Revenue Today - SoundSage

View Details

Today, we welcome Srinath Sridhar, Co-Founder and CEO of regie.ai. Today we're seeing AI writing tools, AI photo and video generators, and more. But will an AI writing tool be just that? Or are there more innovations to expect sooner rather than later?

Srinath busts the myth about AI replacing the workforce but doesn't deny the potential it can have in boosting productivity. He talks about navigating AI today and approaching such innovations, especially with the recent launch of ChatGPT and similar tools.

Takeaways

People end up doing new things as opposed to people being "replaced by AI".
Creativity will be the last thing AI will touch but will take the mundane stuff away first. The opposite of this has actually happened.
Personalization at scale has become even more granular with our technology today.
Focus on keywords where your competitors are ranking and where you don't have content yet.
Don't react too much to what others are doing and fall into a FOMO trap.

Quote of the Show

"I do think it won't be the way people anticipate it to be. It's not going to be a drop-in replacement for an SDR where you're going to do calls and emails. It's going to be higher quality, more personalized, and more one-to-one communication rather than bots spewing lots of random stuff. It's going to be more human than automated at the end of the day" - Srinath Sridhar

Connect with Srinath in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sridharsrinath/
Website: https://www.regie.ai/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Jason Bay, Founder and CEO of The Outbound Squad. He shares insights on the SDR model most companies use today, effective cold calling, email marketing, and much more.

Jason talks about the pros and cons of using AI and similar technologies in sales. Sales reps need to take advantage of these tools but also be wary of using generic and robotic assets for their cadences.

Takeaways

The SDR model is not a good fit for many companies.
Understand how acumen will help you craft your messaging.
Don’t use AI until it can "think outside the box".
In sales, if you don't know how to write effective emails and it's your main job, you are going to be replaced because the technology is already here.

Quote of the Show

"In sales, you're starting from a place of skepticism. It's one of the few professions that we do where the people that we speak with on a daily basis are inherently skeptical of us. We're starting from behind the starting line and most professions are not like that." - Jason Bay

Connect with Jason in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondbay/
Website: https://outboundsquad.com/
The Outbound Squad Podcast

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Rosalyn Santa Elena, Founder and Chief Revenue Operations Officer of The RevOps Collective and the Host of The Revenue Engine Podcast. She discusses how revenue operations play an influence in optimization not only for processes but also for communication within the company.

Rosalyn also shares her perspective on utilizing data and metrics to maximize results. She defines strategy and also talks about the attributes and skills that make a great ops leader.

Takeaways

Revenue operations are the key to getting optimization efficiency internally.
Data can quickly turn sideways if things change because it's constantly evolving.
If you don't set the metrics that matter, you're falling in the wrong direction.
The RevOps function will really start to be the difference maker once RevOps professionals grow their knowledge, expertise, and value.
RevOps leaders can easily connect with CROs and other leadership

Quote of the Show

"I think companies boil the ocean. They try to measure every single little thing that's really not telling you anything. You can measure all of these different numbers but is there an action after you find out that result." - Rosalyn Santa Elena

Connect with Rosalyn in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosalyn-santa-elena/
Website: https://therevopscollective.com/
The Revenue Engine Podcast

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Thao Ngo and Emily Ward, SVP of Marketing at Uptempo and VP of Global Marketing at Anthology respectively. They share their perspective on the advantages of having a great Marketing Performance Management (MPM) Solution.

Takeaways

Utilize technology to stay up on your numbers.
Never turn off the demand tab because you need to diversify your marketing mix.

Quote of the Show

"If she wanted to talk to our financial analyst as well, she would be able to hear the same story or strategy on how we're spending and what we're planning to do as a team because we're one team together as well." - Emily Ward

Connect with Thao Ngo and Emily Ward in the links below:

LinkedIn (Thao): https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaongo/

LinkedIn (Emily): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elluminated/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Mark Kosoglow, Chief Revenue Officer of Catalyst Software. He talks about his time and journey in Outreach before becoming CRO of Catalyst. This was a time of all-out grind for Mark but also a major avenue for his growth and expansion of knowledge in the industry.

Mark discusses building a mindset as an SDR or BDR not only focused on individual performance but also to produce results as a team. He also shares his insights on knowing when to experiment and do things your way or continue following the usual processes. Because both can be good in the right situations.

Takeaways

Building a culture that fosters trust and partnership at work is essential.
Don't act entitled to your expectations.
Identify your ICP, develop sequences, and sort out objection handling while also optimizing along the way.
A consistent approach is required for a team of people to produce consistent data that is valuable.

Quote of the Show

"The biggest enemy of success is expectations. When you have all these expectations, you act entitled. My first job, you know what my first promotion was? If you didn't screw up too much, you get to keep your job. Do you know how many raises I got in my first 7-8 years? None. But you know what, I was able to learn a lot and I was able to grow." - Mark Kosoglow

Connect with Mark in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mkosoglow/
Website: https://catalyst.io/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Thao Ngo and Emily Ward, SVP of Marketing at Uptempo and VP of Global Marketing at Anthology respectively. They discuss understanding the basics of the budget, what it means to actually have access to it, and how it plays out with your data-driven decisions.

Takeaways

You have to be able to articulate your strategy without waiting for finance
Make sure that responsibilities and hand-off are clear especially with data-driven decisions.

Quote of the Show

"By having that solid understanding of your budget, you'll have the clarity to make changes and pivot when you need to. So if there's a recession and you're going to have to cut some areas of your budget, you already have that scenario built in." - Thao Ngo

Connect with Thao Ngo and Emily Ward in the links below:

LinkedIn (Thao): https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaongo/
LinkedIn (Emily): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elluminated/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Thao Ngo and Emily Ward, SVP of Marketing at Uptempo and VP of Global Marketing at Anthology respectively. They talk about how ROI marketing contributes to the sales funnel and why the "Investment" part of ROI often gets overlooked.

Takeaways

Marketers are on top of data on the execution side but not on the business side because it's simply more challenging to track.
Use data to identify areas of optimization and ultimately know where to spend time and resources as a business.

Quote of the Show

"Back to priorities, it will be extremely difficult to get the time of day from marketing if there are no results or positive returns. This is why it's so important that we have a source of truth for what's happening to the leads that we're generating." - Emily Ward

Connect with Thao Ngo and Emily Ward in the links below:

LinkedIn (Thao): https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaongo/
LinkedIn (Emily): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elluminated/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Thao Ngo and Emily Ward, SVP of Marketing at Uptempo and VP of Global Marketing at Anthology respectively. They discuss the sales funnel and how a collaboration between sales, marketing, and sales enablement creates the highest-quality leads that have the highest odds of conversion.

Takeaways

Higher lead quality means fewer prospects need to turn into paying customers to hit targets.
Teams should know what leads to prioritize as their highest-quality opportunities.

Quote of the Show

"If you had the choice between a thousand leads that convert at 1% or a hundred leads that convert at 10%, which would you prefer? So of course, both of these scenarios yield 10 sales but obviously the preference is to have less conversations, and more quality conversations, so generating those higher-quality leads is really going to help reduce the amount of work the teams have to do to get to sales." - Emily Ward

Connect with Thao Ngo and Emily Ward in the links below:

LinkedIn (Thao): https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaongo/
LinkedIn (Emily): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elluminated/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Thao Ngo and Emily Ward, SVP of Marketing at Uptempo and VP of Global Marketing at Anthology respectively. Sales, marketing, and RevOps come from differing perspectives on what each other should do. But as this is a partnership rather than a battle, these departments need to remember the factor that unites us: revenue.

Takeaways

Sales are focused on pipeline generation and finding golden opportunities, marketing wants to know what happens to the leads once generated, and RevOps measures the data for business decisions.
The single uniting factor between sales, marketing, and RevOps is revenue, and being aware of this aligns us all.

Quote of the Show

"RevOps needs to be able to measure everything in order to provide the data and insight for us to make business decisions. So, what does everybody want? What's on our minds when we get up in the morning? And it's revenue. I mean, that sounds obvious, but sometimes it's not, especially when some salespeople might not think it's something marketers even think about." - Emily Ward

Connect with Thao Ngo and Emily Ward in the links below:

LinkedIn (Thao): https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaongo/
LinkedIn (Emily): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elluminated/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Leslie Venetz, Founder of Sales Team Builder. She is a 3x Head of Sales and the founder of Sales Team Builder. As a top-performing B2B sales professional and people leader, Leslie has built elite sales organizations with buyer-centric sales teams.

Leslie digs into the training and coaching needed in a renewal-based business, as well as the KPIs they look at in their sales team. She provides actionable advice on improving emails and shares how she grew her SDR team using frameworks rather than scripts. Leslie also talks about how critical the first hire is to the success of the business and fine-tuning the ICP.

Takeaways

Emails must be short and hyper-personalized with advantages, not features.
Take advantage of free resources that connect you with folks who have been in the sales game longer than you for external perspective and community.
Books to read: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, The Transparent Sales Leader by Todd Caponi, The Challenger Customer by Brent Adamson
KPIs for a renewal-based business are based on clients who are most likely to renew, so look at which industries and revenue bands are most likely to continue, and if they are renewing flat or with an increase.

Quote of the Show

"If I could pick one [KPI], it would be the number of qualified meetings kept. I think that's a pretty solid one, it sits in the middle of the funnel. It's pretty quickly after some of that marketing, and sales dev activity, but it's right at the beginning of your AE picking it up before that handover. I think that's an incredibly important one assuming that we're in a renewal-based business." - Leslie Venetz

Connect with Leslie in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslievenetz/
Website: https://insidesalesteambuilder.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Kevin "KD" Dorsey, Advisor and Practice Lead: Revenue Leadership at Winning by Design. He discusses that the way to predict the future is to work backward and determine what will remain constant over the next few years. KD dials in on human psychology and what humans generally want. This narrows down the factors that you can then safely predict how sales, and by default, how buyers will change as well.

Takeaways

To "predict" the future, think about what WON'T change and will remain consistent like human psychology and how people make decisions.
In the future, customers and prospects will want the same things like trying your product (PLG), trust (CLG), safer terms, transparent pricing, and easily customizable products.
What will certainly change is the generation of buyers, company setups, and technology.

Quote of the Show

"When we are trying to innovate or trying to predict the future, a better question is what won't change? What wont change over the next 4 to 5 years? And that's where we focus because we can predict that." - Kevin "KD" Dorsey

Connect with KD in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kddorsey3/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Kevin "KD" Dorsey, Advisor and Practice Lead: Revenue Leadership at Winning by Design. Predicting the future is actually pretty accurate, it's the "when" that people get wrong. In sales, we know that AI will replace certain jobs. It's when that is debatable. The question now is, are you willing to change or adapt?

Takeaways

Take a good hard look at what AI is already doing today to get an idea of where AI will be in the near future.
If you are not willing to change and adapt, the future of sales and how you fit in it does not matter.

Quote of the Show

"You have to ask yourself, are you willing to change and adapt? Because if we don't change and adapt, what happens in the future actually doesn't even matter. It doesn't make any difference. So the key to all of this is actually being open-minded." - Kevin "KD" Dorsey

Connect with KD in the link below:

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kddorsey3/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome back Danilo Nikolich, VP of Sales Development at RollWorks, and Nick Bennett, Director of Evangelism & Customer Marketing at Alyce. ICP is continuously evolving so companies must be aware not to severely limit their TAM and to keep experimenting. Nick then shares how ABM is performed at Alyce and how their strategies are aligned across RevOps, sales, and marketing, as well as the enablement required to teach the sales team.

Takeaways

ABM helps in narrowing down an organization's ICP and categorizing big and small accounts.
You must not be afraid of experimenting a little bit to expand your idea of who your ICP really is.
ABM can involve gifting to keep accounts warm, keeping track of MQA activity, and sales team enablement to teach sellers how to work the sales activity and intent.

Quote of the Show

"ICP could be an evolving variable because, sure, when you start off as a small organization when you think about an ideal customer profile, you might have some ideas as to what that is just based on some earlier adopters and just kind of where you think your product would fit. You just don't have enough data points to figure out what that ideal customer profile looks like. As you evolve, then you have more and more customers, you find out what are your best customers, what are their traits and so forth." - Danilo Nikolich

Connect with Danilo and Nick in the links below:

LinkedIn (Danilo): https://www.linkedin.com/in/danilonikolich/
RollWorks website: https://www.rollworks.com/
LinkedIn (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/
Alyce website: https://www.alyce.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome back Danilo Nikolich, VP of Sales Development at RollWorks, and Nick Bennett, Director of Evangelism & Customer Marketing at Alyce. Danilo talks about looking at your possible leads as a pie and that 40% are not looking to buy but can be convinced to look at your product. By aligning sales and marketing and how accounts are moved through the funnel, more and more of this bucket can be converted.

Takeaways

Align sales and marketing structurally by handing off MQAs or "sales-ready" accounts.
Sales activity is a good way to determine how to move accounts through the funnel between sales and marketing.
If accounts were a pie, 40% can be convinced not necessarily to buy but to look at your product. Focus on those.

Quote of the Show

"The 40%, Danilo, is the folks that are not in any sort of intent. They're out there. They're not looking for something but they can be convinced to look at your product. He's like that's where we need to get into." - Danilo Nikolich

Connect with Danilo and Nick in the links below:

LinkedIn (Danilo): https://www.linkedin.com/in/danilonikolich/
RollWorks website: https://www.rollworks.com/
LinkedIn (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/
Alyce website: https://www.alyce.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Danilo Nikolich, VP of Sales Development at RollWorks, and Nick Bennett, Director of Evangelism & Customer Marketing at Alyce. Today, they drill down the different tools and strategies you can use to perform ABM with an MQL or MQA model, and how to align sales and marketing by having them work under a CRO to focus efforts from the top down.

Takeaways

Use technology not just to identify MQLs but also the associated people who will ultimately influence the decision on that account.
MQA can be defined under an account-based and strictly outbound model.
Expand the buying committee especially in enterprise sales by making stakeholders feel seen.

Quote of the Show

"First, divide your lead funnel. And so, what does that actually mean? So separate your lead types. So you have two different lead types. So directly asked to be contacted, which those high-intent leads. Basically the hand raisers, you know, demo requests. They contacted for sales inquiries, and things like that, then you've got your scored leads, so measured as basically MQLs. So lead capture forms, content downloads." - Nick Bennett

Connect with Danilo and Nick in the links below:

LinkedIn (Danilo): https://www.linkedin.com/in/danilonikolich/
RollWorks website: https://www.rollworks.com/
LinkedIn (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/
Alyce website: https://www.alyce.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Danilo Nikolich, VP of Sales Development at RollWorks, and Nick Bennett, Director of Evangelism & Customer Marketing at Alyce. Today, they introduce their masterclass on ABMifying growth by laying the foundation that marketing and sales should be aligned for ABM to happen, as well as defining what a marketing qualified lead (MQL) is versus a marketing qualified account (MQA).

Takeaways

The process of ABMifying growth is grounded upon focus and the alignment of sales and marketing.
ABM is a strategy that can be looked at through different channels like content syndication.

Quote of the Show

"ABM and the strategy behind ABM is really just targeted marketing at the end of the day. And there are really 3 core things that I think about within that strategy, it's how do you win more deals in a more kind of cost-effective way, especially in this down market, how do you reduce churn, and how do you increase the operational efficiencies to be able to do that?" - Nick Bennett

Connect with Danilo and Nick in the links below:

LinkedIn (Danilo): https://www.linkedin.com/in/danilonikolich/
RollWorks website: https://www.rollworks.com/
LinkedIn (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/
Alyce website: https://www.alyce.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Dutton, Head of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations at 6sense. Chris rounds out the discussion on achieving breakthroughs with ABM and AI and takes on audience questions. He answers how to use webinar data in the ABM process and explains what marketing event leads (MEL) leads are and how to engage with this group.

Takeaways

Webinar data is considered a marketing event lead (MEL) and any person met via this channel must fit a very specific set of criteria to be engaged by a marketing team.
MELs are a branch of MQLs, and in an ABM environment, they are historically known to be good fits and would warrant follow-ups.

Quote of the Show

"The MEL process works to identify what are the certain criteria that would have someone be a MEL. An MEL is a marketing event lead, and what I mean by that is they have to fit a certain list of criteria. They have to be in our ICP. They have to check box 1, 2, and 3, and if they do, we would then share those with the team and the team would engage with those individuals." - Chris Dutton

Connect with Chris in the links below:

Chris Dutton
6sense
Email

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Dutton, Head of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations at 6sense. Employing the right tech allows you to engage with the right people at the right time when they are ready to buy.

Chris digs into how they ensured they have enough resources to respond to the buying signals that they were tracking with their 6QAs. This automated cadence uses a series of technologies to streamline the process of taking qualified accounts and ensuring that they are getting worked.

Takeaways

Getting in front of your ICP means nurturing relationships, so even initiatives like email nurture will reflect it in its P2P approach.
Track buying signals in your email campaign and have a team of BDRs on standby to insert themselves at any stage.

Quote of the Show

"When these emails go out, they're going out on behalf of our BDRs. So our BDRs can insert themselves at any moment. So if someone engages, they can jump into the conversation. If someone is showing maybe higher intent and we're noticing they're on our website or we're noticing questions on LinkedIn may be that they're asking, they can engage." - Chris Dutton

Connect with Chris in the links below:

Chris Dutton
6sense

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Dutton, Head of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations at 6sense. He discusses what companies need to do to achieve breakthroughs in their ABM strategy and unlock their TAM using AI. Step 1 is to define your ideal customer profile. Step 2 is to define behaviors that trigger sales activity. Chris shares what a revenue operation looks like when sales and marketing are aligned, as well as provide a solid example in the form of content syndication.

Takeaways

Identify and define your ideal customer profile by leveraging past firmographic and technographic data. This informs your future GTM strategy and account targeting.
Content syndication is a good example of how aligning sales and marketing moves better accounts downstream.

Quote of the Show

"There are unique indicators within every organization that would classify or at least alerts you to someone is in some type of buying motion. Here at 6sense, we call that our custom 6QA, and what we have done is we have defined those 5 qualifying factors for us that say hey, someone here is in the market, they're ready to engage in a conversation." - Chris Dutton

Connect with Chris in the links below:

Chris Dutton
6sense

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Decker, the CEO of Salescast, as he rounds out principles 3 and 4 of Content-Led Growth: just get started and go back to principle 1—have something to say. Chris shares what fellow founders can do to bootstrap their founder story and apply the lean startup model to get started fast and not worry about results in the beginning.

Takeaways

Just focusing on your podcast generates your own long-form content.
Omni-channel distribution solves the audience issue and allows your email list to build itself.
Remember to always have something to say. Hit record, publish, and repeat the process—forget about perfection.

Quote of the Show

"Have something to say. Once you reach a certain point in your content development, let's say you're 6 months down the line, you've had some success and some luck and some growth, you need to go back to principle 1 and you need to go through this exercise again with your soundtracks. What you say has evolved. What you do has evolved." - Chris Decker

Connect with Chris and join the Salescast Community in the links below:

Chris Decker
Salescast Community

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Decker, the CEO of Salescast. Retention is a function of connection and repetition aka stickiness, so do what it takes to keep people around. Chris dives into what this means in the world of podcasting and some tactics you can employ to help make your podcast stick with your listeners. He also shares how, in the beginning, it would be best to determine your soundtrack or 2 to 3 things that you can say over and over again that communicate with clarity what you and your business do.

Takeaways

Pick the path that you want to grow into by choosing the people your clients follow, selecting your exact ideal client, and exploring partnerships.
Interview-type podcasts have a 67% average completion rate while solo episodes have a 91% completion rate, a staggering statistic that shows how hosts can create retention for their podcasts.
Create a podcasting community, engage with them, and get leads from there.

Quote of the Show

"A typical interview podcast has about a 67% average completion rate if you're a great show. So this is the host and the guest, whereas a solo episode where it's just a host has a 91%+ average completion rate. If people are sticking around longer, they're developing a relationship with the host." - Chris Decker

Connect with Chris in the links below:

Chris Decker
Salescast

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Decker, the CEO of Salescast. He shares the old way of doing content as compared to the new way. He also introduces the 4 principles of Content-Led Growth, starting with principle 1: Have something to say. To get grow through referrals, you must first create shareable and remarkable content that is anchored on your identity and vision.

Takeaways

Growth is most realized in referrals which is a product of shareability and is based on your identity and vision.
In the concentric circles of content-led growth, identity and vision form the core and are the basis of principle 1: have something to say.

Quote of the Show

"What you say is going to lead to that remarkability which will lead to that shareability which leads to that referral. If someone understands who you are and what you stand for, they're much more likely to share that with someone else because of the clarity." - Chris Decker

Connect with Chris in the links below:

Chris Decker
Salescast

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Decker, the CEO of Salescast. He shows a video that he shot on his iPhone, clear evidence that anybody can begin their storytelling journey with the tools already at hand. And one of the biggest lessons is that whatever journey you are on, it is not over. As a matter of fact, it is just beginning.

Takeaways

Begin telling your own unique story using the tools you already have such as your phone.
Jump off the cliff to dramatically increase your intensity to solve the problem.

Quote of the Show

"To me, stories are a source of hope and inspiration. When I hit my rock bottom and found myself in recovery groups, people shared their past and eventually got sober." - Chris Decker

Connect with Chris in the links below:

Chris Decker
Salescast

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Decker, the CEO of Salescast. He shares how storytelling helped him and his community to speak with qualified leads every single day. He also introduces how the power of storytelling, of sharing his true authentic self, brought people closer to him and transformed the way he does business.

Takeaways

Storytelling is a natural way of bringing business closer to you and helping create a pipeline of qualified leads.
Allow your business associates to tell their stories, learn from them, and find your purpose as well as others.

Quote of the Show

"I get to share the power of content-led growth with B2B companies large and small. I have the privilege of serving a team of 13 incredible team members, and a community of over 600 podcasters, and have learned a ton of lessons training hundreds of business content creators to connect with their story, multiply that with community, and experience the kind of groundbreaking growth that we've coined content-led growth" - Chris Decker

Connect with Chris in the links below:

Chris Decker
Salescast

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome James Breen and Amy-Louise Tracey, the Director of Sales and Senior Account Executive of Loopio respectively. They reiterate that a repeatable process is a secret behind the success of top sales teams. Take your best content and reuse, improve, and repeat them for future RFPs.

Takeaways

Remember that top teams reuse their best content, improve on past iterations, and repeat so you're not always starting from scratch.
Don't try to boil the ocean and utilize your contributors only for the parts they are needed.
Try a go/no-go system to prioritize which RFPs are most winnable.

Quote of the Show

"It's about building a repeatable process. That's the secret. And the amount of times that I hear from prospects like we don't have a process, RFPs come in the door, they land on our desk, and we just scramble to get them done before the deadline. So creating a repeatable process is really key. It's just so worth the time and effort." - Amy-Louise Tracey

Connect with James and Amy-Louise in the links below:

James
Amy-Louise
Company website
2022 Loopio Benchmark Report

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome James Breen and Amy-Louise Tracey, the Director of Sales and Senior Account Executive of Loopio respectively. They round out their top 4 strategies to win more RFPs, focusing on the last one which is to use a centralized system in place for RFP answers. This system saves a lot of time and allows the organization to capture all the data about winning bids so no one is starting from scratch every single time.

Takeaways

A repository for your RFP resources avoids the time suck that backs and forth and copy and pasting usually entail.
Update your content regularly and make sure they are always up-to-date with the latest versions.

Quote of the Show

"Don't let all of that hard work that you put into a winning bid or even one where you were really close to winning and maybe there was something that was out of your control, like you need to capture that information and not rinse and repeat every time." - James Breen

Connect with James and Amy-Louise in the links below:

James
Amy-Louise
Company website
2022 Loopio Benchmark Report

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome James Breen and Amy-Louise Tracey, the Director of Sales and Senior Account Executive of Loopio respectively. They continue their top 4 strategies to win more RFPs by focusing on strategies 2 and 3: involving a range of contributors and qualifying bids that you take on.

Takeaways

Be clear about the roles of contributors upfront so when an RFP arrives, there is no ambiguity on who does what.
Only send over the parts of the RFP that concern particular departments.
If need be, host a kick-off meeting on key prospect needs and themes and establish clear deadlines.
Prioritize your bids by assessing customer fit, examining the relationship, and gauging the timeline and resources needed for the bid.

Quote of the Show

"Making sure that you're strategic about how you involve, your contributors are the key to this strategy. So we want to separate out the different sections for the correct contributor. We don't want to have to send the whole entire RFP to legal when they only need to look at 6 questions, so let's parse out what parts are actually relevant to them." - Amy-Louise Tracey

Connect with James and Amy-Louise in the links below:

James
Amy-Louise
Company website
2022 Loopio Benchmark Report

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome James Breen and Amy-Louise Tracey, the Director of Sales and Senior Account Executive of Loopio respectively. To increase your RFP win rate to 51% and higher, James details the top 4 strategies you can use to achieve this: spend more hours writing, involve more contributors, be selective, and use a centralized system for RFP answers. James and Amy-Louise take a deep dive into strategy 1 and share the granular details of how and why spending more time to create customized responses increases your chances of winning an RFP.

Takeaways

To win more RFPs, execute the following strategies: spend more time writing customized answers, diversify expertise by involving more contributors, be selective about the bids you can realistically win, and use a centralized system for RFP answers.
Writing time varies greatly by company size, with small and midsize companies spending 21 hours, mid-market spending 24 hours, and enterprise spending an average of 25 hours. But regardless of size, any company improves its chances of winning by creating customized responses.

Quote of the Show

"They also involve more contributors. And it's not a lot more, we just found 1 or 2 more contributors that are participating in this RFP process. You're going to get a variety of different subject matter experts involved. So you might be reaching out to your customer experience team, your legal team, your product team, and your sales team. You have those great people that are experts within their domain that are really helping to beef up the content of your RFP." - James Breen

Connect with James and Amy-Louise in the links below:

James
Amy-Louise
Company website
2022 Loopio Benchmark Report

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome James Breen and Amy-Louise Tracey, the Director of Sales and Senior Account Executive of Loopio respectively. They provide an overview of how you can increase your RFP win rate to 51% and some benchmarks SaaS teams utilize to achieve this.

Takeaways

Most SaaS teams achieve a 46% win rate in RFPs, but one-third are winning 51%. However, it is important to note that not a single one is winning every single RFP.
Companies regardless of size, from 10 to 10,000 employees, can benefit from learning the benchmarks and strategies that increase RFP win rate.

Quote of the Show

"46% is very much the average win rate of a software team, but there's over a third of organizations who have much higher than that, so a 51% win rate here. What do we want to see, or what do we want to learn about, and what are the strategies that they are actually employing in order to get this higher win rate? So these organizations, a third of them have a win rate of 51% or higher... no one is winning a hundred percent of RFPs." - Amy-Louise Tracey

Connect with James and Amy-Louise in the links below:

James
Amy-Louise
Company website
2022 Loopio Benchmark Report

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Chris Dutton, the Head of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations at 6sense. The elephant in the room is that generating a quality pipeline is hard. And because so much of sellers' time is spent on unproductive prospecting, more than $2 trillion is wasted on missed opportunities. Chris shares the first thing you should do to avoid this: identify your ICP.

Takeaways

Leakage examples include focusing resources on the wrong accounts, missed and mistimed opportunities, low-quality pipeline, inability to differentiate solutions, misaligned sales and marketing, and not understanding buyers' needs.
Clearly define your ICP by looking at past data, knowing your future verticals, expecting future technologies, and anticipating future product lines, to name a few examples.

Quote of the Show

"Define your ICP. What does that mean? Your ideal customer profile. And the way that you do that is, there are a few ways that you can do that. You can look at past performance. You can look at technographic data and firmographic data. Do you also want to look at what's your future go-to-market strategy? Where do you expect the organization to go? Are you going to be expanding your GOs? Are you going to be going into different verticals?." - Chris Dutton

Connect with Chris in the link below:

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Donald Kelly, the Founder of The Sales Evangelist. His mission is to evangelize the method of effective selling and motivate sellers at all levels to do big things. He is the author of Sell It Like a Mango and has helped sellers for many companies build confidence in their selling abilities.

Donald shares the top secret he was taught in selling to a certain market, which was to go for the segment that never calls in and never complains but uses your solution over and over again. It wasn't the biggest or smallest customers, they were medium-sized organizations that had enough pain and problems and budgets.

Takeaways

Increase your sales by focusing on medium-sized players who have just enough pain, problems, and budgets to use your solution over and over again.
Before allotting budgets for sales teams, make sure you are focusing on the right target market and the segments within that can really enable sellers to sell more.

Quote of the Show

"It wasn't the large cities like the Houstons or the cities like New York and it wasn't the small ones like a small town or a rural community. It was a medium-sized organization. They had enough pain, they had enough problems, they had enough difficulties, they had a decent budget, and they could use our solution over and over and over again." - Donald Kelly

Connect with Donald in the link below:

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Donald introduces product market fit and how to make sure that teams are on the right path, are focused, and are putting the right pieces together. He discusses The Platinum Rule and how this differs from The Golden Rule and how to determine your target customer first to make sure your product sells.

Takeaways

The Platinum Rule states that you should treat others the way that they would like to be treated.
Determine your target customer. Identify your ICP and what their pains, problems, and difficulties are.

Quote of the Show

"The Platinum Rule states that you treat others the way that they would like to be treated. So when you think about this with your customers, that company that I worked for, PD, our goal, we were focusing on being the Golden Rule, we wanted to treat others the way we want to be treated. We wanted to make money so we figured if we like this product, people are going to like this product." - Donald Kelly

Connect with Donald in the link below:

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Angela Bunner, the Vice President of Solutions for ClickUp. She oversees solutions engineering, professional services, and customer enablement and has more than 20 years of experience in project portfolio management.

Angela talks about how freemium models are successful when the product is good enough that people want to keep using it. She also answers audience questions such as how she grew ClickUp, the biggest challenges they faced in the last year, and maintaining an industry-leading retention of 150%.

Takeaways

Let the product speak for itself. Freemium models work when the product speaks for itself.
Growing a team virtually requires collaboration through a platform.

Quote of the Show

"Let the product speak for itself. Like I said, that freemium model works because the product speaks for itself. Users are out there trying it and using it and they get excited about it, and that's what's bringing in growth on new teams, expanded teams, enterprise deals, and whatnot." - Angela Bunner

Connect with Angela in the link below:

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Mary Vue, Head of Partnerships and Alliances at Syncari. A partnership strategy during your product-market fit motion may seem counterproductive, but having them integrated creates a necessary feedback loop between the company and the end users.

Not only will this create a roadmap to make your product or service better, but having them included early on embeds them in your sales DNA, smoothening out friction and actually helping achieve customer success better and faster.

Takeaways

Partners create a vital feedback loop between your design and engineering team and customers to inform how to make your product better.
A partner strategy inserted early in the PMF integrates them into the sales DNA and eliminates friction with the sales team and helps to achieve customer success.

Quote of the Show

"Partners are working on live customers on a daily basis. They see these problems on a daily basis and they become a great feedback loop to help inform your product roadmap, to help inform your product and engineering team, so that they can work on the right things, work on the things that are faster, create a better UI design, user experience." - Mary Vue

Connect with Mary in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryvue/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Christina Garnett, an award-winning community builder and advocacy strategist who is the Principal Marketing Manager for Offline Community and Advocacy at HubSpot.

Christina discusses the differences between product-market fit and community-market fit and how the sense of belonging and emotional connection around your product or service is central to its success.

Takeaways

Community-market fit has an emotional value that creates a member experience around your product.
It takes the voice of the customer and puts it at the heart of everything, creating a feedback loop to provide happiness around your product.

Quote of the Show

"What community gives is more of an emotional value, the longing, network, tangible opportunities to connect with other humans. And so, we really have this difference of emotional connectivity versus tech connectivity." - Christina Garnett

Connect with Christina in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinamgarnett/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome a fantastic panel of guests to share their insights and experiences on standing out from the crowd. We are joined by Gina Guriere, Partner Success Manager at RevGenius, Mark Tanner, Co-Founder of Qwilr, Jonathon Blackburn, VP of Global Sales at Qwilr, and Kendra Berner, Senior Strategic Team Lead at Lattice.

There are multiple in-between moments in the sales process that provide you the opportunity to really leave your mark on the prospect. Our guests share some of the most unique prospecting they received that got the sellers through the door, and how anything that makes the buying process easier makes you the more attractive choice for buyers.

Takeaways

Use the in-between moments to showcase creativity and a deep understanding of the buyer's pains to set yourself apart.
Make the buying process easier for the buyer to actually buy from you.

Quote of the Show

"The next layer of really setting yourself apart is truly understanding the pain from your prospect and then also a lot of the little moments that exist in a sales cycle. Having all of your communication resources in one place that's easy and makes the buying process easier sets yourself apart; speed of response, as well really digging down into understanding the process to get something approved." - Kendra Berner

Connect with our guests in the links below:

About Gina Guriere
About Mark Tanner
About Jonathon Blackburn
About Kendra Berner

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube

View Details

Today, we welcome a fantastic panel of guests to share their insights and experiences on how sellers ask tough questions. We are joined by Gina Guriere, Partner Success Manager at RevGenius, Mark Tanner, Co-Founder of Qwilr, Jonathon Blackburn, VP of Global Sales at Qwilr, and Kendra Berner, Senior Strategic Team Lead at Lattice.

With your pipeline now optimized, sales teams should make sure that they are asking the right questions that progress the deal forward, such as the availability of a realistic budget. This would give you an accurate picture of how the internal processes look that will ultimately determine if the deal pushes through or not.

Takeaways

Ask tough questions and be multithreaded in large deals that make or break a quarter because losing the point of contact can be devastating.
Understand the problem you are solving so you can accurately assess where your solution falls in the list of priorities.

Quote of the Show

"If it's going to end in a no, you want to get that no as quickly as possible. And I know that sounds demented, in a weird way, but... maybe there's a rep on a call who closes 90% of their deals. But for most reps, most conversations lead to a no. That is the stock standard thing. Whether it's 55% or 95%, most of the time, it ends in a no." - Mark Tanner

Connect with our guests in the links below:

About Gina Guriere
About Mark Tanner
About Jonathon Blackburn
About Kendra Berner

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube

View Details

Today, we welcome a fantastic panel of guests to share their insights and experiences on performing deal reviews during a downturn. We are joined by Gina Guriere, Partner Success Manager at RevGenius, Mark Tanner, Co-Founder of Qwilr, Jonathon Blackburn, VP of Global Sales at Qwilr, and Kendra Berner, Senior Strategic Team Lead at Lattice.

Once you know how and where you win, the next question you need to answer is how much pipeline do you actually need to hit your goal and quota? Perform deal reviews to prioritize the deals that have the best chances of winning and ensure the right timing exists. Avoid the scarcity mindset which is a kneejerk reaction during downturns.

Takeaways

The answer is not always more pipeline. You need to prioritize the deals with the best possible closing and ensure your leads are quality leads.
Perform deal reviews with your team to determine which deals are most likely to move forward and convert.

Quote of the Show

"Thinking about in your pipeline, where are your strongest champions and the best business case, and really ensuring that the right timing exists to change, instead of saying things like sticking with the status quo or no change actually happening." - Kendra Berner

Connect with our guests in the links below:

About Gina Guriere
About Mark Tanner
About Jonathon Blackburn
About Kendra Berner

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube

View Details

Today, we welcome a fantastic panel of guests to share their insights and experiences on closing deals during a downturn. We are joined by Gina Guriere, Partner Success Manager at RevGenius, Mark Tanner, Co-Founder of Qwilr, Jonathon Blackburn, VP of Global Sales at Qwilr, and Kendra Berner, Senior Strategic Team Lead at Lattice.

Most companies know their ideal client profile, but in today's environment, it is more important than ever to look back on it and ensure that the team is working on deals that you are actually winning. This involves revisiting the ICP and communicating it so the team focuses their efforts on deals that win.

Takeaways

Know where you win. Look at your pipeline and use insights to determine the percentage of deals that have a good chance of closing.
Be honest about the deals you want to win and the ones you are actually winning.

Quote of the Show

"If you're a revenue leader and you feel like you have a pretty good idea of what your ICP is but maybe you want to cut it up and down or look back on that. I urge you to do the same thing across your team just to make sure that the types of deals that you believe and think you should be working on are the ones you're actually winning." - Jonathon Blackburn

Connect with our guests in the links below:

About Gina Guriere
About Mark Tanner
About Jonathon Blackburn
About Kendra Berner

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube

View Details

Today, we welcome Mollie Bodensteiner, Global Revenue Operations Leader at Deel and a trusted advisor for hypergrowth startups. SDRs are treated as the lowest on the totem pole, but the reality is that they are an investment in any business.

SDRs need to receive direction and coaching, as well as be measured against more reliable KPIs to set them up for success. Companies from top to bottom need to be very clear on their focus and remove distractions. Mollie shares how trying, failing and learning led to the meteoric rise of Deel and how other leaders can do this too.

Takeaways

People expect personalization. Create scorecards internally that measure how many personalized emails are being sent.
Activity is not a leading indicator. Meetings set is a more reliable KPI for sellers.
Hypergrowth can only be achieved by focusing and removing distractions.

Quote of the Show

"Get really purposeful on what you're trying to do and make sure you've got that steering at the top. There's nothing worse than the distractions. The thing that I practice a lot with my team is focus. We have to focus, and if it's coming in and distracting from the focus, we've either got to adjust our priorities and adjust our expectations or get it out of here." - Mollie Bodensteiner

Connect with Mollie and learn about the revops positions available at Deel in the link below:

About Mollie

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Angela shares how listening to the experiences and needs of their end users, not their buyers, has been critical to the growth and development of ClickUp. She shares how staying obsessed with end users not only ensures product market fit but also results in product-led growth.

Takeaways

Listen to the needs of your end users because they will be the ones who will ultimately drive your product forward, not the decision-makers.
Be obsessed with your customer because it goes hand in hand with product market fit.

Quote of the Show

"Over time, when you focus on the sales aspect of it and less on listening to the customers and the product, it becomes shelfware. You don't get the adoption that you need because you're selling to the buyers on top and not necessarily listening to the users, and those are the ones that are going to drive the product and be successful." - Angela Bunner

Connect with Angela in the link below:

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Christina Garnett, an award-winning community builder and advocacy strategist who is the Principal Marketing Manager for Offline Community and Advocacy at HubSpot. Today, Christina digs into the benefits of community management and why creating an online community for your business helps your business grow.

Not only does the community provide excellent support, but they can also act as your brand champions for others to learn from. In terms of ROI, this can be quantified in the loyalty and leverage to your brand, helping provide honest feedback on what you do best (or worst) and why.

Takeaways

The CMX SPACES Model shows you different parts of business value that the community can actually provide, like providing support and becoming champions for your product.
The value of community is loyalty and leverage. A community built on this provides honest feedback that results in positive change and growth.

Quote of the Show

"Communities can answer questions and really kind of take a large lift off your support team. They can help your product. They can tell you exactly what kind of product features they want, they can tell you what product features they need, if there's any bugs, if there's anything that needs to be different." - Christina Garnett

Connect with Christina in the link below:

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we have an amazing panel of guests to share their insights and experience in crafting stories. We are joined by Jorge Soto, Head of Community and Partnerships at Reprise; Joe Caprio, Operating Partner at Glasswing Ventures; Ed Jaffe, Director of Research and Customer Experience at 2Win!; and Tyson Goeltz, CRO at Reprise.

The tail end of a meeting is just as important as any other part of the demo, so AEs and SEs should make sure to leave a good impression instead of flustering to drill in new features and benefits to the buyer. The panel also discusses some best practices for virtual meetings and killer post-demo follow-ups.

Takeaways

The end of a meeting is critical to establish credibility. Don't scramble to show additional benefits because AEs and SEs that did their job right won't need to.
Success is a product of team selling, so maintain objectivity during the post-meeting debrief and avoid opening up subjectivity.
Be specific in your follow-up to retrigger the reason the buyer is on the call in the first place.

Quote of the Show

"Just know, it is not just one person. The success is a culmination of everyone doing their individual task across the customer journey. I think the debrief, which I'll just spin on for a second... I love objectivity. When we get into a debrief and we say, I think you did that really or oh, I think I really dropped the ball here, it opens us up to all this subjectivity and you're spinning on things that are hypotheticals or maybes." - Tyson Goeltz

Connect with our guests in the links below:

About Jorge Soto
About Joe Caprio
About Ed Jaffe
About Tyson Goeltz

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we have an amazing panel of guests to share their insights on the AE/SE relationship. We are joined by Jorge Soto, Head of Community and Partnerships at Reprise; Joe Caprio, Operating Partner at Glasswing Ventures; Ed Jaffe, Director of Research and Customer Experience at 2Win!; and Tyson Goeltz, CRO at Reprise.

AEs and SEs should work together at the front and, much like a dance, learn to anticipate each others' moves. How well AEs and SEs work together is also dependent on how their organization views both roles. AEs and SEs should divide their responsibilities between themselves, maintain objectivity in the debrief, and always be searching for a champion.

Takeaways

AEs and SEs that work together can spot when customer requests are not commensurate to the person and set up for that call.
Organizations should promote taking the ego out of the equation to foster mutual respect between the AE and SE.
A well-balanced meeting between AE and SE establishes roles upfront.

Quote of the Show

"They are going to choreograph a dance together and you can't just step on the dancefloor and say okay, I'm going to lead, you're going to step on my toe... and I think the best again SE, AE relationships, they practiced. They know how each other works. They can anticipate each other's moves." - Tyson Goeltz

Connect with our guests in the links below:

About Jorge Soto
About Joe Caprio
About Ed Jaffe
About Tyson Goeltz

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Ryan Staley, Founder and CEO of Whale Boss and host of The Scale Up Show. SaaS companies do NOT know their customers intimately. Not knowing your perfect customer profile (PCP) prevents them from effectively targeting and selling to their best customers.

Ryan shares actionable tips so that SaaS companies can instead focus on emotionally connecting with buyers and understanding what motivates them to make a purchase. He also discusses quantifiable outcomes in order to be a successful company.

Takeaways

You can double your deal size by knowing your customers and figuring out who your best buyers are, also called the PCP.
Double down on knowing the problem you solve to avoid spending too much on marketing to customers who are not a good fit for your product.

Quote of the Show

"Look at the last 12 months of data that you have with your 5 biggest wins, your 5 fastest wins, and your 5 biggest losses, and then put it through that lens of what's the vertical, what's the revenue size, what's the ownership structure on top of it. Two, what's the outcome you've created. And last but not least... the actual tangible people you're working with." - Ryan Staley

Connect with Ryan in the link below:

About Ryan

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

The panel discusses how account executives and sales engineers must work in partnership during demos instead of limiting themselves because of stereotypical views of each other. They also talk about why revenue leaders should respect their AE’s and SE's calendars based on these two's roles.

Takeaways

Your job during demos is to show why your product is valuable to the prospect, not how the software works
Sales engineers don't want to be demoing all the time, they want to build too.

Quote of the Show

"I would argue that my job when I'm giving a demo is not to teach you how the software works. That's what professional services deal with later. My job is to show you how it's going to be valuable." - Ed Jaffe

Connect with our guests in the links below:

About Jorge Soto
About Joe Caprio
About Ed Jaffe
Tyson Goeltz

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

The panel shares their insights on getting the right people involved in meetings to encourage more stories and eventually create more effective demos. They also discuss the idea that some discovery questions are naturally meant to show you how to tailor the demo.

Takeaways

There are times when your discovery is there to set up a moment of the demo
There should be a partnership between the account executive and sales engineer but understand that it's never easy

Quote of the Show

"Some episodes are going to focus on one character versus another so, rather than trying to have a power struggle over this particular meeting, there are some meetings that the AE is the focus and I'm more on the support role if I'm the SE. Sometimes it's going to be the reverse of that." - Ed Jaffe

Connect with our guests in the links below

About Jorge Soto
About Joe Caprio
About Ed Jaffe
Tyson Goeltz

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

The panel starts a discussion on how to create compelling stories for your demos. They talk about leveraging closed won opportunities, customer stories, and discovery to craft a story.

Takeaways

You're not just narrating a story, the story should guide the interaction
Discovery should help paint the picture of what you care about and then you can use the product to highlight that

Quote of the Show

"People follow leadership and a great way to show leadership is to show that you've been there before and that you can help them get to the place they ultimately want to go" - Tyson Goeltz

Connect with our guests in the links below:

About Jorge Soto
About Joe Caprio
About Ed Jaffe
Tyson Goeltz

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features guest host Iris Zarecki, Director of Product Marketing at Explorium, for a discussion on Market Segmentation Strategies Steering Through Uncertainty. Today, she is joined by John Buten, Principal Analyst at Forrester.

John and Iris answer questions about the explorium.ai platform, how to perform market sizing outside traditional segmentation, how companies get started with lead-scoring projects, looking at vertical as a way to segment marketing, and many more!

Takeaways

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to market sizing
Support the sales model with things that are specific to your use case

Quote of the Show

"Market sizing is always looked at as more of a science than an art. But it's a little bit of both, you know. There are great data providers that can help you understand the nature of the market." - John Buten

Connect with Iris in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iriszarecki/
Website: https://www.explorium.ai/

Find out more about John in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbuten/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Amelia Taylor, Lead Evangelist and GTM Sales Strategy at regie.ai. Side hustles have exploded in popularity, but is it for you? Amelia shares her hot take that not everyone needs to split their time and attention attending to multiple responsibilities.

People's time is valuable and it is better spent on things that will actually generate income. Salespeople should side hustle based on something unique that they want to create, not just rehashing something like a course or podcast that already exists. Amelia also talks about passion as a differentiator and her love of basketball.

Takeaways

Side hustles are not a necessity; double down on the job at hand that maximizes your earning potential.
If you decide to start a side hustle, always go back to your "why" and make sure a side gig is correct for you.

Quote of the Show

"If you're not passionate about what you're doing, what are you doing? Passion sells. Passion is motivating. Passion is what drives people to you, that builds relationships, that brings referrals. That genuinely is the way." - Amelia Taylor

Connect with Amelia in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amelia-taylor1/
Website: https://www.regie.ai/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features guest host Iris Zarecki, Director of Product Marketing at Explorium. Today, she is joined by John Buten, Principal Analyst at Forrester, as she discusses how data that is spread around makes it difficult for companies to operationalize with a coherent picture.

Explorium suggests a different approach to segmentation and the data you need to use. Not only do they provide a large catalog of business data, but they also go beyond basic two-dimensional segmentation to include personas, individuals, geos, location, and demographic info to pinpoint the attributes that are impactful to you.

Takeaways

Explorium takes your internal data like win-loss analysis and matches it with their catalog of attributes to see which are most impactful to you.
Explorium can be used to come up with qualified leads for the sales team.
The 4-step segmentation process is Pre-process, Enrich, Filter, and Score.

Quote of the Show

"The initial results when we did a proof of concept with them were amazing. We were able to give them 650,000 new leads in the proof of concept, and they got very good reviews from their salespeople. Very good leads." - Iris Zarecki

Connect with Iris in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iriszarecki/
Website: https://www.explorium.ai/

Find out more about John in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbuten/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

John discuses utilizing market segmentation to get through uncertainty in the markets and the elements of targeting the business' ideal customer profile. Iris also shares her insight on the challenges of traditional segmentation and how to find and use data that will actually help fuel growth.

Takeaways

Understand what drives buyers' needs and you'll see more opportunities even when growth isn’t visible
The biggest challenges involve finding the right data and actually using that data to get the most value

Quote of the Show

"You wanna use the data to understand these buyers as markets shift and really try and understand them on the basis that matters to your company and that matters to your buyer based on how their needs differ. And when you do that you'll find lots of different kinds of opportunities." - John Buten

Connect with Iris in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iriszarecki/
Website: https://www.explorium.ai/

Find out more about John in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbuten/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

John discusses segmentation approach, the challenges in prioritizing market segments, what prioritizing market segments actually looks like as he provides examples of these relating to the segmentation approach.

Takeaways

One initial challenge that usually comes up is that businesses feel like they don't have the data to understand the market
There are very different needs for companies with knowledge workers that have a lot of applications on a desktop vs grey-collared workers

Quote of the Show

"When they really dug into what kinds of companies were the best fit, it's companies that already have people doing predictive analytics that want to raise the bar, that want to do more." - John Buten

Connect with Iris in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iriszarecki/
Website: https://www.explorium.ai/

Find out more about John in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbuten/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

John discusses the economic uncertainty in 2023 and how businesses should approach planning when it comes to uncertain market environments. Additionally, he talks about the benefits of targeting and segmentation in relation to this uncertainty.

Takeaways

The move to remote work has changed the B2B buying process so businesses need to adjust to that
Planning for change needs to happen throughout the year, not just in the planning season

Quote of the Show

"Our number one guidance for the coming year is investing in market insights, both to course-correct and make sure you're not making the wrong assumptions and really understand what's happening in the market." - John Buten

Connect with Iris in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iriszarecki/
Website: https://www.explorium.ai/

Find out more about John in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbuten/

Ways to tune in

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Jamie Shanks, inventor of social selling as a term and category, CEO of Pipeline Signals, and the author of two bestselling books on the topic. Jamie discusses how poor time management among sellers is often the result of bad decision-making around account selection and prioritization.

He explains that most sales leaders don't realize how important these decisions are and that if a salesperson is focused on the wrong accounts, no amount of action will make up for it. Jamie also stresses the need to find your total serviceable and attainable market and to focus your efforts on them.

Takeaways

Time management does not work when you do not perform account selection, prioritization, and/or segmentation
Work closely with customer success to reverse engineer who your customers are
Categorize your accounts as Park, Reverse, Neutral, and Drive
Find your total addressable market and recalibrate your model

Quote of the Show

"Say (to your sales leadership), the hundred accounts that I've been assigned, this is where I think they sit today; which ones are in Park, Reverse, Neutral, or Drive. That sets the foundation of an objective understanding that you took a moment to back up, look at your market from a birds eye view, and state ‘I think I know which ones are vibrating forward.’" - Jamie Shanks

Connect with Jamie and work with him in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamestshanks/
Website: https://pipelinesignals.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Mary Vue, Head of Partnerships and Alliances at Syncari. Partnerships help drive revenue and accelerate the growth of a product or service.

Mary suggests partner strategies to maximize functionality across an organization, and a partner leader to oversee it. But as partner strategy is a top-down initiative, the buy-in from the C-suite is crucial to get it started.

Takeaways

Strategies to work with partners include co-selling, referrals, reselling, expansion, and 3 x 3 relationships
Leverage the clout and equity that your partners already bring
Find a partner leader and get the C-suite behind you

Quote of the Show

"Partner strategy is a top-down initiative. The investment in a partner leader is important for this function. Certainly, if you're pre-seed, great. Maybe you're not quite ready. Have the CEO, CTO, CPO, CRO want it depending on where you think that the most value of your partner strategy is going to play out." - Mary Vue

Connect with Mary in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryvue/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Christina Garnett, Principal Market Manager of Offline Community & Advocacy at Hubspot. Community market fit requires a product to compete with anything else that demands the customer's time, including advertisers, social media, and even the customer's own family.

This means that brands must create a space that is worth the investment of time for members, which can be done by thinking about the value that members get from being a part of the community, whether it's proximity to the brand or other members.

Takeaways

Community-market fit competes with anything that is vying for your time and attention
Empathy is at the core of community-market fit
Community can mean proximity to the brand and other members

Quote of the Show

"You really need to think about what your community is truly competing with. Everything that takes time is your competitor. So, for product, yeah, ‘Is it worth the price? Do the features give me enough value that it makes up for the price I'm paying?’ But the community, ‘Is it worth the time? Is it worth the investment?’ " - Christina Garnett

Connect with Christina in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinamgarnett/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Angela Bunner, Vice President of Solutions at ClickUp. Today, she digs into the 3 main focuses of customer experience, namely best-in-class support, innovative engineering, and design.

Angela discusses the key elements of their highly-rated customer experience which focuses on listening to customer feedback and utilizing customer success managers as business partners to educate on the product's best uses and features.

Takeaways

Dependability, personalization, ease of use, accessibility, and customizable offerings are all factors that influence customer experience
Grow your product by constantly listening to your customers and deploying customer success managers

Quote of the Show

"We also have customer success managers who are basically business partners to our larger accounts to make sure that the product is being adopted. We're monitoring usage in areas where folks maybe aren't utilizing the product as much as they can and pushing them to use the product more." - Angela Bunner

Connect with Angela in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelabunner/
Website: https://clickup.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Alina Vandenberghe, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Chili Piper. Today, she digs into finding product-market fit that skyrocketed her company from 0 to $20 million.

She shares how motivation is the number 1 factor she wants to understand from a customer. Next, is the dollar sign behind it. Alina also discusses how they found product-market fit by signing a contract with a company before building their product. This was to ensure that all the features made sense for their buyer.

Takeaways

Finding product-market fit in 50 companies as prior experience was essential in growing Chili Piper
Discover the motivation behind why someone buys a certain product, and then find out how much they are willing to pay for it

Quote of the Show

"I made sure that all the features that I was building made sense for my buyer and that buyer had a repeatable need and repeatable motivation as well." - Alina Vandenberghe

Connect with Alina in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinav/
Website: https://www.chilipiper.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast

YouTube:

https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Alex Boyd, Founder and CEO of RevenueZen. In this conversation, he debunks the myth that hiring more sales reps will generate more revenue. To scale, a company needs to have sales, marketing, and the rest of the company on the same narrative about the problem you are solving.

Alex highlights the importance of organic growth and leaders leading from the front amidst economic forecasts. He discusses how uncomfortable yet necessary it is to really get to know your customer for a marketing-driven approach to succeed. Alex also digs into the value of taking a minute to ponder to open up new perspectives.

Takeaways

SaaS companies need a subject matter expert to tie in the narrative between sales and marketing
KPIs to watch for are win rate on qualified ops by source and acceptance rate from meeting to qualified opportunity
Hire SDRs for the job that only they can do and technology cannot

Quote of the Show

"Revenue always represents what is working. When you make money, you do so by what is working. And the problem is that marketers and sales leaders don't always know what's working, so their techniques to try to generate revenue lag behind reality." - Alex Boyd

Connect with Alex in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexcboyd/
Website: https://revenuezen.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Mary Vue, Head of Partnerships and Alliances at Syncari. Today, she lays down a few examples of good B2B-PMF (Product-Market Fit) partnering. Mary also shares some partnership types that can fit well for B2B start-ups.

Takeaways

Think about where your product helps you fit and what role your partner plays
You want to establish partnerships that will have meaning to your sales, marketing, and product teams

Quote of the Show

"Even when you start to say, 'I'm going to go and establish some partnerships'. You want to be able to establish partnerships that are going to be meaningful to your ideal customer profile. You don't want to just be shooting a bunch of blanks in the dark." - Mary Vue

Connect with Mary in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryvue/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/maryvue

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Donald Kelly, Founder and Chief Sales Evangelist at The Sales Evangelist! He talks about a crucial mistake that many start-ups have early on in that they don't even determine if there's something that they can bring to the market. Donald also shares his insights on which areas start-ups should focus on and why it is important to establish your value proposition early on.

Takeaways

As a start-up, focus on an industry and try to make sure you actually fit and can solve the problem
Your value proposition has to be clear and established from the get-go

Quote of the Show

"Before you get to that part, let's determine if there's even something we can bring to market, that we can have salespeople sell, and we can have marketing share to the world. We need to establish this thing first and that's where it's a sucky part, it's just a lot of research and gathering information and doing the grunt work so you can make sure that this is something the customers want." - Donald Kelly

Connect with Donald in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly/
Website: https://thesalesevangelist.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Alina Vandenberghe, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Chili Piper! She talks about how many clients they had before actually building the product. Alina also shares the thought process and decision-making involved as many in the company had different ideas on how the problem should be solved.

Takeaways

You can observe patterns from people's feedback and use that to build your product
People don't see problems as fast or in the same way that you do so you may need to provide more education for your production

Quote of the Show

"I observed that people are very poor and judging what they really need. They just see some specific part of the problem that they have right now and they may not be fully plugged in to all the other things that the product may be able to do to make their life better overall." - Aline Vandenberghe

Connect with Alina in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinav/
Website: https://www.chilipiper.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Nadja Komnenic, previously Head of Business Development at lemlist and now Senior Sales Development Manager at Lokalise. Today, she talks about growing lemlist from one million to ten million dollars in less than two years with the help of the founder in identifying the right product-market fit.

Takeaways

Use a sales automation tool for cold emails
Always identify the pain you want to address first

Quote of the Show

"Before you even start building a product, it's not only about the demand that you potentially see in your market, it's also about what is the pain that you want to solve and making sure that the pain is existent in a large enough audience that you're going to be able to address it." - Nadja Komnenic

Connect with Nadja in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadjakomnenic/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we welcome Ian Koniak, Dean of Enterprise Sales School at Pavillion and the Founder and CEO of Ian Koniak Sales Coaching Inc. Long-lasting relationships are at the core of Ian’s success as the top enterprise sales rep at Salesforce. He shares how the 80-20 Pareto rule applies to prioritizing your clients and his eventual move to entrepreneurship.

Ian digs into his KPIs for growing a multimillion-dollar business and his copyrighted PREDICT test that sales reps can use to measure if a deal is going to close or not. He also stresses that you are not your number however, when your ego is high, you behave badly too.

Takeaways

Less is more, so the 80-20 rule lets you focus a majority of your efforts into the top 20% of your A accounts.
PREDICT Test:

P - Problem with pain

R - Reason

E - Engagement

D - Decision-maker/Decision process

I - Impact

C - Cost of inaction

T - Timeline

You are not alone with your mental health struggles, especially around addiction and recovery.

Quote of the Show

"The myth I want to debunk is that more activity equals better results and that actually is not true. It's true if you're in a transactional role. It's true if you have a quick sales cycle and you're selling and you have a huge list, but for enterprise selling, more does not mean better. Less is more. It's the 80-20 rule." - Ian Koniak

Connect with Ian on addiction recovery or sales coaching in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iankoniak/
Website: https://www.untapyoursalespotential.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we have an amazing panel of guests to talk about how to scale your revenue operations. We are joined by Darrell Alfonso, Global Marketing Operations at Amazon Web Services; Mollie Bodensteiner, Global Revenue Operations Leader at Deal; and Eddie Reynolds, CEO and Revenue Operations Strategy Consultant at Union Square Consulting.

The panel discusses the utilization of service-level agreements (SLAs) and, more specifically, knowing when not to use them or if you're using them way too much. They also talk about using this along with the other processes to create a roadmap for revenue operations.

Takeaways

You can't use SLAs everywhere to fix things they're not designed to fix
Make sure there is alignment across all departments to roadmap efficiently in revenue operations

Quote of the Show

"In an ideal world, sales should want to follow up on the leads that marketing passes over as fast as possible because they're really good. And the benefit is understood by both, that more deals is going to be better for everyone. So if you're trying to force that with an SLA, it's indicative of a larger problem." - Darrell Alfonso

Connect with our guests in the links below:

Eddie:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardreynolds/
Website: https://www.unionsquareconsulting.com/

Mollie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molliebodensteiner

Darrell

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemandDarrell

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital. Today, he talks about the main factors that kill companies when it comes to hiring, whether it be because of slow or fast-paced reasons. Mark then discusses the right way to approach how fast you should scale as a company.

Takeaways

Many companies hire too recklessly and don't think about how to onboard or manage reps as the number increases more and more
Use the product-market and go-to-market fit as your growth speedometer

Quote of the Show

"Your peers are deciding if they are scaling too fast based on the quarterly board results and most of us know that those results are what happened to your business six months ago. Your peers are using old data to dictate this decision, if you use the lead indicators of retention and unit economics, you're getting a good feel for your business today." - Mark Roberge

Connect with Mark in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/
Website: https://www.stage2.capital/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Nadja Komnenic, Senior Sales Development Manager at Lokalise. You can determine product-market fit by running a test to find your high-expectation customers. Listening to this group’s concerns refines and iterates a product or service to achieve product-market fit. Nadja also shares the top 4 mistakes founders make during the product-market fit phase.

Takeaways

Create a survey that asks if the customer would be not disappointed, somewhat disappointed, or extremely disappointed if they lost your product or service. Your high-expectation customers are in the extremely disappointed group.
Once you reach 40% here, then you have product-market fit. The goal for most is to reach this threshold.
Divide your time addressing the extremely disappointed and somewhat disappointed groups to refine your product or service and achieve product-market fit.

Quote of the Show

"To increase your product-market fit score, you need to spend half of your time doubling down on what your users already love, so your key value propositions, and the other half on addressing what's holding others back." - Nadja Komnenic

Connect with our Nadja in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadjakomnenic/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHsThis episode of Revenue Today features Nadja Komnenic, Senior Sales Development Manager at Lokalise. You can determine product-market fit by running a test to find your high-expectation customers. Listening to this group’s concerns refines and iterates a product or service to achieve product-market fit. Nadja also shares the top 4 mistakes founders make during the product-market fit phase.

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Andrew Gazdecki, Founder and CEO of MicroAcquire. A story around a cause you believe in makes you stand out and this same story can close deals and dominate markets. Andrew shares how his previous companies harnessed the power of storytelling and the structure by which others can follow too.

Takeaways

Start your story by looking for shifts in the market, reinforcing themes, and letting them combine into a movement centered around your brand.
You can compete in price on in brand, and one of the best ways to build brand is through storytelling.

Quote of the Show

"This brand and storytelling framework is really looking for a shift. What's changed in the market? What's new? Maybe you're selling against legacy software, maybe there's an opportunity to create a category, there's an opportunity to reinforce a theme, and that all combines into a movement where people are really rooting for your company to succeed because they believe in the story that you're telling so much." - Andrew Gazdecki

Connect with our Andrew in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/
Website: https://microacquire.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

A lot of success in sales and even in running whole businesses comes not only from experience in the industry but also from working for customers and knowing the problems that need to be solved.

In this episode of the Revenue Today podcast, Jared has a great conversation with his long-time friend Ryan Scalera, Head of Business Development at Flosum. Ryan debunks a myth about generating revenue, shares the key metrics he typically follows, and provides insight into the opportunities in a Business Development Representative (BDR) role.

Takeaways

Revenue Myth: Most companies and founders have no idea about the actual business problem that they solve for
Finding the north star metrics is usually easier said than done
Strengthen your weaknesses instead of just doubling down on your strengths
The BDR role might return to the roots of full cycle in the incoming years

Quote of the Show

"That's why I'm glad I went to AE before I went into this role because I was an SDR, then I was an AE, and I sold to sales leaders so I started to understand them and what they measure. That's how I became a better sales leader is by selling to them and really just running great discovery on them to learn what good looks like and where you can spot problems in a funnel." - Ryan Scalera

Connect with Ryan in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanscalera/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanscalesales

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we have an amazing panel of guests who share how to scale your revenue operations. We are joined by Darrell Alfonso, Global Marketing Operations at Amazon Web Services; Mollie Bodensteiner, Global Revenue Operations Leader at Deal; and Eddie Reynolds, CEO and Revenue Operations Strategy Consultant at Union Square Consulting.

The panel discusses building revenue operations and making sure it runs at its best as you start to have larger marketing and customer success teams. They focus on the importance of processes to keep revenue operations firing on all cylinders.

Takeaways

Start with centrally-accessible key processes so as to not rely on a sole individual to keep the business running as you scale
There are broken processes but there are also those that can simply be made more efficient

Quote of the Show

"When I think about process, you're always balancing quality and speed. When I think about scalable process, it's always like a tightrope. You're always either leaning towards the direction of 'it's too constraining' or 'it's a little bit too empowering' which can translate to chaos." - Darrell Alfonso

Connect with our guests in the links below:

Eddie:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardreynolds/
Website: https://www.unionsquareconsulting.com/

Mollie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molliebodensteiner

Darrell

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemandDarrell

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital. Today, he presents the data on the correlation between leading indicators and customer retention for product-market fit. He then talks about scalable unit economics as a goal in the go-to-market fit phase.

Takeaways

Product-market fit is not a revenue line or survey, it's based on leading indicator retention
We need to understand the leading indicators of unit economics just as much

Quote of the Show

"Do you know how many entrepreneurs come up with an idea and never get customers to see the value they envision? Do you know how hard it is to come up with an idea and get the majority of your customers to realize that value? If you do that, you have experienced something so many people wanted to experience and never did." - Mark Roberge

Connect with Mark in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/
Website: https://www.stage2.capital/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Nadja Komnenic, Senior Sales Development Manager at Lokalise. Before achieving product-market fit, founders must first overcome the phenomenon known as internal dishonesty.

Internal dishonesty makes founders seek validation from their own personal networks that their idea will change the world instead of using metrics. Getting over internal dishonesty will save a lot of wasted effort and creates a product that actually helps your audience.

Takeaways

Companies will only achieve product-market fit when founders overcome internal dishonesty.
Use metrics like customer feedback, not personal validation, that your product is viable.

Quote of the Show

"I want to make sure that everybody that is currently potentially looking to grow their businesses to think about one very important factor in growing your initial stages of your business which is the phenomenon that a lot of founders face which is the internal dishonesty." - Nadja Komnenic

Connect with Nadja in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadjakomnenic/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital. Today, he provides insights on when companies should scale and how fast based on product-market fit. Mark also discusses the definition of product-market fit that uses leading indicators like retention as the basis.

Takeaways

Scaling has less to do with revenue and customer lines and more to do with product-market fit.
Use leading indicators like retention to determine if you have achieved product-market fit.

Quote of the Show

"When someone uses your product and then chooses to re-buy it, to renew or buy more from you if you're not in the subscription business... if any metric out there, I'd say that's product-market fit." - Mark Roberge

Connect with Mark in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/
Website: https://www.stage2.capital/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Andrew Gazdecki, CEO of MicroAcquire. Today, he highlights the importance of branding and how to use storytelling to cut through the noise and to make your brand recognizable. You can even use stories from another customer, a David versus Goliath story, to drive across relevance.

Takeaways

Use storytelling in your branding to set yourself apart.
Roll out your own story to help sales teams understand their commissions.
Find your David versus Goliath story.

Quote of the Show

"Your biggest competitor today for your company is customer attention, and so that's why storytelling can really help you cut through the noise and have people recognize your brand which gives you air cover over your sales call." - Andrew Gazdecki

Connect with Andrew in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/
Website: https://microacquire.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast

YouTube:

https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

The panel discusses how to build revenue operations during different stages of a company. They talk about building RevOps, both before the company reaches product-market fit, as well as immediately after.

Takeaways

Revenue operations should make the go-to-market process more seamless
Make sure operations are effectively delivering the things that should be delivered

Quote of the Show

"Revenue operations, ultimately, should strive to make the go-to-market process more seamless, repeatable, and scalable. And if you haven't achieved product-market fit, there's not much to optimize there." - Eddie Reynolds

Connect with our guests in the links below:

Eddie:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardreynolds/
Website: https://www.unionsquareconsulting.com/

Mollie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molliebodensteiner

Darrell

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemandDarrell

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Andrew Gazdecki, CEO of MicroAcquire. Today, he shares insights on evoking emotion and why understanding your audience is key before you even start crafting and telling a story catered to any specific market.

Takeaways

Servicing problems within a story can be even more powerful by understanding your audience and evoking emotion
Start by getting brutally honest feedback from your customers

Quote of the Show

"When you really nail it with a customer story, customers start creating their own stories for you, for you to tell to other customers. Word of mouth marketing will and always will be the most powerful form of marketing." - Andrew Gazdecki

Connect with Andrew in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/
Website: https://microacquire.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we have an amazing panel of guests to talk about leveraging LinkedIn as a professional social media network to elevate your brand and connect with people. We are joined by Christina Nalband, Director of Enterprise Sales at Groove; Jason Vana, Founder of SHFT Agency; and Nick Bennett, Director of Evangelism and Customer Marketing at Alyce

The panel shares their insight on why LinkedIn could be essential in any go-to-market strategy today. They also discuss the importance of using LinkedIn for your company's benefit, whether you're working in marketing or you actually own the business.

Takeaways

Put LinkedIn together for a go-to-market strategy
If you are in B2B, LinkedIn is simply the best place to connect with your ideal customers
People buy and market differently from how they did years ago

Quote of the Show

"You're not doing a good job if you're not on LinkedIn because it really is the place to connect one-on-one with your ideal customers. For me, what I tell my clients is that your ideal customers are on this platform so if you're not there, they're connecting with your competition and you're not even a solution." - Jason Vana

Connect with our guests in the links below:

Christina

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina281990/
Website: www.ChristinaNalband.com

Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonvana/
Website: https://shft.agency/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonvana
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickB2005

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Rachel Mae is the Chief Evangelist and General Manager of Training Certification/Licensing at A Sales Growth Company. Today, she talks about knowing and shaping the client's decision criteria so you can put yourself ahead of others who are barely paying attention to this today.

Takeaways

The goal is to help your client base their decision criteria on the right areas
You need to ask questions but it all starts with first knowing what you're looking for

Quote of the Show

"It starts with you knowing what business problems you're looking for. And I know this sounds really basic but when I coach salespeople and when they're asking questions in discovery, the biggest thing that I see is they don't know what business problems they're looking for." - Rachel Mae

Connect with Rachel in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelmae/
Company Website: https://salesgrowth.com/#

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

This episode of Revenue Today features Alina Vandenberghe, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Chili Piper! Today, she talks about how product-market fit has changed and evolved along with the brand. She also shares her insight into some of the early challenges to look out for when bringing your product to market.

Takeaways

For every feature or platform you launch, always ask yourself if it's going to have product-market fit.
Identify the persona in a way that you can address the most work and solve the most problems

Quote of the Show

"One would be to love this process and be excited by it because even if you have the right momentum at one particular time, it doesn't mean that you stop." - Aline Vandenberghe

Connect with Alina in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinav/
Website: https://www.chilipiper.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we have an amazing panel of guests to talk about leveraging LinkedIn and the KPIs they look at to measure success. We are joined by Christina Nalband, Director of Enterprise Sales at Groove; Jason Vana, Founder of SHFT Agency; and Nick Bennett, Director of Evangelism and Customer Marketing at Alyce

The panel discusses the use of SHIELD as an analytical tool, how do you know if these tools measure success effectively, and doing self-recorded attributions and tracking direct messages to add to those analytical tools.

Takeaways

There are still many ways to discover "How do you track and measure ROI from LinkedIn?"
Have a self-attribution field that the prospect can fill in to know what prompted them to visit your page.
Tracking on LinkedIn is mostly done manually, especially with DMs.

Quote of the Show

"It's the same thing with any software product that you purchase. How do you know if it's working? Right now, for me, it's the direct messages I get, it's if we get demos filled out of people that I know are following me." - Christina Nalband

Connect with our guests in the links below:

Christina

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina281990/
Website: www.ChristinaNalband.com

Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonvana/
Website: https://shft.agency/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonvana

Nick

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickB2005

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

We are joined by one of the leading members of RevGenius! Tom Slocum is the VP of Sales at TrainYo, a Strategic Advisor at Outplay, and previously the Program Director of RevGenius. Today, he talks about having a change of mindset from talking and trying to win the prospect over to listening more to them instead.

Takeaways

Use empathy and tact in your conversations to dive deeper with them and become a resource.
People want to have an emotional experience with you instead of being sold on features and benefits.
Empower your reps to become help people and not salespeople to have longer-lasting customers

Quote of the Show

"Sales is the only game where winning could cause you to lose. Because you're trying to win over your prospect, making you appear insensitive to their values and incapable of meeting their needs. Because you're trying to win them over. If you're selling, you're doing it wrong." - Tom Slocum

Connect with Tom in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomslocum/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tommy_Slocum
Website: https://www.trainyo.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

We are joined by one of the leading members of RevGenius! Tom Slocum is the VP of Sales at TrainYo, a Strategic Advisor at Outplay, and previously the Program Director of RevGenius. Today he shares an example of prioritizing helping instead of selling and how reps can help when there's a highly-technical sale.

Takeaways

Know when to quit on somebody or reach out and be a little more "human" when reaching out.
Using video to walk the prospect through how they can be helped on the technical side.

Quote of the Show

"When you're coming from a technical sale, you can do it by helping them either understand the industry, maybe you can give them an educational PDF, so you can build layers of education with them and let them become domain experts." - Tom Slocum

Connect with Tom in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomslocum/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tommy_Slocum
Website: https://www.trainyo.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Rachel Mae is the Chief Evangelist and General Manager of Training Certification/Licensing at A Sales Growth Company. Today, she defines "sales" and "influence" and talks about how we can effectively influence the sale.

Takeaways

You have to think to yourself about what you're trying to influence with every interaction.
There are multiple moments through the sales process where you are trying to influence different things.

Quote of the Show

"Your job is to influence the way that the prospect thinks about the problem that exists. And most importantly, you need to influence the way they do business today. The way they think about the way they are doing business today." - Rachel Mae

Connect with Rachel in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelmae/
Company Website: https://salesgrowth.com/#

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Rachel Mae is the Chief Evangelist and General Manager of Training Certification/Licensing at A Sales Growth Company. Today, she talks about when and how in the discovery phase you can start influencing decision criteria. Rachel digs into asking questions effectively so that the prospect understands their situation and how you can help them.

Takeaways

Ask the right questions to help the prospect understand how they are currently thinking about the problem
Give your reps the right tools to be successful

Quote of the Show

"It's because the discovery, they think it's for you, they don't think it's for them. But if you're doing it right, it's for them. If you're doing it right, you're going to get all of that information and you're going to hold back. Don't say anything about your product, don't tell them you're going to fix it, don't tell them anything." - Rachel Mae

Connect with Rachel in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelmae/
Company Website: https://salesgrowth.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today's guest is Gurupandian Chandrasekaran, the VP of Revenue & Growth at JustCall and SaasLabs. He provides insight into sentimental analysis and how you can influence both recorded calls and real-time conversations. He also delves into scaling conversations by listening and learning through these recordings.

Takeaways

Have real-time and post-call analysis in order to identify patterns and influence the call as it happens.
Listening helps to align product with market first and then the messaging with market.
You can scale conversations through listening. When that muscle is built further and further, then you can go to learning.

Quote of the Show

"You know that there is a customer coming and you now have that one product market fit. But the messaging fit might be different and that's becoming a scalable motion. Now you're saying, 'I used to say this to my first 10 customers' but now for the next hundred, there's some variation. Maybe they want more value that I'm not articulating." - Gurupandian Chandrasekaran

Connect with Gurupandian in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurupandian/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today we are joined by one of the leading members of RevGenius! Tom Slocum is the VP of Sales at TrainYo, a Strategic Advisor at Outplay, and a Customer Advisory Board Member at Chili Piper. He shares his time to talk about the 3 Rs - Research, Relevancy, and Relatability - that will give you more chances of reaching the right person at the right time.

Takeaways

Research is vital when it comes to building sequences. You need it to make sure you're reaching the right audience at the right time and place, and it also builds into providing relevant and relatable content.
Focus on what you can do to help your prospective buyers on their hero's journey.

Quote of the Show

"Find maybe five steps to help them get better that doesn't cost a dime to interact with you. You can give them a small win that they can go and be a hero today, but they're going to come back to you for more. So offer that practical tip that they can implement whether they work with you or not. Again, we've got to stop being salespeople and start being help people." - Tom Slocum

Connect with Tom in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomslocum/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tommy_Slocum
Website: https://www.trainyo.com/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Nick Capozzi is the Founder of SalesPitching and Head of Storytelling at Demostack. Today, he talks about the different ways you can better describe what your product does without telling the prospect that it saves them time and money.

Takeaways

When telling a story, it should never be about saving time or money. Because that's what everybody is saying already.
Evoke emotion to help the prospect navigate through their own story and become willing to share more.
Listen back to your story or recordings from time to time because it also has to evolve.

Quote of the Show

"Fear, uncertainty, and doubt does not work in a business environment. What you're trying to do is build a champion on the other side. And if you build a champion and get people excited about what you're doing, there are 10 people out there selling the same product you but if you can get someone on your side, you immediately hit top 3." - Nick Capozzi

Connect with Nick in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-capozzi/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickCapozzi

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Nick Capozzi is the Head of Storytelling at Demostack. Today, he shares using descriptive storytelling to paint a vivid picture for your prospect of what you're trying to achieve with them. He talks about understanding your prospect's story and using that to provide value as well.

Takeaways

A key thing is to involve your prospect in the story. To tell a great story about your product, you have to be detailed and descriptive.
Helping your prospect find their "why" will allow them to better tell their story.

Quote of the Show

"If you're a seller, you've probably heard this before, the 'what's your why now?' And people get stuck there. They're afraid to push and prod into it if they meet resistance in the beginning. But really if you figure that out, you can craft your story specifically to that prospect." - Nick Capozzi

Connect with Nick in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-capozzi/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickCapozzi

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Our guest today has spent the last 20 years in revenue-producing roles, from sales training, to sales ops, and revenue management! Angela Alea is the host of the Corralling the Chaos Podcast and is the President and Chief Revenue Officer at Lasso. Angela joins Jared to tackle revenue myths and shares her perspective on success with different customers.

Takeaways

Revenue Myth: Growing revenue isn't at all a result of making your customers happy. It's not enough to make happy customers, you have to make them successful.
You have to live the gap of discomfort if you want to grow. It can be scary but it's also necessary.
Have a balance between serving the customer and solving for the customer.
It's scalable when you can get your team up to speed on different metrics and help everyone understand that success should look different with each customer.

Quote of the Show

"Approach it as 'I don't want anything from them, I want something for them.' But you have to figure out what that thing is. You've got to understand their business, where it's going, and then how your product plays a role in the bigger picture. Because if you're not going to connect the dots for them, they're not going to be able to connect it." - Angela Alea

Connect with Angela in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelaalea/
Website: https://www.lasso.io/
Email: angela.alea@lasso.io
Podcast: Corralling the Chaos

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Gurupandian Chandrasekaran is the VP of Revenue & Growth at JustCall and SaasLabs. Today, he shares how we can better differentiate customer success call signals from sales call signals. He talks about how to implement listening in connection to those signals and in your go-to-market (GTM) process as a whole.

Takeaways

There are human signals which are consistent in all calls and there are some that will depend on factors like the team, industry, features, resolutions, etc.
Implementing proper listening in a GTM strategy benefits all teams whether you are in sales, support, or marketing.
When implementing listening, you need to plug in tools that actually give actionable insights.

Quote of the Show

"Listening is a key thing that you have to make part of your GTM engine. You have to build that muscle. That muscle is crucial because it kind of provides context to all teams whether you are in sales, success, support, marketing, it doesn't matter." - Gurupandian Chandrasekaran

Connect with Gurupandian in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurupandian/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Gurupandian Chandrasekaran is the VP of Revenue & Growth at JustCall and SaasLabs. Today, he shares what he thinks is at the core of any successful go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Gurupandian talks about the importance of 'listening' and applying it to the GTM motion as well. It can be a great help in identifying red flags and issues that customers want to communicate to you.

Takeaway

Aligning internal and external perceptions is your priority before discovery, distribution, and product.
Make "listening" an active part of your GTM motion
You want to know which part of your marketing funnel is making an impact for this customer

Quote of the Show

"You need to understand which part of the messaging is resonating with my customers and how are the customers describing it in their language. We have to match them, you have to figure out just like product-marketing fit which you already have, which messaging is articulating the value your customers want." - Gurupandian Chandrasekaran

Connect with Gurupandian in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurupandian/

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today, we have an amazing panel of guests who talk about leveraging LinkedIn to nurture and produce top-quality content. We are joined by Christina Nalband, Director of Enterprise Sales at Groove; Jason Vana, Founder of SHFT Agency; and Nick Bennett, Director of Evangelism and Customer Marketing at Alyce

The panel discusses how producing and engaging in LinkedIn content drives top-of-the-funnel activities from the leader's perspective. Each guest shares their insight on the different ways folks should leverage LinkedIn no matter the activity.

Takeaways

Most B2B companies still look at content as a marketing tactic
Have the mindset of being a content resource instead of focusing on leads
Daily LinkedIn content can make a huge difference in connecting with target accounts
Creating effective LinkedIn content should be included in onboarding

Quote of the Show

"The goal is not leads. The goal is to say I want to be the expert, I want to be the resource, or I want to be the company that gives out so much information that people look at us and say we're the ones that are the experts." - Jason Vana

Connect with our guests in the links below:

Christina

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina281990/
Website: www.ChristinaNalband.com

Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonvana/
Website: https://shft.agency/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonvana

Nick

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickB2005

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Nick Capozzi is the Head of Storytelling at Demostack. Today, he shares why you should have a 45-second story, a 3-minute story, and 1 in long form. Most importantly, he explains why you should be able to tell your story in 10 words! Nick also talks about sales development follow-ups to your story and avoiding the use of terms like "our solution."

Takeaways

Why "What's your story in 10 words?" can be impactful
Address the prospect's problem instead of focusing on the solutions your provide

Quote of the Show

"It's not our solution. It's my prospect's problem or pain point. I was talking about the negatives. I want to push on their pain points but I want to do it in a happy way. What I mean by that is I want to acknowledge that they do have issues and get confirmation from them and take them through the story." - Nick Capozzi

Connect with Nick in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-capozzi/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickCapozzi

Ways to tune in:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

View Details

Today’s guest writes the chiefmartec.com blog and is the author of the best-selling book Hacking Marketing, published by Wiley. Previously, he was the Co-Founder and CTO of ion interactive. He holds degrees in computer science from Columbia University and Harvard University and an MBA from MIT. Today’s guest is Scott Brinker the VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot. Scott sits down with Jared to discuss the necessity of lowering your dependency on 3rd party cookies, creating an effective ecosystem of apps, and figuring out which integrations really matter.

Takeaways:

Revenue Myth: “Third-party cookies going away is a bad thing”. Despite all the benefits cookies have offered, marketers have been using them as a crutch.
Instead of focusing on what other websites your potential customers' view, focus on how they interact with yours. Where do they click? What do they read? How do they respond to your emails?
Having a great Ops team member is the key to inside marketing. You can have the greatest, most creative marketing strategy, but without someone to help you implement it, it will fall short.
The total number of app integrations is nothing more than a vanity metric. What truly matters more is which integrations are being used, and how many people are using them.
Keep the value on the customer. What do they want, what are the use cases, and what are they trying to solve?
Even though there are countless different softwares and programs, the industry still has a long way to go before we consolidate, and are able to have all the different tools work together.
While lowering dependency on 3rd party cookies seems like a far-off issue, we know it's coming, and need to be taking strides to address the problem before it happens.

Quote of the Show:

“What we really want to do is we really wanna understand authentically who our prospects and customers are.” - Scott Brinker

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chiefmartec
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjbrinker/
Blog: https://chiefmartec.com/
Website: https://www.hubspot.com/
The MarTech Show: https://youtu.be/2Fw98UGrCpA
Hacking Marketing: https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Marketing-Practices-Smarter-Innovative/dp/1119183170/ref=asc_df_1119183170/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312128454859&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=439765734653661185&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002280&hvtargid=pla-448831158462&psc=1

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

Hacking Marketing: Agile Practices to Make Marketing Smarter, Faster, and More Innovative

View Details

She’s a sales leader, thought leader, speaker, and a B2B sales badass. Jen Allen is the host of the “Winning The Challenger Sale” podcast and is the Chief Evangelist at Challenger. Jen sits down with Jared Robin to explain how to change your buyer’s status quo, explore the changing landscape where buyers push off sellers, and share tips for sellers on how they can up their game.

Takeaways:

Revenue Myth: “To earn a meeting with customers, you need to show them why your solution or company is better.”
Instead of leading with ROI, lead with COI (Cost Of Inaction). Show buyers what they might miss out on by not taking action.
Buyers are looking for someone to help them understand, not someone who is going to push them through a process.
Buyers are changing and are wanting to do more of the research on their own. As a result, buyers are pushing off sellers for as long as they can.
When you approach sales as a rigid process, you tend to do things that actually get in your own way.
As a sales rep, you need to figure out why people are holding onto the status quo before you can convince them to change.
Posting content to a channel your target audience doesn't use will result in few results. Identify where they are, and then start creating content.

Quote of the Show:

“There are plenty of sales leaders who think that outbound is just about sending as many emails and making as many phone calls as possible.” - Jen Allen

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferallen1121/
Website: https://www.challengerinc.com/
Podcast: https://www.challengerinc.com/podcast/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube - https://youtu.be/xpZ1oWs5kvA

View Details

Today’s guest is a funny high energy in-demand event host and panel moderator. He’s an accomplished award-winning marketer, a sales world top 50 keynote speaker, and multi-time gold medalist content creator. Darryl Praill is the host of the “Inside Inside Sales” podcast and the CMO of Agorapulse. Darryl joins Jared this week to smash revenue myths, show you how to make social media work for you, and explore the mysterious world of “dark social”.

Takeaways:

Revenue Myth: “social media doesn’t work for me because I don’t have a following.”
To increase your connection rates on social media, make sure your messages are personalized and contain no ask. Connect as people first.
Creating good content is important to developing connections. Before anyone will connect with you, they will preview your content first to see what you have in common.
When you prioritize the number of activities rather than the conversation rate, you encourage your sales reps to utilize ineffective, spammy strategies
“Dark Social” is when a lead comes in but you can’t trace it to any one particular source. Dark social is driven by referrals and awareness.
You can't expect your team to perform to the levels you desire or require if you're not doing it yourself.
Demonstrating relevancy is more important than telling your prospect that you went to the same school as them.

Quote of the Show:

“Relevancy speaks to a personal pain or challenge that is very immediate to me” - Darryl Praill

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ohpinion8ted?s=20&t=ToqDx1tQ1IblXeTyPbsUPw
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylpraill/
Website: https://www.agorapulse.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-inside-sales/id1436064292

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/sdCYCK5uB0k

View Details

Today's guest is a GTM leader with 20-plus years of experience in marketing tech, data science, recruiting, and advertising. He's built high-growth companies from the ground up. Olivier L’abbé is the former President of Metadata. Olivier joins Jared Robin on the show this week to sit down and chat about revenue and marketing. Olivier shares his wisdom on how to drive engaging brand-focused content, amp up your marketing strategy, and increase your closing percentages.

Takeaways:

Revenue Myth: “If you have a good product and good sales team, you don’t need marketing”
When it comes to Demand Generation, you can build demand, or convert on existing demand. Ads are great for converting existing demand, but building demand requires a more in-depth content creation process.
Product lead growth is an effective way for small teams to figure out early on if their product has a high demand.
Promoting content on LinkedIn, and having your employees share it gets you free marketing to their networks.
One of the worst things you can do when leading a sales team is to have your sales reps try to convert customers who are not a good fit.
Using video communications as a sales rep is one of the best ways to increase your closing percentage.
At the end of the day, marketing is more important to scaling revenue efficiently than having really good salespeople.

Quote of the Show:

“The difference between a good salesperson and a mediocre one is going to be how they spend their time.” - Olivier L’abbé

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oli_G
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivier-labbe/
Website: http://www.propsf.net/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/ydSgqavEd-M

View Details

Jesse Oullette, Founder of LeadMagic, is a former enterprise sales leader turned SaaS founder. He’s an email outreach expert, an advisor to unicorns, committed to helping salespeople land in the primary inbox, and has helped over 430 companies fix their email delivery strategy. Jesse joins Jared this week to educate us on how to revamp your email marketing and make email your number one lead-generating strategy.

Takeaways:

Revenue Myth: Email delivery is dead.
Personalization doesn’t matter as much as relevance does. You need to be able to show that you can solve a problem for the person you are reaching out to.
Sales Navigator and other similar tools can give you insights into recent changes at the company allowing you to add relevance to your outreach.
Never give your SDR team sequencing on a single domain where they have a cap of over 50 emails a day.
While phone calls can be a valuable sales tool, prospects may feel that you are interrupting their time, and may be less receptive to what you say.
By not building productized services to scale your time, you set yourself up for problems in the long run.
Opening to someone by mentioning that you know their family member and really like the work they do might help you get a meeting, but it won't help you get a sale.

Quote of the Show:

“I thought I had to win every competition. I realized really quickly, it's good to lose a lot of competitions too.” - Jesse Oullette

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jesseogtm?lang=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseoue/
Website: https://leadmagic.io/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
Youtube: https://youtu.be/mbsx503ahjA

View Details

Today’s guest got her start as a Quake pro gamer and now finds herself as the CRO of a company with $110 Million in series B funding. She's a negotiator, strategist, and the world's first female pro gamer under the alias “killcreek”. Stevie Case is the CRO at Vanta. Stevie joins Jared Robin to talk about picking the right employees for your team, the changing outbound landscape, and how sales reps can work to cut through the noise and reach their clients.

Takeaways:

There is a myth that it is hard to get people for sales, AE, and CRO roles. These are jobs that anyone can do with the right onboarding.
Being curious, asking a lot of questions, and engaging like a human being makes you stand out as a candidate.
As a startup, you need to hire employees who are adaptable to change.
Outbound strategies have changed, and it’s getting harder and harder to cut through the noise.
Make use of strategies that show your voice and personality. While phone calls may seem outdated, they are a good way to make a more personal connection.
If you are an AE and have concerns and aren’t sure what to do, double down on discovery.
What buyers ultimately want to know at the end of the day is “is this somebody I can trust to help me solve my problem?”

Quote of the Show:

“You will always figure out how to solve the problem if you get your discovery right.” - Stevie Case

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KillCreek
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steviecase/
Website: https://www.vanta.com/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/IHcPUHxi0zk

View Details

The landscape for sales reps has changed, and it's more than just a numbers game now. Today's guest is a professional and personal development advocate dedicated to advancing leadership opportunities and has scaled multiple companies from $5 million to $20 million. Paul Rosen is the CRO of ShipBob Inc. Paul talks with Jared this week to help shed light on the new world of sales and the new metrics to look at.

Takeaways:

Myth: “sales is just a numbers game”.
In this digital age, spend time researching customers on LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social media platforms. Learning more about the customer helps you to connect with them.
It matters more about how many meetings turn into deals, rather than how you got to those meetings.
Activity for reps today is lighter and more customized than it was before.
Every single outreach should be customized and be humorous or add value.
Customer success is on the seller. Bringing in the right clients means less churn and bigger deal sizes.
When the economy takes a turn to stay safe, your company needs to be running at 100% effectiveness.

Quote of the Show:

“I would say activity, in general, is lighter today and more customized than it was in 2018” - Paul Rosen

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Paul_Rosen2
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/paulrosen2
Website: https://www.shipbob.com/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/40b665df-1a4f-455a-a514-ef599fd1a106
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revenue-today/id1626063261
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/38z3wZIAcpoAYF5LQ65xON
Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucmV2ZW51ZXRvZGF5LmxpdmUvZmVlZC54bWw
YouTube: https://youtu.be/enOD4WbyNcQ

View Details

Today's guest co-founded and sold a startup that built fundraising software for small nonprofits. Following that acquisition, he built an enterprise sales team from scratch, then he went on to become the Chief Growth Officer at GAN. Founder of Fluint, Nate Nasralla joins Jared Robin on this week's episode of Revenue Today to dispel some myths and discuss how to sell with your buyers, not to them.

Takeaways:

Buyers close deals, not sales reps.
Sell with your buyers by enabling champions.
The moments that kill a sales deal are in the buyers' internal conversations.
Creating a good message starts with discovery. Go deep and find the best way to frame a problem into a problem statement.
Use familiar aspects of your buyers' internal communications to better design your materials.
The best sales reps develop their business case’s with the buyer, use their words, and factor in the process the buying team uses when making their decision.
One of the biggest challenges sales teams face is a lack of traction within the buyers' company.

Quote of the Show:

“Do I like the person I'm becoming more today, than yesterday?” - Nate Nasralla

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NNasrall
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natenasralla/
Website: https://www.fluint.io/
Book Link: https://www.fluint.io/resource-content/the-enterprise-sales-playbook#top

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/2Wq-0Y5F6to

View Details

Today's guest took HubSpot from zero to a hundred million in annual recurring revenue. Mark Roberge is the current Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital, but he's also a sales scientist, MIT quant, sought-after keynote speaker, professor at Harvard business school, and author of the bestselling book: The Sales Acceleration Formula.

Tune in as Jared talks about revenue generation with the first person he looked up to when he started his sales leader journey.

Takeaways:

Revenue Myth: 95% of teams ignore that customer retention and success is the most important metric over revenue.
When most brands look at causes for issues with customer attention and success, they often first look at their product and their customer success teams. While those are intuitive places to look, in most cases the issue lies with sales.
The failure rate of a seed series A, series B, and series C is the same across the board at ~ 75%.
Extracting tangible areas of measurement from larger long-term goals is an effective way to lead sales team members to success.
Product Led Growth processes offer an exciting peek at how B2B structures will change in the near future.
The most successful teams are cross-functional, with the ability to experiment on the entire full-cycle funnel.
To see if your product has a good product-market fit, look at the value that your product offers, rather than the revenue generated from the product.

Quote of the Show:

“We have this cool term called product-market fit, but no one really knows how to define it. And half the people define it as a revenue line, which I couldn't disagree with more. When I have a million in revenue, that's market message fit, you can sell, great. But does your product deliver a value?”

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/markroberge
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/
Website: https://www.stage2.capital/
Book Link: The Sales Acceleration Formula

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube: https://youtu.be/BW9isti41Vc

The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million

View Details

Industry Innovator, media and strategy guru, Eden Gorcey, joins host Jared Robin to debunk the myth that brands have to focus on only one thing at a time. Eden, currently CRO at UnitedMasters and Translation, has problem-solved for almost every Fortune 500 company across multiple industries. She shares her take on what the future holds in this creator economy and how UnitedMasters is turning the table on individual ownership.

Takeaways:

Revenue Myth: You can only do one thing, one focus, one perfect product at a time
There is a lot of value in doing one thing really well, but there is a fine balance between doing too much and having a fear of innovating
Building a career, particularly in the music industry, is about having access to data and tools to understand your fan base
Brand partnerships don’t shift the core focus as long as you’re thoughtful to who and how you are partnering with
UnitedMasters is breaking the mold and shifting power from the institutions to the individuals in this creator economy
It’s important to be thoughtful and focused when navigating new brands like metaverse, NFTs; brands can jump too quickly to “get in on something”
The future is ownership, people owning their own brand; ownership and the ability to have transparency to every piece of media that’s ever been created

Quote of the Show:

“When you see an opportunity and you don't expand beyond your core competencies, someone else will. And I think that if you look at the case of Blockbuster and many companies that are no longer with us. And I think there's a really fine balance between doing too much and having fear of innovating.”

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edengorcey/
Website: https://unitedmasters.com/ and https://www.translationllc.com/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcast
YouTube - https://youtu.be/_1TvJMksDVc

View Details

Andrew Gazdecki, CEO of MicroAcquire, is a two time exited founder with an unyielding passion for creating startups and entrepreneurship. He has been featured in NYT, Forbes, WSJ, Inc.com, and Entrepreneur Magazine, as well as prominent industry blogs such as Mashable, TechCrunch and VentureBeat. Andrew joins host Jared Robin to share his insight on generating revenue and to smash the myth of venture capital funding!

Takeaways:

You don’t need venture capital to buy a company, and you don’t need to build a billion dollar company to be successful as an entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs build companies to serve customers, better their lives and others, but they may lack the fundamental understanding of what they want to get out of their business endeavors
Too many founders and entrepreneurs are stressed out, trying to “hit numbers,” and hate their jobs
Avoid venture capital to begin with and build a company you love, that really makes you happy, and focuses on a customer you really care about
Bringing transparency to the sale and purchase of businesses lends itself to greater trust building
As a founder of a company one of your responsibilities is to make the team feel safe and that success metrics and goals of the business are clearly communicated
One of the most underrated things that founders don’t do - laugh and have fun! Realize it’s “all part of the game” when running start ups
Andrew’s advice, “Be grateful for the progress you’ve made!” Take a step back and think of where you were two years ago and how far you’ve come

Quote of the Show:

“Building that big of a company, especially on your first try - you can avoid so many mistakes by just avoiding venture capital, avoiding all the stuff that you read about, all the startups that you hear about that are just crushing it. And build a company that really makes you happy and doesn't stress you out and focuses on a customer that you absolutely love serving.”

Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/agazdecki
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/
Website: https://microacquire.com/

Ways to Tune In:

Amazon Music
Apple Podcast

Revenue Today: Recent Episodes

RevGenius