Ali Lillie from SmartBug joined the Demand & Ops Unboxed podcast to dive into the fascinating topic of how alignment between sales, marketing, and customer success teams is the often-overlooked key to driving revenue growth. 

Ali, who has worked in all three revenue departments at SmartBug, shares her valuable insights on the different priorities and processes of each team. It was interesting to hear how her experience has shaped her understanding of the importance of alignment.

During the conversation, we touched on some other interesting topics as well, including lead scoring, the difference between customer success and customer service, and the effectiveness of webinars and events as a demand gen strategy.

As a side conversation (it's 2023, why not) we discuss the role of AI in improving efficiency and productivity. We both agree that AI has been a game-changer in our work. Ali predicts that leveraging AI for efficiency will be a big focus in 2024.

Here are a few key takeaways from the interview:

• Alignment between sales, marketing, and customer success teams is crucial for driving revenue.
• Lead scoring can be tricky to set up in HubSpot, but highly effective if done right 
• There's a difference between customer success versus customer service
• Webinars/events are still effective as part of a demand gen strategy
• Leveraging AI for efficiency will be a major focus in 2024, which can help create better alignment

Learn more about and connect with Ali and SmartBug

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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In the first interview of the re-branded era for the podcast, I interviewed Connor Jeffers, the Founder and CEO of Aptitude 8, a HubSpot Elite Partner.

Connor comes from a Saleforce background and, with the recent changes HubSpot has made to it's platform and Ops Hub, he's been able to do things in HubSpot that, previously, could only be done in Salesforce. 

We talk about how this has been a gamechanger for HubSpot and his business as well as why Ops Hub might be one of the most underrated hubs.

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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Demand Gen is a huge buzzword, yet many people are unsure what it is.

Christopher Roche, Chief Executive Officer at Catalyst Consulting, talked about why now - with a lot of talk of a looming recession- is a great time to transition from a lead gen model to a demand gen model. 

Here are some of the topics covered:

• The difference between demand gen and lead gen
• The compounding effect of demand gen on growth and revenue
• The importance of social selling and building a personal brand to good demand gen
•  Chris' framework for transitioning from a lead gen model to a demand gen model- without having to burn it all down

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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RevOps and Marketing Ops isn't new, but it sure seems like it by the amount of attention they're getting these days - and for good reason.

With so much focus on growth- especially rapid growth - companies are looking for different levers to pull to accelerate their growth curves. 

Technology has made it easy to spam cold leads at scale and people are ignoring these emails. Especially in a time of constant distraction and noise.

Ali and I hopped on a call to riff about the recent attention MOps and RevOps are getting right now and why it's so critical to businesses of all sizes. 

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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John Suarez, Director of Marketing Strategy at Smart Bug Media

We talked about:

• The evolution of HubSpot
• HubSpot's new functionality and why it’s a big deal
• The importance of being intentional about the types of projects and clients you take on
• Gating vs un-gating content and outbound vs no outbound sales
• What he sees happening in sales and marketing in the next 1-2 years

Follow John on LinkedIn: ​​https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnjsuarez/

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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Tara is a financial services, product marketing director at Demandbase, and we talked about the lessons learned throughout her career and what it means to be an industry marketer, the importance of mentors, and why it's so important to not only develop the hard skills of marketing, but also the soft skills.

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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Sales compensation. It's a very complex, yet fascinating topic and Ali and I had the pleasure of sitting down and digging into all of the nuances of this topic with Sandeep Singh.

Sandeep shared his three key elements of sales compensation and also touched on quota planning, sales enablement, as well as how things have changed over the years.  

About Sandeep 

Sandeep has nearly 20 years of revenue operations experience spanning companies like Dell to independent consulting. 

He is currently the Founder of Ascentreon and VP of Revenue Operations. 

Ascentreon provides advisory services related to sales GTM strategy and planning, revenue operations, process optimization and sales compensation design focusing on serving revenue orgs in early-stage and mid-stage SaaS and professional services firms. 

Connect with Sandeep on LinkedIn -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandeep-singh01

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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Jay Desai has started several companies, some of which he continues to be involved with. However, just a few months ago he decided to leave entrepreneurship and pivot into an in-house role as the Head of Marketing for Captivate Talent.

This might seem strange during the time of "the Great Resignation" and he explains why now is actually a great time to go in-house.

We also dove into what it means to be a solo marketer and a couple of his favorite content strategies you can use if you're a marketing team of one, along with a few of his favorite tools. 

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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I have had a lot of great conversations with people since starting this podcast in the Summer of 2021, but my conversation with Robbie could have gone on for another couple of hours. 

Robbie recently published a book (one in a future series of three) about the reality of being able to way more than we think in even less time than we think.

He wrote this book, 12 minutes at a time. 

Day by day, drip by drip until, one day, he had a book to publish. 

The topic might not be specifically marketing or ops, but the concept applies to anything we do - especially the big things we dream of doing in our careers. 

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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Jamie Moran is the Head of Marketing at Neurotrainer.

After attending over 30 different events in 2019, Jamie didn't quite understand how to use HubSpot Sequences and has regretted a huge missed opportunity to follow up with people.

He wanted to change this, so he started doing research, leaned into learning, tested different strategies, and finally nailed how to use HubSpot sequences.

Follow Jamie on LinkedIn

The Demand (and Ops) Unboxed podcast is produced by RainierDigital, a demand and ops consultancy.

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