Episode #256:
Robert Sanchez, Chief Executive Officer at Anteriad, breaks down why overloaded B2B buyers are changing how they evaluate vendors and why the old playbook no longer works. He explains how trust is built by showing up where buyers already search for answers and by consistently delivering strong customer experiences. He also shares why brand and pipeline should be treated as one connected motion, not competing priorities. The discussion ties growth to customer insight, cross-functional alignment, and disciplined use of data and tools.
“What you get when you behave in your consumer life is that everything’s designed to be easier. So, the goal is to help people who sell complex things make it easier and more frictionless. On top of the data, the AI, and the tech enablement, we’re offering a layer of solutions that help as well. Its services and solutions.” – Robert Sanchez
In this episode, Robert shares how buyer expectations now mirror consumer experiences, why trust must be earned earlier in the journey, and how leadership alignment, brand clarity, and execution discipline combine to create sustainable growth in modern B2B go-to-market strategies.
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[Transcript]
[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspectives podcast. I am Steve MacDonald, your host, and today we have a really interesting conversation we don’t typically have. We are going to be talking about the overloaded B2B buyer, their experience today, and the new playbook for how we get through to that audience and do it well. We have Rob Sanchez with us. Rob, you are a CEO, and I am going to let you talk a little bit about the company you are with. You have grown and adapted a number of times through different rebranding efforts. You have gone through three different, or, like you were saying, five different acquisitions over the last decade plus.
[00:00:48] Steve MacDonald: So we are going to talk about how you establish that playbook. You are a company that reaches out to marketers, so you have a perspective from both being a marketing organization yourself and constantly selling a SaaS product to that same kind of audience. I think there is a lot we have to get into here, but before we do that, I would love to hear a little bit more about your background and what you are doing right now, and then we will dig right in.
[00:01:16] Robert Sanchez: Sure. Thanks, Steve. It is really great to be here. I love talking about marketing, so we could go on all day. We are a B2B marketing-first company.
[00:01:24] Robert Sanchez: We are data-driven. We do not necessarily sell only software. We have some SaaS related products, but it is more tech-enabled, with solutions wrapped around it. We are a global business, so in the last five years, we have gone from being one hundred percent in the US to thirty percent outside the US. It has been a pretty rapid global expansion.
[00:01:45] Robert Sanchez: It is part of our growth strategy and growth initiative. We have learned a lot, but one of the most interesting things, obviously, being in B2B marketing and selling to B2B marketers, is what we have learned from our customers. I think that is the biggest takeaway. Continuous learning really comes from listening to customer insights, developing products from them, and developing solutions. You can never go wrong by adapting to that. The market is changing a lot. It is continually changing. You hear a lot of people talk about the buyer’s journey. You hear a lot of people talk about the buying group.
[00:02:22] Robert Sanchez: The actual B2B buyer is becoming more like a consumer buyer because digital natives are now in decision-making positions and they are used to certain things. Companies have adapted. I think one of our core missions has always been to lead, learn, and be customer-centric.
[00:02:40] Robert Sanchez: We always try to stay close to customers and understand what their pain points are. With those pain points, there is always an opportunity. There are a lot of tools and a lot going on, but we feel there is an incredible opportunity in this market.
[00:02:55] Steve MacDonald: Before we dig into the playbook itself, I would love to get your take on something. You and I talked about some of the biggest challenges B2B organizations face in growing. You mentioned changes in the macro environment and how that impacts the go-to-market strategy. I would love to get your opinion on that as we get started.
[00:03:15] Robert Sanchez: The macro environment always changes quite a bit, but if you look at the past six years and the number of things that have affected it, COVID and economic uncertainty come to mind. There have been cycles of ups and downs and a lot of volatility in the tech market and other B2B markets. Navigating through that has probably been the single biggest challenge. At the same time, there have been a lot of opportunities that come out of it.
[00:03:48] Robert Sanchez: We deal a lot with enterprise tech, and there has been a lot of opportunity, but also a lot of change. The speed and velocity of change is very different than it used to be. Fifteen or twenty years ago when I first got in, there was change among the client base and M&A activity, but change is the constant now, and we have to adapt to it.
[00:04:12] Steve MacDonald: It is interesting when we look at our market and our ICP. The one true constant is that it is complex and always changing. We can never sit back or sit on our laurels and say we get it now. It is not just about refining our product and service offerings. We have to be students of the market and students of our ideal customer profile all the time. You mentioned there are other factors at play. Buyers are inundated and overloaded, and their behavior is changing as a result. I would love to know what you mean by that.
[00:04:52] Robert Sanchez: The buyers themselves have changed. They have grown up in an environment where information is readily available.
[00:04:58] Robert Sanchez: Some of them want to be less sold to. They have much quicker access to information. In larger organizations, they buy in groups, so several decision-makers are involved. They have gotten younger, and there is also an expectation of a frictionless experience.
[00:05:19] Robert Sanchez: Think about your consumer life, whether it is Uber, ordering food, or anything at your fingertips. Everything is designed to be easier. We are still helping people who sell complex solutions, and our goal is to make that easier and more frictionless. On top of the data, AI, and tech enablement, we also offer a layer of solutions, including services.
[00:05:56] Robert Sanchez: What we find with our customers is that many of them are resource-constrained at times.
[00:06:00] Robert Sanchez: They like tools, and in some cases they want self-service, but in many cases they ask, can you do this for me. They want to focus on strategy and other parts of their business, and we focus on activation, execution, data analysis, data management, and the things that help them grow.
[00:06:14] Robert Sanchez: The core mission has not changed. The core mission is how do we help you grow, how do we help you get more customers, and how do we help you make sense of data. The way we do it has changed quite a bit.
[00:06:26] Steve MacDonald: I would be really interested in your point of view on two macro changes. The self-service B2B buyer journey has been well explained by Gartner and Forrester.
[00:06:38] Steve MacDonald: Buyers are waiting longer and longer before they even want to talk to us. The playbook from ten years ago is clearly not the playbook for today. The other change is building trust. Forrester recently shared their 2026 predictions, and trust was a foundational theme.
[00:06:57] Steve MacDonald: Building trust in an environment where buyers do not want to talk until later is challenging, especially since trust often comes from conversations. How does this impact the playbook today and how we go to market?
[00:07:18] Robert Sanchez: Trust is really important, and this is another page from big brand marketing. You have to do more to gain that trust. You have to exist where your customers exist. We do quite a bit on social media because customers are looking for information there. They have that experience in their consumer life and they are looking to LinkedIn and other places.
[00:07:50] Robert Sanchez: It is not just how quickly can I buy or how much does it cost. You have to create a brand. We are proud of our MPS scores, and we stay on top of that. We work with major brands and track what they say and think about us as a KPI. That is always part of how we evaluate ourselves.
[00:08:13] Robert Sanchez: There has always been debate about brand and demand in B2B. It used to be about selling products.
[00:08:31] Robert Sanchez: At the end of the day, we are selling solutions. Cost, ROI, lifetime value, and KPIs all matter. But over the past decade, brand has become much more important in B2B.
[00:08:31] Robert Sanchez: You want to be trusted and recognized. The way to do that is through good experiences. We focus heavily on customer satisfaction, promotional scores, and putting the right people in front of customers. We do not just hand them off. We involve senior leaders and full teams because these are some of the biggest brands in the world. We have to stay focused on how we work with them.
[00:08:59] Steve MacDonald: So it is interesting, we place a big emphasis on the brand in building trust, and we all know that it is important, but you rarely go into a board meeting and have a board member say, hey Rob, how is that brand building going?
[00:09:14] Steve MacDonald: It usually starts out with, how is this quarter’s quota, how is next quarter looking. And usually from a CEO’s perspective, too, right, a Chief Marketing Officer is a lot of the time having an uphill battle convincing the organization overall of the role of the brand and the resources that need to be dedicated to it.
[00:09:33] Steve MacDonald: You had a perspective in our last conversation that brand building and pipeline building are not separated. They are not separate activities where they can be looked upon, and traditionally kind of have. How do you think about it? You are leading the organization, right? The buck stops with you.
[00:09:49] Robert Sanchez: Yeah, so a couple of different things that are unique, well, they are not unique to our experience, but things we have gone through that kind of lend themselves to the branding discussion. We went through a rebranding exercise, and part of the reason we did that was that we have a combination of about five companies, and this goes back to 2016.
[00:10:06] Robert Sanchez: But more recently, from 2019 on, when we were PE-backed, one of our strategies was, let us go get capabilities we do not have. So we went from what we can build internally to what we buy. In the buying discussion and the acquisition discussion, it was how do we expand our capability.
[00:10:27] Robert Sanchez: How do we get more talent, which was interesting because if you look at the five companies, we have people in the C-suite from all the different companies. So if we were in need of something and we knew a company had a capability, and guess what, they have a really good CTO, and as we are growing, we needed to fill those spots.
[00:10:43] Robert Sanchez: So we recruited some key spots, but then we discussed. You have got these companies. We do not want people to feel like the original company was holding all the cards, and we have really worked hard to get that shared management team. So we felt like a rebrand was the right thing to do.
[00:11:03] Robert Sanchez: Our PE firm had gone through this with other companies, so we had a nice process where we analyzed what are the brand values. So we spent a lot of time on it. So unlike kind of the straight financial thing, we did spend time on the brand, and at the same time we spent time on what are we going to do around marketing and who is our next CMO and those types of things.
[00:11:23] Robert Sanchez: So with that, it was a very important process. So now we do measure, because the name we had before was pretty well established and people knew us, and it was a little bit of a risk to say, all right, we are going to move on from that because we have got other companies that were equal our size, and we need everybody to feel like we are all on board with this new thing going forward. So we did some measurements on that, and actually over time, quickly, people came to know Anteriad and not the old brand. So we spent a lot of time on that.
[00:11:54] Robert Sanchez: Obviously, the board meetings are usually financial and sales driven, and what is the market doing, competition, and that is all great. But the way you get there is by establishing that brand in the marketplace. People have to know you when you are reaching out. It is an advantage if they know who you are.
[00:12:13] Steve MacDonald: You know, I love one of the things you focused big time on there, which is really integrating all the different companies and all the different players. And we have interviewed over 250 C-suite executives on the podcast, and we always ask this one question at the very beginning: What are your two greatest challenges in creating long-term, sustainable growth?
[00:12:32] Steve MacDonald: The number one challenge by far was the lack of internal alignment. And that only gets accentuated when you bring together separate companies that have now been combined. Yet that was not the case for everyone who answered that question. Internal alignment: We all know that high-performing teams are the ones that are aligned and are going to create success and growth in the business.
[00:12:56] Steve MacDonald: So I love the way that you answer that because that brand, what I am taking away, was one of the biggest ways that you were integrating and aligning teams in a single go-to-market strategy. Is that a good takeaway?
[00:13:10] Robert Sanchez: Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of things in alignment around the mission statement. And we talk about several things all the time, and then, in a broad sense, lead and learn, innovate, inspire, do more, do good. So there are the basic things that we say, hey, everybody has got to be around these things.
[00:13:26] Robert Sanchez: And then the alignment around the strategy. We have leadership meetings, and we try to keep it, or I try to keep it, very simple, because things could get very complicated. But here is our growth strategy. Here is what our major pillars are that we are going after, and there could be six or seven things at most. And then how are we going to accomplish those things.
[00:13:45] Robert Sanchez: And this year we met and we said everything has got to be about those strategies and what we are doing, and everybody has got to kind of circle now within that. When you go beneath that, there are things that we have done. So for example, the global expansion has been a big thing for us.
[00:14:02] Robert Sanchez: It has worked well, but we would not be able to do it without going out and saying, yeah, here are the things we want to do. Here are the solutions we feel are important. But every market is going to have its own culture, and we make a big effort when we go into a new market, when we go into APAC and parts of APAC Australia, that we have leadership in market. We have the core things we are going after, but within that, we are respecting that there are cultural differences and we have to behave in that market in a way that we are going to have success with the right people and leadership.
[00:14:46] Robert Sanchez: So in every different market, we have leadership in AMEA. We have a person who is the president of AMEA, from there. And we have adapted to what is going on there.
[00:14:58] Robert Sanchez: So we make a big effort not only to rally around our core, but also to say we are different in different places. We have got to approach things differently in order to have success.
[00:14:58] Steve MacDonald: So now that brings me back to one of the things that you opened up with at the beginning. You talked about learning deeply about your customers and their pain points and their problems.
[00:15:09] Steve MacDonald: So you could say growth expansion 101 is a well-defined, understood brand that is aligned internally and then explained well externally. And that the voice of the customer is the highest voice of authority in the business. So these are really basic things.
[00:15:25] Steve MacDonald: But when CEOs, CROs, and CMOs are constantly saying, we are not aligned. In fact, we do not even have a true, concise definition of our ideal customer profile. And you are saying that is really important, in your own words, but then you are expanding into different markets and cultures. So tell me a little bit about how you, A, align around the voice of the customer, and then how you do that on a global basis too.
[00:15:52] Robert Sanchez: Yeah. So it starts with really studying who the internal customers are. And another important thing is that we have a broad spectrum of B2B customers. We have got a big chunk, probably close to half, that are enterprise tech. And depending on what we are helping people sell, we identify who we are targeting there. It could be C-suite people, CMOs, marketers, or tech people. It runs the gamut.
[00:16:17] Robert Sanchez: But then we also have quite a bit of broader B2B services, industrial, manufacturing, healthcare, and other areas. So there is no one-size-fits-all. It really depends on the market. And then within the market, you have to adapt to the geo of what that is.
[00:16:48] Robert Sanchez: So our work, for a lot of customers, is helping them actually do that work. So a company may go in and buy several companies, each with its own data set. They need to be unified, scored, run models, and all of that.
[00:17:00] Robert Sanchez: And we are doing that type of work. So that has helped us understand our own information and data, and use our own tools to do so. But we spend a lot of time, and then just have conversations. I mean, I feel like now the one thing I wish I could do more of, and I do as much as I can, is host events.
[00:17:07] Robert Sanchez: They could be lunch and learns, they could be dinners, they could be half-day events where we invite the customers, and we let them usually take the stage with a moderator, and we listen to them. And we pose these types of questions to them, like, what is going on, what are you seeing? So we spend a lot of time with those customers to understand what they are going through and to study the companies we are working with.
[00:17:31] Steve MacDonald: You know, I just interviewed, about three weeks ago, a four time B2B CRO, and he was saying exactly what you are saying. So you are talking about from the point of view of the CEO. He was talking about from the point of view of the CRO. I cannot tell you how many countless conversations we have had with CMOs that we all need to have one on one conversations. We need to be in direct conversations with our customers. It is a really important part of it.
[00:17:54] Steve MacDonald: But you also nailed it on the head too. It takes up a lot of your time being CEO. The amount of time that you have to dedicate to that. But you know, if we go back to our ICP is complex and always changing, how do you operationalize that. And then when you have those meetings that you are talking about, how does that get translated to the teams that are performing, the teams that are executing. So it is not just in your head or in the head of a few people that are at those meetings. How does that work in your organization.
[00:18:25] Robert Sanchez: Yeah, so within, I have always liked the kind of different specialties within the C-Suite. I think that is the way to go. You can combine, like we have certain ones that are combined, but I love having a marketing perspective from the CMO, a sales perspective from the CRO, a financial perspective from the CFO. And what we get now, which I think I am very fortunate to have this kind of team, is that they work together really well. And this number one indicator of success in our organization, because we have had people that have not made it, that were C-Suite or have moved on, or it just was not a good fit, is that ability, kind of like that soft skill, to work across the lines and work with each other and understand what we are trying to do.
[00:19:10] Robert Sanchez: There are several organizations that the CRO and CMO are combined into one, but I like having the sales perspective and the marketing perspective, as long as they are working together, and the financial perspective. They are all important, and we have a Chief Data Officer and a Chief People Officer. We have filled these positions, but the requirement is that you work as a team. You are not fighting each other and you understand the perspective of where each other is coming from. So that is really important.
[00:19:36] Robert Sanchez: The other thing that is really important is because, again, we are marketers. We are selling marketing solutions. So we understand that our customers are trying to target people and we are trying to target the customers and how that all works. So we are kind of living that every day. So it is not that big a leap to say the most important thing is probably what is the ideal customer of the customer.
[00:19:57] Robert Sanchez: Who are they trying to reach? What is the company trying to do? Who should they be marketing to? What kind of data should they be using? What channels should they be using? So we have a lot of experience across different channels and profiles. That is kind of the business. So it has not been just what our business is. It is not really a struggle to get there.
[00:20:17] Steve MacDonald: I like how you kind of termed that. It is almost like what is the ideal customer of the customer, because in the end, that is what they are trying to do. And you are selling marketing solutions to marketers, but every organization, as part of understanding the challenges and pain points of the customers they serve, must truly understand what they are trying to do.
[00:20:37] Steve MacDonald: There are too many organizations that approach a market like a vendor. Here is what we do and here is how we help you. But those conversations that you have on a regular basis with customers, it helps you understand this, right.
[00:20:48] Steve MacDonald: This is what they are dealing with. This is their challenges. Instead of coming at it from here, here is what we can do for you, let us first talk about what you need and what your challenges are. So I would be very interested, kind of from a C-Suite perspective and a CEO perspective, what recommendations you would have for CROs or CMOs that are going to be tuning into this episode here, in terms of how they have their own unique understanding, but how that comes together and how they play well together in the sandbox. Because that is one of the biggest issues that we have in the B2B industry, playing well together and aligning. What are your recommendations for them from a CEO perspective?
[00:21:28] Robert Sanchez: Yeah, I think it starts with the leadership within the teams. And we have our first corporate values, lead and learn, and that does not just mean the C-Suite. It is everybody. So, for instance, our marketing team as a whole works really well with the sales team. And that is the CRO and the CMO setting the tone. They work well together and then the teams work together. Our finance team works very well with both the sales and marketing teams.
[00:21:53] Robert Sanchez: So there are different perspectives and I have to break tie breakers and say, you know, I weigh in on different sides of it, but they are all valued and they value each other and they value the perspective so that they are not really at odds. And the same thing for operations and customer success and all that.
[00:22:09] Robert Sanchez: So I think start at the top. Show that you can work well with the other groups. Have regular communication. We hold leadership team meetings, then rally around the initiatives. So we have several initiatives for this year and we are all, that is what matters. How are we going to get there.
[00:22:26] Robert Sanchez: And try to learn from each other’s perspective. I mean, I think that is the most important thing. But it is really, the teams and the people have to be a good fit. And sometimes it is not, and the integration part is a lot more difficult than it seems to be at times. But you have got to get those people working together and that is the most important thing.
[00:22:43] Robert Sanchez: So I would say it is cool to have the different perspectives, as long as they are kind of feeding each other. Healthy disagreements are fine. In fact, if you do not have them, I think that is more of a challenge, right? If they are telling you what you want to hear and not like, here is what we need to do: we need to change certain things, and whatever, then that is good. But I think we have a really good team, a lot of talent, and a lot of experience, and they all fit a certain profile: really loving the business and working hard to achieve all the goals we want.
[00:23:18] Steve MacDonald: So if I am counting right, you have brought up maybe three or four times values and the company mission. Values and principles used to be the kind of things that hung on the walls as plaques or were posted on the website. But you have brought it up consistently throughout the conversation. So I have to ask, how do you see those as important to creating, maybe the right culture? How do you see that in terms of accelerating the business’s growth?
[00:23:47] Robert Sanchez: I think the main thing is there are just some core things that everybody believes in, that you are sharing, that you are going after. They can be broad. That is fine. And then, from there, come the growth strategies and the type of behavior that will grow the business, and that is where you get into the more details. But I think it is important that everybody is on board. And it is a challenge. I think in the past, one of my shortcomings was that I was all right, let’s get it done. Numbers, this, that, and just being straight to it. And over time, I did learn, because I used to have the same thought. Those are things just hanging on the wall. That was just my personality, like, ah, just get out and sell. It does not matter. And you learn over time that these things are really important.
[00:24:26] Robert Sanchez: It is not that we were not aligned. We just did not take the time to go through it. I think the branding exercise helped us a lot and helped us step back and think, all right, how do we want to be known? Simple questions like that. What do you want people to think about when they think about the company, or about your position, or the job we are doing, or the services we are providing?
[00:24:44] Robert Sanchez: All those things. So I think it is good to step back, rally around those things, set the strategy, and then the talent will do the rest. And I think you have to respect the fact that I like to empower people within their positions. We discuss the concept of extreme ownership. Things are going to change. You want them to be able to make decisions as they go through their work without having to keep checking up. So I want them to kind of own their area. Obviously, there are checks and balances, and there are budgetary things, and we always have to get certain approvals, but I really want them to own their respective area and work tightly with their other colleagues in the space.
[00:25:25] Steve MacDonald: So I have got only one more question, but it is probably the most important question. And that is that we have just covered so much territory in the last half hour here. If there was one thing that you wanted the other C-Suite executives in your peer community to take away from our conversation today, if there was one thing, what would it be?
[00:25:44] Robert Sanchez: I think, and I think I touched on this before with you, that the market and B2B marketing, I just feel like there is so much opportunity. There is a lot of, I would not say negativity, but fear of technology, AI, and other things. And often it goes a little too far. And I just think, you know, all of business history, we have come through internet computing, all this stuff. And I think it is a massive opportunity if you know how to harness it.
[00:26:14] Robert Sanchez: And I think in some cases, there is always a tendency to over-platform, to over-tool, to do too much, to not rely on the core competencies and instincts. But I think there are so many tools available to marketers now, and it is such a good time to be in this space. That is what I think people should be really excited about: the space, despite some challenges, and the tools that are available.
[00:26:39] Robert Sanchez: And I think you do not need to latch onto everything. I think AI is pretty interesting now. But there is such an opportunity with it. I mean, we have the opportunity from using the tools to selling to companies that are big AI drivers in the space, from infrastructure to tools to everything else.
[00:26:57] Robert Sanchez: So there is just a massive amount of opportunity, but you have to manage it the right way. And I think it is important to keep a perspective on the industry’s trajectory. It is really important, and there is a lot going on. But the massive opportunity, that is what I would think. I hope people share in that, that they think this is a great time. There will always be challenges, but it is amazing. I think the optimism that should be out there is incredible.
[00:27:23] Steve MacDonald: It is a great way to end the conversation here. And I have to tell you, people are going to have questions. So I would love to share a direct link to your LinkedIn profile so people can reach out and ask questions. Would that be appropriate?
[00:27:35] Robert Sanchez: Sure. That would be great. That would be great.
[00:27:38] Steve MacDonald: I say this a lot, but I really, really mean this. The whole mission of this podcast is to bring diverse perspectives from C-Suite roles across different parts of the world. We interview people worldwide, APAC, Australia, India, you name it, Canada, US. And if we can bring all those perspectives and all those insights from years of experience in doing one thing well, which is leading B2B organizations in an ABM motion, and we can learn from each other, that is the rising tide that lifts all boats. And you did an amazing job providing that rising tide today and offering unique insights. So I just wanted to say thank you for coming on board.
[00:28:14] Robert Sanchez: Thank you. I think this type of thing is so important because as a CEO, and I know in other parts of my management team, with the CMO, the CRO, everybody, you are constantly on this mission to learn what is going on and things like that. Like what we just did, hearing different perspectives is so important.
[00:28:31] Robert Sanchez: I think that is the most common thing I hear at my CEO groups or conferences. It is like, hey, it is just simple. What is going on? Sharing experiences is super important, and I think that is what this does. I appreciate the work you are doing.