What happens to all those leads marketing works so hard to generate? More often than not, they go cold. According to Nishi Seth, Industry & Solutions Marketing Lead for Google Cloud APAC, this isn't a niche problem. It's one of the most persistent challenges across B2B, regardless of company size or sophistication.
In this episode, Shahin sits down with Nishi to unpack the real reasons leads stall between marketing and sales, from qualification gaps to missing context, and what it actually takes to fix them. Nishi shares battle-tested lessons from scaling Google Cloud's marketing-to-sales motion across APAC, including how AI is transforming BDR productivity right now.
Guest Introduction
Nishi Seth is the Industry & Solutions Marketing Lead for Google Cloud APAC at Google, with over 20 years of experience across cloud technology, financial services, and travel. She has held senior marketing roles at American Express and British Airways, and is a recognised B2B marketing leader across the Asia-Pacific region.
Key Topics
Why leads go cold: the two root causes (qualification gaps and context gaps) and why even the most sophisticated B2B organisations struggle with them
The three pillars of an optimised marketing-to-sales handover: lead quality, context, and a continuous review and feedback loop
Why BDRs are the critical bridge between marketing and sales, and how to assess whether your BDR function is actually working
How MQL definitions should evolve over time: Google Cloud's journey from basic demographic scoring to 48+ real-time intent signals, including account-level qualification
What providing context to BDRs really means: enablement calls, campaign-specific opening scripts, and cadences tailored to how each lead engaged
The key metrics that reveal handover health: SAL acceptance rates, SAL-to-SQL conversion, number of outreach touches, and lead velocity
How AI is changing BDR productivity: using automation for low-intent lead follow-up, real-time AI assistants during live sales calls, and AI-powered account research at scale
Nishi's rapid-fire take: "strong opinions, loosely held," using AI to boost your own marketing productivity, and why simplifying complexity in B2B is what excites her most
Resources & Links
Google Cloud — Nishi's base for all real-world examples discussed, from MQL definition evolution to AI-powered BDR tooling
Google Gemini — Nishi's go-to research tool in place of following influencers; she also used it to prepare for this episode
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