Predictable B2B Success

Colin Shaw is the founder of Beyond Philosophy LLC, a customer experience company that has been recognized by the Financial Times as 'one of the leading management consultancies for the last four years in a row.

Colin Shaw is an original pioneer of 'Customer Experience.' LinkedIn has recognized him as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers'. He has written seven best-selling books on Customer Experience.

Colin is also the co-host of the highly successful Intuitive Customer podcast, which is rated in the top 5% of all podcasts by BuzzSprout.

In this episode, he shares how we can create delightful experiences for businesses that drive growth. Insights he shares include:

• The four areas we need to understand and have a handle on in order to improve the customer experience
• Why asking customers what they want or need isn't a good idea and what to do instead
• How to build relationships to further customer experience
• How to take a data-driven approach to improve the customer experience
• How to get the customer experience insights you need
• How to determine the emotions experiences evoke in customers
• How to best utilize insights and data to improve the customer experience
• and much much more ...

Dan Varroney is the President and CEO of Potomac Core, a strategic consulting firm that specializes in association transformation and industry-focused strategic partnerships, and the author of Reimagining Industry Growth: Strategic Partnership Strategies in an Era of Uncertainty).

Dan is a much sought-after expert on economic performance, supply chain issues, and strategic partnerships. His groundbreaking book demonstrates how utilizing these institutional frameworks can help business leaders leverage the collective strength of the supply chains and value chains to overcome challenges, address uncertainty, mitigate risks, and position their industries for growth. 

Dan has spent 30 years successfully transforming Trade Associations. Those transformations were rooted in this simple philosophy: We should act on what we know instead of what we think

As the world continues to reel from COVID, countless industries are left uncertain about the future. Because of this chronic uncertainty, leveraging all avenues means that industries need to look beyond traditional growth solutions. One area that provides a tremendous opportunity is optimizing strategic partnerships between industries and trade associations among business executives.

In this episode, he shares how we can use powerful strategic partnership strategies to drive industry growth. Insights he shares include:

• Why do certain parts of the marketplace believe that from a trade association perspective that an Inside Out focus is the way forward for industries
• What does it take to bring about a change in perspective
• The place of change management in the process of bringing about a change in perspective
• Do we need inspiration? If so how can we find it despite the circumstances
• The advantages to developing insatiable curiosity
• How do we explore the potential strength and value of partnerships with trade associations to move the needle for entire industries? Is there a framework we can use
• What strategic partnerships look like from a trade association point of view
• Risk minimization through strategic partnerships
• and much much more ...

Lowell is the CEO & Founder of Traction Advising which specializes in helping B2B SaaS companies with >$5M ARR get acquired.

Lowell’s been a Co-founder/CEO/Chairman, COO of a $120M public company, Startup CRO, and Global VP Rockwell. He’s a Global Mentor, Investor, Board member, and CEO coach.

His current business Traction Advising was started out of his frustration when he was in a buyer’s position. The investment banker model uses accounting/finance people trying to sell. “No one hires accountants to sell products so why hire them to sell a company?” Selling/Marketing a small SaaS company is more like selling a technology product than selling a financial instrument.

With the company's buying/selling experience of more than 30 organizations, he knows what internal stakeholders need to approve a transaction. As a founder/CEO he knows what it’s like to start up a company, build a product, hire employees, raise money, find customers, keep them happy and make payroll. He leverages this experience to craft acquisitions that get the best outcome for the founders/investors structured to maximize success.

In this episode, he shares how we can position our business for greater traction and to drive growth. Insights he shares include:

• Why do business owners want bankers to help to drive the sale of their business
• Why having bankers drive the process is wrong
• Why relationships matter and how to best build them
• Misconceptions or stumbling blocks when it comes to evaluating a company
• Factors most businesses do not take into consideration when selling a business
• Financial vs. Strategic: Understanding why SaaS buyers buy
• Apart from due diligence when buying a SaaS business what technical aspects Lowell keeps an eye out for
• and much much more ...

Darryl Praill is the Chief Marketing Officer of Agorapulse, a social media marketing platform.

Darryl is a high-tech marketing executive with over 25 years of experience spanning startups, re-starts, consolidations, acquisitions, divestments and IPO's. He has been widely quoted in the media including television, press, and trade publications. He is a guest lecturer, public speaker, and radio personality and has been featured in numerous podcasts, case studies, and best-selling books. Praill is a former recipient of the coveted Forty Under 40 Award and has held senior executive roles in leading companies including Sybase, Cognos (now IBM), webPLAN (now Kinaxis), and CML Emergency Services (now AIRBUS).

He has raised over $50 million in venture funding across multiple organizations and consulted with world-class corporations including Salesforce, SAP, and Nielsen.

In this episode, he shares how we can use soft leadership skills to empower teams and drive growth. Insights he shares include:

• The biggest challenges with revenue growth for companies in the B2B space
• The place for soft leadership skills for today's executive leadership teams
• Is revenue growth the by-product of a handful of attributes? If so what are they
• What does it take for a CRO to be successful today
• Is there a correlation that can be drawn between how tasks are executed and the manner in which leaders develop relationships in and out of a team
• How to build psychological safety in conversations with others
• How to better understand people's motivations in their roles and responsibilities
• Darryl's take on experiential learning in the context of leadership development
• How best to tackle revenue growth
• and much much more ....

Zino Rost van Tonningen is the CEO of TyrAds, a marketing agency that aims to help increase the growth of your mobile apps as well as ensure that the apps are being recommended to its target users. 

Zino has 8+ years of experience and a proven track record of building and growing 8 fig businesses across the globe.

He has worked with many Fortune 500 companies and helped them succeed with their app marketing.

He has managed 7 figure marketing budgets for apps worldwide and effectively achieved client CPAs.

Zino's company builds its own automation technology for advanced marketing automation.

In this episode, he shares how we can use data to fuel app marketing strategies that drive growth. Insights he shares include:

• Why do some companies prefer to go with a no-risk CPA model as part of their app marketing strategies
• CPA model vs CPM model
• How to approach developing your app marketing strategies when starting out
• Why first-party data is going to be really important
• How to set up and prepare for first-party data now to mitigate the risks associated with upcoming changes
• The role of programmatic advertising in your app marketing strategies
• How programmatic advertising works
• How to set up programmatic advertising using data to make it really work well for you
• and much much more ...

Satyam Kantamneni is the Chief Experience Officer at UXReactor. In less than 7 years, UXReactor has become the fastest-growing specialized experience design firm in the US, with a team of 50+ employees spread over three continents.

Prior to founding UXReactor, Satyam led various in-house design organizations such as Citrix and PayPal. He is also an alumnus of Harvard Business School. While at Harvard, Satyam realized that most businesses aren’t leveraging the full power of User Experience (UX) Design as an engine for strategic growth. So, he resolved to change that. Through UXReactor, Satyam demonstrated that UX can and should

drive enterprise-wide innovation and business outcomes. UXReactor has enabled its clients-partners to generate hundreds of millions in additional revenue from user-centered innovation. Satyam is passionate about user-centered innovation and he is the author of the book titled User Experience Playbook: A Practical to Fuel Business Growth.

In this episode, he shares how we can use experience transformation to get the x-factor required to drive growth. Insights he shares include:

• Why do certain companies get high value from a design-first approach as opposed to others
• The issues that prevent companies from gaining high value from experience transformation
• Why experience transformation requires a design first approach
• Why is design neither hard nor easy
• How UXReactor addresses not just UX but processes and aspects of culture
• The 3 levels of value creation
• The best ways to address experience transformation issues at an executive level
• Small design changes vs big design changes
• The five mindsets required for business success
• and much much more...

Ben Jones is the founder of Titan Marketers and Youth in Business, his core business is to skyrocket sales for his customers through YouTube advertising. He has over seven years of digital marketing experience. He is a serial entrepreneur and international keynote speaker with YouTube advertising being his specialist subject. 

In this episode, he shares how we can use YouTube TV ads to reach our audience and drive business growth. Insights he shares include:

• Why do people think YouTube ads are expensive
• Are YouTube TV ads a good fit for most businesses
• The benefits of advertising on YouTube TV
• Do need to build a narrative to make YouTube TV ads effective
• How to structure your ads
• How to target the right people via YouTube ads
• and much much more ...

Dr. Chris Croner is an entrepreneur and sales psychologist with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, which he has used to study and understand salespeople. 

Dr. Croner is co-author of the book, Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again, detailing his research and practice in identifying the non-teachable personality traits common to top producers.

Dr. Croner developed the proprietary DriveTest® online sales ability test and The Drive Interview®, both used for hiring “Hunter” salespeople. Using this method, he has helped over 1,000 companies worldwide to hire and develop top-performing salespeople.

Dr. Croner has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, teaching personnel selection in the Industrial Psychology Master of Arts program. Dr. Croner is an active member of the Consulting Section of the Illinois Psychological Association and former Co-Program Chair of Chicago Industrial/Organizational Psychologists (CIOP). Dr. Croner is also a partner with the DePaul University Center for Sales Leadership.

In this episode, he shares how we can go about hiring salespeople who have the potential to be top producers who will drive growth. Insights he shares include:

• Why do many businesses believe that gut instinct alone is a good way to go about hiring salespeople
• Why ask a series of structured questions that pertain to a specific competency when hiring salespeople
• Why the need for achievement should play an important role in hiring salespeople
• The 3 characteristics or traits to look for in hunter salespeople
• How to look for predictors of future behavior
• How to expose guarded truths when interviewing potential salespeople
• The place for probation in the hiring process
• and much much more ...

Raaja Nemani, a certified Business Ninja, is a Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of MarketerHire, a talent marketplace with a mission to make expert marketing accessible to everyone.

MarketerHire has scaled rapidly with hundreds of clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 100 companies in less than a year and a half.

Prior to MarketerHire, Raaja was the Co-Founder and CEO of Bucketfeet, a footwear brand collaborating with a global community of artists to create the most unique shoes in the world.

Bucketfeet raised over $20M in venture capital (including from Adidas) and sold ~1 million pairs of shoes in 30+ countries before it was acquired by Threadless in 2017.

As a passion project, Raaja co-founded Counterpoint in 2019, a “both sides” political cartoon newsletter with approximately 200,000 subscribers, written and illustrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists.

He began his career in Private Equity and Investment Banking after he graduated from Northwestern University in 2004.

In this episode, he shares how we can easily hire the best marketing talent on demand to drive growth. Insights he shares include:

• How MarketerHire came to be
• How they established trust early in the process
• Do all hires need to be full-time hires
• Why MarketerHire focuses on marketing talent
• The problem with hiring marketing talent on demand
• The best way to hire talent on demand
• Is hiring marketing talent on demand a suitable solution for all industries
• How does MarketerHire work
• How to set up hiring for success
• and much much more ...

Rob Krecak is a thrill-seeker, self-professed nerd, question-asker, voracious reader, competitor, keynote speaker, and business builder.

When he first got his Wall Street job as a sell-side equity analyst out of college, he thought he’d made it. After buying everything he wanted on his wishlist, he realized that he still wasn’t happy. He listened to his deep-down desire to help more people by leaving finance to eventually own three Anytime Fitness health clubs and four uBreakiFix cell phone repair stores.

As someone vulnerable to technology’s addictive hold from a young age—video games and Facebook in particular—Rob is on a mission to help individuals and companies reduce burnout and get back time to master their careers and lives. He founded Humans First to provide a one-of-a-kind coaching experience that analyzes and coaches people’s efficiency and energy by paying attention to their mindfulness with technology. 

In this episode, he shares 3 key productivity improvements that reduce stress and drive growth in business. Insights he shares include:

• Can productivity improvements make a four-day workweek a reality
• Why Rob believes that social media can be detrimental to your overall well being
• How did you achieve technological and productivity mindfulness
• Why productivity improvements matter and tips to help improve it
• Why the use of technology is one of the hardest problems to solve
• How to better communicate to gain productivity improvements
• What businesses can do to help their employees communicate better
• How addressing culture, communication, and productivity can produce productivity improvements, drive growth, and better mental health across an organization
• How best to use science and data to help bring about productivity and efficiency gains
• and much much more ...