Kara Hardin is a mental health educator and clinician who works at the intersection of mental health and performance as CEO of The Practice Lab. She specializes in the complicated ways that mental health drives performance and how it shows up at work. She's a former practicing corporate and securities lawyer and holds a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) and a Juris Doctor from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law.

We talk about:

- Work / life balance - is it possible?
- Finding your why - finding meaning at work, in marketing
- Journaling
- Productivity guilt
- And more - a conversation beyond marketing you will get something out of

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exit5marketing

This episode is brought to you by Zapier. Zapier empowers anyone to automate their work across 5,000+ apps, so that every person and business can move forward at growth speed. We power over 2.2 million businesses, from startups to Fortune 100, and we’ve been doing it for over a decade. Learn more + get started for free at zapier.com

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Danny Schreiber is Sr. Manager of Biz Ops at Zapier and has spent close to a decade at the company. In a world where it's easy to jump from company to company, Danny was an early employee at Zapier and has stuck around for an incredible ride. He's had ~5 different roles across the company and sharing his wisdom to help you navigate your career path on this episode of the Exit Five podcast.

We talk about:

• Early stage marketing experiments at Zapier
• Career growth in a high growth company - Danny is on year 10 at Zapier and in his 5th role
• Transitioning his career to supporting leadership vs. being a leader
• Team rituals - staff meetings, business reviews, all-hands, etc. for a remote company
• And more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exit5marketing

This episode is brought to you by Zapier. Zapier empowers anyone to automate their work across 5,000+ apps, so that every person and business can move forward at growth speed. We power over 2.2 million businesses, from startups to Fortune 100, and we’ve been doing it for over a decade. Learn more + get started for free at zapier.com

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Lashay Lewis is a B2B content marketing expert and founder of Authority Plug. She joins Dave to talk about how to drive more revenue through content and why you need a bottom of the funnel content strategy. We discuss:

- How to drive revenue with your content
- The problems with top of the funnel content

- How to do feature mapping for your product + content
- How to get executive buy in with content
- How to get subject matter expert interviews so you can produce better content
- Some of the right questions to ask before writing
- How to do better customer research before writing
- And more

Here's a link to Lashay's Content Marketing dashboard we mention:

https://authorityplug.com/content-dashboard

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exit5marketing

This episode is brought to you by Zapier. Zapier empowers anyone to automate their work across 5,000+ apps, so that every person and business can move forward at growth speed. We power over 2.2 million businesses, from startups to Fortune 100, and we’ve been doing it for over a decade. Learn more + get started for free at zapier.com

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Hillary Carpio and Travis Henry are the authors of "Busting Silos: How Snowflake Unites Sales & Marketing To Win Its Best Customers." 

Hillary (Head of ABM) and Travis (Director, Sales Operations & Enablement) work at Snowflake and helped scale the go-to-market program behind one of the fastest growing software companies in history. Not satisfied with the traditional model of separate sales and marketing functions, they married both integrated, account-based, cross-functional teams that targeted and closed business at historic rates. In this episode we discuss their new book, how it came to be, and the lessons learned at Snowflake that they outline in the book, including:

- How to marry sales and marketing (and why it works to drive revenue)
- How to think through attribution and measuring what matters
- What great ABM looks like and some of their favorite ABM "plays"

You can learn more about the book and grab your copy here online.

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exit5marketing

This episode is brought to you by Zapier. Zapier empowers anyone to automate their work across 5,000+ apps, so that every person and business can move forward at growth speed. We power over 2.2 million businesses, from startups to Fortune 100, and we’ve been doing it for over a decade. Learn more + get started for free at zapier.com

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Lindsay Bayuk is Chief Marketing Officer at Pluralsight. We talk about the path to becoming CMO, what it takes to be a high performing CMO, going from VP Product Marketing to CMO, her marketing scorecard, doing internal marketing, what it means to think and operate like an executive, the importance of hiring/talent scouting, why org. design is so important and more.

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exit5marketing

***

This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demos. Get your free keyword feasibility assessment today at demandwell.com/keywords.

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

We're joined by Jessica Hreha (Head of Global Integrated Campaigns & Content Strategy at VMWare), Kelly Peters (Director of Marketing at Tomorrow.io), and Austin Distel (Growth Hacker at Jasper) to discuss how B2B marketing teams are actually using AI today, including:

- Why and How VMWare created an internal cross-functional AI council
- Why Tomorrow.io decided to hire a full-time "AI Marketer"
-  Perspectives on adopting AI and setting standards for its productive use in marketing today, including examples from how their teams are using AI to drive productivity and efficiency in a responsible way

Whether you're a marketer looking to learn more about AI, a skeptic, or just someone curious about one of the top trends in marketing today and want your team to get more out of what you're doing today, this is episode on AI in marketing is for you.

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exit5marketing

***

This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demos. Get your free keyword feasibility assessment today at demandwell.com/keywords.

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

HANG IN THERE!

Between Exit Five and some companies that I am involved with I can tell you that right now stress and burnout in marketing is higher than I've ever noticed in my career (so at least the last 10 years). And it makes sense as to why: the economy slumping, leads to fewer companies wanting to spend, marketing gets cut in all different areas, and we're being asked to do more with less and we're stressed / burned out / questioning what we're doing and re-visiting your career path.

Hang in there.

Almost across the board this is the case right now. With the exception of AI companies, most B2B SaaS companies are have a tough go of it. 

But maybe there's an opportunity for you to learn something new and acquire new skills during this time. Zoom out and look at your career - will you work at this one company in this one industry for the rest of your life? Probably not. So even if things aren't going great, can you take the longer term view and see what you can be learning right now? Can you think of it as you're being paid (hopefully...) to acquire new skills? Maybe you've never done a rebrand before but now you're being asked to do one one a shoestring budget. Great. Figure out how to get it done. Maybe you're selling to a new ICP and a new customer that you don't have experience writing for. Great. Maybe now you can add other layer to your depths as a writer and content creator. Maybe your boss is an absolute pain in the butt but the CEO is great and the company is in a great market. Can you learn from others around you in the company and in your industry and just ignore the PITA boss for a bit?

Take a minute to zoom out, think about your career, and see the next 6-12 months as "skills acquisition" and see where it takes you. Continue to work in your current job, but see it is they are paying you for your development and maybe that can change how you think about your day-to-day job for the time being, especially if company growth has slowed.

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exit5marketing

***

This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demos. Get your free keyword feasibility assessment today at demandwell.com/keywords.

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Dave is joined by John Short (Founder & CEO of Compound Growth Marketing) to talk about two of the biggest trends in B2B marketing that aren't going away anytime soon: AI and ABM.

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exit5marketing

***

This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demos. Get your free keyword feasibility assessment today at demandwell.com/keywords.

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

This episode is from a live session we did with Zapier's Head of Content Marketing Lane Scott Jones. Lane shared how Zapier has been able to generate a 450% ROI on content and she breaks down how Zapier's marketing team uses content across the entire funnel, from generating top of the funnel content for awareness, middle of the funnel content hat drives signups, and bottom of the funnel content that drives active users and paying customers.

Lane will unpacks how Zapier built a strong SEO foundation with over 2,000 articles that generate 2M pageviews per month, and she breaks down the roles and responsibilities of Zapier's four person content team. She also discusses how Zapier thinks about content measurement and pitching the value of content to the CEO, plus she shares her perspective on AI + automation with examples of how Zapier's content team is using AI today to up their game.

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/
Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco

***

This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demos

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Jon Miller is CMO at Demandbase and co-founded Marketo and Engagio. Jon is widely regarded as one of the top voices in B2B marketing and does not disappoint with this episode. Dave and Jon talk about:

- What an effective B2B CMO does
- Questions to ask the founders when taking a new CMO job and how to understand their view of marketing
- Why marketing is not a "gumball machine"
- The challenge with Marketing sourced revenue vs. Sales sourced revenue (and why Jon believes in team sourced revenue)
- Thoughts on what the rise of AI and ChatGPT will mean for B2B marketers
- Marketing before and after product market fit
- Helpful benchmarks (and where to find them)
- Lessons from the early days of Marketo, and more

Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.

This episode is brought to you by Jasper. Jasper is the AI Content Generator that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster. Learn more + start using AI to create content for free at jasper.ai

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Send guest pitches and ideas to [email protected]
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!