Dave Kennett joins us on this week's episode to discuss lessons learned throughout his years transforming businesses to adapt for a digital world, the art form of sales, how to lead from the front, and walks us through the genesis and evolution of Replayz.

In 2019, after an extensive career at notable companies such as AutoTrader.ca, Strutta, Payfirma, Hootesuite, and MergeBase, Dave founded Replayz - a predictive SaaS platform that uses Data Science to analyze Call Scoring Results to predict what skills matter the most.

What You Will Learn:

• The importance of role-playing, how to communicate to the CFO.
• Steps to building trust and rapport through credibility.
• How to cultivate and leverage customer stories for a competitive advantage.
• 5 leadership tools to arm your team with.
• Ways to visibility improve your win rate.
• How to lead from the front, and learn the most from past mistakes.
• Strategies to navigate career path options in the current environment .

Highlights:
(5:20) Call coaching culture & Replayz pain point solution strategy.

(7:45) Blind spots in discovery/demos & how to avoid them.

(13:22) Common threads of sales reps that consistently crush it.

(18:10) How to introduce a customer story?

(21:45) The importance of role-playing.

(25:00) Digitally transforming AutoTrader to Trader.ca.

(27:10) Leadership lessons from experience.

(34:25) How to think about career pathing.

(39:10) Rounding out your leadership skills.

(40:25) Widely held beliefs that are wrong.

(44:30) Actionable moves available now.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkennett/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

‘Thinking more out of the box instead of just following playbooks is something that I think is important.’ - Martin Gontovnikas.

In this week’s episode, Scott Barker chats with Martin Gontovnikas ‘Gonto’ about taking big risks in marketing, Generative AI, and understanding customer behavior while making marketing strategies.

Gonto is the founder of Hyper Growth Partners. He previously worked with Off Zero where he started in branding relations and ended up in marketing and growth, growing with the company in revenue from 20 dollars to 20 million average revenue.

What You Will Learn:

• The impact of Generative AI on marketing.
• How to achieve big hairy audacious goals in marketing.
•  Experimenting in marketing when risk tolerance is low.

Highlights:
(04:02) Generative AI for marketing.

(09:56) Where will Generative AI be in 10 years?

(13:31) Audacious goal experiments that worked.

(22:53) Big audacious goals that turned out successful.

(30:29) Restructuring back after implementing an audacious idea.

(33:40) Running experiments when risk tolerance is low.

(36:40) How long do you run an experiment before making a decision?

(39:31) What most revenue leaders believe but Gonto doesn’t agree with.

(44:01) Fitting marketing strategies into users’ habits.

(46:36) How to get in touch with Gonto?

Guest Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgonto/en
Website: https://www.hypergrowthpartners.com/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

Episode Summary

There are many benefits of the marketing and sales teams working together. It helps generate better leads, improve conversion rates, and eventually, increase company revenue. But how do you align marketing and sales strategy? 

In this episode of the Sales Hacker podcast, our host Sam Jacobs welcomes Mariana Cogan, the CMO of People.ai. They talk about why buying needs to be a team sport, why forecasting won't lead to the growth you need, and the importance of diversity in technology.

Guest-at-a-Glance

💡 Name: Mariana Cogan

💡 What she does: She's the CMO of People.ai.

💡 Company: People.ai

💡 Noteworthy: Mariana is known for building strong alignment with sales. She's also a committed advocate of diversity inclusion and founded the Hispanic ERG resulting in building the best teams and bringing different lenses to the C-suite.

💡 Where to find Mariana: LinkedIn

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

Max Altschuler and Scott Barker back at it for another monthly jam session. Sharing some compelling internal company updates as well as the impact of our candidate placements in the last year (placing over 80 candidates in the last year). We also can't help but discuss some topical stuff, including: Whether companies should begin to ban alcohol at work related events, generational trends, and ChatGPT's takeover on our creativity.

Highlights:
(1:50) The generational evolution within the work force.

(4:45) The importance of our creativity and whether ChatGPT has much competition against it.

(13:17) Hot take on whether companies should ban alcohol or not.

(16:20) Internal company updates & the motivation behind our decisions [new HQ office, new official GTMfund hires].

(27:00)  Deal updates & SPVs.

(29:42) Angel Investing sessions and candidate placements at our portfolio companies.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

Mark Stephenson joins us in this week’s episode to talk about the modern revenue architecture. Mark has 30 years of solution sales leadership experience, with high growth series A through D companies. Currently he's an advisor at Evisort, former VP of Sales at Avi Networks, and has worked at large companies such as HP, Cisco, & Xerox.. 

We kick off this episode by unpacking the 5 leading and 4 lagging indicators of a strong go-to-market team that drive your business.

What You Will Learn:

• The importance of getting cross functional alignment within your team.
• Leading metrics that every leader should be focused on.
• 5 layer framework on modern revenue.

Highlights:
(8:03) 5 Layers on how to Go-to-market.

(13:48) Problems to solve on the Go-to-market approach.

(20:37) Where Mark’s gone right and wrong in defining ICP.

(26:10) How to hire great talent.

(32:18) Cross-functional alignment.

(36:00) the leading and lagging metrics for successful alignment.

(45:00) Mark’s take on the layoffs happening in todays market.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-s-2b28054/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

In this week’s episode, Scott is joined by Bryan Breckenridge and Corey Marshall, the co-founders of VITAL, a company that harnesses impact-powered revenue and culture to accelerate growth.

Corey Marshall is a builder, advisor, and investor with a strong background in CRM Data. He previously worked with Splunk, a cybersecurity startup where he built programs around workforce development, employee engagement and volunteerism.

Bryan Breckenridge is a social intrapreneur who thrives at the intersection of corporate and nonprofit mission fulfillment maximizing social, environmental and economic returns. He has implemented growth and impact strategies and integrated nonprofit networks into core operating structures at Salesforce, LinkedIn, Box, Zillow, and Snyk.

They explore the world of social impact issues in startups, including how and when startups should get involved in social issues, which issues to take on, how to align these with the company’s values and how these help in connecting with the customers for eventual profitability.

Highlights:
(1:44) Introduction of speakers.

(2:50) Corey Marshall’s background story.

(5:15) The impetus for Splunk.

(6:36) Bryan’s background.

(9:42) Bryan’s time at Salesforce.

(11:08) The truth about the Sales profession.

(13:26) Having environmental, social and governance in mind as a Startup.

(19:34) Attracting talent that aligns with your company’s values.

(22:09) When should a company take a stance on social issues?

(29:11) How should startups establish which social impact issues to focus on?

(36:42) Corey’s story about building strong partnerships through participating in social impact issues.

(40:16) Merging problem solving for clients with addressing social issues they are passionate about.

(47:39) Strategies that revenue leaders or founders can implement.

(53:56) Social impact participation extends beyond sales and marketing.

(56:14) How to get in touch with Bryan and Corey.

Guest Speaker Links:
Bryan's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanbreckenridge/
Corey's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreymarshall/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

Pivoting and verticalization has the potential to be a  game-changer for many companies. A case in point is the story of Seismic.

On the podcast today is Ed Calnan,  the founder and former CRO of Seismic, a company he led through the pandemic. In this episode, you will learn how Ed, as the  company’s first BDR, grew the company to 1,500 people, 2,000 customers, and $300 million in ARR  through successful pivoting and verticalization to financial services.

What You Will Learn:

• The power of pivoting and verticalization and how to do it successfully.
• The value of vacation, rest, and relaxation.
• The importance of analyzing and sharing team successes.

Highlights:
(3:00) Ed’s reflection on founding Seismic and taking a long break after 11 years.

(9:30) The value of sales enablement.

(13:00)  How to pivot and verticalize successfully: Case study of Seismic.

(32:20) The benefits of being a specialist and an expert.

(35:50) Why you need to analyze and share team successes.

(48:42) Discussion on consistent communication, being open and authentic.

(49:42) Strategies for growing a company and harnessing customer stories.

(52:20) A strategy founders and revenue leaders should implement to move the needle.

(55:30) One common misbelief held by revenue leaders.

(57:03) The challenges of being a revenue leader: How to identify and address core issues.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edcalnan/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

Today on the podcast, we have the privilege of speaking with Cara Felleman - a dynamic advisor, investor, and sales powerhouse. Cara is currently serving as the Vice President of Sales at Vividly and is also an LP at GTM Fund, where she uses her expertise to help startups grow and scale.

With a wealth of experience, Cara has a unique perspective on what it takes to succeed in a fast-paced and competitive environment. When it comes to hiring, she identifies two key attributes that she looks for in employees. The first is the unwavering drive to succeed despite obstacles. The second is having a positive outlook and being able to stay hopeful even when things seem hard.

Cara is also a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace. She believes that companies need to take into account the emotional and cultural impact of their decisions, such as layoffs, on employees.. Cara thinks we can make workplaces that are more fair and open to everyone if we approach these problems with empathy and understanding.

Join us as we delve into these important topics with Cara Felleman and gain valuable insights into what it takes to create fair, safe, and successful workplaces and sales teams.

Highlights:
(2:37)  Qualities of a successful go-to-market professional.

(5:46)  Why companies need to be more considerate in layoffs.

(8:00) How layoffs have a greater impact on women.

(11:50) Exploring strategies for attracting and retaining Gen Z talent.

(16:24) Building the sales team at Resy: The challenges and lessons learned.

(20:35) Finding the middle ground between control and collaboration.

(32:19) Discussion on how to relinquish control and trust your sales team.

(37:06) Conversation on radical candor.

(38:26)  One thing most go-to-market leaders believe that is not true.

(42:49)  The value of human connection in business.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carafelleman/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

In this episode, John Barrows, CEO of Sell Better by JB Sales, helps you understand what the new reality of sales looks like and how to stay ahead of the AI curve. With his expertise and experience, John discusses the implications of AI and automation and how it will challenge the sales profession, as well as the importance of remaining human and personalizing your sales approach.

What You Will Learn:

• The future of sales with AI and automation.
• How sales professionals survive and thrive in a world of AI and automation.
• The potential ramifications of automating jobs.
• AI personalization at scale.

Highlights:
(4:40) John and his daughter’s children book about sales.

(7:34) How ChatGPT will change the sales profession.

(9:10) Why you must get interested and learn to leverage ChatGPT.

(11:20) AI personalization at scale.

(15:00) The impact of the recession and AI revolution on sales jobs.

(17:25) The failure of the education system today.

(23:55) Addressing the university ban of ChatGPT.

(28:00) John’s learnings from getting fired twice – “They were two of the best things that ever happened to me.”

(43:01) John’s best actionable advice to revenue leaders.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

Max Altschuler and Scott Barker back at it for another monthly jam session. They share company updates for the month of January, including some exciting PortCo announcements. They also discuss the ongoing layoffs and some strong advice on how to create and maintain solid pipeline in this market, as well as some predictions on the future of the SDR role.

Highlights:
(1:47)  PortCo updates and highlights.

(6:55) A behind the scenes intel on the 70+ candidates that the GTMfund placed in the last year.

(13:00)  Most common challenges founders and revenue leaders are facing today.

(17:24) The future of the SDR role.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.