The Simplicity Mantra: Why Simple is Hard in Marketing

When it comes to deciding on what campaign will work or not work, I always find that it’s the simple things. How easy it is for the message to land, how easy it is for your audience to be able to relate to it is the key factor, which I think played a big role for me as I started my journey here. This is Revenue Makers, the podcast by six Cents investigating successful revenue strategies that pushed companies ahead. Hey, Saima. Do you know what’s hard? What’s hard? Simple. Right? It’s it’s true. Simple is hard. And today’s guest on the podcast talks a lot about that and a a lot about how he solves for some of that in his role as CMO of Persistent Systems. We have Gurvinder Singh Sani as a guest, and he starts obviously with that mantra. He’s kind of an intellect in the sense that he’s got a a number of rules that he lives by and runs his teams by. He’s an avid reader, and he shares some of that. But we’re gonna talk about not just that, but how he’s leaning in on AI. Two thumbs up there. What else? Weigh in. Yeah. He’s leading way, and he was in early, has his team in. And I thought one of the really interesting things, and I won’t give it away, but how they evaluate and how they bring tech investments and how their team actually makes the decision. They have a very interesting format for how they they do that. So that one was both entertaining and interesting at the same time. Yeah. It’s a great episode. Lots of tips and tricks. But, yeah, I almost wanna implement that way of evaluating tech here at Sixense. And it may or may not have to do with somebody’s favorite reality show. But, anyway, with that, let’s dive in. Let’s do it. Agarvinder, thanks so much for joining us. I wanted to jump in to something. We we talked a little bit before, and there’s a quote that you mentioned that I think really will just set up this entire conversation. It’s Steve Jobs who doesn’t loves quoting Steve Jobs, but I’m gonna read it because I don’t wanna get it wrong. So simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. So how does that apply to marketing and CMOs and Persistent? So first of all, thanks for having me. And and and I think that quote kind of sets the tone of my journey at Persistent. We are in a complex business and work with multiple customers. There are multiple domains, multiple verticals, horizontal. It’s it’s a matrix structure. And what I find is that the common thing that I drive, whether it comes to marketing or business, is the simplicity. You know, I don’t know who said it, but somebody also said that I would have written you a shorter letter if I had more time. So I think that mantra for me and when it comes to taking key decisions, when it comes to deciding on what campaign will work or not work, I always find that it’s the simple things. How easy it is for the message to land, how easy it is for your audience to be able to relate to it is the key factor, which I think played a big role for me as I started my journey here. Yeah. And again, the quote says it, but simple is hard. And so how do you take what is a very complex problem? I mean, even for Persistent itself. Right? You’re a technology services company. You are serving clients. How do you take a very complex problem statement and simplify it? I imagine you have to really focus everything around client centricity. That almost has to take center stage. So can you elaborate on how you ensure that everything that you’re doing in marketing and everything that you’re doing as a company is really starting with the client’s business challenges in mind? I love that question. Let me start that with when I joined Persistent, we were celebrating our billion dollar journey. We had just clogged our billion dollars in revenue. And I was at this event where I met a set of customers who were there to join us in the celebration. And I asked them a question that what appeals to you? Why do you work with Persistent? And what is it that draws you to giving us your business and having the confidence in us? Multiple customers said and I and I asked this in Seattle when we did this event. I did this in New York. I did this in Santa Clara. The answer was we love the say do ratio. It was a common thing that when you say something, you do it, which simple, you know, in essence kind of speaks volumes about what we do for our customers. Second point is that if I look at none other than Gartner, when you look at peer insights framework of Gartner, they have a portal where customers can go and give feedback. You can check all the avenues where we participate, whether it’s custom software or public cloud. Resistant always has the highest number of surveys. That’s point number one. Point number two, in the VOC framework of Gartner, we are an established player. We are challenging irrespective of our size. We are now a one point two billion dollar company. But you can see Persistent as a key challenger to all the much bigger players who are ten times, twenty times, hundred times our size. So for me, it’s that simplicity. It’s about at the end of the day going and delivering what the customer wants you to do. I think that’s simply what matters. That’s the mantra. I mean, again, like, simple is hard. It’s a mantra. And I know there’s a number of other mantras that you are a big fan of these sort of and I guess one of which is, you know, we talk about simple is hard. We think about technology, MarTech. Right? I know you’ve got the concept, like, beware of the MarTech trap. And I think we can all relate to what’s the shiny new tool. We bought so many tools. It’s gonna solve this problem, and the tool is is a strategy. And can you explain that in your mind what that means in terms of, like, the MarTech trap? And then how do you sort of avoid falling into it while actually still staying ahead of the curve with there is actually technology that’s gonna make simpler things possible. Mhmm. I love that. In fact, I’ll tell you I know it’s a dated study, but I think PwC said this and they do a pulse survey and this was dated to November twenty twenty two. And I think it’s true today also that they said that forty five percent of the CMOs are investing in tech in response to the current market environment. Right? And I’m sure that number has gone even higher given you just replaced the tech with AI or there’s something called as GenAI. So Oh, really? We hadn’t heard. I don’t know if while we’re having this call, there’s a new there’s a new LLM or there’s a new tool that’ll get launched before we finish and wrap up and publish. Right? So the other point that I also it was a very interesting research where there was a study done for marketing teams. And what it said was that marketing teams that use more tools regularly spend more of their work on manual task. Right? So more tools are actually leading to more manual task. And I’ve seen that, you know, in practice because don’t get me wrong, MarTech is important. I don’t think we could have achieved what we do if we didn’t have access to the MarTech tools that are out there. But the trap is that just get the tool and it’ll solve things for you. Just go and buy the access and push it there and somebody will go figure that out. And I think that’s what I like when I took over and and I had calls with the six sense team to ensure that we understand that what this tool can do, but we need to enable it as well. We need to build a broader understanding of what inputs will lead to what output. And then how do you connect back the look in terms of feedback. So I think the trap is that just go ahead and make the investment and things will happen on their own. I don’t think there’s a shortcut there. No. I mean, it’s cliche almost, but it always is the people process that you put around the technology that drives it. I know you have a number of other mantras because you mentioned the fact that you spoke to the Sixense team before buying Sixense. You spoke to me, and I was you know, that call, I still remember it. And I think there’s something to be said about setting high expectations for yourself and your team. Because one thing that you said very clearly in that call, and we haven’t prepped this, so you might not even remember this. But you said I wanna be the best sixth sense customer. I wanna be the one that everyone else is looking to in terms of of how we use it and how we adopt it and how we drive it. And it was just really refreshing to hear that from a marketing leader. You know, you hadn’t even bought the tool at that point. We were still discussing it, but you had a very clear expectation for how you wanted to, number one, what gaps and pains this tool was gonna solve for you, but also how you were gonna then drive adoption and usage. So talk to me about that, and does that permeate throughout things other than tech purchases? I I remember that call, and I remember pinging like me to say that I want to speak to someone. And then she said that, well, you know, we have someone who was a customer in the past and now is an advocate and on the team. And I said, you know what? That’s absolutely the person I want to talk to. And and I said, I would want to be that person in the future, you know, who goes and becomes the advocate. I think that call played a big role in me lining up the right people on my side. Then we connected the dots with the demand gen team, with the inside sales team. We also went ahead and organized those sessions with the business leaders, getting an overall sense of appreciation that what can this intent signal do for you and what it cannot do. And because I think, again, going back to the whole trap part, you can have all the right intent, no pun intended in terms of you’re an intent signaling company. But if that does not get backed by the right action, the right level of access, and the other part is the right timing for it. All this has to happen at the right time is what matters. And I think in our interactions, I really saw that initial discussion, and I wish more companies would do that. Right? Even I would love to incorporate something like that in terms of when they’re going into a new project or when we are talking to a prospect. So I I would love to acknowledge how much impact that discussion had, Simon. Yeah. It actually makes me think about something as well because with these tech purchases, right, there’s probably and you have to sort them and I couldn’t tell you percentage, but the team goes off and buys something. Right? They’ve got some budget. A leader may not even be aware of it or, like, remotely aware of it. And then you have, you know, looking at technology, that’s a purchase. It’s a technology purchase, but it’s a strategic technology purchase, and it has to be elevated to the CMO of the C suite level. Time and time again, I’ve talked to leaders and so forth who, oh, yeah. We have that, but my team uses it. I think if you wind up in that situation of technology purchases that you’re not aware of as a leader or at least are not engaged with, that’s gonna tell you something right there that, I mean, short of it being some small fifty dollar a month point solution, that the purchase has to be aligned with strategic initiatives. And if you as a leader are not in it, I mean, you don’t have to be pulling the levers on it, but clearly understanding of what the outcomes and the goals are. You start thinking about is that tool actually necessary? Yeah. I mean, trust me, at Persistent, even a single dollar invested is you know, I have a great team, so I have a clear view. Not that I want to micromanage it, but I think we as a team collectively agree that if we are going to make an investment and, again, there are things for free as well. I mean, people can go and download a tool for free. But what we collectively do do is, so I I have two things that I started, and I have a global team. So I have people spread across entire United States and Europe and and India. And to your point, the it’s about having that pulse as a CMO. Right? I’ll give you an example. And I spoke about that when I was delivering this keynote at Momentum ITS and I last year. We actually want to be a company that creates those tools and frameworks as well. Believe it or not, within the four months of GPT going live, we created something called as content assist, which was a Gen AI based tool that we created, which has three pipes. One pipe goes into ChargeGPT, second pipe into open Internet, and third pipe into our own database. And if you want to write a blog, if you want to write a LinkedIn post, this content assist tool was able to craft that first draft for you. And I was actually looking to hire someone in the thought leadership team, and I had to put that on hold because I told my thought leadership had to use the tool because use the tool like an intern. In fact, looking at how Claude and other tools are behaving now, it’s not even an intern. It’s a PhD intern. The level of insight that it has. Right? So so on one side, we as a team are very keen. By the way, we presented this to some customers as well, and they loved how we were able to connect our technology to an outcome. And then we also started working on sales assist because in sales as well, it’s the context. And if imagine if you have access to the database, the CRM, but it’s all properly guarded. None of this can go out. This is a private instance, so there is no loss of information happening from that perspective. But, yeah, I think coming back to the question that you asked, there are a lot of free tools, but the information security part is number one. And the second thing is that, normally, we as a team let me share this point as well. We run sort of a sharp bang internally before an investment. So if you wanna make an investment, you have to come in to have a marketing leadership team which acts as a sharp tank. And you have to come and present to the group that I would love to invest in this because it’s not only about one team investing, others also have to buy in. So if you’re launching a new way of doing something, then it’ll impact five, ten, twenty, thirty other people as well. So we try to follow that shot. And it it’s worked well because then there’s a consensus. There’s a buy in. I know at times I have to play the CMO card and say nothing happening. Either we are doing this or not doing this. But I think it builds a good consensus within the team and sort of helps us navigate the challenge that you spoke about. I love that. And you’re starting with a business case, which too often tends to just not happen in speed of trying to get things done. Who’s represented on your internal Shark Tank? What teams are there? So what we do is one, of course, in terms of the judges, if there is a business that gets impacted, let’s say this is gonna impact a specific service line or a business unit. So I try to get the head of that unit to join me. And then, of course, we have the I’m there myself. And then I also bring a peer to the team that is presenting. So we try to balance the whole thing. So not just marketing. Like, it is a cross functional team. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, you know, if it’s all marketing, then again, remember the the first thing. You’re creating a moat around yourself, and you want business to chime in. You want them to believe in. And I think business appreciates that. This whole thing about sales and marketing, there’s always a rift. Sales does not appreciate the leads that you bring in and sales says the leads are not worth our time. So this kind of helps cross that path in terms of getting sales and marketing to come together also. Is it not something, by the way, this is a random tangent, that every time I’m in a hotel, there’s nineteen episodes of the Shark Tank playing, like back to back to back. I don’t know. I think I’ve seen every episode just by being in a hotel. But, anyway, whatever. Random. Or on a flight. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So we’ve talked about AI. So, of course, we have to go there even more. It’s the rules. Yes. I mean, this is an episode that has to come up. Bad and ICP are the things that seem to come up in every other episode. So you talk about kind of, like, right off the gate, you were using it internally for content creation, not looking at sales. Obviously, it’s changing everything for marketers for probably across the board, not just marketers. But, you know, in your mind, like, what do you see now as sort of the opportunity for and I think it’s actually it really encompasses the whole concept of simple being hard because all that’s going on in the back end of these Jedi tools is massively complex to get to the point of, like, write me a social post or create this, you know but where do you see it now in terms of, like, the beyond the content use case you already talked about? And then in your mind, if you could take it someplace either for your own internal use or maybe even kinda like what you’d love to see happen in the next, you know, couple of well, I shouldn’t say years because I could say next couple of months because things are moving so quickly. So what I try to do because we can really spend the rest of the episode in talking about this. So let me try to limit my answer to marketing and CMO world. But I can tell you that as a company, we have pivoted towards and if you we just clogged our seventeenth straight quarter of growth as a company. And I can tell you that we’ve taken a clear pivot in terms of saying that we are pivoting towards being AI led platform driven services company. And we see that playing out. Right? But I don’t want to go into that part. Let me limit this to marketing and CMO audience. I think and I believe it is very important for you to know all the tools that are out there. This got referred to me over the weekend by someone. And I’ve read Sal Khan’s book. I’ve read I love reading and blogging. If you follow me on LinkedIn, maybe I do a little too much of spamming of, you know, books that I’ve read. But but what I learned was that there are a lot of tools. Every day there’s a new tool. In fact, my elder one is she’s an intern at a AI startup for nutrition. So they have launched something. Right? So there will be a new tool that will get created around how to manage your health or how to run marketing or how to run campaigns. You know? So that’s one part. The second is there are the foundation models. Right? And then there are frontier models. The frontier models, and that’s what kudos to Ethan Malik who spoke about this or wrote about this. Those frontier models matter. So those frontier models are GPT four and Claude and Gemini Pro and a few others. Ensure that you are using them. Ensure that you are experimenting with them. Ensure that you can either treat them as an intern. Some people have the philosophy to treat them like an intern. Somebody treat them like a PhD on your team. So I firmly believe that it is important that we start using these tools because and you get better And and you get better at prompting, treated like a team member or ask those questions. So I think that’s going to be a big differentiator. And then also figure out how that plays into how you solve your customers as well. So for example, we’ve opened three Gen AI studios. One in New Jersey, which is where I am right now in Bridgewater, second in London, and third in Pune. And these Gen AI studios essentially make it real. So marketing plays a key role in terms of offerings that get created, the experience, the moments that we create. Because what we essentially want to do, we want to create it like a collaboratory where our customers and partners come together. And I can help you play around with the LLMs. And you can bring synthetic data or your data depending on your comfort. And we can literally see that between the LLMs, what’s the time difference, what’s the quality of the output, what’s the price point per token or per transaction. So to be able to relate to that, I think it’s like it’s a tool that will be tough for me to sell and market if I don’t use it myself. So I’m pushing the team that we need to use it. You are seeing a lot more designs that are being created using my journey and a and a few other options, and it’s helping us become more productive. Yeah. So you’re all in on embracing AI. Two thumbs up. Listen, Gurvinder, there’s a question that we ask every single guest on the episode, and that is, what is the craziest or most ridiculous thing you’ve been asked to do in your career? Crazy good or crazy bad? This is a tough one. Oh, this is what I was not prepared for. Okay. I think the crazy good thing was in a previous company. Actually, no. No. It was here. Alright? So it was my day three or day four in the company. And I was literally getting used to not calling myself that I worked for the previous employer. And we had this gala celebration, and we had this big MC that was going to come. And I was looking forward to having fun, you know. It’s a fun. It’s a good day. And wake up in the morning and my team tells me that MC is not able to make it. And what do we do? They’re expecting for you to climb the stage and and be the MC for the event. So I believe it or not and I had worked with my previous employer for twenty one years, and this was my fourth day. I was made the MC for that event. And I think for the first time in my life, I literally went scripted because my biggest fear was that I may introduce myself as working for the previous company or may end up thanking them or naming them. So I don’t know if this qualifies in your Oh, it qualifies. It does. Yeah. Yeah. Trial by fire. Yes. Did you have to just get up and do, like, stand up or humor or just no singing at all or in the dap, but I I cannot sing, but I was ready with some dance moves maybe, you know, that and I made them play my woke up music. And so, yeah, it was fun. Well, thanks so much for joining us. I think some really great insights for the audience and love kinda hearing just how far ahead of the curve you were with AI’s chat, Chippy team made its way out and all sorts of other concepts. So really Joya, thanks so much for for joining. No. Thanks for having me. And I think I will leave one message that I think the biggest thing for CMOs and marketing is that brand and growth need to be like a virtuous cycle and you have to focus on both. And one leads to the other. The more your brand becomes popular, the more you grow, the more you grow. And so I I think that’s the mantra that I’m I’m working with. And thanks for having strategic partners like six cents, and thank you to both of you. Thank you. Thanks.