Revenue Today

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 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

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

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

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

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, to talk about the ideal customer profile in targeting and segmentation.

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

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, to define segmentation and identify best practices for segmentation.

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

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, to talk about market segmentation going into 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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