Whether you know it or not, your business has a Nearbound sales strategy.Here’s the secret nobody told you - this type of partner revenue is exactly what drives most of the growth for high performing SaaS companies that take over the market seemingly out of nowhere.So what is nearbound? In simple sales terms, those are the deals that close quickly because the prospect already trusts you before the conversation even begins, as they trust the people that recommended you in the first place. This doesn’t have to be a random occurrence though.Today’s guest is Jared Fuller - Co-Founder and CEO of nearbound.com, and your best source to learn how to build a Nearbound strategy that helps you successfully market with people that your buyers already trust.Jared has always been a serial entrepreneur. He likes to say that his early career is a graveyard of dead startups - but between his early losses you can see huge career highlights like helping grow PandaDoc and Drift into unicorns.For smaller startups, Jared recommends building a list of your best customers and asking them about the vendors they use and trust. The top relationships on this list are the ones that control the mindshare of your buyer, meaning you should find a meaningful way to interact and partner with these companies to become part of their ecosystem. He recommends figuring out a way to collaborate on content that has you doing all of the grunt work and letting your collaborator become the hero at the lowest possible investment.Tune into the full episode to learn how to build your nearbound strategy!Connect with Jared - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredfuller/Check out Jared’s bestseller - https://www.amazon.com/Nearbound-Rise-Economy-Jared-Fuller-ebook/dp/B0CW2WPBS6Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/ (01:47) - From partnerships to nearbound (03:34) - What is nearbound? (06:11) - The B2B Who economy (09:12) - Building your first Nearbound strategy (14:20) - The lowest hanging nearbound fruit (18:24) - How to partner with B2B influencers (22:51) - Creating a B2B marketing movement (26:18) - The nearbound sales blueprint

Today’s episode welcomes Phil Carpenter, CMO at ALICE Technologies - the world's first artificial intelligence platform that understands construction. ALICE enhances your construction planning and scheduling abilities to help keep crews flowing on any size project – so you can build faster and cheaper.Everybody wants to be a category creator - until they realize exactly how difficult and time consuming it is. Trying to define something new and communicating it to an unaware audience at the level where they not only remember the message but also take action requires a ton of mental work. Even though category creation became a popular term in B2B recently, the concept has existed for a long time. Phil mentions that while there are certainly some pretty significant differences in category creation when comparing B2B and B2C, the tools and methodologies are quite similar. During Phil’s time creating a new category in travel search engines, he leveraged journalists - the original influencers - to generate a bunch of noise and create a movement in the consumer travel space.In his current role at ALICE technologies, he uses a lot of visualization to showcase the workflows that ultimately close clients. The problem they solve is that most construction projects are over budget or executed untimely in around 80% of the cases, and the ALICE platform helps battle that through automations, workflow integrations and forecasting. To drum up noise about this revolutionary tech, they’ve been heavily utilizing both influencers and niche, traditional media sources.Tune into the full episode to find out more about category creation!Connect with Phil - https://www.linkedin.com/in/philcarpenter/Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/ (04:03) - How to approach category creation (08:51) - B2B vs B2C Category creation (12:11) - How Phil approaches category creation at ALICE (14:40) - You need to spark interest (15:45) - Forming the category vision (17:17) - Building a category creation marketing team (23:42) - The right tools for category creation

Stale marketing is like stale bread.People will bite - but only if they’re desperate enough.When you’re going to market with a new product in a well-established, saturated space that consists of top-heavy key players with billion dollar evaluations, stale won’t cut it.Today’s guest is Melissa Rosentha - CMO at Insight Timer, and ex. Chief Creative Officer at ClickUp, where she built a world-class marketing engine and helped the company go from Series A to the brand that we all know and love today.Melissa's understanding of how to create a sticky brand online started with her tenure at Buzzfeed, where she built and led a team of 100+ creatives back in the early 2010’s. She took the same playbook of viral, troll-esque content, adjusted it for B2B and created some of the most legendary marketing campaigns of the post-COVID era, achieving mind-boggling engagement on online media platforms.ClickUp took a chance on Melissa when they allocated a big part of their Series A budget towards building an in-house creative agency. Ultimately it paid off, as it allowed them to create a content engine that capitalizes on relevant news, consistently stays top of mind for their ICP and completely abides by their creative vision.Melissa speaks on how the secret to creating humorous and viral content that also converts is to always keep your ICP’s pain points in mind and do a ton of research on online forums like Reddit to find out what they’re thinking. Purely chasing virality is a losing strategy, but if you pair it with a relatable message and tie it back to the product, you’ll see a positive ROI.Tune into the full episode to learn how to build a brand like ClickUp!Connect with Melissa - https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissarosenthal5/Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/ (00:00) - Chapter 1 (03:04) - The idea behind ClickUp’s marketing engine (04:45) - How to build a unique, recognisable B2B brand (09:21) - How to build an effective B2B creative strategy (11:41) - Creating B2B content that converts (14:45) - How to generate B2B content ideas (17:09) - Building a B2B production crew (21:25) - Getting your competitors involved (26:32) - What matters most when creating content

Season 1 is officially over.Huge thank you to everyone who tuned in and the amazing guests that joined us over the last few months - we appreciate you!This new season will feature more highly effective, creative and courageous revenue professionals who have taken their unique strategies to market, succeeded, and now have tactical insights and strategies to share with you.We're looking forward to continuing this journey!

The B2B Go-To-Market landscape is changing. Again.SaaS companies have adopted a “growth-at-the-lowest-cost” model, while social media platforms are becoming more pay-to-play by the day. This doesn’t go together well.But every now and then you’ll notice a group of companies appear seemingly out of thin air and take over your feed. These companies then go on to announce VC rounds, hit new revenue records and build brands that are forever etched in your mind.That is the power of collaborative growth.Today’s episode features Jared Robin, Co-Founder of RevGenius - a community of 40k GTM professionals. Their mission is to build trusted spaces for curious revenue professionals who are collaborating on the future of B2B GTM. Collaborative growth is the evolution of community. Instead of simply creating content for your own company, you approach marketing new products through a variety of stakeholders including SMB’s, influencers, employees and the audience, which effectively creates a movement that is fuelled by a collaborative effort. You get people involved by giving them the opportunity to grow their personal brands and create additional revenue streams while increasing your own reach.This is not a new concept - B2C brands have been crafting and implementing this playbook for years, and now that SaaS companies are no longer in a financial position to approach their GTM through a “growth-at-all-cost” lens, they’ve been forced to adapt to a collaborative approach as it doesn’t require the same level of commitment and spend that a classic marketing strategy would.Collaborative growth only works with feedback. The model of a one-sided expert relationship, while effective at building thought leadership, doesn’t get people involved - which is the whole point of community. Jared’s strategy is to always have an established feedback loop with those who collaborate with him, which also works as a great way to discover what the market is currently interested in.Check out the full episode to learn more on how to build a collaborative growth playbook!. Connect with Jared - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredrobin/Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/

The biggest myth that movies like The Wolf of Wall Street propagated about sales is that you need to be an a$$hole to succeed.The truth is that most great salespeople who later move on to lead high-performing teams and start companies, typically begin by adopting a lone-wolf, success-at-all-cost mentality, which only gets you so far before limiting you from unlocking your true potential.Today’s episode welcomes Adam Jay - a seasoned sales leader and ex-CRO who now runs Revenue Reimagined - a GTM Special-Ops team that gets in the trenches with their clients and helps them achieve their revenue goals. He’s also the co-host of the Revenue Reimagined podcast - a top 10% podcast designed for founders and revenue leaders looking to uncomplicate their revenue engines.Adam calls himself a “recovering CRO”. He’s led sales in 7 different startups over 15 years, with his earlier experiences stemming from the healthcare industry. He’s been involved in many different industries over his career, all of which made him realize that the biggest problem founders face is getting their product to market and scaling revenue.A great go-to-market strategy doesn’t save a bad product. Prior to working with a client, Adam’s team does a full audit of the business to understand the product and the problems they’re trying to solve. This process determines if the startup will sink or swim, ultimately answering if a potential engagement is the right move.Adam speaks on his early sales career. He was the type of performer that gets to set his own rules and ignore collaborating with others. He knew that by asking the right questions and truly listening to his prospects is the key to success, but he wasn’t a big fan of sharing this knowledge with others - which ultimately held him back when he decided to pursue management positions. Unlocking the skill of truly understanding your prospects is no easy task - otherwise everyone would be a top performer in sales. Adam’s background in healthcare helped him a ton, because when you’re working with doctors you really need to understand what the true priorities and north stars of your prospects are. He recalls a situation where one of his teammates had tried to play the ROI card on a doctor, who sent them packing as the teammate didn’t understand the true priority of the prospect - saving lives.Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to get ahead without being an a$$hole!Connect with Adam - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambjay/Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/ (02:52) - The biggest problem founders face (05:39) - Is the consultancy space oversaturated? (06:43) - Unlocking the privilege of being an a$$hole (08:23) - The secret to becoming a top sales performer (12:14) - The problem with discovery calls (13:12) - Where competitive sellers fail (19:08) - Going from Sales Manager to VP of Sales (22:07) - Top performing rep to top performing leader

Today's episode welcomes Deepinder Singh Dhingra, Founder & CEO of RevSure AI. They’re on a mission to improve predictable revenue growth through Predictive AI for Pipeline Generation for B2B SaaS companies.Deepinder has spent over 20 years in big data analytics and machine learning in multiple industries - but mostly serving the Fortune 500 in both B2B and B2C. A few years ago he saw a market opportunity in B2B SaaS, as the way we run GTM motions nowadays is much more complex and has more glaring inefficiencies - and he set out on a mission to solve them.The dark funnel is becoming brighter by the day. As AI-powered GTM tools evolve, our understanding of the exact customer journey and ability to pinpoint signals increases by the day - which is quickly becoming a huge competitive advantage for revenue teams. The technology that Deepinder has built looks at all available customer touchpoints across the GTM motion and auto-harmonizes the data. Their end-users see an end-to-end view of the entire funnel across all GTM functions and they get a full view of which parts of the process are driving outcomes, and where bottlenecks arise. This is a true gamechanger for GTM teams, as there’s a ton of guesswork in revenue teams, especially if data is scattered across sales, marketing and CS.No approach is perfect. Some marketing channels still can’t be tracked - especially when it comes to offline conversations or awareness generated by influencers. Deepinder speaks on the only ways to attribute influencer interactions - looking at engagement data from posts or events, as well as the classic approach of unique CTA links.Tune into the full episode to learn more on the modern way of GTM attribution! Connect with Deepinder - https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepinder-singh-dhingra-66bb54/Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/ (02:29) - Integrating all parts of the customers journey (04:08) - Tracking from top-of-the-funnel to deep-funnel (04:55) - How much information can we truly get from a lead? (07:05) - Auto-harmonizing your GTM data (08:05) - End-user data visualization (13:19) - Influencer interaction attribution

If you got into sales over the last 4-5 years, chances are you’ve never worked on the sales floor.While remote is wonderful, there’s something truly special about the level of interaction, feedback and energy you get when you’re closing deals as a team in-person.Before you start bickering about remote being the only way you’ll ever work, take a moment to listen to someone who’s led 4 revenue teams to exits and recently ran enterprise sales at Meta.Today’s guest is Vince Beese - Founder & CEO of Sales HQ and Sales@Scale - a B2B sales consultancy accelerating revenue growth for venture capital-backed startups.Networking opens up doors that you never even knew existed. In a remote world, your best bet when trying to build lucrative relationships is to get active on LinkedIn. Vince mentions that you don’t necessarily have to become a content creator overnight - just connecting with people, inviting them to intro meetings and keeping your eyes peeled for the right opportunities is enough to achieve your desired outcomes.Vince speaks on the importance of choosing the right sales job. As a new seller evaluating potential employment, instead of choosing the fanciest product or company you can find, your focus should be finding the right leader that will mentor you and set strong foundations that will ultimately shape your sales career. Relying on a mentor alone is a losing strategy - proactive self-education and intellectual curiosity are keys to a successful sales career.There’s no denying it anymore - HubSpot recently released a study saying hybrid sales teams saw a 28% increase in results compared to fully remote and on-site teams. Vince is a huge proponent of the hybrid model - and he’s got the track record to prove it. His experience shows that 100% of the time hybrid or on-site teams outperform remote only.Check out the full episode to learn more on how to build a high performing sales team!Connect with Vince - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vbeese/Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/ (04:19) - How to build community in a remote world (06:27) - Build your tribe on LinkedIn (08:07) - How to find the right job in 2024 (10:33) - Hybrid vs Remote vs On-Site sales teams (15:12) - Become more efficient at remote sales (16:35) - The magic of co-working in sales (20:35) - Combining remote and in-person

The B2B content meta is about to change.LinkedIn is getting its very own short-form video section.We all knew this was coming.And with a potential TikTok ban on the horizon, there’s a whole new market of buyers that will now turn to LinkedIn for their scrolling needs. The time to invest in video is now.Today’s guest knows what it takes to succeed in a video-first content world.Alex Minor is the owner of Eye AM Media - a video production & marketing agency for small businesses, coaches and entrepreneurs.Just like many creatives that make waves on LinkedIn - Alex quickly realized that being a full time creator is typically not financially feasible, so he started using his talent to help us corporate types generate revenue.Some say that starting a podcast in 2024 is inefficient due to an oversaturation of interview-based content. Even though 2020 had many people starting their B2B shows, the reality is most of those projects have grinded to a halt a long time ago. Most podcasts don’t make it past episode 8 - and the amount of people starting podcasts has decreased dramatically, meaning many niches are still being underserved and ripe for the picking.The idea that video content will immediately generate leads can lead to bitter disappointment. Building an audience takes time, consistency and experimentation, but the good news is you’ll be building your brand with every piece of content you release, and once you have an audience hooked - you’re ready to start generating revenue.You don’t need to buy a course in video creation to succeed. The great thing about social media is that you can look for inspiration that’s publicly available and learn best practices while finding your own voice and style. When asked about companies that are creating great content, Alex mentions the work of Milanote and Descript.  Tune into the full episode to learn how to navigate a video-first content world!Connect with Alex - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexminor/Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/ (00:00) - Chapter 1 (03:26) - Should you create B2B video content? (04:38) - B2B Content is a long term strategy. (06:51) - Which B2B companies are making great content? (08:25) - How to create a B2B media brand (10:54) - Converting audience into pipeline (11:52) - The secret method to increasing reach (15:20) - Hacking the algorithm through daily posting (18:57) - What aspects of your content matter most? (20:05) - Long form vs short form video content (22:53) - Should you try to go viral? (25:34) - What content performance metrics matter? (27:37) - How to hire a content marketer or head of content

Your network truly is your net worth.If you’re a new founder who’s bootstrapped and shooting for the stars in a heavily saturated SaaS market, your ability to access early investors, hire the right talent and build revenue generating partnerships will separate you from the startups that sink.Here’s the problem - manually asking people in your network for warm intros is highly inefficient and soon becomes a third job.This episode welcomes Olivier Roth, Chief Growth Officer at The Swarm - a platform that gives companies and investors the keys to their networks and the relationship data they need to accelerate sales, recruiting, and fundraising.Great salespeople foster long-term relationships and know how to eloquently use their network to multiply their pipeline. This is very much a manual activity, and one that is very difficult to scale or delegate.Even LinkedIn isn’t built out to be a true networking platform, as people accept connection requests for a plethora of reasons - most of which have nothing to do with actually knowing the person on the other end of the screen.Olivier suggests battling this by having a process-oriented approach to involving your true network. By documenting your process, setting up regular meetings and building win-win scenarios, you’ll create a real network effect that drives your desired outcomes.For those targeting mid-market and enterprise accounts, Olivier speaks about a client that had over 150 stakeholders with high value networks without a way to consistently leverage them.Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to turn your network into your ultimate competitive advantage!Connect with Olivier - https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivier-roth/Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/Want to convert your website visitors instantly? Try Warmly for free - https://warmly.ai/