In this episode, Dave sits down with Kira Federer, VP of SMB Marketing at Paramount Advertising, and formerly at companies like Reddit and Glassdoor. Kira shares her journey from sales to product marketing and the lessons she’s learned along the way.

Dave and Kira discuss:

How to align marketing and sales through co-creation to ensure your sales team uses the content you create
The value of a strong messaging framework and how it drives consistency in B2B marketing
Why you need to time your product launches and ensure that marketing resonates with both your team and the market at the right moment

Timestamps

(00:00) - - Intro to Kira
(06:42) - - Kira’s Career Journey From Sales Enablement to Product Marketing
(09:56) - - Challenges of Building Community / Getting Connected with Exit Five
(17:47) - - How To Get Sales To Use Content from Marketing
(20:22) - - How to Align Marketing and Sales Teams
(26:28) - - Effective Messaging and Having a Core Company Narrative
(31:36) - - Why You Should Identify What Differentiates Your Business
(35:19) - - How To Create Strong Brand Positioning
(38:04) - - Why You Need To Have A Clear Vision And Strong Point of View in Marketing
(39:48) - - “The Risk Of Insult Is The Price Of Clarity”

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!

“Babe: White Devil in the City” w. Sissy Spacek