Interviews

MarTech Interview with Asaf Shevach, Director of Product Marketing at Lusha

Sales prospecting is evolving with AI-driven efficiency, real-time insights, and hyper-personalization. Learn how data-driven tools are transforming lead generation.
Asaf Shevach

Asaf, could you start by sharing a bit about your journey in product marketing and what led you to your current role at Lusha?
My journey in Product Marketing started in Public Relations, where my role involved promoting clients, creating content, and working with journalists to tell compelling stories. I then transitioned into Product Management at Ynet, Israel’s largest news outlet, eventually leading a team of product managers. This combination of storytelling and product leadership naturally led me to a technical product marketing role at Wix, which was an incredible learning experience in marketing. From there, I moved on to lead a team of PMMs at Elementor.

Salesmark Global

Joining Lusha felt like the next step in my journey. Here, I leverage my experience to drive marketing and product strategy, improve our offerings, and deliver real value to users. My focus is on making products intuitive, accessible, and effective, something that has been mastered in web design but is still evolving in sales, business development and prospecting.

How do you see the landscape of sales prospecting evolving in today’s hyper-competitive market, and what are the key factors driving this change?
In today’s hyper-competitive market, sales prospecting is increasingly driven by efficiency and personalization. The landscape is shifting towards a data-centric approach where accuracy and real-time insights are key. Leveraging AI-powered recommendations enables sales teams to identify in-market buyers, providing tailored suggestions based on behavior patterns and intent. This creates a more precise targeting process, allowing sales teams to focus their efforts on engaging the most relevant prospects.

Before AI, sales reps would manually sift through large lists of prospects, relying on generic customer profiles and basic demographic data to decide who to reach out to. They would cold call, send mass emails, and hope to strike a chord. The process was time consuming and often inefficient, with many leads slipping through the cracks.

Today, AI-driven tools can automate lead generation and qualification by analyzing vast datasets to identify the most promising prospects. AI evaluates factors like behavior, firmographics, and engagement patterns to rank leads by likelihood to convert. This drastically reduces the time sales teams spend on low-probability leads, allowing them to focus on high-value prospects with a much higher chance of success.

Additionally, the competitive landscape is pushing sales teams to adapt faster than ever before. Speed and responsiveness have become crucial differentiators. Prospects are inundated with options, and the first team to respond with a solution that meets their needs often has the upper hand. Automation tools, integrated with CRM systems, enable sales teams to stay on top of prospect interactions, ensuring timely follow-ups and reducing the risk of losing leads to competitors. The ability to move quickly is increasingly becoming a make-or-break factor in sales prospecting.

Personalization is the other key driver, as today’s buyers demand messages that resonate with their specific needs and challenges. Generic, broad pitches are losing ground to tailored, value-driven content that offers solutions aligned with prospects’ unique pain points. By using AI to deliver relevant, timely communications, sales teams can build stronger connections and improve conversion rates. These shifts are not just about working smarter; they’re about creating meaningful, relevant engagements that cut through the noise and drive results.

With the overwhelming amount of data available to sales teams, what strategies do you recommend for sifting through information to identify high-quality leads effectively?
To effectively identify high-quality leads, sales teams should utilize lead scoring models, focusing on key factors like intent signals, company fit, and past interactions. This enables prioritization of prospects with the highest potential, ensuring efficient use of resources.

Another strategy is leveraging a single, reliable data source that provides accurate and comprehensive lead information. Access to real-time insights such as contact details, job changes, and industry trends makes it easier to pinpoint the right prospects quickly.

Finally, AI can be used to automatically personalize outreach, tailoring messages based on lead behavior and preferences. By combining accurate data with automated, personalized communication, sales teams can engage high-value leads more effectively and drive better results.

In your experience, how can sales teams strike the right balance between generating a large volume of leads and maintaining the quality of those leads?
To balance lead volume with quality, sales teams should start with a clear lead qualification process, aligning leads with ICP criteria like geography, company size, revenue, and buying intent. By applying AI-driven lead scoring, teams can prioritize those most likely to convert, ensuring that efforts focus on high-potential leads while still casting a wide net.

A key approach for targeting high-value opportunities is incorporating Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies, especially for bigger companies. ABM enables a focus on a select number of high-value accounts that closely match the ICP, allowing for personalized outreach and tailored messaging to engage decision-makers effectively. This strategy ensures that quality is emphasized over volume for strategic accounts, enhancing conversion rates and driving higher ROI.

Additionally, segmenting outreach ensures efficient resource allocation. High-quality leads receive more personalized attention, while lower-priority leads are nurtured through automated campaigns. Regularly reviewing lead performance and refining criteria based on sales outcomes helps teams stay agile, maintaining a healthy balance between quantity and quality over time.

Given the integration of multiple tools and platforms in prospecting, what are some best practices for mastering and effectively utilizing these technologies?
Building a tech stack that aligns with your goals and streamlines your process is essential when integrating multiple tools and platforms for prospecting. Start by selecting tools that integrate seamlessly into your CRM, allowing for the automation of data enrichment and consolidation of signals, intent data, and lead information in one place. This approach minimizes redundancy, keeps your data accurate, and ensures it’s immediately actionable across all channels.

Automation is key to maximizing efficiency. Automate repetitive tasks like lead scoring, data enrichment, and follow-up sequences to enable your team to focus on high-value activities. Streamlining these processes not only makes workflows seamless but also ensures timely engagement with the right prospects.

Finally, consistent training should be ensured, and tool usage should be regularly reviewed. Staying up-to-date with features, best practices, and performance analytics allows your team to continuously optimize prospecting strategies, making the most of your tech stack for better results.

How important is personalization in modern sales, and what advice would you give to sales professionals aiming to craft messages that resonate with individual prospects?
Personalization is crucial in modern sales because it helps sales professionals cut through the noise and connect meaningfully with prospects. In today’s market, where buyers are inundated with generic pitches, personalized communication stands out by addressing specific pain points and demonstrating a genuine understanding of a prospect’s unique needs. Tailoring your messages to reflect a prospect’s industry, role, and challenges not only captures their attention but also fosters trust and enhances the likelihood of conversion.

To craft messages that resonate, start by thoroughly researching each prospect to understand their background and current needs. Utilize data from CRM systems and sales intelligence tools to gain insights into their previous interactions and preferences. It’s crucial to adjust the tone of voice and values based on the person and their role, ensuring that your communication feels relevant and tailored. Focus on delivering value by highlighting how your solution specifically addresses their challenges. Use a conversational tone to make your outreach feel genuine and engaging, also . This approach ensures that your communication is relevant, personalized, and impactful, ultimately leading to more successful engagements.

With increasing data privacy regulations, how can sales teams ensure they are prospecting both ethically and compliantly?
As data privacy regulations become more stringent, sales teams must navigate prospecting practices with a keen focus on ethics and compliance. To ensure both, teams should start by familiarizing themselves with relevant regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and other local data protection laws. Understanding these regulations helps in aligning data collection and usage practices with legal requirements. For instance, obtaining explicit consent before collecting or using personal data and providing clear options for opting out are essential steps to comply with these regulations.

Additionally, sales teams should implement robust data management practices, including regular audits and updates to their data handling processes. Using secure tools and platforms that prioritize data protection is crucial. Lusha, for example, goes above and beyond in its commitment to data privacy with rigorous certifications and compliance features like data encryption and access controls. Our focus on meeting and exceeding data protection standards sets us apart, making it a trusted choice for sales-driven companies. When evaluating solutions, potential buyers should pay close attention to how these certifications and compliance measures align with their own privacy priorities.

Ensure that all team members are trained on data privacy policies and best practices to prevent inadvertent breaches. By prioritizing transparency, consent, and secure data practices, sales teams can effectively balance their prospecting efforts with the need to protect individual privacy and adhere to regulatory standards.

How should sales teams adjust their approaches to align with the more informed and empowered modern buyer?
Sales teams should shift from traditional tactics to a consultative, value-driven approach to align with the informed and empowered modern buyer. A staggering 96% of prospects research companies before engaging with sales professionals. While equipped with an idea of exactly what they need, positioning as an advisor becomes key—offering insights, solving specific challenges, and delivering tailored solutions. This personalized engagement not only builds trust but also differentiates your approach from competitors who rely on generic outreach, ultimately fostering stronger relationships and sustainable growth.

Can you discuss the role of AI-driven insights and data enrichment tools like Lusha in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the prospecting process?
AI-driven insights and data enrichment tools like Lusha significantly enhance the prospecting process’s efficiency and effectiveness. Lusha leverages AI to analyze large data sets, delivering actionable insights that streamline how sales teams identify and engage leads. By analyzing patterns in historical data, engagement levels, and other key metrics, Lusha helps pinpoint high-potential prospects and guides teams on the best time, channel, and messaging to engage them.

Lusha’s data enrichment capabilities further empower sales teams by providing real-time, accurate prospect information, including contact details, job titles, and company attributes. This enriched data, integrated directly into CRM systems, enables more precise targeting and highly personalized communication, ensuring that outreach is relevant and impactful.

The combination of AI-driven insights and data enrichment in Lusha optimizes prospecting strategies, allowing sales teams to focus their efforts on the most valuable opportunities, improve conversion rates, and drive business growth.

Lastly, what trends or innovations do you anticipate will further shape the future of prospecting in the sales industry?

The future of prospecting in the sales industry will be significantly shaped by advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, which are enhancing lead scoring, automating repetitive tasks, and providing deeper insights into prospect behavior. AI-powered tools are improving the precision of outreach by predicting which leads are most likely to convert. Additionally, advanced data analytics and predictive analytics are helping sales teams anticipate future opportunities and optimize their strategies by analyzing large datasets for patterns and trends. The rise of conversational AI, including chatbots, autonomous AI agents (such as AI SDR using both text and voice), and virtual assistants, is also transforming prospect interactions by enabling real-time personalized engagement and improving overall responsiveness. These innovations collectively drive a more data-driven, efficient, and personalized approach to sales prospecting.

For more expert articles and industry updates, follow Martech News

Asaf Shevach, Director of Product Marketing at Lusha

Asaf Shevach is the Director of Product Marketing at Lusha, with over a decade of experience in marketing and product management across B2C and B2B sectors. He enjoys solving complex challenges and delivering meaningful experiences. In his spare time, Asaf is passionate about teaching, cooking, and making music. LinkedIn.
Previous ArticleNext Article