#308 Sales Alignment | In this session from Drive 2025 titled “Building Pipeline in the Shiny Object Era”, Jen Allen Knuth unpacks why deals stall even when your product is objectively better, how the explosion of shiny tools and AI noise is making it worse, and why most teams are unintentionally fueling the problem with me-centric messaging. Jen shares the two zero-dollar exercises every team should run to quantify how much pipeline they’re losing today, align sales and marketing around the true blocker, and rebuild outbound messaging that creates curiosity.
PS. Want to join us at Drive 2026? Head over to exitfive.com/drive to join the waitlist for Drive 2026 and be the first to know when tickets go on sale.
Timestamps
- (00:00) - – Dave’s Intro
- (04:10) - – Jen’s Story & Why She’s Here
- (07:00) - – The Real Enemy: Buyer Status Quo
- (11:07) - – The Shiny Object Era
- (15:07) - – How Status Quo Kills Deals
- (22:37) - – The Close-Lost Audit
- (30:18) - – The “We” Problem in Outbound
- (33:03) - – The Raincoat Example & Messaging Shift
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Optimizely - A no-code AI platform where autonomous agents execute marketing work across webpages, email, SEO, and campaigns. Get a free, personalized 45-minute AI workshop to help you identify the best AI use cases for your marketing team and map out where agents can save you time at optimizely.com/exitfive.
AirOps - The content engineering platform that helps marketers create and maintain high-quality, on-brand content that wins AI search. Go to airops.com/exitfive to start creating content that reflects your expertise, stays true to your brand, and is engineered for performance across human and AI discovery.
Visit exitfive.com/retreat to apply for Exit Five’s first-ever, in-person Marketing Leadership Retreat, March 18–20, 2026 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Join 100 CMOs and VPs of Marketing from companies like like Zoom, Snowflake, Manychat, Bitly, G2, HP, and more for two days of thinking bigger around a trusted group of peers in marketing.
***
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