B2B Revenue Rebels – Details, episodes & analysis

Steve Wright leads mid-market sales at Synergis, where they help companies find and retain top talent in technology. After 25 years of primarily serving enterprise clients, Synergis saw an opportunity to expand into mid-market - and the results have been phenomenal.

The magic of mid-market is that it allows you to work directly with decision makers who have strategic, tactical and contract signing abilities all in one. They have less established buying processes, which can be a huge relief if your company doesn’t yet have a fully fleshed out enterprise motion.

In today's softer market, mid-market companies are still big because they don't have the internal resources to do everything in-house. While enterprise clients can often leverage existing teams, mid-market needs external support to drive transformation. This has led to Synergis's mid-market division hitting 107% of plan even as enterprise slows.

For companies looking to expand into mid-market, success requires deep domain expertise and the ability to be advisory rather than just a silver-tongued seller. The best salespeople combine enterprise best practices with consultative selling skills while continuously working on their output metrics.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to build and scale a successful mid-market motion!

HIGHLIGHTS: 
0:00 Intro 
1:00 Why mid-market? 
3:12 Rewriting the enterprise playbook
8:08 Mid-market vs enterprise in 2024 
10:31 Should you start selling into the mid-market?
16:33 Small vendors winning big deals
21:10 Best AI tools in 2024

Connect with Steve - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenwwright/

Connect with Max - https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-greenwald/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

Ali Schwanke (Founder @ Simple Strat) is an expert in helping companies get better and faster results through mastering HubSpot. Her company is a Diamond Solutions Partner and she’s the host of HubSpot Hacks, the #1 unofficial YouTube channel for HubSpot Tutorials.

Even though HubSpot positions itself as a plug and play solution that’s easy to set up, Ali believes that the best HubSpot strategies start with a whiteboard and a chart. You need an understanding of what exactly is the purpose of your CRM and how it can best integrate with your team's existing workflows. 

Intent mapping has proven to be a winning tactic in 2024. With the right tech stack you can start to truly focus your sales efforts towards leads that have the highest likelihood of closing. Ali recommends identifying false signals like existing customer website visits to help make the process more efficient. Automations are a necessity, but over-automating can cause complications down the line, especially as you scale your team.

Tune into the full episode to get a real lesson in RevOps and master your CRM! 

HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 Intro
1:51 Product-market fit is a must
3:41 Clearbit + HubSpot = Data Enrichment 
5:31 How to build better workflows on HubSpot
7:08 Orchestrations in HubSpot 
9:11 First steps towards lead scoring
11:50 Lead Gen vs Demand Gen 
13:21 HubSpot configuration dream state
16:11 Best HubSpot Hacks
19:17 There is no automation silver bullet 
20:52 Top 5 Don’t Do’s in HubSpot
22:37 Max’s bonus Don’t Do 
25:05 Top 3 HubSpot Dashboards

Connect with Ali - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alischwanke/

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

Connect with Max - https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-greenwald/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

B2B Influencer marketing is booming right now. According to Forbes 94% of B2B marketers say influencer marketing is a profitable strategy, yet if you ask around you’re bound to find skilled marketers or founders who invested heavily in creator partnerships and ended up seeing less than desirable results. 

Here’s the thing - unlike investing in safe, mature and refined marketing methods like ads or SEO, the influencer marketing route requires you to have a strong understanding of a few key aspects that might seem logical to a social media native person, but can blindsight you if you only got your first iphone after finishing college.

Today’s guest is Morgan J. Ingram, Founder of AMP -  a GTM production company that helps businesses drive sales through account-based content. Rather than traditional marketing, they create engaging video content and events tailored to key accounts. This earns trust and boosts sales by connecting with target customers in an impactful way.

Morgan segments creators into 3 categories - brand ambassadors, who typically talk about the brand they're associated with, influencers who are classic content creators with a large following and subject matter experts (SME’s) who are highly esteemed thought leaders in a particular niche. Knowing which creator category is best for your goals is going to make all the difference between a profitable and an unprofitable creator partnership.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to navigate the landscape of B2B influencers and build profitable partnerships with the right people!

KEY INSIGHTS:
03:36 The 3 tiers of B2B influencers
05:35 How to choose a brand ambassador 
06:27 Building a brand ambassador strategy
08:26 Structuring the right offer
10:16 B2B influencer outreach
11:57 Picking the person with the right content
14:20 Building up internal creators
16:52 How to identify the creators category
18:29 Aligning the incentives 
21:15 Structuring a deal with an influencer
24:25 B2B Influencer marketing attribution
26:05 Structuring a deal with a SME

Connect with Morgan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/morganjingram/

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

Today’s episode welcomes Aditya Vempaty, VP of Marketing at MoEngage - an insights-led customer engagement platform that can analyze customer behavior and engage them with personalized communication across the web, mobile, and email. MoEngage is a full-stack solution consisting of powerful customer analytics, AI-powered customer journey orchestration, and personalization - in one dashboard.

Positioning is an evergreen B2B marketing topic. Technical founders often go down the route of marketing their product based on the features and benefits without taking into account what matters most - the customer's voice. 

The best way to hear the customer's voice is surveying. In the most recent surveys at MoEngage, Aditya has been focusing on figuring out what channels they use most in cross-channel marketing and which channels are truly effective for his clients. He recommends always to ask about effectiveness, as that will typically be the north star that you can use to cater your messaging around. 

An omnichannel approach is great in theory, but with the maturity of online platforms people expect to consume content that is catered to them. Before creating, you need to put in some serious time into understanding where your customers natively reside, what formats they prefer and what a truly native experience feels like. Aditya recommends that you figure out a few platforms and formats that are your best bets and then focus on how to drive customer engagement.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to master positioning!

Connect with Aditya - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityavempaty/

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

• (01:47) - Aditya Vempaty’s Background
• (05:34) - How to approach product positioning
• (08:24) - Building B2B marketing surveys
• (12:35) - Identifying the true level of pain
• (15:28) - How to develop converting B2B content
• (18:48) - Building your B2B content funnel
• (22:07) - B2B Content distribution
• (23:49) - The value of B2B influencers

This episode continues the conversation with Chris Walker -  Executive Chairman of Refine Labs and CEO of Pasetto - a GTM Strategy Consultancy that helps B2B Executives identify and execute against their highest priority growth levers with confidence and clarity. He’s also the host of B2B Revenue Vitals - one of the most beloved podcasts in the B2B revenue ethos.

Chris brings up the statistic that 50% of revenue is typically budgeted towards your go-to-market motion, which most of the time leads to about 1/5th of that being recouped in ARR. This shouldn’t be the case, as without a constant stream of venture capital this model is unsustainable. His solution is to opt in for signal based go-to-market - a new category that looks at capturing buying signals, which allows you to identify who's in-market (or who's about to be), prioritize accordingly, and take action with context.

The Go-To-Market paradigm shift that Chris recommends is a pretty simple concept - stop your sales team from talking to people who are never going to buy. The idea of signal analytics and signal-based go-to-market as a whole is to have accurate data that indicates the probability of someone buying your product without wasting sales resources, and reducing your dependency  on the skill of the salesperson.

Chris’s new company, Passetto, is creating a new category - signal analytics. They’re focused on figuring out which signals are worth using to trigger different events in the funnel and dissecting data to achieve a higher level of go-to-market efficiency. Their core focus right now is to make sure you’re aware of the things that are NOT working and to battle B2B data survivorship biases, which have led profitable companies to overspend on inefficient aspects of their GTM motion.

Tune into the full episode to learn more about signal-based go-to-market!

Connect with Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswalker171/

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

• (01:22) - Getting to profitable, efficient growth
• (02:56) - Signal-based Go-To-Market
• (05:20) - Categorizing B2B signals
• (06:31) - Figuring out the right signals
• (09:51) - How to implement signal-based GTM
• (12:38) - The problem with Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
• (14:31) - The adoption problem
• (18:36) - The road to appropriate GTM ROI
• (20:56) - Why Chris started Passetto
• (00:00) - Chapter 10

B2B has recently been obsessed with the word “dead”.

Cold calling. Email marketing. Blogs. Interview based podcasts. You name it - someone’s made a case on a LinkedIn post that it’s dead and discouraged many from strategies that have worked for seemingly forever.

Truth is - in 2024, the word “dead” is more relevant than ever when used to refer to methodologies that were once defining the B2B revenue landscape.

Between the downfall of free venture capital, the steady rise of AI and the macroeconomical state of the world, what worked yesterday no longer works today. Or possibly it never worked in the first place - you just didn’t need to pay attention when the times were good.

Today’s guest is Chris Walker - Executive Chairman of Refine Labs and CEO of Pasetto - a GTM Strategy Consultancy that helps B2B Executives identify and execute against their highest priority growth levers with confidence and clarity. He’s also the host of B2B Revenue Vitals - one of the most beloved podcasts in the B2B revenue ethos.

For the last few years, Chris has been one of the rare voices in B2B that’s called out companies on their ineffective spending habits and tried to push the market towards data-driven thinking. He challenges B2B companies to make transformational changes to their go-to-market motion instead of trying to incrementally improve outdated models that simply don’t work.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to build a modern B2B go-to-market playbook!

Connect with Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswalker171/

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

• (02:14) - The Chris Walker method of revenue
• (04:41) - How to find the right accounts to sell to
• (06:52) - How B2B buyers make decisions
• (10:04) - The right way to sell B2B
• (11:57) - Demand creation vs demand capture
• (13:24) - The modern B2B sales motion
• (14:27) - Predictable revenue is dead
• (17:35) - Why your GTM budget is wrong

Whether you know it or not, your business has a Nearbound sales strategy.

Here’s the secret nobody told you - this type of partner revenue is exactly what drives most of the growth for high performing SaaS companies that take over the market seemingly out of nowhere.

So what is nearbound? In simple sales terms, those are the deals that close quickly because the prospect already trusts you before the conversation even begins, as they trust the people that recommended you in the first place. This doesn’t have to be a random occurrence though.

Today’s guest is Jared Fuller - Co-Founder and CEO of nearbound.com, and your best source to learn how to build a Nearbound strategy that helps you successfully market with people that your buyers already trust.

Jared has always been a serial entrepreneur. He likes to say that his early career is a graveyard of dead startups - but between his early losses you can see huge career highlights like helping grow PandaDoc and Drift into unicorns.

For smaller startups, Jared recommends building a list of your best customers and asking them about the vendors they use and trust. The top relationships on this list are the ones that control the mindshare of your buyer, meaning you should find a meaningful way to interact and partner with these companies to become part of their ecosystem. He recommends figuring out a way to collaborate on content that has you doing all of the grunt work and letting your collaborator become the hero at the lowest possible investment.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to build your nearbound strategy!

Connect with Jared - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredfuller/

Check out Jared’s bestseller - https://www.amazon.com/Nearbound-Rise-Economy-Jared-Fuller-ebook/dp/B0CW2WPBS6

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

• (01:47) - From partnerships to nearbound
• (03:34) - What is nearbound?
• (06:11) - The B2B Who economy
• (09:12) - Building your first Nearbound strategy
• (14:20) - The lowest hanging nearbound fruit
• (18:24) - How to partner with B2B influencers
• (22:51) - Creating a B2B marketing movement
• (26:18) - The nearbound sales blueprint

Today’s episode welcomes Phil Carpenter, CMO at ALICE Technologies - the world's first artificial intelligence platform that understands construction. ALICE enhances your construction planning and scheduling abilities to help keep crews flowing on any size project – so you can build faster and cheaper.

Everybody wants to be a category creator - until they realize exactly how difficult and time consuming it is. Trying to define something new and communicating it to an unaware audience at the level where they not only remember the message but also take action requires a ton of mental work. 

Even though category creation became a popular term in B2B recently, the concept has existed for a long time. Phil mentions that while there are certainly some pretty significant differences in category creation when comparing B2B and B2C, the tools and methodologies are quite similar. During Phil’s time creating a new category in travel search engines, he leveraged journalists - the original influencers - to generate a bunch of noise and create a movement in the consumer travel space.

In his current role at ALICE technologies, he uses a lot of visualization to showcase the workflows that ultimately close clients. The problem they solve is that most construction projects are over budget or executed untimely in around 80% of the cases, and the ALICE platform helps battle that through automations, workflow integrations and forecasting. To drum up noise about this revolutionary tech, they’ve been heavily utilizing both influencers and niche, traditional media sources.

Tune into the full episode to find out more about category creation!

Connect with Phil - https://www.linkedin.com/in/philcarpenter/

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

• (04:03) - How to approach category creation
• (08:51) - B2B vs B2C Category creation
• (12:11) - How Phil approaches category creation at ALICE
• (14:40) - You need to spark interest
• (15:45) - Forming the category vision
• (17:17) - Building a category creation marketing team
• (23:42) - The right tools for category creation

Stale marketing is like stale bread.

People will bite - but only if they’re desperate enough.

When you’re going to market with a new product in a well-established, saturated space that consists of top-heavy key players with billion dollar evaluations, stale won’t cut it.

Today’s guest is Melissa Rosentha - CMO at Insight Timer, and ex. Chief Creative Officer at ClickUp, where she built a world-class marketing engine and helped the company go from Series A to the brand that we all know and love today.

Melissa's understanding of how to create a sticky brand online started with her tenure at Buzzfeed, where she built and led a team of 100+ creatives back in the early 2010’s. She took the same playbook of viral, troll-esque content, adjusted it for B2B and created some of the most legendary marketing campaigns of the post-COVID era, achieving mind-boggling engagement on online media platforms.

ClickUp took a chance on Melissa when they allocated a big part of their Series A budget towards building an in-house creative agency. Ultimately it paid off, as it allowed them to create a content engine that capitalizes on relevant news, consistently stays top of mind for their ICP and completely abides by their creative vision.

Melissa speaks on how the secret to creating humorous and viral content that also converts is to always keep your ICP’s pain points in mind and do a ton of research on online forums like Reddit to find out what they’re thinking. Purely chasing virality is a losing strategy, but if you pair it with a relatable message and tie it back to the product, you’ll see a positive ROI.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to build a brand like ClickUp!

Connect with Melissa - https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissarosenthal5/

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

• (00:00) - Chapter 1
• (03:04) - The idea behind ClickUp’s marketing engine
• (04:45) - How to build a unique, recognisable B2B brand
• (09:21) - How to build an effective B2B creative strategy
• (11:41) - Creating B2B content that converts
• (14:45) - How to generate B2B content ideas
• (17:09) - Building a B2B production crew
• (21:25) - Getting your competitors involved
• (26:32) - What matters most when creating content

Season 1 is officially over.

Huge thank you to everyone who tuned in and the amazing guests that joined us over the last few months - we appreciate you!

This new season will feature more highly effective, creative and courageous revenue professionals who have taken their unique strategies to market, succeeded, and now have tactical insights and strategies to share with you.

We're looking forward to continuing this journey!