When the economy rocks as much as we've all witnessed in the past year, pivoting and reprioritizing can become the norm. But reprioritization doesn't need to feel chaotic. Ryan Morel, VP of Marketing at Flexe, a software company delivering technology-powered, omnichannel logistics programs, knows this first hand. Being at the company for over seven years, Ryan is no stranger to change, which is why he's so adamant about having a North Star to work towards. With a clear North Star in mind,...

"You're not listening!" Be it in our personal or professional lives, most of us have heard this sentence once or twice. Why? Because we all like to think we know what others are thinking and feeling. In reality, however, the only way we truly know how our friends, customers, and prospects are feeling is by listening to what they have to say. That's one of the reasons Amy Frampton, Head of Marketing for BambooHR, moved the sales development rep (SDR) team to the marketing team when she...

People, processes, and technology. That's the formula Rakhi Voria, VP of Sales for Procore Technologies, has found to be the most successful in building an inside sales strategy. Rakhi is no stranger to inside sales strategies, either. She built a new digital sales force at Microsoft, managed the global digital sales development team at IBM, and now leads the sales development team at Procore Technologies. In this episode of Revenue Talks, guest-hosted by Drift's VP of Mid-Market Sales,...

The CIA and product marketing: Two industries that are obviously different yet strikingly similar. In this episode of Revenue Talks, Justin discovers why John Brezinsky (VP of Product Marketing at Searchmetrics) might have a background, or a future, as a CIA agent. John shares how his team figures out what messaging will resonate with different audiences across the globe, how to then ensure that the other go-to-market teams at Searchmetrics use that messaging, and how his product marketing...

Justin Keller isn't a sports guy, but in this episode, he gives sports analogies his best shot to understand how Kevan Lee (former sports journalist turned VP of Marketing) and his team at Oyster® drive sales and marketing alignment at their 2-year-old startup. In the equivalent of just one hockey period, Justin and Kevan discuss what Oyster®'s go-to-market scoreboard looks like, how the go-to-market teams hold each other accountable, and how Kevan reports on the ROI of brand to his...

Janet Jaiswal (VP of Global Marketing at Cloudbeds) doesn't believe personalization can happen overnight. Instead, she encourages her team to look at it as a journey. In this episode of Revenue Talks, Janet talks to Justin about what that journey looks like. The two marketing leaders question whether verticalization makes personalization easier or harder, discuss how Janet balances top-of-funnel content with bottom-of-funnel content, and Janet shares her tips for trying to span marketing...

Marketers, we get it. You feel like you're constantly moving in a thousand directions, you don't know what your true North star metric is, and it feels impossible to make everyone happy. This marketing therapy session is for you. In this episode of Revenue Talks, Neil Cohen, a self-proclaimed marketing therapist, talks with Justin about the biggest problems he sees in sales and marketing teams today. The two debate if sales and marketing teams should report to the same leader, discuss how...

Listen to your customer is the advice all marketers and sellers receive, but who really understands them best? If you ask David Malmborg, the Vice President of Marketing, Community & Partnerships at Nivati, it comes down to macro and micro levels of communication. On this episode of Revenue Talks, Justin and David discuss what building brand affinity looks like in practice, how to create messaging that customers will resonate with, and how to ensure the entire company is using that same...

Humans, humanity, and how we are wired: those are the three components that lie at the heart of marketing according to PAR Technology's CMO, Seth Temko. Seth has been involved with internet marketing since the internet first became commercialized in 1995. Seeing its evolution over the years has caused Seth to have a unique outlook on technology's role in marketing, which he shares on this episode of Revenue Talks. In the episode, Seth explains how he thinks about the value of each piece of...

Lisa McClure (Regional Vice President, Revenue Cloud (SMB West), Salesforce) spends her day selling to people just like her - salespeople. While this means Lisa understands the persona, it also means that she knows the roadblocks preventing a deal from getting done. In this episode, Lisa talks with special host Armen Zildjian (Drift's VP of Mid-Market Sales) about how her sales team overcomes these roadblocks. She explains what it's like to sell an "add-on" component of the larger...

Data, not drama. That's the motto of The RepTrak Company's marketing team. RepTrak's marketing team uses data to inform the majority of decisions they make, but that doesn't mean they don't take risks. Ali Jawin, The RepTrak Company's Vice President of Marketing, believes strongly in leveraging data to justify marketing spend. In this episode, she explains how her team balances data with creativity, how she communicates the ROI of big brand plays (even when the results don't come until...

When it comes to digital experience and design, you can't think of one without another. No one knows this better than Mike Impelluso, the Vice President of Marketing, Brand and Digital for CentralReach. In this episode, Mike explains how he aligns CentralReach's brand and digital teams to work towards the same goal, how he thinks about the ROI of brand plays, and what he considers as "must-haves" for a positive website experience. You can connect with Justin and Mike on Twitter at...

What do B2B SaaS and lobstering have in common? More than you think. Jess Meschino is the SVP of Customer Services at Workable, but she's also a lobsterwoman on the side. Jess uses this side hustle to inform her 9-5 work, and that's just one of the topics Justin and she explore on this season premiere of Revenue Talks. In this episode, Justin and Jess, alongside special guest Armen Zildjian (VP of Sales at Drift), discuss how Jess's team scales the 1:1 customer experience, what the sales...

Sales and marketing (mis)alignment. A tale as old as time, but a tale Justin Keller, Drift's Vice President of Revenue Marketing, is tired of hearing. That's why for Season 2 of Revenue Talks, Justin sits down with leaders across sales, marketing, and customer success to find out how they're aligning go-to-market teams to accelerate revenue at their organizations. Listen to leaders from companies like Workable, Salesforce, and Nivati talk about how they measure success, how they hold teams...

Ask your sales team what it means to "win." Now ask your marketing team the same question. Are their answers the same? Joe McNeill, the Chief Revenue Officer of Influ2, a person-based advertising platform for B2B companies, would bet on no, and it's this discrepancy that he believes is the key blocker for sales and marketing alignment at companies today. That's why Influ2 created Buying Group Marketing (BGM) - a new way to focus on all the people that matter in a sales process. On this...

"Best in class" "Cheapest" "Fastest" All of these "-est" words seem great to win in the moment. But that's all they are: momentary wins. If you really want to win as a B2B brand today, you need to create a relationship with your customers - one that survives on the longevity of the emotional connection you create by solving a pain point your customers have. People have a lot of different pain points, so how do you pick just one, and what differentiates your solution, or brand, from the...

It's no secret that on this podcast we believe revenue is the responsibility of all go-to-market teams. But that begs the question, how do we think about attribution for sourced revenue? Christy Marble, the current CMO of Pantheon - a WebOps platform that empowers marketers and developers to create, iterate, and scale websites - has been thinking about this question for years, and she always comes back to the same answer: Marketing's job is to delight and deliver value to their customer's at...

Banks, software, even groceries. It doesn't matter the business - trust in the brands where we invest our money is a key reason for why we make the decisions we do, and it's why former Vice President of Customer Success at Liferay, Fred Tsai, believes trust is the core to every successful business. In this episode of Revenue Talks, Fred explains why he believes building trust with buyers is crucial to a company's long-term success, how Liferay builds trust with its buyers, and how the...

Pipeline - is it the responsibility of sales, or marketing? And even before deciding that, how do you define "pipeline"? Scott Berg, Vice President of Global Revenue and Field Marketing at Hitachi Vantara - an IT service management company - says that there are two definitions to pipeline, but both are the responsibility of both sales AND marketing. In today's go-to-market landscape, Scott believes that for marketing to build trust with sales, sales and marketing teams must first align on...

Growing upmarket as a company means more than just hiring account executives to sell into new territory. Lauren Weinberg, Global Head of Marketing and Communications at Square, a financial services and digital payments company, knows this first hand. Before sales teams can even start selling, extensive research needs to be done in order to understand who the personas are in the new market and how they think and operate differently from the personas that reps may be used to selling to. It...

Treat humans like humans. Practice empathy, and even if you don't know the answer, just try to help. These are the simple messages that get back to the basics of go-to-market relationships, and they're the messages Allison Carroll, SVP of Customer Success at Avalara -- a software company for automated tax compliance - uses to help her global company experience hypergrowth amidst a global pandemic. In this episode of Revenue Talks, Justin hosts our first customer success guest, but Allison...

Treat humans like humans. Practice empathy, and even if you don't know the answer, just try to help. These are the simple messages that get back to the basics of go-to-market relationships, and they're the messages Allison Carroll, SVP of Customer Success at Avalara -- a software company for automated tax compliance -- uses to help her global company grow 40% YoY amidst a global pandemic. In this episode of Revenue Talks, Justin hosts our first customer success guest, but Allison wasn't...

Right people, right accounts, right time. That's the philosophy Kyle Coleman's go-to-market team at Clari, a revenue operations platform, follows in order to increase buyer efficiency at every stage of the funnel. On this episode of Revenue Talks, Justin and Kyle get into the details of what buyer efficiency really means. They clarify that increasing buyer efficiency does not, and should not, be separate from revenue generation, and Kyle breaks down how to apply account-based marketing across...

Artificial intelligence (AI)—the term everyone in tech talks about. But how many of us actually know what artificial intelligence means? And how many of us actually know how to use artificial intelligence to deliver better website experiences for our buyers? In this pilot episode of Revenue Talks, Drift’s CMO, Katie Foote, sits down with Quantcast’s former CMO, Ingrid Burton, to explore these questions. Ingrid shares her three tips for optimizing AI, why she thinks no one should fear...