How did we get there? Marketing has gone from being responsible for building brand awareness to now being responsible for almost every interaction from when a prospect first hears about your brand until they are a qualified opportunity and passed along to the sales team. More responsibilities with higher expectations, but rarely a significant increase in resources. 

That’s why we’re talking with Connie Glover, GTM Strategist, at CMarie Marketing Studio. She’s been in the marketing and P.R. game for a long time and brings brands to life through a mix of grassroots efforts and cutting-edge digital practices. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Connie talk about the impossible expectations of marketing in SaaS, what marketing really needs to deliver to sales, why leads are worthless, and so much more. and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Marketing has evolved tremendously causing marketing teams to be responsible for everything from when a prospect first hears about the brand through qualifying an opportunity for the sales team. 
2. Most CEOs and board members don’t understand the real role of marketing. They tend to focus on the visual aspect of marketing or lead quantity rather than understanding the importance of creating brand awareness. 
3. CEOs will never stop sharing random ideas about marketing. That doesn’t mean you have to implement any of them. 
4. Marketers have to stop falling victim to the reaction rabbit hole where they’re constantly reacting to feedback from countless people in the organization. 
5. MQLs, SQLs, and leads should die. Sales doesn’t really want any of them. They want handraisers who are in the market and ready to evaluate software solutions. Not people who looked at your content, visited your tradeshow booth, etc. 
6. The expectation for speed that companies have related to marketing doesn’t equate with the amount of effort that is required or the reality of how long it takes to drive results. 
7. Demand generation is NOT possible. You can’t create demand because you can’t make people buy when they’re not in the market to buy. Marketing can build a brand that will drive demand when people are in the market for a solution. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Jack Wilson, EVP of North America at amplify5, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Jack answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Blog posts. Ebooks. Webinars. Podcasts. And the list goes on and on. There are so many different ways to create content today and distribute it. Oftentimes, we tend to think of content marketing success as hitting the publish button on a new piece of content. The reality is that content marketing isn’t about publishing new content all the time. It’s about growing mindshare. 

That’s why we’re talking with Jillian Hoefer, Senior Content Marketing Manager at UserEvidence. She’s so dedicated she is to creating different, memorable, and impactful content that she once got in a REAL dumpster for B2B content. Throughout her nearly 10-year career in content marketing, she's worked for brands in the tech and e-commerce spaces and helped them create content that not only earned mindshare, but drove demand. Some of her proudest career moments include hanging with Saxsquatch for a virtual event called "Break Sh*t", acting alongside a puppet, wearing the coveted Disney name tag, getting a cease and desist from Cards Against Humanity, and seeing the word "EVERYWHERE!" as someone's self-reported response for where they heard about us while booking a demo.

In this episode, Stephanie and Jillian talk about what she’s learned from a career in and out of tech, the value of original research, how content marketers should define success,  and how to get content marketing a seat at the table.

In this GTM Advice episode, Mason Cosby, CEO of Scrappy ABM, answers a fast round of questions and shares his go-to-market advice with you. 

Product market fit. Account-based marketing (ABM). Ideal Customer Profile. Target Accounts. These are the most critical and talked about topics for go-to-market leaders. And they’re also most misunderstood and oftentimes poorly executed. 

That’s why we’re talking with Mason Cobsy, CEO of Scrappy ABM. Mason has built scrappy marketing programs that deliver millions in revenue. While serving as a marketing leader at numerous boutique and bootstrapped businesses, Mason saw firsthand the power of trading a shiny ABM program with all the fancy tech tools for a scrappy account-based program that instead sourced over $15M in the three years, driving a 20x ROI.

In this episode, Stephanie and Mason talk about what it means to really have product market fit (PMF), why ABM strategy requires PMF, who should be in the room to define your ICP and target accounts, and a bunch of acronyms you need to know. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Product market fit means sales is EASY. If it isn’t easy to sell your product, then you don’t have it. No exceptions. 
2. It doesn’t make sense to launch an ABM program until you have product market fit.
3. Marketing, sales, customer success, and finance need to collaborate on defining your ICP and creating a target account list. It cannot be owned by only one functional area. It’s also imperative that you consider how many customers you want to add within the next five years when you create the target account list. 
4. Content marketing should make up half of your ABM strategy because it’s both destination and distribution.
5. Five plays can help your business consistently create pipeline: closed lost, customer winback, website engagement, event activations, and podcasting. You should be running these plays every single month. 

Welcome to GTM Confessions. The show where we share what it takes to be a go-to-market (GTM) professional today…because it’s freaking hard and it’s far from the glamorous picture that social media often paints.

Each week, we’ll have a go-to-market professional on the show to share real examples of what’s worked and what’s failed spectacularly…the extreme highs of this career, the lowest of lows, and everything in between.  Think of it as your weekly go-to-market therapy session…where you realize you’re not alone in trying to figure it all out.

How do you balance a changing buying process, countless technologies to use, unrealistic expectations, and an extremely crowded market? That’s the challenge facing Chief Revenue Officers (CROs). Not to mention that there seems to be significant debate about what the role of CRO actually entails and where CROs should focus their attention. 

That’s why we’re talking with Jack Wilson, EVP of North America, at amplify5 leveraging his extensive experience in developing strategies, building high-performance teams, and delivering revenue and profitable growth. Jack is an accomplished senior executive, entrepreneur, and advisory board member with more than 25 years of successful executive leadership experience in various industries. He has experience in international market development, closing multi-million dollar deals, and building international sales teams. He’s been a part of six successful exits including an IPO with triple-digit growth with every venture. He’s also an avid runner who has participated in numerous marathons and Ultra Marathons including the Moab 240, and placed in the top 20 in the Ironman.

In this episode, Stephanie and Jack talk about when it’s time to hire your first sales leader, the role of a Chief Revenue Officer, what sales really wants from marketing, dealing with unattainable quotas, and so much more. and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. The CRO role is more than just sales. It should oversee all revenue functional areas including sales, marketing, and customer success. 
2. Executives need to have more open and honest communication with each other. Executive team meetings should be a healthy debate each week to hold each other accountable and bring out the best ideas. 
3. Never hire a sales leader until you have at least three sales reps consistently hitting their quota. A player/coach sales leader will never be successful.
4. Companies need to invest significantly more in marketing. Bringing in an experienced sales leader won’t result in more sales if you have an existing pipeline problem. Invest in marketing and fix your pipeline problem first. 
5. Prospects have become highly sophisticated in the buying process and want clear information from your company available to them. Start with your website and make it easy to understand. 
6. Sales professionals are closers. They don’t want your leads. They want REAL opportunities that need to be worked. 
7. Most sales quotas are spreadsheet exercises based on how much the company theoretically wants to grow rather than how much growth is realistic. Financial targets shouldn’t be created in a vacuum without significant input from your sales, marketing, and customer success leaders. 
8. Don’t underestimate the impact of personal communication such as handwritten thank-you notes.

In this GTM Advice episode, Maureen West, VP of Marketing at Brillion, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Maureen answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge that exists today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Product marketing is one of the most misunderstood roles in SaaS. Most companies avoid hiring the role until they’ve achieved millions in ARR. There is an ongoing debate on where product marketing should lie with the most common answers being product or marketing. Product marketers are often seen as the creators of countless slide decks and old-school sell sheets. It’s an interesting dichotomy because product marketing should actually be at the center of everything a SaaS company does. So, what should the role of product marketing look like?  

That’s why we’re talking with Maureen West, VP of Marketing at Brillion, an accomplished product marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in the B2B SaaS industry. She has a proven track record of driving company growth by developing and executing go-to-market strategies, streamlining product launches, and building strong relationships across teams. Maureen excels at creating integrated marketing campaigns, enabling sales teams, and conducting market analysis to refine product positioning and messaging. She’s also held leadership positions at various companies, including Cytel, Uberflip, 6sense, Conga, and Emarsys. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Maureen talk about why product marketing should report directly to the CEO, the biggest misconceptions around product launches, how to create messaging that resonates with buyers, and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Product marketing should be the first marketing-related hire. You can’t build demand for a product no one effectively understands. That’s why you need to hire a product marketer first. 
2. Product marketing should report to the CEO. Not product. Not marketing. Directly to the CEO.
3. Brand marketers and product marketing should work collaboratively to build the brand 
4. Use your customer’s language on your website. Stop trying to be creative with words. Talk like your customers. 
5. Stop making slides. Buyers don’t want them. Sales doesn’t love them either. Have a conversation instead. If your product requires slides to explain, then your messaging needs work. 
6. Continuous software deployment can lead to a lack of accountability and challenges with planning product launches. 
7. Product launches should last 90 days and align with your business goals. Don't have a product launch just to have one. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Kate VanLue, VP of Revenue at AudiencePlus, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Kate answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge that exists today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Working at a start-up is challenging…no matter the role. It’s kinda like flying in a plane while the plane is still actively being built. Definitely not for the faint of heart. And the pressure is even higher for sales in a start-up because the company literally lives or dies based on revenue. So, what does it take to be successful in a sales role at a start-up>

That’s why we’re talking with Kate VanLue, VP of Revenue at AudiencePlus where she oversees sales strategy, partnerships, and growth. With more than 15 years of exceptional performance in B2B and B2C sales environments, Kate has developed and honed her skills in customer relationship management, sales operations, recruiting, coaching, and team building.

In this episode, Stephanie and Kate talk about what it takes to work in a start-up, the challenges facing sales leaders, how to think about measuring sales effectiveness, and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Being successful in sales at an established company doesn’t mean you’ll be successful in sales at a start-up or scale-up.
2. Start-up sales leaders and AEs need to be resourceful and willing to wear multiple hats. You will have to build EVERYTHING from scratch. 
3. Nothing should be scalable for a while. That’s the nature of a start-up. 
4. Getting attention from prospects is REALLY hard. Invest in building a brand for your company and educating the market about the problem you solve. It makes sales easier in the long-term.
5. An initial “no” from a prospect is likely not a permanent no. It’s typically a “not now.” Education is key to changing these a no to a yes.
6. Forecasting sales is more of an art than a science at this stage.
7. Understanding the financial model of the business is crucial for every sales leader. 
8. Market conditions will happen to your business that you can’t control. Focus your efforts on how you can productively respond to these market conditions. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Wes Bush, Founder and CEO of ProductLed, answers a fast round of questions and shares his go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Wes answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge that exists today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Countless new software companies are launching every single day, making the market more commoditized than ever before. It’s more expensive than ever to acquire new customers using a traditional sales-led motion. And customers expect the ease of a Netflix-like experience. So, what’s the answer? Enter product-led growth (PLG). Using a product-led strategy, a company uses its product to acquire, engage, and monetize users, allowing them to essentially try the product before they buy. And it’s becoming a prominent go-to-market strategy in SaaS. 

That’s why we’re talking with Wes Bush, founder and CEO of ProductLed. He’s the bestselling author of Product-Led Growth: How To Build a Product That Sells Itself and is one of the most sought-after product experts in the world. After working for some of the world’s fastest-growing companies, he now partners with SaaS founders around the globe on how to turn their products into powerful growth engines.

In this episode, Stephanie and Wes talk about what it takes to be successful with product-led, common misconceptions about PLG, transitioning from sales-led to product-led, and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. The founder and CEO MUST be involved in and leading the company’s PLG effort for PLG to be effective. PLG must become the company’s go-to-market motion and be baked into its DNA.
2. Product-led is a go-to-market strategy, not an initiative driven by the product team.
3. PLG is NOT just a free trial. 
4. PLG conversion rates are not the same as win rates in a sales-led motion.
5. Your company must have moats of how you’re going to win that make it clear why your product is the obvious choice in the market.
6. You have to understand your user better than anyone else in the market. 
7. Sales-led pricing strategy won’t automatically translate to a pricing model that works for PLG. 
8. Don’t go into PLG from day one with zero customers. Use founder-led sales to obtain your first 10-30 customers, then implement PLG. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Jillian Hoefer, Senior Content Marketing Manager of UserEvidence, answers a fast round of questions and shares his go-to-market advice with you. 

In this GTM Advice episode, David Galante, Senior Director of Product Management for Channels at ActiveCampaig, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how David answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Whether or not we’d like to admit it, software has become more commoditized in the last five years than ever before. It’s extremely easy for a competitor to quickly steal your market share by offering only a portion of your functionality at a significantly cheaper cost. Plus, every software company seems to be using convoluted messaging that doesn’t clearly articulate what their product actually does. Combine that with the challenges and opportunities that AI brings and it becomes more critical than ever before for your product management and product marketing teams to be top-notch.

That’s why we’re talking with David Galante, Senior Director of Product Management for Channels at ActiveCampaign. He and his team manage AC’s channel products which include SMS, transactional email (Postmark) and new marketing platforms such as WhatsApp. The team is focused on the delivery of new products and features to empower ActiveCampaign customers to grow their digital presence. He has more than 20 years of product management and software development experience from past roles at Motorola, ExactTarget, Salesforce, Oracle, and App Annie/data.ai. 

In this episode, Stephanie and David talk about the challenges of product management, misconceptions around product MVPs, the role of product marketing, and so much more. 

Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of ActiveCampaign.

In this GTM Advice episode, Sam Smith, Technical Advisor at Neighbor Serve, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Sam answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

One of the functional areas that have to balance the needs of the entire go-to-market team the most is product. They are constantly trying to achieve their product vision while dealing with countless requests from sales, customer success, the CEO, and more. It’s almost impossible for them to make everyone happy.

That’s why we’re talking with Sam Smith, Technical Advisor at Neighbor Serve. Sam is a technical cofounder and startup veteran who’s spent the last 15+ years turning early-stage ideas into real, revenue-generating products. He’s helped scale multiple SaaS companies from the ground up, including as Co-founder & CTO of Demandwell, CTO at Backstroke, and Chief Architect at Sigstr. Sam thrives in the scrappy, ambiguous early days, where shipping fast, aligning cross-functional teams, and obsessing over customer outcomes matter most.

In this episode, Stephanie and Sam talk about balancing product priorities, what it’s like to be part of a company that’s acquired and one that shuts down operations, the biggest misconceptions about using AI in product development, and so much more. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Lindsay Tjepkema, Founder at Human  Brands Win, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Lindsay answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Every marketer knows the importance of building and investing in a brand, but that’s not usually the case for the rest of the company. Many CEOs, board members, and VCs, often challenge marketing leaders about investing in building a brand especially when the company is first starting. They prefer that all marketing activity be focused on demand generation. This sets up the eternal battle of brand vs demand. 

That’s why we’re talking with Lindsay Tjepkema, founder at Human Brands Win. Lindsay is a 3x founder and visionary B2B marketing leader with 20+ years of experience. She founded venture-backed SaaS startup, Casted, the first podcast and video marketing platform for B2B brands. As CEO, she led the company to rapid growth with clients like IBM, HubSpot, and Salesforce. Now, as the founder of Human Brands Win, she helps founders build authentic, breakthrough brands. A sought-after speaker at SXSW, INBOUND, B2BMX, and more, Lindsay’s insights have been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, NPR, and TechCrunch. She is a Forbes Business Council member, co-leader of the Women of Pavilion Community, and a passionate advocate for founders defining success on their terms. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Lindsay talk about what it takes to create a brand, the constant battle between brand and demand, how to get your CEO and board to understand the value of a brand, and so much more.

Key Takeaways:

1. Brand exists whether or not you invest time and money into it. It’s the summation of how people think about you and your company. 
2. Most start-ups need to think about building a founder brand and a company brand. There will likely be some overlap between the two, but both must exist. 
3. Demand doesn’t exist without a strong brand.
4. There will always be countless feedback about your company’s brand. You need to be extremely picky regarding what feedback you listen to and what you ignore. 
5. Content creation is an integral part of building a strong brand. Most early-stage companies significantly understand the amount of content that needs to be created to establish and grow a brand.
6. Brand can’t be easily measured on a KPI dashboard. Instead, there are anecdotal or qualitative ways to track brand effectiveness such as social media comments about your company, speaking opportunities available to your senior leaders, etc.
7. It’s insane for marketing leaders to explain the importance of a brand to CEOs and VCs. Everyone should already know why it’s critical to invest in a brand and the increase in valuation that a strong brand can bring in an acquisition. 
8. One of the best internal partners to help you advocate for investing in a brand is the sales leader. A sales leader who understands that sales becomes tremendously easier when the company has a strong brand is a marketer’s dream partner. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Connie Glover, GTM Strategist and Master Storyteller at CMarie Marketing Studio, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Connie answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

In this GTM Advice episode, Rachel Elsts Downey, Founder and CEO at Share Your Genius, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Rachel answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

It seems like every B2B company has a podcast…but that’s not actually the case. Podcasting is still a blue ocean and only a fraction of podcasts exist compared to blogs. So, how do you know if it makes sense for your company to launch a podcast? What does it entail? How should you think about measuring podcast effectiveness? Should you consider a podcast for your personal brand? 

That’s why we’re talking with Rachel Elsts Downey, Founder and CEO at Share Your Genius. She’s been in podcasting for almost a decade and helps major B2B brands launch, produce, and optimize their podcasting strategies. She’s also an experienced content marketer who believes it’s never just a podcast and believes every episode should fuel your content engine to build trust, create impact, and drive measurable growth. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Rachel chat about the purpose of podcasting, how to know if a podcast makes sense for your business or personal brand, how to get started and measure effectiveness, and so much more. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Ryan O’Hara, Founder and CEO at Pitchfire, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Ryan answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

When did B2B marketing get so boring? It seems like every company is using the same old tactics with the same messaging structure making it impossible for anyone to stand out. In fact, creativity and marketing and sales tactics are often frowned upon by some companies. Every go-to-market professional seems to have a story about when they were told to not use a specific word, change or take down their LinkedIn post, or asked why they thought it was a good idea to use humor in their outreach. 

That’s why we’re talking with Ryan O’Hara, founder and CEO at Pitchfire, who has been breaking the marketing norms with his creative social media strategy and marketing tactics. He was the first BDR at Dyn and helped build their client lists to the thousands while doing sales training there from 3-100+ reps. They were acquired by Oracle in 2016 for north of $600m. He loves startups and has a soft spot in his heart for them. After Dyn, Ryan was the first business hire at LeadIQ, where he led go-to-market, scaling the company from 4-8 figures in revenue.

In this episode, Stephanie and Ryan talk about the lack of creativity in B2B marketing, why people need to stand out more on social media, the major challenges in prospecting, and so much more.

In this GTM Advice episode, Kara Smith Brown, CEO at Lead Coverage, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Kara answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Go-to-market strategy. Everyone talks about its importance. It’s typically a key portion of every all-hands call, board meeting, etc. But what does it take to really craft a go-to-market strategy that can work for your business? Who do you need to get on board with you with GTM strategy? What should your ICP look like? When do you chase “whales”? Where does intent data fit in? Should you mimic what your competitors are doing or try to stand out? What can you learn from the GTM strategies in other industries? And the list goes on and on. 

That’s why we’re talking with Kara Smith Brown, CEO and Founder at LeadCoverage, and a recognized supply chain, logistics, and technology thought leader. Her book, The Revenue Engine: Fueling a B2B High Octane Pipeline, is an Amazon Bestseller and offers readers effective revenue-generating strategies. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Kara discuss why companies struggle with their go-to-market strategy, the importance of having an ideal customer profile that looks like your existing customers, how to effectively use intent data, and so much more.

In this GTM Advice episode, Leslie Greenwood, Co-founder at Wednesday Women, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Leslie answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

What does it take to build an engaged community? It seems simple enough initially. Bring people together with similar interests and provide them with a way to engage with each other. If only it were that simple. In fact, community creation and long-term management are far from simple. It’s highly complex and takes significantly more resources than most companies expect. 

That’s why we're talking with Leslie Greenwood, co-founder of Wednesday Women, on this week’s episode of GTM Confessions. Leslie has extensive experience in building and managing effective global communities. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Leslie discuss what it really takes to create a community, how to know if your company is ready to build one, the level of investment involved, and so much more.