The GTM Podcast

We have a special episode this week, a community mashup with the best community leaders in the game! Pavilion's SVP of Marketing, Kathleen Booth, The founder of Salesforce's Trailblazer's Community, Erica Kuhl, and The Former Director of Community for Salesforce's Trailblazer Community as well as The Former Head of Global Community at Atlassian, Holly Firestone.What You Will Learn:The importance of community in 2023.How to stand out as a community in an oversaturated market.How to maintain quality members in the community as you scale.Centralizing user groups for the community: how to scale, track, and optimize for monumental growth.Highlights:(1:15) Kathleen Booth explains why community is more important than ever.(6:34) How to advise early-stage SaaS companies on how to leverage community to drive revenue and demand.(16:00) Erica Kuhl unpacks the oversaturation of community today and how to overcome that.(20:00) Maintain quality members as you scale.(25:07) Building Salesforce Trailblazers: walking through what worked and what didn't.(33:00) Holly Firestone's time at Atlassian: scaling, tracking, and optimizing for significant growth.(42:00) Some mistakes that Holly made as the Director of Community with Salesforce's Trailblazers.(46:20) Mistakes that Erica Kuhl made during her time at Salesforce.Guest Speakers Links:Kathleen Booth's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleenslatterybooth/Erica Kuhl's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericakuhl/Holly Firestone's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollygfirestone/ Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTM Podcast The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Mark Cranney is an enterprise go-to-market operator and three-time unicorn creator. Most recently, he was the COO at Skydio. He's also a founding operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and has been involved in the acquisitions of Opsware and Aster Data Systems by HP and Teradata, respectively. Mark specializes in developing winning playbooks, cultures, and strategies that put his competition on the back foot.What You Will Learn:How to create a winning culture.How to keep your competition at bay.How to hire talent that culturally fits your organization.Highlights:(03:48) The books that shaped Mark's winning culture.(10:39) How to keep your competition at bay.(14:10) Three questions to ask when scouting for culture-fit talent.(15:46) How to keep recruited talent motivated.(16:16) "Process triumphs heroics." How Mark created and used playbooks to create winning cultures.(23:00) Why you need to get more granular in your competitive strategy.(35:17) How to create a winning culture without turning your team's culture toxic.(37:18) "If it's not a competitive environment, for me, that's toxic."(39:09) Mark's parting advice.Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcranney/ Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/Referenced Resource: Books by Ben Horowitz: The Hard Thing About Hard Things & What You Do Is Who You Are.The GTM Podcast The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Dan Reich is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and writer and has been building companies since he was a teenager. Some of the companies that he founded include: TULA Skincare which was acquired by Proctor & Gamble - Troops.ai which was acquired by Salesforce - Spinback which was acquired by Buddy Media and then acquired by Salesforce. Dan is now a co-founder of Dibs Beauty, which is backed by LCatterton and is building more companies. He also invests through his family office, Reich Capital. He has a background in electrical engineering and volunteers as a member of national ski patrol.What You Will Learn: The power of influencer marketing.Leveraging B2C strategies for B2B companies.Maintaining authenticity across all business plays.The importance of building strong relationships in business.How to keep your team motivated when momentum takes a hit.Highlights:(6:33) Influencer marketing in B2B.(8:34) Tactics and strategies that B2B companies can steal from B2C companies today.(13:00) How Dan structured a designated BDR team for influencer marketing.(17:00) How to maintain authenticity when partnering with influencers.(21:32) How to effectively compensate influencers: Equity vs Cash.(24:20) Dan’s experience with 2 M&A exits.(30:08) How to keep your team motivated in moments of momentum loss.(32:28) How each acquisition began its first conversations.(42:30) Why email marketing is dead today.(44:50) Finding gratitude and happiness within yourself will ultimately lead you toward success.Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danreich/Website: https://danreich.comDIBS Beauty Website: https://dibsbeauty.comHost Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTM Podcast The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Sam McKenna is the founder of SamSalesConsulting, previous to that she spent 6 years at On24 ending up as their VP of Enterprise Sales, She then jumped over to LinkedIn as their Head of Enterprise Sales. Sam is also an advisor for high growth companies. She now leads an all women team of 11, has over 180 clients, multiple million dollars in revenue, all under 4 years.What You Will Learn:Knowing when to outsource talent as a founder.Using strategic hooks to capture engagement on social.The power of dark social and leveraging it to increase impressions.How to monetize your social presence.Learning to scale things you do well effectively.How to effectively implement the "show me you know me" framework in sales.Highlights:(3:40) Why building your digital footprint is more important than ever for founders(8:30) How to carve out time for thought leadership throughout busy times.(13:00) Strategies from Sam’s playbook that people should implement when building their social.(20:00) High-impact strategies that Sam used to excel throughout her sales career.(26:00) Walking the line between doing what works for you vs following playbooks given by your leaders.(29:00) A framework for “show me you know me” in Sales.(33:42) Hot take: Shorter e-mails are not the way to earn your ICP’s time.(35:51) How to successfully hire for key roles.(40:30) Hot take: Cold calling isn't the way to approach your ICP anymore.(44:10) How to leverage data to prospect efficiently.Guest Speaker Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samsalesli/SamSalesConsulting: https://www.samsalesconsulting.comSam's LinkedIn Influencer Playbook: https://shorts.samsalesconsulting.com/courses/linkedin-influencer-playbook  Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTM Podcast The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Melanie Fellay, CEO and Co-Founder of Spekit, discusses the importance of hiring smart individuals. They also emphasize work-life balance and the benefits of being a solo founder. They talk about their integrated solution and the sacrifices of building a brand. Additionally, they highlight the significance of a strong executive team and making quick decisions.

Meka Asonye, Partner at First Round Capital, discusses his experience scaling Stripe's sales organization. Topics include long-term orientation for lead distribution, angel investing tips, and compensation structures for early-stage companies.

Eli Rubel is the CEO of MatterMade and NoBoringDesign, and has served as a Marketing advisor for companies like Dropbox, Loom, Productboard, Calm, and many others. Prior to MatterMade & NoBoringDesign, Eli was the founding CEO of Glider.com which he led through a successful acquisition to FPX.What You Will Learn: The importance of leveraging Demand Efficiency for your business.Being aware of the bad actors that exist in business.Extreme diligence on contract work should not be overlooked.Setting yourself up successfully post-acquisition changes.Highlights:(3:39) Defining Demand Efficiency.(7:30) Shared data around good efficiency through channels.(10:10) Common micro-surfaces that are often overlooked.(13:10) Companies revisiting their brand guidelines and brand identity.(15:24) Good conversion rates on ad spend for B2B SaaS companies.(17:10) Things people should think about when analyzing their demand efficiency(18:10) Eli’s acquisition that went wrong.(25:30) How to combat against acquisitions going wrong.(28:00) Post-acquisition shift - how to set yourself up.(30:10) Founder Question: What your first marketing hire should look like.(25:00) Hot take: LinkedIn is dying!(38:00) Operational excellence will set your team up for success every time.Guest Speaker Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elirubel/MatterMade's Website: https://www.mattermade.coNoBoringDesign Website: https://www.noboringdesign.comHost Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTM Podcast The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Lars Nilsson, VP of Global Sales Development at Snowflake, shares his insights on nurturing young talent, the origins and success of Cloudera's account-based sales development method, the power of personalization, creating a lasting impression, and what to look for when hiring a BDR.

Dave Gerhardt, former CMO at Drift and now the founder of Exit 5, shares his wealth of knowledge on B2B marketing. He discusses transitioning from a ‘yes’ mindset to making strategic ‘no’ choices to enhance work-life balance. Gerhardt emphasizes aligning sales and marketing for success and argues the importance of niching down for growth. He also touches on the balance between data-driven marketing and creativity, advocating for focus over metrics obsession, while sharing insights on building a personal brand through podcasting.

Anna Baird started her career in Accounting helping with IPOs of companies like Google. She then moved to become an SVP at McAfee and when they sold to Intel she decided to work at start-ups so that she could help build the foundations at scale from the beginning. She became a CFO and then a COO and finally a CRO. Anna is now working on Boards to help other executives take advantage of the opportunities that they saw earlier and avoid some of the mistakes that she's faced at early stages. ◡̈What You Will Learn:The importance of leveraging your relationships to bring in revenue.Practicing resilience to surpass those who doubt your capabilities.Knowing when to walk away from a company.Understanding where your hires' skillsets are to be successful within your organization.Highlights:(6:13) What Anna has learned throughout her career selling into large strategic accounts.(11:45) A walk through of Outreach’s deal review calls as a successful strategic tactic.(15:45) How to prepare folks to make a strong ask that garners results.(19:20) Anna’s impactful story that fueled her.(22:55) A moment in time where Anna faced a struggle with misalignment.(32:40) Anna’s advice to female leaders struggling to get promoted.(37:40) Understanding where your hires' skillsets are to be successful in your organization.(42:10) Working in silos no longer works.Quotes:“I just wanna work with interest people, solving interesting problems, with people I enjoy and respect being around.”“The only reason why we exist as a company, is because we’re solving a pain. Never lose track of why you exist and what is it that you’re building for.”“Everyone wants to work for a place where they feel has a great foundation of innovation, great ideas, and different perspectives, and I feel that’s what the younger generation is excelling at.”Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-baird-38966513/ Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTM Podcast The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.