Podcasts about influitive

In this episode, we talk with Mark Organ, who created not one, but two software categories: marketing automation at Eloqua and advocate marketing at Influitive. These days, he coaches founders through the highs and lows of category creation at Categorynauts — and he specializes in deeply insightful and contrarian takes. Mark explores the evolving landscape of AI and its potential impact on business and technology. Organ projects how AI will further transform software development, scientific research, and industry strategies. He offers a nuanced perspective on technological innovation, highlighting the importance of human insight alongside machine capabilities. With a focus on practical applications and future trends, Organ provides listeners with a strategic view of how AI could reshape product development, market creation, and professional skills. His key quote, "I'm excited about the next wave of software that really could not exist without AI," encapsulates the episode's forward-looking approach to technological innovation.About Mark Mark OrganCEO Coach at Categorynauts, Founding CEO of Influitive and Eloqua. Author of WSJ and Amazon best-seller The Messenger is the Message, and Co-Host of The Best Half Showhttps://www.categorynauts.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/markorgan

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Jim Williams, CMO at Uptempo. Summary: Forget version control spreadsheets and stale budgets, Jim's take on marketing planning is about putting purpose behind every dollar. Instead of throwing darts at a board, focus on creating a blueprint that connects goals to actual business impact. For him, goals shouldn't be handed down from the top like a royal decree but hammered out together with practitioners so they're ambitious… but you know, grounded in reality. Marketing Ops pros are the unsung heroes, bringing sanity to the madness with data and KPIs that keep every piece aligned. Plus, AI's set to take over the boring bits—updating data, tracking budgets, making sure no dollar gets lost—leaving marketers free to do what they do best: make real magic happen.About JimJim started his career in PR and Product Marketing before spending 7 years at Eloqua as Sr Dir of Product Marketing and helping the company rise from 15M ARR to 92M and IPO. He later moved on to Influitive – the popular advocate marketing platform – as VP of Marketing where he helped grow the company from pre revenue to 12M in ARRHe then moved over to the DNS world as Snr VP of Marketing at BlueCat where he led all facets of marketingHe then became CMO at BrandMaker which has since rebranded to Uptempo, the leading enterprise marketing operations software that helps marketers plan better, spend smarter and execute with confidence.What Is a Marketing PlanJim dispels the idea that marketing planning should be like “throwing darts at a dartboard.” A marketing plan isn't a guessing game; it's a strategic framework for how teams tackle the future. One of the most common mistakes Jim sees? Dusting off last year's plan and rebranding it for the new year. This tactic, he argues, is the quickest way to stay stuck. In a world that demands fresh thinking, relying on past strategies doesn't cut it.The old-school concept of a “pivot” has taken on a new life in marketing. It's no longer about just one big strategy shift but about building in constant adaptability. Jim suggests that, unlike traditional yearly plans, today's marketing requires continuous recalibration. The best teams aren't just agile once—they're agile all the time. That flexibility to assess, pivot, and refine isn't a luxury; it's the core of modern marketing planning.Another common pitfall Jim highlights is the habit of dividing up the budget before solidifying a game plan. For too many teams, budget allocation is seen as the end goal rather than just a piece of the puzzle. Getting the numbers in place is just step one, not the entire strategy. A plan isn't simply a breakdown of costs; it's the strategic “why” and “how” behind each dollar spent. Without defining the intended outcomes, budgets lose meaning.Jim makes an essential distinction: budgets support the mission, but plans set the course. The budget tells you what's possible financially, but the plan clarifies what needs to be achieved. This separation between resources and goals keeps marketing teams focused, providing a framework to measure success rather than just track expenses. With a clear strategy in place, budgets go from static numbers to dynamic assets driving real outcomes.Key takeaway: A budget is just a set of numbers; a marketing plan is the vision behind those numbers. By keeping intent at the forefront, teams can transform budget allocations into impactful actions, staying adaptable and ready for whatever's next.Building a Marketing Plan That Aligns Top-Down and Bottom-Up GoalsJim dives into the complexities of planning in a large organization, pointing out that it's not a matter of simply setting goals at an offsite retreat. At the enterprise level, planning is a detailed, phased, six to nine-month process. Yet, he notes that surprisingly few accessible resources break down this method. For many marketers, planning seems shrouded in mystery—a skill they're expected to learn on the job, often after they've already taken on leadership responsibilities.Jim explains that marketing planning often starts with annual, top-down forecasts. This approach provides broad company objectives, which interlock with a bottoms-up plan in later stages. Rather than seeing top-down and bottom-up planning as opposing methods, Jim views them as stages in a coordinated approach. At Optempo, they've formalized this method in a seven-step “blueprint for marketing planning” to guide teams through each phase. This blueprint begins with setting overarching company objectives—determining whether the focus is on market expansion, product launches, margin improvements, or even mergers and acquisitions. Until these objectives are set, marketing teams can't start defining specific growth tactics.Once top-level objectives are clear, Jim explains that the marketing team distills them into a focused “plan on a page,” a roadmap outlining how marketing will support each objective. This document serves as a communication tool, clarifying what marketing intends to achieve and aligning these goals with company-wide expectations. According to Jim, defining these specific objectives—whether they involve selling to new buyers, entering fresh markets, or optimizing existing processes—is foundational for cohesive planning.Jim also breaks down the budget allocation process, which directly follows the plan on a page. This is where marketing teams work with finance to divide funds, categorizing costs into programmatic and non-programmatic expenses, as well as campaign-based and non-campaign-based spending. By grouping expenses into clear, high-level “buckets,” Jim explains, teams ensure their budgets align with strategic priorities and company-wide financial targets.Key takeaway: A successful marketing plan balances top-down objectives with bottom-up execution. Begin with high-level company goals, then translate them into actionable steps and align budget allocations accordingly. This approach ensures that both strategy and resources are directed toward achieving meaningful impact.Why Marketing Goals Need to Be a Two-Way ConversationJim counters the misconception that company goals are simply handed down from a closed-door board meeting, with marketers then left scrambling to hit those targets. He clarifies that in most forward-thinking companies, the setting of financial objectives isn't a secretive, top-down affair. Instead, it's a dialogue involving senior leadership across all departments—including marketing. When the ownership of a business, be it public shareholders or private investors, establishes financial ambitions, these aren't randomly assigned numbers; they're set with input from an executive team that includes the CMO or head of marketing.Jim explains that technology companies, for example, often focus on maximizing valuation. The board or ownership group typically benchmarks these goals using standards like the “Rule of 40”—a common framework in SaaS that blends growth rate and profitability. But these objectives are usually part of a larger, multi-year vision, not just a single-year target. Once these broad metrics are set, the board works backward to define the current year's objectives. From there, it's up to the executive team, including marketing leadership, to devise the most effective strategies to meet these targets.Jim emphasizes that marketing isn't just a passive recipient of goals. Marketing leadership works closely with other executives to determine how marketing can help hit specific benchmarks. It's at this stage that the conversation turns practical. For instance, if a company needs a particular level of market penetr...

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Could customer marketing be the secret weapon your B2B SaaS company needs to thrive in today's noisy marketplace? Join us for a compelling conversation with Mark Organ, the CEO of Categorynauts and the brilliant mind behind Influitive and Eloqua, as we uncover the pivotal role of customer marketing. Mark reveals why marketing to existing customers for upsell, cross-sell, and retention, as well as leveraging their advocacy to attract new prospects, is becoming increasingly crucial. Despite its importance, many organizations still favor new logo acquisition. We tackle the organizational challenges that hinder customer marketing efforts, including the lack of alignment between customer success, sales, marketing, and product teams.We dive deep into how marketing operations can amplify customer advocacy through effective collaboration. Discover the strategies that marketing and customer success teams can use to identify and empower potential customer advocates, even those who may not be entirely satisfied with the product. Mark shares insights into utilizing data from various platforms and communities to enhance advocacy efforts. We explore the potential of centralizing operations under a revenue operations (RevOps) function to harmonize goals across marketing, sales, and customer success teams, thereby boosting overall company performance.Cross-departmental collaboration is key to success, especially in coordinating design efforts across product and marketing teams. We introduce practical tools like the broken importance matrix for prioritizing process improvements and highlight the critical role of the kickoff process for new accounts in reducing churn and fostering growth. Mark offers valuable advice for marketing ops professionals aiming to elevate their careers, emphasizing the importance of empathy, collaboration, and understanding the language of sales and engineering. As we wrap up, we express our appreciation for marketing ops professionals and invite our audience to share their ideas, feedback, and guest suggestions, ensuring our content remains relevant and engaging.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals We've been HACKED! (just kidding)If you love our show, you gotta be sure to tune into Justin Norris' show: RevOps FMSupport the Show.

Many entrepreneurs dream of creating categories. But few have actually done it - much less built a category worth billions of dollars. Mark Organ is one of those rare few. As founding CEO of Eloqua, he pioneered marketing automation in the early 2000s, paving the way for other players and selling to Oracle for nearly $900 million. Mark and I chat through how he co-founded Eloqua, the pivots and experiments needed to achieve product-market fit, and how category creators may be wired a bit differently. Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that's slick, modern and beautiful. When they're done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it's got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest Mark Organ is the founding CEO of Eloqua (the first successful marketing automation platform) and Influitive. His greatest professional passions include creating new billion-dollar categories in technology and developing new leaders. Today he helps CEOs achieve their full potential in their businesses and their lives as the CEO of Categorynauts.https://www.linkedin.com/in/markorgan/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:05] - Founding Eloqua and marketing automation[07:47] - Origin of the lead generation playbook[10:39] - Getting to product-market fit[16:03] - Genesis of lead scoring[19:08] - Toolkit software vs. opinionated software[24:25] - Pivots and brushes with death are the norm[27:09] - When is it right to build a category?[30:14] - Building a category around an under-served hero[33:51] - Creating a category for the second time[36:42] - Challenges with churn at Influitive[41:05] - Alternatives to VC funding in SaaSResource LinksCategorynauts - Categorynauts is the leading global community of category creating leaders, helping CEOs looking to discover, develop and dominate their category. Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

Qualitative market research has been impacted by AI and will never be the same again. Matt Seltzer of Influitive stops in to talk cheeseburgers, market research, and artificial intelligence with our host Kyle Hamer.Support the show

In the world of marketing, customer advocacy has moved in recent years from a piecemeal hit-or-miss effort to a scalable discipline and Ari Hoffman is at the forefront. Vice President of Customer Marketing & Advocacy at Influitive, he shares his powerful framework on this episode of Gratitude Through Hard Times with Host Chris Schembra. It's all about building authentic community and loyalty to your brand, product or service not by soliciting the same customer testimony over and over again but by engaging fans as part of a growing, dynamic ecosystem. You'll learn what makes this marketing approach so powerful, how Ari rolls out programs that generate customer obsession across sectors and why defaulting to ad-based lead generation is not the way to go in times of recession. If you've been trying to figure out how to connect with customers in meaningful ways and turn them into spontaneous evangelists for your company, then here's your starting place. Ari is a thought leader with the set of tools (like his DRIVE methodology) you'll need on the journey!Learn more about Influitive's Fearless 50 Elite 18 Awards and how to nominate, vote for or otherwise celebrate the customer-led marketers whose work you appreciate most!If you'd like to learn more about Chris and his 7:47 Virtual Gratitude Experience or subscribe to our newsletter, please visit this link.Click here to hear more fascinating conversations with Fortune 500 CEOs, professional athletes and entertainerswho have shared their human stories on Gratitude Through Hard Times. KEY TOPICS:Freeze and Squeeze: Ari spells out some of the sales-centric, demand-gen defaults, like emphasis on advertising, that companies mistakenly fall back on in times of recession.Customer Obsession: Why companies oriented towards user experience see 2.5 times faster growth and 1.7 times better retention.Fearless 50 and Elite 18: How Influitive is inspiring a customer-first approach through awards that exemplify it.Moving Messages: Ari highlights the importance of creating ecosystems that engage customers and inspire them to proactively speak up on behalf of your product or service.Stepping Stones for Moving Towards Customer Engagement:Start an advocacy “well,” documenting customers who are already in your corner.Identify customers you've gone back to for testimony too often – burning them out and generating a stale message.Create a mini-advocacy program that invites customers to connect.Map out a handful of things to ask of your customers, including:Committing to connect with other customers.Writing a review.Providing 30 minutes of product or messaging feedback.Incentivize customer advocacy by offering in exchange things like:Early access to your new lines of business or free use for a limited time.Swag bags.Free attendance at dinner gatherings.An honorary jacket.Scaling requires an engagement engine to nurture customers and help them see the value-add in advocacy. Giving versus Taking: How customer advocacy programs can turn on generosity and other benefits in the long run.Why Customer Obsession is a can't-lose campaign because it's all about:Being thankful.Celebrating people who are doing things right.Leveling up the skill sets of others.Inspiring others while creating demand generation for your company.Spreading the Love: How to nominate, vote or otherwise tee up gratitude by participating in Influitive's Fearless 50 customer-led marketing awards.Uncovering Marketing Gold: How Ari connects with customers and helps them see their importance by providing connections, resources and words of affirmation.DRIVE Advocacy: Deliver value first.Refine what people are good at.Iterate the Value.Expand the delivery.Leveling Up: How Influitive trains people to become internal and public advocates for – and champions of – their own customer success and achievement.The Hero's (and Heroine's) Journey: About gratitude as a tool that taps into powerful emotions that create a symbiotic customer narrative and outcomes.Value Realization: You can deliver value all day long, but if the person receiving it doesn't realize it then did you actually do anything?If It's Just Transactional, It Won't Work! The gratitude you're giving has to:#1 Be of value to the recipient.#2 Be inconvenient or cost you something in some way. #3 Be genuinely something you're glad to be offering.Don't forget to check out Fearless 50 and if you've missed the nominating or voting window, bookmark it for next year! QUOTABLE“We are the biggest of the big in customer marketing … but the reality is that the customer marketing world is a fractional sliver of the entire marketing world.” (Ari) “The more collective value our industry and each individual contributor and thought leader in our space has, the more that rubs off on the larger marketing community and the way that we think about leveraging our customers.” (Ari) “It's about creating a community and ecosystem where customers are literally raising their hands because they want to share their success stories.” (Ari) “The neat thing that gratitude has the ability to do is reactivate weak or dormant ties.” (Chris) “I don't make champions, but I find them and I shine a spotlight on them. I find those diamond-in-the-rough people who don't even realize the talent they have.” (Ari) “(Your customers) are the champions. They are the heroes of the story. Let them shine and bring you along for the ride.” (Ari)  “We're dealing with humans at the end of the day, but we lose sight of that. We get caught up in the numbers, then can't understand why we can't move the needle the way we want to.” (Ari) “The heroine's journey is filled with emotion and connection and reflection and introspection. And gratitude is the tool that taps into those emotions.” (Chris) “Make someone feel personally validated, appreciated and connected to your community of customers and they will talk about you ‘til the cows come home.” (Chris)  LINKS/FURTHER RESOURCES:Click here to learn about Forrester's thought leadership around Customer Obsession.Gartner's Top Customer Experience Trends for 2023.More about Influitive's Fearless 50 and Elite 18 at this link.Visit this link to learn more about Mark Granovetter's work at Stanford around the strength of weak ties.Click here to find out what all the buzz about Gong is about!About Google's study, "Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands."Learn about Barbara Frederickson's groundbreaking research on happiness and the power of positivity. ABOUT OUR GUEST:Ari Hoffmanis the VP of Customer Marketing and Advocacy at Influitive. His human-first approach to work and passion for customer success are fixtures of his career. A seasoned veteran and trusted advisor, Ari supports customer-centric businesses, primarily in the enterprise SaaS industry. He is a natural organizer and people-connecter, using empathy to relentlessly shine light on others. FOLLOW OUR GUEST:WEBSITE | LINKEDIN ABOUT OUR HOST:Chris Schembra is a philosopher, question asker and facilitator. He's a columnist at Rolling Stone magazine, USA Today calls him their "Gratitude Guru" and he's spent the last six years traveling around the world helping people connect in meaningful ways. As the offshoot of his #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling book, "Gratitude Through Hard Times: Finding Positive Benefits Through Our Darkest Hours,"he uses this podcast to blend ancient stoic philosophy and modern-day science to teach how the principles of gratitude can be used to help people get through their hard times. FOLLOW CHRIS:WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | LINKEDIN| BOOKS

Breeze into this work week by watching our Facebook Live event with CEO, Dan Cote of Influitive today November 30th, at 1:00 pm. Dan is a technology veteran with over thirty years’ experience who started his career in computer science and compiler writing before finding his calling in marketing and business operations. Through this unique blend of expertise, Dan seeks to build and strengthen Influitive’s customer marketing platform while prioritizing long-term customer success. Dan brings more than 25 years of management and marketing experience in high-tech software and services companies across disciplines such as strategy, demand generation, research, and communications. As Chief Marketing Officer at Influitive, Dan is committed to applying his proven track record of driving innovation and growth to ensure that the success of Influitive’s customers is always the center of strategic decision-making. Before joining Influitive, Dan held executive marketing positions at Citrix, Virtual Computer, nSight, and SellMasters. Learn more about Dan Cote and Influitive: https://influitive.com/ Florida Business Protection Plan: https://www.jordanlawfl.com/monthly-business-plan/ Get all the important tax updates and advice https://www.jordanlawfl.com/important-florida-tax-updates/ Join our Newsletter https://www.jordanlawfl.com/networking-blackjack/ This Friday, Oct 9, we're hosting a Blood Drive at our office, please consider showing up and joining us. Details are on our Facebook Page. https://www.facebook.com/jordanlawfl Join us through our podcast and hear more about the firm and the guests on our shows: https://anchor.fm/letsgetuptobusiness Please subscribe to the channel and click the bell for new updates.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Nqeo-lYmbzFfqNE9YzExQ - Contacts: Our Website: https://jordanlawfl.com/f Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordanlawfl/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanlawfl/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JordanLawFL LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/jord... Jordan Law is a Law Firm based out of Orlando, Florida that provides legal solutions to business owners. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/letsgetuptobusiness/message

A self-professed startup junkie, Alex Shipillo always thought he’d be working in growth marketing for startups. He’s had stints in well-known Canadian startups such as Influitive, Indochino, and Helpful. But then the call came and Alex ended up as the Director of Growth Marketing at Clio, a fast-growing scale-up company now with over 500 employees. In this episode, Alex draws upon his experience and shares how growth marketing differs in startups versus scale-ups. Sponsor For This Episode This episode of Growth Marketing Today is brought to you by 42 Agency. 42 Agency works with high-growth B2B SaaS Companies helping them build and scale Revenue and Marketing operations that accelerate demand generation and pipeline growth. To learn more & get $500 in free consulting time - visit them at https://growthtoday.fm/42

Subscribe | Transcript | Comment The Episode in 60 Seconds What does working with CEOs have in common with driving category creation? You must have a compelling vision. Mark Organ, the creator of Eloqua and other companies, joins John Farkas for a discussion about: The challenges of founding companies Why some leaders don't want to define a category The most important factor in marketing: your customer telling others And more Our Guest Mark Organ is the CEO of Categorynauts. He helps companies create and dominate new categories. He also coaches CEOs to achieve their goals in business and life. He founded Influitive and is the author of the book, The Messenger is the Message: How to Mobilize Customers and Unleash the Power of Advocate Marketing. Leaders throughout North America and Asia know Mark as a go-to-market consultant for SaaS companies who, most famously, founded and led Eloqua, the undisputed leading Enterprise marketing automation and CRM powerhouse now operated by Oracle.   Show Notes You can reach Mark Organ at his LinkedIn profile or by emailing him directly. When you have the opportunity to lead the conversation, then you have the opportunity to lead the conversation. That demonstrates you have the competence, command and courage to lead. — John Farkas Mark Organ believes that leaders who can create categories aspire: To be a great leaders To build an amazing new markets To build incredible wealth for other people They are much more excited about their category vision than they are about amassing personal wealth. The most powerful component of category creation is the underserved hero. The underserved hero is a customer who plays an important role. That role will be different for each category, but don't miss identifying your underserved heroes and rewarding them.   Golden Spiral has a number of free resources about differentiation and category design: The Real Market Value of the Soul of Your B2B Brand Positioning Worksheet 4 Important Steps to Crafting a Powerful B2B Point of View Seven Steps to Create a Strategic B2B Competitive Analysis Free Download from Anthony Kennada

This is Part 2 of my interview with Wendy White, chief marketer at Egencia (Expedia's corporate travel arm). Subscribe to the podcast: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed.Marketing Bs is going “premium” on October 19th. Following that date premium subscribers will receive four issues per week (essay, briefing and podcasts). Free subscribers will continue to receive Marketing BS on Fridays with one piece of content from the week. Subscriptions are half price until October 16th as a thank you to my longtime subscribers. You can subscribe here. Thank you to everyone who has already subscribed.TranscriptEdward: This is part 2 of my interview with Wendy White. Today, we are going to dive into her experience as a chief marketer at Egencia. Wendy, for those not familiar, can you start up by explaining what Egencia does, and how it's different from Expedia.com?Wendy: Expedia Group is one of the world's largest travel brands. Brands you might be familiar with including Expedia, Orbitz, Hotwire, hotels.com, and then, of course, there's Egencia. One of these things is not like the other, and it's definitely Egencia. That's because we are the corporate travel arm. We do corporate travel management, so we are a company that supports brands. Some of the small, fast-growing, and very cool unicorn startups all the way up to the world's largest brands that you're familiar with, that you can see on the TV advertising screen every night. We run their corporate travel program, which includes the software, by which employees buy travel, and the software by which companies set a policy. The negotiated rates they have, the HR system connections, etcetera. And then, of course, we provide all the great travel inventory that goes into those—the hotels, the airlines, the cars, et cetera, which is why it's a great connection with Expedia.Edward: How is Egencia different from all the other corporate travel companies out there like American Express Travel?Wendy: Like American Express, we're global. We operate in 65 markets, but unlike them, we're what would be called the original disruptor in corporate travel. Corporate travel, for the longest time—and I think all of us who are probably listening and have been around for a while—remember that corporate travel was to get on the phone with a travel agent, explain your long itinerary. I want to go to London, I want to go to Paris, and I come home. That person goes off and searches for flights, sends it to you in your email, and then you send it to your boss for approval, and you send it back. I mean, who has time for that?What we've done over the lifespan of our company is really modernized travel. Bring that consumer-like online booking experience to corporate travel, but also create for companies a single place where they can manage their travel program and all their markets at once. Set their policy once and have it be online in every market through the same experiences that you called in. Most of the larger competitors just can't do that. They don't own their own technology, it's not integrated, so we have a real differentiator.Edward: Is your customer base significantly different from the other players? Do you deal with smaller companies than they have, bigger companies, or different industries?Wendy: Yeah, we're lucky to serve companies of all sizes. Our smallest customer is still relatively large. They have several $100,000 of travel spend, and then, of course, we have the largest companies in the world as well. So we uniquely position our ability to do that around the globe, and we're very proud of that.Edward: But what type of company chooses Egencia versus choosing a more traditional, old-school travel provider? Are there any characteristics? Is it the type of CEO? Who comes to you and compares like, you know what, we're going to win this one for sure.Wendy: The culture of the company has to be aligned with wanting to drive a modern travel program experience for employees. Companies who really care about that employee experience as part of their travel program, and not just our cost savings. Obviously, we can deliver the cost savings, but as a traveler, I want to feel like my travel management company is with me. From the moment I want to get in my app, book really quickly, and in a matter of minutes know where my colleagues have stayed so I can book a hotel I feel safe at. Get in, book, get out, and then have the information at my fingertips, and my app the whole way through.We care a lot about that traveler experience and companies who really want to drive high online adoption where their travelers are self-serving. Their policy is easily implemented, and yet still want to have a great experience for the travel manager, in procurement, and the finance teams in terms of accounting, reporting, and the easy policy management. Even now, the duty of care, which is so important during the time of COVID, companies don't want to do that. They're really culturally aligned with us.Edward: I want to dive into some of your marketing channels. One of your more successful channels is paid search. I understand how that works for Expedia because if someone is searching for hotels in Seattle, likely wants to book a hotel in Seattle. How does that work for signing large corporate deals? Are a lot of travel planners searching for things like corporate travel solutions?Wendy: That's different, again, I think by the size of the company, and are they already with a travel management company, or are they moving to a managed travel program for the first time? Paid search is great for us in that more unmanaged to managed space, or companies who don't have an existing travel manager in place. Somebody who really thinks about this, and it's not in that travel management ecosystem. Obviously, larger companies, they've got travel, no programs in place, they have a professional travel manager, who attends the big industry conferences, et cetera. They know us already, but it's the folks that don't that are searching for managed travel, or business travel management that we capture through our search networks very well for us. The brands aren't that well-known outside of that industry player.Edward: If you have your large companies to small companies that you serve, paid search is the way you get the smaller companies, and you use other techniques to get the bigger ones?Wendy: Yeah, definitely paid search. I mean it definitely pulls in larger whales. I think the reason why a search can pay for itself—even for smaller clients that maybe your CAC to LTV ratio, wouldn't make sense to spend a significant dollar on it in terms of the acquisition. But the way whales covered the cost of that channel. Really for us in the up-market space, we're really focused on using more ABM techniques to go after that known target list of known accounts. The paid search really takes us all the way up to the commercial mid-market. It does really well for us.Edward: Yeah, I often call it hunting rabbits. You go out, you hunt rabbits every day, and you make sure you get enough calories in your rabbits. But every now and then, an elephant comes along, and the elephant is a bonus.Wendy: The elephant is the bonus, and it probably pays for the whole channel for the year for all those rabbits.Edward: Egencia is like software, and you've had a lot of success with software evaluation sites like Trustpilot and G2. How do you optimize those channels? Or is it just a matter of being there, and then make sure you can monetize enough?Wendy: We try to be there. We are not a company that has yet turned on paid promotion, or paid referrals through those sites. Some of our competitors have. You go on to one of those sites, you might see they have a lot more reviews because they have a paid program going, but so far we rely on the advocates that we've built in our customer base to put reviews out there for us and be PR advocates in a way that it isn't about giving them a reward, like a gift card, etcetera. I think that's the difference between us and a few of the competitors that we deal with within that space. We try to shoot our authentic relationships with our clients.We really focus on client engagements. We have both a strong account management team. We have a customer community that we really engage with, educational sessions, training sessions, and peer-to-peer networking. When we see that those clients are high NPS, we ask them to leave us a review. I think it's a virtuous circle for us to make sure that we're taking our applicants, and making them aware that we'd appreciate their support on those sites.Edward: Who does the asking? Is it the marketing team or the account management team?Wendy: Both. That works best when you're both asking. You want to ask at the point of a quarterly business review where it goes very well. The account manager can certainly say, we love your feedback. But as the marketing team sends out NPS service and we get a high response or great comments, we absolutely want to ask. And then we have asks that we put in our community. We used to run it on Influitive, I don't know if anybody here knows Influitive, but it's got a lot of Gamification in it where you can ask customers to do a thing and they could earn a point, get badges, and show off grades against their peers, and people love that.Why not ask them a reference activity could update your review on G2, and you get a badge to go on your profile in the community? People love it, I love it, and the customers feel good. They're doing something for us, we're doing something for them, and we have that wonderful symbiotic relationship.Edward: Do you have a similar toy for the account managers? How do you influence account managers to make sure they're doing the asking? I'm sure account managers are so focused on doing things for the customers. Sometimes they are like go away marketing, we want to do our thing.Wendy: Wendy takes a note about fun badging for account managers. I just wrote that in my notebook while you say that. I love that. Yes, I need to do that now.Edward: How do you influence the account manager? Is it just a matter of having good relationships with them? Is there anything you do to make sure that the marketing account manager relationship is good?Wendy: We talked to our account managers through enablement training every single week. We're constantly educating them. We're very visible in front of them. The fun thing that I think has happened over the last 18 months since we adopted Slack is celebrating each other's success visibly, and having really open and transparent lines of communications through our Slack channels. There's a lot of emojis flying, over-celebrating each other's successes, and sharing the good news. I think that builds a lot of trust, support, and rapport. I think that makes it a lot easier than when we have asked them to support those activities because they know it's important to us.Edward: Another big channel for you is events. How do you measure the success of event marketing?Wendy: I think for marketers, the number one measure of success is ROI in terms of either new logos and revenue created or existing customer engagement. On the acquisition and prospecting side, we absolutely do attribution for both marketing-created revenue, as well as marketing influenced revenue. We track it across all of our channels. We look at the success of our channels, and we're constantly optimizing. Events are a really strong channel for us. Business travel is about people. It's about people meeting face-to-face. For our travel managers, the procurement teams that work on travel, they want to have a trusted relationship. We do an incredible amount of meetings pre-COVID, especially at some of the most important business travel trade shows. Post-COVID, we're taking all of that online. We're continuing to do virtual events. Third-party events like CareCon or other things where we can meet new clients, but also our own events where we're highly engaging, and educating our clients. A huge thirst for information right now about travel advisories, how borders are opening and closing, and how companies are modifying their travel programs. We want to be at the forefront of helping our clients understand that. We're really leveraging events right now.Edward: What's the relative value of events for existing customers and keeping the engagement up and reducing churn versus going and acquiring new customers? How do you think of the events along those two lines?Wendy: We try to kill two birds with one stone (so to speak) all the time when we do educational events and invite prospects and customers. Last year, we did a roadshow in 53 cities and brought prospects and customers together. Bringing prospects and customers together should be a great thing for your company if your customers love the services you provide because they can be your best evangelists. Educational events, where we bring prospects and customers together, have been a big part of our strategy and continue to be even with small group roundtables that we're doing. Enabling our account managers to host 5, 8, or 10 customers and a few prospects in a small roundtable, giving them some content to let them do that.We've also really focused on user groups that are private to our existing clients, and letting them facilitate those conversations themselves. Even if they're going to share something they're unhappy with, I think it's still important to facilitate those conversations. We learn from them, they learn from each other, and it gives us a good understanding of where to focus next in terms of improving an experience. Be it a support experience or a product experience.Edward: These events are generally very high touch then. You know the sales that you get or the new customers you get from the events, you can tie directly back to the event. Attribution is not a problem.Wendy: Yeah, we do multi-touch attribution. We track everything so we can absolutely measure the ROI of our events. What I would say is before this year they were small. We knew it was on those events. Even if it was just a couple of 100-person webinars, but COVID changes everything. A lot of our events, recently 1500, 1700, and 2000 folks attending because their thirst for knowledge is just so strong in the industry. I think also, we probably got ahead of most of the competition in terms of being out with information, webinars, and events. I feel really proud of the work my team did there. Through March through June period of just being visible, being out in front of customers almost every single week with more information on small virtual events, webinar, etcetera to share information.Edward: That's incredible. You have 1500 people attending the event. You get their email addresses, presumably at the event. You know what companies were there. If one of those companies turns into a customer three months later, do you attribute it back to the event?Wendy: You bet. We absolutely look at the first touch. We actually look at the whole journey that the customer went on. Yeah, we absolutely attribute it. What I would say is you're not going to be surprised to know that the landscape of business travel is dramatically changed right now because of COVID. All of our acquisition channels are not performing like we expected them to during this period. That doesn't mean you give up on any of them. It means you're constantly testing and learning. You're looking at the data, trying to make some decisions about where to move money, or where to move resources and time. It's no different than we do in normal times, but right now, it's even more important for us because nothing is behaving like we expect. For example, 1700 or 2000 people showing up to a webinar.Edward: Yeah, that's amazing, especially when you have a long sales cycle. For you guys, I imagine—from the time you first touch a potential customer to the time they become an actual customer—must be months if not a year, sometimes between when you first initiate contact, when they sign their whole company over to you.Wendy: Sure, I mean, the larger clients are on a 3-5 year contract, so it could be a 3-5 year sales cycle. We're very much an enterprise style. Even if it's a contract that is coming up for renewal and they're issuing an RSP, it's still several months. We really focus on nurturing and engaging that prospect all the way through that sales cycle.Edward: When you're writing your ROI calculations—generally look back historically—you can be like, hey, we got these leads in January and by December, this many teams turned into sales, so we know if our spending was effective or not. But if your sales cycle is two years long, and then all of a sudden COVID happens and everything changes.Wendy: Welcome to my world.Edward: All your historical data doesn't mean anything anymore. How do you know what's working?Wendy: It doesn't mean anything, and believe me, we've had that same discussion every few weeks for six months. And you start to look at the new patterns that are emerging. Our organic traffic dropped off about 75% and hasn't returned. If you watch our marketing mix month over month to look where our acquisition is coming from, the profile of that mix looks dramatically different today than it did six months ago. A lot of that is just a shared force of will of the team saying, we're not going to wait for the organic traffic to recover. We're going to go out and seek out clients who made the profile, or people who need to think about this. We've just been very lucky to have gotten smart, to do some smart experimenting, and we continue to do that now.Edward: Wendy, thank you so much for being here today. I like to end these interviews by asking about your quake book, but for you, it's more of a genre than an individual book. Can you explain it?Wendy: You ask me that question ahead of this. I was a little prepared. What I said is, probably like the rest of the world, or at least the rest of America. I've been heavily influenced by the black lives matter movement to think differently about my approach to that topic. How To Be An Anti Racist is a great book that has come to my attention, but it's not just that. I mean, it could be something as simple as Ben and Jerry's anti-racism website, which is really quite amazing. If you haven't looked at it, I'd encourage you to do that.I'm reading a lot right now. I'm learning a lot, and I'm happy to be really engaging in that conversation.Edward: How have these books changed your view of the world? Did they solidify what you believe before, or do they change things pretty dramatically?Wendy: I think they solidified when I believed before, but they deepened my understanding of the systematic nature. The problems that we face and racism in America, from financial institutions to gerrymandering to how neighborhoods are designed and developed. We just have so much opportunity to make a change in how we attack these issues.Edward: Thank you, Wendy. That's a great note to end on. I really appreciate your time here today.Wendy: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Justin Breen is CEO of the PR firm BrEpic Communications and author of the No. 1 International Best-Selling Book, Epic Business. Justin is hard-wired to seek out and create viral, thought-provoking stories that the media craves. And he finds the best stories when he networks with visionary entrepreneurs and executives who understand the value of investing in themselves and their businesses. Justin believes strongly in the power of introductions and creates important relationships through those introductions. He is an extremely active member of Entrepreneurs' Organization, Strategic Coach, Secret Knock and ProVisors, and he has an incredible global network of visionaries and exceptional businesses. BrEpic is a PR firm that writes compelling, newsworthy stories for its clients and pitches those stories to media across the world. BrEpic clients have included Allstate, University of Illinois, Salvation Army, Safe + Fair Foods, Influitive, Everspring Education, McCormick Foundation, Morgan Stanley, White Lodging, Burwood Group, Cultivate Advisors, financial planners, physicians, several schools, universities, nonprofits and many more.Don't miss this episode..."This Is The Year For Your New Book"

Support the Breakfast Leadership Network! Hire Michael to speak at your event: https://BreakfastLeadership.com/speakingBuy Michael's life altering book: 369 Days: How To Survive A Year of Worst-Case Scenario: https://www.amazon.com/369-Days-Survive-Worst-Case-Scenarios-ebook/dp/B074CCLKZP/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502047423&sr=8-1&keywords=369+daysContribute on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bfastleadershipOr PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/bfastleadershipBreakfast Leadership Network Merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/breakfast-leadership-networkLike, Rate and Review the Breakfast Leadership Show on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/breakfast-leadership/id1207338410------Influitive Virtual EventHub, a turnkey product and service offering to help customers design, build and manage a virtual event in lieu of their in-person conference cancelled due to the coronavirus.Also, why it's more important than ever to be engaging customers, and how Influitive helps leading brands to do it effectively by combining targeting, personalization, gamification and rewards. @influitive@dan_mccallhttps://influitive.com/

As the technology side of marketing advances at an unprecedented rate, so should its tactics. Joining Dr. Diane Hamilton is one of the future builders in the marketing technology industry, Dan McCall, the CEO of Influitive. With 30 years of experience in technology, Dan takes his technical expertise, marketing, and business experience to build and strengthen Influitive’s online community and customer advocacy platform. Influitive is a human engagement platform that encourages customer engagement through recognition, rewards, and gamification. Join in as Dan explains more about what the company does and how they are pivoting amidst the COVID-19 crisis. When the clamor for gender equality is at its strongest, the need for holistic education that empowers young women to succeed cannot be overemphasized. Marisa Porges, the eighth headmaster of The Baldwin School and author of What Girls Need, is one of the future builders that in this field. She speaks to Dr. Diane Hamilton to give us an overview of their school’s vision and educational philosophy. Marisa is an advocate of holistic girls’ education that combines essential elements such as resilience, adaptability, and courage to prepare them for success. She sees the innate predisposition of girls to solve problems collaboratively as a competitive advantage that will figure prominently in the future of work and the wider world. In an era of pandemics, climate change, economic inequality, and other issues that can only be solved collaboratively or not at all, this is no small endeavor. is marketing. Jed Ayres talks about how marketing has been improved by innovations of technology. Jed is IGEL’s Global CEO, a company aimed at providing next-gen operating systems and endpoint security, optimization, and control solutions for cloud workspaces and virtual desktops. He joins Dr. Diane Hamilton on today’s podcast in a conversation about technology, sales, and marketing. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!Here’s How »Join the Take The Lead community today:DrDianeHamilton.comDr. Diane Hamilton FacebookDr. Diane Hamilton TwitterDr. Diane Hamilton LinkedInDr. Diane Hamilton YouTubeDr. Diane Hamilton Instagram

Dan McCall Dan McCall is the CEO of Influitive. Dan is a 30+ year technology veteran who started his career in computer science and compiler writing before finding his calling in marketing and business/operations. Previously, Dan co-founded two companies, including Guardent (acquired by Verisign in 2004) and Virtual Computer (acquired by Citrix in 2012). Dan has held executive positions in marketing, product management, corporate development, and engineering at four publicly-traded companies, and is a former recipient of the prestigious Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. At Influitive, Dan seeks to apply his blend of technical expertise, marketing, and business experience to help build and strengthen Influitive’s online community and customer advocacy platform. He is an avid proponent of customers and customer success with a goal to refine product/market fit, create repeatable sales and marketing processes, build and motivate great teams, and delight Influitive’s customers. Marisa Porges Marisa Porges is the eighth headmaster of The Baldwin School, a 130-year-old all-girls school outside of Philadelphia renowned for academic excellence and for preparing girls to be leaders and changemakers. Prior to joining Baldwin in 2016, she served in the Obama White House as a senior policy advisor on cybersecurity at the National Economic Council, was a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she traveled extensively in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia conducting independent research and writing on terrorism, counterterrorism, and efforts to counter violent extremism, and serves as a counterterrorism policy advisor in the Departments of the Treasury and Defense. She is the author of What Girls Need.

Justin Breen is CEO of the PR firm BrEpic Communications and author of the No. 1 International Best-Selling Book, Epic Business. Justin is hard-wired to seek out and create viral, thought-provoking stories that the media craves. And he finds the best stories when he networks with visionary entrepreneurs and executives who understand the value of investing in themselves and their businesses. Justin believes strongly in the power of introductions and creates important relationships through those introductions. He is an extremely active member of Entrepreneurs' Organization, Strategic Coach, Secret Knock and ProVisors, and he has an incredible global network of visionaries and exceptional businesses. BrEpic is a PR firm that writes compelling, newsworthy stories for its clients and pitches those stories to media across the world. BrEpic clients have included Allstate, University of Illinois, Salvation Army, Safe + Fair Foods, Influitive, Everspring Education, McCormick Foundation, Morgan Stanley, White Lodging, Burwood Group, Cultivate Advisors, financial planners, physicians, several schools, universities, nonprofits and many more.

Cindy Padnos is an innovator and an advocate for all things entrepreneurial. She is a founder (both of a VC-backed tech startup and a VC firm), with a passion for enabling experimentation that can lead to the discovery of new business models and unique points of leverage. Cindy bleeds B2B/Enterprise Tech – gaining the moniker “Queen B2B” and a place at the table with the top institutional investors in the category. Cindy has been working with enterprise technology startups for more than 20 years - as a founder, operating executive, adviser, or investor. She founded Illuminate Ventures, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm that invests exclusively in enterprise cloud and mobile software companies. Illuminate seeks entrepreneurs that are "re-inventing the enterprise" with products that deliver dramatic productivity and decision making improvements while leveraging better, faster, cheaper - cloud technologies and innovative business models. Prior to her investing career, Cindy led several successful venture-backed entrepreneurial efforts. She was the founder/CEO of Vivant (now part of Oracle) an early Software as a Service (SaaS) company. She was CEO of Acumen, orchestrating a profitable M&A, and VP Marketing for Scopus, helping position this early CRM company for its successful IPO. Early in her career, Cindy served as a management consultant at Booz Allen and Arthur D Little. Illuminate is particularly interested in companies delivering: - B2B SaaS applications and infrastructure - Application of AI and blockchain technologies to the Enterprise - Enterprise mobile solutions - Predictive and prescriptive analytics that improve business results - Business model innovation enablers - Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)” Cindy is also an investor at various companies, such as Jacobi, Cafe X Communications, Bedrock Analytics, Peerlyst, ChannelEyes, Pyze Inc., JetStream Software Inc. Influitive, Hoopla Software, Xoupang, Contentstack, BrightEdge, and Allocadia. During this interview we cover: 00:00 - Intro 02:09 - Early SaaS Experience from Raising VC Capital to Acquisition 15:00 - The Decision Behind Illuminate Ventures and Transformation to what it is today (Metrics) 22:21 - Experience & Perspective on the Volatility of Deal Flow Investments with the COVID-19 Pandemic 24:10 The Value of a Dollar & Current Challenges in the COVID-19 Environment 26:18 How Founders Deal with the Slow Down in Decision to Buy or Renew Software from Customers and Some Strategies for the New Normal 31:34 What Illuminate Ventures Share with Startups Beyond Capital Support 38:46 What is a Founder Heroic & Why Any Founder Should Aim to Become One 40:54 Cindy's Winner Startup Criteria for Investing 42:29 Cindy's Turn Down Startup Criteria for not Investing Mentions Terms: - https://www.techopedia.com/definition/9339/shelfware (Shelfware) - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rrsp.asp (RRSP) People: - http://www.illuminate.com/employees/jennifer-savage/ (Jennifer Savage) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-goldman-552a472/ (Ken Goldman) - https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stonebraker (Michael Stonebraker) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophercabrera/ (Chris Cabrera) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9M_zqZgmFk (Gary Swart) "The future of work Ep." Companies: - http://www.illuminate.com/ (Illuminate VC) - Vivant Corp. - https://aws.amazon.com (AWS) - https://www.oracle.com/assets/technology-price-list-070617.pdf (Oracle) - https://cloud.google.com/products (Google) - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/ (Azure) - https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeopleSoft (People Soft ) - https://www.sap.com/trends/cloud-solutions/saas.html (SAP) - Evolve - http://www.expressventures.com (Express Ventures) - https://www.ariba.com (Ariba) - http://xactlycorp.com (Xactly) - https://www.vistaequitypartners.com (Vista) - https://www.brightedge.com/glossary/world-search-engines (BrightEdge) -...

#005: Mark Organ, founder & CEO of category-creating companies Eloqua & Influitive as well as a CEO coach, shares invaluable insights from steering his marketing technology companies through the last two great recessions. We learned a ridiculous amount in a short discussion.Some highlights:· Removing risk is one of the highest value messages to clients that most marketers miss· The more of the CEO's job you can take on, the more budget will open up· Content marketing is like an annuity that keeps paying off, and he increased his spend in the Great Recessionhttps://www.verblio.com/The Verblio Show is your weekly cocktail of content marketing fun and fruitful conversation. Hear Verblio's CEO Steve Pockross talk with marketers, digital agencies, and an assortment of thought leaders.

Every now and then someone comes along and creates their own category or segment. That's exactly what our podcast guest has done twice. He created sales and marketing automation in B2B with Eloqua which he sold to Oracle for $800 M. He then created a whole new category again with his company Influitive around advocacy marketing, to infuse more trust, at scale, into the buying process. He is a huge profile within Martech and proven successful over and over in building highly successful scale-ups. We are delighted to have Mark Organ join our podcast episode and share highly inspiring insights around Megadeals, messaging, building successful scale-ups, leadership, how to create new industry categories, the importance of “A” players and strategy. Drawing insightful learnings from his incredible success as an entrepreneur.

What is the secret to selling? David Priemer says it's simple. Just sell the way you buy. David is an expert in the neuroscience of selling, and he leverages his background as a research scientist along with his accidental career in sales with Influitive, Salesforce, Varicent and Infor to decompose the best way to connect, engage and win over your customer. In this interview we discuss what makes a great remote selling experience, the best way to do discovery and demos, and the important difference between ROI and value. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpriemer/ #cerebralselling #neuroscience #decisioneconomic#decisionscience #salesperformance #salestraining #salesmethodology #salesenablement #salescoaching #salestransformation #discovery #ditchthepitch #dayinthelife #buyersjourney #neuroselling #neuroseller #valueselling #valuemanagement #valuemessaging #roi #businessvalue #digitalselling #remoteselling #revenueenablement

The future of virtual events is evolving rapidly. With new innovation comes opportunity. In this episode, Adam Torres and Dan McCall, CEO of Influitive, explore the current landscape of virtual events and what professionals need to know. Follow Adam on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/askadamtorres/ for up to date information on book releases and tour schedule.Apply to be interviewed by Adam on our podcast:https://missionmatters.lpages.co/podcastguest/

In episode #4, Eran Aloni (COO of Gong.io) shares tips on how to get your team aligned and why accountability is critical to leading teams. We also talked about how Gong.io uses operating principles to guide their team and what signals you can watch for to know you’re ready to implement them in your company. Eran has over 20 years of experience building and scaling enterprise solutions. Previously, he was COO and VP of Product at Adobe EchoSign, VP of Product at Influitive, and VP of Product Marketing at Clarizen. Tune in to hear all about Eran’s leadership journey and lessons learned along the way! Enjoyed this episode? Be sure to leave a review and share the podcast with your colleagues.

After equally successful careers at advocate marketing giant, Influitive, Deena Zenyk, Co-Author of 'The Messenger Is The Message' and Liz Richardson partnered to build The Captivate Collective.  Their joint venture is more than an advocate strategy consultancy, but a platform for like-minded marketers.  As experts in the field of advocate marketing, with decades of experience between them, Liz and Deena share some powerful insights about what it takes to start a successful advocate marketing program within your organization and how to measure success.   BOOK: 'The Messenger is the Message'   Welcome to the Sales Synergitics Podcast, where we arm you with the knowledge, tools, skills, and experts to bring your sales, marketing, and operations teams together, all through your sales process. Host: Jason Smith, Founder of Sales Synergistics www.SalesSynergistics.com Interested in being a guest on the show?  Contact us at: Jason@salessynergistics.com

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform the way we can mobilize and leverage the power of advocates, and my guest is Mark Organ, Founder and Executive Chairman at Influitive.Mark is an entrepreneurial go-to-market specialist; a CEO with a focus on sales, marketing and business development. His greatest professional passions include creating new billion-dollar categories in technology and developing new leaders. Today he’s helping CEOs achieve their full potential in their businesses and their lives.Mark founded 6 companies, amongst which Eloqua (acquired by Oracle), raised more than 15 rounds of financing, helped a lot of people realize their dreams, and got specialized in creating cultures that are a competitive advantage. He’s also the author of the book “The Messenger is the Message.”In September 2010 he founded Influitive based on the idea that the most successful sales and marketing comes from advocates. That inspired me, and hence I invited Mark to my podcast. We explore the challenge many software businesses have in getting customers to reference them, how that’s driving everyone crazy, and what needs to change approach-wise, to solve that. We also dig deep into Mark’s experience in creating new categories that deliver remarkable impact.Here are some of his quotes:“What I realized, working at Eloqua, was how important it was to have your customers doing more of the work for you, more of the sales and marketing work especially.When you have multiple referrals and references and case studies and all these things, the sales cycle would go down by like +90%. We'd have these deals closing in four days, instead of the usual four months, because there's a ton of advocacy over it.Sales cycle is critical. Where most of the cash flow is tied up in a software company is in ‘people who are not able to make a decision.’ And the best way to get people to make a decision is to surround them with great relevant people who are all saying how great a company is, how great the product is, and how great the people are.”During this interview, you will learn three things:How the best innovation is created if you embrace curiosity and dare to bring in ideas and people from totally different domainsWhy you should fall in love with your target market, instead of your product, in order to create an impact that turns customers into advocates. That focusing your time on turning your advocates into superheroes is the secret that will ultimately turn you into a superhero. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mark Organ is a serial creator of multi billion dollar software categories and companies. He coaches CEOs on how to discover, develop and dominate their categories. He is also creating the largest global community of category creating leaders, the Categorynauts. Mark is currently the Chairman and was previously founder and CEO of Influitive, the creator of the the advocate marketing and community category. Influitive creates communities of customer advocates, mobilizing advocates to produce massive increases in referral leads, reference calls, social media participation and more. Mark first revolutionized B2B marketing as the founding CEO of Eloqua (ELOQ), the world leader in marketing automation software, which was recently acquired for $871M. In between, he was a go-to-market consultant for SaaS companies in North America and Asia. Mark has also helped over a dozen software companies successfully go to market in asymmetrical or disruptive ways as a consultant and entrepreneur. With an M.S. in Neuroscience from Northwestern University and a passion for understanding human psychology, Mark is a dynamic speaker with a unique vision centered not only in business success and technological innovation, but also how and why people think, act and interact the way they do. Mark enjoys sharing his observations, regularly writing and speaking on entrepreneurship, marketing and advocacy. He has energized professional audiences at a number of recent events, including DemandCon, Influence HR Summit, The Globe and Mail Small Business Summit, InsideSales Virtual Summit and many more. Please see testimonials and video samples here: http://influitive.com/founder-and-ceo

Hiring for SDRs that hold out for the long haul can be a daunting task. Maybe you've had bad luck in the past or have seen colleagues struggle to fill SDR roles. Even so, try not to feel discouraged if hiring SDRs is your responsibility. Successfully hiring motivated and dedicated SDRs can be done! In this episode of the B2B Revenue Executive Experience, I catch up with Influitive's Director of Sales Development and head of Halifax HQ (and former SDR), Lisa Schnare. We discuss: Overcoming the misconceptions around the SDR role How to properly onboard and train SDRs Qualities to look for in SDR candidates Resources mentioned in this episode:   Blinkist Salesforce LinkedIn Sales Navigator Outreach LeadIQ Gong   This blog post includes highlights of our podcast interview with Lisa Schnare, Director of Sales Development at Influitive.   For the entire interview, you can listen to The B2B Revenue Executive Experience. If you don't use Apple Podcasts, we suggest this link.

Hiring for SDRs that hold out for the long haul can be a daunting task. Maybe you've had bad luck in the past or have seen colleagues struggle to fill SDR roles. Even so, try not to feel discouraged if hiring SDRs is your responsibility. Successfully hiring motivated and dedicated SDRs can be done! In this episode of the B2B Revenue Executive Experience, I catch up with Influitive's Director of Sales Development and head of Halifax HQ (and former SDR), Lisa Schnare. We discuss: Overcoming the misconceptions around the SDR role How to properly onboard and train SDRs Qualities to look for in SDR candidates Resources mentioned in this episode:   Blinkist Salesforce LinkedIn Sales Navigator Outreach LeadIQ Gong   This blog post includes highlights of our podcast interview with Lisa Schnare, Director of Sales Development at Influitive.   For the entire interview, you can listen to The B2B Revenue Executive Experience. If you don't use Apple Podcasts, we suggest this link.

Your peers often influence your purchasing decisions. When they like something, you're more inclined to buy it. When they don't, you're less likely to do so. And those who are the most vocal supporters tend to have the most influence. In this episode, Jon Prial talks with Mark Organ, the Founder and CEO of Influitive, a software company that specializes in advocate marketing. They get into the important role that messaging apps will have in shaping the future of marketing. You'll hear about: -How sales have changed from high touch to low touch (1:28) -How marketing is changing by mobilizing customers (2:34) -What CEOs should be thinking about when it comes to marketing (5:22) -The importance of advocate marketing (7:19) -The role of messaging in advocacy (9:44) -The importance of push and pull in messaging (13:24) -The best messaging platforms for building advocacy (17:30) -How CEOs can stay on top of technology trends for their business (19:25) -Achieving work-life balance(23:04)

Transparency and Transformation with OKRs w/ Mark Organ Mark Organ is a visionary who founded both Eloqua and Influitive and is the author of the best-selling book The Messenger is the Message. In this episode, Mark talks very candidly about the challenges Influitive faced in 2017 that led him to adopt OKRs and the WorkBoard platform – they'd hit a growth wall and the great people in the org didn't have great clarity on how best to contribute. Their OKR program was transformational within its first quarter. Mark gives us a candid view on what that's meant to the company, culture and to him personally.

Leen Li is the Chief Financial Officer of Wealthsimple. Leen received her bachelors degree in China at the Changchun Taxation College. She then moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia to receive her masters in finance at Saint Mary's University. In 2005, Leen moved to Toronto to join Eloqua. In 2012, the founder of Eloqua asked Leen to be the Vice President of Finance and Operations for their new venture, Influitive. Leen talks about closing the technology gap in developing countries, the future of fintech to Elon Musk's neuralink. You can reach out to Leen on LinkedIn. Stay up to date with Witty through our website, LinkedIn or email us at podcastwitty@gmail.com. Support the show (http://wittypod.com)

Influitive and Eloqua founder Mark Organ confesses to Stephen Cummins that he has an obsession with cashflow in the early stages of his startups – and explains why this obsession led to the founding of Influitive. We'll also find out how many months it took him to learn to speak and understand Mandarin. And what app he used to help make that happen.

Final episode of this 3 part mini-series with Mark Organ, Exec Chairman & Founder of Influitive (and original founder and former CEO of Eloqua). He tells Stephen Cummins that 'Best Place to Work' awards are a sham. He talks about Marshall McLuhan's famous quote ‘The medium is the message.' Today he feels the messenger is the message. Mark reflects on how Lego is the King of advocate marketing and is a prime example of how B2C is always years ahead of B2B

Influitive and Eloqua founder Mark Organ confesses to Stephen Cummins that he has an obsession with cashflow in the early stages of his startups – and explains why this obsession led to the founding of Influitive. We’ll also find out how many months it took him to learn to speak and understand Mandarin. And what app he used to help make that happen.

Final episode of this 3 part mini-series with Mark Organ, Exec Chairman & Founder of Influitive (and original founder and former CEO of Eloqua). He tells Stephen Cummins that 'Best Place to Work' awards are a sham. He talks about Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote ‘The medium is the message.’ Today he feels the messenger is the message. Mark reflects on how Lego is the King of advocate marketing and is a prime example of how B2C is always years ahead of B2B

The world is changing. We all know this. Think about it: What do we do before we try a product or a service? We go and find reviews and information from others who have had experiences with those apps, companies, or restaurants. I recently interviewed Mark Organ, co-founder and CEO of Influitive. A serial category creator, he knows that advocate marketing is one powerful tool that, if used correctly, can explode a company's growth.

One of the last sessions at SaaStock18 was a bonus chat that brought a double dose of Canadian accents - April Dunford, the world's foremost expert on positioning sat for a conversation with Mark Organ, CEO and founder of Influitive. Even though they spoke at 4;20 on the day weed was legalised in Toronto, the topic they covered on the day was slightly different - category creation. On this week's episode we are bringing you their entire chat. Category creation had been coming up again and again during the two days of the conference. It's something that Mark, who has started 7 companies in his career, two of which category creators, is all too familiar with. His first one was Eloqua, which he founded 20 years ago and the second is his current company, Influitive, which he started 8 years ago. In their conversation, April and Mark talk about the origin story of each, to what extend Mark realized he was creating categories at the time, how he sold the idea to funders and customers, and many other. Both agree just how difficult category creation is and why you need to be built for the ordeal it would take. Mark and April also touch on the subject of the future of marketing and where the industry as a whole is going. Both Mark and April will be returning to Dublin, for SaaStock19. There, they will be joined by SaaS thought leaders such as Claire Hughes Johnson, COO, Stripe, Leela Srinivasan, CMO, Survey Monkey, Kathryn Petralia, COO, Kabbage, and Girish Mathrubootham, CEO, Freshworks. Grab a ticket now at the best possible price.

In this episode we talk to Chris Newton, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Influitive. Chris shares... What is a customer-powered enterprise? "Trust crash" and why customer-powered enterprises are so timely Why customer community the required foundation for a customer-powered enterprise The critical role that Advocates play within a customer-powered enterprise? The model Influitive uses to accomplish customer-power

B2B buyers spend just 17 percent of their time meeting with potential suppliers, while 45 percent of their time is spent researching independently, according to Gartner.  Out of that 45%, B2B buyers spend 27 percent of their time researching independently online and 18 percent of their time researching independently offline. With approx. 62% of buyers time spent on research and meeting with suppliers, what can marketers do to help buyer’s research and sales efforts?  There are plenty of things that marketers can do. I want to share 2 tactics that marketers can employ to help buyer’s research efforts  1 recommendation to support sales teams The two tactics are search optimization and content marketing: Let’s think about how B2B buyers do research. First of all, they type problem statements or keywords into Google or other search engines to get relevant links and content. Buyers will generally click on different links to view content. So, first and foremost, marketers can facilitate buyers’ research by focusing on search optimization on your websites and content. Optimize Search you need to understand a list of keywords or problem statements that buyers are likely to type, then make sure that you seamlessly add them to your website and content. In order to do that you’ll need to have buyers’ personas and a clear understanding of buyers’ challenges as well as how your products resolve those challenges. The pre-requisites of search engine optimization are to have a deep understanding of your buyers’ personas and the ways they search or research online. Obviously, keywords and challenges are not only helpful for website and search optimization, but they are also beneficial to determine what keywords to buy if you run paid-search which is Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Search optimization is tedious tactical work, it’s a specialized marketing discipline of its own, but it’s super-critical to create a solid digital presence online. For my own website, I allocated budget for continues search optimization efforts. Website and search optimization is something you have to do on a regular basis. It doesn’t help.  Leverage content Now, let’s talk about content. For B2B buyers, content is still king when it comes to digital research. After search optimization of your digital presence, content is an important component of marketing outreach. The challenges for content marketing are what to communicate and what formats of content to create. “What to communicate” comes down to understanding customers’ buying journey from awareness and consideration to purchase. Identify questions that buyers may ask at each stage and create content to address those questions. For example: what are some questions that buyers may ask when researching the purchase of a marketing automation tool. What is marketing automation? What are the top 10 marketing automation tools? What do people say about different marketing automation tools? What is the pricing of different tools? List a set of questions that your buyers may ask. Address them through content. Regarding the formats of the content, you need to do some research and find out what formats resonates with your buyers. For the same topic, you may have different formats of content. These content pieces, in theory, should reside on your website. Then, you promote the content through different paid and organic traditional and social media channels and drive traffic back to your sites. Search Engine Optimization (organic search) and Search Engine Marketing (paid search) coupled with relevant content can certainly facilitate buyers’ purchase journey.  There are different mixes of marketing channels, such as e-mail marketing, events, sponsorships, influencer outreach, that you need to consider when planning how to reach out to your buyers. For B2B marketing, the least you can do to help your buyers during their research stage is search optimization and content marketing. The third way to help buyers during the research stage is to help your sales team through account-based marketing (ABM). ABM is strategic and personalized marketing outreach and engagements with people at target accounts through close collaboration between sales and marketing. Basically, as a marketer, you allocate some marketing budget and align some of your marketing efforts with your sales’ account-based outreach. Marketing complements sales outreach to increase the probability to win a deal. I talked about Influitive’s ABM marketing example on episode 49. Now back to Gartner’s statistics: Although B2B buyers spend just 17 percent of their time meeting with potential suppliers, 45 percent of their time is spent researching independently. As a B2B marketer, you can make a large impact on that 17% and 45% if you focus on the right tactics.  So, if you have marketing questions, you know where to find me. If you like the podcast, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. Keep hustling, my friends. You got this.  

52: Carly Mantione - Loopio’s top AE - Getting to Value Quickly Extensive show notes with links to items mentioned in the show available at: https://top1.fm/52 Carly Mantione is the #1 Senior Account Executive at Loopio. Carly intentionally got into sales after watching her dad support her family on an entirely commission-based sales role. Both of her siblings and many of her relatives are also in sales. After university she went into a more transactional sales role at company called Rogers, selling to small businesses. She was successful there and fell in love with selling but realized she wanted to be more in a solution sales role with enterprise companies. Then she went to an SDR role at Influitive before coming to Loopio as a Senior SDR and helped build out the outbound process. Then she became an AE, then a Senior AE and that led her to where she is today. With the intention of achieving 150% of her annual quota in 2017, Carly ended up exceeding her quota every quarter. In Q4, she beat her quarterly number by over 200 percent and hit 170 percent quota attainment for the year.

After he left Eloqua and before starting Influitive, Mark Organ tried really hard not to go back to SaaS. The experience of seeing Eloqua, the company he had built with his two hands, go public without him as the CEO had been too painful. He didn't want to inflict that sort of pain on himself once again. No matter what he tried, it never really brought him contentment. So he decided to do it once again. But do it right. The start of Influitive was slow as they were introducing a completely new category but once it took off it really took off. For awhile Influitive was one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in the world. There was a time their LTV to CAC ratio was 6 to 1. Everything was going stellar until it stopped. Just like that. Influitive hit a ceiling, which as it turns out is a common occurrence for many other MarTech SaaS companies. It was time for some major changes. Employees had to be let go, perks had to be stripped down, costs reduced severely. But to truly survive and prevail, Mark had to implement fundamental strategic and operational changes, affecting customer base and the product. In this truly honest conversation, Mark talks about all that, offering numbers and emotion and not sugar coating anything. He has been very successful in what he has achieved so far, cutting churn rathe and burn by 70%. And he has managed to keep the promise he made to himslef when he started Influitive - none of this at the expense of company culture and morale. On the contrary. As Mark says during the interview, SaaStock is one of his favourite conferences to attend because instead of chest bumps it brings honesty and intimate conversations between founders. A lot of the changes he implemented came as a result of conversations he had had at SaaStock 17. Also some international clients he has recently closed. To see him speak, have similar valuable conversations in a friendly and fun environment and meet new potential customers join us in Dublin, 15th to the 17th of October https://www.saastock.com And if you are a startup, we have just launched the application for our Global pitch competition so head over to https://www.saastock.com/global-pitch/ and apply before September 16th.

I was requested by a client to create an eBook for account-based marketing. The client asked if I could add some real-world account-based marketing examples as part of the eBook, so I went hunting. Well, not so much of hunting as Googling.  I came across this blog post by Influitive.  Influitive offers an advocacy management platform. The blog title is “The Results of 3 B2B Account-Based Marketing Campaigns: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”  Truman Tang, the author of the blog, talked about 3 ABM campaigns Influitive ran.  I don’t usually summarize a blog post, but I thought their 3 examples are worth sharing. First of all, what is account-based marketing, anyway? Well, in a nutshell, it’s marketing working together with sales to create customized outreach for target accounts. It’s planned and intentional effort. In a way, it’s a marketing version of sales enablement if you think about it. So, here are 3 examples Influitive did: Influitive discovered that many of their target accounts were not aware of reviews of their own products. The marketing team decided to send their contacts at these accounts a personal package that contained a review about their companies on a third-party review website. The marketing team thought it was a good introduction point for talking about what they could do to get more customer reviews. The package included a handwritten note from the sales rep, a review from one of the prospects’ customers, and an Influitive sticker. Some packages also included an eBook about how to generate a sales pipeline with the help of customer advocates which is tied to the key benefits of Influitive’s products.  The marketing team sent it in a nice box via UPS, which helped the track of  the package so they knew when to follow-up. For this effort, they generated a 29% response rate and a 1.6% sales-qualified opportunities conversion rate.  Not bad. Truman did a quick AB testing. He sent 50% of accounts a less than positive review about their brands, and the other 50% a positive review. He observed that 95% of their responses came from people who had received positive reviews. It made sense to me. We all like people to say nice things about us, right. For their next ABM effort, they decided to target companies that were ranked in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant—but could use more reviews. They asked their salespeople to create custom videos that personally congratulated each company on their standing in the Magic Quadrant and sent the videos via Twitter. Then, the marketing team informed these accounts that they could get to the upper right (AKA the Holy Grail) of the quadrant with the help of their customers. They sent out a small sample of 24 videos, and generated four responses (17% response rate) resulting in one sales-qualified opportunity (4% conversion rate). It was better than the last campaign. Here is the big lesson learned: Creating video is a time-intensive effort. Some sales reps had many outtakes when they did the recordings.  I can relate to that…  For each podcast, I need to record several times. I get it. Even though it’s hard to scale, the response rate was solid.  The marketing team asked the sales team to do it again for holiday video campaigns. The results were good as well. For the 3rd campaign, they decide to kick Campaign #1 up a notch by sending packages with positive online reviews, but this time they put them inside piñatas that were filled with candy. Real piñatas!  I attached an image of piñatas on the transcript. I thought the idea was awesome.  They also switched up their messaging a bit by adding some social proof from one of their advocates, Amy Rosenberg. She shared personal testimony about her success with their platform and offered to speak with them via email. It added a nice human element to the campaign. Results – After sending the “piñata-grams” they had a 36% response rate along with a 3.4% sales-qualified opportunities . Their best campaign ever! Here is the lesson learn: If you want to do account-based marketing, any conversational starter campaign needs to stand out and catch people’s attention, then having something as part of the outreach for your accounts to take action on. Truman said it well: “To strike a balance with all of their ABM efforts. The campaigns had to be flashy enough that people would take notice, and personalized enough that they would feel special—but inexpensive enough to be doable.” I love Influitive’s examples so much that I added them to my client’s eBook and I made a podcast about it. Thank you for sharing, Truman!  A nice post, indeed! Well-done!! So, 3 examples to share with you today. Are you doing account-based marketing? Love to hear your stories and challenges. Again, send me your marketing questions or thoughts via Twitter @pamdidner   Be well. Until next time.

Featuring special guest Mark Organ, co-founder and CEO of Influitive (and co-founder of Eloqua before that). We talk about the roots of customer advocacy, the future of the Influitive advocacy platform, and why Mark Organ thinks the next generation of CMOs will come from customer advocacy. 

Alex is a Partner at Relay Ventures, an early stage venture fund exclusively focused on mobile computing. Alex oversees direct investments in a broad range of mobile applications and services companies. Alex is an active board member and observer in supporting Bionym, Influitive, ClearFit, TouchBistro, Kira and teaBOT. Alex overseas the Fund's affiliate program investments... The post Why Mobile and IoT are the Future and How Canada is Leading the Way with Alex Baker of Relay Ventures appeared first on The Syndicate.

If you liked this episode, we bet that you’ll love our blog content. blog.drift.com/#subscribe Subscribe to never miss a post & join the 20,000+ other pros committed to getting better every day. ----- David Priemer is the Founder of CerebralSelling.com where he shares his passion for teaching the art and science of modern selling. A chemical engineer by trade, Priemer rose through the ranks at Salesforce where he served as VP of Commercial sales (joining the company after the acquisition of his company Rypple). You might also know him as the former VP of Sales at Influitive -- and you should 100% go and check out his stuff at http://cerebralselling.com/ where he writes and teaches on how to sell in a way that makes your customers LOVE you. This is part one and we'll have Priemer back for more. Tweet at him @dpriemer and say hi to @dcancel and @davegerhardt. And don't forget -- HYPERGROWTH 2018 is coming. Get your tickets at hypergrowth.drift.com with the promo code SEEKINGWISDOM.

In this episode of Make It Happen Mondays, I'm joined by Emmanuelle Skala, the VP of Customer Success at Toast. We met a few years ago when she was the VP of Sales at Influitive, and we discuss the importance of finding the ideal customer profile, and how sales, customer success need to work together to focus on revenue and profitability with their customer base.

Hear stories from the gritty frontline of entrepreneurship with Eloqua Co-founder and the CEO of Influitive, Mark Organ. A self-described serial entrepreneur, Influitive is Mark's 7th business. Mark dove into entrepreneurship head first after realizing he couldn't hold down a regular job. His first ventures gave him exposure to everything from bootstrapping a business to generating leads and managing a board of directors. Mark survived the struggles of getting Eloqua off the ground, later seeing it sell for nearly a billion dollars. Click here for show notes. Leave some feedback: Who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here. Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes. Get the non-iTunes RSS feed Connect with Eric Siu: Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @ericosiu

Mark Organ. He’s the founder and CEO of Influitive, helping companies mobilize their advocates to produce massive increases in referral leads, reference calls, social media participation and more. He revolutionized B2B marketing and the founding CEO of Eloqua, the world leader in marketing automation software, which was acquired by Oracle for $871M. In between, he was the go-to marketing consultant for SaaS companies in North America and Asia.  Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Getting to Yes What CEO do you follow? – Dara Khosrowshahi Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “How important it was to build new relationships with people”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Mark to the show 02:17 – Mark left Eloqua even before the acquisition 03:25 – It was the VCs that pushed Mark to leave 03:54 – Mark still had a great exit from the company 04:10 – Influitive helps companies grow by getting more value out of their happy customers 04:46 – Mark saw the importance of mobilized customers when he was still in Eloqua 05:13 – Influitive created communities where companies invite their customer advocates 05:51 – ACV is $50K annually 06:10 – Influitive currently has 270 customers 06:33 – ARR is close to $10M 06:51 – it would take 4-5 years for Influitive to reach their $100M ARR mark 07:02 – Influitive was founded in 2010 07:21 – Influitive has raised $50M 08:09 – Mark shares why he had to raise 09:13 – Influitive’s growth is faster than Eloqua’s 09:40 – 2016 revenue 10:05 – Influitive is averaging more than 50%, year-over-year growth 10:50 – Influitive is cash flow positive on some months 11:08 – Team size is 125 with 8 people in sales 11:22 – “I want all the sales guys to make money” 12:03 – Increased quotas make it impossible for salespeople to hit their numbers 12:55 – CAC is around $40K 14:10 – Payback period is a year to 15 months 17:01 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: VCs are there for a reason, trust them. Reaching one’s quotas takes a much longer time than it did a decade ago. Networking and relationships are crucial to your personal and business life.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

If you’re in Sales Development and not following David Priemer, you’re missing out on one of the top minds in our industry. David is the VP of Sales at Influitive, https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpriemer/ and wrote an excellent blog post on Sales Development on Salesforce https://www.salesforce.com/quotable/articles/why-prospects-are-ignoring-your-outreach/ After reading this, I knew we had to have him on the podcast. He continues to knock it out of the park with the content on his blog, Cerebral Selling. http://cerebralselling.com/ I’d highly suggest subscribing. Join David and I in a wide ranging conversation on getting above the noise in Sales Development and be more successful in your strategy and tactics!

Are you connecting with and empowering your customer advocates? If not, you should. Here’s why. Customer advocacy marketing programs help you increase revenue by improving customer acquisition and retention (and they’re also your best source of leads). How? Because you’re helping to motivate happy customers to speak about you positively to others. And delighted customers […] The post Why Customer Advocacy Should Be at The Heart of Your Marketing appeared first on B2B Lead Blog.

Mark Organ, Founder & CEO at Influitive. Influitive helps B2B companies mobilize their army of advocates for more rapid and profitable revenue growth. They have raised close to $50m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Lightspeed, First Round Capital, prior guest Cindy Padnos @ Illuminate and Nick Mehta @ Gainsight, just to name a few. Prior to Influitive, Mark was the founding CEO of Eloqua, growing the business to over 150 people, hundreds of clients and a major presence around the world in 7 years. Eloqua was eventually bought by Oracle in 2012 for a reported $810m. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Mark made his way into the world of SaaS, came to found Eloqua and then what the catalyst was for the founding of Influitive? How did Mark make the decision to make profitability a goal? How did Mark communicate his desire to focus on profitability and unit economics over aggressive growth to his investors? What type of SaaS startups should consider this route more? To what extent is “landing whales” crucial to getting to cash flow positive? What are some of Mark’s big learnings in how to attain those “whales”, having done it so successfully before with Eloqua? Where do most founders go wrong and how should they approach pricing whales? Why does Mark believe paying sales reps on signing misaligns incentives? Why does he believe it is optimal to pay half on signing and half on cash being received? How do you communicate that to your sales team?    To what extent should SaaS startups consider debt financing as a respectable and appropriate form of company financing? What type and stage of SaaS company does debt make perfect sense for? When is it wrong in the lifecycle to take debt? 60 Second SaaStr What hire does Mark wish he had made earlier? What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? Pros and cons of running a SaaS startup not in Silicon Valley? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Mark Organ

Welcome to Episode 43 of the No Quit Living Podcast. NQL is a personal development podcast designed to help listeners achieve their goals and desires. Through hearing the inspiring stories and tips from the greats, we will all find it easier to stay motivated and never quit. Mark Organ's "no quit" story starts back when he was a teenager. He worked for a house painting company doing door to door sales, and soon after started his own business doing the same thing. Organ learned that knocking on doors in the rain provided better results, although it wasn't comfortable, prospective clients would be more likely to let him into their house and listen to his pitch. This is a perfect embodiment of something we talk about at NQL often, which is the importance of living out of your comfort zone. In total, Organ almost had to file for bankruptcy four different times in his career. Instead of throwing in the towel, he persevered and put his people skills to the test and ultimately was able to turn his situation around and sold his company to Oracle for one billion dollars. Organ's main project right now is called Influitive, which is a company that creates marketing campaigns using a business's pre existing customers as marketers. He's an incredible innovator and is changing the way businesses market their products for the better.   Website: https://influitive.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/markorgan?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/markorgan  

  Have you ever been close to filing bankruptcy? My guest today almost filed 4 times and then grew his company which sold to Oracle for a whopping 871 Million Dollars! Mark Organ is today the founder and CEO of Influitive, a powerful platform that could help you gain massive increases in referrals, create better communication with your clients, have immediate access to references, get your content on steroids and much more! Mark first revolutionized B2B marketing as the founding CEO of Eloqua , the world leader in marketing automation software, which was later acquired by Oracle Now, all this success would get to most people’s head but beyond this wildly successful businessman is a charming, curious, humble, authentic, passionate and genuinely caring human being. I’m truly honored to introduce to you this quietly unassuming leader … Mark Organ   What you will learn: How to get more referrals How to gamify your business How to create a sense of urgency The power of focusing on one thing The future of growing your business How to motivate people to promote your brand How Mark went from bankruptcy to building a billion dollar company … and MUCH MORE Interesting highlights: Mark was a week away from filing bankruptcy Mark sold his company for close to a billion dollars! Mark poached clients from his biggest competitor Mark’s #1 practical advice:  Advocates are the future of your businessTweet This Wanna pick Mark’s brain?   Join my exclusive FB group now (https://www.facebook.com/groups/canipickyourbrain) ! Resources & Links: Upshot  (https://upshotstories.com/) Influitive  (https://influitive.com/) Get Featured (http://www.GetFeatured.com) (Sponsor) Thank You for Listening! I would like to personally thank you for listening to my podcast.  If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with others. Just click on the social buttons below. Also, if you podcast on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/can-i-pick-your-brain/id1076916148?mt=2) , you would be joining me on my mission to help as many people as I can become really successful. And finally if you haven’t already subscribed podcast on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/can-i-pick-your-brain/id1076916148?mt=2) , so you can get automatic updates whenever another episode goes live!

On this episode of The Backbone, Leen Li (Head of Finance at Wealthsimple) discusses: Her journey into tech, after stints starting with Eloqua, Influitive and now leading finance at Wealthsimple ; What Wealthsimple does; The challenges she faces operating in the highly regulated financial services industry; Why Finance and Operations tend to go hand in hand at early and growth stage technology companies; The importance of the finance function at an early stage technology company --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/backbone/message

Bryn Jones. He’s the co-founder and CEO of GrowSumo. GrowSumo graduated from Y Combinator in the summer of 2015, and they’re building a marketplace for influencer programs. Prior to building companies, Bryn was also a member of a swim team. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? –  Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “To just go for it”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces Bryn to the show 01:41 – Nathan found Bryn through Product Hunt 02:42 – There are large enterprise clients who came from GrowSumo 02:53 – GrowSumo builds a marketplace for influencer programs 03:10 – GrowSumo charges a one-time annual fee 03:14 – GrowSumo takes a percentage of every dollar the influencer earns from the brand 03:22 – GrowSumo is an affiliate program on top of an affiliate program 03:33 – An influencer can be anyone 04:19 – GrowSumo has a month over month fee which is $300 a month 04:48 – It is for a new startup with no affiliate program 04:56 – It lets you go in and manage the program yourself 05:16 – For an enterprise account, GrowSumo automates the entire program 05:23 – GrowSumo helps you identify the influencers 05:32 – The enterprise account: $10K annually 05:36 – GrowSumo takes 10% from all payouts to influencers 06:20 – “You have a lot of customers today that are influencers and you just don’t know where to find them” 07:03 – Bryn shares how they identify the influencers 07:43 – GrowSumo doesn’t have the ability to qualify an influencer based on the list size they have 08:33 – GrowSumo was launched in August 2015 09:06 – GrowSumo has a lot of traction 09:20 – Percentage of customers that GrowSumo is currently working with 10:30 – GrowSumo’s biggest competition are Commission Junction and Influitive 11:07 – GrowSumo hasn’t raised capital yet, but they’re going to soon 11:35 – Current Y Combinator terms 12:45 – Team size is 8 13:03 – Bryn is Canadian 13:50 – Number of unique new customers driven by GrowSumo 14:00 – GrowSumo has driven over $100K recurring monthly revenue 14:20 – GrowSumo still qualifies and chooses the customers 15:20 – GrowSumo is software and there is no need for an internal tool 16:20 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Find new ways to grow your following by leveraging websites that are popular in your niche. Having a feature that your biggest competitors do not offer will give you an edge. There is no clear path to success—the only way to succeed is to START trying.   Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible. Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books. The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise.  Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013. Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. Other than SaaS he is like me, no known hobbies. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Jason make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Founder and VC @ SaaStr? ACV: What levels of ACV and characteristics suggest potential for a unicorn? How does Jason look to help founders attain higher ACVs? Why is stay focused horrible advice with regards to increasing your ACV with differing customer demands? Does Jason believe that founders always undersell? What advice would Jason give to founders that are nervous to ask for more? What customer response would excite Jason and what would make him concerned? Jason has previously said that ‘founders have to be 110% committed to sales’. What does this mean? How does this look when assessing a founder? Should founders be happy to pay their sales hires more than them? How quickly should the payback period be on these reps? Jason has also previously said that some founders financials are ‘simply ridiculous’. What makes him say this? What financials are fundamental to have very accurately pin pointed? Why is 100% gross margin impossible? 60 Second SaaStr Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech? What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What should SaaS founders look for in their investors? Why does Jason only invest out of the SaaStr community? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise.  Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013. Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. Other than SaaS he is like me, no known hobbies. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Jason make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Founder and VC @ SaaStr? ACV: What levels of ACV and characteristics suggest potential for a unicorn? How does Jason look to help founders attain higher ACVs? Why is stay focused horrible advice with regards to increasing your ACV with differing customer demands? Does Jason believe that founders always undersell? What advice would Jason give to founders that are nervous to ask for more? What customer response would excite Jason and what would make him concerned? Jason has previously said that ‘founders have to be 110% committed to sales’. What does this mean? How does this look when assessing a founder? Should founders be happy to pay their sales hires more than them? How quickly should the payback period be on these reps? Jason has also previously said that some founders financials are ‘simply ridiculous’. What makes him say this? What financials are fundamental to have very accurately pin pointed? Why is 100% gross margin impossible? 60 Second SaaStr Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech? What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What should SaaS founders look for in their investors? Why does Jason only invest out of the SaaStr community? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr

Webinars. So many companies do them, few do them well. Mindtouch has found a winning formula in their Influencer program. Hsin-Ju Chuang discusses webinars and other influencer outreach on today's show. If you enjoy SaaS Insider, please rate us. About Hsin-Ju Chuang Spearheaded the creation of Mindtouch's influencer channel. Purpose is to promote brand awareness, build partnerships, and generate co-branded, co-promoted content with other companies in the space to drive sales. What she does is reach out to executives - Directors, VPs, C-Level, at companies in Mindtouch's space like Zuora, WalkMe, Zendesk, Influitive, ServiceRocket, Gainsight, etc - and get them to commit to a thought leadership interview with her CEO. She builds out the campaigns, coordinates the co-promotion efforts between MindTouch and the influencer’s marketing team, run the webinar show, and create more partnership & lead generation opportunities. About Shira Abel Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com), an inbound marketing and branding agency. She is also Acting CMO of Cyara. Clients include: Totango, Cyara, Sarine Technologies, Pushbullet, AXA Tech, CloudEndure, AppsGeyser, Pitango VC, Chipolo, Allianz, and more. Creator and host of the SaaS Insider podcast. Creator of the Behavior Engineering Canvas. Mentor at 500 Startups. Former professor of Marketing for Startups at Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College. MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Loves family time, cooking, and travelling. Hates writing about herself in the third person. She lives in Silicon Valley with her husband, tween sons and a very large Great Pyrenees. If you would like to be interviewed on SaaS Insider - please contact Shira at the URL above.

Value Is the Driver of Every Human Interaction
 When there’s no longer any value in an interaction, then the sales cycle stops.   Full show notes complete with links to items mentioned on the show available at: top1.fm/3     Justin Bridgemohan is the Regional Director at Influitive, an advocacy marketing platform designed to help businesses supercharge their customer’s enthusiasm for their products and services. Justin has been promoted twice since he joined Influitive in 2013 and has been a leader on Influitive’s rapidly-growing sales team. Justin shares some of his keys to success, but the most important of them all is to always deliver value in every human interaction. If you don’t, then the sales cycle stops dead in its tracks.

Senior Manager of Content Marketing, Francesca Krihely, has transformed her team's content pipeline by leveraging one of her company's most valuable resources: MongoDB customers. Hear how her team uses Influitive and Oracle Eloqua to activate their user champions to be advocates in their community and ultimately, multiply MongoDB's marketing engine with small and large acts of advocacy.

Hear from API integration leaders Chris Campbell, Group Product Manager at Oracle Eloqua and Steve Organ, Sr. Product Manager at Influitive discuss how they seamlessly move data, power transactions, connect mobile apps and thousands of other functions with powerful APIs running in the background. The webinar is designed with you in mind. You have the power to drive the conversation by signing up and submitting your most pressing AMA questions.

An email from a company tells you about their great product, but a coworker tells you about a lousy experience with that same company and/or product. Whose opinion do you trust? The company trying to make a sale or the person you actually know? This reliance on human advice works with positive feedback, too. A glowing review from an independent speaker at a conference is far more likely to gain your attention than a company spokesperson. In this episode, Jim Williams, VP of Marketing at Influitive, explores the power of customer advocacy and how to bring the human touch to your marketing strategy.

Super excited to welcome a heavy weight of the SaaS industry today as we have Mark Organ, Founder & CEO at Influitive. Influitive helps B2B companies mobilize their army of advocates for more rapid and profitable revenue growth. Prior to Influitive, Mark was the founding CEO of Eloqua, growing the business to over 150 people, hundreds of clients and a major presence around the world in 7 years. Eloqua was eventually bought by Oracle in 2012 for a reported $810m. In Today’s Episode with Mark We Discuss: The founding story behind Influitive? What was the a-ha moment behind the concept? What were Mark’s biggest takeaways from watching Eloqua scale into the global force that it became? Influitive are creating a category, so how is that for Mark? What are the inherent challenges?  What are the commonalities of successful category creators? What is the difference between good and bad competition? Why does Mark try and encourage good competition? Why are brand advocates crucial to the success of a business? Is it a really scalable solution? How did you figure out the model for making customers successful?   In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: Mark’s fave SaaS resource and reading material? Thought leadership: Fundamental or unnecessary? Target Markets; Go large or be specific and niche? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Mark Organ

Jim Williams is the VP of Marketing at Influitive. In the episode, we discussed the history and growth of advocate marketing, how to measure success with an advocate marketing program, how MarTech’s growth impacts software purchases, and why ABM is the next stage in B2B marketing evolution. Read more: http://technologyadvice.com/blog/marketing/growing-brand-affinity-with-influencer-marketing/ More on Influitive: http://influitive.com

Episode 3 of the How To SaaS podcast features Jim Williams, VP of Marketing at Influitive, on the strategy behind their Advocamp conference and how it is helping them create the category of Advocate Marketing.

Jim Williams, Vice President of Marketing at Influitive has spent 20 years in B2B marketing with start-up and growth-stage technology companies. Under Jim's leadership, Influitive, a pioneer in advocate marketing software, has developed a world-class inbound marketing engine that fuels 70 to 80% of the revenue engine. Jim has built a thriving community of engaged advocates made up of customers, partners and evangelists. On this episode, Jim and I discuss the dynamic role of the modern CMO. He reveals the skills a modern CMO needs to have, how to impact revenue growth by building a team of internal and external advocates, and the pitfalls to avoid. Jim stressed how a CMO's best tool is the brand's reputation. What are your customers saying about your brand? View the show notes page: http://www.socialbusinessengine.com/podcasts/why-the-modern-cmo-is-like-a-mutual-fund-manager

As the founding CEO of Eloqua – which is now part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud – Mark Organ has been developing tools related to #modern #marketing for decades. Mark shares his experiences with Eloqua and his most recent company, Influitive. Mark’s opinions on the future of our industry can’t be missed.

Employee advocacy & branding will transform your employees into experts, contributors and influencers. Check out what Influitive, LinkedIn Elevate, Dynamic Signal & EveryoneSocial are doing in that space.

Emmanuelle Skala from Influitive joined us in the Bowery Capital studio this week to walk us through her take on the "First Steps To Sales Ops Success" that every early-stage founder should know. Especially for SaaS companies with a driven-driven sales model, Sales Ops has become a discipline in its own right. We're all familiar with traditional SaaS metrics like MRR, churn, CLTV, etc. But for the most part, these are lagging indicators. While important, they don't provide the sort of foresight that modern Sales Ops leaders need in order to optimize sales performance 6 months or more in advance. In our podcast today, we'll not only cover the basics, but dive into other types of metrics that can be the difference between a missed and blowout quarter. In particular, we tackle 3 new categories of Sales Ops benchmarks: sales capacity, funnel metrics and pipeline metrics.

Emmanuelle Skala from Influitive joined us in the Bowery Capital studio this week to walk us through her take on the "First Steps To Sales Ops Success" that every early-stage founder should know. Especially for SaaS companies with a driven-driven sales model, Sales Ops has become a discipline in its own right. We're all familiar with traditional SaaS metrics like MRR, churn, CLTV, etc. But for the most part, these are lagging indicators. While important, they don't provide the sort of foresight that modern Sales Ops leaders need in order to optimize sales performance 6 months or more in advance. In our podcast today, we'll not only cover the basics, but dive into other types of metrics that can be the difference between a missed and blowout quarter. In particular, we tackle 3 new categories of Sales Ops benchmarks: sales capacity, funnel metrics and pipeline metrics.

Jim Williams, VP of Influitive shares how to engineer advocacy from your customer base for your product or service, the formula for motivating your buyers to advocate your product / service (the SAPS model (status, access, power and stuff)) and what are the two seemingly clashing marketing models that work best for Influitvie Also, he explains who your advocates are and who you should be looking at to turn them into advocates for referrals, how to find the right target market for your outbound marketing campaigns and the new trends being to be cutting edge in sales. For even more good stuff, go to: http://borntoinfluence.com/JimWilliams

Jim Williams, VP of Influitive shares how to engineer advocacy from your customer base for your product or service, the formula for motivating your buyers to advocate your product / service (the SAPS model (status, access, power and stuff)) and what are the two seemingly clashing marketing models that work best for Influitvie Also, he explains who your advocates are and who you should be looking at to turn them into advocates for referrals, how to find the right target market for your outbound marketing campaigns and the new trends being to be cutting edge in sales. For even more good stuff, go to: http://borntoinfluence.com/JimWilliams

To Mark, the term” category creation” is often mislabeled. He would rather refer to it as category discovery, in the same way that archaeologists discover ancient cities and relics, he and his team at Influitive discover categories and trends. Mark first finds a group of people that he thinks will become powerful and numerous because of important trends that are happening in technology and society.