Podcast appearances and mentions of sterling snow

In this episode, Pete Kazanjy—author of Founding Sales and a veteran sales leader—joins hosts Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow to share a crash course in founder-led sales, explaining why early-stage founders must take charge of selling before hiring sales reps. He breaks down the key mindset shifts for technical founders, how sales is like “weaponized product management,” and when it's time to delegate lead generation.If you're a startup founder looking to master sales we highly recommend this episode. Pete's book which can be found online at foundingsales.comChapters: 06:11 Objection Handling and Sales Narrative Crafting12:48 Validation through Founder-Led Sales Approach16:55 Founder's hands-on role in scalable sales.22:09 Tailoring Outreach Strategies for Target Audiences29:49 LinkedIn Prospect Engagement for Founder Outreach Success35:15 Empathetic Approach to Sales Conversations42:10 Effective Sales Strategies for Closing Deals47:31 Hiring Early Stage Salespeople for Startups54:12 Product-Obsessed Pioneers in Organizations58:26 Packaging Tactical Solutions for Customer Pain Points

How do early-stage founders break through and build exceptional companies? In this upcoming season of the I/O Podcast, hosts Sterling Snow and Tyler Hogge unveil a new approach—combining insights from the Exceptional Startups List with tactical advice from founders actively scaling their businesses. This season, we're setting out to be the best podcast in the world for seed and Series A founders.Episode Highlights:00:45 - The Big Change: Merging the Exceptional Startups List with the I/O PodcastWe're bringing on founders who are actively crossing key growth milestones—sharing real-time insights before they hit the mainstream.02:35 - Solving a Major Founder Challenge: Hiring Exceptional TalentThe Exceptional Startups List started as a resource for job seekers, but it's also helping founders attract top-tier talent.04:43 - Introducing I/O Podcast Snacks: High-Impact, Shorter EpisodesIn addition to our full-length episodes, we're launching I/O Snacks—quick, tactical interviews with startup leaders making waves.This season is all about delivering actionable, high-quality content tailored for founders navigating their early-stage journey. If you're looking for insights on scaling, hiring, and building a world-class startup, you won't want to miss this.Exceptional Startups List Here: https://exceptionalstartups.com/Follow the I/O Podcast Here: x: https://x.com/IO__podcastWeb: https://www.investoroperator.io/

How do you become the best of the best—the top performer in your field? Dr. Julie Gurner, an acclaimed executive coach and once likened to Billions' Wendy Rhoades by The Wall Street Journal, shares her insights on what it takes to excel at the highest level. In this episode, Dr. Gurner joins hosts Sterling Snow and Tyler Hogge to explore the mindsets, strategies, and leadership styles that empower people to perform at their peak.Episode Highlights:00:00 Meet Dr. Julie Gurner and her unique approach to executive performance05:47 The fine line between "good crazy" and "bad crazy" in high achievers08:44 Rule-bending: When it drives success and when it derails progress15:16 How confidence and aggression play into leadership styles18:56 Evolving roles: Adapting leadership from a startup's early days to maturity24:18 The power of vulnerability: Why CEOs should own their weaknesses to build balanced teams27:43 Helping others lean into their unique strengths for maximum impact33:17 Identifying "great" talent vs. "good" talent: What sets true excellence apart40:23 The importance of positive self-talk and why leaders should never downplay themselves47:01 Reframing failure: How top performers see setbacks as learning, not defining momentsWhether you're a startup founder, entrepreneur, or aspiring leader, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways to help you break through personal and professional barriers. Dr. Gurner's guidance is invaluable for anyone striving to reach the top in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment.Follow Dr. Gurner Here: X: https://x.com/drgurnerNewsletter: drgurner.substack.comWeb: drgurner.com

In this episode, Tyler Hogge & Sterling Snow sit down with David George, General Partner at a16z, where he leads the growth investing practice. Since joining in 2019, David has been at the forefront of investments in companies like Coinbase, Databricks, Figma, Robinhood and Instacart. Prior to a16z, David was at General Atlantic, where he invested in iconic brands like Airbnb, Opendoor, Slack, Crowdstrike, and Uber. David shares his unique insights into growth investing and his predictions for the future.Chapters: 01:15 David's Path to Venture 05:30 What Makes Andreessen Horowitz Different 10:30 What He Looks For When Making Growth Investments21:15 Focus On Inputs Not Outputs29:30 How They Source Investments35:10 "On TAM, Ignore the Research Reports". Here's What To Look For Instead44:30 What It Takes To Go Public: The Three Things A Company Needs48:56 Where AI Is Going And How He's Investing1:01:23 Episode Takeaways Connect With David & a16zhttps://x.com/DavidGeorge83https://a16z.com/growth/

Current Investor and Divvy's Former CRO Sterling Snow is jumping back into an operating role, this time as CEO of Redo, a fast growing customer experience platform. Sterling shares how Redo's founder Taylor Brown approached him to take on the job and how together they're building a company everyone in Utah can root for.Chapters:01:03 Why The Investor Operator Podcast Was Started03:45 How Sterling Started Talking With The Founding Team At Redo05:12 Why Redo May Be The Next Divvy09:41 What Is Redo & How It's Going16:30 Why You Should Join Redo 23:30 Join An Excellent Startup For Faster Career Growth

How far would you travel for a good conversation? For hosts Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow it was a no brainer to fly 2000 miles to talk with Kaz Nejatian, the COO of Shopify in their Toronto HQ. Kaz is a fascinating mind in tech and an unconventional thinker shaping the the product culture of Shopify. He shares his story of growing up in Iran, experiencing the Iran-Iraq war, and eventually immigrating to Canada at age 12. In Canada, Kaz gets even deeper into his fascination with computers and goes onto found a YC company, run a product line at Meta and now acts as the COO and Product Evangelist at multi-billion dollar company Shopify. Tyler and Sterling find out why Shopify employees have no meetings, how big tech companies are doing product wrong, and why Shopify's unique culture will create a 100 year company that just keeps getting bigger. Chapters: 01:50 - Kaz's Childhood in Iran and Fleeing to Canada06:49 - Hot Takes on Current Protests on College Campuses 07:55 - Early Exposure To Computers and Path To Tech11:17 - The Best Product Managers Are Weird People13:30 - "I Cannot Take An Average Person And Train Them To Be A PM" 21:25 - How Shopify Is Different Than Other Big Companies31:00 - How Kaz Killed Meetings At Shopify37:30 - Write Code And Talk To Users, Do That Over And Over Again43:39 - Why Getting Married Will Be Your Best Career Accelerant50:00 - Wrap Up questions57:25 - Tyler & Sterling's Recap_________________________Connect With Kazhttps://x.com/canadakazKaz@shopify.com Connect With Tyler & Sterlinghttps://x.com/thoggehttps://x.com/sterlingmsnowFollow The I/O Podcast (New Episodes Monthly) https://x.com/IO__podcasthttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCayuY0VO95kQTUXJvh9T0oQhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-investor-operator-io-podcast/id1678642609https://open.spotify.com/show/0J92LTLgpHe8C0CzEaCBDG

In this week's episode, Casey sits down with Sterling Snow, a true visionary whose entrepreneurial journey is nothing short of inspiring. He recounts his experiences managing a family owned restaurant at 16 years old, where he discovered his passion for marketing and sales, and how these early lessons laid the foundation for his future success. Sterling's story is a testament to unwavering determination and unapologetic authenticity.Sterling discusses the highs and lows of his entrepreneurial path, from navigating the challenges of rapid growth at Divvy to learning from billion-dollar mistakes. His journey is a blend of calculated risks and relentless pursuit of excellence, offering listeners a masterclass in resilience and adaptability.Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business leader, or simply someone looking for inspiration, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and motivational anecdotes that will leave you inspired to chase your own dreams with unwavering determination. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Immad Akhund had the idea for Mercury years before they started. In fact, he'd launched 3 other startups and been through YCombinator twice before even starting initial validation on what would become the beloved neobank of startups everywhere. And opinions were mixed. Immad himself recognized the need for a simpler and more efficient banking service while while operating Heyzap his previous company. But when he shared the concept with other startups, not everyone grasped its potential.Today, Mercury dominates in the neobank industry. Immad walks hosts Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow through the early days of Mercury, shares advice on how to operate and his strategies on investing. Chapters: 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:56 Immad's Entrepreneurial Journey - Previous Companies & Learnings00:08:27 What Does Mercury Do? 00:11:24 How He Launched Mercury 00:14:35 The Neo Bank Industry and Launch Timing 00:21:50 The SVB Fallout & How That Led To Big Growth For Mercury 00:32:50 Operating Advice: The Six-Year Vesting Plan00:43:35 Immad's Hot Takes & Predictions: AI Is a Hype Cycle 00:57:17 Rapid Fire & Wrap-upThings to Check Out: Immad's Memo - How to Not Be A Bottleneck as a CEO Immad's Podcast - Curiosity PodcastImmad's Advice on Operating - @immad on X___________________This episode of the IO Podcast is brought to you by PelionConnect on XFollow on TiktokHear Other Episodes on Our Website

Sterling Snow is the former Chief Revenue Officer at Divvy, which raised €380m to date from Andreessen Horowitz and Insight Partners. He is now a Venture Partner at Pelion Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm bent on exceeding the expectations of unapologetic entrepreneurs.This episode is sponsored by GemographyAre you struggling to find top developers in a competitive market? Gemography connects you with top-tier remote tech talent from untapped regions, all pre-vetted and interview-ready. You'll Know all costs upfront, no surprises.If you like our podcast, please don't forget to subscribe and support us on your favorite podcast players. We also would appreciate your feedback and rating to reach more people.We recently launched our new newsletter, Principles Friday, where I share one principle that can help you in your life or business, one thought-provoking question, and one call to action toward that principle. Please subscribe Here.It is Free and Short (2min).

Sterling Snow joins us on this episode of the Silicon Slopes Podcast. He's a Venture Partner at Pelion, helping entrepreneurs and innovators bring their vision to life. He shares his journey as an entrepreneur in Utah, including thriving in an environment where he was allowed to make mistakes, and how he avoided the cardinal sin of Utah's tech scene: thinking too small. Sterling talks about selling businesses and making strategic moves to win in the market against his competitors. With Utah being a unique leader in the startup world, Sterling hopes to see a future that relies on collaboration over competition and values working together over all. "It doesn't mean that you have to agree on everything or that you're not going to compete, but know that we can all win together."

Struggling to find product market-fit?   Join former Divvy CRO, Sterling Snow, and learn how the company went from 0 to a $2.5B exit in just four years using effective go-to-market strategies. Find out what the team did differently that set them apart from their competition and get your product off the ground in no time!  There are 6 primary operating models Divvy used to fuel incredible growth, culture, and results. The best part is they're dead simple and every team should be using them. Don't miss this session where Sterling will talk through the tactics, mistakes, and lessons learned.

In many companies, the longtime dispute between sales and marketing prevents them from collaborating or agreeing on a goal. Divvy's CRO, Sterling Snow, created a structure aligning these two teams with others to create a formidable revenue team. This structure drove the company to a $2.5 billion-dollar acquisition by Bill within five years. In this episode, Snow shares the journey to realizing the strength of revenue alignment through sales, marketing, and customer success and the principles for implementing this structure to yield tremendous results.   Video: https://youtu.be/1L2P-fi6gfM   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the

The two biggest mistakes business leaders can make in a competitive space are thinking their competitors are too smart or, alternately, too dumb. The game on the field has shifted dramatically over the past 12 months, and what matters to a startup today is much different from a couple of years ago.    In the second installment of CRO Confidential, Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond, previous CRO at Brex, goes head-to-head with the CRO at Divvy, Sterling Snow, previously bitter rivals turned curious comrades. Snow and Blond dive deep into competition — how to position yourself against competitors and make the most of that competition.    Brex and Divvy are adversaries in the corporate card space, with many deals going up against each other. There has always been a ton of respect there and a bit of animosity, too, because of how competitive the businesses were.    This poses the question: Does staunch competition lend itself to better business? Psst… the answer is yes! Let's see what Snow and Blond have to say about competition.    Full video: https://youtu.be/7LTyMpxy9LQ   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the

Sterling Snow is the CRO of Divvy (Recently Acquired by Bill.com) and a revenue/leadership expert. He lives to help companies scale and grow and thrives on integrating sales, marketing, and customer success teams! Follow him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sterling-snow-051baab5/ And Divvy: https://getdivvy.com/ Join my Sales Mastermind Group for business owners and sales consultants - https://empatheticselling.com/ Music made by Qü ThaMusic - https://www.quthemusic.net/ The rest of my links to subscribe, support, and access more content - https://linktr.ee/daltonkjensen For the best health insurance talk to Norm - https://thehappyhealthinsuranceguy.com/ For all your digital marketing needs check out Monarch Social - https://monarchsocialbrand.com/

What does a life of success and significance look like? In episode 45, Sterling Snow shares how to set standards in different aspects of our lives to become the person we want to be. Sterling is the Chief Revenue Officer at Divvy, a financial platform for businesses. Tune in and hear from Sterling how living purposefully and being intentional about your goals and who you surround yourself with can shape your future.

Sterling Snow is a husband, father-to-be,  Christian, member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Chief Revenue Officer at Divvy. Sterling: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sterling-snow-051baab5/Sponsor: ThreadWallets.com  To learn more, go to https://www.tenaciouslyhuman.com/

If customer experience is important to your company, you won't achieve it without alignment between sales & marketing. Any interaction your customers have with your business can make or break that relationship.   In this episode, I interview Sterling Snow , Chief Revenue Officer at Divvy | Inc. , about customer experience, how he's been able to achieve alignment with his company, and tips for the listeners looking to do the same.   Sterling talked with me about: - The rise of customer experience and who's responsible for it - Divvy's ideal customer & the problems it solves - Segmenting resources to customers of differing size & advice to listeners - The feedback loop: bringing sales & marketing together - The internal communication needed to create alignment - Pros & cons the listeners should be aware of around company alignment  Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast: - Sterling Snow on LinkedIn  - Sterling Snow on Twitter  - Divvy  - Woody Klemetson on LinkedIn  - Calendly  Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Play or Google Podcasts , and find more episodes on our blog.

Taylor Jones, Principal at Peterson Ventures discusses early-stage demand gen with Rachel Hofstetter, Chief Marketing Officer at Genesis Block and former CMO at Chatbooks, and Sterling Snow, Chief Revenue Office at Divvy.  Both Rachel and Sterling were critical to igniting top-of-funnel demand in the earliest days at both Chatbooks and Divvy, and since then they both have scaled marketing and growth organizations that attract millions of users. In our conversation, Rachel and Sterling discuss the frameworks and processes they used to identify the first successful growth channels, how they scaled their growth channels and teams, how they approach hiring and evaluating growth marketers and some of the nuances between B2B versus consumer growth marketing.The portfolio companies identified and described herein do not represent all of the portfolio companies purchased, sold or recommended for funds advised by Peterson Partners. The reader should not assume that an investment in the portfolio companies identified was or will be profitable. Any opinions, projections, forecasts and estimates contained in this production are necessarily speculative in nature, are based upon certain assumptions, and subject to change without notice. It can be expected that some or all of such assumptions will not materialize or will vary significantly from actual results. This production is not an offer to buy or sell any investments. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Sterling Snow is the  Chief Revenue Officer at Divvy, which raised €380m to date from a.o. Andreessen Horowitz and Insight Partners. In today's episode of Leaders of Growth, Sterling shares his views on systemization in startups, setting up the go-to-market strategy, and the role of the CRO function. Discussion topics:0:45: Background2:30: How did you manage to re-invent yourself along your journey3:50: What is your story about growing a company, what best practices did you see?5:15: What challenges do you see at the separate stages of funding and how do you systematize?10:50: What is your advice for implementing your go-to-market model?15:25: When is the right moment to hire a CRO and what to look for in a CRO?21:15: How do you build a growth organization?27:00: When do you diversify channels?

Pull out your notepad to join Ryker as he interviews Sterling Snow, the Chief Revenue Officer at Divvy, as they touch on important business topics like thinking outside of the box to identify marketing channels, managing the actions to scale quickly, and the importance of being customer-centric. If you're looking to grow your business fast, this is the WunderCAST episode for you! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

On this episode of the Scaleup Valley podcast, War Time season, Mike Dias speaks with Sterling Snow, Senior Vice President of Revenue at Divvy | Inc. Key Takeaways: - How to explore while exploiting - Using structure as a way to attract talent - Creating good rituals of revenue

During this 204th episode of “Marketing Today,” host Alan Hart interviews Sterling Snow, the senior vice president of revenue at Divvy. Today we talk about the founding story of Divvy and why it was created in the beginning. We also talk about marketing at a high-growth company and what the impact of building your own brand can be on your own company. Snow tells us how Divvy began and where Divvy customers start their journey. He describes his broad role and predicts that having someone that is singularly responsible for revenue in this way will become a trend. Snow shares Divvy’s initial marketing strategy and how the company diversified. His advice to other marketers at high-growth companies is, “You can find these high-efficiency low-cost channels that really allow for quick and efficient growth.” Snow then emphasizes the importance of how people can use their personal brands to benefit the companies they work for. He says, “I think people underestimate how much impact they can have on their own careers and on the companies, they work for, if they take a little bit of time to put together a content strategy for themselves.” The conversation highlights how starting your own personal brand can help your company. Highlights from this week’s “Marketing Today”: Where Sterling grew up and what brought him to Salt Lake City. 01:43 Divvy is a financial platform that allows companies to automate expense reports and make payments. 02:40 The impetus to found a payments/expense management company. 03:26 Where Divvy customers start their journey. 5:04 How Divvy makes its money. 06:11 Sterling's responsibilities as Senior Vice President of Revenue. 06:56 How Sterling approaches the large scope of his role. 07:42 What led Sterling into the marketing realm. 08:30 Divvy's marketing strategy. 09:24 Sterling advises other high-growth marketers. 11:28 When Divvy was founded. 12:59 How Divvy has diversified its marketing strategy. 13:16 How Sterling fuels his ideas. 13:57 The importance of how people can use their personal brands to benefit the companies they work for. 14:40 The best way to build your personal brand while highlighting the company. 15:49 Is there an experience in his past that defines who he is today? 18:25 How Sterling knows when to take a break. 20:54 What is the advice Sterling would give to his younger self? 21:48 Are there any brands, companies, or causes that Reggie follows that he thinks other people should take notice of? 22:54 The most impactful purchase he has made in the last 6-12 months of $100 or less. 33:52 Sterling’s take on the top opportunities or threats facing marketers today. 25:14 Resources Mentioned: Ryan Hilliard at Lifeomic Divvy Blake Murray co-founder Alex Bean co-founder Competitors: Expensify, Concur Sponsored Content Morning Brew The Hustle Hubspot Salesforce Square PayPal Qualtrics Intuit Credit Karma Subscribe the podcast: Listen in iTunes (link: http://apple.co/2dbdAhV) Listen in Google Podcasts (link: http://bit.ly/2Rc2kVa) Listen in Spotify (Link: http://spoti.fi/2mCUGnC ) Connect with the Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sterling-snow-051baab5/ https://twitter.com/sterlingmsnow https://twitter.com/Divvy_HQ Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart: http://twitter.com/abhart https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhart http://twitter.com/themktgtoday https://www.facebook.com/themktgtoday/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketing-today-with-alan-hart/   Support the show.

The Inbound Success Podcast launched on August 28, 2017 and today marks the 100th episode, and 100 straight weeks of publishing interviews with high performing marketers. On this week's Inbound Success Podcast, I'm taking a break from interviewing guests to share with you 13 trends that I've observed from the 99 interviews I did throughout the last two years. Listen to the podcast to learn more about the 13 things that the world's top-performing inbound marketers are doing, and get links to the specific episodes where you can dive deeper into each topic. Transcript Welcome back to the Inbound Success podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth. I'm your host, and this is the 100th episode of the podcast. I thought this was a great opportunity for me to take a break from the usual routine of interviewing some of the incredible marketers that I get to speak to every week and look back on the last 99 episodes and try and digest some lessons learned. I've had the incredible good fortune of speaking to some really amazing marketers in the last two years as I've done this podcast. It's given me an opportunity to meet people I otherwise never would have met, to learn some things that have really kind of made a difference for me in the way I think about marketing, and have prompted me to take a second look and reevaluate the way I've been doing some things. So, thought it was a great opportunity to share some of those lessons learned with all of you. How The Inbound Success Podcast Got Started But first, I wanted to just take a moment and tell a story about why I started the podcast. It was about two and a half years ago that I had my own marketing agency, Quintain Marketing. I had had the agency for 11 years. I'd gone to a lot of marketing conferences and listened to tons of podcasts, and watched webinars, always looking to make myself a better marketer. I had a lot of clients that I wanted to help. I also wanted to market my own agency and do better every day. I always would listen to these folks talk about the marketing work they were doing and the incredible results they were getting, and so infrequently felt that there was anything really tangible that I could take away from it and immediately use to improve my own marketing. This podcast was really an attempt to solve for that. It was me trying to scratch my own itch, and in doing so hopefully helping some of you. The interesting thing about this has been that it has certainly done that for me, and it has also done so much more. I already mentioned that it's enabled me to meet so many people I otherwise would never have met. There are a lot of people in the marketing world that I really admire and respect. And having the excuse of saying, "Hey, would you like to come on a podcast?" is a great way to meet someone new and to meet and to form that relationship, so that's been great. I've also met some really incredible people that I didn't know about through my guests when I ask them who else is doing a really great job with inbound marketing. And those relationships have been amazing. One of the most amazing and incredible things about this is that it changed the entire course of my career. One of first people I interviewed when I started the podcast was Bob Ruffolo, who is the founder and CEO of IMPACT. Now, I work at IMPACT. The reason is that before we started to hit the record button for the podcast interview, we were just talking about how things were going. I was telling him that I thought I might be ready to make a change, and that led to me selling part of my company to IMPACT and joining the team. That's been a really major shift in my life and a great one. I've learned so much. I get to work with some really smart people every day and do very, very interesting work. All this has come out of this little podcast. And most importantly, I've learned a lot about marketing. As I said, that was my original goal. 13 Lessons From Interviewing 99 High Performing Marketers So without further ado, I looked back through the 99 episodes I've done before today and really saw 13 themes emerge. That's what I'm going to share with you today. 1. There Is No "Secret Sauce" The first one ... And some of these, by the way, are going to seem like no-brainers, but they're important because it's important to remind ourselves of the things that we kind of already know. First one is, in most cases there really is no secret sauce to being an amazing marketer. The folks that I interviewed who were the most successful have a few things in common. Number one, they are voracious learners. They're always trying to improve their knowledge. They're always hungry for more. And they're consistent. That's huge, the consistency. A great example of that is Goldie Chan. I interviewed her. She's often referred to as the green-haired Oprah of LinkedIn. She has the longest running daily channel on LinkedIn. She's posted a new LinkedIn video every day for I think it's about two years. It's incredible. It doesn't matter where she is, what's happening, whether she's feeling well, whether she's traveling, what her access to Wifi is, she finds a way to do it because consistency is so important for her. And it's really paid off. They also do a few things and do them really well. A great example of that is Rev Ciancio who I talked with about Instagram marketing. Rev has an incredible Instagram presence. Which by the way, do not look at it when you're hungry because his pictures are all of mouthwatering hamburgers, french fries, pizzas, chicken wings, nachos, essentially everything that's bad for you, but that tastes so good. But, Rev has a fascinating strategy for how he approaches Instagram and has built an entire business around it. He does one thing, and he does it really well. Alex Nerney talked about Pinterest similarly, just a platform a lot of inbound marketers overlook, but he's really figured out a way to make it sing for him. The hungry learners who are consistent and who pick a few things and do them really well, that's really the secret sauce, which essentially isn't so secret. That's number one. 2. Listen To Your Customers And Prospects And Use What You Learn in Your Marketing Number two is they really listen to customers and prospects and use that in their marketing. Again, sounds like a no-brainer. We always talk about the need to do persona research and to build buyer personas, but I think what happens is we get very often so caught up in building the actual persona that we forget the big picture, that it's not about having this fictional profile of a person. It's really about understanding the way our audience thinks, what their real pain points and needs are, and the language they use to talk about that. A couple of the interviews I did were great examples of this. Barron Caster at rev.com who uses their own transcription product to transcribe all of the conversations they have with customers and then pull actual words that customers have used out and feed that into the copy on their website and landing pages, and that's gotten them amazing results. Val Geisler and Joel Klettke, two of the most accomplished conversion copywriters out there, both also talked about this type of research and understanding deeply, deeply the needs of customers and prospects. Paul Blamire at Atomic Reach, who is head of customer success and makes it a point to speak to new customers shortly after they've onboarded and really understand what brought them to the company and how the product is solving their needs. And he feeds that back in not only to marketing but to product development, to every aspect of the business to deliver a better customer experience from first touch in the marketing process all the way through the experience of using the company's product. 3. You Don't Need Fancy Tools Or A Big Budget Number three, you don't necessarily need fancy tools or a big budget to get incredible results. There are some really great examples of this. Oli Billson who I recently interviewed about the small events he's doing that are delivering tremendous amounts of revenue to his business. Chris Handy who talked about marketing for a Pre-K school, really small campaigns, but they just really ... They understood their audience, and they used the available tools that they had and got terrific results for the school. Adam Sand, who's using direct mail in conjunction with inbound marketing, super old school, but very effective for him. And Harry Campbell, who's The Rideshare Guy, and he's probably the top content creator in the ridesharing space. So think Uber, Lyft, Lime, Bird. He just started blogging and has created some great content and a big following. You really don't need fancy tools or a big budget. You can do it on your own with what you've got, if I go back to the first thing, if you're consistent, if you pick a few things and do them really well, and if you're a hungry learner who is willing to roll your sleeves up and apply what you're learning. 4. Connect With Your Audience On An Emotional Level Number four, the best marketers connect with their audiences on an emotional level, another thing that might seem obvious but that I think a lot of marketers get wrong. We tend to put our marketing hats on and make our marketing all about ourselves or we fall back into that comfortable place of corporate jargon, and kind of robotic speech, and use words like leverage and synergy. Nobody talks like that in real life, or not at least the people that you want to hang out with. The people who talked about this were Kieran Flanigan of HubSpot who shared their hearts and minds strategy for creating content with two types of content, content that solves a person's problems and tells them how to do something, that's really that mind's content, and then the heart's content, which taps into a pain and emotional need that the audience has. Then, Katie Stavely from Mautic. This is ironic that these are the two examples I'm giving for this one because HubSpot and Mautic could be considered two different sides of the same coin, HubSpot being a paid marketing automation, CRM, customer service platform, and Mautic being a completely free open source alternative to it. Katie talked about how important it was to be authentic in your marketing, especially with their audience, which it's all about community. It's opensource software, so your community is helping you develop your product. But regardless, the idea is to really make that emotional connection. 5. Sometimes The Biggest Wins Come From Content That Is Not Related To Your Products Or Services Number five, with content marketing, sometimes the biggest wins happen when you don't create content about your products or services. We as marketers, as inbound marketers, think a lot about top-, middle-, and bottom-of-the funnel strategies. We're always brainstorming what are the questions that our audience is asking as relates to our product or service. That often leads us to create content that is very much about us and not so much about our audience. But, I had two interviews that I thought really highlighted how successful you can be if you flip that script and talk nothing about yourself. What I mean by that is ... I'll start with Stephanie Baiocchi, who was actually Stephanie Casstevens at the time I interviewed her. She hadn't been married yet. And funny enough, she was not working at IMPACT. That's another great outcome of the podcast. Now she is. But, she talked about a campaign that she was running for a client that sold solutions for medical waste from physicians' practices. Originally, they were creating a ton of content around medical waste, and it just wasn't working. The reason is that their audience, which is really the office managers for physicians' practices, already has a medical waste solution. You can't be in business if you don't, so they weren't out there searching for any information about medical waste. They didn't even realize they needed to switch providers or that they had a problem. It was when she kind of took a step back and thought, "What are the biggest problems that office managers have? It doesn't need to have anything to do with medical waste," and she realized it was patient no-shows. They created a patient no-show policy template that office managers could use. That was a total home run. What it did was it opened up the conversation with their audience so that eventually they could begin talking about medical waste. But at that top-of-the-funnel level, they needed first to really open that conversation, and product- and service-related content wasn't going to cut it. Another person who did that really well was Ryan Bonnici, who is now the CMO of G2 Crowd, but at the time was working at HubSpot. HubSpot's a company that has a huge audience. Of course, trying to broaden the top of the funnel at a company like HubSpot is challenging. All the low-hanging fruit is gone, and so you really have to get creative. He was trying to target a small business audience. He really asked himself, "What are the problems that small businesses have?" And, again, doesn't have to have anything to do with HubSpot. He realized when you're starting your business or when you come to work at a small business, one of the first things you have to do is come up with an email signature. You're usually either copying one that somebody else in the company has created or you have to create it from scratch, and it's kind of a pain. He built an email signature generator, an online tool where you could type in some information about yourself and it would spit out a really nice-looking email signature. That tool generated a ton of traffic, leads, and revenues for HubSpot, and it cost them only $6,000 to build it, but the impact was enormous. So, great lesson learned about getting out of the habit of creating only product- and service-related content and thinking bigger. 6. Paid Ads Are An Essential Part Of Any Inbound Marketing Strategy Number six, the old myth that paid ads are not inboundy is dead, or it should be dead. This one was woven throughout almost every interview I did. It's funny because when I first started working with inbound marketing, it was back with my old agency. I had discovered HubSpot. We were following their original methodology of attract, convert, close, delights, for those of you who've been in the HubSpot world for a long time and all. I remember many times going to INBOUND and seeing Brian Halligan stand on stage and talk about how the old way, the old interruptive way of marketing was paid ads, and people didn't like being interrupted. I think we all read that as, well, paid ads are not acceptable if you're an inbound marketer. That myth started dying, I think, several years ago, but it's worth repeating that paid ads are, I would say, not even just inboundy, they're essential to an inbound strategy in this day and age. I'll just list off a bunch of names of my guests who've talked about it. This isn't even a complete list, but Mark Rogers, who at the time was with Carney and grew The Daily Carnage newsletter using Facebook ads; Sterling Snow from Divvy who's used ads to drive leads for their platform; Moby Siddique who has his own inbound agency and does some incredible Facebook ads work with Messenger bots; AJ Wilcox, who is a LinkedIn ads expert; Ali Parmelee, who's one of my coworkers here at IMPACT who does incredible things with Facebook ads; Anthony Sarandrea; Rick Kranz. The list goes on and on. All of them attribute the success that they're getting and the incredible results to some form of paid ads. Let that be the final nail in the coffin of that old myth. Let's really embrace ads, and not just checking the box with ads and promoting our posts, but really taking a full funnel approach to advertising. Because that's the other thing that these folks talked about is it's not about boosting something on Facebook. This is about really digging in and getting good at ads and thinking how ads can be used at every stage of the funnel. 7. Content Distribution Is Critical Number seven, it's not enough to create and publish your content on your website. You've got to promote it and distribute it. This is one that I've heard time and time again. A lot of the best marketers I've spoken to say you should spend twice as much time promoting and distributing your content as you do creating it. I think for a lot of us that equation is backwards. One person who talked about that was Kipp Bodnar who is the CMO of HubSpot, probably one of the companies that is the best at inbound marketing. He talked about what a game changer it was in the last year when HubSpot really threw some muscle behind content distribution and how that impacted their traffic. This is a company that already had amazing traffic, by the way. Then, Phil Singleton. I loved my interview with Phil who is an SEO expert and an author. Phil talked about this great strategy he uses for clients where he's creating e-books, just like lots of inbound marketing agencies do. But then he takes the e-books that he makes for clients, or he takes a collection of blogs, for example, and compiles them into any book, and he publishes them as Kindle e-books on amazon.com, and also in some cases as hard copy books through Amazon direct publishing. It is so simple, and straightforward, and inexpensive. It blows my mind that more marketers are not doing this. It was a cool episode, so definitely check that out. But yeah, the lesson is don't just like write those blogs, create those e-books. Think about what are you going to do with them once they're published. How are you going to get them out in front of the world? 8. Original Research Can Drive Tremendous Results Number eight, original research can have amazing results. I had several interviews where people touched on what has come of original research. One of the people I think that that is most famous in the marketing world for doing this is Andy Crestodina. He has been doing a blogging survey for several years and really credits that with bringing a lot of attention to his agency, Orbit Media, out of Chicago, giving him a ton of backlinks and press. It's a pretty simple survey. He does put quite a bit of effort into promoting the survey itself so he can get a lot of responses, and then once he gets those responses into packaging that content so that he can turn it into things like infographics and articles, et cetera. But, it's not just Andy. Michele Aymold from Parker Dewey uses original research and data to boost her marketing results. Clare Carr from Parse.ly, they actually don't even have to do that much research because simply by the nature of the product that they sell they have access to a lot of proprietary data. She's really productized that and used it to get a tremendous amount of press. In fact, she was able to dramatically cut back the amount of content she was creating while getting better results because the data itself was so attractive to their audience, and it also helped her reduce their PR spend. Then, Rebecca Corliss at Owl Labs. They produced the state of remote work, and that's gotten them quite a bit of traction. 9. Community Is A Powerful Tool To Fuel Growth Number nine, community is such a powerful tool for marketing. This is an interesting one because here at IMPACT we've been working really hard over the course of the last two years to build our own community called IMPACT Elite, which is on Facebook. We've learned a lot about community in the course of doing that. I would say it has been a game changer for our business, certainly. We now have over 5,000 people in that community. It's a delicate balance how you run it. You can't make it all about yourself. It has to truly be about helping the members of the community and getting them to the point where they're almost running it, if you will. I spoke to several other people who have built communities and had similar experiences in terms of the community being a fundamental tool in the growth of their business. One was Bill Faeth who is a marketer who specializes in the limousine and transport business. He has Limo University, and he has a big community around that of limousine companies. Frank Gruber, who started Tech Cocktail in the beginning and turn it into Tech.co, which was then acquired, he now has a company called Established. But, he began this grassroots community all over the country of startups and people interested in the startup ecosystem and wound up building a tremendous media business from that. Nikki Nixon who at the time I interviewed her was running the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. Ameer Rosic who has a community focused on blockchain called Blockgeeks. And Mark Graham, who is an old friend of mine doing amazing things, he's up in Canada and has a software platform called Commonsku and has built a great community around that. All of these folks doing incredible things with communities in very different niches, I should say. For Bill, it was limo companies. For Frank, it was startups. For Nikki, it's people who are ABM practitioners. For Ameer, it's folks in the blockchain community. And for Mark Graham, it's people in the promotional products world. All of these different niches need communities and people are hungry to connect with others who have similar interests as they do. 10. The Quality Of Your Content REALLY Matters Content quality. I had a couple of great interviews on this. This is one that I'd love to talk with more people who are focused on this. In this day and age, you can't just be creating content and checking the box. You have to really create great content that is better than anything else out there if you really want to get amazing results. One person who talked a lot about this was Oli Gardner and how he is putting a lot of effort into really making the content that they create be the best that's available on the Internet. Emily Maxie from Very talked about this, too, really digging deep and creating unbelievable resources for your audience. Both of these folks are getting great results in terms of traffic, and that traffic ultimately turning into leads, because they took the time to create in-depth pieces that really added value for their audience. Seems like it should be obvious, it's another one of these, but it's really not too a lot of us. I mean, you might think your content's really good, but is it the best? When you Google that topic that you created content about, is your piece the best thing that you can find in the search results? If not, go back and spend the time and make it better. I think one of the lessons I've learned is it's better to make less content that's better content than it is to create a high volume. 11. Creating A Podcast - Or Being A Guest On One - Is A Good Way To Build Your Brand Another theme that came out was podcasting. It's sort of ironic because we're on a podcast talking about podcasting. But a lot of my interviews, as I went back and reviewed, had to do with podcasting, beginning with George B Thomas, who I've had the privilege to work with over the years here at IMPACT. He's now at Impulse Creative. George is a prolific podcaster, and he's ... It might seem easy when you listen to him. It just seems like, "Oh, there's a guy that just has a great rapport with his audience," but he puts a ton of thought into how he does these podcasts, how he structured them so that they not only deliver value for the audience, but that they have naturally built-in incentives for people to share them and to grow his audience. That's really worth listening to if you're somebody who wants to start a podcast. Andrew Dymski is another person who's been podcasting for a long time and who I've been a guest on his podcast. He's been a guest on mine. He's got some great insights. Ryan Hawke, who has The Learning Leader podcast, Ryan blew my mind just with how prepared he comes to everything. He talked about this, too, how before he does an interview the amount of preparation he does, the amount of preparation he does when he even just invites somebody to come on his podcast. This guy is serious business, and that's why he's so successful. He really has put the thought into it and turned his podcast into a business. Dan Moyle came on the show and talked about podcast guest interviews. So not necessarily starting a podcast, but if you want to get the word out, going on other podcasts as a guest. At the time, he was with a company called Interview Valet. What's been really cool for me is seeing the other side of that. I get pitched a lot by companies like Interview Valet, and there are certainly other ones as well. They'll send me an email and say, "Listened to your show. Thought it was great. Here's a guest that I think would be really good for you." That's how I've gotten a lot of my more interesting guests. There's something to that podcast guesting strategy that really I think can help you get traction and raise your profile if you're trying to build a personal brand or trying to get the word out about a product or a service. There are plenty of companies like Interview Valet that, for a fee, will take care of that for you. It's kind of like having a talent agent. I also talked to Jay Acunzo about podcasting. He is actually a consultant to other companies and helps them create, produce, and get the best results out of their podcasts. One of his clients is Drift, which comes up a lot on my show. People love Drift, always cited as one of the best examples of a company doing inbound marketing really well, and they have a couple of podcasts. Then, Jeff Large of Come Alive Creative. Lots of folks talking about podcasting. It really stuck out to me that it's not just about, hey, everybody should have a podcast, and I don't think everyone should. It's not right for everybody. But, podcasting can play a role in almost everybody's marketing strategy for sure. 12. Video, Video, Video Number 12, video. Can't have a list of trends and things that are important in marketing without talking about video these days. Some of the guests that I've had that have spoken about this are some of the more impressive people that have been on this podcast. In 2019, I opted to kick the year off with an interview with Marcus Sheridan, who is an amazing man that is a big role model for me. I currently get to work with him at IMPACT. But, he's somebody that I followed for years and I have so much respect for because he sees things about marketing and about customer behavior that a lot of other people don't, even though they're staring us in the face. One of the things that he has really seen and committed to is that when it comes to marketing and selling, we can't just tell people something. We have to show it to them, too, and we show it to them using video. He talked about how important video was going to be in 2019. I know that he's out speaking at conferences and talking about video all over the world. Also, Eric Siu. I kicked off 2018 with Eric Siu doing predictions for last year. He talked about video as well and was like, "Video's going to be huge in 2018." So in both of my kind of yearly prediction episodes, the guests that I've had have cited video as one of the biggest things we should be paying attention to. And then, of course, I already mentioned her, but Goldie Chan, who is a LinkedIn influencer and creates a new LinkedIn video every single day, has made a career around those videos. She's amazing. She travels all over the world and is sought after as a speaker because of the LinkedIn video she creates. And Dennis Yu who has turned video into a formula for building people's personal brands. It's really impressive what he does. They're these short little videos that he films. Using that medium has helped countless people create brands for themselves. 13. Lead With Brand Which brings me to my 13th and last lesson learned from 99 interviews with incredible marketers, and that is that all of these strategies, and tactics, and approaches are powerful. But at the end of the day, the most important thing in marketing is brand. Brand is paramount. Without it, you can have some quick wins but you'll never have a true success that will last over the long term. I'm only going to cite one example here because it's the one that comes up the most. And if you listen to this podcast with any degree of regularity, you know that at the end I always, always ask my guests, "Company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?" There is one company/individual, the company and the marketer who's spearheading it for them, that by far comes up more than anybody else, and that is Drift and Dave Gerhardt, who I was very fortunate to have as a guest early on. I can't tell you the number of times people have mentioned Drift, and it's not just people from the marketing world. It's folks that have come onto this podcast from all different industries, and they all cite Dave Gerhart and his work building a brand at Drift as the one succeeding the most with inbound marketing. It's not for me to say what that brand is or to really try to encapsulate what Dave has done, but I think it's fair to say that they've built a brand that's incredibly authentic. There's no artifice. There's no fancy tricks about it. They, of everybody, really reflect everything I've said about the past, you know, this list of 12 to 13 trends I just spoke about today. When I look back through this list, they are doing a few things and doing them really well. They really listen to their customers. It's not about fancy tools or a big budget. The things that make them successful don't have anything to do with that. It's about connecting on emotional level. It's about creating content that sometimes doesn't have anything to do with your products or services. They do paid ads. And it's not enough to create and publish your content, you've got to promote it. They are so good at that. They've got a tremendous community, really high-quality content, a bunch of podcasts. They use video better than almost anybody else, especially on LinkedIn. Checkout Dave Gerhart's LinkedIn presence. And they just have a really strong brand. So my hat is off to Dave Gerhart and the team at Drift for ... If I had to give out an award for top inbound marketers, I think it would go to them. Thank YOU For Listening But really, everybody that I've interviewed over the course of the last two years has been so impressive. It is just my absolute privilege to get to do this every single week. I also wanted to say thank you to you for listening. Podcasting is a funny exercise. As I record this, it's Sunday morning, and I'm sitting in my home office, which is a tiny little room that actually had to be permitted as a closet because it's so small. There's chaos happening around me in my house. I'm by myself talking into a microphone. I'll go away, and I'll turn this into an episode. It'll go live tomorrow. You'll be hearing this Monday, if you get the episode right when it comes out or sometime after, and you're out there listening. But when I create these things, it's just me in a room. To know that there are people who choose to listen to this every week is just an unbelievable honor and a privilege to me. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to this content. I hope so much that you've learned something from it and that, even if it's in a small way, it's helped you get better results from your marketing and feel like a smarter marketer. If that has happened, then I feel like I've succeeded. With that, I will say I would love to hear from you. It's been a hundred episodes. If you are a regular listener, please take a moment and contact me. I always say at the end you can tweet me @workmommywork, which is my Twitter handle, but you can also message me on LinkedIn. You can email me at kbooth@impactbnd.com. You can send a carrier pigeon. However you want to do it, I would love it if you would get in touch and let me know what you like about the podcast and what's something that I can improve because I'd love to make the next hundred episodes even better. With that, I won't belabor it. Thank you again for listening, and I'll see you next week. Or not see you, I'll be talking to you next week for episode 101.  

Traditionally, “alignment” between teams looked like this: Marketing did its thing then passed (or, more accurately, threw) the baton to sales, who then closed the deal and passed the baton again to customer success. There was a lot of movement, but there was one crucial element missing: synergy. In this episode Sterling Snow, SVP of Revenue at Divvy, talks about how to line up multiple teams around a single target—and why that target should always be revenue focused.

As the Senior VP of Revenue at Divvy, Sterling Snow is a firm believer in measuring what matters at all times and uses goal setting and evaluation to drive success. A clear and concise conversation, filled with important information for all leaders.More Info: Sterling Snow See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sterling Snow: Managing Your Expenses Let's start here...we all hate expenses because – they take away from the bottom line. Even worse, you have to keep track of them so you can deduct them from your top line...for me, that's extra work and I don't like it....you know I would rather be at a couples retreat somewhere with JJ or watching Californication or Mrs. Maisel As one of Utah's most experienced marketers, Sterling Snow, SVP of Revenue at Divvy, is here to help --  Divvy, is an expense management platform built to eliminate the headache of end-of-month reporting. And if this is your headache check out today's Nice Guys.   Show notes by show producer/podcastologist: One of the Taylor Sisters    Connect with Sterling Snow: Twitter: @Divvy_HQ Website: www.getdivvy.com/niceguys Email: chandler@getdivvy.com   Nice Sponsors: Get $100.00 to demo the best expense management software EVER. Get your free E-Book 5 Ways to Make Money Podcasting at www.Turnkeypodcasting.com/gift   Reach The Nice Guys Here: Doug- @DJDoug Strickland- @NiceGuyonBiz   Nice Links: Subscribe to the Podcast Niceguysonbusiness.com TurnkeyPodcast.com - You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. Podcast Production, Concept to Launch   Book Doug and/or Strick as a speaker at your upcoming event. Amazon #1 Best selling book Nice Guys Finish First. Doug's Business Building Bootcamp (10 Module Course)   Nice Survey: Take our short survey so The Nice Guys know what you like.     Partner Links: Amazon.com: Click before buying anything. Help support the podcast. Acuity Scheduling: Stop wasting time going back and forth scheduling appointments   No time to get to this, but you can read the blog here: 12 worries that every entrepreneur has   Promise Statement: To provide an experience that is entertaining and adds value to your life.   Never underestimate the Power of Nice.  

Sterling Snow: Managing Your Expenses Let's start here...we all hate expenses because – they take away from the bottom line. Even worse, you have to keep track of them so you can deduct them from your top line...for me, that's extra work and I don't like it....you know I would rather be at a couples retreat somewhere with JJ or watching Californication or Mrs. Maisel As one of Utah's most experienced marketers, Sterling Snow, SVP of Revenue at Divvy, is here to help --  Divvy, is an expense management platform built to eliminate the headache of end-of-month reporting. And if this is your headache check out today's Nice Guys.   Show notes by show producer/podcastologist: One of the Taylor Sisters    Connect with Sterling Snow: Twitter: @Divvy_HQ Website: www.getdivvy.com/niceguys Email: chandler@getdivvy.com   Nice Sponsors: Get $100.00 to demo the best expense management software EVER. Get your free E-Book 5 Ways to Make Money Podcasting at www.Turnkeypodcasting.com/gift   Reach The Nice Guys Here: Doug- @DJDoug Strickland- @NiceGuyonBiz   Nice Links: Subscribe to the Podcast Niceguysonbusiness.com TurnkeyPodcast.com - You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. Podcast Production, Concept to Launch   Book Doug and/or Strick as a speaker at your upcoming event. Amazon #1 Best selling book Nice Guys Finish First. Doug's Business Building Bootcamp (10 Module Course)   Nice Survey: Take our short survey so The Nice Guys know what you like.     Partner Links: Amazon.com: Click before buying anything. Help support the podcast. Acuity Scheduling: Stop wasting time going back and forth scheduling appointments   No time to get to this, but you can read the blog here: 12 worries that every entrepreneur has   Promise Statement: To provide an experience that is entertaining and adds value to your life.   Never underestimate the Power of Nice.  

Sterling Snow   Sterling Snow is the VP of Marketing at Divvy, an expense management platform built to eliminate the headache of end-of-month reporting. The company has been growing rapidly, in fact, the headcount has quadrupled to 140 in under 11 months and they’ve secured $57m in funding. By integrating real-time tracking for every business transaction, Divvy provides organizations with instant insight into their spend. With Divvy, you can make informed cash flow decisions, curb losses before they happen, and never have to save a receipt again.   Listen to another #12minconvo

How does a fast growing SaaS startup get 95% of its business leads from inbound marketing?    This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Divvy VP of Revenue Sterling Snow shares how the company went from 20 employees to more than 140 in 2018, with 95% of that growth fueled by inbound leads. Some highlights from our discussion include: In 8 months from April to December 2018, Divvy has undergone explosive growth from 20 employees to 140 - and it is expected to more than double in size again in 2019. During that same period, the company raised a Series A and Series B round of funding. 95% of the company's customers come from its inbound marketing efforts. One of the first channels that got results for the company was LinkedIn's sponsored InMail which they used to target demo offers to qualified prospects. They are also seeing some good results from paid advertising on Quora. Today, sponsored content is driving strong results - particularly paid email newsletter placements. On an average day, the company sees between 300 and 700 demo requests per day from its inbound marketing efforts. Looking ahead to the coming year, Divvy is planning to expand its marketing efforts through podcast guest appearances, dimensional mailing, and an increased focus on SEO. Resources from this episode: Get $50 for taking a Divvy Demo at getdivvy.com/inboundsuccess. Sterling Snow on LinkedIn. Listen to the podcast to get the details behind Divvy's explosive growth and the inbound marketing strategies behind their success. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host):Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and this week my guest is Sterling Snow, who is the Senior Vice President of Revenue at Divvy. Welcome Sterling. Sterling: Thanks Kathleen. Awesome to be here today. Sterling and Kathleen recording this episode Kathleen: Yeah, I'm excited to learn more about some of the stuff you guys have been working on because it sounds like you're getting great results from your marketing. Before we dive into that, for those who are listening and might not know much about Divvy, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and about the company. About Divvy Sterling: Yeah, absolutely. I've been in various marketing roles for the last 10 years. Most recently before Divvy, I was with a company called Jive, a fast growing start up in the unified communications as a service space. When they were acquired by LogMeIn in April, I wanted to go through that hyper growth again with a new and exciting company. Divvy has provided all that and more, so I've been here since April. In that time, we've seen Divvy grow from around 20 employees to today, we have over 140. Kathleen: Whoa. Sterling: We added thousands of companies that are now using the Divvy platform. 95% of them coming from our inbound marketing efforts. That was the first team that I was tasked with building when I got here to Divvy. Since then, we've built out the sales and customer success functions that all kind of roll up into the revenue head for us. That's who I am and what I'm working on. Divvy is a company that owns and puts you in control of your finances. Everything from funding your business all the way through spending money and reconciling it with your accounting software, that it was Divvy does. We automate that process. We make it very simple. Very visible. And we give you the control you need to be in the driver's seat of your finances. We do that for free. We make money like a credit card. We make money on what's called an "interchange fee" which means every time you swipe your card you're not paying any extra in person. You're not paying any extra, but there's a fee called interchange any time there's a credit card transaction. That's a little bit about me and a little bit about Divvy. Kathleen: Love it. That's a great business model. I want to make sure I heard you correctly because I kind of had like a jaw drop moment when you said ... When exactly did you join? Tell me that again. Sterling: April. Kathleen: April. Sterling: Yes. Kathleen: Of last year? So it hasn't even been a year yet? Sterling: No, April of ... Yeah, April of this year. Kathleen: Of this year. Sterling: Yes ma'am. Kathleen: It hasn't even been a year yet. Sterling: It hasn't even been a year yet. Kathleen: And you've gone from 20 employees when you joined, to how many? Sterling: To over 140, yep. Kathleen: Oh my gosh. Wow. Sterling: It's wild. We've raised a Series A and a Series B, and done a bunch of things in that time. But it's all driven by people seeing our marketing message, identifying the problems we're solving, and bringing their companies on the Divvy platform. We are very much trying to keep up with the growth from a customer acquisition and a revenue standpoint as opposed to just throwing bodies and trying to figure this out. We're growing with our revenue and our customer acquisition as opposed to the other way around. Kathleen: That's amazing. What really blew me away was that you said 95% of your new customers come from your inbound marketing efforts? Sterling: That is correct. Kathleen: Wow. Alright, so I feel like we have a lot to talk about. Let's talk. Sterling: Great. How Divvy Gets 95% of Its Customers From Inbound Marketing Kathleen: I mean, I don't even know where to start. Obviously, you came in. You had a small team. You've got a much bigger team now. I want to focus in on that 95% that's coming in through inbound marketing. Walk me through what your inbound marketing strategy looks like. Sterling: Yeah. Well it's obviously matured. The first thing when I got in in April, was to figure out, "Okay, we need two or three lead sources to start feeding an inbound sales team," right? At that point the sales team was, I think, seven people. So it was small. We started testing a bunch of things. Like I mentioned, I've done this for a decade now so I came in with kind of preconceived notions about what would work for a company like Divvy. Those assumptions were largely inaccurate. We nailed kind of our first two or three channels. Started feeding and growing the sales team. Then every month to this day, we try and figure out two to three new channels that provide a marketing payback that's acceptable for us, and it allows us to continue to generate the demand to feed our sales team and continue to go out and grow like gang buses. Kathleen: You're growing the number of channels that you're using. I imagine now that you're a company of 140, I could see where that's an easier approach to take. You've got more people. You've got more bandwidth. But back in the beginning, there were 20 of you. Not all of them are marketers clearly. How do you take that approach where you're saying, "Let's exploit more channels" without getting distracted and spreading yourselves too thin across all these different areas? Sterling: Yeah. Back in April I think there were three of us: Me, Chandler and Brock. Then we brought in a fourth, but really that was what I spent most of my time doing. So before we start really caring about creative, or brand, or those things, it was about how do we generate healthy demand very quickly? I worked on that a lot with Chandler. That was the focus, right? You couldn't get distracted because that was priority number one, was find and identify those channels. Test them. Test them quickly and move on quickly when they don't work. Get the ship right in a timely manner. Kathleen: In the early days when it was just the three of you and you were starting out, and you're testing these channels, what were some of the first channels that you started to see traction with? Sterling: Yeah, again this is where I was wrong. We tested some PPL (pay-per-lead) vendors really early on because I'd seen that work and I had some success with that at previous stops- Kathleen: And for anybody who's listening and doesn't know PPL, Pay Per Lead? Sterling: Pay Per Lead. So different vendors through a bunch of different things. You could do content syndication. You can actually have pre-qualed vendors. We largely just saw that not work for our business. Again, it was about gathering that data quickly and moving on fast. So we moved right into paid social, and sponsored content. That was where we started to see our first really fantastic traction. That was where I kind of had my own jaw dropping moment of this idea, this problem that Divvy is fixing, people are hungry for it. We just have to find the right marketing channels to put it in front of them. Yeah, so that's how it went. It kind of went PPL. Flop. Across different vendors, right? You don't ever have a single source of failure. Tried PPL across local vendors, didn't see results that were appealing enough. We quickly move into a paid social and a paid content kind of world. Immediately see those things take off and then start building out more of your SEM, more of your organic and web-driven things, and some of those other initiatives. Kathleen: All right, so let's start to unpack this a little bit. You saw some success with paid social. Walk me through which channels. Were there any particular ad formats, and what kind of audience targeting were you doing? How Divvy Is Using Paid Social Sterling: Yeah. We obviously had our buyer personas. Facebook and LinkedIn or wherever we spent most of our time in those early days, and very quickly you're able to tell, "Okay, this is the type of company that Facebook brings, and this is the type of company LinkedIn brings in: Your cost for a lead." You're able to just map all that pretty quickly. Then you get to pick. "Okay, so we're more heavily in LinkedIn. We're less-" because for us Facebook brought in very small companies, solopreneurs, things like that. Which are great, and Divvy accepts them, but where we wanted to spend marketing dollars was on companies that had a few employees at least. We're spending some money on behalf of their business on a monthly basis. That sort of thing. Kathleen: Okay, so LinkedIn wound up being your more successful social channel. Sterling: Yeah. Kathleen: What kinds of LinkedIn ads were you doing? Was it sponsored content? Was it text ads? What do those look like? Sterling: Again, same process right? We did it all. So you do sponsored content. You do native ads. You do all these things, but paid InMail has actually proven over time to be the most successful for us. Kathleen: Okay. Paid content. What kinds of content? Articles that you were writing for your blog and then- Sterling: Sorry, so it's paid InMail, right- Kathleen: Oh, sorry. I thought you said paid content. Got it. Okay. Sterling: No. So we're paying to send messages directly into our potential buyers' inbox within LinkedIn. That's where it's proven to be successful. A very high CPL, but a very low marketing payback period. So that's ... we'll take that all day long. Kathleen: Yeah, I was going to ask about that because my experience with LinkedIn is that it can be very effective, but it's definitely a higher customer acquisition cost. Sterling: Yes, no doubt about that. Particularly if you're comparing it to other social channels. I think it could scare some people away. But again, CPL is a metric that as marketers we pay attention to, and I think we should. But what's maybe more important than CPL is payback. You'd happily spend thousands of dollars to land someone who you start making revenue off of in month two. That's really what Divvy does. But you do have to have kind of some money and some grit to hang in there and see that kind of a strategy through. Kathleen: How do you do sponsored InMail in a way that doesn't feel super spammy to the recipient? Sterling: It's a great question. I think you can always get better at it. What we do is we take a very informative tone of like, "Hey, this is who we are. This is what we do. This is why it matters to you." But we also always have a value ad in there. We know your time is valuable as the Controller of a company, VP of Finance, some of our targeted personas. We say, "Hey, come take a demo. We'll give you $50.00 for your time. We'll give you $100.00 for your time." And again, that comes back to betting on ourselves as a company because we close 35-40% of our held demos. We can afford to give people some kind of attractive offers to actually attend a demo. Most people will take it. They've heard about us. They have started to hear rumblings of a disruptor in this space. They're already curious. Then you say, "Hey, we're going to give you $50.00 or $100.00 to attend this demo." They come in and they sign up, and that's largely been the LinkedIn formula for us. Kathleen: Yeah, and I suppose you have to know what a new customer is worth to you. If spending $50.00 to get somebody who's going to represent a significantly higher value of ongoing revenue, that becomes a no brainer. Sterling: Exactly. Kathleen: Any other types of LinkedIn campaigns other than sponsored in-mail? Sterling: We do the rest, but that's the one that we've really drilled down on, that we spend the majority of our LinkedIn budget on. Kathleen: Okay. This was in the very beginning, have you over time evolved to add or layer in any other social channels? How Divvy Is Using Quora to Drive Leads Sterling: Yeah. I mean we have at this point a very healthy marketing mix, but when you first start out, you're trying to find your two or three breadwinners. But yeah, at this point we're spread out in a much more diverse way. You add in things like Quora, which for us counts as paid social, and obviously you mix in some Facebook, some Twitter ads and those types of things just for paid social, right? Then you branch out across the rest of your paid media as well. Kathleen: To clarify, you mentioned Quora. Are you actually doing paid ads on Quora? Are you responding to Quora questions? What are you doing there? Sterling: Yeah, it's part of their paid platform and it doesn't take up a large part of our budget currently. But it does get some nice returns. Kathleen: Oh that's neat. One of my guests that I just had on talked about Quora, but taking more of an organic approach there, which was really interesting. Definitely- Sterling: Yeah, I think it's healthy too. You look at some of the organic activity. It happens on Quora, and Reddit, and some of these other forums, can be nice little spots. Obviously, you just have more control when you're in a paid environment. How Divvy Is Using Sponsored Content to Drive Leads Kathleen: Yeah, now the other thing that you mentioned you started to do early on was some sponsored content. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Sterling: Yeah. This was a really interesting learning for me. Divvy's appeal is so broad. Let me ask you, have you done expense reporting on behalf of a business? Kathleen: Yes. So I used to own my own business- Sterling: Yep. Kathleen: And now I'm an employee at a business, so I have been on all sides of that fun equation. Sterling: Tell me what your experience ... I'm sure you've used a plethora of tools and solutions, and processes. Tell me how it's been for you. Kathleen: Well I sort of like run the full spectrum. I remember the days of filling out spreadsheets with my expenses and attaching actual receipts. Sterling: Lots of people are still doing that by the way, but yeah. Keep going. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't miss those days at all. In fact, I would pay money to not have to do that again. Sterling: Yeah. Kathleen: You lose things, right? You lose your receipts. I would say for the last, oh gosh, three to four years, I've been using systems where I have both a desktop interface as well as a mobile app that lets me ... If I'm out to lunch with somebody, I can take a picture of the receipt and it uploads into the app. The app syncs with my corporate credit card. I can attach those receipts to the credit card charges, and then submit an actual expense report completely electronically. The systems that I've used in the past all integrate with QuickBooks, which is what the two businesses I've been involved with have been using. Sterling: That's awesome. You've kind of seen the first evolution from like spreadsheets and stapled receipts to a solution where you spend on your corporate card and then you attach a receipt and kind of categorize a transaction with a software provider. Is that fair? Kathleen: Yes, exactly. Sterling: What Divvy is doing is saying, "Hey, yeah the app that lets you take a picture of your receipt is better than your old spread. But we're doing is taking it a step further." With Divvy, when you swipe your card, your expense report is done because we are the actual corporate card, it's the Divvy MasterCard, so it's all automated from there. It knows what budget it comes out of, the category that it's in, and you're literally done. Kathleen: Oh, okay. Gotcha. Sterling: So you have real time insight into your budgets. Your expense reports are automated. A bunch of other features that I won't go into, but that's what we're doing. Oh, and by the way, it's free. So whatever you were paying for take that picture of your receipt, otherwise, you don't need it anymore. Save that money. When we were doing that, when I can tell that story, when I can tell business owners, small business owners, corporate controllers, VPs of Finance of companies, "Stop messing around with all this post-transaction garbage. Automate it at the swipe, and it just flows into your QuickBooks or your NetSuite," or whatever it is, people just jump at that. So all we had to do was find the right venues to kind of tell that story, really. Sterling: Honestly, what was fascinating about sponsored content is we didn't have to say too much about our product or the features. We would tell a story. We would say, "These two Founders who raised $60 million dollars in the last three months are taking on and automating expense reports from swipe to books." Bam, like that, we would get 400 to 600 inbound leads in a day. Those were kind of those jaw dropping moments for me as a marketer, where I feel like ... We did some things right on the marketing side for sure, but the product and the market fit were just special. We just had to find more of those channels, again, just really like tell a snippet of our story and then watch the traffic come in. Kathleen: Yeah. That's what I was thinking in my head as you were telling that story is that great marketing is definitely no substitute for really strong product market fit. Sterling: Of course. Kathleen: You know, you kind of have to have both so that's interesting. Alright, sponsored content. If somebody's listening and they're thinking, "Huh, that's an approach that I'd want to take," walk me through what you're doing there. How do you begin to get traction? What's your outreach strategy like? How do you target the places where you want to get placement? Sterling: Yeah. Again, so these are all paid relationships so it's usually pretty easy to get ahold of them because they're trying to sell something that we're trying to buy. We do a lot with newsletters. Chandler, who's on our team, has done a fantastic job of identifying and continuing to identify newsletters where our target audience consumes their content. Then we throw up kind of our little paragraph about our business and a teeny bit about what do, and we send them to a landing page. It's very simple, but out-sized rewards for us. Along the way you learn little things like, "Oh, if we add an image to our little paragraph that helps a ton. Oh, if we actually have motion graphics attached to our little blurb, then CTR is even higher." You learn a bunch of those things as you go, but it's like I said ... So for us, it's those emails where our target market consumes content. Kathleen: Now in the email channel. In the email newsletter channel, are you looking at newsletters that are already set up to take paid or sponsored content? Or are you doing any outreach to newsletters that don't and figuring out a way to get your presence in there? Sterling: That's a great question. 90% of the time there are people who are already monetizing their newsletters, and so they already have a program going there. But we have done with one or two companies, we've actually been their beta. We called them up and said, "Hey, we love what you're doing. We're actually readers or we know people who are readers. We want to help you start monetizing this because we know we've really done it well with X, Y and Z company. So let us help you." We've done that in the past with some good results too. That's a lot of fun, right? Because you get to work with these companies, give them input as they build out their program for placements and that's a lot of fun when we get to do that. Kathleen: If somebody is thinking that they want to do some sort of sponsored content in an email newsletter, are there any metrics that you can share, or ballparks, about what you should expect to spend on that kind of a thing? Is it based on the number of subscribers? How is that generally calculated? Sterling: Yeah, so it's a CPM. So depending on the size of the newsletter, they're just going to hit with a CPM and times the number of subscribers they have. Kathleen: Are you paying based on recipients, or are you paying based on opens? Sterling: In everyone's they do it a little bit different. Some of them do it by registrants, and some of them do it by opens. But they kind of all have their way that they like to do it. Kathleen: Got it. From your end, you know if you say, "Okay, we're going to have a paid placement in newsletter X," I assume you have a process on the back end of ... I think you mentioned setting up a landing page. What does that look like so that you can fully capitalize on any click throughs that you're getting? Sterling: Yeah, again this is where like to this day we're doing a lot of testing. We're doubling down and saying, "Okay, what do phone numbers do? What if we try and get them to call right now as opposed to filling out this form?" We're just testing a lot of that, but historically what it's been is just driving for a form fill landing page. Again, reiterating whatever offer we have, our value proposition, and the call to action is to take a demo. We remind people that Divvy's 100% free, and how we make money. We include some customer testimonials from some recognizable logos to make sure that folks know that we're trusted by thousands of companies. That's largely been our blueprint. Then you just test from there. You say, "Okay, if we change the CTA a little bit to call in now, or schedule a demo now as opposed to just getting the form fill and waiting for a rep to reach out to you," all of those types of things are the fun things that marketers get to test and improve. Divvy's Inbound Marketing Results Kathleen: Can you share with me examples of some of the kinds of results you've gotten from these different newsletters? Sterling: Yeah, in terms of what? Kathleen: In terms of ... Well, it could be click throughs, it could be demo requests. However you're measuring success. Sterling: Yeah. Kathleen: I'd love to get a sense of is it, "We paid X to a newsletter and we got five demo requests," or is it, "We paid X to a newsletter and we got 500"? What is the order of magnitude there for you all? Sterling: Sure. For us, there's always layers. The first thing is "Okay, what did we pay?" Then it's "What was the click through rate?" Then it's "What was the form fill rate?" Then it's "What was the demo held rate?" Then it's "What was the opportunity amounts generated?" Then it's "What was closed?" It's kind of like the full funnel. When I work with my team, what we cared the most about, the first thing that we pay attention to is form fills. So, how many people actually filled out the entire form to get a demo request? Like I said, on days where we do this we see between 300 and our highest ever is 700 demo requests in a day. Then obviously you drill down and you say, "Okay, what was the opportunity amount generated in terms of value to Divvy? And then what was closed?" There's some other things. So obviously opportunity amount generated, that's a conversion. Then it kind of gets passed off to sales, but we generate tens of millions of dollars of opportunities from those. Kathleen: Wow, those are pretty strong numbers. Sterling: Oh yeah. Again, I think that our marketing team has done an excellent job. But I think again what you're seeing is a wonderful product that our Co-Founders and team have built because some of those numbers are out of this world. Even sometimes the vendors who we pay to do these sponsorships with tell us, "This is far and away the best result we've ever seen from a campaign like this." So as any good marketer, happy to take a lot of credit for our team, but also acknowledging that the product market fit is extraordinary. Kathleen: Yeah. Outside of email newsletters, any other kind of sponsored content that you're seeing real success with? Sterling: Well, you nailed it. We're starting to foray into the podcast space because again, it's pretty organic. You get to just have a conversation and then you make a little plug about your business, and who you are and what you do. If we continue to find those correct podcasts where our target market is consuming the content, then we're going to continue to have success. So that's part of our next step in that sponsored content realm. Kathleen: Yeah, so full disclosure: This is not a sponsored podcast for Divvy. I am not being paid to have them on. This was purely because you guys were getting great results and I wanted to learn more about it. I just wanted to make sure that's clear to anybody who's listening. Sterling: Absolutely. Kathleen: Yeah. Interesting. Any other particular strategies that have worked really well for you? Sterling: You know, we've done a really good job at our PPC stuff, when you look at classic Bing, Google.  We're starting to show really good signs with physical mailers. Again, when you kind of give us some credit that it's only been since April that we started the team, a lot of these initiatives are relatively new. But you start to see those strong results as well. You're also going through a lot of learnings. Okay, are the deal sizes that come in from Google and Bing, how do they compare to the stuff you're doing on LinkedIn and sponsored newsletters? That sort of thing. I think we have a lot of really good results. The stuff that I'm the most excited about right now are our physical mailers, and then continuing to bolster some of our PPC efforts. Kathleen: So physical mailers, that is definitely different than what a lot of the guests who come on my show talk about. What do those look like? Sterling: We have fun with it, because you get a lot of mail and most times it goes right in the trash or it doesn't even make it to the decision maker or whatever. We've had an offer where we'll pay for a year of Netflix for someone to take a demo. We include kind of that card with a package of popcorn that gets sent in an envelope. So it already comes in a different and unique ... It just feels weird and different, and you kind of have to open. So stuff like that has proven to be effective for us. We'll continue to iterate and have fun, and learn a lot from that. Kathleen: That makes a ton of sense. In a previous life when I owned my own agency, one of the things we did a lot of was just that kind of thing. The term for it is "dimensional mail" and it does have dramatically higher response rates than typical flat mail because it's like everybody thinks they're getting a present. You can't resist it. You have to open it up and see what's in there because it might be something cool for you, and in this case it is. It's free popcorn and potentially Netflix. Sterling: And Netflix. Yeah. Kathleen: Yeah. I mean, it's also a great way to get past the gatekeeper, I found. Like, when you have direct mail campaigns and you want to get to somebody who usually has a secretary or an assistant fielding their mail. If it is like a box with a thing in it, it usually makes it to the person. Sterling: I remember one of the best things I ever got, because you and me can get mailers just like we're sending to other people. But they sent a box. So okay, I'm going to open it. I open it. It's a case of Ray Bans, but just a case. Inside says, "Meet with us at Dream Force and get your Ray Bans," essentially, "We'll put the glasses in this case." I was like, man that is clever and I loved it. I ended up going and sitting through the demo and signing up. So it worked from top to bottom. I love people like that, who like you mentioned, are doing really good at dimensional mail. I think that's an area where we're seeing some early attraction but can improve for sure. Kathleen: That's so funny that you say that about the Ray Bans because one of the ones that worked the best on me was very similar. It was an empty case for Maui Jims. I went to the booth, and I got myself a brand new pair of Maui Jim sunglasses. I'll tell you, I was very happy to engage with that company. Sterling: Yeah, I agree. Although a bunch of us read and listen to Gary V's stuff, and he talks about the Thank You Economy. When someone puts in that kind of effort, to me it communicates that they have a lot of confidence in what they're pitching you, and you also just like human nature is to say, "Wow, they really did something for me. I owe it to them to at least hear them through and consider it." That goes a long way in this day and age when we're just kind of bombarded nonstop with offers, and ads, and all that. Kathleen: Yeah, that feeling of quid pro quo is strong. Sterling: It really is. But yeah, I don't disagree with that at all. Kathleen: Yeah, well that's really cool. It sounds like your efforts have really resulted in a nice, steady and strong flow of demo requests. Have you seen a similar growth in, for example, just overall website traffic? Are you doing anything on the traffic generation side? Sterling: Yeah. One of the next frontiers for us is to make sure that we spend more time caring about organic and working on things like SEO and site optimization, and landing page optimization, and all of those kinds of things. That's stuff that we're working on now. But just naturally with how our business has grown, site traffic has just exploded. We had to change our AWS subscription I think three times so far this year to level up, but that was largely a result of just people knowing who we are and what we're doing. Now it's like, "Okay, let's get a little more purposeful about this and put some effort into continuing to-" Like, have that be an active part of our funnel. Kathleen: Yeah. Looking ahead to 2019, I'm assuming that you want every year to be better than the last. I don't know how you top going from 20 to 140 people, but what are you- Sterling: I'll tell you. Next year we're supposed to go from 150 to 350, so that's how you top it. Kathleen: Oh my God. I would not want to be your HR Director. That sounds like a really hard job. Sterling: But she is amazing. Her name is Kacy. She joined us from Uber a couple of months ago, so she is very familiar with how to grow an organization like ours very quickly. We have a lot of confidence in her. Otherwise, yeah going from 150 to 350 would be a nightmare. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. It definitely has the potential to ... Bad growth can break you, for sure. Sterling: Absolutely. Kathleen: Looking ahead to the coming year, what's on your radar as far as new tests you want to try, new channels that you're eyeing? Sterling: Yeah, well one of the big things is continuing to build out our marketing organization and making sure that we're bringing in the right talent for different roles. You heard me talk about a lot of things I think we're doing really well, but there are certain areas where we can improve and largely that's about going out and continuing to get the right talent on the team. So where I mentioned SEO for example, we can do a lot of that stuff with the existing team, but then let's go out and get someone who that's their specialty and they have a track record, and they can help us out a lot. Really, when you look at next year it's continuing to build on the good stuff that we accomplished, and then round out the team so we have more bandwidth to do more tests, and continue to stoke the fire and help Divvy grow. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, SEO, it's changing so fast. Thank God we do have somebody on our end who just looks at that because- Sterling: Yeah. Kathleen: I don't know what I would do without that person. Sterling: Oh, it's crazy. Then the other thing is so right now if we have people who are managing Facebook and LinkedIn. Let's say, wouldn't it be much better to have one person who could be in LinkedIn all day, and one person who could be in Facebook all day? So that's what I mean by continuing to break it out, because like you said, with SEO, but with literally every other platform, algorithms change daily and different cost structures are varying widely, and how much you're paying per click is just kind of ... So you really have to be super honed in. I think that's an area for us to improve in as we grow and scale. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Great. Well I'm going to switch gears here now. There's two questions that I ask everyone that I interview, and I'm really curious to know what your answers will be. The first one is, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Sterling: That's a great question. Who I aspire to be like, is that kind of the in the individual or company. There's a lot of them. There's a company, I don't know if you've heard of them, Drift, out of Boston. I've been really impressed with what they do, and they seem to pop up in a lot of different conversations for me. It sounds, again, like they have a terrific product, but then have a fantastic go to market. Kathleen: Yeah, I actually interviewed their VP of Marketing- Sterling: Dave. Kathleen: A few months back. Dave Gerhardt, yeah. Sterling: Yeah. I don't have any personal connection to anyone over there, but I have a lot of respect for what they're doing. Kathleen: Yeah, his name comes up a lot when I ask this question. There's a good reason for it. Sterling: Yeah, and you know what? What he does extremely well is he's got a personal brand that then allows him to shed light kind of his company and what they're doing. But yeah, they're doing a fantastic job so that would be someone I would look up to. There's another company here locally named Qualtrics. Kathleen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Sterling: I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. They just announced an eight billion dollar acquisition. They're going to become part of SAP. They did a really good job at something I've seen done poorly a lot of times. They created a category. What they were in their early days was they were a survey tool to anyone who was outside of Qualtrics, but then they created a category, changed the experience. They called it "Experience Management". They really defined the category, had fantastic growth, had a fantastic exit. There's people over there who as marketers I really look up to, like Mike Maughan is one of them. The results of that just speak for themselves. That's another company and individual that I think are doing marketing extremely well. Kathleen: Great, well I like the combination because Drift is one that consistently comes up, which is why I had wanted to interview Dave so much. But nobody's mentioned Qualtrics before, so that's definitely a good one for anyone listening to go and check out, and I'm going to do that when we get off. Sterling: You really should. They did some things, and they did them all under the radar, which is why you haven't heard of them. But what they pulled off over there was just amazing. And then their exit and how the results ended up shaping. When you got a peek under the hood for their revenue and how they've been growing, you just tip your hat to them and try and learn from them and replicate it with our efforts here. How to Contact Sterling and Learn More About Divvy Kathleen: Yeah. Great. Well if someone's listening and they want to check Divvy out, maybe even if they're interested in the product or if they want to see what you're doing from a marketing standpoint, what's the best way for them to learn more about the company? Sterling: Yeah, so we went ahead and created a landing page just for listeners here. We're, again, going to offer kind of our classic $50.00 gift card for decision makers who are interested in the product. That link is getdivvy.com/inboundsuccess. That's getdivvy.com/inboundsuccess. If you're interested in chatting marketing, talking shop, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and anyone can shoot me a message and I always love kind of getting into the nuts and bolts of marketing. Kathleen: Great, I will be sure to put the link to that landing page in the show notes. So if you're listening and you're in the car or on the go, check the show notes out on the IMPACT website. That link will be in there. I'll also put a link to your LinkedIn in, so people can find you easily. Thank you. This has been so interesting. It's really cool to hear about the growth you're experiencing, and how much of that is being driven by inbound. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of people who go check your website out after this. Sterling: Yeah. That's cool. Like I said, we have an awesome team that I love working with every day, and then we have just an amazing product and business model. So it's kind of a perfect storm. Thanks again. It was super fun to chat about this, Kathleen. Always a pleasure. You Know What To Do... Kathleen: Yeah. As always, if you're listening and you enjoyed what you heard today, please leave the podcast a review on Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice. If you know someone else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, Tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thanks Sterling. Sterling: Thank you.

Sterling Snow from Divvy :: Zack Miller Says :: almost 300 by Zack Miller

Sterling is the VP of Marketing at Divvy. Prior to Divvy, he worked at Jive. Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. If you don’t have a finger on the pulse, it can be too late to take the appropriate actions. 2. Why businesses are closing their doors? The thing they don’t have that they need is the ability to see in real time how their financial health is as a company and as an organization. 3. When it comes to growth, it’s not important to focus on getting bigger. It’s important to focus on getting better. Sign up for a free, 20-minute training and Demo over at GetDivvy.com/fire and get $100 from Divvy! Sponsor: ZipRecruiter: Successful businesses rely on quality people. But finding quality people can be tough. That’s why I love ZipRecruiter! Its powerful technology scans thousands of resumes to identify people with the right skills and experience, and then actively invites them to apply for your job! That means you get quality candidates fast. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free! Visit ZipRecruiter.com/fire. ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire!