What's one thing in your work life that you're going to double down on? And what's something in your personal life that you're doubling down on right now?

I think I'm going to double down on one-on-one conversations.

I think it has been eye-opening how many partnerships and things that I wasn't even thinking about that happened just because I had one-on-one conversation.

The whole idea of having hundreds of people won't work.

So one-on-one is what I'm going to double down

What about personal life? Something you're going to double down on your personal life?

Well, yesterday there was a conversation by Mel Robbins.

She was speaking here and she said, you know what purpose is? Purpose is not what you do.

So in two parts, what pulled you off the sidelines and why is this an execution problem, not a strategy problem?

Well, when I think about ABM was started in like what, 2014, 2015.

That's really where we started talking about it, writing about it.

Like my first book was in 2016.

And then around 2019, I wrote the second book, ABM is B2B, with the thought that, okay, people got it.

Like ABM is the way to go.

ABM is B2B.

Sanger, what do you think, compared to the old way of trying to leverage signals, how do you see this transformation?

So what's kind of your current mission for 2026 and going forward?

Yeah, I think in 2026 and beyond, just to maybe take a step back before I jump into the mission part is when we exited out of Terminus, which was like $100 million plus exit, Brian and I, Brian, my co-founder at G-Team Partners, we were like, man, we got to do something else.

We have done building companies and going through that hiring, like we had 300 plus people at Terminus.

And we were looking at like, what could we do? And we got into, well, let's just do some consulting.

We just launched the book Move.

It became a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

So we just started doing some basic consulting and then very quickly found out that we are horrible consultants.

Are they actually how are they embedded in the organization? How are they leading? How are they driving influence? How are they building relationships? Just walk me through that.

And I guess what I'm wondering about is, how can marketers do a better job of architecting trust into the overall go-to-market function, right? Not just for retention, but also for acquisition, for all aspects of how a business interacts with the public.

Yeah, I think I was talking to everyone, a lot of CEO roundtables.

And in one of the CEO roundtable, there were about $10 million, $10 to $15 million CEOs.

And every one of them was focused.

We were like, what is your top priority? And every one of them were like acquisition, acquisition, acquisition, new logo growth, like ARR, like that was the topic.

And then I asked the question around, what is your retention looks like? And the numbers were not that great.

And then I'm like, what does NRR look like? You wouldn't believe, Lee, almost, this was about 18 to 22, I think, number of CEOs together.

I think

of marketing and then you give them an opportunity to turn marketing into lead gen potentially on on linkedin for example and they're like oh that's not in my wheelhouse so one of the concerns or challenges i have that i'd love to ask you about is enterprise clients disconnected systems teams that are sort of siloed how do you bring them together and get them to work cohesively when naturally they're kind of separated especially at larger companies

Yeah.

The bigger the company, the bigger the problems, right? No doubt about it.

At the same time, I think one thing we have realized, David, is that words truly have the power of life and death.

And so one of the things we do in our advisory work, and if you look at the go-to-market operating system, I'll use one of the pillars.

There are eight pillars in it, but one of the pillars says brand and demand.

And a lot of people throw a fit when they see that.

It's so interesting.

Yeah

... a-and, and, um, um, and it was a phenomenal thing, and then I got my first, uh, job with Deloitte Consulting, and that was, that was where I learned how to present, how to talk, how to, how to work with big companies and clients.

So it was a really, really good experience, and then I take a detour and joined a startup.

And I tell you, Jeff, like the energy of building something from ground up and seeing ideas come to life.

I was a computer science major, so for me, I had no idea.

I was behind a desk, like, doing stuff, and when I saw, oh, you can put a message out there and see people change, and, and you can change people's behavior and perception.

So I fell in love with marketing, and so I said, "You know what? I'm gonna go and just learn everything about marketing." And that got my first break in marketing that led to becoming a CMO of Pardot, uh, which then got acquired, as you said, by Exact Target and then Salesforce.

Hmm.