“The best thing we can do as sellers is match the urgency of the person who is reaching out to us.” says Val Riley, VP of Marketing at Unbounce, Insightly, and LeadsRX.

In this episode of The Content Cocktail Hour, host Jonathan Gandolf chats with Val about the shift from conversion to connection, both in your tech stack and your go-to-market strategy. With deep experience spanning CRM, landing pages, and attribution tools, Val shares how brands can build more meaningful customer experiences by removing friction between form fill and follow-up. She also unpacks what it looks like to move fast as a challenger brand in the AI era and how being “right-sized” in your CRM approach can actually lead to better results across your funnel.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1. Why 25–50% of form fills are wasted and how to fix that
2. What it means to align sales and marketing around a shared funnel view
3. How mid-market CRMs can offer enterprise-grade AI without enterprise-grade headaches

Resources:

Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-gandolf/

Explore AudiencePlus: https://audienceplus.com

Connect with Val on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerie-riley-marketer/ 

Explore Unbounce: https://unbounce.com/ 

Explore Insightly: https://www.insightly.com/ 

Explore LeadsRX: https://leadsrx.com/

Explore Closing Time: https://www.insightly.com/closing-time/ 

Read the report: https://app.thejuicehq.com/content/TBtyYfywtWN9NQ8T3MCzBbag  

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:54) Meet Val Riley

(04:19) The importance of conversion and connection

(09:28) Aligning sales and marketing teams

(11:21) Right-sized CRM solutions

(14:50) AI in CRM: opportunities for challenger brands

(18:55) Unpopular opinions in B2B marketing