AI increased speed, not accuracy ft. Jéssica Aires

In today's episode, I chat with Jessica Aires, Growth and Marketing Lead at Abstra, about running B2B sales-led growth for a Brazilian finance automation SaaS targeting CFOs and finance managers—covering revenue operations, performance ads, outbound automation, and co-founder-led content all at once.

We explore her core insight on list quality: Sales Navigator data is roughly 30% wrong at any given time, and no matter how good your message is, sending it to the wrong person wastes your BDR's time, your LinkedIn connection quota, and sometimes produces meetings with completely the wrong person—so she now runs every Sales Nav list through Clay to clean and verify before it ever reaches an SDR. She also shares what's working in Brazil specifically: LinkedIn and WhatsApp outperform cold email for booking meetings, co-founder-led content from their CEO (an AI specialist) is growing fast and generating inbound interest, and email is used more as a soft nurture channel for people who aren't ready to engage yet. Her honest challenge with the space: there are so many tools and so many possibilities that the hardest skill is staying focused on the actual problem rather than building something because it's cool—the discipline to say not right now is as important as the creativity to imagine what's possible. Her prediction: every department will have its GTM engineer equivalent—a finance engineer, a marketing engineer—as AI tools get accessible enough that even finance managers can build their own automations, and the line between technical and non-technical roles dissolves. Jessica shares her path from engineering degree to sales ops and marketing analytics since 2018, using Python for reporting, discovering Clay earlier this year, and realizing that combining analytical thinking with business curiosity is exactly what this new role rewards.

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards
(00:21) What Abstra Does: Finance Automation SaaS for CFOs and Finance Managers in Brazil
(01:06) Running Marketing, RevOps, Outbound, and Co-Founder Content Simultaneously
(01:30) The 30% Problem: Why Sales Nav Lists Need Clay to Be Trustable
(03:50) The Real Cost of Talking to the Wrong Person: Wasted Quota, Time, and Meetings
(05:02) Channel Mix in Brazil: LinkedIn and WhatsApp Beat Cold Email for Meetings
(06:04) Jessica's Journey: Engineering Degree to Sales Ops to GTM Engineering
(07:44) The Hardest Skill in GTM: Staying Focused on the Problem, Not the Shiny Tool
(09:39) Future Predictions: Every Department Gets Its Own Engineer, AI Becomes Everyone's Tool
(13:42) Don't Forget the Basics: Run the Reports, Listen to Your Community, Stay Grounded

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