and sales.

Santosh explains how the democratization of marketing tools has created unprecedented noise, leading to buyer withdrawal from traditional engagement models. The future belongs to marketers who can build trust at scale and optimize for both human and algorithmic evaluation. As Santosh puts it, "Trust cannot be copied," making it the ultimate differentiator in an age of feature parity.

The most fascinating revelation? The emergence of agent-to-agent commerce, where AI intermediaries continuously search, evaluate, and negotiate on behalf of both buyers and vendors. This creates entirely new channels for discovery beyond traditional search and social platforms.

This episode is essential listening for any marketer struggling with rising customer acquisition costs, diminishing returns on outreach, or the challenge of standing out in crowded marketplaces. The future of marketing isn't about better automation—it's about rethinking the entire model of how buyers discover, evaluate, and engage with sellers.

🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.

New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing.

Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel.

👉 Subscribe, share, and connect with us at www.mightyandtrue.com

📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com

🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes.

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I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin

The traditional B2B marketing playbook is crumbling before our eyes. Forms, cold calls, and digital ads aren't delivering like they once did – and marketers are scrambling to adapt to a new reality where trust, authenticity, and human connection reign supreme.

Elaine Zelby, founder of AI-powered marketing platform Tofu, brings an electrifying perspective to this seismic shift in go-to-market strategy. With her unique background spanning biomechanical engineering, marketing leadership, and venture capital, Elaine breaks down the perfect storm reshaping how B2B buyers make decisions today.

Three powerful forces are converging: macroeconomic pressures pushing companies upmarket, demographic shifts as millennials and Gen Z take buying positions, and technological disruption from AI that's both enabling creativity and drowning channels in spam. The result? A marketplace where your buyers are starting their journeys in small, trusted circles – not by clicking your ads.

What's working now? In-person events are experiencing a renaissance. Niche influencers with genuine expertise are thriving. Direct mail is back. Most importantly, authentic human connections within small peer communities are becoming the cornerstone of buying decisions. As Elaine puts it, "In-person is the antidote to digital distrust."

This episode isn't just theoretical – Elaine delivers tactical insights on building influence authentically, creating content that genuinely resonates, and leveraging AI as a force multiplier for human creativity rather than a replacement for it. Her philosophy? "The humans need to be the creatives. What is our messaging? Our positioning? People buy emotionally, and good marketing connects at an emotional level."

Whether you're a CMO rethinking your entire go-to-market strategy or a practitioner looking to enhance your daily impact, this conversation will reshape how you think about connecting with today's B2B buyers. Get ready to take notes – this is marketing wisdom you can't afford to miss.

🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.

New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing.

Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel.

👉 Subscribe, share, and connect with us at www.mightyandtrue.com

📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com

🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes.

📰 Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at: Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at: https://kevinkerner.substack.com/

📰 Want more tech marketing insights? Subscribe to the Drag & Drop newsletter for fresh thinking, real talk, and tools that make your job easier.

www.mightyandtrue.com

I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin

What if playing it safe is actually the riskiest marketing strategy of all? That's the provocative premise at the heart of my conversation with Udi Ledergor, former CMO and current Chief Evangelist at Gong, who shares the breakthrough strategies from his bestselling book "Courageous Marketing."

Udi reveals the counterintuitive truth that most marketers discover too late: following "best practices" (which he calls "boring practices") only delivers ordinary results. When you're competing for attention in crowded markets, ordinary is a death sentence. But there's an alternative approach that doesn't require massive budgets – just the courage to stand out.

From his journey taking Gong from startup to category leader, Udi shares tactical frameworks you can implement immediately. His "Punch Above Your Weight" strategy demonstrates how he created campaigns that appeared to cost millions while spending a fraction of that amount. Times Square billboards for hundreds of dollars? Super Bowl commercials for under $300,000? Udi breaks down exactly how he did it, and how you can too.

Perhaps most valuable is his insight on creating the psychological safety that marketing teams need to take creative risks. Drawing from research by Adam Grant and others, he explains how to balance creative experimentation with what he calls "process accountability" – ensuring all creative efforts align with business objectives.

For marketers drowning in a sea of sameness, Udi offers practical advice on carving out budget for experiments (he recommends 5-10% specifically for marketing tests), gaining leadership buy-in, and using customer conversation data to generate unique marketing insights. The content series "Gong Labs" is a perfect example – transforming pattern recognition from sales conversations into genuinely useful content that helped build an audience of nearly 300,000 LinkedIn followers.

As we navigate the AI era, Udi cautions against using technology merely to accelerate mediocrity. The truly human elements – surprising insights, unexpected angles, and genuine connection – remain the essence of breakthrough marketing.

Ready to take the boring out of B2B? Listen now and discover how to create marketing that doesn't just perform well, but stands out, sparks conversation, and drives extraordinary business results.

🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.

New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing.

Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel.

👉 Subscribe, share, and connect with us at www.mightyandtrue.com

📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com

🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes.

📰 Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at: Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at: https://kevinkerner.substack.com/

📰 Want more tech marketing insights? Subscribe to the Drag & Drop newsletter for fresh thinking, real talk, and tools that make your job easier.

www.mightyandtrue.com