Podcasts about revops

CRM is finally moving closer to where sellers actually work.In this episode, John sits down with Ryan Braastad from Microsoft to talk about agentic CRM, AI adoption, productivity tools, and why the old system-of-record model has created so much friction for sales teams. Ryan shares lessons from Forrester, Yammer, Salesforce, his own startup, and Microsoft as he explains how the next wave of CRM can move closer to the flow of work.If you are in sales leadership, RevOps, enablement, or go-to-market strategy, this conversation gives you a practical look at what AI should actually do for reps: reduce admin, improve data quality, support better habits, help leaders coach more effectively, and give sellers more time to focus on customers and revenue.Want to prepare your sales team for the next version of CRM before the market moves again? Visit www.jbarrows.com and learn how you can Make It Happen.What You'll LearnWhy CRM is shifting from a system of record to a system of actionHow AI can support sellers inside the tools they already use every dayWhy CRM adoption has often failed to give reps a clear benefitHow sales leaders can think about revenue per seller as AI becomes part of the workflowWhy AI adoption should start with one specific use case, not a company-wide free-for-allWhat agentic CRM actually means and why it is different from bolting AI onto old softwareRyan Braastad is a customer-obsessed tech marketing leader at Microsoft, where he works on product strategy across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, helping shape the future of agentic CRM and AI-powered productivity tools. His background spans Forrester, Yammer, Salesforce, and a self-founded fitness startup, with experience across product marketing, go-to-market strategy, productivity, collaboration, enterprise social, and business applications.Connect with Ryan Braastad:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbraastad/John Barrows is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution—helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today's AI-driven sales environment.Connect with John Barrows:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnmbarrows/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows Check out John's Membership: https://go.jbarrows.com/ Join John's Newsletter: https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter

In this video, I sit down with rev ops expert Pasha and Adem to unpack why revenue is really an architecture problem, not a sales problem. We get into cutting through the AI noise, why your CRM ends up as a record of optimism, and what it actually takes to get sales, marketing, and success working as one unit.We cover:→ Why the hardest part of rev ops today is separating what's real from the AI hype→ How stacking tools and methodologies on a broken operating system only compounds the mess→ Why your CRM fills up with inflated pipeline and deals that advance on optimism→ How misaligned incentives pull sales, marketing and success in different directions→ The simple cataloging questions most teams still never ask their buyersIf you are a founder, rev ops leader or B2B marketer drowning in tools and dashboards but still can't get clean data or a straight answer on which accounts are actually in market.Tune in and learn:→ Why revenue is an architecture problem and what that changes about how you build your systems→ Where AI genuinely helps in the sales motion and where it just makes better spam→ How to spot the difference between real alignment and another meeting that changes nothing→ Why marketing was never equipped to decide who's in market, and who should own it instead→ Practical, bite size AI use cases that actually move the needle without a 90th operating system-----------------------------------------------------

Nobody ever shows first-time sales leaders how to actually know their numbers. In this episode, Mark Kosoglow breaks down their exact playbook, including: 

Alison "Ali" McElroy, Founder and CEO of Kaleidoscope Growth Advisors, has spent nearly two decades helping franchise brands scale across global markets, and she's seen exactly where growth quietly turns into fragility. In this conversation, she breaks down why unit-level economics, not sales momentum, determine whether a brand survives its next stage, and why "slow to go fast" beats scaling on optimism alone. If you're leading growth through a complexity ceiling, this episode reframes what actually needs to be solid before you push further.What You'll LearnWhy growth and scale aren't the same thingThe real cost of skipping foundational homeworkHow unit economics predict long-term survivalWhat "royalty self-sufficiency" actually protectsWhy culture cracks first at scaleThe mindset shared by founders who break throughWhere AI should. and shouldn't, enter your opsA framework for balancing agility with structureResources MentionedKaleidoscope Growth Advisors  Certified Franchise Executive (CFE)  Global Franchise Magazine's 100 Influential Women in Franchising FDD (Franchise Disclosure Document)  Royalty Self-Sufficiency Green in the Grain  Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

What's up folks, welcome to our 4 part series of crawling through the dungeon of martech architecture. You've arrived at our final episode, part 4: The Dispatch Tower.We'll tackle:(00:00) - Intro (00:59) - In This Episode (01:30) - Sponsor: Mammath Growth (02:33) - Sponsor: GrowthLoop (03:58) - FLOOR 4: THE DISPATCH TOWER (04:39) - What Happens When 30 Vendors Turn On AI at the Same Time (21:24) - Boss Battle: The Agent Avalanche (22:53) - Why You Need a Central Referee, With Agent Guardrails (26:48) - Sponsor: Knak (27:55) - Sponsor: MoEngage (28:52) - Privacy Compliance and Data Minimization (38:38) - The Dispatch Layer that Controls Routing Logic (44:00) - The Layer Above the Dispatch is the Interface (47:20) - What Production AI Agents Look Like on a Governed Data Foundation (50:27) - The Deterministic Layer: Why the Interface Can't Run on Guesses (53:09) - System Stewardship: The Role That Emerges When You Clear This Floor (59:33) - FINAL ACHIEVEMENT: The Dungeon Is Cleared ---------------------------------------------------------------------------OPENING---------------------------------------------------------------------------Welcome back to the Dungeon of Martech Architecture.You've arrived at the final floor. Parts 1 through 3 built the foundation, the meaning layer, and the causal memory. Part 4 is the floor most organizations have been living on the whole time, often without knowing it.Episode 1: CRM GravityWe conquered the source of truth and discovered that the data warehouse replaces the CRM with portable audiences.Episode 2: The Eye of ContextWe learned why AI fails without context engineering and built the shared meaning infrastructure that keeps agents from misinterpreting what they read.Episode 3: The Correlation MasqueradeWe escaped the correlation trap and built the causal memory layer that separates agents that optimize correctly from agents that confidently scale the wrong behavior.Episode 4: The Dispatch TowerToday, we tackle the governance chaos of 30 vendors all claiming authority, and confront the interface decision that most organizations already made without realizing it.Let's finish our descent.------------------------------------------------------------------------------FLOOR 4: THE DISPATCH TOWER---------------------------------------------------------------------------Congratulations martech crawler, you've arrived to the final floor of the dungeon. Let's face it, most of your fellow crawlers will never make it this far. They're still lost in political battles debating why the CRM shouldn't hold product activation data or they ended up falling prey to the correlation trap and I forever stuck in the boomerang room. But you've made it. You're proudly wearing the 3 badges of honor on your jacket: data janitor, context king and causal brainiac. This floor is the hardest because it combines collaborative political battles but some serious technical obstacles as well. The layout of this floor is best described as a hot mess of agent spaghetti. Every vendor in your stack has an agent now. Your ESP has one. Your CDP has one. Your MAP has one. Your CRM has one. Your ad platform has one. Each one has separate logic, separate assumptions, separate permissions, and a roadmap slide that says “autonomous.”None of them knows what the others are doing.And nobody volunteered to referee this stuff.At the top of this floor, there is a door most organizations never noticed. Whoever controls that door controls what instructions get through, which systems can act, and which agent gets authority over the customer.What Happens When 30 Vendors Turn On AI at the Same TimeYour inbox is probably already full of emails from every platform in your stack, all saying some version of “Turn on AI today.”Each one promises autonomous intelligence. Each one wants permission to write, recommend, segment, suppress, score, enrich, personalize, or trigger something. Each one is operating from its own model of the customer. None of them can explain what happens when two agents try to update the same record, message the same person, or optimize against conflicting goals.You are now the referee. Congratulations. Rich Waldron, CEO of Tray.ai, describes how this feels on the ground:RICH WALDRON, Episode 162"If you're the marketing ops leader and your 30 vendors are telling you to go turn on the AI for their application, you sort of become like an AI referee. You have to figure out, well, do I turn it on for this one and not for this one? And is this one gonna overwrite what occurs here? You feel it already. Your inbox floods with vendors begging you to 'just turn on our AI capability' -- 30 different platforms all promising transformation. Suddenly you're an unwilling AI referee asking impossible questions: which AI systems should I activate first? What happens when one AI's decisions contradict another's? Are all these systems feeding sensitive data into the same models?""Agents backed by an iPaaS give you full governance and control of where execution happens. For teams drowning in vendor AI chaos, the third option -- iPaaS-backed agents that naturally integrate with everything -- provides centralized governance, unified control points, and consistent execution environments."Rich is describing the nightmare version of the final floor: every vendor ships an agent, and marketing ops gets stuck deciding which ones are safe, which ones are redundant, which ones are risky, and which ones quietly conflict with each other.The answer is not to let every team turn on whatever they want. It is also not to create a central AI police force that blocks everything until innovation dies in a committee.The middle path is an operating model: a small central group that sets standards, reviews risk, creates reusable patterns, and lets the business move quickly without turning the stack into a haunted appliance storeFunny enough, I spoke with someone who actually did volunteer for that AI referee job – her title is a bit fancier though. Here's Lindsay Rothlisberger, Director of GTM Innovation at Zapier and also a member of their AI Center of Excellence. At Zapier, she sits at the spoke of a hub-and-spoke AI Center of Excellence, a small central team led by a Chief AI Officer, with Lindsay as the GTM representative responsible for translating governance into go-to-market practice. Her work covers deciding which AI tools get activated, setting the standards for what a shared skill has to pass before it enters the internal library, and keeping track of what people are building before it fragments into 100 unsanctioned experiments.LINDSAY ROTHLISBERGER, Zapier"We have a skill that reviews our skills for data and security compliance. It gives you a red, yellow, green. Red — here's what you definitely need to fix. And in most cases, Claude can just say, 'I can go fix that for you. Would you like me to do it?' And just do it. So it's a pretty simple process. But it is a standard review skill that runs through all of these different things."Every shared skill at Zapier has to have a named owner. If it's used across a team, someone is accountable for maintaining it. Skills covering go-to-market operations are owned by RevOps. New builders who want to ship a skill that runs through a cross-functional workflow pair with a RevOps partner to build it. The governance operates as a co-authorship model, designed to make s...

Free GTM Prompt Pack for Perplexity Computer: https://clickhubspot.com/gbvs Ep. 434 Can one RevOps leader and a team of AI agents really replace a 10-15 person operations team?  Kieran and guest Nate Follen (Head of strategy and Ops for Perplexity) dive into the real-world impact of Perplexity on modern go-to-market and RevOps workflows. Learn more on automating tedious CRM audits, building thoughtful event workflows with AI-powered model councils, and creating a scalable skills library for proactive, agent-driven teams. Mentions Nate Follen https://www.linkedin.com/in/follen Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/ Ramp https://ramp.com/ Ironclad https://ironcladapp.com/ Apollo https://www.apollo.io/ Nvidia https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ Gemini https://gemini.google.com/app Claude https://claude.ai/ Get our guide to build your own Custom GPT: https://clickhubspot.com/customgpt Resource [Free] Steal our favorite AI Prompts featured on the show! Grab them here: https://clickhubspot.com/aip We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: ​​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg  Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod  Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934   If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar   Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by Hubspot Media // Produced by Darren Clarke.

Chantel Soumis, Head of Marketing and Partnerships at Franchise Empire, joins host Brendon Dennewill to challenge how brands are approaching AI, customer engagement, and content strategy in 2026. With two decades of experience as a fractional CMO and franchise marketing leader, Chantel makes the case for human-first marketing, a structured listening tour approach, and a deliberate "anti-AI policy" that protects brand trust. If you lead marketing, revenue, or operations in a franchise or multi-location brand, this episode will reshape how you think about consistency, differentiation, and the real cost of getting it wrong.What You'll LearnWhy your customers are your brandThe case for an anti-AI policyWhat the EOS framework reveals about marketing gapsHow listening tours shape content strategyThe hidden cost of AI-generated brand damageWorking Genius and right-seat leadershipCAC and LTV as the marketing "holy grail"Resources MentionedEOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System)The Six Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni Who Not How by Dan Sullivan HubSpot Culver's Frozen Custard Franchise Business Review (FBR) Survey Vistage Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

On répète qu'il suffit d'acheter l'outil, de créer son produit et de vendre. Franck Berthelot a passé près de dix ans à réparer les projets qui ont cru ça. Fondateur de Darix, il ouvre le capot de Salesforce et du CPQ pour montrer ce qui se cache derrière une simple case à cocher : 40 objets qui s'ajoutent d'un coup, toute une chaîne métier à réaligner, et un projet vendu six semaines qui finit par en durer six mois. Un épisode pour comprendre pourquoi la vraie difficulté d'un projet Lead to cash n'est presque jamais technique, mais humaine.Franck évolue dans l'écosystème Salesforce depuis 2018. Passé par le e-commerce chez Yves Rocher, la finance de marché, puis l'AMOA et les cabinets d'intégration (4C, Levana), il a été référent Business System chez Aircall pendant quatre ans avant de fonder Darix, un cabinet de conseil Lead to cash / Quote to cash, avec son associé Yacine Zelmat, architecte technique.Ce que tu vas apprendre dans cet épisode :Ce qu'est vraiment le CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote), et pourquoi cette brique devient le cœur du réacteur dès qu'on veut automatiser sa facturationPourquoi le fameux « on a déjà tout spécifié, il n'y a plus qu'à implémenter » est le signal d'un projet qui va déraper, et quelles questions reposer avant de se lancerComment une refonte Quote to cash touche toute l'entreprise (sales, customer success, ADV, finance), et pas seulement les commerciauxJusqu'où va le no-code Salesforce, et à quel moment le code devient inévitable (calcul d'ARR multi-SKU, renewals à gros volume)Pourquoi le RevOps qui brille est un profil hybride, aussi à l'aise avec le métier qu'avec le système, et jamais un pur expert d'outilComment la dimension métier protège les Ops face à l'IA, quand une knowledge base suffit déjà à remplacer un prestataire purement techniqueNotes complètes, ressources et captures de l'épisode : [LIEN]Chapitres :[00:02:54] Le parcours de Franck, d'Yves Rocher à l'écosystème Salesforce[00:10:09] Le CPQ expliqué : catalogue, pricing, devis[00:16:06] Le piège du « j'ai juste à implémenter »[00:21:08] La boîte de Pandore : pourquoi six semaines deviennent six mois[00:25:12] Le RevOps hybride et l'équipe système[00:41:03] Les déclencheurs d'un projet Quote to cash[00:57:04] Facturer des jours ou de la valeur : les Ops face à l'IA[01:28:22] Le facteur humain : reconvertir l'ADV, aligner avant de systémiserPour aller plus loin :L'épisode d'Engrenages avec Raphaël Brousse, qui définit le Quote to cash comme une porte d'entrée sur la compréhension businessDarix, le cabinet de Franck et YacineLes concepts cités : CPQ, ETL, multi-SKU, Data CloudLes outils évoqués : Salesforce, NetSuite, HubSpot, AttioHébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

In this episode of The Private Equity Podcast, Alex Rawlings speaks with Bobby Ocampo and Sheldon Lewis, co-founders and managing partners of Blueprint Equity.Following the successful close of Blueprint Equity's $333 million third fund, Bobby and Sheldon explain how the firm identifies and supports high-growth B2B software companies. They discuss Blueprint's early growth investment strategy, its direct sourcing infrastructure and the role its six-person operations team plays in supporting portfolio companies.The conversation also explores the impact of artificial intelligence on software valuations, underwriting and value creation. Bobby and Sheldon explain how Blueprint has integrated multiple AI tools across sourcing, deal evaluation, portfolio operations and internal workflows.They also share why vertical software businesses with deeply embedded customer workflows may be better positioned to withstand AI disruption than lightweight horizontal software products.Key TopicsBlueprint Equity's early growth investment strategyRaising a $333 million third fundInvesting in B2B vertical software businessesBuilding a large direct sourcing functionSupporting founders with recruiting, go-to-market and RevOpsUsing AI to identify, prioritise and track investment opportunitiesConnecting multiple AI tools through an integrated technology stackUnderwriting software businesses in an uncertain marketAssessing founders in minority growth investmentsMoving quickly without creating employee burnoutTimestamps00:00 Introduction00:28 Blueprint Equity and the successful Fund III raise00:53 The firm's early growth equity investment thesis01:43 Building the team and operations function02:50 Common mistakes made by investment firms04:21 Underwriting software businesses in the AI era06:33 How Blueprint structures its value creation team07:41 Recruiting and institutionalising portfolio companies08:35 RevOps, reporting and financial visibility09:53 How Blueprint uses AI internally10:37 AI-driven sourcing and opportunity prioritisation11:06 Using proprietary data in underwriting12:32 Blueprint's AI technology stack14:01 Building a genuine direct sourcing strategy15:24 The resources required for proprietary origination16:46 Less obvious investment signals17:14 Assessing the entrepreneur behind the business18:13 Vertical software and the threat of AI disruption20:25 Creating a fast-moving culture without burnout22:09 Recommended private equity news and content23:34 How to connect with Blueprint EquityRaw Selection partners with Private Equity firms and their portfolio companies to secure exceptional executive talent. We focus on de-risking executive recruitment through meticulous search and selection processes, ensuring top-tier performance and long-term success.

Sally Facinelli, growth strategist and franchise advisor with nearly 30 years in the industry, joins Brendon Dennewill to challenge the instinct to scale fast and instead make the case for intentional, systems-driven growth. From leadership transitions and organizational clarity to real-time data visibility and the accelerating impact of AI on franchise operations, Sally brings a practitioner's lens to the questions most brands avoid until it's too late. If your franchise is hitting a ceiling and you can't figure out why, this conversation will tell you exactly where to look.What You'll LearnWhy pausing momentum actually protects itThe leadership change most growing brands delay too longGrowth exposes problems, it doesn't create themBrand consistency requires more than standards documentsData without adoption is just expensive noiseWhy franchisee success is the real FranDev strategyAI as an efficiency multiplier, not a headcount replacementProactive vs. reactive brands: the COVID test caseResourcesFranchise Business Coaches (FBCs) IFA (International Franchise Association)  Sally Facinelli's upcoming book – In progress, focused on franchise leadership and sustainable growth (watch for release)Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

Racheter une entreprise, c'est une ligne dans un communiqué de presse. L'intégrer vraiment, c'est le travail des Ops, et presque personne n'en parle. Marie Piquemil a vécu cinq rachats de boîtes en trois ans chez Swile. Dans cet épisode, elle ouvre le capot de la croissance externe : ce qu'on audite avant de signer, pourquoi le risque le plus grave n'est jamais la techno mais les personnes, et comment on évite de faire reposer toute une boîte sur une seule tête.Marie a commencé chez Groupon, au tout début de la "startup mafia" française, puis a passé sept ans à construire le produit et la tech de Bureau à partager (devenu Morning puis Ubiq). Elle bifurque ensuite vers les opérations chez Swile, où elle transforme le Service Ops en CXOps et pilote l'intégration de cinq acquisitions. Aujourd'hui, elle travaille sur les opérations et la première “ligne de défense” d'une fintech.Ce que tu vas apprendre dans cet épisode :Comment opérer un rachat côté Ops : ce qu'on audite vraiment au-delà des chiffres (personnes clés, doublons d'outils, zones à risque) et pourquoi la partie RH est le premier point de vigilance.Pourquoi il ne faut souvent pas merger les CRM lors d'un rachat, et comment faire rentrer les clients rachetés par le tunnel du nouveau produit au moment du renouvellement.Comment repenser l'architecture d'un support : ouvrir des canaux asynchrones pour baisser la pression sur le chat, réduire le coût par ticket et garder le CSAT stable.Pourquoi "mettre l'humain le plus loin possible" ne veut pas dire déshumaniser le support, mais le placer là où il crée vraiment de la valeur.Comment la documentation protège du "bus effect" et devient le carburant des boîtes qui avancent le plus vite sur l'IA.Comment adapter la méthode agile (sprints, deadlines, loi de Pareto) à des équipes support qui ne savent pas dire non.Comme le dit Marie : Tout le monde pense que son business est unique alors que finalement, toutes les boîtes opèrent à 80% de la même façon.Notes complètes, ressources et captures de l'épisode : [LIEN]Chapitres :[00:03:56] Parcours : de Groupon à la "startup mafia"[00:19:56] Le bilan de compétences qui fait bifurquer vers les opérations[00:28:09] Arriver chez Swile et construire le CXOps[00:33:41] Chat live, messaging et autonomie client[00:37:23] Cinq rachats de boîtes en trois ans : opérer la croissance externe[00:47:23] L'audit d'un rachat : la partie RH et les personnes clés[01:04:33] La documentation : protection contre le "bus effect" et carburant de l'IA[01:39:29] CXOps : mettre l'humain là où il crée de la valeurPour aller plus loin :Le Business Operation NetworkLe "bus effect", le syndrome du facteur de bus appliqué à la dépendance aux personnes et à la documentation.La PMI (Post Merge Integration) et la notion de première ligne de défense (KYC, KYB, AML).La pyramide de Maslow du management avec la "trust" à la base, framework repris de Jean-Baptiste Hugon, son ancien directeur Operations chez Swile."Tu dis ce que tu fais, et tu fais ce que tu dis", son principe de fiabilité managériale.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Seller productivity is being redefined in real time, and the divide is no longer about effort or experience. In this segment, Alex Varel shares a grounded look at how AI is already reshaping the role, from a RevOps leader training multiple agents in a single weekend to the expectation that sellers will augment their own output. The conversation highlights a growing reality for revenue teams: those who get hands-on with AI will operate at a different level, while those who don't risk falling behind faster than they expect. Alex Varel is EVP of Worldwide Sales at Cerebras Systems, where he leads global go-to-market efforts at the forefront of AI infrastructure. He has built and scaled high-performing teams across MongoDB, Zscaler, and Multiverse, driving growth through IPO, hyper-scale expansion, and emerging technology shifts. Connect with Alex: LinkedIn Resources mentioned: "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell "AI Superpowers" by Kai-Fu Lee “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson "No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy “The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley” by Jimmy Soni Listen to the full episode: How AI Is Rewriting the Sales Playbook and Raising the Bar on Human Performance with Alex Varel Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank Sohn speaks with Jagadish Bandhole, CEO and Founder of MobileForce.ai, about how CPQ is changing as AI, no-code administration, mobile workforces, and broader revenue operations requirements reshape the market. Jagadish describes himself as an engineer turned entrepreneur and shares how MobileForce has evolved since his last appearance on the CPQ Podcast in 2023. The discussion covers the company's move from Mobile Force Software to MobileForce.ai, why the shift is more than a rebrand, and how the company's approach has moved from AI-enabled toward AI-first while still recognizing that fully AI-native CPQ is an ongoing journey. The conversation also explores what CPQ customers can realistically expect from AI today. Topics include AI-assisted quote creation, automatic renewal quotes, catalog and price book updates, approval and pricing rule support, and upsell recommendations. At the same time, Jagadish explains why highly configurable products, complex rules, dynamic pricing, and cross-system orchestration remain difficult problems that require careful implementation and governance. Frank and Jagadish also discuss why CPQ projects are often delayed or fail, including poor documentation of current processes, unclear KPIs, and underestimating the need for ongoing business-led updates. The episode provides practical guidance for CPQ buyers, sales operations teams, RevOps leaders, and business analysts evaluating no-code CPQ platforms. Additional topics include CRM-agnostic CPQ, direct and indirect sales channels, partner portals, headless CPQ, offline mobile CPQ, field service integration, and quote-to-service-to-cash workflows for manufacturing, industrial, trade, and service-oriented businesses.

Revenue growth becomes harder to sustain when leadership relies on a handful of top performers, inconsistent processes, or reactive decision-making. Jason Forget, President and CRO of Cockroach Labs, shares lessons from building revenue organizations from the earliest startup stages through large-scale growth, explaining why sales motions must continuously evolve as companies scale. The conversation explores the role of RevOps as a strategic advisor to leadership, the importance of building a strong middle class of sellers, hiring for adaptability and coachability, and creating cultures where problems surface early. Jason also shares how open-source adoption can be transformed into enterprise-wide business outcomes through disciplined account planning, executive engagement, and scalable go-to-market execution. Jason Forget is President and CRO of Cockroach Labs and has spent his career building revenue organizations from multiple vantage points, including finance, RevOps, sales, and executive leadership. That uncommon path has shaped his approach to predictable growth, helping companies scale from early-stage startups to enterprise revenue organizations through operational discipline, coaching, and repeatable sales systems. Connect with Jason: LinkedIn Resources mentioned: "The Locker Room is Not for Sale" by Coach Brian White Key takeaways from this episode:  00:00 – Why the most effective RevOps leaders act less like operators and more like trusted advisors to the business. 02:52 – What it really takes to turn product adoption into an executive-level business conversation. 05:26 – A look inside how enterprise momentum is built long before an executive meeting is secured. 12:26 – Why many CROs underestimate how dramatically a sales motion must evolve as a company scales. 21:38 – What leaders often overlook about the group that drives the most predictable revenue growth. 37:08 – Why the best hires are not always the most experienced candidates on paper. 54:31 – The mistake many leaders make when performance issues appear without understanding the full context. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

Brian Schnell, Partner and Chair of the Franchise Practice at Faegre Drinker, brings nearly four decades of franchise law, operations, and executive leadership to one of franchising's most persistent tensions: the breakdown between franchisors and franchisees. In this conversation with host Brendon Dennewill, Brian challenges the command-and-control model still used by too many brands and makes the case for a collaborative leadership philosophy rooted in trust, franchisee voice, and unit-level profitability. If you lead or advise a franchise system and want to understand what separates sustainable brands from those that stagnate, this episode is required listening.What You'll LearnWhy franchisee voice matters more than franchisee voteThe first habit of highly successful franchise systemsWhen command and control actually destroys brand equityHow leadership gaps compound as systems scaleWhat most franchise disputes actually start asThe role private equity is beginning to play in franchising's futureWhy data without the human element still leads to bad decisionsResources Mentioned2026 Franchise SummitFaegre Drinker "The Five Habits of the Highly Successful Franchise System"  framework developed by Brian Schnell and Bill Killian"The AI-Driven Leader" by Geoff Woods HubSpot CRM IFA (International Franchise Association)Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

Casey Cease, Founder of scalingbusiness.ai, joins host Brendon Dennewill to challenge the most common mistake leaders make when scaling with AI: reaching for tactics before they have a strategy. Drawing on decades of experience across branding, publishing, franchising, and emerging technology, Casey breaks down why operational complexity, people systems, and decision-making clarity must come before any tool deployment. If your team is drowning in subscriptions they don't use, or your franchisees are calling the same repetitive questions, this episode will reframe how you think about AI, automation, and what it actually means to scale.What You'll LearnWhy strategy always comes before toolsThe three components of every AI agentSystems that protect people, not just processesWhen to trust AI with a decision (and when not to)The hidden reason leaders resist necessary changeWhat separates high performers in an AI-enabled teamFranchising's "rule of threes and tens" explainedAI as rocket fuel, not a replacementResources Mentionedscalingbusiness.aiPlanify AgencyLucid BooksStrategic Coach  The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber  Scaling Up / Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish Predictable Success by Les McKeown  The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni  The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff Woods  Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni  Zapier / Make / n8n  ClickUp / TeamGantt  Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!What if the biggest marketing problem in your organization isn't the marketing team at all?In this episode, Michael Hartmann sits down with Charral Izhiman, Head of Marketing at Bayobab and author of The Marketing Movement, for a conversation about why so many organizations still misunderstand what marketing is supposed to do, and what it takes to fix that from both sides.Charral's perspective is refreshingly different. Her book isn't written to teach marketers how to market. It's written to help non-marketing leaders understand how to actually work with marketing. That framing opens up a rich discussion about the gap between strategy and execution, and why Ops professionals may be the best-positioned people in the business to close it. In this conversation, they discuss:The outdated assumptions organizations still hold about marketing, and how marketers unintentionally reinforce themWhy Ops teams sitting at the intersection of marketing, sales, finance, and leadership are uniquely positioned as translators across the businessThe SHAPE framework, and why "Activation" is the overlooked layer between planning and resultsWhy organizations romanticize strategy and celebrate execution but skip operational readiness in the middleThe Formula 1 metaphor for marketing leadership: everything that has to come together before you can even competeWhether you're in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or marketing leadership, this episode is full of ideas for anyone trying to bridge the gap between strategy, operations, and the rest of the business. The conversation doesn't end here. Explore the full SHAPE framework and more in Charral's book, The Marketing Movement: https://themarketing-movement.com/Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations ProfessionalsSupport the show

Neste episódio do Vamos de Vendas, Gustavo Pagotto recebe Anderson Munhoz, Diretor de Vendas Enterprise na Meu Copo Eco, para uma conversa sobre Revenue Operations, Sales Enablement e os desafios de criar uma operação comercial escalável, previsível e orientada por dados.Ao longo do episódio, Anderson explica por que RevOps e Enablement devem caminhar juntos desde os primeiros dias da empresa, mostrando como processos bem estruturados impactam diretamente a produtividade, a adoção de CRM e o crescimento da receita. Ele compartilha experiências práticas sobre onboarding de vendedores, construção de playbooks, monitoramento de performance e os erros mais comuns que impedem equipes comerciais de escalar.

Michael Iannuzzi, Partner and Franchise Practice Leader at Citrin Cooperman, joins host Brendon Dennewill to unpack the financial and operational fault lines that quietly derail growing franchise systems. From the tension between top-line and bottom-line incentives to the infamous "100-unit ceiling," Michael brings a practitioner's lens to unit economics, royalty self-sufficiency, and the decisions leaders delay until it's too late. If you're scaling a franchise brand and wondering when to rebuild your systems, hire your next leader, or fire yourself from your current role, this episode delivers the framework.What You'll LearnWhy franchisors and franchisees have competing financial interestsThe metric that signals when real growth beginsWhat the "100-unit ceiling" looks like in practiceWhen to fire yourself as a founderHow to build a tech stack from day oneWhat private equity actually looks for in a franchise systemThe rule of threes and tens in franchise growthResources MentionedIFA (International Franchise Association)Restaurant Leadership Conference  Franchise and Fitness Conference (Chicago) Citrin Cooperman Franchise Practice QuickBooks / XERO  FDD (Franchise Disclosure Document) Franchisee Advisory Council (FAC) The Rule of Threes and Tens - Growth framework referenced by CEO of Rakuten Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

In this episode of CRO Spotlight, Warren Zenna sits down with MK Marsden, CEO of Sales-Sleuth, to diagnose the root causes of the modern B2B sales crisis. They explore how the shift toward cheap, automated mass communication has eroded buyer trust and forced buyers to rely on independent research. As buyers become increasingly overwhelmed by digital noise, revenue leaders must fundamentally rethink their outbound approaches.The conversation tackles the systemic issues created by misaligned software solutions and arbitrary key performance indicators. MK argues that treating complex sales relationships as a series of isolated events—measured by clicks, opens, and call volumes—has detached sellers from true relationship building. When finance teams and software engineers dictate sales metrics, organizations lose sight of genuine buyer satisfaction.To counteract this dysfunction, leaders need to empower their teams with deep insights before a conversation ever occurs. The discussion shifts toward leveraging advanced sales intelligence platforms that analyze public buyer signals, eliminating the need for cold discovery calls. By equipping sellers with accurate data regarding a prospect's technical environment and immediate needs, companies can level the playing field.Ultimately, restoring effectiveness in sales requires a commitment to long-term value over instant gratification. Warren and MK highlight the challenges newly appointed revenue leaders face when balancing immediate expectations against the time required to genuinely turn a strategy around. They conclude by discussing how measuring long-term impact and sustained trust is the only sustainable path forward for modern businesses.

Kary Oberbrunner, Founder of Instant IP and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, joins Brendon Dennewill to challenge everything founders think they know about intellectual property. As AI accelerates IP theft across every industry, from musicians to franchise brands to solo entrepreneurs, Kary makes the case that protecting your ideas isn't a legal formality, it's a revenue strategy. If you've ever said "I don't mind if people steal my ideas," this episode will change how you run your business.What You'll Learn:Why thinking "I'm not an IP company" makes you a commodityThe shift from 17% to 90% intangible asset value in the S&P 500The offensive vs. defensive sides of IP strategyWhy using "TM" may actually invite theftHow AI is creating a new category of IP riskThe "publish, protect, promote" flywheel12 steps to becoming an IP companyResources Mentioned:Instant IP IP Toolbox"You Are an IP Company" by Kary Oberbrunner and Katie RobinoUSPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) Story Brand by Donald Miller  Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni  Strategic Coach by Dan Sullivan  Suno  Plaud AIMeta Glasses Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Today, most teams aren't just struggling to build their AI strategies. The real struggle begins when they try to execute their strategies. In this episode of Ops Cast, host Michael Hartmann sits down with David York, Chief AI and Innovation Officer at Helix CXM, to get practical answers about what it really takes for GTM organizations to move from talking about AI to operationalizing it.David has spent years working at the intersection of marketing operations, RevOps, automation, and AI transformation. Together, he and Michael discovered an uncomfortable truth about how most teams are already overwhelmed by manual work, fragmented processes, shadow systems, and operational debt. Piling "figure out AI" on top of all that creates more chaos. In this conversation, you'll hear:Why the gap between AI strategy and implementation is so hard to closeWhat operational excellence actually looks like in practice, and why it has to come firstWhy mapping how work gets done today is the critical first step before introducing AIThe real difference between automation and "automation plus intelligence"How to identify low-risk, high-value AI use cases (like partially manual lead routing) versus harder onesThe hidden costs teams underestimate: tooling, LLM costs, maintenance, and human monitoringWhere human judgment is still absolutely requiredPractical advice on where to start if you're feeling overwhelmed by AI pressure right nowWhether you lead a scrappy SMB or a specialized team inside a large enterprise, this is a grounded discussion about the reality of AI in modern GTM, beyond the hype and the LinkedIn hot takes.David also published a new book this week, AI-Powered Growth: A 7-Step Adoption and Transformation Framework, which goes deeper into how Marketing Ops leaders can systematically prioritize and operationalize AI initiatives. Grab a copy here: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Powered-Growth-7-Step-Adoption-Transformation/dp/B0H2QCZG5M/Enjoy the episode!Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show

Charles Chang, Founder of Unified Technologies Group (UTG), joins Brendon Dennewill to challenge the way most organizations think about growth, arguing that the real bottleneck is never technology, it's the absence of documented processes, operational leadership, and a culture of prevention. Drawing on his experience in healthcare IT and multi-company ownership, Charles shares how his team is already deploying AI agents to replace repetitive workflows, using a "sandbox-first" rollout approach to avoid costly mistakes. If you're a RevOps leader trying to figure out where AI actually fits in your organization, and how to move fast without creating chaos, this conversation delivers a practical, security-conscious roadmap.WHAT YOU'LL LEARNWhy technology always comes last in the scaling orderThe hiring decision that separates scaling companies from stagnant onesWhat a "bookkeeper agent" looks like in a real businessHow to use Delegate and Elevate to identify AI opportunitiesThe sandbox-first rule for rolling out AI safelyWhen SMBs are actually outpacing enterprise on AI adoptionWhy visionaries need operational leaders to survive growthRESOURCES MENTIONEDEOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) Delegate and Elevate (EOS Tool) Kolbe A IndexEOS Rocks / Quarterly Meeting CadenceAI Sandbox TestingLLMs (Large Language Models)Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

In this episode of the CRO Spotlight podcast, Warren Zenna hosts Kris Billmaier, EVP & GM of Agentforce Sales at Salesforce to discuss how the traditional CRM interface is rapidly evolving, shifting revenue teams from manual data entry to autonomous workflows. We explore the transition toward headless CRM and how AI agents are automating administrative tasks, allowing sales professionals to focus on direct customer engagement and high-leverage closing activities.Modern chief revenue officers must transcend traditional sales leadership to become comprehensive revenue architects. The conversation highlights the necessity of breaking down operational silos to integrate sales, marketing, and customer success into a unified engine. By leveraging conversational insights and predictive data, CROs can build highly predictable forecasts, accurately define ideal customer profiles, and design frictionless deal cycles.We examine the tangible deployment of AI within the sales funnel, specifically focusing on how automated prospectors are redefining the business development phase. By assigning agents to previously ignored leads and automating initial outreach, organizations drastically expand their pipeline capacity. This shift requires human representatives to transition into management roles, overseeing hybrid teams of both human talent and automated systems.Sustained business growth relies heavily on post-sale customer advocacy rather than endless top-of-funnel acquisition. We analyze why revenue leaders must prioritize retention and customer success as core growth mechanisms. By gathering intelligence from renewed accounts and deploying agents to follow up on deferred buying cycles, companies create a compounded data loop that continuously refines targeting and scales revenue efficiency globally.

Ryan Alford sits down with Josh Troy for a deep conversation on what actually creates predictable revenue in modern B2B sales. Josh explains how revenue operations, outbound systems, content, trust, and AI all fit together, and why most businesses are still chasing activity instead of building a true revenue engine. He also breaks down the difference between generating leads and generating pipeline, why cold calling still works, and how smarter follow-up systems can unlock more revenue without spending more on new leads. Ryan brings the operator and marketing lens, Josh brings the sales systems and RevOps lens, and together they unpack what founders, sales leaders, and growth-minded businesses need to understand if they want their revenue to become more reliable. Topics Covered What RevOps really means in practice Why predictable revenue matters more than one-off wins The role of AI in modern outbound strategy Why cold calling is still working How content builds trust and pipeline What businesses get wrong about lead quality Why pipeline reactivation is an underrated growth lever How founders can think more strategically about revenue systems

Andy Mowat has run RevOps at four unicorns, and between every role he's gone out and built something new. His latest is Whispered, an AI platform that helps top GTM execs build their careers through shared insights, warm introductions, and access to the roles that never get posted.In this episode, Andy and Justin get into why the entire GTM tech stack is heading for a two-year rebuild, what the move to a data-warehouse-first model means for RevOps teams, and why smaller companies are suddenly more nimble than the enterprise. Andy shares hard-won lessons from scaling Culture Amp, including the speed-to-lead system he built around time-critical leads and the market-maturity question he buried in the win-loss forms. They also dig into whether the fractional exec wave is real, why thoughtful gifting and distinctive events still beat automated outbound, and what it actually feels like to run a proactive job search at the VP level for the first time.A candid conversation between two friends about category strategy, positioning, and building a career in go-to-market when the ground keeps shifting.Buzzsprout Chapter Markers00:00 — Intro: how Justin and Andy met around Culture Amp 01:40 — Andy's background: RevOps at four unicorns, and why he keeps building 03:30 — Founders as a hiring profile, and the trap of "ambiguous roles" 05:30 — Rebuilding the GTM tech stack: data warehouse first, the semantic layer, and two years of turmoil 07:00 — The give-to-get ratio and why AI-era outbound still comes down to better emails 08:30 — Strategic gifting, distinctive events, and the Wisconsin business school cold open 11:00 — Podcasts as relationship engines, not just content 11:30 — Inside Culture Amp: 180 events a year and the speed-to-lead system 13:00 — The multi-prospect demo experiment, and the market-maturity question that predicts a category's breakout14:45 — The fractional exec wave: real shift or euphemism for "between jobs"16:15 — Why early-stage marketing needs people to "grok what you do" before top of funnel 18:00 — What's next for Whispered: the network, the community, and the roles that get whispered

The old gated-ebook playbook stopped working around 2018, and slapping AI on top of it isn't going to bring it back. In this episode of Content to Close, Matt Zelasko, founder of growth agency Radish and self-described "Tom DeLonge of RevOps," makes the case that most teams are using AI to do the same broken things faster, then blaming AI for the falling engagement that was already happening. Matt walks through why content is saturated, why "intelligence" is the wrong word for what an LLM actually does, and why understanding how the technology works (it's speculating what comes next) is what finally unlocks its real use. He shares his shift from prompt engineering to context engineering ("what else do you need from me?"), why he turned down a client who wanted an AI agent to write case studies but said yes to one who wanted an agent to write RFPs, and how creative people can use AI without losing the ideation work that makes the output good. If you're tired of AI hype and want a sharper view on where it actually belongs in revenue generation, tune in.About MattMatt Zelasko runs Radish, a horizontal growth agency that helps clients "do more rad shit" and take the next step in their growth. He's spent longer than he'd like to admit in the agency, marketing, and RevOps space, and is better known on LinkedIn as "the Tom DeLonge of RevOps." Matt is opinionated, willing to be proven wrong, and believes you can take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously. Before running Radish he worked as a copywriter, and still leans on old-school habits like writing 50 to 100 taglines by hand before reaching for any tool.Show Notes- Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewzelasko/Text us what you think about this episode!

Recorded after closing out the RevOps AF Conference, Jeff Ignacio unpacks the ideas behind his keynote on AI and the future of revenue operations. A tactical and strategic look at how AI is reshaping pipeline management, coaching, forecasting, win-loss analysis, and the role of the modern RevOps operator.

Revenue leaders are under increasing pressure to grow without adding headcount at the same rate, and AI is forcing a deeper conversation about productivity, consistency, governance, and organizational design. Alex Bilmes, CEO of Endgame, joins John Kaplan and John McMahon to discuss what his team learned from analyzing more than 30,000 real AI workflows across go-to-market teams. The conversation moves beyond tool adoption and into the harder leadership questions: how to create a centralized intelligence layer, how to prevent inconsistent messaging at scale, how RevOps must evolve, where AI can accelerate ramp and account coverage, and why human judgment becomes more important as automation gets better. Alex Bilmes is the CEO and founder of Endgame, a revenue intelligence platform built for go-to-market teams. His work focuses on helping revenue organizations centralize customer, methodology, and account knowledge so both humans and AI agents can operate from a consistent foundation. Connect with Alex: LinkedIn Key takeaways from this episode:  00:00 - A look inside what happens when AI agents move from task automation to managing real revenue workflows. 06:02 - Why agent sprawl quietly creates new execution risks for CROs trying to scale AI across the revenue organization. 09:09 - What leaders often overlook about the knowledge foundation required to keep humans and AI working from the same truth. 29:29 - Why RevOps has to evolve from fulfilling requests to building systems that change how revenue teams operate. 35:04 - What it really takes for AI to improve productivity beyond simple headcount reduction. 48:28 - The governance risk many revenue leaders underestimate when AI adoption moves faster than controls. 51:26 - Why human judgment becomes more important, not less, as AI takes on more of the sales workflow. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with ParkerGale Operating Partner Paul Stansik to break down five ways CFOs can help build a better sales engine: making the budget mean something, improving forecasting, sharpening metrics, getting involved in key RevOps moments, and building real trust with sales.—SPONSORS:Aleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/runRightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform built for teams that have outgrown spreadsheets and billing tool workarounds. It handles high-volume subscriptions, usage-based contracts, and mid-cycle upgrades, so you can scale without scrambling at month-end. For RevRec that keeps your books clean, visit https://www.rightrev.com/CJRillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cjEY works with high-growth tech companies to navigate the messy realities of scaling—from regulatory requirements to IPO readiness. By helping teams get it right early and often, EY lets founders stay focused on building while reducing risk as they grow. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartupsSpendHound is a SaaS spend management platform built for finance and procurement teams that want visibility and leverage in every deal. By tracking all your software, benchmarking pricing across thousands of vendors, and surfacing contracts and renewals, SpendHound helps you stop overpaying and negotiate with confidence. Trusted by teams at ZoomInfo and Hootsuite. Get started at https://www.spendhound.com/cjBrex is an intelligent finance platform that combines corporate cards, built-in expense management, and AI agents to eliminate manual finance work. By automating expense reviews and reconciliations, Brex gives CFOs more time for the high-impact work that drives growth. Join 35,000+ companies like Anthropic, Coinbase, and DoorDash at https://www.brex.com/metrics—LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsNGuest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulstansik/Company: https://www.parkergale.com/Hello Operator: https://hellooperator.substack.com/CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com—RELATED EPISODES:Is a weekly martini ARR? | with Dave Kellogghttps://youtu.be/Yb1lUQLJ6qw—TIMESTAMPS:All verified. Here are the timestamps:0:00 Preview and intro2:27 Parker Gale and Paul's role3:52 Topic: how CFOs build a better sales engine6:21 1: Make the budget mean something8:11 Budget segmentation and cleaving the business10:54 Sponsors — Aleph | RightRev | Rillet14:08 2: Help emphasize forecasting17:23 Forecasting as non-threatening co-construction19:37 Sponsors — EY | SpendHound | Brex23:06 3: Lend a hand with data and metrics25:32 Walking sales through NDR levers27:16 Metrics tied to exit readiness28:00 4: Get involved in a few RevOps spots29:04 Pricing, proposals, and quoting31:22 Kill your SKUs32:51 Selling with certainty: quote formatting34:26 CFO letter for enterprise deals37:37 5: Build a great relationship with sales37:59 You can't fix a secret39:23 EQ over IQ for finance leaders40:41 Recap: all five tips42:11 Credits#RunTheNumbersPodcast #CFO #SalesStrategy #FinanceLeadership #RevenueOperations

In this episode of the CRO Spotlight podcast, Warren Zenna sits down with Mark Roberge of Stage Two Capital to dissect the inflection points of scaling a go-to-market team. They explore common pitfalls founders face when hiring a revenue leader. Mark emphasizes aligning a candidate's background with the company's maturity stage rather than focusing strictly on brand-name resumes or simple industry experience to ensure a highly effective hire.The conversation shifts to defining the responsibilities of a Chief Revenue Officer. Warren and Mark distinguish between someone managing a traditional sales function and an executive capable of architecting a comprehensive revenue engine. They discuss why forcing a standard sales leader into a transformational role fails. True growth requires a leader who breaks down silos across marketing, sales, customer success, and revenue operations.Mark outlines his predictions regarding the impact of artificial intelligence on the broader go-to-market landscape. He describes a phased evolution where AI initially optimizes selling time and coaching, eventually transitioning to autonomous agents handling the buying and selling processes. This technological shift will force companies to rethink standard organizational boundaries to maximize system efficiency and maintain a competitive advantage.The episode concludes with a discussion regarding mental health in the executive space. Mark explains his decision to dedicate his recent book's proceeds to mental health initiatives, addressing the lingering stigma in professional environments. By discussing his experiences, he highlights the absolute necessity of humanizing leadership. Both agree that addressing these challenges directly creates stronger, more resilient corporate cultures.

Consumption pricing puts pressure on the forecast in places traditional SaaS models rarely exposed. Total usage may be easier to model from the CFO's seat, but the field still has to answer harder questions: which customer, which channel, which rep, and when. In this replay segment, Devavrat Shah explains how AI can help teams learn across cohorts, spot patterns in uneven data, and create more trust in a forecast that would otherwise depend on isolated judgment calls.  Devavrat Shah is an MIT professor, director of MIT's Statistics and Data Science Center, and co-founder and CEO of Ikigai Labs. He brings a data science and operator's perspective to forecasting, consumption pricing, and enterprise AI. Connect with Devavrat: LinkedIn Listen to the full episode here: Understanding AI Through History and Practical Application with Devavrat Shah Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

Dave Sanderson, the last passenger off US Airways Flight 1549, known as the Miracle on the Hudson, brings 37 years of sales leadership and hard-earned crisis experience to a conversation with Brendon Dennewill about what it actually takes to build resilient teams and make decisions under pressure. From the ASSESS Framework and the A-to-I Affinity Model to the VCR leadership structure developed with Chad Jenkins, Dave unpacks the systems that separate leaders who hold the line from those who collapse when pressure compounds. If your organization is navigating uncertainty, low trust, or execution breakdown, this episode is the blueprint you didn't know you needed.What You'll LearnWhy trust outranks competence in high-stakes hiringThe three levers for managing your mental state under pressureCaptain Sullenberger's unique ability, and what it means for your teamThe VCR Framework: Vision, Capability, ReachHow the ASSESS Framework works in real-time crisis decisionsThe A-to-I model: Access to Influence to AffinityWhy "proximity is power" is your fastest path to growthResources MentionedResilience Partners Group"Moments Matter" by Dave Sanderson "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss "Selling in a Post-Trust World" by Larry Levine Tom Hopkins"The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni  ASSESS frameworkIs your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show! Most RevOps advice assumes your organization is already halfway in your success journey. But what happens when you're starting from zero, with no clear blueprint, inconsistent data, and a team that can't agree on how revenue actually works? In this episode, host Michael Hartmann sits down with Chelsea Gill, CMO at Resultant, who recently expanded her role to include RevOps and Customer Experience. What started as a need for better data and process quickly revealed a full-scale management change challenge across the entire organization.Chelsea and Michael discussed:What Chelsea expected when stepping into RevOps and what she actually foundWhy most RevOps frameworks assume more maturity than most teams haveWhat a "beta" version of RevOps actually looks like in practiceHow to change behavior across sales, marketing, and leadership (not just process)The role of empathy and storytelling in building organizational trust around dataWhether marketing has contributed to its own credibility problem inside the businessIf you're going through the messy middle between marketing, sales, and operations, or trying to build RevOps without a roadmap, this episode is a must watch for you.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, host Frank Sohn sits down with Siva Rajamani, the Co-Founder and CEO of Everstage, to discuss the evolving landscape of Revenue Operations and the critical role of Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software in modern business. Siva shares his journey from managing Revenue Operations at Freshworks—where he witnessed the company scale from $10M to $100M ARR—to founding Everstage in 2020. Having seen firsthand how pricing changes can disrupt downstream operations, Siva built Everstage to empower RevOps and Finance teams with a strategic, no-code platform. What You'll Learn in This Episode: The Evolution of Everstage: How a platform with 300+ enterprise customers for incentive compensation expanded into a cutting-edge CPQ solution in October 2024. AI & Agent-Led Innovation: How Everstage is leveraging AI and intelligent agents to automate code creation and simplify the user experience for sales reps. Market Focus & Growth: Why Everstage is prioritizing the tech industry for its CPQ rollout and its ambitious goal to add 150 new CPQ customers this year. Complex Pricing & Integrations: A deep dive into the platform's ability to handle subscription pricing, ramp deals, usage-based models, and 100+ out-of-the-box integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, NetSuite, and Stripe. The Human Side of Tech: Siva talks about his life as a "Girl Dad" and the importance of staying grounded while scaling a global startup. Whether you are a RevOps professional, a finance leader, or a CPQ enthusiast, this conversation offers a masterclass in building scalable systems that drive revenue growth.

Rajiv talks with Mike Ni (Constellation Research) about why AI makes old go-to-market playbooks less useful and why experience, judgment, and outcome thinking become the real edge. We break down enterprise-grade context, closed-loop learning, and what changes when humans start managing both people and AI agents.• LLMs commoditizing expertise while elevating experience and question quality• Aligning go-to-market work to outcomes as roles converge across marketing and sales• Humans becoming the bottleneck through constant review and context switching• Defining enterprise context through semantics, memory, and traceability• Replacing dashboards with learning loops and decision automation that improves over time• Comparing Meta's closed-loop AI ROI with Microsoft's slower enterprise payoff• Rethinking SaaS pricing as seat counts fall and value shifts toward decisions and platforms• System integrators pivoting from stitching apps to redesigning end-to-end AI-enabled processesYour best “proven” playbook might already be obsolete, and AI is the reason. From Park City, Utah, we sit down with returning guest Mike Ni, VP and principal analyst at Constellation Research, to unpack what happens when large language models commoditize expertise and the real differentiator becomes experience, judgment, and asking better questions. If you lead go-to-market, marketing, sales, RevOps, or product, the stakes are no longer incremental improvements. The pressure is to design for outcomes and build systems that learn faster than your competitors.We dig into why humans are suddenly the bottleneck in AI-enabled workflows, and how burnout shows up when people sit in the middle of automated flows doing nonstop review and context switching. That leads to a provocative shift: managers won't just manage humans, they'll manage AI agents too. To make that workable, enterprise AI needs more than a clever chatbot. It needs context you can trust: shared semantics, stateful memory, and decision traceability so inputs stay fresh, constrained, and permission-aware at execution time.We also break down “dashboards die, decision loops live”, why closed-loop learning makes ROI provable, and the tale of two cities between Meta's immediate AI payoff and Microsoft's more gated enterprise story. Then we get practical about SaaS pricing pressure as seats decline, plus how system integrators can move from integration tax to building unified systems of context while controlling token costs with the right mix of ML and generative AI.Mike Ni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelni/Mike Ni is the VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc., having previously served as the CMO of Openprise, CGO Coveo and CPO at Avangatel. Drawing on over 25 years of executive experience, Mike specializes in driving growth for SaaS companies and brings deep expertise in product strategy, go-to-market execution, and RevOps-enabled journey orchestration.  In his current role, he covers the fast-evolving Data-to-Decision Automation landscape. Mike also holds an impressive "trifecta" of degrees: a BS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, an MS in Systems Engineering from Stanford, and an MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWebsite: https://www.position2.com/podcast/Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/Email us with any feedback for the show: sparkofages.podcast@position2.com

Dr. Amy Osmond Cook, is the Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Fullcast, an AI-native go-to-market platform that helps companies align strategy with revenue execution. A seasoned marketing executive, she has led high-growth companies like Simplus, PathologyWatch, and Onboard from Series A to acquisition. Dr. Cook founded Stage Marketing, a successful full-funnel marketing firm, and has a PhD in Communication from the University of Utah. She is a recognized thought leader in business and healthcare marketing and has taught at ASU, BYU, and the University of Utah. In this episode… What happens when the friction between sales and marketing slows down growth, even in companies with great products? Can AI truly fix that gap — or does real acceleration still depend on how people and teams work together? And what does it take to scale revenue without losing alignment along the way? Dr. Amy Osmond Cook, a seasoned marketing and RevOps leader, explains that growth accelerates when AI-powered systems are combined with strong human alignment across sales and marketing. She highlights how Fullcast unifies forecasting, commissions, territory planning, and revenue operations into one platform to remove friction and improve execution. The result is faster alignment, clearer visibility, and more predictable revenue outcomes. She also shares how strategic acquisitions and deep data integration helped build a scalable system that still prioritizes onboarding and client relationships.  In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Dr. Amy Osmond Cook, to talk about AI, RevOps, and scaling revenue through better alignment. They discuss building Fullcast through acquisitions, using AI for forecasting and commissions, and improving sales territory planning. Dr. Cook also shares insights on onboarding, post-sale relationships, and maintaining trust during growth.

Pipeline generation breaks down when sales organizations rely on individual performance instead of building controlled, repeatable systems. In this episode, Greg Casale shares how his background in engineering shaped a system-first approach to sales, applying principles of process control, data capture, and structured training to reduce variability and improve consistency. The conversation explores why outbound phone remains a critical channel despite its difficulty, how over-automation has saturated the market and reduced conversion rates, and where AI fits as a tool to strengthen preparation and execution without replacing human interaction.  Greg Casale is the Founder and CEO of Reveneer Inc., where he leads a system-driven approach to outbound pipeline generation through embedded SDR teams. He began his career as a chemical engineer and brings a manufacturing and process control mindset to building repeatable, data-driven sales operations. Connect with Greg: LinkedIn Resources mentioned: Hyperbound TitanX Key takeaways from this episode:  03:00 – Why many CROs over-index on hiring instead of addressing the system driving performance 33:30 – What it really takes to build an outbound channel competitors can't easily replicate 49:00 – Why leaders risk losing differentiation when AI replaces human-driven sales behavior 01:00:00 – A look inside how top SDRs control conversations in the first 30 seconds of a cold call 09:33 – The mistake many CROs make when relying on fractional SDR models for pipeline generation 01:07:24 – Why cutting SDR capacity during downturns quietly weakens your ability to recover 18:11 – What leaders often overlook when measuring SDR success beyond meeting volume Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

Marcus Sheridan, author of They Ask You Answer, a partner at IMPACT and the co-founder of several forward-thinking tech and consulting companies, including PriceGuide, AI Trust Signals, and Question First Group, joins Brendon Dennewill to challenge why B2B companies still refuse to talk about pricing, even when the data is overwhelming. Marcus breaks down how AI-powered agents are about to reshape the buyer journey entirely, and why brands that withhold pricing information will be algorithmically penalized within 18 months. If your franchise, dealership network, or multi-location brand is watching leads slow down and ad spend climb, this episode is a direct explanation of why, and what to do about it.What You'll LearnWhy $35M came from one 45-minute articleThe AI agent behavior reshaping how buyers searchWhat Google's 'Have AI Check Prices' feature signalsHow pricing estimators 3x organic leads instantlyWhen franchisors must stop asking for buy-inWhy sunk cost fallacy is killing franchise brandsThe 3% sales habit that builds immediate trustResources MentionedThey Ask You Answer by Marcus SheridanEndless Customers by Marcus Sheridan PriceGuide.aiAI Trust SignalsQuestion First GroupMarcusSheridan.com Is your business ready to scale? Take the Growth Readiness Score to find out. In 5 minutes, you'll see: Benchmark data showing how you stack up to other organizationsA clear view of your operational maturity Whether your business is ready to scale (and what to do next if it's not)Let's ConnectSubscribe to the RevOps Champions NewsletterLinkedInYouTubeExplore the show at revopschampions.com. Ready to unite your teams with RevOps strategies that eliminate costly silos and drive growth? Let's talk!

Stage 2 Capital General Partner Liz Christo joins the show to discuss the disconnect between venture expectations and reality in the software market. The conversation covers the hidden costs of the new build versus buy debate, the structural changes happening within modern sales organizations, and whether traditional B2B SaaS go-to-market strategies and moats still matter when AI coding tools make software replication cheaper than ever. Key Takeaways: -The shift toward building internal AI tools instead of buying SaaS products overlooks long-term technical debt, as Liz Christo points out that "there's like a huge amount of cost buried behind the scenes that we're not really talking about today because it's still like sexy and fun." -Founders are artificially inflating their Total Addressable Market to meet new venture capital baseline expectations, with Liz Christo noting that "pitch decks read like really ridiculous right now where everybody wants to tell the story of like a $10 billion outcome because that's the new milestone that got set." -Revenue Operations is becoming the most direct path to the Chief Revenue Officer seat in AI-first organizations, which Sam Jacobs explains is "because as we use fewer humans and more agents, the sort of the half technical, the semi-technical capabilities of most RevOps people will translate into orchestrating armies of agents." -Delegating analysis and writing to AI risks destroying strategic judgment across go-to-market teams, a trend Liz Christo summarizes by stating, "I think we are producing an incredible amount of content that's not getting consumed... I just think we're like losing the ability to think and we're not teaching junior employees how to do it." Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/  Host: AJ Bruno - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/  Host: Asad Zaman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/  Guest: Liz Christo - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizchristo/   Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack   Chapters:  00:00 Intro and Cold Open 02:41 The New Build vs Buy Debate 06:10 Engineers in Every Department 10:48 Pitch Decks and 10B Dollar TAMs 17:53 Venture Capital Funding Quiz 23:43 AI Memos and Critical Thinking 42:41 Software Moats and Switching Costs 47:46 Bulls vs Bears Segment 48:23 RevOps as a Path to CRO 51:25 The Future of SDR Managers 55:14 Is Clay Actually Undervalued 59:12 Odds of Hitting 50M ARR  

AI is shifting from model development to real-world usage, exposing a new bottleneck that most sales teams are not prepared to understand or sell against. As inference speed, memory bandwidth, and infrastructure become the true differentiators, traditional software playbooks begin to break down. Alex Varel joins John Kaplan and John McMahon to unpack what it takes to sell in this new environment, where technical depth, curiosity, and adaptability are no longer optional. The conversation explores how AI is reshaping productivity, why ICPs must evolve weekly, and how elite sellers distinguish themselves by orchestrating value across increasingly complex buying groups. Alex Varel is EVP of Worldwide Sales at Cerebras Systems, where he leads global go-to-market efforts at the forefront of AI infrastructure. He has built and scaled high-performing teams across MongoDB, Zscaler, and Multiverse, driving growth through IPO, hyper-scale expansion, and emerging technology shifts. Connect with Alex: LinkedIn Resources mentioned: "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell "AI Superpowers" by Kai-Fu Lee “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson "No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy “The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley” by Jimmy Soni Key takeaways from this episode: 00:00 – A look inside what it really takes to rethink computing architecture when speed, not scale, becomes the constraint 13:09 – Why many leaders underestimate how the shift from training to inference is redefining where competitive advantage actually lives 25:27 – The mistake many CROs make when applying legacy software playbooks to markets that require constant recalibration 21:33 – What it really takes to turn AI from a concept into a daily productivity multiplier inside a revenue organization 31:34 – Why most sales organizations quietly accept a broken productivity model and what changes when that assumption is challenged 34:26 – A look inside the evolving role of the AE as a multi-dimensional operator across technical, business, and interpersonal domains 49:41 – Why treating ICP as a static exercise leads to missed growth opportunities in markets that are shifting in real time Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

#351 | Dave is joined by Corey Haines, the founder of Conversion Factory, Swipe Files, and Marketing-Skills.com, which has over 20,000 stars on GitHub. He's been all-in on AI since 2023 and in this episode he shows Dave exactly how he works now. He pulls up his screen and walks through live keyword research from an API, 10 programmatic SEO pages generated in under a minute, a cross-referenced SEO audit that would cost five figures from a consultant, a RevOps skill that audits HubSpot and builds out a lead scoring model, and a video editor running in the browser. Then they talk about what all of it means for marketers: the job isn't going away, but the way you do it is changing fast, and the gap between marketers who get that and those who don't is already showing up.Timestamps(00:00) - Don Draper, Peggy, and what AI actually changes about marketing (04:23) - Who is Corey Haines and how he went from laid off to AI-pilled (07:49) - The moment at coding boot camp that changed how he thinks about AI (10:30) - Why Claude Code in the terminal beats every other interface (14:40) - What Marketing-Skills.com is and how skills actually work (22:00) - Live demo: keyword research pulled straight from an API (24:15) - Live demo: 10 programmatic SEO pages built in 30 seconds (30:50) - Pushing pages live and the future of website editing (36:20) - Cross-referencing Google Search Console, Fathom, and keyword data (40:40) - Live demo: RevOps skill that audits HubSpot and builds lead scoring (47:20) - Video editing in the browser with Remotion and Claude (52:30) - The marketer as creative director: what the job actually looks like now (56:20) - The bull case for marketers in an AI world Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Knak - A no-code, campaign creation platform that lets you go from idea to on-brand email and landing pages in minutes, using AI where it actually matters. Learn more at knak.com/exitfive, or check out the MCP server by clicking this link. Vector - A contact-level ads platform that lets you build audiences from actual people on your site, clicking your ads, and checking out your competitors. Learn more at vector.co, and get on the waitlist for their new MCP server by clicking here. Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand generation agency that helps high-growth cybersecurity, DevOps, and enterprise software companies drive more pipeline through AI SEO, paid media, and go-to-market engineering. Visit compoundgrowthmarketing.com and tell them Dave sent you.***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreMost SaaS companies build a sales team first and a community second — if ever. Clay did the opposite. In this episode, Yash Tekriwal, Head of Ecosystem Growth at Clay, walks through the full ecosystem-led growth playbook that took Clay from nine people in a Williamsburg apartment to nearly 370 — without a traditional sales motion. From a certification program that actually proves competency, to 84 Clay Club chapters around the world, to IRL workshops where attribution is nearly impossible to measure but the results are undeniable, this is the blueprint for building a community that compounds into revenue.In this episode, you'll learn:The six subgroups of Clay's ecosystem and the specific metrics that govern each oneWhy Clay's certification program looks nothing like any credentialing process you've seen — and why that's the whole pointHow IRL workshops influence deal velocity and contract size even when you can't perfectly attribute them to revenueWhy Clay tracks two types of data — hard financial metrics and "the feeling" — and why both matter equallyHow the reverse demo / PLG motion became the product extension of Clay's ecosystem philosophyWhy GTM leaders who can't tie community to pipeline are asking the wrong question • • The honest truth about ecosystem ROI: indirect, unattributable, and absolutely worth it

Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the ICONIQ 2026 State of GTM Report, a 32-page benchmark study based on a January 2026 survey of 155+ B2B SaaS executives across CROs, CEOs, and RevOps leaders. The pair digs into what the data says about how high-growth companies go to market differently, how usage-based pricing is reshaping sales compensation, and where AI in the GTM stack is actually delivering results versus falling short.Topics CoveredGTM Motion Mix: Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up vs. Hybrid. The data shows roughly 60% of companies use a hybrid motion, but high-growth companies skew more toward bottom-up and PLG. Ray and Dave unpack the ICONIQ "variable growth bar" definition and what the motion mix signals about the source of growth.Channel and Partnership Revenue Is Bigger Than Expected. ICONIQ reports channel partnerships representing 27-31% of revenue for high-growth companies. That is well above the 11-15% Ray typically sees in comparable reports. Dave calls it the long-awaited comeback of channel in SaaS, and both hosts flag the near-absence of self-serve as a surprise.Quota Setting and Commission Structures in a Usage-Based World. For the first time in a major GTM benchmark, ICONIQ covers how companies set quotas and structure commissions in a consumption and outcome-based pricing environment. 30% of respondents use forecasted consumption to set quota. Commission payout timing is split across four models, signaling how unsettled the go-to-market compensation playbook remains.Clawbacks Are Back. With usage-based and prepaid consumption models on the rise, 45-50% of companies now have clawback provisions in sales compensation. Ray and Dave discuss why clawbacks are a morale killer for sales teams and what the smarter alternative looks like in practice.POC and Free Trial Conversion Rates. POC-to-paid conversion improved from 36% to 50% year over year. Ray and Dave discuss resource allocation for proof-of-concepts, including dedicated versus shared solution architects, and raise the question of where forward-deployed engineers fit into the picture.AI in GTM: Where It Is and Isn't Working. Lead gen and call transcription top the adoption charts, but AI-driven forecasting sits at only 38%. Ray flags the gap between AI-native and traditional SaaS companies in GTM AI adoption. Dave points to slide 30 as a reality check: pipeline efficiency and unit economics are not yet showing meaningful improvement from AI investment.If you are responsible for GTM strategy, sales compensation, or measuring the ROI of AI investments, this episode gives you a practical lens on one of the best benchmark reports published in 2026. Ray and Dave go beyond summarizing the slides. Dave and Ray flag caveats in the methodology, challenge the data where it warrants scrutiny, and connect the findings to real-world operating decisions on quota design, commission structures, channel strategy, and AI adoption. If you only have time for one GTM benchmark deep-dive this year, this is the episode to start with.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Jordan Crawford outlines how revenue leaders can build an autonomous pipeline generation engine and transition away from static playbooks. The discussion covers practical methods for extracting competitor usage data, identifying segments of users who are far more likely to buy, and generally how top GTM teams are using GTM Engineering to dramatically improve their results. The hosts also evaluate how AI tools alter revenue operations, shift the traditional B2B SaaS go-to-market strategy, and force a total redesign of traditional AE compensation models. Key Takeaways: Top-down executive mandates fail because leadership lacks hands-on experience with the required technical systems. Jordan Crawford notes the absurdity of this disconnect, stating, "You read these letters from all these CEOs and they're like, 'We need to be an AI first organization and I can't tell you what that means or how to implement it, but goddamn, you need to be able to do it.'" The core function of revenue operations must shift from administrative reporting tasks to running active market tests. Sam Jacobs explains this organizational friction, observing many Rev Ops employees think their job is still to deliver reports to the C-Suite and ensure data accuracy, when today's reality is that "actually your job now is to generate demand and like I need 50 campaigns tested by tomorrow." Identifying high-value target accounts requires prioritizing product telemetry and user actions over static CRM fields. Jordan highlights the power of this approach, explaining that "AI can basically analyze customers' words, actions, and what's in the CRM and say... these accounts are worth 10 times more than these accounts." Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/  Host: AJ Bruno - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/  Host: Asad Zaman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/  Guest: Jordan Crawford - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancrawford/ Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-newsletter  Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast J Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack Chapters: 00:00 Podcast Episode Introduction  02:52 Reversing GTM Strategy  06:44 RevOps and AI Thought Partners  13:58 Executing Fast Sales Campaigns  18:25 AI For Comp Plan Benchmarks  21:04 Defining Pain Qualified Segments  26:42 Shifting RevOps Priorities  38:41 Unbundling B2B SaaS Jobs  39:21 The Topline Trivia Game  45:11 Top Of Funnel AI Tactics  46:43 Middle Of Funnel Telemetry  47:56 Bottom Of Funnel Contract Review  49:10 Bull/Bear Predictions  

In this episode, Jason and Kyle Vamvouris from SalesThread break down how AI is revolutionizing sales strategies and why RevOps as we know it might soon vanish. Tune in for bold insights and actionable tactics to stay ahead in the future of sales. Check out more free content and get coaching at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://outboundsquad.com.⁠