APAC's B2B Growth Podcast

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Nicholas Kontopoulos, APAC Regional Head of Growth Marketing at Adobe about how marketers can step into sales teams’ shoes and work towards achieving alignment with them. 

As the Asia Pacific Regional Head of Marketing, Adobe DX Commercial, Nicholas harnesses over 25 years of professional experience, built across multiple industries and geographies. 

Nicholas advises marketers to be a part of the sales process by joining discovery calls and listening to the conversations SDRs have with prospects. He also emphasises the importance of seeking sales input while creating content and shares some interesting details about Adobe’s brand to revenue framework. 

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/develop-sales-mindset/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Hayley Hopwood, head of growth at Stripe, ANZ, about how organisations can build a solid and effective outbound sales team. 

During the conversation, Hayley defines the responsibilities of an outbound associate role unique to Stripe. She also talks about hiring best practices, the challenges she faced while building a sales team in Australia, the OBA career path and how they need to be given targets to drive maximum productivity.

Prior to joining Stripe in 2019, she held positions at Travelex, Western Union, PayPal and Australia Post. Hayley is passionate about embracing new technology and navigating teams through the ever-changing landscape.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/outbound-sales-team/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, Shahin chats with Andrei Zinkevich, Co-founder of Fullfunnel.io about how he approaches ABM initiatives and how, in some cases, he and his team are able to execute some of these campaigns with really tight budgets.

Andrei lives and breathes B2B marketing since 2007. He is the founder of Fullfunnel.io (full-funnel account-based marketing operations for B2B tech companies) and ROIplan (marketing planning platform). 

In 2019, Andrei published "LinkedIn Content Marketing: How to generate high-quality B2B leads on LinkedIn without cold messaging and ads", which was awarded the best B2B marketing e-book and was included in the “100 Best B2B Marketing Books of All Time” by Bookauthority.

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Orbit Media, about the approach marketers can take to create compelling research-based content.

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media, an award-winning 40-person digital agency in Chicago. Over the past 20 years, he has provided digital marketing advice to 1000+ businesses.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/research-based-content/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Bev Burgess, Senior Advisor at ITSMA, about key trends in the account-based marketing domain and its changes in the last four years. 

During this conversation, Bev shares valuable insights on the differences between account management and executive management. She also talks about how marketing to accounts is not the same as ABM. 

The discussion concludes with Bev sharing her predictions for ABM beyond 2021.

Bev Burgess is an industry expert in marketing technology services and literally wrote the book on it (Marketing Technology as a Service, Wiley 2010). She is best known as an authority on Account-Based Marketing (ABM), being the first to classify it when developing the approach jointly with several clients. S

he is co-author with Dave Munn of the book, A Practitioner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing: Accelerating Growth in Strategic Accounts (Kogan Page, 2017 and 2021), and author of Executive Engagement Strategies: How to Have Conversations and Develop Relationships That Build B2B Business (Kogan Page, 2020).

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/account-based-strategy-postcovid/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

ABM Talks are open AMA style sessions for ABM experts, practitioners and the curious to discuss the world of Account-Based Marketing & ABX.

​In this session, we’ll be discussing what you’ll need to prepare before running your first ABM campaign. 

​We'll be covering:

• ​Who you’ll need on board from the company
• ​Finding your sales partner
• ​Clearly outlining your ICP & the accounts your targeting
• ​Defining your success metrics
• ​What essential tools you’ll need

If you want to participate in one of these sessions make sure to join the community slack channel at https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats to Nick Sheehan, Founder & CEO at EFEX.

EFEX, an Australian Business Technology Service provider, dedicated to ‘making IT simple and accessible for SME’s and enterprise-sized companies.

Nick shares his experience in entrepreneurship and discusses why he believes you shouldn't have a plan B as well as the importance of staying true to your values throughout the entire journey.

A combination of Nick’s strong work ethic, problem-solving skills and his passion for helping others is part of the reason EFEX came to fruition. Nick noticed that notionally, newer technology was out of reach for many Australian business owners and C-level executives which was primarily due to the large upfront capital outlay and complexity overload. As a result, he created a customer service-led business to provide a range of technologies through a single provider and subscription, or AaS (As-a-Service), consumption model.

EFEX has won several awards over the years for its commitment to the Australian technology and SMB industry. It has been named on The AFRs BRWs Fast Starter list twice and placed as runner up in the CRN Fast50 Awards in both 2015 and 2016.

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Leandro Perez, Vice President, Asia Pacific Marketing at Salesforce, about how he manages his team and executive stakeholders in the post-COVID world. 

Leandro stresses the importance of empathising with employees’ situations while working on a project. He also shares his approach to boosting employee morale and ensuring proper upskilling of his team.

Furthermore, he talks about how he aligns his KPIs with that of the business when it comes to marketing and the internal communication structures that he has established for providing visibility on all marketing efforts to stakeholders outside of the marketing teams.

Leandro leads marketing across the Asia-Pacific region for Salesforce. Previously at Salesforce, he led the global corporate messaging team, responsible for crafting and disseminating the Salesforce corporate narrative to 50,000 employees and millions of customers globally each year.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/marketing-leadership-postcovid/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Shahin chats with Brandon Redlinger, Senior Director, Product Marketing at ringDNA, about how marketers can create content that actually adds value to readers.

Brandon shares practical ways to look for interesting topics to write about and sheds light on a team structure that works best when creating large pieces of content such as ebooks. 

During the conversation, he also stresses the importance of having long-term relationships with industry influencers and advises marketers to be strategic about the whole process.

Brandon Redlinger is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at ringDNA. He has an extensive background in helping organizations create GTM strategies and orchestrate demand gen programs to power sales execution.

He’s passionate about the intersection between technology and psychology, especially as it applies to growing businesses. In his spare time, you'll often time him reading, playing hockey or spending time with his family.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/content-marketing-strategy

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Ray Kloss, Director of Brand Marketing for APJC at Cisco, about how diversity within the region impacts marketing and what can marketers do to set themselves up for success.

During this interesting conversation, Ray talks about the importance of having an “insider” from every culture to help make better marketing and hiring decisions.

He also shares some valuable advice on mentoring, having a local network and managing the APAC region, specifically India and Japan, by citing stories from his personal experience. 

Ray is a seasoned B2B marketer with over two decades of experience across all aspects of enterprise software and technology, including sales, marketing, ecosystems & channels, and delivery.

He has successfully led major projects across North America, Greater China, Southeast Asia, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/lead-apac-marketing/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack