Don Otvos, RevOps leader and current GTM Strategist and Platform Evangelist at Chili Piper, shares the story of how one difficult conversation with a former boss made him switch career tracks after 20 years in sales.

Since then, he has networked his way to a successful RevOps leadership career at companies like Yammer, SalesLoft, and LeanData.

Don Otvos has built an entire career in RevOps off the back of thoughtful networking and product evangelism.

After an honest conversation with a manager led him to a career in revenue operations, he’s held sales & RevOps leadership roles at companies like Yammer, SalesLoft, and LeanData.

This week, Don joins Alex to share his greatest hits, including:

• how he networked himself into a major career shift
• his memorable job interview with David Sacks
• how an appearance in First Round Review landed him a job at SalesLoft
• behind the scenes of the partner programs at LeanData and Chili Piper

Melissa Rosenthal's first job out of college was as an intern at BuzzFeed. In her 6 years with the company, she rose to Global VP of Creative, delivering more than $50M in native ad revenue and $100M in branded content.

She also helped ClickUp 100X their revenue growth as their Chief Creative Officer. Today, she's the co-founder of Outlever, a new startup that helps companies become the #1 news source in their industry.

For our 40th episode, we’re talking to Melissa Rosenthal.

As BuzzFeed’s Global VP of Creative, she led a team that created over 3,000 branded content campaigns, earning hundreds of billions of views, over $100M in revenue for BuzzFeed, and a spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30.

As ClickUp's CCO, Melissa grew their ARR from $2 to $200M in 4 years and ran some memorable billboard campaigns. 

On today’s episode, Melissa breaks down the most memorable stories from her career, including:

• How she scaled herself at BuzzFeed
• Why ClickUp was willing to take a shot on brand-forward marketing
• What she's building at her new company, Outlever

Catie Ivey is the Chief Revenue Officer at Walnut — a leader in interactive demo platforms.

Catie has built a standout career in sales, leading teams at some of the biggest names in marketing tech, including Marketo, Demandbase, and Pendo.

Today, we’re taking a journey through pivotal moments in Catie’s career that shaped her approach to sales leadership.

Catie Ivey has built a dream career in sales, leading teams at some of the biggest names in marketing tech.

Today, she's joining Alex to break down her advice for aspiring sales leaders, and her biggest tips for interactive demos that convert.

Catie also takes us through pivotal moments in her career, including:

• The private equity acquisition at Marketo
• Selling an ABM product at Demandbase
• Shifting to a new customer persona at Pendo
• Life as a startup CRO at Walnut

Nobody prepares you for the jump from CSM to CS leader. But Rachel Provan is trying to change that. Rachel is a customer success leadership coach, helping CS leaders and early-stage companies build customer success strategies and leadership habits that scale.

Nobody prepares you for the jump from CSM to CS leader. But Rachel Provan is trying to change that.

Rachel is a customer success leadership coach, helping CS leaders and early-stage companies build customer success strategies and leadership habits that scale.

She joined Alex to discuss the psychology and strategy behind CS, including:

• When a founder should make their first CS hire
• The best way for CS to handle product feedback
• Why live training sessions aren’t always the best way to onboard clients
• How to be more proactive about winning renewals

Most of our guests are builders, but Wynne Brown is a fixer. Learn how she's slashed churn, expanded renewals, and professionalized Sales and CS teams at Monster, GitHub, Seal Software/Docusign, Fable, RocketReach, and more.

Wynne Brown spent the last two decades coming into scaling companies with leaky revenue — where she rights the ship, and then moves on to the next challenge.

She’s revamped Sales and Customer Success at companies like Monster, GitHub, Fable, and RocketReach - mostly by focusing on the customer.

This week, Wynne joins Alex to discuss her career journey, including:

• Introducing Customer Success to Monster’s military.com division
• Leading CS at GitHub, where she introduced enterprise CSMs
• Turning around a huge churn problem at Seal Software
• Leading revenue at Fable and RocketReach through their Series A

Chris Michelmore, Head of Mid Market Acquisition at Zoom, tells the nine-year story of how he ascended from first-time SDR to senior sales leader.

It's rare for a first-time SDR to stick around long enough to become a sales leader at that same company.

But that's exactly how Chris Michelmore became the Head of Mid Market Acquisition at Zoom.

This week, he's taking Alex through his journey up the company ladder, including:

• What made him so successful as a seller
• Why coaching sales reps is more like selling than you'd think
• The big differences between leading sales directors vs. AEs
• What it’s like growing alongside a company in hypergrowth

Matt Green, Co-Founder and CRO of Sales Assembly, shares the company's founding story, the keys to a great sales training program, plus the biggest sales skills most teams are missing today.

Some of today's best companies started over a cup of coffee.

That's how Matt Green and his co-founder, Jeff Rosset, started Sales Assembly – the go-to sales resource for some of the world's best B2B tech companies.

Matt joins Alex this week to share the growth story of Sales Assembly, including:

• why they pivoted from role-backed to skill-based training
• what today's most successful sales leaders are talking about
• the 2 biggest skills that sales teams are missing
• the most common struggles he sees with new sales leaders
• his advice for selling through champions

Monica Perez, Head of Customer Success at Notion, shares the four-year journey of building Notion's foundational CS team.

Customer Success at a product-led company is a completely different animal.

When Monica Perez was brought in to grow Notion's foundational customer success team, they were already at $40 million in revenue.

Today, Monica joins Alex to discuss what it was like to build a CS program on top of a strong PLG engine — including:

• how their customer onboarding is structured
• the relationship between sales and CS
• how they mature customer accounts over time
• how they measure the success of their CS programs

Devin Bramhall, growth advisor and former CEO of Animalz—the content marketing agency for companies like Amazon, Google, and Intercom—shares candid stories about 3xing the agency's revenue to $11.5M in only 2 years.

Devin Bramhall is a content marketing legend.

After 3xing revenue to $11.5M in only 2 years at Animalz, she went on to build a successful consulting biz while growing her marketing podcast, Don't Say Content.

This week, Devin joins Alex to discuss:

• How she scaled Animalz
• Her advice for startups thinking about content
• How she grew her podcast

Eloise (Shuttleworth) Salisbury, newly named Chief Customer Officer at AutogenAI, recounts lessons from 5 years of building Iterable's customer success program from the ground up, how she's approaching her first 90 days in a new CS leadership role, and why she founded Women in SaaS.

What does it take to build an enterprise-level customer success program?

Eloise Salisbury, Chief Customer Officer at AutogenAI, joins us this week to break down what she learned scaling Iterable's customer success program.

Eloise joined Iterable, a cross-channel marketing enablement platform, after their Series B. 

In her five years with the company, she scaled their CS to an international audience, introduced an enterprise CS and implementation track, which ultimately helped the company grow to a $2 billion valuation.

In today’s episode, Alex and Eloise discuss:

• how to build mid-market and enterprise CS teams
• what makes an ideal CS/sales relationship
• how she's approaching the first 90 days at AutogenAI
• why she founded Women in Saas (and her advice for women in tech leadership)