In this episode, Dave sits down with Michael Cole, SVP of Marketing at Everflow, a partner marketing platform that helps companies manage referral and affiliate programs. Michael discusses his journey from being Everflow’s first marketing hire to leading a marketing team of 16, and shares strategies for building a marketing function from the ground up.
Dave and Michael cover:
- How Everflow turns happy customers into referral partners
- What it’s like to be a first-time marketing leader
- Building a marketing function from scratch
Timestamps
- (00:00) - - Introduction to Michael
- (06:25) - - Michael’s journey to marketing leadership
- (11:12) - - Understanding company growth before developing your strategy
- (14:16) - - Turning happy customers into referrals
- (18:21) - - Scaling a successful team
- (25:16) - - Referrals vs. paid ads
- (29:33) - - Organic vs. paid strategies
- (32:00) - - Growing organically and spreading through word-of-mouth
- (33:46) - - Finding complementary business partnerships
- (39:59) - - Enhancing content creation
- (42:59) - - Delegation and accountability in a strong team
- (43:58) - - Strategizing for growth
- (47:08) - - Closing remarks
Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.com
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership
***
Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.
Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?
Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.
That’s where Walnut comes in.
Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.
That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.
And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.
Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?
Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!
