Pipeline Meeting

Katie Bevilacqua is the Director of Operations at ConexEd, a higher ed edtech startup that migrated from Salesforce to HubSpot. Her and the team are investing in increasingly sophisticated marketing to take their product to market.Laying the right foundation is just the start. Once the finishing migrating from Salesforce to HubSpot, the work began in earnest to see what's working and try new things. We talk about topics like customer journey mapping, lead attribution, and how their B2B marketing efforts are really distinct from what you'd see in a more conventional B2C organization. Jump ahead: (00:00) - Intro (00:28) - Switching from Salesforce to HubSpot (03:11) - Measuring ROI in HubSpot (05:04) - Being strategic as a marketer (07:02) - Managing longer sales cycles (10:25) - Follow Katie Bevilacqua (10:38) - Outro Find Katie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katelynbevilacqua/ Find ConexEd online: https://conexed.com/ 

Brandon Kim is the VP of Marketing at Crystal, a powerful personality data platform that sales and marketing teams are using to increase sales. It works by understanding your prospects better, primarily with the DISC assessment. Brandon shares how they believe more personalized communication is the future. Whether that's one-to-one conversations, multi-stakeholder B2B deals, or any number of other use cases for the product.Noteworthy topics include Myers-Briggs, DISC, Enneagram, adaptive selling, and how the Crystal LinkedIn extension and free assessment tools can help people get a sense of how the product works.Find Brandon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-kim-39aaa529/Find Crystal online: https://www.crystalknows.com/Skip ahead: (00:00) - Intro (00:28) - What is adaptive selling? (01:51) - Personality assessments (04:31) - Value for sales (05:28) - How Crystal works (09:10) - Uses outside of sales (10:04) - Applying to ABM (12:08) - Follow Brandon Kim (12:45) - Outro

Aiden Technologies is a fast-growing IT automation platform that serves large enterprise companies. Aaron joins to talk about his enterprise sales and go to market strategy as the first marketing hire. Topics include marketing with HubSpot, cold outreach, sales-marketing alignment, and more. Aaron also talks in detail about how Aiden's sales team is structured, working with SDRs and sales reps, and sales automation. Jump ahead with the following chapter markers: (00:00) - Enterprise sales strategy with Aaron Mellman at Aiden Technologies (00:28) - Enterprise sales strategy (04:17) - Marketing with HubSpot (07:00) - Sales-marketing alignment (08:07) - Cold outreach (12:57) - Positioning (14:38) - Follow Aaron Mellman (15:26) - Outro Find Aaron Mellman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronmellman/Learn more about Aiden Technologies: https://www.meetaiden.com/

Pete DeOlympio just implemented inbound marketing at a professional services firm with over 100 employees as the first full-time marketing hire. He shares how it's gone and what's next.He talks about how he hit the ground running, identified early wins, and is moving forward with more advanced tactics like account-based marketing (ABM) as well as customer storytelling through case studies.  Pete also talks about how he works with his counterpart in sales, how channel sales fit into their strategy, and what he did immediately to level up the brand's website and social presence. Jump ahead with the following chapter markers: (00:00) - Intro (00:28) - Getting recruited (01:44) - Establishing an inbound function (02:16) - What's working in inbound (04:05) - Working with sales (05:10) - Lead generation (06:00) - Account-Based Marketing (ABM) (07:22) - Intent-based data (08:24) - Steady growth (10:03) - Follow Pete DeOlympio (11:05) - Outro Find Pete DeOlympio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petedeolympio/Learn more about Cleartelligence: https://www.cleartelligence.com/

Connie Lund is a marketer who espouses the benefits of community-led growth marketing, driving 4x ROI on campaigns and filling the sales funnel for her sales team. She talks about specific webinars, events, and other tactics she has used, and compares/contrasts them with more conventional marketing tactics. Connie outlines how B2B marketers can apply these tactics and set their sales teams up for success.Jump ahead with the following chapter markers: (00:00) - Intro (00:28) - Marketing as community building (03:16) - Valuable marketing spend (04:14) - Sales with PLG (06:27) - Community in the sales funnel (09:20) - Organic vs SDRs (11:09) - Marketing in a silo (12:49) - Outro Find Connie Lund on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensenc/Learn more about testRigor: https://testrigor.com/

Ryan Paul Gibson is the founder of content lift. Ryan explains how customer research can drive sales, how to make the case for marketing budget, and how to do customer research interviews that don't suck.He has worn business development hats, works alongside demand gen marketers, and really understands what it's like for organizations that are navigating uncertain times right now.Ryan also contextualizes this type of work and shares examples like The Mom Test by entrepreneur and writer Rob Fitzpatrick. Jump ahead with the following chapter markers: (00:00) - Intro (00:28) - De-risking marketing (01:27) - Arguing for your budget (03:12) - Aligning with sales (05:18) - Customer research (08:39) - Beyond personas (10:39) - Research amidst uncertainty (13:16) - Outro Find Ryan Paul Gibson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-paul-gibson/Learn more about content lift: https://contentlift.io

Ashley Guttuso is a Chief Strategy Officer. She joins us to talk about how to do effective content marketing that helps sales teams be successful.Her overview on content marketing is an important starting point for the conversation. Flagging where a lot of teams get started on the wrong foot. And considering what Google is really looking for these days when it comes to SEO.Then she introduces the serving vs. selling framework and how this can be applied to product and content marketing. Ashley includes a detailed approach for ensuring that you're always talking to customers to better identify, understand, and resonate with your ICP. Find Ashley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyguttuso/Learn more about Audience Ops: https://audienceops.com/

First, thanks so much for your support. We've seen a lot of success since switching to this new short format, interview-style show in August. Thank you helping spread the word.Second, we're going to be adding video in February. We are going to finish a queue of audio-only episodes over the next few weeks. And then in February we will start publishing video interviews on YouTube.As part of this transition, we will be going back to one episode per week and supplementing with more tutorial and walkthrough content that will also be published on YouTube.If you have any feedback, please email podcast@introcrm.com or find Harris Kenny on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/harriskenny

What if you could automate prospecting efforts for your sales team? User Gems' approach is based on jobs-based changes. Isaac Ware joins to share more.Isaac has an extensive background in marketing and demand gen, working in a wide range of industries and spanning both agency and in-house. He's bringing all that experience to help grow User Gems.They're taking novel approaches to help identify and create opportunities for their sales team that any B2B marketer can learn from. Think post-demo ABM-like paid media. Things like generating net new opportunities based on job changes. And even influencing buying committees.Jump ahead with the following chapter markers: (00:00) - Pipeline Meeting Intro (00:28) - Paid media approach (02:22) - Contact enrichment (03:30) - Fully automated campaigns (05:10) - Sales enablement (07:17) - Workflows (07:55) - Alternatives (09:11) - Guaranteeing ROI (10:19) - Use cases (12:58) - Customer success (13:48) - Following Isaac Ware (14:42) - Pipline Meeting Outro Find Isaac Ware on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaac-ware/Learn more about User Gems: https://www.usergems.com/

Natalie B. Swan joins the pod to talk getting help when you're the head of marketing. Natalie shares examples of tasks big and small that can be taken off your plate. (Seriously!)She has been doing fractional marketing work since 2017 and has a lot of experience freeing up marketers to work on strategic projects by taking on important things that feel like they simply can't be done by anyone else.Natalie shares drivers behind this, how it contrasts to working with freelancers through sites like Upwork and Fiverr, and speaks more broadly about the types of projects that tend to be successful. To jump ahead, click the chapter markers in your podcast player: (00:00) - Pipeline Meeting Intro (00:28) - Fractional marketing services (02:20) - Why experience matters (03:32) - An example success story (06:01) - Avoiding putting off work (08:51) - Where to start (11:23) - Rethinking what needs to be done (13:15) - Follow Natalie B. Swan (13:22) - Pipline Meeting Outro Find Natalie B. Swan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliebswan/Learn more about her business: https://nataliebswan.com/

Justin Jackson is the co-founder of Transistor.fm, the podcast hosting company that hosts this podcast. In part two of our interview series, Justin talks about how to grow a podcast audience.His comments about creators, distribution, and arbitrage opportunities exceed well beyond podcasting itself, but if growing your podcast is your goal, then you're in the right place.Justin has successfully grown his podcasting company, his own podcasts, and he's built a platform where major creators have succeeded in distributing their show to every major platform. To jump ahead, click the chapter markers in your podcast player: (00:00) - How to grow your podcast with Justin Jackson at Transistor (00:28) - Introduction (01:09) - Podcast distribution (03:56) - Centralization vs. decentralization (06:53) - Picking your lane (09:37) - Critical mass (11:12) - Choosing a direction (12:48) - Pipline Meeting Outro Find Justin Jackson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinijackson/Learn more about Transistor: https://transistor.fm/

Justin Jackson is the co-founder of Transistor.fm, the podcast hosting company that hosts this podcast. In part one of our interview series, Justin talks about growing a podcast hosting business. He talks about their business model as a software company, how they serve podcast agencies, and provide podcast websites. He also takes a step back to provide his perspective on the podcasting industry and market trends. Justin shares specific insights about the total market, number of active podcasts, and how different platforms compare.  He specifically contrasts podcasting with the video hosting marketing, looking to YouTube in particular.To jump ahead, click the chapter markers in your podcast player: (00:00) - Pipeline Meeting Intro (01:19) - Podcast services (03:29) - Serving podcast agencies (05:32) - Podcast websites (08:18) - Podcasting industry (11:10) - Centralization vs. Decentralization (14:56) - Pipline Meeting Outro Find Justin Jackson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinijackson/Learn more about Transistor: https://transistor.fm/

Richard Lee is developing an AI-driven copywriting tool for marketers. It's called SuperCopy and it relies on one tool in particular called GPT-3.He explains how they're building for the best marketers, what this means in practice, and the long-term implications for their product. He talks through some specifics about how these GPT-3 copywriting engines work, circumstances where they thrive and where they struggle.Richard also shares where they're seeing success and his preference for having a small marketing team that has deep understanding of the brand. And how GPT-3 copywriting can make marketers' jobs easier. He contrasts this to having teams of interns doing lower quality work.To jump ahead, click the chapter markers in your podcast player: (00:00) - Pipeline Meeting Intro (00:28) - How does AI write copy (01:22) - Use cases for GPT-3 copywriting (03:53) - Inputs for GPT-3 copywriting (06:57) - Scaling copywriting with AI (09:52) - GPT-3 copywriting use cases (13:33) - Improving engagement with AI (15:09) - Pipeline Meeting Outro Find Richard Lee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-dc-lee/Learn more about SuperCopy: https://supercopy.io/ 

Mike Schill has worked with sales leaders like Grant Cardone and Brandon Dawson. Mike joins the Pipeline Meeting podcast to talk about getting your salespeople to care about growing your business. What do salespeople care about? The same thing as anyone else. Pursuing their dreams. Mike talks about how to root organizational goals with personal goals. And how you have to understand your employees in order to get the best results out of them.He does believe it's possible to flip a team from low performing to high performing, sharing his experience playing Division 1 football.Motivation can be both personal and organizational. He talks about how setting big audacious goals can motivate your salespeople to care because they're pursuing something bigger. Lastly he shares an interesting point that while marketing is senior to sales, investing in salespeople is key to getting ROI on marketing spend where salespeople close the deals for your business. To jump ahead, click the chapter markers: (00:00) - Pipeline Meeting Intro (00:28) - What salespeople care about (02:06) - From low to high performance (03:24) - Sales operations (04:24) - Motivating your sales team (07:20) - About The Full Circle Agency (10:20) - Marketing is senior to sales (12:38) - Follow Mike Schill (13:24) - Pipeline Meeting Outro Find Mike Schill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-schill-74110a55/Learn more about The Full Circle Agency: https://thefullcircle.io/

Cece Lee is the CMO at Enable Us, a seller and buyer enablement platform. She joins the Pipeline Meeting podcast to talk about her first six months as CMO, sales enablement, digital sales room software, and more.Cece walks through her journey from customer to CMO for Enable us, including her 30-, 60-, and 90-day plan, transitioning to the VP- or C-level in marketing, and where you should be six months in.We talk extensively about sales enablement and how she sees marketing's role in this process. Beyond marketing or sales, she shares how she's increasingly thinking about this as the revenue function vs. how traditional corporate structures approach it.She shares in detail about how B2B buyers journeys and sales cycles are changing. And how this informs Enable Us as a product, thinking about every stakeholder in the process of what is commonly described as a digital sales room.Use the markers below to jump ahead. (00:00) - 37-pipeline-meeting-cece-lee (00:28) - First 6 months as CMO (04:28) - Making things happen (06:53) - Sales enablement (10:15) - Digital sales room software (14:42) - Learn more (15:12) - Pipeline Meeting Outro Follow Cece Lee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecelee/Learn more about Enable Us: https://enableus.com/

Daniel Cafiero is a senior program manager at Seagate Technologies responsible for supporting go to market for their Lyve cloud offering. In this role, he is using an account-based marketing (ABM) approach.Daniel joins the Pipeline Meeting podcast to talk about what is account-based marketing, how it compares/contrasts with old school marketing, what ABM selling is, how he owns outcomes, the pipeline development team, implementing ABM successfully, and more.If you think of an enterprise sales cycle, you would use ABM to engage multiple stakeholders throughout a lengthy sales cycle. It is built for 'dark funnels' where there's a lot happening that is not on your radar as a marketer or salesperson.But it's not easy. It's a team sport that requires committing to people, process, and technology to change how you go to market. There is so much to unpack with this topic. This interview will give you an overview and a lot to think about. Use the markers below to jump ahead. (00:00) - Introduction (00:28) - Defining Account-Based Marketing (ABM) (01:39) - ABM vs. old school marketing (04:01) - ABM selling (05:13) - Owning outcomes (06:38) - Pipeline development (09:11) - Implementing ABM (11:38) - Getting into ABM (13:32) - Closing Credits Follow Daniel Cafiero on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielcafiero/Learn more about Seagate Technology's Lyve Cloud: https://www.seagate.com/services/cloud/storage/

Jennifer Durishin is the new head of marketing at Prodigal. Well, new-ish. She got through her first 90 days as head of marketing, shares how she approached it, and what other SaaS marketers might want to keep in mind.Jennifer specifically talks about a first 90-days framework that she got from Gartner, which she learned about through a community of go to market professionals called Pavilion and in another community by 6sense. She shares more about what Prodigal is building, how her marketing team is structured, and her first steps in starting her new role.Other topics include the role of marketing agencies, learning and development (L&D), sales enablement, customer onboarding, working cross-functionally, and measuring performance. Use the markers below to jump ahead. (00:00) - Introduction (00:28) - About Prodigal (01:48) - Jennifer's First 90 Days (03:35) - Meet Jennifer's Team (05:33) - Hiring Agencies (06:56) - Marketing L&D (07:47) - Sales Enablement (08:57) - Customer Onboarding (09:52) - Working Cross-Functionally (11:12) - Measuring Performance (12:16) - Conclusion (14:23) - Following Jennifer Durishin (14:42) - Closing Credits Follow Jennifer Durishin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-durishin/Learn more about Prodigal: https://www.prodigaltech.com/ 

Bryan Clayton is the Co-Founder and CEO of GreenPal, an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. GreenPal has been called the “Uber for lawn care” by Entrepreneur magazine and has over 100,000 active users completing thousands of transactions per day.In this interview, Bryan talks about getting your first customers, building a two-sided marketplace, and building a software company after selling his service business.Use the markers below to jump ahead. (00:00) - Introduction (00:28) - Pre-Interview (01:00) - About Green Pal (02:33) - Getting Your First 100 Customers (04:37) - Two-Sided Marketplaces (07:41) - Things That Don't Scale (09:32) - Scaling the Business (13:39) - Following Bryan Clayon (13:59) - Closing Credits Follow Bryan Clayton on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryanmclayton/ Learn more about GreenPal: https://www.yourgreenpal.com/

Nicholas Thickett helps salespeople and organizations with go to market strategies for social selling with training, enablement, and consulting. Their team specializes in LinkedIn and Nicholas discusses authenticity, automation, and thinking beyond content on LinkedIn.Our conversation also explores how sales is changing heading into 2023.Use the markers below to jump ahead. (00:00) - Introduction (00:28) - The end of the anonymous seller (02:10) - Authenticity on LinkedIn (05:48) - The new burden on sellers (07:45) - Thinking beyond content on LinkedIn (10:46) - A better method of LinkedIn automation (11:33) - Following Nicholas Thickett (12:55) - Closing Credits Follow Nicholas Thickett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasthickett/Learn more about Alignd: https://getalignd.co/

After launching a new short format in August, we're doubling down on it. We'll be releasing episodes every Monday and Wednesday morning. We'll keep interviewing experts and we'll keep the interviews short—15 minutes. In the new year, we're going to add video interviews and publish them on YouTube.  Use the markers below to jump ahead. (00:00) - Introduction (00:37) - New show format (01:19) - Feedback welcome Find the Pipeline Meeting podcast at: https://introcrm.com/podcast or by searching "Pipeline Meeting" wherever you get your podcasts.Find Harris Kenny on LinkedIn by visiting his profile: https://linkedin.com/in/harriskenny

Larry Long, Jr. founded LLJR Enterprises to help people, teams, and organizations go from good to great. He regularly speaks to organizations of all sizes, and he has been coaching sales organizations for 16+ years. He recently concluded the Flip the Script 12-city, 18-day tour across the United States speaking directly with hundreds of sales professionals. Our conversation touches on the event, his book, motivating salespeople in the current environment, and timeless principles about sales. If you want to learn how to motivate sales teams, listen to Larry Long Jr.'s interview on the Pipeline Meeting podcast. Hear lessons here for founders, marketers, and sales managers looking to engage sales reps, help them hit their numbers, and meet their personal goals.Learn more about Larry Long Jr.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/longjr7/Learn more about LLJR Enterprises: https://larrylongjr.com/

How do you think and act like an owner as a marketer? Lisa Cox at Teak & Twine shares her approach and how it informs everything from coming up with campaigns to running revenue reporting. Highlights include:* Balancing business growth and personal goals. Lisa shares how her past experience as a business owner taught her how important it is to focus on business growth. Now that she's in-house, she finds ways to also drive personal growth and take risks.* Their most successful paid ad. It's a meme. Seriously. And they haven't been able to top it. Lisa shares how they develop creative concepts. They went too far but pulled it back and are striking the right tone.* B2B doesn't have to be boring. Beyond any one ad, they engage with the human-side of their prospects which include HR teams and other marketers. While also supporting a smaller DTC segment of their ecommerce business.* Expanding their definition of success. Strictly speaking, Lisa is responsible for sales pipeline. But she has gone rogue to build her own reports and track revenue since she knows what's what really matters. * Experimenting with ABM. Not wanting to invest heavily in data or tech, they found a scrappy way to experiment with ABM (account-based marketing) and achieved some pretty incredible results. Like a 50% meeting rate! Hear how.Find Lisa Cox: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-a-cox/Find Teak & Twine: https://www.teakandtwine.com/

Madison Zimmerman has taken full lifecycle marketing on as head of marketing at Property Meld, a proptech (property technology) B2B SaaS company. Our discussion includes:* Generating new leads through webinars. Making webinars that people actually show up to and find interesting -- it's true, it's possible.* Managing inbound with HubSpot. How marketing and their outbound BDR team use HubSpot for marketing and sales automation.* Quantifying pain to justify pricing. Their custom scorecard drives their sales process and helped them increase their prices. * Coordinating with customer success. Beyond generating leads, their marketing team focuses on win rates and retention, all in HubSpot.* Trying new technologies. They implemented a new lead concierge tool called Chili Piper. It works and they learned something else, too.Find Madison Zimmerman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madisonzimmerman/Learn more about Property Meld: https://propertymeld.com/

Jenn Steele recently became the CEO of Kissmetrics, an advanced product and marketing analytics platform. She talks about marketing and product analytics, using data, and how other marketers can become CEO themselves. Marketing and product analytics. Jenn spent tens of thousands of dollars when she didn't have to. She talks about why. How marketing and product analytics can work together. CMO to CEO transition. Jenn shares her background working at HubSpot, with private equity firms, MIT, and a bunch of other places.  Kissmetrics as a Google Analytics 4 alternative. Jenn talks about how they're adapting their go to market strategy to capitalize on changes to Google Analytics (GA4, specifically). Rebuilding sales and marketing from scratch. Without having any players in sales or marketing seats, Jenn has been recreating those those, recreating processes, and hiring specialists to take these things off her plate. First 90 days as CEO. She walks us through the myriad of tasks on her plate as a new CEO, some of which are not her area of expertise. Like taxes. And all the ways she wants to fire herself. That's not all. We also reminisce about T-shaped marketers. How companies like Carvana use Kissmetrics. And a big risk of her marketing background: Spending too much time on marketing. Jenn Steele: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennsteele/Kissmetrics: https://www.kissmetrics.io/ 

Janelle Amos helps companies craft--and execute--demand gen strategy. Not just any companies, though. She specializes in working with B2B SaaS startups that are anywhere from seed stage to series C rounds. We discuss: Who she helps. There are three typical scenarios when a head of demand gen might be called in to help. She talks about all three, and two tend to work better than the third. Why marketing first. Janelle explains why she thinks marketing, and demand gen strategy, should come first when a startup is starting to see traction. She contrasts this to a sales-first approach. Why marketing now. She explains how timing is key. There are several specific things she looks for in the market and the product that help her understand if demand gen strategy can help. Supporting sales. Janelle shares interesting insight into how the right demand gen strategy can set up the sales team for success. And beyond a nice to have, it may be vital for the success of that sales team. When done right, they can jump in and do their job--selling! The ideal tech stack: Always a tricky topic, but Janelle talks about a few different popular tools and how they come together like HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, Outreach, and Salesloft. We cover more topics like the specific tactics she recommends in B2B SaaS, repurposing long form content, sales cycles, message testing, and internal communications for your campaigns. Janelle Amos on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janelleamos/ Elevate Growth: https://elevate-growth.com/ 

Lucas helps HubSpot partners and customers identify the best ways to attract, engage, and delight their customers. He joins the Pipeline Meeting podcast to talk specifically about how sales and marketing teams can work better. Topics include: Bringing sales in the loop: Even a high performing marketing team using marketing automation, lead scoring, and analytics is going to want to bring their sales team onto the same platform to make the most of it.  Sales and customers win: Lucas shares how both sales teams and customers benefit when marketing insights are fully incorporated into the buyer's journey.  Marketing has skin in the game: Having visibility into sales activities and the full sales pipeline also means marketers can make better, data-driven, and revenue-informed decisions about how they spend their time. Operations, or RevOps, is the glue: These two teams can connect with other platforms, tools, and other teams through HubSpot's OpsHub. You can also automate things like data cleaning and enrichment across your CRM. Partners are key. HubSpot is a powerful platform. But the average scaling company is using 242 pieces of software in their tech stack. HubSpot both plays well with others and can handle some of these workflows. We also talk about emerging tools like Arrows, built for onboarding, which is a native HubSpot app. Lucas Stacey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-stacey/HubSpot on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hubspot/Learn more about HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/Why Choose HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/why-choose-hubspotWhat's New in HubSpot's Software: https://www.hubspot.com/new

Emma was the first marketing hire at Mystery, and in her time with the company, it has evolved a lot. They've gone from only 10 people to 70 and counting and she shares what she's learned along the way. Measuring brand marketing: Never an easy topic, Emma shares how brand is rooted in everything they do and has been from the beginning. There are ways they measure though, like impressions, visits, and through the success of their product and growth marketing teams. Why now for virtual events: The company has seen a lot of growth, in part because people are more interested in virtual events than ever. Think Zoom fatigue and quiet quitting being major headlines in the press. Demos that don't suck: They make an experiential product. Emma talks about how they've used this to their advantage in the process of introducing new prospects to their product.  Experience design plus data science: There's an interesting angle they're taking which is bringing principles of data science to make virtual events that scale. Emma explores this. Connecting sales and marketing: Sometimes the best way for your sales and marketing teams to talk to each other is for them to... Talk to each other. Mystery uses their own product to bring the two teams together. Learn how it impacts sales and marketing alignment. (Hint: It works!) Emma Biskupiak on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ehunsaker/Mystery on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trymystery/ Learn more about Mystery: https://www.trymystery.com/

James' partner sales responsibilities run the gamut, from identifying partners and to co-marketing and helping them succeed. He shares his insights building this program, including: Ways to partner: Close offers three distinct partner programs: Affiliates, experts, and integrations. James walks through how each works and how they are incentivizing and engaging growth levers that were previously underutilized. Integrations: This is a hot topic and an increasingly important one in the SaaS (software as a service) world. James shares an example of their partnership with QuotaPath, how they identified the opportunity, executed on it, and how it's going. (Hint: It's going well!) Incentives: Several times in our conversation James talks about incentivizing partners and how financial motivation is an important part of the equation for partner sales... But it's not the only one. Sales support and training is another important consideration. Complementing vs. Competing: One area we explore is that it looks like to have a complementary partner sales relationship versus a competitive one. Product roadmap, customer base, and other factors come into play.  One to Many: When it comes to integrations, if you build one, chances are you are going to build another. So how do you know where to start? And how does that affect your sales and go to market motions?  James Urie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-urie/Close on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/close-crm/Learn more about Close: https://close.com/

We're joined by Tara Pawlak, head of marketing at GetAccept. For starters, this episode kicked off when Tara posted the following tactical exercise on LinkedIn, encouraging people to rethink how they do events:https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tara-pawlak_marketers-sales-salesteam-activity-6976547555996225536-uvHo/ In this episode, we cover a lot of ground. Sales-marketing alignment for events and trade shows. How Tara has flipped the conventional way of doing events on its head and is including the sales team with digital sales rooms. Plus the one key that is required for this to work. How outbound sales can complement marketing's events strategy. That's right, when coordinated appropriately, outbound sales efforts can co-exist with marketing's conventional event and trade show strategies.  Digital sales rooms. It's an emerging category and Tara talks about GetAccept thinks about this new tool for salespeople and how they interact across the org chart. And she makes the case for how digital sales rooms can help salespeople sell more! Sales-marketing communication around events. If marketers often use project management software and salespeople often use CRM software, how do they meet in the middle? Hear how they do it at GetAccept. Revenue goals. Tara shares her personal experience that led her to become a marketer who is not only comfortable talking about sales, who wants a revenue number. Find Tara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-pawlak/Learn more about GetAccept: https://www.getaccept.com/Discover HubSpot INBOUND: https://www.inbound.com/

Stuart shares incredible insights into the new customer onboarding process, topics include: Sales-Marketing-Service Alignment: Gaps in this area aren't because of your internal teams per se, but because of not knowing your customer. And they feel it. He shares valuable advice on how to avoid this trap. Failed Onboarding: This has proven controversial online, but the Arrows team is opinionated about it. Onboarding can be considered either a success or a failure. What does this mean in practice? Stuart breaks it down. Cost of Failure: It's easy to think about new customer onboarding as a short-term concern. However, there are long-term financial ramifications of failing to retain customers. And it could cost you your business. Who Owns Onboarding: This is a tricky one. Stuart talks through the nuances of sales or service teams owning new customer onboarding, and in particular, what that looks like in HubSpot (in deals vs. tickets). Onboarding Velocity: This is the one metric that Stuart is thinking about right now. He explains what it means, how they think about this at Arrows, and why it matters. Learn more about Arrows: https://arrows.to/Find Stuart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartbalcombe/

In this episode, Harris asks Sam to share his thoughts on a few topics:  Understanding buyers: Sam tells the story of a lead that came in—an intern. Why this lead could have been considered disqualified, but he encouraged the client to take the meeting and it ended up in a meeting with the prospects' CEO. Hear the whole story in the show. Big vs. small companies: There's a difference between decision-making and buyers committees at companies with 10 vs. 10,000 employees. Sam shares how the focus on the person that literally signs the contract can be misguided.  Defining your ICP: Refine Labs has a unique process for defining an ideal customer profile. Sam sheds a little bit of light on how they think about it, and more importantly how they consider it a living document—not a static one. Using the CRM: When looking back, using CRM data, you can conduct win-loss analyses and expand your understanding of who the buyer and buyer's committee are. Sam also talks about leading CRMs like HubSpot. Human touch: Sam and Harris talk about the balance between automation and human intervention, and how high intent vs. low intent actions should weigh into how you route and respond to leads. They touch on lead scoring and using group updates as tactics to consider. Following up: When you have an exciting lead come in, how do you handle the follow-up to ensure the lead doesn't fall flat? Defining demand generation: Lastly, as leaders in the space, Sam defines demand generation from Refine Labs' perspective. If you found this episode interesting, learn more by visiting introcrm.comLearn About Our GuestRefine Labs helps companies consistently launch new revenue programs, improve the buyer experience, and build a sustainable competitive advantage with Revenue R&D.Visit Refine Labs to learn more about their work.As VP of Demand Generation, Sam works with Refine Labs' clients to make demand generation their competitive advantage.Find Marc Thomas on LinkedIn.

In this episode, Harris asks Marc to share his thoughts on a few topics:  Role of sales: How does he see the overlap between sales and marketing, and in particular, are there certain companies where salespeople don't make sense? Short answer: Yes, listen to the episode or read the transcript for the reply, because it's a little complicated. Repeatability in sales: When has a company achieved repeatability in their sales process, where they feel they are getting closer to Product Market Fit (PMF)? How can you measure that? Beyond Product Market Fit: Even if you've got a sense of PMF, is that enough? Marc says you must look at the market part of the equation before proceeding.  Steps after getting traction: Now that you're scaling, what are the next steps to take in sales and marketing alignment? How do you drive conversion, where would you go next with site content and marketing strategies? Marc's low-volume keyword strategy is an interesting one. Listen or read to hear him explain it. One thing to improve all your marketing: To keep it simple, Marc concludes by sharing the one thing that will improve everything about your marketing: Focusing on pain points.  If you found this episode interesting, learn more by visiting introcrm.comLearn About Our GuestPowered By Search helps B2B SaaS companies with solid product-market fit who want to make building demand a priority scale MRR at record-breaking speeds.Visit Powered By Search to learn more about their work.As director of growth, Marc Thomas works with their clients between $5M ARR and $75M ARR, delivering strategic demand gen programs for companies like Basecamp, OpenPhone, AdvisorEngine, Rally, Reltio and MyCase, and he's building a predictable high-quality pipeline for Powered By Search through their own marketing efforts.Find Marc Thomas on LinkedIn and on Twitter. 

We've thrown a lot of ideas at the wall to see what levers companies can pull for growth. After seeing exceptional results with Hubspot, we decided to get certified as a Hubspot solutions partner. Hear why and what that means for the company. For more information, you can read the blog post announcing the news here.

In this podcast, we talk about sales. Sales is not the right way to grow every single company. And when I say sales, I'm talking about the process of having conversations with your customers, explaining how your product works, helping them see value and how you can take them from where they are today, to where they want to go. This involves people. But there are a lot of companies that grow without this type of sales motion. This movement is called product led growth. And there's a tension between sales led and product led growth. Usually people are in one camp or the other, depending on which category they're in and how their product works. I'm excited because in this episode, we're going to talk with Aazar Shad, who has experience with both.This interview was inspired by a podcast that Aazar recorded entitled "Wins & Losses: Behind-the-scenes of Sales-Led to Product-Led Experiment That I Did."Follow Aazar Shad's work: Newsletter ➔ Podcast ➔  Twitter ➔ LinkedIn ➔

This episode is just a trailer recorded November 2021. You can subscribe through the following feeds:➔ Amazon➔ Apple➔ Castbox➔ Castro➔ Deezer➔ Google➔ Overcast➔ Pandora➔ PlayerFM➔ Pocket Casts➔ Podcast Addict➔ Podcast Index➔ RSS➔ Stitcher➔ Spotify➔ TuneIn➔ TwitterOr search for Pipeline Meeting wherever you get your podcasts.

In today's episode, Harris shares two big updates. The first update is both major and minor: We're changing our name. And we're expanding the format of this show to include more team interviews, guests, and additional voices. With the name change, Intro CRM is now simply Intro. It's been 10 months since we stopped developing our CRM. The pivot to tech-enabled services has gone well and we are fully embracing this new model for our business. Note that our domain and social media handles will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. Harris shared more background in a thread on Twitter. With the show, we're bringing more voices into the conversation. Things have come up in our work with customers that we want to share, customers have questions we don't have great answers for, and there are new things we're learning every day. Stay tuned because we have exciting conversations in store, like with Justin Jackson (Co-Founder of Transistor) and James Urie (Head of Partnerships at Close). Note that we will be keeping the podcast short format and audio-only for now. 

Harris is on the mic this episode to share our new offering, Lead Reply. He discusses what it is, who it's for, and how it is going for customers so far. With Lead Reply, we respond quickly, as if we are a member of your team. We develop clear messaging and a clear call to action. And the follow through. For most customers, this means taking an opportunity, qualifying it (e.g. making sure it's a fit), and then booking a time on your calendar.The best part? Pricing is largely performance-based. So we align our incentives with yours.Listen to the whole episode to hear more. 

In our first-ever Meet the Team interview, we are joined by Sailja. Sailja and Harris ask each other three questions to take you behind the scenes to learn more about our company, customers who are succeeding, and where we're going next.Harris asks Sailja to to reflect back on what it was like when we first started our work together, how things have changed, and what it looks like for our clients who are achieving success in their sales efforts.Sailja was one of the first people to join the Intro CRM team in early 2020, so she has unique insights to share. And she asks Harris interesting questions about the company's asynchronous work culture and why company culture matters so much to him. 

Harris introduces you to Lead Rater, the new app from Intro CRM that is currently in beta with paying customers.Lead Rater is part of our outbound offering and puts founders and early stage sales leaders in charge of the demand generation process. We believe that high quality, filtered lead lists are the best way to test outbound sales is a channel. This is for low-volume, omni channel testing. In this episode, Harris shares how talking to founders led to our minimal viable version of this service—delivered with spreadsheets. How we leveled up that process. And ultimately built Lead Rater with no-code on using Glide, in collaboration with our friends at Low Code Agency.If you are bootstrapping (or self-funding) a business and want to go from services to productized services, then this episode is worth a listen. To see the first-look at Lead Rater, subscribe to the Intro CRM YouTube channel  →Or catch screen shots by following Intro CRM on Twitter →

Harris has three big updates today as we get back into the swing of things this fall. He talks through: Intro CRM's new software product called Lead Rater—built with no-code! A recently introduced new lead qualification and scheduling offering. The ongoing pipeline management offering that started when Harris was solo consulting. We're going to go into more of each of these areas in upcoming episodes, but this welcome back gives you a quick walk through each of them to get you acclimated. You are hearing this all here on the Intro CRM podcast first, so don't be surprised when the updates start rolling out on the website next. 

We're signing up new customers, which means we're thinking about our customer onboarding process. Let's talk about a new tool for this called Arrows by Daniel Zarick and Benedict Fritz.

Harris gives an update on Intro CRM. Spoiler alert: It's big. Hear more about Intro CRM's evolution into offering a sales done for you platform.

Hear about how the Intro CRM Basecamp integration works. And today's sales topic is ignorance. How much do you really need to know about your product to sell it? Plus, Harris upgraded his audio equipment. How does this sound?

The beta release is here! Harris also shares an award that the show received from the MicroConf community, and wonders if any show listeners are on Clubhouse?

Intro CRM alpha testing is coming to a close—hear about a special offer for alpha testers, the latest updates, and when the project is moving into beta. Plus, do grants count as sales? Harris recently learned of one and is applying for it. Should you consider the same?

Harris talks about the deals that can be the fastest to close—and the most frustrating—when you are selling to people you know. We also talk about Transistor, the podcast hosting service, and the latest improvement in Intro CRM that can track deals by billable hours or units sold.

Harris shares some big personal news, an update on Intro CRM, and talks about his pipeline through the end of the year and into 2021. Plus, new cover art!

Who are you selling to? Do you know? Think beyond name, job title, and company. Let's explore customer development and considering that challenge is built right into Intro CRM.

Are you being yourself? How can embracing yourself (or your business) create opportunity—or simply feel better? Featuring Alex Medick's experience growing his digital marketing business nearly 50% as a solopreneur.

Are your deals stuck? Get a framework for leads from the time of Coronavirus. Plus, Harris explains the format for the show, talks about his pipeline, and shares some exciting personal news.

Pipeline Meeting is a space for people who don’t have anyone else to talk about their sales pipeline with. Here's what you can expect to hear.