The Trust-First Revenue Playbook : Stop selling. Start advocating. Trust as the real KPI in long enterprise sales cycles.

Hi everybody, welcome back to Rethink Revenue podcast. I am your host, Arjun Pillai, co-founder and CEO of Docet. Today I am super excited. Our guest is Lack Gobi Shetty. He has been a star lobby evangelist and investor in several startups. And he has been a public speaker on several macro trends. And we have been trying to get him on this podcast for a long time, not that he didn't say yes. We were kind of figuring out the right time and making sure we have the right topics. We requested him to take some time to speak about the latest trends and topics around what is happening in the world of AI, go to market revenue, things like that. He brings more than 30 years of experience in leading digital transformation across public and commercial sectors as well. He has been a leadership role that Accenture IBM, PWC, HCL, he is currently the CEO of Infosys Public Services. If you don't know what that is, that is the North American Public sector arm of Infosys. With that, Lack, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. - Thank you, Arjun. It's privileged to be here. You have a great success background. So I'm really looking forward to learning through our conversation and great to be on this platform. Thank you for extending the invite. - Of course, yeah, you're being very kind. I appreciate it. And specifically today, like we wanted to kind of start, you talked to a lot of enterprise sellers. And today, 2025, the selling and buying and Vionmal has changed quite a bit. What are you seeing? What are some of the changes that you are seeing? And how are the people around you, the companies that you're advised, or the people where places you have invested? How are they navigating this complex buying environments? - The topic itself is so vast actually, it's always difficult to see where do you start with. - And I know this topic was picked up as a revenue and a selling kind of a context the way you set it up. I actually will flip, start with a buying concept, a buyer concept first. I always felt that that's something which started with that, but then it moved significantly to the selling side of the equation. I said, okay, let's look at the buying side of the equation. What happened? How buyer behaviors have changed? Buyer, demographics have changed. Buyer positions have changed. What their buying has changed? Why their buying has changed? So obviously when their buying has changed. And this is when I say changed, and when you're picking up, it's a time horizon, right? Is it, how is it different between a five years back to now? How is it difference to 20 years back to now? And also the question of which industry we are talking about. Is it a tech product? Is it an FMCG product? Is it a defense products, right? Our products are services. I think that ecosystem is what I always say is to understand that first and talk about it. Then selling is in a way kind of a second in nature to the buyer, we mindset. And in the current scheme of things where the, I mean, you live in that world, or the Silicon Valley world, the freemium, prosumer, the new terms, which keeps coming about, you know, you give everything for free and back and you monetize the value, the value chains are different at a consumption layer to an innovation layer to a production layer. The, what are they buying and how are they buying that changes to even in enterprise, clear, right? So tech products are also moved into a services model and a subscription model. So my view is, it's two sections for me. There is an entire buying construct to be understood on a continuous basis. Then the second is about the selling construct, which is acting to see what we need to cater to. And third is the medium of what are we buying, what are we selling? That's the way I decouple. Of course, there is a fourth element, like, you know, kind of four to five, four steps or anything, which we speak about, what is the environment we are in? - Yeah. - Whether it's a regulatory or policy making or a tax complexity or what not, right? Which are, so for me, these four modulates how these behaviors both sellers and buyers and the products and services, you know, make that shift. - Understood. And when you think about these different constructs that we are talking about, it's very difficult to find something that holds across every aspect of the buying and selling cycle. But what are some of the, let's say, proven strategies that you are starting to see the GTM teams adopt today? Or is that also very diverse that you see? And we can even pick a sector, right? We can pick an industry like tech. A lot of my audience is actually tech. So maybe, you know, we can kind of say that, okay, it's tech. We can say that, let's say, it's somewhere between mid-market buying to like enterprise by just to, you know, help you, because your per view is also very big. So if that helps you to bring it down into something that we can talk more details about, then, I guess that'll be a good place for us to talk about. - No, absolutely. I think that's fair and it's appropriate to talk about tech itself, which is also good to know how much actually the changes which has happened. As much change did not happen in the FMCG product or so, but the tech is significantly shifted, right? So yes, there are standards, which I personally believe there are standards in certain formats, in specifically last decade or two or so. There is also diversification which has happened. So I kind of give everything I look at it as a spectrum, based on where we are catering to. So I'll give you a spectrum and then go into a specific way. So at the highest level of spectrum, the buyer and seller, or at least the buyer, seller could be an, you know, these days, agentic AI specter. Buyer is a human being. That's a common denominator in my mind, right? So there is a behavior, there is a human element to it, there is a decision making process, there is a, you know, Maslow's IRRK about needs, wants, desires and whatnot. And if you take in the tech world, you talk about discussion with spend versus a run spend and operational spend versus transformational spend, all those pieces, right? But I still feel there is a fundamentally, there is the final decision maker, both on a consumption and buyer perspective is a human being. That's a common denominator. Yes. So first is, I look at demographics. Who are your buyers segment? I mean, the one's services like docket could be selling into a different demographics versus selling, you know, ERP packages could be different, you know, even enterprise or otherwise, when I say demographics, you're selling it to a different classification of your customer segments, by age, by maturity, by enterprise size, by the scale, by what not, right? So that's a very important classification and that classification stands as a standard today. I mean, it's there, it's been there that way, it will continue to be there because that's how the behaviors are going to be different. The shift is about how are they buying, right? Earlier, they were probably in the tech space, they were buying skews or they were buying people in a TNM construct or a fixed price construct or they were buying packages for, you know, then these skews will come at this kind of license price. That is shifted into a subscription price today, which is, you know, pay as you go model. Same thing happened on the services site, so I'm running a parallel on product and a service in the tech space, right? And some in the product space is coming with, okay, I don't charge you anything, but I know how to make, how to create value at the back end, right? So that's a different behavior which you are selling into because then you're creating a demand rather than serving a demand. I consider like over kind of models that have probably not serving the demand, they created a demand or Airbnb models, right? Purely by tech, that the significant shift again is earlier tech used to be a support engine for sales lifecycle or, you know, or any industry. Today tech has become core. So earlier a buyer used to buy a tech on a supporting an enterprise function. So the buyer mindset and objectives were different. Today buyer mindset and objectives are different when they're consuming tech because that has become core to their enterprise value. So the decision making process, whether it's an IT organization buying or a business guys buying into it, if you remember the core versus context language, which used to be there about 10 years back and technology was always in the context, not so much in core. Today tech is the core and the context. So I'm saying is these shifts which has happened, helps to people to understand, as need to demand people to understand how the buyer behaviors have changed. Why are they buying? What are they buying? Hence when are they buying? Hence you are selling mechanisms across the value chain, whether you look at outreach programs to your leads, scoring to a qualification dimension to a sales lifecycle, all of that shifts because of the buyer behavior is a leading indicator. - Understood. And so one of the things that people struggle when we talk about, especially my folks who are listening, they are always thinking about selling to enterprises. That is where a lot of the things that you mention, whether it is a demographic, the need, the way in which they figure out the ROI, all of that is very, very different than diverse. And the sales cycles tend to be super, super long there. So when you think, about a sales cycle and when it's a long sales cycle, how do you keep the everything that you mentioned about the buyer at the center and still you as a seller need to figure out a way to reduce the sales cycle? Are there things that you have successfully executed in the past or the advices that you give to kind of focus on reduction of the sales cycle with enterprises? Because I speak to founders who are like it's 18 months trying to is a land avail and that's like in 18 months I don't know if my company will be there. Yeah I mean you mentioned few attributes there right? A whale hunting is it if you know it is that life cycle. Somebody is investing or making a decision of a hundred million dollar spend or a fifty million dollar spend needs to go through that consensus management or a convincing management or the decision process versus somebody buying a hundred thousand dollars. So one that the size certainly matters. But second is you know and I'll make it more of a current comment right? Today I don't even I don't even want to call as sellers as a sellers today in today's paradigm. I want to shift from selling more to a advocacy mode. Customer success mode because earlier when they were buying and again I'm staying with a tech today they were when you were doing a skew selling skew selling they were selling in the product and they make that incentive and they're gone. Today in the kind of a subscription mode across almost all tech is in subscription serverization mode right? You are making your incentive or your reward as the consumption continues which means you are staying with the customer through the success of that life cycle versus just a selling. Hence I consciously think all enterprises have to shift forcefully or voluntarily to a customer success dimension or advocacy dimension and a convincing dimension versus a selling dimension. So I'm changing the few words to get a empathy is about it is no more about selling a product. It is about convincing the stakeholder to consume your product and two different things. Yeah and in those cases would you in your world when you look at some of these companies trying to land a big company would you focus on like driving the sales cycle long and try to land like the biggest deal possible or would you think hey land get in the door even if the deal size is slightly lower that's fine do the customer advocacy and then you can grow and upsell and cross sell would you go with the yeah. It's a it's an important question which people debate about a lot and in my lens it is not one versus other again it's a strategic direction for each organization based on what platform you're running into. My my thesis is always been run parallel tracks. You go the the small fish entries the land and expand model traditional consulting structure, well hunting is traditional large deals structures which you go through and why would you ignore the mid size of approach studies. So my always approach is if you can run right amount of resource balancing run all parallel tracks. The fundamental underpinning piece for any customer advocacy or customer success person is how am I able to build the trust. Understood. The underpinning layer is about how do you build trust and whichever the channel you have access to which will help you to start building trust and trust doesn't come on day one. You'll move you'll go from an experimentation to a trust building stage either in a long large deal sale cycle or a short small sale cycle but it is it has to go through the trust establishment and that measure is a significantly different measure than how many conversions you're able to make it. Got you and there's no podcast today that happens without talking about AI. So I'm going to make a small jump into the AI just to try and tie it together. In your world you are obviously seeing hearing about AI and even helping some of your folks around you to kind of adopt AI. Where is AI moving the needle today in the world that you are seeing because we saw the McKinces, the report that came out that 95% of the AI pilots are faved and then it also told that the back office process is the better AI optimization that's happening. What is your view of where is AI moving the neural neural? Yeah so you know in first this platform also we have done our own AI survey survey about 3000 odd enterprises and each one is at a different stage of maturity different side of our piloting and how the survey shows about 50% of the pilots at least our experiments I call them are been successful with certain level of tangible results. On a personal front the way I sense about AI is somebody asked actually which projects are you doing AI? I actually flipped the question answer to say everything we do will have AI and that's the way I see AI world in the future is AI when I'm just giving this rough analogy may not be great analogy is AI is like an English language we all use English language but we didn't build a career in English. So AI is going to be that way I'm using my laptop now I don't know enough technology to build that laptop but I'm using it. So AI is going to be that you know general purpose technology everybody pervasive technology which will be used by everyone and what the key topic which anybody has to think about is instead of thinking what AI can do the question is what is that I want AI to do for me and how do you go about identifying that that question is being deliberated across enterprises and individuals or whatnot and because it's a self-reflecting question it is going through a journey of experimentation journey of you know skepticism of what generally it can do you know you see you know LLM being driven by across the board you know like the way the in when the internet era happened the search engines used to come everybody used to build a search engine today everybody is building an LLM yeah more efficiency fine what is it going to do for me is the question so answer is not by what AI can do answer is about what is that I want it to do because it is a self-imposed question hence it is taking time and it will take some time before it has more power than what you can use understood and are there frameworks or criteria that you use to prioritize some of these use cases because when you look into at any given company like a small company like Docker or like a huge company and enterprise if you look at inward there are so many problems that you could potentially solve how do you bring together here is my highest impact project here is where AI is very strong and probably this is a good marriage right what is the framework or criteria that you have seen successful so yeah for me it boils down to about three big buckets one there is a market facing activities and initiatives where you are adding value to the customer adding value to the projects we are delivering adding value to a solution which you are offering to customer which can bring efficiency and what not second is an inward looking operations what do you know so that's a clear classification of my prioritization right and third is about what is what is the talent because this is an emerging technology emerging and evolving on a rapid pace where is my experimentation lab because it is not a clear line of sight on lot of use cases on what tangible realization you can get so there is an element of experimentation you go through so these three buckets one is an investment bucket second is a go-to-market tangibleity and third is an internal operational efficiency tangibleity right there we prioritize to see what is the outcome which you are expecting to realize and some will happen naturally because of you know if you are doing your let's say your back office contact center to infuse AI maybe your contact center technology will anyway implement AI so you will anyway get a benefit you know benefit out of it you don't have to take an initiative on that if I have to look at and now an RFP response to be using AI yeah the question is about is RFP evaluation team from the client is going to use AI to evaluate before even we start writing with AI so it's a question of speed of adoption right and so so those things that's prioritized to see where where we bring the two cases but the point for me is not to negate any use case which doesn't have value from AI the basic principle is everything will be using AI period it's a matter of journey and maturity to get there understood in your world of the way in which you are talking to your buyers and you talk a lot about flipping from a seller mindset to a buyer mindset and today buyers are actually looking for a lot of help in terms of you know how do I make sense out of this complex world so and a lot of the things that we are selling generally are sellers are very technical in nature right like we use words that the buyers have never heard in the past. So are there techniques that you use to kind of make it easier for them to understand like you're not telling it as a story you used a couple of analogies. What are some of the effective techniques that we can adopt making some of these things easier for the buyers? I'll simplify to extend my viewpoint but I think this is the journey for next 30 years. I'll still continue to learn how to tell. That's why it's a human element which comes and it takes longer rather than a logical element. And you're right. There's so much technology and options for anybody to decide because of the way the innovation has increased in rapid pace. So I call it a call is pace at which innovation has been created or came into the market. Consumption has been lagging. So which means you can ideally consumption should be demanding and innovation cater to consumption. That's what's a traditional economy. Today innovation is far ahead than the consumption. So which means people are lagging to consume. So you have a lot more production and innovation which is actually there's no takers. Hence the confusion and clear clarity requires to be coming. Another simple or oversimplified analogy I use is all of us probably go through spend time on sitting in front of TV with remote not figuring out what exactly to watch. And that was not the case 20 years back where you are only get four or five channels and then you're comfortable with it. So same analogy for me in the technology today. So hence the question about advocacy. How can we be really in advisors to clients or stakeholders on how to unclutter, how to bring clarity on their own objectives, their own road maps and their own journeys and how do we bring more effective decisions so they can produce, you know, their mission objectives right. The good part is the switching of technologies very easy today. So your decisions can be changed in the journey compared to a five to ten years back where you take a decision and it kind of have to hold it for a couple of years or three years time. While public sector is still holding the same event today, technologies are allowing but their procurement guidelines regulations doesn't allow them to switch the decisions easily. But even in the commercial world, while the decisions which can happen fast enough, but doesn't mean that you can shift your decisions every three months, six months on a technology because so still there is a value of a clear decision making longer term and shorter term decisions are important. Hence this advisory and customer success journey becomes more important than a selling journey. So one you are establishing because you are advising there is a level of trust established in the early stages but you are going to be there with the customer throughout the consumption life cycle. Hence there is a partnership life. So hence the traditional selling mindset need to shift it to the advocacy and success mindset. God, you mentioned something interesting about the AI capability built out which is going at light speed already more than a hundred billion or a trailer or whatever it has been invested and the realization of that value on the enterprises are still catching up. Today, investors are obviously incentivizing a lot of the lower cost that we are receiving for all these AI services. I was wondering, do you have a sense of like how margins are going to get affected in the future because you are, you know, you now have to give AI into everything that you are doing and there is a hard cost for AI depending on how you are using it. Or do you think that you will be able to kind of get more from the customer because now you are able to give more? How do you think about the throughput versus efficiency versus margin question? It is a very widely discussed topic across organizations across, you know, corporate as well. But it is not about AI influencing margin and, you know, revenue uplift. The debate is about how this current innovation, I am clubbing all of it, right? The cloud economy, mobile economy, digital economy, AI economy, all of them because each one is built on each other. When I, you, you, you, we didn't mention about, you know, the way that's a blockchain, nanotechnology, space technologies, right? I mean, imagine a communication industry which was depending on a wire line, so including fiber. Today, Starlink is going to give you entire communication through your set light network. What happens to the, what, I mean, how does it disrupt a traditional telecom player, right? So, I think you club all these technologies and look at how the entire industry model or operating model of an enterprise and economic model and a social model. All these three things are going to be shifted. So it's just not about a margin and revenue uplift for me in my mind. It is a combination of all these touch points, how they are going to be shifting. Hence, you will have a different enterprise model going forward. I call it is, I know, the framework which was defined post industry, you know, industry 4.0 or industry, which happened post world war. I think that entire framework is going to be disrupted. Not just by AI is one of the latest one, but this entire last 30 years of innovation, where I said, right, you know, producers are going to be consumers vice versa in the tech world. The freemium construct has come through. So the actual value is only happening in the equity markets, not really on the transaction pricing constructs. And if you look at even S&P, you know, if you take the top 10 companies out, the rest of the companies are not actually yielding the value which it should be. So the S&P is driven by the only few companies. So that's the shift which is happening. I'm saying, you can take automotive industry or anywhere, right. So yes, margins will be, if you apply to the same operating model, it will give you margin because today margin is all driven by human capital, almost all companies, including, you know, yours, right. Earlier, it used to be a capital expenditure, then it was energy expenditure, then it went into, you know, technology expenditure. Now, human capital is the highest line item in the cost. So the, those, but the balancing is, the pressure is on. It is not that it will come. It is on already, but it is not about purely the margin or revenue uplift, but it is going to force shift the operating models, redefine the operating models. And that's where actually the next set of value components will come through and the definitions will come through. -Cautious, that's interesting. I have two more questions, but these questions are more forward looking. What part of enterprise selling do you think will look very different in the next couple of years? Again, it's industry dependent because of the way I'm looking at it, but I'll just throw a few examples to Article A, right. Automotive is very familiar with a lot of people. So in the EV construct, which is pretty, you know, eminent, a dealer-based selling model will go and direct selling will come. It's a D2C, it's already there. So the enterprise of auto sector selling into the market will change. And tomorrow, I mean, the way BEMO is coming into the picture, there's not even selling the car anymore. It is only selling transportation services. So look at the shift from a selling, a manufacturing car, sending it to a distributor and a dealer and then selling it to a consumer, to selling automotive transportation services to consumers. That's a shift of auto industry, right. Now, as a seller of a technology to that industry, who do you sell to? You use to sell to dealer technologies, you use to logistics technologies, you use to sell so many things. Today, it goes back into is the manufacturer or the insurance provider, some OEM provider, you probably have a selling interest. That's a shift into it. Same thing happens in energy sector. Same thing happens in, you know, you know, food sector, right. So each of the sectors are actually moving significant to D2C. And in that, that's where I said, each industry and the enterprise is reshaping itself. So that recognition is important to see what tech, good parties, tech is a core for them in this transformation. So which means demand for tech is going to continue to rise. How we need to approach them, how we need to sell or how we need to advise them, will shift and economic principles will change, economic models will shift into it. And more and more outcome based pricing will come, more and more shared values will come, more and more, you know, almost like a business partnerships will happen rather than a seller and a buyer relationship. And based on all of these, some of the examples that you cited as well. And what are some of the things that you would suggest like a revenue leader, like a CRO start doing or stop doing to make sure that they are ahead of the curve. So yeah, what they should stop, I mean, it's both our corollary topics. They should certainly stop doing a traditional way of looking at qualifications, generations and go to market. Firstly, certainly that depends on what their buyer behaviors have. they should continue to study and then not look at a people's centric approach alone into the selling model. What they should start is about this is an ecosystem play. Any industry today is not an E to E if I have to call it right an enterprise selling to another enterprise. It is an ecosystem because of the way the value chains of every industry is moved into a big interdependent ecosystems. So the buying happens through the influencers I'm sure you would people will agree. The influencer category has changed. Channels have changed. And I'll pick the same again auto industry who is actually buying going and doing a test drive and buying. In the future it's all about you know social media interactions are the peer-reuser group influences. If it's a peer-reuser group influences then how am I influencing the buyer if I'm just going and selling you know putting a brochure out there or sending a presentation out there. Second you know it is actually as I said it's not almost there's no storytelling selling. It is shifting to a demonstrable it's what you see and get you know what I see is what I get. Touch and feel right. The selling is going to be very touch-in-feel constant going forward. Third is about it is not about purely the value of the product value of the service. It is the lifetime value of what else you can do. So people take the value of the product or services table stakes. What else it can do. So if you give an example of energy sector so most of us get utility bills at home. Utility by definition is supposed to only make that transactional value and you take that value. But today you look at any of those bills 80% of the content is actually about advising you on how to be efficient. What equipment to buy. How do you conserve energy. How do you really make your home more efficient to it. So lot of them becomes a value added selling. So which means you have to be stickiness to the customer through the consumption journey. Good part is the technology is giving you the live fear of the data on a continuous basis today. So you can continue almost a monthly basis you can refine to see how do I serve my customer next month better than the last month. Yeah. So basically you're saying that it's a combination. It's not one thing that they can start or stop doing. Obviously you have to look at the data. AI is making it easy for you to look at the data. You still have to move into your advocacy base plan and you have to do it based on the demographics and who you are serving to and look at the macro trend that's happening in your industry. Yeah, exactly. So it is always a combination of parameters. But good part is judgment is judgment and choices are still with people. Right. We got to make what choice we'll make using the data and using the information what we get. I don't think I'm probably old school in this point. I don't think a human relationship that will take away by technology. I think the relationship data can be fed information can be fed anything but the human relationship is I think still is going to be a human centric and human touch high touch area. That's an amazing note to close on. Human touchers cannot be replicated, recreated by any of these technologies that we are talking about. I can talk another hour with you, but I got it. You have been very kind with your time. Really appreciate all the time, all the insights and I look forward to doing it at another convenient time for you. Absolutely. It's pleasure. It's as I said, it's a new topic. I haven't done this but very exciting to share the perspectives and learn from you as well and how you are seeing in the talk. So a good conversation. Looking forward to the next one. Thank you have a good day.