GTM Disrupted with Mike Smart

In a recent conversation, GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart sits with Donna Weber customer onboarding expert and author of “Onboarding Matters” to discuss the evolution of customer engagement and the challenges many B2B tech companies must overcome to deliver greater value to their customers.

Donna shares the six-stage approach detailed in the book for more effective onboarding.

Key Takeaways from this episode include:

1. Shift towards a customer-centric engagement

2. Adopting the Orchestrated Onboarding Framework

3. Sales' new role in customer success

4. Shorten the Time to Value

Donna declares B2B tech must prioritize the importance of customer onboarding and customer success by taking a page from the consumer space. Onboarding begins during the selling process, by the time the opportunity has closed customers must have clarity about how the engagement will proceed and most importantly at what stage they will see value from the solution.

The conversation between Mike and Donna underscores the significance of building enduring customer relationships and providing transparency and accountability throughout the customer journey.

Donna’s Bio

Donna Weber is a leading expert in customer onboarding. For more than two decades, she’s helped high-growth startups and established enterprises transform new and existing customers into loyal champions. As a recognized thought leader, influencer, strategist, advisor, author, and speaker, Donna gets to the heart of Customer Success. She is passionate about helping customers reach their goals because when your customers win, you win. It’s that simple. High growth companies hire Donna to increase customer retention and lifetime value, decrease time to customer first value, reduce implementation time and costs, boost product adoption and usage, and scale Customer Success organizations. Prior to finding her boutique consulting firm in 2016, Donna worked at several startups, where she built Customer Success and Customer Education programs and organizations from scratch.

For more about Donna to go https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnaweb/ or www.donnaweber.com/

GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart grabs a few minutes with Mark Stiving, Ph.D., and Chief Pricing Educator of Impact Pricing. They do a dive deep into the world of B2B SaaS pricing and sales strategies. Mark shares insights on the evolving dynamics of pricing in the SaaS industry and how market segmentation, product packaging, and pricing metrics play a pivotal role.

Mark sheds light on key concepts of his latest book “Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices.”

This episode gives valuable takeaways including:

1. Segmentation power in pricing strategy

2. How to price with precision

3. SaaS companies that price with success

Mike and Mark discuss how to price strategically to address growth and retention challenges in B2B SaaS companies.

Mark’s Bio

Mark is an educator at heart and a pricing expert by education and experience. He helps companies win more business at higher prices by delivering programs to help executives and employees create, communicate, and capture more value. For 30 years, Mark has led, coached, and taught businesses to extract more of the value they create. He has driven company-wide pricing initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental profit and started and sold three companies. Mark writes about pricing and value. In his most recent book: Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices, Mark takes his years of pricing expertise and applies it to sales with some surprising insights.

To learn more about Mark to go https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Or email Mark: [email protected].

GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart chats with Karthik Suresh Co-Founder of Ignition, an early-stage Go-to-Market platform designed to align sales, marketing, and product teams and enhance GTM outcomes. Karthik shares his thoughts on how to build go-to-market excellence; the only viable MOAT for B2B SaaS companies. His insights come from more than 10 years of experience in product and engineering roles with Meta, Craft.co, and KCG Holdings. Karthik shares the challenges companies face when launching products and emphasizes the significance of having a well-defined go-to-market plan. He offers a detailed view of how a purpose-built platform such as Ignition can automate various aspects of the launch planning process, including persona generation and messaging.

Key learnings from this podcast include:

 Adopt a standardized Go-To-Market approach

 Create Sales, Product, and Marketing Synergy

 Implement a GTM System of Record

 Use Automation and Dynamic Planning

Tune in to this episode to find out how to unlock revenue opportunities by aligning product, marketing, and sales and the power of using a platform for end-to-end go-to-market planning and execution.

Karthik’s Bio:

Karthik Suresh is the Co-Founder of Ignition, the first Go-to-Market Ops Platform which ensures every product launch or feature release drives revenue impact, via tighter alignment with GTM teams. Karthik is a product and technology leader with experience as a founder, an early startup hire, and a key player in defining product strategy and finding a market fit. He has experience building products in consumer and enterprise domains across early-stage and established companies like Meta.

To learn more about Karthik to go -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthiksureshlbs/

To learn more about the Ignition GTM Platform to go -- https://www.haveignition.com/

GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart sits with Jason Vander Meer a serial CPO in the B2B SaaS industry. Jason shares his views on how the CPO role has changed in recent years and what it takes to succeed in the job.

Jason’s insights and best practices come from nearly 20 years of experience in a variety of product leadership roles including CPO for several midmarket B2B software companies. He shares a perspective that is grounded in aligning product strategy with business direction. His approach is based on building and executing product strategies with limited resources that prioritize and maximize growth.

Key learnings from this podcast include:

 Implement a 3-pillar framework

 Master the Art of Managing Expectations

 Build a Strong Team for Scale

 Embrace Fire Prevention over Firefighting

The go-to-market mindset of a modern CPO is more than just signal noise. Tune in to this episode to find out how to unlock the value of your existing product management organization and succeed as a product management executive. Mike and Jason explore how the macro climate has influenced a shift in the CPO role and what may be next.

Jason’s Bio:

Jason has served in product leadership roles in various industries the last 18 years with a key focus on building, refining, and successfully implementing GTM strategies as part of M&A integrations, product consolidations, and new product launches. With a core focus on driving revenue growth, cost efficiency, and customer satisfaction, Jason has helped companies from wide range of industries grow and achieve these successes, from finance at SS&C Eze, legal at Litera, now CPO at GoCanvas supporting companies in the trades digitizing their operations.

To Learn more about Jason to go -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonvandermeer/

GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart gets a chance to talk go-to-market, ABM and customer growth practices with Adam Turinas, CEO & Founder of Health Launchpad a health tech marketing consultancy. His new book “Total Customer Growth” outlines how to use ABM to impact topline results. Adam reveals how several health tech companies have benefited from ABM by adopting concepts including precise targeting, personalized engagement and sales development (SDR) buy-in.

Key take aways from this episode include:

1. How to break marketing lead MQL addition

2. Implementing ABM at any size company

3. Identifying and tracking Key ABM metrics

4. Achieving Total Customer Growth through account-based experience (ABX)

Mike and Adam discuss the key concepts of his book. Adam shares his career journey from advertising executive to health tech entrepreneur and marketing expert.

Adam’s Bio

Adam Turinas is a long-time technology marketing leader and entrepreneur. Adam spent two decades marketing for Dell, IBM, Bank of America and dozens of other major marketers. In 2012 he founded, grew and eventually sold a healthcare technology software business and then created healthlaunchpad, a leading healthtech marketing firm that is teaching clients how to use ABM.

To Learn more about Adam to go -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamturinas/

Learn more about Health Launch Pad at https://healthlaunchpad.com/

In a recent interview GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart sat with Sangram Vajre, best-selling author and Co-Founder/CEO of GTM Partners, a data driven go-to-market analyst firm to chat about the urgent need for B2B companies to modernize their go-to-market functions. Sangram shares his experience and insights on how to use a go-to-market framework to scale a company at every stage to sustain growth. His call to action for B2B companies that struggle with stagnant Net Recurring Revenue (NRR) is based on clarity, alignment and trust starting at the C-Suite.

Sangram’s Bio:

Sangram has been at the forefront of the B2B marketing trends for over a decade. He is the author of two books on B2B marketing the most recent one “MOVE The 4-question go-to-market framework” is a Wall Street Journal best seller. Sangram believes his primary job is being a great husband and Dad. His side gig is running GTM Partners. Prior to his most recent side gig, he was co-Founder and Chief Evangelist of Terminus the ABM platform company. He has also served as head of marketing for Pardot, a Salesforce company.

To Learn more about Sangram to go - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangramvajre/

Correction Please Read:

At 21 minutes into the show I stated that Product Board acquired the product management community

“Mind the Product”.

Correction – on February 1, 2022 Pendo.io Inc. announced that it acquired Mind the Product the terms

were not disclosed.

GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart reconnects with Jesse Lujan Vice President of Product at Ascend a leading a leading provider of Accounts Payable (AP) automation solutions for medium and large enterprises.

Jesse shares his insights on the evolution of an organization from legacy on-prem to a multi-tenant business model and ultimately to being product-led. Jesse emphasizes the essential ingredient of go-to-market success is product management and sales alignment.

As a former scientist Jesse brings a strong data-driven mindset to the product leadership role with a keen emphasis on cross-functional collaboration and shared goals.

Jesse’s Bio:

Jesse is a B2B SaaS Product Management expert with a focus on utilizing quantitative and qualitative strategies to create successful products. Responsible for driving Ascend’s product vision by prioritizing the right value-adding People, Products, and Processes. His focus is using market research, business case scenarios, and experimental design to orient my teams to produce accurate and measurable roadmaps. Prior to Ascend, Jesse was a scientist in immunology, R&D, and therapeutics. He transitioned into enterprise software while working as a product consultant at Egress Solutions, Inc.

To learn more about Jesse go to https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesselujan/

GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart interviews Brian Utz Sr Director of Global Product Management at Sopheon, a leading innovation platform for innovation, product, and project professionals. Brian brings a diverse product management background, having built products and solutions for retail, finance, and now for the enterprise. He shared that his experience in the B2B and B2C domains provides a set of common principles that are based on customer/user empathy, an understanding of their job to be done, and knowing the customers’ customers leads to better product outcomes.

We also discussed how customer and stakeholder alignment is crucial to market success. Brian's common sense insights on the B2C and B2B knowledge transfer give PMs practical approaches to improve product launch success.

Brian’s Bio:

Brian is a seasoned product professional, with experience in business verticals from Retail to Finance. As a product leader Brian helps teams design, build, release and launch the leading innovation solutions for Sopheon.

Brian has seen the best parts of small companies operating in start-up mode and the advantages of the scale of large organizations can leverage to benefit their customers. Always with an eye toward innovation, Brian uses all this experience and learning to help his team bring the best possible products and experiences to market.

To learn more about Brian go to https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-utz/

Mike Smart of Egress Solutions has an exhilarating discussion with successful entrepreneur Esben Friis-Jensen. He is working on his second start-up in less than 10 years. Esben adds a unique perspective on the product-led growth (PLG) initiative with offers his thoughts on how the enterprise software business will shift and change in the future. We discuss the progression of PLG and how it will change how software companies organize teams to improve their effectiveness. Esben is Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow, a no-code onboarding flow builder that enables customized in-app tours and checklists. Previously he was Co-founder and Chief Customer Officer at Cobalt, a security platform that offers Pentest as a Service (PtaaS). Esben began his career as a consultant with Accenture responsible for the deployment management of global IT implementations.

Esben’ Bio:

Esben Friis-Jensen is the co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow, a no-code builder for in-app onboarding and surveys, allowing SaaS businesses to be more product-led. Prior to Userflow, Esben co-founded Cobalt, which today is a 200+ employee company. Esben holds BEng in Mathematics and MEng in Mathematical Modeling from Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

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Guest: Esben Friis-Jensen | Linked In: Esben Friis-Jensen

Host: Mike Smart | www.EgressSolutions.net

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This is a Mr. Thrive Media production. Learn more at www.MrThrive.com

Mike Smart of Egress Solutions sits down with Kavita Ganesan, PhD founder of Opinosis Analytics and author of “The Business Case for AI: A Leader’s Guide to AI Strategies, Best Practices & Real-World Applications.” Kavita brings key insights and ideas about how enterprise and mid-market software companies can apply an AI mindset to have greater success layering AI capabilities and tools into new and existing solutions. Kavita shares her experience of over 15 years in the trenches completing successful AI projects with companies such as eBay, 3M and GitHub. As an AI thought leader, advisor, strategist and educator, Kavita has worked with enterprise leaders and practitioners around the world to implement AI strategically. Kavita has been featured by numerous media outlets including Forbes, CEOWorld, CMSWire, Verizon, SDTimes, Techopedia, and Ted Magazine.

Kavita’s Bio:

Kavita Ganesan is the founder of Opinosis Analytics (http://www.opinosis-analytics.com), an AI advisory and consulting company, and a strategic advisor, educator, and consultant. Over the years, she has advised Fortune 500 companies as well as midsize to smaller operations and has helped deliver numerous successful AI initiatives.  Kavita holds graduate degrees from top computer science programs in the US—specifically, a master’s degree from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign–specializing in applied AI, NLP, and search technologies. With over fifteen years of experience, parts in the trenches, and then out of it to advise leaders and teams, Kavita has seen a range of problems in practical applications of AI, leading to failed and canceled initiatives. Kavita’s mission is to change the status quo. She aims to see many more wins in the adoption of AI through mindset changes, sound strategies, and education.

To learn more about Kavita, visit www.Kavita-Ganesan.com. Finally, if you’re not already connected with

Kavita on LinkedIn, you can do at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kavita-ganesan/

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Guest: Kavita Ganesan | www.Opinosis-Analytics.com

Host: Mike Smart | www.EgressSolutions.net

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This is a Mr. Thrive Media production. Learn more at www.MrThrive.com