In this episode of Across The Funnel, Adil Saleh sits down with Chandra DeKeyser, CEO and Co-Founder at Voicera, to explore why transcripts alone can mislead GTM teams by stripping out the emotional signal that often reveals true intent, especially around renewals and deal risk. Chandra breaks down how Voicera approaches “sincerity” as a measurable layer, including the challenge of building a credible training dataset, and why combining separate models for facial cues and voice tone can create a clearer read than text summaries. The conversation also connects this to practical use cases for SaaS and customer success leaders: coaching sales reps by spotting second-by-second drop-offs during a pitch, improving manager authenticity to reduce talent churn, and strengthening hiring workflows as deepfakes become harder to detect. Adil and Chandra close on what makes adoption work across segments, from self-serve analysis for smaller teams to enterprise deployments where privacy and sensitive video data matter, and how to frame ROI in plain numbers that CROs and CEOs will actually act on.

In this episode of Across The Funnel, Adil Saleh sits down with Omer Gotlieb, Founder and CEO at Salespeak, to explore why AI in GTM still rises or falls on trust, not features, and why the next wave of winners will design around the buyer’s experience instead of stacking more internal tools. Omer unpacks how “intent” has gotten messier as buyers research in ChatGPT as much as they browse websites, why lazy signal-based outreach is turning into a spam cannon, and what it takes to engage with real context rather than a single click. They also dig into practical GTM choices for chaotic markets, including month-to-month experimentation, freemium and pay-per-use models that reduce commitment risk, and a value-first approach that earns expansion instead of forcing it. The conversation closes with lessons from building lean teams in an AI era, using agents to do more with fewer hires, and advice for first-time founders to win early by delivering clear value and owning a distinct point of view in a crowded category.

In this episode of Across The Funnel, Adil Saleh sits down with Kyle Racki, Co-Founder and CEO of Proposify, and Proposify to explore why proposals remain the “digital handshake” in mid-market and enterprise sales, what teams actually buy proposal software for (speed, consistency, fewer errors, better buyer visibility), and how this category is evolving alongside contracts, CPQ, CLM, and digital sales roms. Kyle shares how Proposify navigated SaaS market cycles, moved from early scrappiness to raising capital, then returned to a profitability-first operating style, plus why adding products matters when markets are big but not infinite. He and Adil also pressure-test the AI hype, including the Dunning–Kruger trap where “easy to build” often means “easy to build something fragile,” and they connect that to real-world product work like tech debt, replatforming, and why Proposify 3 existed as a reset for modern shipping speed. On the customer side, Kyle walks through onboarding and time-to-value, including a candid example where an AI template generator hurt conversions because it was slow and produced mediocre outputs, which pushed the team toward simpler AI uses and a more reliable services-led “launch kit” to get customers live faster with the right setup, guidance, and early support.

In this episode of Across The Funnel, Adil Saleh sits down with Patrick Petteruti, Co-founder of Chargeblast, to explore how fast-growing consumer, DTC, and e-commerce businesses can keep chargebacks from becoming a business-ending payments problem, starting with Patrick’s origin story scaling Cramly.ai on Stripe and getting hit by rising disputes, then building Chargeblast’s chargeback alerts so merchants can refund early and keep dispute rates low; they dig into why matching issuer alerts to processor transaction records is hard across tokenized payment methods, how Chargeblast moved from being Stripe-first to supporting 35+ processors and gateways, what onboarding looks like when setup takes minutes instead of months, the tradeoffs of staying on Stripe versus routing volume across multiple processors to improve acceptance and lower fees, the most common dispute-heavy categories (subscriptions, telehealth, iOS apps moving to Stripe, and other higher-risk verticals), why pre-launch sales often trigger dispute spikes, how Chargeblast grows through a mix of direct sales, partnerships (including with payment platforms), and strong referral loops, plus the operating model behind white-glove support, including a large Philippines-based team, a portfolio-wide chargeback log that flags spikes or bad data, and rapid 24/7 live chat, ending with Patrick’s view on where AI can help most next: assembling clear, structured evidence packs for banks during dispute fights by pulling usage and customer proof from whatever systems a merchant uses.

In this episode of Across The Funnel, Adil Saleh sits down with Vova Feldman, Founder at Freemius, to explore what it really takes to sell software globally when payments, subscriptions, invoicing, and tax compliance start competing with product work.

Vova shares Freemius’s origin story: building software was fast, but turning it into a business took a year of implementation work because monetization has too many moving parts, especially once global tax rules and subscription complexity enter the picture. They break down why “just use Stripe” often hides the full cost of cross-border fees, billing, taxes, and invoicing, and why founders should measure their payment stack like any other growth decision, with real unit economics, not assumptions.

The conversation also gets practical about GTM and retention: Freemius reduces churn by making value visible, shipping features tied to revenue lift and support reduction, and building a tight maker community that drives product ideas and creates buyer and investor connectivity. Looking ahead to 2026, they discuss how AI is pushing more products toward usage-based billing, and why pricing and packaging will become a core operator skill, including Freemius’s plans for pricing recommendation tools and pricing page feedback.

In this episode of Across the Funnel, Adil Saleh sits down with Steve Benson, CEO at Badger Maps, to explore why field sales still matters for high-ACV deals, and what it takes to build software that supports teams who live on the road.

Steve breaks down how his background selling at IBM and Google, including work around the Google Maps API, shaped Badger Maps’ focus on mapping, routing, and territory design for outside sales teams. The conversation then shifts into bootstrapping: why a sellable first version matters, when “investible” is the real question (not preference), and how funding choices change speed, product maturity, and competitive pressure.

On the customer side, they argue that customer success is a direct churn and LTV lever, not a nice-to-have. Steve shares a practical view of how to staff CS early (including renewals ownership), why fast customer support still protects retention, and why usage data plus ecosystem partnerships (like CRM integrators) often decide whether a customer gets real value or quietly drifts.

In this episode of the Hyperengage Podcast, Adil Saleh sits down with Aleksa Mitrović, Founder at Dealmayker, to explore why modern B2B sales is shifting from high-volume outreach to high-context conversations built on semantic signals and human psychology.

Aleksa breaks down how “being the most prepared” beats being the most charismatic, and why teams win when they show up with industry context, timing, and relevance rather than generic sequences. He argues that automation made it easy to message everyone, but it also raised the bar for what earns a reply: specificity, usefulness, and genuine understanding.

The conversation also covers early-stage growth and customer success realities: why simple products that non-sales roles can use quickly matter, why small accounts can become the doorway to bigger deals through trust and referrals, and why usage (not signups) is the clearest signal for retention and product-market pull.

In this episode of the Hyperengage Podcast, Adil Saleh sits down with Vlad Shlosberg, CEO of Foqal, to explore how Slack and Microsoft Teams are reshaping modern support operations, why AI adoption in support is now driven from the top down, and what actually matters in messaging-based support metrics. They unpack the shift from resolution-time obsession to first-response expectations, and how in-channel support changes both customer behavior and SLA design. Vlad breaks down the differences between B2B SaaS and open source communities in Slack, when it makes sense to build your own community versus piggybacking on existing ones, and how community strategy ties back into GTM. The conversation also gets into agentic workflows and why data sources and MCP-style connectors matter more than prompt cleverness when building AI support agents. Finally, Vlad shares how Foqal thinks about expansion: moving from external support to internal IT/HR/RevOps use cases, using Slack virality to land-and-expand across teams, and navigating a crowded market where bootstrapped focus and word-of-mouth often beat high-burn competitors.

In this episode of the Hyperengage Podcast, Adil Saleh sits down with Robert Kraal, Co-Founder at Silverflow, to explore how modern card processing infrastructure is reshaping payments for banks, acquirers, and SaaS companies. They unpack why legacy mainframe-era platforms struggle with new card features, regulation, and data needs, and how a data-first approach to recurring payments, tokenization, and authorization can materially change subscription revenue and recovery from declines. Robert walks through the different go-to-market motions in Europe versus the US, the realities of selling core payment rails into banks, and how fraud systems read behavioral signals across devices, IPs, and transaction patterns. The conversation closes on how Silverflow uses AI in operations, why agentic commerce and stablecoins are on their radar, and how Robert thinks about building a knowledge-heavy, founder-producing culture inside a global fintech team.

In this episode of the Hyperengage Podcast, Adil Saleh sits down with Lincoln Murphy, VP of Customer Experience at ListKit, to explore how customer success and post sale GTM are changing in a world of digital engagement and AI tools. Lincoln explains why obsessing over churn keeps teams stuck, and makes the case for focusing on customer outcomes and the overall experience instead. He talks through how COVID era shifts and everyday use of ChatGPT have raised expectations for speed to value, and outlines how ListKit runs a split model with self service GTM customers on one side and high touch done for you cold email programs on the other.

He breaks down his approach to goal discovery, defining goals as an objective, a timeframe and the deeper why, and shows how that drives onboarding, adoption and ongoing performance reviews that often happen asynchronously via Loom instead of long calls. Lincoln shares how ListKit uses AI behind the scenes so teams can handle far more work while still leaving human conversations where customers need to feel seen, heard and validated. Adil and Lincoln close by digging into lifetime value and expansion through a planned Ascension Path, treating churn as a symptom to study rather than the main target, and reflecting on why the customer success software category still struggles to define itself between happy customers and revenue growth.