April 17, 2025

Jeff Wharton on how to lead a marketing team upmarket. From 100% inbound to landing logos like 7-Eleven, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Cox Automotive.

50 minutes

Going upmarket is always attractive, but never easy.

Jeff Wharton is doing it right.

He walked me through his approach, moving from 100% inbound to landing logos like 7-eleven, MGM, Cisco, and Shake Shack.

This interview is a perfect ICP Marketing story.

Jeff went deep on the specific challenges LogRocket faced in their trek upmarket and how he overcame them (with lots of details).

What you'll learn in our conversation:

* How he turned a failed 'donut campaign' into a machine that consistently penetrates 25% of target accounts.

* Why they treat their SDR engine as a "product with modules".

* The art of knowing when to abandon vs. optimize marketing tactics.

* How they use AI throughout their GTM.

* Why they strive to be "data-guided" not "data-driven" marketers.

* How to use true value delivery as a way to differentiate your GTM.

Oh, and the surprising importance of phonetic pronunciation guides in enterprise outreach.

My takeaways from our talk:

1️⃣ "Treat your go-to-market motion as a product"

Jeff approaches his enterprise SDR engine as "a product that we're building in the marketing team." Each growth initiative is focused and accountable to specific metrics within the system. There are so many breakthroughs us marketers can steal from product people. This is one of them.

2️⃣ "Know when to kill vs. optimize"

We all struggle with knowing when to pivot vs. persevere. Jeff shared a helpful frame: "Was the original idea a flyer, or did we think about it from a very nuanced perspective?" and "Do we have at least one anecdotal proof point?" if we do, sometimes one more crank of the wheel is all it takes to get it to work. If not, we need to be "unemotional about stopping things."

3️⃣ Enterprise and PLG isn't "or" it's "and"

"If you build a product that is intuitive enough that credit card swipe customers can continue to use it really well and find value, it's gonna be easy for enterprise customers to use too." It doesn't need to be PLG or enterprise. These motions can be mutually beneficial.

4️⃣ It's not the channels, it's you

For all the talk about dead channels, it was good to hear what's working for Jeff. Specifically, LinkedIn Ads. He shared how they segment, retarget, and bid intelligently. For anyone, it's a good reminder that it might not be the channel that's broken; it's the way you're executing inside of it.

This episode is the third of my new PeerSignal podcast series where I'm interviewing go-to-market leaders on what works and the principles behind them.

Full Interview:

https://www.peersignal.org/podcast

Would love to hear from you!What did you think of this episode? Who do you want to learn from? What else do you want us to dive deep on?Reply to this email, I read every one :)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peersignal.org

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By Adam Schoenfeld

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