Chris Shakarian

SDRs are so critical to success, depending on company size, yet like many GTM functions, they too are under reduction pressure. Data from Jason S. of Live Data Technologies (article in comments) showing that SDR function may be normalizing some, not wholesale decreases like the headlines suggest. SDRs are the glue between the Marketing and Selling function. 3 years ago on one of my LI posts, we all said that SDRs would be future CEOs. Now the headline is cut them. It's an incredibly challenging job for a junior person. And may be better suited for inbound and/or transactional type selling with narrower buying committees. What are you experiencing with your SDR function? ___________ 👏 Follow B2B Fusion on Go To Market best practice strategies. 👍 Like and subscribe to B2B Fusion YT videos, 200+ GTM best practices! 🤙🏽 Struggling with faster, more efficient growth? Let's talk.

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How can DealHub accelerate your strategic GTM plan? Here is what Moran Laufer, CFO at Factorial has to say about their approach…. * Generate company-wide operational efficiency * Manage the entire Quote-to-Revenue lifecycle around one source of truth * Standardize execution across every GTM line-of-business Kudos to Jonathan Angel for creating an exciting partnership with our customer – resulting in outstanding success. #GTM #finance #strategy

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Evan Liang started digging into buying groups a few years ago, knowing it was going a step beyond the recent ABM trends. And there's a reason everyone at #pavilionCMOsummit2024 had a slide, a section or an entire talk about the buying group or team or committee. Or multithreading. Or a dozen other similar threads. Because an efficient business that isn't mired in GTM bloat needs to look at how quickly and effectively they can weave together individual leads into a larger account map. Then trace different intents, different stakeholder positions, different objections and different outcomes. This webinar is probably your best jumping off point for a entirely new set of adventures in marketing.

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Revenue leak. It’s the slow, steady, sneaky loss of revenue that is killing your pipeline. It happens from breaks in your revenue processes. So how do you identify and eliminate these leaks? Just ask Ben Fiechtner (CRO, Clari) and Rachel Roberts (CRO, Cisco). Together, they’re hosting a session at Charge: The Revenue Summit on May 8th to show you how CROs stop revenue leak and achieve outsized returns. You’ll get real-world examples and strategies on how to identify and eliminate these leaks, so you can build a high-performing and predictable revenue engine. RSVP here to save your spot: https://lnkd.in/g2t7n5A4

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If you rely on iROAS to determine spend, you’re probably throwing money out of the window. Here’s why (and what optimization metric to use instead): But first, let's clarify the different ROAS metrics: ROAS = tells you how qualified your audience is. But it doesn't tell you if your ads are actually working. iROAS (incremental ROAS) = tells you if your ads are driving incremental revenue for your business. That's the "i" in iROAS. mROAS (marginal ROAS) = tells you how well your ads are working with your last dollar of spend. So, what's the issue with over-focusing on iROAS instead of mROAS? Short answer: You end up overpaying. Here's an example to illustrate why: - Let's say you have a remarketing list of buyers who are super likely.  - They respond to all your promotions and they're always incremental.  - You know they won't convert any other way except through your remarketing efforts. When you invest in this audience, you get a big spike in revenue. You see a great return. And if you're only looking at averages (like iROAS), that performance looks fantastic. But here's the issue:  Once you've tapped out that audience, any additional spend doesn't return anything back. It doesn't help your business. You're just throwing money away. By looking at mROAS instead, you can see when you've hit that point of diminishing returns. mROAS will show you that while your first dollars had a great performance, your last few dollars are actually your worst performance. Because no one is buying anymore. That tapping out point is very evident with mROAS, but it gets buried in the average with iROAS. With iROAS, you have to just keep spending until your average dips below your KPI. And by then, you've wasted a lot of budget. So, the takeaway is: Use mROAS as the optimization metric for all advertisers. No publisher is going to tell you to stop spending. mROAS is your regulator. It tells you when to stop spending. #marketingscience #marketinganalytics #marketing

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GTM exemplified. When a love ❤️ brand like Gong gives an emphatic high-five for your solution across their GTM teams it's a story worth telling...Shantanu tells it better, his smile is contagious, so watch at your own discretion 😁 watch here >> https://lnkd.in/dY3VWYKw #salesprocess #scale #GTMevolution

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Mr. Miyagi's Two Rules for revenue team leadership 1) Leadership doesn't happen in a SFDC or GONG dashboard, it happens with your team and your customers. 2) First Learn rule #1

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Product Marketing – the most important “thing” in B2B Mktg to get right. And for your business, in fact. Without product-market fit, everything becomes costly experiments. For example: 1. Demand Gen, the plumbing of the entire Mktg department, misfires in the wrong direction. Attempting to capture demand but producing leads & demand that do not meet revenue needs. 2. Brand Marketing begins investing heavily in messaging/creative strategies that do not resonate with your ICP. Thereby not creating future demand. 3. Channel/customer Mktg teams start encountering pockets of “stop and go” workflows. As closed-won deals are no longer predictable, and the need to assist customers with digital and end-user Mktg come in “ebb and flows”. And most importantly: 4. Your Sales and Revenue Ops functions stop producing the revenue needed to hit Pipeline targets. They start to accept “opportunities” that are not in line with the ICP – and begin converting Sales from low-hanging fruit. What’s the symptoms of an org with with poor Product-fit performance? 1.    Closed-loss ratio higher than industry best practices, and their win ratio 2.    Customer complaints for missing product functionality and capabilities 3.    Disconnect between Mktg communications and actual prod capabilities 4.    Pre-announcing capabilities that will take months to develop and launch, while accepting the risk of overhang 5.    Swings in strategy changes from Execs – and general indecisiveness 6.    Constant re-orgs in pursuit of new selling strategies Getting a working Product Mktg capability for a solid Product ensures: 1.    You have identified the ICP and the relevant problem you are solving 2.    You have connected the value prop as relevant to the ICP 3.    You have established messaging resonance 4.    You have aligned and enabled the Commercial team fully 5.    You are building the product in the direction of market needs However, a Product Marketing function DOES require support: 1.    Aligned commercialization and GTM strategy between Product and Marketing, with Exec sponsorship and involvement 2.    Product roadmap and on-time delivery 3.    Product managers equally focused and in-touch with the ICP and regularly speaking with customers and prospects 4.    Close working relationships with Product Managers and Mktg – tied to the hip “so to speak” In many small organizations, Product Mktg is one of many "gigs" an Experienced Marketer needs to assume and assist with. And in larger, more mature organizations, once the Product function is clearly working and delivering, it makes sense to invest in a dedicated Product Mktg team to work alongside a market-focused, Product team. It can be the most challenging thing to get correct. It continuously evolves as the market shifts. And unfortunately, too many orgs define “product mktg” incorrectly. But when you get it right… It works. #b2bmarketing #productmarketing #marketing

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I'm doing yet another product hunt launch: https://lnkd.in/esHrd4hX CalendarHunter helps you discover hidden meeting scheduling links like Calendly. CalendarHunter can help you find leads on Linkedin, Twitter, and Reddit. The tool is still early stage so any feedback is welcome. #ProductHunt #GrowthHacking

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I went from CMO to CRO just under a year ago and people seem to be curious as to how to make that leap, why make it, does/can it work, and what are the pros and cons. First, there aren’t that many of us who have made that leap, so I can see why people are curious. Second, there are a bunch of folks (SaaS influencers, CEOs, VCs) who think it can’t work, but I’m proof that it can. Here are my observations and advice if you are thinking about this career path. 1. If you don’t have a sales background then you will experience challenges with the incumbent sales team. You’ll need to prove yourself to them that you know what it’s like to be in the trenches with them. It took me 1 quarter end and a year end close to prove I knew what I was doing and to be trusted and respected by the sales team. If you come from an OPs background or DG background, you have an easier path than if you are a brand marketer, imho. 2. The benefits of course, are having a holistic view and joint KPIs, having everyone work toward the same revenue goal. If marketing is doing well and sales isn’t, then you fail together. If sales and marketing are doing great, then you win together. 🎩 one thing I did out of the gate was combine the teams, rename us to the Revenue team so that we were all talking together about the problems we were trying to solve. Plus, it’s important the company view you as one team, one dream, and see the KPIs are aligned and under one team. 3. You need to be able to forecast accurately. To do that you need to understand not only your customers, but how the deal cycles work for each segment at your organization. 🎩 you can always take a course for this. This is a learnable skill. Fortunately, I had 15 years of OPs and data analysis experience, but if I didn’t, I would have maybe signed up for Winning by Design’s Revenue Architecture course or have read Brandi Starr at Tegrita’s book “CMO to CRO, the revenue takeover by the next generation executive” or maybe do both. 4. If you weren’t already besties with Finance in your marketing role, you’ll soon become BFFs because you’ll be working closely on comp plans and reverse funnels. You now own and are holding the whole bag. 5. You should only make this move if you have strong marketing leaders you can depend on while you dive into the Sales side of things. I was fortunate enough to have 2 (one on the brand & content side, and one on the DG side). But if I hadn’t had this, I probably would not have been as successful having never run sales before. 🎩ask yourself why you want this role and are you set up for success if you take it? I took it on because we were in between sales leaders and it was offered to me and it seemed like a fun challenge I could do in a safe environment. I trusted my CEO to let me fail and he believed in me enough to win. If you don’t have the support, like any other role, it’ll be tough.

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We’re going to Gainsight's #Pulse2024 next week! Our Founder & CEO, Brent Grimes, will present: “Health Scores are Dead! AI-led Outcome-Based Scoring Improved Net Retention & Quantifies CS Impact” on May 15! Learn more about: ✅ How to move towards Outcome-Based Scoring to target specific revenue outcomes (like churn from product downgrades or competitors, cross-sell, upsell at renewal, big deals) ✅ How to quantify the revenue impact of outcome-based scores to justify CS investments ✅ How our approach will prepare you for Enterprise AI Book time to chat with us (link in comments! ⬇⬇⬇)! See you at #Pulse2024!

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I couldn't agree more Jon Miller! It's time to rethink the B2B marketing playbook. The old model of collecting leads with gated content doesn't work. And we have over-rotated on attribution, which breaks down rather than builds up the critical partnership between marketing and sales. It is also time to revisit brand! But that's not a simple task. Companies need to dig deep to define a white space that solves a pain point, articulate their right to win, and ensure their brand emotionally resonates and engenders loyalty. #brand #b2bmarketing #outwiththeold

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You're hurting your growth if you are not VERY clear on who you are selling to - that's where the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) comes in. So let's dig in. I see three main use cases for your ICP: 1) For your GTM team the its meant to focus outbound marketing and sales efforts and to help you qualify in/out inbound leads. 2) Your ICP is the “Who” of companies that get the most value from your offering. Put it to work by defining outbound lists, ad targeting, creating lead scoring, building discovery and qualification questions, case studies to target, etc. 3) Don't use it to straight up DQ an inbound lead that doesn't check off all the boxes, rather use the ICP to qualify in/out that lead more aggressively. Okay, what should the ICP look like? I have a few sections I try to include: Must Haves: Target accounts must have 100% of these are the characteristics. There should be no edge cases this is the foundation of any segmentation you create. Nice to Haves: These are the bonus characteristics you should look for in GREAT fit prospects. Rarely will you find companies that check off everything on this list. So don't waste time looking for those - instead use it to narrow your segmentation and test different combinations of characteristics. Messaging should strongly align with these as well. Proceed with Caution: These are typically characteristics that don’t disqualify a prospect. They could be a positive for your deal... but they could also be a deal killer. These should be used in discovery to know when to really double down on a topic to qualify in/out prospects. Stay Away: These are the characteristics you should segment out of any paid or outbound target list. For inbound these should be used for discovery to see if a prospect has low potential to be a good fit - note don’t auto-disqualify here! Know your customer - grow your revenue. That's how it works.

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Is your company's GTM 🚀 achieving escape velocity or crashing to earth every quarter? Customer value isn't created within your departments, it's created by the holistic customer experience across the GTM team. Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success alignment and teamwork can take your company to new places. Sadly, too many companies fail to see the alignment light. I explore how the three areas need each other for excellence in the video! 💜 Your Accounts!

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What does it take to land a 7-figure deal? Corey Goldstein, Strategic Enterprise AE at Salesloft, shares that one of the first things you need to do is build buyer trust. And to do that, sellers need to make “value deposits.” Once you give value, then you, as a seller, can make a withdrawal. More from Corey here: https://lnkd.in/eqQW4XEj

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What do you need in order to improve pipeline health, forecast accuracy, and revenue predictability? >> Effective deal reviews << Join Salesloft + Seismic for a webinar where industry experts will chat through their proven strategies and best practices for holding productive and insightful deal reviews. For sales and RevOps leaders, learn how to establish a repeatable process for deal reviews that is consistent, in-depth, and delivers results. For sellers, learn how to show up prepared and get the actionable feedback you need to win more deals. Join us: https://lnkd.in/eKzr99PN

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Request Your Free On-Demand Webinar Now: "The Power of ABX for GTM Alignment" A well-executed account-based experience (ABX) strategy goes beyond marketing campaign efficiency. It also drives sales optimization, improves customer retention, and, most importantly, creates GTM alignment in your business. But what does building a solid ABX strategy actually entail? This webinar features Will Frattini, Head of Strategic Revenue and Growth at ZoomInfo, Calen Holbrooks, Vice President of Marketing at ZoomInfo, and guest speaker Amy Hawthorne, Principal Analyst of Demand and ABM Strategies at Forrester. This panel will discuss: * The purpose and benefits of an account-based experience strategy * Setting an ideal customer profile and other ABX fundamentals * How to discern which prospects are ready to buy and engage with them * How to measure success and scale your account-based tactics Download here : https://t.ly/vMWM4

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Request Your Free On-Demand Webinar Now: "The Power of ABX for GTM Alignment" A well-executed account-based experience (ABX) strategy goes beyond marketing campaign efficiency. It also drives sales optimization, improves customer retention, and, most importantly, creates GTM alignment in your business. But what does building a solid ABX strategy actually entail? This webinar features Will Frattini, Head of Strategic Revenue and Growth at ZoomInfo, Calen Holbrooks, Vice President of Marketing at ZoomInfo, and guest speaker Amy Hawthorne, Principal Analyst of Demand and ABM Strategies at Forrester. This panel will discuss: * The purpose and benefits of an account-based experience strategy * Setting an ideal customer profile and other ABX fundamentals * How to discern which prospects are ready to buy and engage with them * How to measure success and scale your account-based tactics Download here : https://t.ly/vMWM4

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Sometimes we work with some legendary marketers and Jon Miller is next level. I really enjoyed working with Jon when he was at Engagio and Demandbase when we had the privilege of calling him a Velocity client. The interview he has with Stan Woods is exceptional. Read it on our blog our the synopsis on our Velocity Partners page - honestly it is rich with nuggets, takeaways and a clear direction of travel for B2B marketers to put into practice. #b2bmarketing #b2bcontent #b2bCMOs #b2bCEOs

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