The Human Signal in an AI-Scaled Market: How Executive Trust, Technology, and Thought Leadership Turn into Revenue

Featured Speakers:-

Links and Resources

• Data Science Marketing Attribution for Leaders: What You Are Missing in Your Reports
• A Next-Generation Marketing Analytics Guide for Growth Leaders
• Marketing Attribution Tracking: Build a Trail That Lasts

Transcript

[00:00] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of the AI Machines and Marketer Show. Well, it’s an open secret that AI can create content, analyze bias, and scale outreach faster than ever. But we all know that as more of our marketing becomes automated, trust has become harder to earn. Today, buyers are surrounded by more content, more opinions, and more AI-generated interactions than ever before.

That’s put more pressure on our leaders—pressure to show up with a point of view that feels credible, consistent, and genuinely their own. Which also brings us to a bigger question: How do leaders stay human and build trust when AI is shaping more of the buyer’s journey?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, to unpack that, I’m joined by two incredible guests who will explore today’s topic: The Human Signal in an AI-Scaled Market: How Executive Trust, Technology, and Thought Leadership Turn into Revenue.

Without further ado, please welcome Kelli Schutrop, CEO and Founder of Thoughtful Resound. Kelli is a seasoned marketing and consultative-selling professional with more than 18 years of experience across the sales and marketing spectrum. Kelli brings a particularly valuable perspective on building executive leadership presence while staying authentic in an increasingly AI-driven world.

We also have Arpit Srivastava, Co-Founder and Product Head of DiGGrowth, who brings his own perspective on leadership, business, technology, and changing ways of working. Together, they’ll explore how leaders can build authentic brands, use AI effectively, and turn visibility into business impact.

Kelli, Arpit, welcome to the AI Machines and Marketer Show.

[01:46] Kelli Schutrop

Thank you for having me.

[01:46] Arpit Srivastava

Thank you so much.

[01:48] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

So, Kelli, Arpit, before we get into the bigger conversation, I’m curious: What have you both been seeing in your own work that made this topic especially important to you?

[01:58] Kelli Schutrop

You know, it’s so interesting. We all spend a lot of time on LinkedIn in the B2B landscape. And over the last few years, LinkedIn has changed from such a stuffy professional platform to one that’s far more personal. And the individuals over the last few years who have become more and more active on LinkedIn have gained really great followings, built great networks, received opportunities that have found them, and expanded business.

I’ve personally closed over five million dollars in revenue through thought leadership avenues, and a lot of that has been heavily centralized around LinkedIn. I think the challenge that we’re seeing now with AI being saturated in the market—which I’m a big fan of AI—but we’re seeing a lot of people use AI to shortcut authenticity and essentially just ask ChatGPT or Claude for a post and really not take the time to provide a thoughtful prompt, a thoughtful input about who they are, what their experience is, and what their perspective is.

And so we end up seeing a lot of noise and AI slop out on LinkedIn. I mean, even to the point where LinkedIn now has an option where you can select “seems like AI slop,” which is so interesting.

[03:03] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right.

[03:03] Kelli Schutrop

So anyway, we’ll get into this as we get into our conversation, but there are ways for people to still utilize AI and different tools to shortcut the timeframe to get great content, but still have it sound like them.

So that’s what I’m seeing a lot of—people using AI to shortcut it, but not in the right ways, and it just creates a lot of noise.

[03:23] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right. That makes our conversation more interesting.

[03:26] Arpit Srivastava

With AI, it has become a great leveler, which means for leadership teams and for a person who has, like, 20 years of experience, now you have a new generation that also has access to a lot of domain expertise and things of that nature. They can probably represent or even talk about things that we learned and actually did the grind for.

So obviously, now you have to come back with a unique point of view and things of that nature. And that’s where I think the topic is pretty interesting and relevant for me as well.

[04:04] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right. So, okay then. Shall we get started with our first section?

We all know that AI has made it remarkably easy to create competent content, personalize outreach, and even analyze buyers, right? So my question is: Has AI made executive visibility more valuable, or has it made audiences more skeptical of what they see? I mean, what earns that trust now? I’ll start with you, Kelli.

[04:37] Kelli Schutrop

Sure. You know, I think if executives are using AI and it still sounds authentic, then it does continue building authenticity and trust. If they haven’t posted before and they’ve never put out content before, and it sounds very vanilla and it’s using phrases that you know came straight out of ChatGPT, then it does the absolute opposite.

People know that it’s just noise and clutter. So I think the most important thing is working with someone internally or an outside advisor to identify how to capture your voice and capture your experience, your thoughts, and your approach in a way that you can prompt AI to then create LinkedIn posts, webinar content, you know, all of the above.

So I think it’s a really sharp left or right depending on whether it’s done well or not.

[05:24] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right.

[05:25] Arpit Srivastava

Yeah, I think both the message and messenger were important. But in the current scheme of things, the message is kind of getting controlled through AI in a lot of ways.

So, in my view, the messenger or the person or the brand has become more important because that will bring in the authenticity, that will bring in the real experience, and that will bring in the authenticity that we just talked about.

In general, even from a marketing perspective, the whole brand narrative is far more important than just running some campaigns that are being created through AI, for example. So the brand orientation, and then within the brand also, your C-suite itself is actually representing the company or organization. That is going to be far more important.

There’s a technical side of it as well. So the Knowledge Graph that Google owns has a good footprint of what you have done, what kind of expertise you have, and it really maps out with your organization.

So in that sense, I would say yes—with this whole change, since the message or the content has now become relatively easy, the person and the brand are now more important.

[06:40] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right. So as we talk about growth over time, Kelli, my second question to you is: Your career has taken you from marketing to consultative selling through thought leadership and growth-led growth. Now, when an executive has deep expertise but almost no public presence, how do you uncover a point of view that is genuinely there rather than creating a content persona for them?

[07:05] Kelli Schutrop

Yeah, that’s a great question. When someone has deep expertise in a space and they want to become a thought leader for that, the first thing I tell them to do is think about the conversations that you are already in day to day, that you’ve been in year over year, when you’re talking to your peers, people you report to, and especially clients, customers, and prospects.

What are questions that you often get that feel like you could answer them so easily? You know this information like the back of your hand, but yet you get these questions or these types of themes of questions coming to you pretty often.

There’s a reason that in day-to-day, real-life conversations, people are asking you those. So you can take those and create content themes out of those.

When we translate this into AI, one of the easiest ways to do this would be—assuming your LinkedIn profile is up to date, speaks to your audience, and has your experience really nicely outlined there—is put your profile into ChatGPT and say, based on my experience and these specific content themes, please give me a series of posts or please give me a series of topics.

And when someone is working to become a thought leader, there are a few different areas that they can expand within. There are three core areas that I like to hone in on when I work with individuals in thought leadership workshops.

The first is your own presence within LinkedIn. So posting consistently, at least once a week, making sure your profile’s up to date, commenting on relevant profiles and things that are interesting to you.

The second is putting your name in the hat for different speaking engagements. So that could be podcast appearances, that could be providing webinars through associations that support the space that you want to sell into—speaking through webinars, conferences, etc.

And then the third is actually getting really actively involved in the community where you want to build relationships. On the highest-effort side of that, you could host a podcast. There’s a lot, as you both know very well, that goes into hosting a podcast.

On the leaner side of that, one way you could do it is think about the different associations that your ideal audience naturally joins. Where do they go to conferences year after year? And join a committee.

The ideal committees would be a membership committee, so that anytime a new company or new individual gets onboarded into that association, you are the one that’s meeting them virtually or in person, meeting them face-to-face to onboard them to that association.

But by default, you’re also introducing yourself, telling them who you are, connecting on LinkedIn, and now they’re following your content.

Or the events or programming committee, because then you can have a say in recruiting talent and individuals to have great content, or you could be a moderator for those.

So that’s the way that I would approach taking deep expertise that you’ve had for years and pivoting it into something that is digestible and showing up with frequency in front of your ideal audience, which in turn creates inbound opportunities that can turn into revenue for your business.

[10:08] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

So basically, it proves the saying that communication is the key.

[10:11] Kelli Schutrop

Mm-hmm.

[10:12] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Yeah. So Arpit, you sit at the intersection of AI, product, analytics, and go-to-market strategy. If AI can tell a leader who to target, what buyers care about, and even suggest what to say, which decisions should remain unmistakably human?

[10:30] Arpit Srivastava

I think we always debate human versus AI. I think what’s really happening is we actually need a human in the loop. Let’s call it AI along with domain expertise in the loop.

In fact, what’s really happening is there are platforms around agent tech and AI coming up where they’re sort of giving you a blank canvas—a blank canvas where you can create your own agents and automate certain workflows.

That platform will basically still need somebody who’s a domain expert. For example, let’s say I have performance marketing experience for the last 15 years, and now I can build agents to craft ad copies at scale across five different channels in a matter of minutes.

If you just have it in a plain vanilla ChatGPT, the results will be far different from somebody who has domain expertise. So I think that is going to be a critical point.

The other dimension is that it’s all about the stakes as well. So if it’s a small tactical task that can be automated—let’s say, for example, updating a contact record in your CRM—you can probably fully rely on agents because you can actually update that, you can change that.

But certain things are very high-stakes, where brand conviction is required, judgment is required, strategy is required. Over there, I think humans still matter and will matter because that narrative, that thought process, should come from a human when you’re representing a brand or representing your own professional journey.

So I think we should not say AI versus human. It’s going to coexist, and domain expertise will still matter.

[12:22] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

And that’s what I personally believe—that even a machine needs a human to run. So that’s the thing: the human is always in the loop.

So, Kelli, now again coming to thought leadership, you have seen thought leadership create inbound conversations. But what actually happens between someone saying, “I follow this executive,” and someone saying, “I want to do business with this company”? Where does visibility begin turning into commercial trust?

[12:47] Kelli Schutrop

You know, the way that I see this done the best is when people—thought leaders—create content that helps the prospect see themselves in the story.

So, for example, I work with a number of executive recruiters. They are engaged by organizations that need to hire mid- to senior- to very senior-level leadership within the organization, and they go out and find that talent.

Executive recruiters would love to have more companies find them and say, “I’m hiring a Chief Marketing Officer,” or “I’m hiring a Vice President of Manufacturing”—fill in the blank.

Oftentimes, executive recruiters have deep expertise in whatever domain they tend to recruit within. Either they grew up within manufacturing and now recruit for it, or they’ve been recruiting in that space for a really long time.

So what I see work very well is when executive recruiters, for example, will post stories that really become selling without selling.

It could start out with, “I was recently speaking with a VP of manufacturing about what he’s doing to retain the best talent on his team, and he’s really been wrestling with XYZ.”

There are ways to anonymize this based on true conversations you’re having without giving away that prospect’s actual scenario they’re experiencing.

But what that does is it takes someone else—a potential prospect—who’s following that executive recruiter. They may know them in passing, they may have connected on LinkedIn, but they probably don’t know each other very well.

And they see a post like that and they say, “Interesting. I’m a VP of manufacturing, and I’m struggling with that exact scenario.”

Next time they want to work with someone outside to solve that, or even just pick someone’s brain on what they could be doing differently, who do you think they’re going to go to? They’re going to go right to that executive recruiter to engage in a conversation.

And so that’s what I found after spending half my career managing marketing in-house and then pivoting into consultative sales.

My first role in consultative sales was selling digital marketing services into the staffing and recruiting industry. What I found is that by posting video content, regular content, speaking, and being very present and active within the staffing community, I would have people multiple times a week reach out to me just wanting to talk shop.

Sometimes it was, “We are looking for exactly this. It’s going to be you and one other person. Let’s talk.” But most often it was, “Can I just run something by you?”

Because as a thought leader, if you can create a space that’s comfortable for someone to reach out and ask a question, and it’s set up within your business model to want to have a lot of sales conversations, it’s a perfect lead into your pipeline.

Those individuals, when they would come to me and have a conversation, would go in one of two directions. Either they would say, “Great, how do I engage you and your team?” Or they would say, “Great, when I have budget, when the time makes sense, I’m definitely going to reach back out to you.”

And so that’s how I partnered with over 150 staffing and search firms over the course of four years, 95% of which found me and found what we were doing online.

So telling stories based on your own experience helps prospects see themselves in what you can offer them.

[15:49] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

So Arpit, what Kelli said brings me to the next question. Executive brand is almost an attribution nightmare. Someone might read a post or hear a podcast, six months later ask a colleague about the company, and only then enter the CRM.

Now, how would you measure leadership presence in a way a CFO would respect without pretending every touchpoint can be perfectly attributed?

[16:14] Arpit Srivastava

That’s an interesting question, and attribution, as you know, is very close to my heart.

But that’s more on the marketing side—whether the marketing team is delivering revenue or pipeline impact. And that’s generally a million-dollar question because it’s difficult, especially for B2B sales and marketing, where everything is multi-touch.

But you added another dimension—not marketing, but the leader himself—and how he makes an impact that really influences the CFO’s perception.

So I do think we’ll have to go beyond vanity metrics, just the way we do in marketing.

It’s not just about how many followers you have on LinkedIn. You’ve got to have some tangible numbers that prove that you’re making an impact in the organization.

When we started the conversation, I touched upon the topic of the Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph for your C-suite—for your CMO, CFO, CIO, CTO, CEO—all of that is actually empowering the overall brand.

And do you have that kind of visibility in ChatGPT, in Perplexity, in Google AI Overviews when you’re searching for your leadership team? That’s going to be important—how well you’re managing that brand and visibility.

The second aspect is more tactical in nature. If I’m actually joining certain customer calls and participating in sales, am I influencing the sales? Are deals closing faster? Are deal sizes bigger?

Those numbers should actually define it, and those will hit the CFO because they care about the numbers. It cannot be vanity. Just like for marketing and sales, it cannot be vanity for you as well. That’s how we should approach it.

[18:10] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Okay. So Kelli, a lot of companies tell executives to be active on LinkedIn while sales, marketing, and leadership continue to operate as separate functions. What does a practical operating model look like when executive thought leadership is expected to create pipeline and not just simply engagement?

[18:31] Kelli Schutrop

Sure. So first, I would recommend starting with a set number of KPIs—key performance indicators—where you are identifying who the people are that we want to build as thought leaders within our organization.

Are these executives? Are they sales individuals? Because they’re going to be the face in the market to prospects.

Identify those individuals, and then, after having a more in-depth workshop or series of sessions diving into expertise and what they want to talk about and all of those different pieces, identify how many times a week they are going to post on social. How many speaking engagements do they want to get in a given year? What are they doing to get involved in their communities?

Setting out those KPIs from the beginning is very important so that you essentially have a sales recipe or a thought leadership recipe that you can build over time.

Now, jumping to the attribution side of things, make sure that sales, marketing, and that executive leader are in triangulation anytime an opportunity does close.

Have the conversation beyond maybe the one line in the CRM that just says “outbound,” because it’s possible that outbound was successful because of all of the legwork being done by marketing—having an eBook that was ungated and just available and someone was digesting that first, or someone continually following the CEO for the last two years as they published about XYZ.

So part of it is just a thoughtful conversation with the sales team to say, when you were in conversation with this prospect, what else did they say led them to the conversation?

And train and coach the sales teams to be thinking about that proactively. Because the reality is, it’s not trying to take credit away from outbound or sales. What it is trying to do is make sure that we continue feeding the system that’s bringing in pipeline.

If there’s never any attribution given to what is happening from a thought leadership perspective, and the company makes a strategic decision to move away from it, and then pipeline slows six months down the road, that’s a problem.

So I would recommend strategically setting your plan, setting the KPIs, and then having conversations upon close.

[20:35] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Okay. So as you both have shared some good insights, which brings me to the last question of the first segment. And my question is to you both.

Looking three years ahead, if AI keeps making competent marketing faster and cheaper, what becomes the real moat for a leader and for the company behind them? And what should an organization start building now that will be difficult for competitors or AI to replace later?

[21:04] Kelli Schutrop

Sure. You know, there are two things that come to mind.

One is what I would call the marketing brain—the marketing operating system of your organization.

All of these different elements exist in our minds, exist on servers somewhere, but having your AI tool of choice have full access to your ICP and your audience targeting that is really specific—what are the ideal customers and what are the ones that maybe don’t make sense long-term? What are you doing from a marketing standpoint? How do you answer Q&A between sales and marketing and prospects?

I have a friend in the industry named Mandy Hornaday, and she, for example, leads a CMO roundtable around developing this marketing brain for in-house and fractional CMOs.

So getting something like that solidly in place now from an AI standpoint will allow you, as Arpit had mentioned before, to create marketing assets, sales assets, and all of the above with a really, really streamlined approach with your AI.

The second thing that comes to mind is: start building your thought leadership presence now and make sure you have that human judgment as a part of it.

Because just like with anything, you fast-forward three years and there’ll be people who have been doing it consistently along the way and people who are just starting.

So the more you can make sure your voice is a part of everything you’re doing from a thought leadership perspective, and you are planting those seeds of content posting and speaking and involving yourself in the communities where you want to sell, you’re going to have a much stronger pipeline, relationships, and, honestly, revenue down the road.

[22:33] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Okay. Arpit?

[22:34] Arpit Srivastava

I think I’ll also add two to the list, just like Kelli did.

I think one thing that’s probably going to be very important is your deep understanding of customer pain points and all those micro-moments wherever and however a customer interacts with you.

So if you have that expertise to understand the customer pain points and what your workflow or recipe is to handle those touchpoints in a way that gives the best experience—it’s old school, but it’s still going to be far more important because people will care about how authentic you are.

And that will only come once you have a good understanding of the customer. I think you touched upon ICP, but it’s about going deep into the pain points and those touchpoints.

And then the second would be the whole organizational alignment. There’s a good thought leader named Ron Kaufman who does a good talk around the whole customer experience, and he brings in a good case study about Changi Airport in Singapore.

There are 1,300 employees in that organization, but there are so many vendors. The whole experience is well aligned, and every touchpoint is being taken care of, and that has made them such a neat brand, such a cult brand.

So I think that alignment across the organization—whoever is touching the customers—is going to be key for leaders and how they bring that alignment. And then, secondly, obviously, is the understanding of customer pain points.

[24:23] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right then. Well, here we come to the conclusion of our first section, and now let’s move to our rapid-fire round. So, are you guys ready?

[24:32] Arpit Srivastava

Yeah, let’s do it.

[24:32] Kelli Schutrop

Yes.

[24:33] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Okay then. Kelli, my first question is to you. Which creates more valuable opportunities: deep niche authority or broad executive visibility?

[24:43] Kelli Schutrop

Deep niche authority.

[24:44] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Arpit, which would you invest in first: clean first-party data or a more powerful AI model?

[24:50] Arpit Srivastava

I think you know it. It’s always going to be data first because the model is kind of becoming a commodity, and it will keep on improving, enhancing, and becoming superpowered. But the context layer powered by your first-party data, your market data—that is going to be a differentiator.

[25:07] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right. Kelli, which is better at opening a high-value sales conversation: inbound thought leadership or proactive consultative outreach?

[25:17] Kelli Schutrop

I tend to prefer the thought leadership approach because they already feel like they know you and they know what you bring to the table. And that’s typically why they’re reaching out. So it starts a very warm conversation.

[25:29] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right. Arpit, which wins when you have to choose: speed to market or higher confidence in the AI output?

[25:37] Arpit Srivastava

Again, it depends on the stakes that we’re talking about. So anything that can be undone, speed is going to matter most. Go for full automation; let the agent decide.

Anything where you’re not so clear and there are situations where the stakes are higher, go with confidence more.

[25:57] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Okay. This is my question to you both. One-line follow-up: Which creates trust faster today, personal brand or company brand?

[26:05] Kelli Schutrop

I think personal brand. People tend to buy from people more than companies.

It can make a difference if it’s a brand like Nike or something like that, right? But when we’re talking B2B smaller businesses, if someone pops up in the news feed with a logo they’ve never seen, or an individual who’s a CEO or a face of the brand telling a real story, that tends to get my interest faster.

[26:27] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Arpit?

[26:27] Arpit Srivastava

Yeah, definitely agree with that. And in fact, even technically, individual professionals, brands, and the C-suite are representing the brand and giving that discoverability, if you will, in the LLM platforms.

So their expertise, their experience—all of that is going to matter to the algorithms as well.

[26:49] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Kelli, which compounds better over time: weekly consistency or standout ideas?

[26:54] Kelli Schutrop

I’d say weekly consistency.

[26:56] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Okay, Arpit, which would you trust with your highest-value opportunity: predictive scoring or human qualification?

[27:03] Arpit Srivastava

Again, a very relevant topic that is very close to my heart. The approach we generally take is to blend both because the scoring through the business context and the logic is going to be important, but it always has some bias.

Then bias can be removed with some AI and ML approaches. And if you blend it together, that’s the best of both worlds.

[27:26] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Okay. Kelli, which makes an executive more credible: authentic and imperfect or polished and controlled?

[27:34] Kelli Schutrop

You know, I would say that depends on the brand to a degree.

I mean, not to get political, but there’s a United States president who tends to be quite unpolished, and it creates all kinds of issues all around.

And if you think of any major, major brand, if you have a CEO who maybe you know, maybe you don’t—you’re not familiar with aside from the brand—if they are posting on X or posting on LinkedIn and it feels so raw and unfiltered, to me that creates some instability in my mind about the brand, regardless of how amazing the team under that company may be.

Now pivot that to maybe a smaller brand, and it is a company owning what they’ve done wrong or acknowledging something changing in the market. Maybe there’s something like a personal anecdote or story or even a typo in that. For some reason, for me, that feels more authentic.

So for me personally, it may be a little bit of the perception of: Am I thinking about this as a brand entity, and they need to be buttoned up because they’re representing Apple or Google or whatever that might be, versus a company that I may personally choose to work with because I trust the individual team rather than selecting a mammoth brand’s product?

[28:44] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

My last question to you both: If the budget forces you to prioritize one for the next 12 months, which would you choose—attributable pipeline or long-term brand equity?

[28:55] Kelli Schutrop

Attributable pipeline.

[28:57] Arpit Srivastava

Yeah, being the attribution guy, the only way you can defend the whole marketing budget is you’ve got to have numbers, and that is attributable pipeline. That is not going to change.

But at the same time, I think the importance of brand is there. And if you have the ability to tie it back to pipeline and revenue, that is, again, the best of both worlds.

[29:17] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Right. Okay then, that brings us to the end of today’s podcast. Thank you, Kelli. Thank you, Arpit, for joining us today. It was great talking to you both.

The world awaits your answers, and in fact, the world wants to know the things that are happening in the world of AI. So thank you for joining us on the AI Machines and Marketer Show.

[29:35] Arpit Srivastava

Thank you so much.

[29:36] Kelli Schutrop

Thank you for hosting us.

[29:37] Arpit Srivastava

Thank you, Kelli.

[29:37] Host (Rajnish Ranjan)

Thank you.

And a big thank you to our audience for being with us. Until the next time we meet again, keep learning, keep evolving. Thank you.

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