Jen Allen-Knuth, founder of DemandJen and a B2B sales expert, shares her journey from corporate to entrepreneurship with over 15 years of experience. She discusses enriching the marketing-sales partnership by co-creating engaging content that resonates with customers. Jen emphasizes the importance of authentic storytelling in videos and how she built her personal brand on LinkedIn. She also explores the necessity of genuine diversity efforts in the workplace, pushing for deeper connections rather than superficial inclusivity.
54:42
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
question_answer ANECDOTE
Jen's Career Path
Jen Allen-Knuth's career began unexpectedly after college with a sales role at CEB, inspired by her future manager.
She spent 18 years in frontline sales, including roles at Gartner, Challenger, and Lavender, before founding DemandGen.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Chief Evangelist Role
Jen created the Chief Evangelist role at Challenger, initially keeping her sales quota.
This role focused on market education rather than direct selling, leading to increased qualified leads.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Leaping into Entrepreneurship
Take the leap and commit fully to your own venture to discover opportunities.
Embrace the free fall and imposter syndrome as drivers.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
#232: Sales | Dave sits down with Jen Allen-Knuth, founder of DemandJen. Jen shares her insights from her 15+ years in B2B Sales, from managing a quota to building great working relationships with marketing.
Jen and Dave cover:
Co-creating content with Marketing and Sales that drives better customer engagement and grows your pipeline
How Jen successfully built her audience using video on LinkedIn and leveraged it to start DemandJen
How companies should focus on genuine diversity efforts rather than superficial inclusivity
Timestamps
(00:00) - – Intro to Jen
(07:31) - – Why you should have a mentor and how to get one
(09:21) - – Sales experiences and becoming a Chief Evangelist
(12:52) - – Making the leap from side hustle to full-time
(17:19) - – Why your career experiences should be diverse
(22:21) - – The shallow impact of diversity panels
(26:25) - – How Jen built her personal brand
(29:46) - – Creating unscripted content that’s still clear
(33:18) - – Being authentic in marketing
(38:13) - – Don’t use templates for customer conversations
(44:35) - – Strong relationships between product marketing and sales
Knak - A no-code, campaign creation platform that lets you go from idea to on-brand email and landing pages in minutes, using AI where it actually matters. Learn more at knak.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - An 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 (PS - you'll get a FREE pair of Meta Ray Bans if you do).
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
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.
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)