Selling the Cloud Podcast By Mark Petruzzi KK Anderson Paul Melchiorre cover art

Selling the Cloud

Selling the Cloud

By: Mark Petruzzi KK Anderson Paul Melchiorre
Listen for free

Selling the Cloud delves into the stories of C-suite veterans in Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and RevOps, revealing the secrets behind building successful SaaS empires. Each episode features seasoned leaders who walk through their career journeys, sharing the wins and lessons learned along the way. From mastering customer acquisition to leveraging AI-powered marketing and sales strategies, our guests provide actionable insights for driving growth and business success in the B2B SaaS space.

Guided by a powerhouse team of co-hosts, including Mark Petruzzi, Paul Melchiorre, and Kristin "KK" Anderson, Selling the Cloud offers a front-row seat to the evolving world of Go-To-Market strategies. This podcast extends the insights from the best-selling books "Selling the Cloud" and "Data and Diagnosis-driven Selling", co-authored by Mark Petruzzi and Paul Melchiorre, making it your go-to source for the latest trends and practical tips in SaaS excellence.


© © 2026 Selling the Cloud Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Ep.120 - AI-Driven Buyer Behavior, Trust, and the New Sales Playbook with Sabrina Parsons - Part 1

    Ep.120 - AI-Driven Buyer Behavior, Trust, and the New Sales Playbook with Sabrina Parsons - Part 1
    Apr 1 2026
    General Episode Description:In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson sit down with Sabrina Parsons, CEO of Palo Alto Software, to explore how AI is rapidly reshaping buyer behavior and forcing a complete rethink of how companies sell, market, and build trust.Sabrina shares how search behavior has fundamentally shifted toward AI-generated answers, reducing click-throughs and changing how buyers consume information. She explains why this creates new challenges in clarity, especially around the “build vs buy” decision, and why sales teams must now work harder to guide buyers through uncertainty.The conversation also dives into the growing importance of trust, the evolving relationship between sales and marketing, and how organizations can use AI effectively without losing the human connection that ultimately drives decisions. What You’ll Learn:The New Buyer Behavior: How AI-driven search and LLMs are reducing clicks and changing how buyers gather information.The “Muddy Middle” Problem: Why AI has blurred clarity around what buyers actually need and whether they should build or buy.Selling in an AI World: How sales teams must adapt when buyers are more informed but also more uncertain.Sales and Marketing Alignment: Why tighter collaboration is critical to address buyer confusion and build trust earlier.Using AI Without Losing Trust: Where AI enhances the sales process and where it can damage credibility.Key Topics:Shift from keyword search to question-based search behaviorAI-generated answers reducing traditional website trafficAEO vs SEO: optimizing for AI engines, not just search enginesBuyers arriving more educated but with incomplete or misleading contextThe disruption of the “why change” conversation in salesBuild vs buy vs AI: a more complex decision landscape for buyersMarketing’s role in answering buyer questions upfront and building trustThe risk of poor AI experiences damaging brand perceptionUsing AI for preparation versus customer-facing interactionsTurning AI efficiency into better personalization and human engagementGuest Spotlight: Sabrina ParsonsSabrina Parsons is the CEO of Palo Alto Software, makers of LivePlan, a leading business planning and financial forecasting platform. With experience leading both sales and marketing, she brings a unique perspective on how companies build sustainable revenue engines. Sabrina is also a strong advocate for women in leadership and technology, and has guided her company through multiple waves of technological change. Resources & Mentions:Palo Alto SoftwareLivePlanConcept: AEO (AI Engine Optimization) vs traditional SEOConcept: Build vs Buy vs AI decision-makingConcept: Trust equation in modern salesExample: Customer experience with AI chatbots (Oura Ring case)🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more insights on AI, modern buyer behavior, and building high-performing revenue teams.Mark Petruzzi (00:31)Welcome to Selling Intelligence. Our guest today is Sabrina Parsons, CEO of Palo Alto Software, makers of LivePlan, one of the world's leading business planning and financial forecasting platforms. Sabrina has been the helm at the company, this company that has over four decades of history leading through multiple waves of technology disruption.Before stepping into the CEO role, she ran both sales and marketing, giving her a uniquely integrated view of how companies grow, how buyers decide, and what it really takes to build a revenue engine that lasts. She is a passionate advocate for women in leadership and technology, a thread we'll weave in throughout today's conversation as well. So three topics we'd like to cover with you and with Sabrina today.how AI is reshaping buyer behavior and what that means for how you sell. We've covered that many times on our podcasts already, but we really are excited about Sabrina's perspective and her experiences in that area as well. The second one is why the human element, why trust, story building and storytelling.And relationships are the only sustainable differentiators that we really can build in today's business climate. And third and finally, what sales and marketing leaders must do differently today and how that integrates into the CEO role and also the board of directors. What can the boards be doing to help their sales and marketing leaders evolve in the way that they need to?Sabrina, welcome to Selling Intelligence.Sabrina Parsons (02:13)Great, thanks Mark, I'm really happy to be here.Mark Petruzzi (02:15)All right, let's dive right into topic one. ⁓ Topic one, AI and the changing buyer. So Sabrina, you've described the buyer behavior online as having shifted more dramatically in the last 18 months than in the prior decade. What are you actually seeing? Why does it matter so much for how we sell and how we need to sell in the future?Sabrina Parsons (02:35)that's a great question. And I'm pretty sure as soon as I start talking, all the listeners ...
    Show more Show less
    19 mins
  • Ep. 119 – Running Uphill at Full Speed When AI Keeps Raising the GTM Bar with Sunil Rao – Part 2

    Ep. 119 – Running Uphill at Full Speed When AI Keeps Raising the GTM Bar with Sunil Rao – Part 2
    Mar 25 2026

    In this episode of Selling the Cloud, Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson continue their conversation with Sunil Rao, founder and CEO of Tribble, diving deeper into SaaS fatigue, agentic execution, and the challenge of scaling institutional knowledge in enterprise sales.

    Sunil breaks down how AI agents are reshaping the way work gets done by becoming the interface across systems, eliminating the need for constant tool-switching, and enabling teams to operate from a single layer of intelligence. He also shares how modern GTM teams can capture and scale expertise across conversations, documents, and internal knowledge to improve performance over time.

    The discussion closes with a look at the human side of selling, where trust, collaboration, and real customer engagement remain irreplaceable even as AI automates more of the workflow.

    What You’ll Learn:

    • SaaS Fatigue and the Shift to Agents: Why the future interface is not more tools, but a single AI layer that connects everything.
    • Agentic Execution in Practice: How AI can capture context across calls, RFIs, and RFPs to generate smarter, more personalized responses.
    • Scaling Institutional Knowledge: How to turn tribal knowledge, conversations, and documents into a usable system of intelligence.
    • The Failure of Static Content Systems: Why traditional enablement platforms fall behind the speed of modern business.
    • Human + AI Collaboration: Where automation should take over and where human judgment, trust, and relationships still win.

    Key Topics:

    • “Kiss your apps goodbye” and the rise of agents as the new interface
    • Eliminating tool-switching and browser tab overload for GTM teams
    • Capturing context across the full sales lifecycle, not just at the RFP stage
    • Using AI to coach reps in real time during customer interactions
    • Building knowledge graphs from calls, documents, and internal conversations
    • Denoising and validating data from sources like Slack, Gong, and CRM systems
    • Why knowledge bottlenecks exist due to limited subject matter experts
    • The limits of traditional enablement programs and static content libraries
    • Designing AI systems with humans in the loop for approval and quality control
    • Reallocating 30% of seller time from admin work to customer engagement


    Guest Spotlight: Sunil Rao

    Sunil Rao is the founder and CEO of Tribble, an AI-native platform that helps enterprise sales teams automate and optimize go-to-market workflows. With a background as an engineer at SAP and a leader at Salesforce, Sunil brings a unique perspective on both the technical and human sides of enterprise selling. At Tribble, he focuses on building systems that scale knowledge, improve response quality, and enable teams to operate more efficiently with AI.

    Resources & Mentions:

    • Tribble
    • Concept: Agentic workflows in go-to-market
    • Knowledge graphs for sales and GTM intelligence
    • SaaS consolidation and interface shift to AI
    • The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
    • Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
    • Concepts: “SaaS fatigue” and “tribal knowledge” in enterprise organizations

    🎧 Listen now and follow Selling the Cloud for more insights on AI-driven GTM strategy, enterprise sales transformation, and the future of work.


    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
    Show more Show less
    22 mins
  • Ep. 118 – Running Uphill at Full Speed When AI Keeps Raising the GTM Bar with Sunil Rao – Part 1

    Ep. 118 – Running Uphill at Full Speed When AI Keeps Raising the GTM Bar with Sunil Rao – Part 1
    Mar 18 2026
    In this episode of Selling Intelligence Podcast, Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson sit down with Sunil Rao, founder and CEO of Tribble, to explore how AI is reshaping enterprise sales, go-to-market execution, and the future of software itself. Sunil shares why AI-driven productivity alone is no longer enough to create advantage, how the rise of agents is changing what software should do, and why trust, personalization, and institutional knowledge are becoming even more important in a world flooded with AI-generated noise.The conversation dives into the productivity paradox, the coming consolidation of fragmented SaaS tools, and the shift from software that assists humans to systems that can actually take action on their behalf. What You’ll Learn:The Productivity Paradox: Why AI makes everyone faster at the same time, raising the bar instead of creating instant advantage.AI and New Work Creation: How efficiency gains in one part of the workflow can create new review, oversight, and decision-making work elsewhere.Differentiation in an AI World: Why personalization, timing, and relevance matter more now that everyone has access to the same tools.From SaaS to Agents: What separates AI-assisted software from agentic systems that can actually do the work.Trust in Autonomous Systems: Why transparency, confidence, and clear decision logs are critical when AI operates inside core business systems.Key Topics:The treadmill problem in modern sales productivityWhy AI has upgraded everyone at the same timeThe flood of low-quality outbound and the need for precision engagementUsing digital exhaust and customer signals to guide better sales conversationsWhy traditional scaling models relied on people because software could not solve the problem yetHow fast-moving foundation models are changing product designThe coming consolidation of SaaS point solutionsWhy the future interface may be lighter, with more approvals and fewer manual workflowsBuilding AI-native products that can evolve with each new model releaseReducing SaaS fatigue by designing for orchestration, not more app sprawlGuest Spotlight: Sunil RaoSunil Rao is the founder and CEO of Tribble, an AI-native platform built to help enterprise sales teams scale knowledge and automate critical go-to-market workflows. Before founding Tribble, Sunil began his career as a software engineer at SAP and later held leadership roles at Salesforce, including GM of Consumer Goods. Tribble was founded in 2023 and has quickly gained traction for helping companies automate RFP responses and improve GTM efficiency with AI-native workflows. Resources & Mentions:TribbleSalesforce Ventures generative AI fundRFP automation and response workflowsAI agents versus traditional SaaS applicationsSaaS consolidation and platform orchestrationThe role of trust and transparency in AI adoption🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence Podcast for more conversations on AI, modern go-to-market strategy, and the future of enterprise sales.Mark Petruzzi (00:31)Welcome to today's episode of Selling Intelligence Podcast. I'm thrilled to welcome Sunil Rao, founder and CEO of Tribble, an AI native platform that's fundamentally changing how enterprise sales teams scale knowledge and automate critical go-to-market workflows. Sunil's journey has been fascinating. He started as a software engineer at SAP.moved into leadership roles at Salesforce, including and general manager of consumer goods, and then founded Tribble in 2023. Tribble was quickly added to Salesforce's ventures, $500 million generative AI fund, and has since revolutionized RFP automation, helping companies like Clary, Sword Health, and others slash response times by up to 80%.Today we're exploring a critical challenge facing every sales leader. AI is making us more productive, but the bar keeps rising. It's like running on a treadmill at full speed and just when you your stride, the incline keeps going up. How do you stay ahead when everyone else has access to the same productivity gains? We're gonna focus on four critical themes. The productivity paradox, why AI-driven efficientisn't enough to win anymore. From software to agents, building AI that actually does the work, not just assists, scaling institutional knowledge, the hidden competitive mode in enterprise go-to-market, and the human element, where AI should take over and where it must step back. Sunil.First off, we're really happy to have you here. Thank you for taking the time with us and welcome.Sunil Rao (02:10)Thanks for having me. It's nice to be with you all.Mark Petruzzi (02:12)Excellent. So topic one, the productivity paradox. Let's start with what you have called the treadmill problem. Every sales team now has access to AI tools, chat GPT, co-pilot, all these niche engagement and enablement platforms. And all sales teams are getting more productive, or at least the ones that are investing in this. But here's the thing, if everyone's running faster, you're not actually...
    Show more Show less
    20 mins
No reviews yet