Shannon is a business creative at heart. She loves strategic and measurable storytelling that makes an impact on the business and on people. As a recovering PR person she loves the art of the well-crafted pitch and tailoring content for the end use. She’s passionate about businesses and products that are changing the way we work and live. 

Words are important, but even more important are the people you are sharing them with.

One-liner about you

I’m a marketing exec working with companies to define their ‘why does it matter’?

What is not working anymore in the B2B space?

The altitude of our programs are no longer working, you hear either short term wins or we need to wait a long time to see results. How do we break down long term projects to show leading indicators of success? How do we get away from always working towards the short term?

Most difficult project you’ve worked on

A leaky funnel for me is always the most difficult. Breaking down where the issues could be (there could be many!) and working through how to prioritize. 

Your biggest professional accomplishment

When I left my first leadership role, I asked the company not to backfill me and really let my team rise up (because I knew they could). They were all promoted within the year. 

What are you passionate about?

I am super passionate about getting messaging and differentiation right, how do you really speak to your customers in a way that makes them remember you? That paired with a high performing and well coached team is unstoppable.

Best advice you’d give to yourself 10 years ago?

Chase the work, bet on yourself, the rest will come.

What’s the number 1 trend you feel will shape the future of the B2B space

Peer to peer referrals and relationships.

What is one thing you love about RevRoom?

I am so grateful for how open and game everyone in RevRoom is to help, give their opinions and advice and build relationships. 

Ready to join conversation with leaders like Shannon? Enter RevRoom

The post RevRoom Member Spotlight: Shannon Curran appeared first on RevGenius.

Mollie is one of the most exciting voices in SaaS, with experience leading revenue operations  at Corteva Agriscience, Syncari, Deel, Sound, now advising growing companies. She’s built numerous revenue teams from the ground up, setting up new standards and processes. She’s also a founding member of RevRoom (a curated community for senior executives) and an active member of RevGenius. We’re talking career, RevOps, leadership and lessons learnt.

How did it all start?

I like to joke that I’ve always been in revenue operations, even before it was cool. I started my career at a large health insurance company, in sales operations. At that time, sales ops involved building RFP databases and doing proposals. Then I transitioned to what would now be considered marketing operations, although back then, tools like Marketo and HubSpot were not widely used. I did email marketing using SilverPop, where I had to HTML/CSS  code every email. It was a fun world.

I truly did operations work, which encompassed marketing and sales support. After that, I worked for a small construction tech startup (which has since been acquired by Oracle), where I took ownership of their Salesforce, marketing automation, and what we would now call revenue operations. This was about 15 years ago, before the term became popular. I continued to lean into the marketing side for a while. Later, I joined Marketo and worked on client implementations in their professional services team. During that time, I learned so much, working with numerous companies across various industries. I’ve worked with FinTech, nonprofits, athletic teams, and more. Eventually, I shifted more towards true revenue operations.

I enjoy problem solving. There’s always something to fix, and in this role, I have the authority and autonomy to make things better. It can be overwhelming, but it’s also rewarding.

What would you consider your biggest success?

I’m a mom of three little kids, and I’m really proud of being a successful-working parent.

Apart from that, I also own my own company where I work with small companies, helping them build their operations foundation through coaching and guidance. In terms of professional accomplishments, one of my favorite projects was running the beginning-to-end open enrollment for a healthcare company.

We achieved an incremental revenue success of over 23 million dollars. It was an excellent result due to having a solid strategy, a well-executed plan, and a customer-centric approach.

Additionally, I consider building strong and successful teams as a significant accomplishment. I’ve always had to build teams from the ground-up, so that’s definitely something I consider my biggest strength.

You’ve built and led teams, what are your biggest lessons on leadership?

I think being a people leader is one of the hardest jobs out there.

In the world of startups, it’s important to accept that not everyone will stay for the entire journey. The fast-paced nature of growth often involves a shift in talents and skills. Individuals who thrive in the early stages of a startup may not be the best fit for later stages, and that’s okay. Sometimes, it’s best for them to seek new opportunities. But I wouldn’t say it’s easy to let them go.

Navigating communication in remote companies can be a challenge, but I already know that effective leadership requires time and effort. I strive to be a people manager who prioritizes transparency and honesty. When people truly comprehend the reasons behind decisions, they are more receptive and motivated (even if they don’t always agree with them).

I am committed to helping my team members advance in their careers.

I believe that bad leadership is one of the primary factors that drive people to leave.

When I instill confidence in my team members and truly believe in their abilities, they are more likely to exceed expectations and make the right choices.

Community: What’s in it for you?

We’re each other’s cheerleaders, champions, supporters, and even therapists to some extent. We win together outside of a company, which is really impactful. It’s less self-serving and more about investing in each other. It’s not about building personal brands or gaining influence.

The community is wholesome and pure. That’s what makes it special.

What trends are you seeing in the B2B space?

There are two buzzwords right now. The first one is AI, which we all know. The second one is productivity, which ties into AI.

Businesses are looking to do more with less and improve their output and performance. If we can automate certain tasks and free up time, we can invest that time in personalization, content creation, and consumer engagement, leading to higher conversion and engagement rates. The focus should be on using AI to enhance the consumer experience, not just as a cost-saving measure.

The consumer experience should be the priority when implementing AI and automation. It’s important to meet user expectations and provide smart, quick, and responsive experiences. We don’t want to frustrate them with irrelevant or unhelpful automation.

What should we move away from?

It’s less about what works or doesn’t work and more about the level of maturity in the approach.

Lead scoring is a good example. If businesses are still relying solely on demographic and behavioral lead scoring without incorporating intent and other factors, they may be behind the times. It’s about understanding when businesses have outgrown certain practices.

So, it’s more about staying adaptable and continuously improving. Businesses should always strive to push boundaries, iterate, and improve. If something is working, it means there’s room for further optimization.

What should we read?

One book that I found really valuable is “Crucial Conversations.” It’s about having difficult conversations in a respectful manner. It taught me the importance of removing myself from unproductive conversations and taking breaks when emotions run high. It’s a skill that applies not only in professional settings but also in personal relationships.

How do you set your personal goals?

Personally, I’m not as formal as sitting down and setting hard career goals.

One thing I invest a lot of time in is reflection.

Every Friday, I write down what I do in a Google sheet that’s always open on my computer. I try to write things down as they come and summarize them at the end of the week. Did I get things done? Did it work? What was the impact?

Feeling like we’re working towards the right things generally helps.

For my personal career growth, I invest in the community and have a career mentor. It helps me think about the right things and stay focused. I’m open to being challenged and continuing to learn. I don’t have a fixed plan like “I want to be a CEO” because I want to be more well-rounded and seek opportunities to learn and improve.

Working with other good leaders and learning from their experiences is also helpful. It’s not just about solving complex issues but also handling situations like staffing challenges and adjustments. For team growth and development, I believe in focusing on three things. Each team member should have two core objectives per quarter related to their job and growth. The third objective is personal learning and development, something that fulfills them outside of work.

I try to put these pieces in place and have ongoing discussions and monitoring. We all start with good intentions, but it can get out of hand if we don’t continually manage it.

What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago?

That it’s okay to fail. Don’t put roots in bad earth. Don’t invest your time in situations where you can’t be your best self. I’ve learned that the hard way. Sometimes we think we can’t leave a job because of the fear of job-hopping, but if you’re in a toxic environment or dealing with bad people, it’s best to get out.

Do what’s best for you, not what’s best for the company or your team.

I still talk to people from my first company, so people remain even if you leave. It’s a hard lesson for many, especially for those from previous generations who stayed at the same company for decades. We need to be okay with making decisions that are best for ourselves. If you’re proud and excited about the decision, it’s the right one.

My advice is to do what you need to do, not what others think is right.

Insights we loved:

Achievement Tracking

Track weekly progress, evaluate goals’ impact, reassess based on business dynamics for personal and operational growth.

Objective Prioritization

Limit goals to three quarterly: two professional, one personal. It encourages focus and achievable targets for team development.

Embrace Failure

Accept shortcomings, avoid toxic environments, prioritize well-being over misplaced company loyalty, and learn from each setback.

Well-being First

Support team in prioritizing personal well-being, empower choices for individual happiness over societal expectations or norms.

Leadership Insights

Frequent check-ins with self, ensure team’s objectives align with personal development, and foster continuous improvement dialogue.

Community Involvement

Value online communities for sharing expertise, discourage self-serving interactions, and foster genuine engagement for growth.

AI & Productivity

Use AI to enhance customer experiences, focus on meaningful applications rather than solely cost-cutting measures in B2B.

Team Building Challenges

Hiring and leading teams require hard choices, transparency, and fostering a supportive environment for members to thrive.

Grace in Leadership

Practice transparency, maintain patience, and encourage a positive mindset. Become a leader who inspires, not the reason for departures.

Ready to join conversation with leaders like Mollie? Enter RevRoom

The post RevRoom Member Spotlight: Mollie Bodensteiner appeared first on RevGenius.

What is your definition of “community”?

Community is the sum total of all interactions that people have about an idea, goal or problem set. And if you use that working definition, community becomes much more than just a forum or a place where your customers go to ask support questions. It’s the sum total of all conversations amongst people who care about the problem that you solve.

There are two kinds of communities that companies participate in:

• Owned Communities — spaces and conversations that you have control over.
• UnOwned Communities — spaces and conversations that are happening about you that you don’t control.

The big community is Community with a capital C. And that’s sometimes called dark social.The little community is your own platform, where you are able to guide and control the narrative. For Gong, this little community is Visioneers. They’ve designed a beautiful experience that combines conversations, content, learning, an academy and resources for all the people who are invested in Gong’s brand. What would be the “big C” community for Gong is the sum of all conversations that are happening abouts sales and the Gong brand across the internet (e.g. inside RevGenius, Pavilion and on LinkedIn etc)

So the community has to be united around a problem and not specifically a product?

Yes, that’s the big idea. The community of people who care about your product is not a community, it’s a support channel.

Why should companies care about building a community?

That depends on the state of the company. For startups, the modern way to launch a business is to produce short-form content first to see what resonates. Then, turn these insights into long-form content and check again. Finally, bring your most engaged readers into a community and use the conversations to define the problems faced by this group and in turn, build a solution that solves them.

This is the new startup playbook: building an engaged audience, turning it into a community and then delivering the solutions that will solve their problems. You’re seeing this being executed in real time by PeerSignal and Keyplay.

It’s the cheapest way to validate your problem before you go to market so that you don’t end up building the wrong product.

For bigger brands, the answer is different. All the traditional demand gen channels are slowing down in ROI. If you look at ROI for ad spend, traditional demand marketing is not working anymore or at least the costs are prohibitive. Most folks these days people buy software because they heard about it on social media or in a private community from somebody they trust.

So a lot of the buying decisions start with word-of-mouth. The big C is the answer for brands because most people who are buying your product heard about it on social media or in a community. And this number is higher than what attribution software is gonna tell you.

Case in point, I run a sister organization to RevGenius, called customereducation.org.  We have only five thousand members. We serve education professionals, people who work in customer enablement and customer training. We have a private, invite-only channel called No Vendor Clubhouse. No vendors allowed. People are posting screenshots of their RFPs and the actual bills they’re getting from vendors. They’re asking: “Hey, I’m paying twelve dollars per seat, per license. How much are you paying?” And someone’s like, “Oh, I’m paying fourteen dollars.”

These conversations are completely private.  And this is how buying decisions are made. But the regular AE has no idea that their champion is bashing them in a private channel with other peers because in order to get access to this channel, you have to be vetted by me.

People are discussing Outreach versus Gong versus Salesloft behind closed doors. So why community? Because it drives a lot of the buying decision and the traditional media channels have a much lower ROI than they did five years ago.

How do companies today use community to grow?

Using community-led motions is at its infancy and there are only a few companies that are doing this well, like: Asana, Slack, Shopify, Gong, Duolingo, Peloton, Notion.

Notion, for example, uses community across three stages: awareness, conversion, and expansion. For awareness, they went city by city,  running small local meetups with few Notion superfans. They gave them swag and said, “Hey, why don’t you start a local chapter?”. These local chapters were responsible for driving awareness of the product. They backed it up with  subreddits and Facebook groups. Thanks to these thousands of people found out about Notion.

When it comes to conversion and activation, Notion found out that people used their product in many different ways. So they had the community create templates, guides, and tutorials. They enabled them and hosted these resources, but they were created by the users and served as great tools for the net new users (plus they made them convert from free to paid).

The most interesting one is their upgraded expansion motion, which is perfect for companies to adopt Notion at the enterprise level. They opened up a community- powered consultant database where people applied to the program, Notion certified them, and now these community members help companies adopt Notion across their organizations. That way, Notion is not building out a services layer. They’re outsourcing that to the community. This way, people make money on Notion and they get more invested in the brand.  And this is similar to what Salesforce has done, back in the day.

We’re now seeing it in PLG companies, which is pretty interesting. Miro has created  Miroverse and the content library, all powered by the community. Except for Trailhead and Drift Insider there’s not much happening in the B2B space though.

Do you think companies can leverage existing communities like RevGenius to have more impact?

One hundred percent.

In my community consulting practice, people come to me wanting to launch a community. I ask them if they’re in one already and if their teams are engaging on an online platform where their ICP hangs out. If the answer was “no” then I’d say: “If you’re not already participating in conversations, you haven’t earned the right to have your own community.”

I can show you my framework on how to build a good community, but being actively involved and actually performing well inside of other people’s communities is the best thing you can do before you start your own.

The first thing companies want to do is to buy a hundred-thousand-dollar platform and hire a community manager. That’s not going to make a real community.  If participating in conversations, writing interesting content and responding to others are not in your DNA, then your community is not going to be successful. Or at least, it will never grow out of the little c, which is about your product and product support.”

What is your framework for creating a community?

I call it the “Rising Sun” model.

You can build a community of the product — focused around a specific thing, physical or software, like Nike Sneakerhead. The main driver is utility and you’re mostly talking to superfans, mainly paying customers. Great examples are: Jeep and Wrangler.  If you have super users in the tens of thousands, like Harley Davidson does, or like Nike sneakers do, then this type of community makes sense.

It’s typically customer support, customer success and the main driver’s utility. The tactical execution involves a forum, support documentation and tools like Slack or Discord.

Then you can build what I call a “community of brand”. This one includes users, partners, your marketing team and free users. Here the main driver is social connection.

And then you have the community of category. Here the main driver’s identity.  Now you are talking to sales professionals, not just Gong users or Gong lovers, for example. The tactics here involve industry awards, conferences and certifications, and the main value add is the sense of belonging.

So depending on your company and your mission, you can choose one of these three types of communities. I can see companies doing all of these but I typically recommend starting from product and expanding.

What are the best practices to build and run a community?

If you want to build a great community program, you should follow the music: M.U.S.I.K.

M is for movement. I think this is especially important for SaaS companies. When you start a community, you have to declare a movement, the reason behind it.  Something you want to achieve or you’re fighting against.  It’s important to declare it upfront.

U is for utility. The main driver here is providing value for your users. There are many tactics you can implement: chat, content, templates, Q&A, a product road map, and resources  libraries.

Then, if you want to create a brand community, you add the social connection layer.  This is where you should consider organizing meetups and peer-to-peer DMs, private channels, coffee introductions, leaderboards, events, executive round tables, service marketplaces. You should enable users to connect with each other, not with your company.

I is for the Identity layer. This is a level-three community. This is where you are establishing yourself as the leader of the identity that you want to create for your users. For Gong, that identity would be data-driven sales professionals. They have the Golden Gong Awards, recognizing the world’s best data-driven sales professionals. You might declare the annual “salesperson day”, during which every salesperson gets a day off, where you are doing things for the identity behind your movement as a whole. This is what elevates you from a level two to a level three community.

And then supporting all of this as a business is the K. You need to know the KPIs of your community. So depending on whether your community reports to marketing or corporate strategy or to customer success, you need to know how your community is driving revenue. That’s the most important thing. That might look like membership engagement, churn, conversion, activation of community members. Reporting this at a company-wide level and an executive level so that your board and your executives are all aligned is something that is your responsibility as a community manager.

So that’s the MUSIK framework: Movement, Utility, Social, Identity, and KPIs.

The post Sumeru Chatterjee on Community-Led Growth appeared first on RevGenius.

When she’s not planning content, she’s repurposing it. When she’s not repurposing content, she’s hanging out with her pup and two favorite redheads. Or she’s trying to coach the Portland Trail Blazers from her couch (unsuccessfully).

I worked with Camille for a little while at a SaaS company, before she went to PeerSignal, where she’s heading a media company. She has some great insights about building community and launching a B2B media company.

You are well known as a content marketer in the SaaS space, but recently you had a LinkedIn post that caused a bit of a stir, where you said you were no longer a SaaS marketer. What’s the story behind it?

When I came to PeerSignal, we didn’t have a SaaS product yet, not even a true community. At that point, it was just a research project that had an audience and resources.There was a site where you could go to learn about B2B sales and marketing. On the site you could look through different databases that we had collected.

So people were choosing their own adventure. It was fairly unstructured and it’s like, ‘hey, we have this interesting data. You can figure out how to use it for prospecting. You can figure out how to use it in creative ways as you can, you know, figure out how many companies are doing community. Or how many companies are doing this and that and what those signals mean for you.’

And then they started expanding it with other things like galleries and other resources for people, like a newsletter.

So that was basically the company I was joining. It was a bit of a gamble.

One of the first things that we wanted to do by November was officially launch the software product. And as part of that, the website. So there was a lot of talk with Adam about the messaging, telling the story of how this came to be. And also patterns of what was happening in the market. And there were two patterns: return to rigor and GTM Excellence. Those are the two things that we wanted to own and have a point of view on.

And from there we started developing our structure. PeerSignal is always going to be the research arm, the community arm, like, the media company, essentially. And then KeyPlay, our SaaS product. So how do we do this in a way that people are not going to worry about the integrity of PeerSignal? Because PeerSignal is still a cool resource. And you know, as soon as something gets attached to a software product that you have to pay for, things can go wrong, you just start mailing it in or you start just using it for your own product benefit.

We wanted these things to be separate. They’re only six of us. But everyone changed their job from being from PeerSignal to working full time at Keyplay, except for me. We wanted to make that distinction.

When we announced it, I said, we’re still gonna preserve this media company. I’m still gonna own this. I’m gonna help out with Keyplay. And, obviously, the two have to fuel each other, There were two parts to it. Me announcing that I was no longer a SaaS marketer, which is true.

In the first month we’d come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t directly attached to revenue. I was attached to building the community, building an audience, all of that.

And then Adam put out the newsletter explaining the relationship between the two, saying, okay, there’s two separate things, but there is a growth loop. And here’s how they play together and how they won’t ruin each other.

So what exactly is PeerSignal? Is it a media company, a community, or a research company?

I think ‘media company’ is just thrown around a lot because it’s the highest umbrella term that you can give something like this. I would say that it is a research media company.

So think about Forrester and Gartner. That’s kind of the level that we want to get to as a media company for B2B SaaS marketers and salespeople, reporting on the things that VP of sales, VP of marketing would care about. We want to speak to that sort of executive level and business strategy level, and really own go to market.

Originally when Adam started this with Andrew, they hadn’t even decided on the product or the market that they wanted to serve. I think Adam wanted to serve early founders as well as the people on the front lines helping them figure out how to sell their product and how to go to market.

So it was really just his own sort of curiosity about what’s working right now. For example, PLG is working. We did a quantitative analysis and asked things like:

• What are the patterns there?
• How many more people are doing this? Is it working?
• What are the big levers that the few companies that are actually growing?
• How can we do those things?
• And how can we share this data with more people?

So, it’s really like a research backed media company.

What is the role of community in your strategy?

We’re thinking about community first. The traditional research companies are gated. They’re, like, pay to play. They have these crazy expensive subscriptions you have to sign up for to get access to their data, that’s usually a little biased.

Whereas, we just want to study this for ourselves. We want other people to have this data. And the benefit to us making a lot of the stuff free is we also just get to grow our community. We believe in the benefit of that enough that we don’t have to monetize the media company part of it.

Later down the line, there might be options for sponsorships, right? But we just are very careful about wanting to do it the right way. Keyplay is the sponsor. There’s that flywheel there — we want to study go-to-market, study sales and marketing, to also make our products better. And it expands that community of people that know about Keyplay, but even if they never buy, never become customers, at least we can become a content brand that then gets recommended because we clearly know what we’re doing and we’re presenting valuable data to the people in that community.

So when you’re talking about community, how do you define community? How is it different from an audience?

We don’t have a true community in the sense that we don’t have a space that we own, that creates two-way conversation. We don’t have a separate Slack that we have people in right now.

We’re leveraging social and creating community there. I think that is the best first step for most people because sometimes SaaS companies or just companies in general tend to be like, we know we need this, so here’s our community, come and join, but haven’t given away free stuff, haven’t built any goodwill. So it’s, like, who are you? Why would I join this thing? I don’t know anyone there. So you have to create goodwill and trust before you can ask someone to join your club.

That’s a little bit more audience building than community building. But we do have a newsletter, which to me is a little bit more of a two-way communication. You’re sending something out and people can reply. There’s a way to do it well, where you ask people for those replies. You make it a conversation, maybe you’re asking a question at the end, you’re clearly wanting feedback.

The other thing that we do there is we always link out the newsletters that we send to our social posts. And the social posts tend to be very open ended, like, what do you guys think? Like, what should we do next?

So I think that creating that loop for several different ways to engage has been the next step up from audience building to community building.

You have to be really active on social media, not necessarily presenting anything ,trying to bring something interesting to the table. Like, here’s a little bit of data based on this, what do you think is gonna happen next? And that’s a very community centric type post.

Another kind of post is, “Hey! We did a bunch more data and here’s a whole forty-page deck of information.” And then you get good engagement that way too because people just appreciate you’re doing that work.

Look for opportunities where people might be asking questions that you can answer. Maybe they have questions on, the best way to identify your ICP or the best way to go to market, or something about PLG, something that we have done a lot of research on and can help with.

The other thing right now is that people are looking for jobs. So we built a couple hiring trackers and shared those. Basically, we are chirping when we have something to say or we have a resource that we can take people to.

So those are the ways that we have borrowed community, if you will. And in that way, I’ve carved out a little bit of a niche, a trust within a part of that community.

Do you think this is kind of a working framework or model for startups to launch? Like, they start with content, they build an audience, then a community, And then from the feedback is when they create the actual solution or product?

Yeah. I definitely think this can work and has worked. There is a different order of operations depending on what type of a community you are.

If you’re a product-led company or a company that has a free version of your product, you might create a different type of community than you would if you had a smaller total addressable market and you only let people buy that product by taking a demo, because you don’t need as big of a community. You don’t have to go for volume. And in those cases, I do think maybe the first step for some of those things is working toward a big event or conference, and maybe you do that through micro events or through in person events and things like that.

But you can get a lot more narrow and niche that way. And typically, there’s only a couple people actually using the product. It may just be RevOps or HR that’s using products like yours.

So if you have multiple people within the org using the product, then you’d want to set up a community where different users can help one another, where they can give each other inspiration on how to use the product. And you have to moderate or CS clarify and provide a structured response to make sure that they’re getting the right response to the questions.

Do you have any plans of going deeper into community or creating something more like a space for people to interact?

I definitely do. It can be hard to get in touch with people one on one, even the ones that you know are power users or power fans—people that are really deep into what we’re doing, they’re on the website a lot and get a lot of value from the resources. So it’d be nice to get the insights from those people, and use that to make the site better, make the experience better, all of that. Like, a customer advisory board of fans.

And then the general larger community. Metadata is doing this. The best are Figma with the PLG angle. And RevGenius. As we develop Keyplay, we’re planning on adding a freemium version, so that might shape what type of community we build first. But from my perspective being more on the PeerSignal side, I think there’s value in just having a PeerSignal community. That’s the goal. As we think of ourselves as this research and community arm.

The other thing is shows. I think usually a big pillar of any community is having some sort of event arm. Events are a two-way communication channel that acts as the stepping stone to an owned community.

The post Camille Trent on How to Launch a B2B Media Company appeared first on RevGenius.

As part of this mission, Nick has co-founded Revenue Era, a community of marketers that are obsessed with driving revenue over leads and also runs The Anonymous Marketer Podcast where we tackle the most pressing questions from the B2B marketing community. Based just outside of Boston, in his spare time you can catch him on the baseball diamond still playing America’s favorite pastime or spending time with his family.

We caught up with Nick to talk about event-led growth and B2B marketing. He has some great insights, so make sure to take notes.

As a seasoned marketer, you’ve run a lot of events, and now at Airmeet, you get to think a lot about this topic. What are some tips and tricks to run a successful online event?

I feel like B2B, from a go to market perspective, is broken in today’s world. There are three problems here.

First, there’s a disconnection in the remote workplace. Whether it’s remote or hybrid, as a B2B marketer you’re feeling that you can’t connect to your target audience. It’s leading to a lack of personal engagement in relationship building.

Second, information overload. Marketers are bombarding people with information, marketing messages, and it’s making it difficult to stand out and get noted.

And the third problem is inefficient pipeline creation channels. Traditional channels have become less effective. People can say email’s dead or cold calling’s dead. I don’t think anything is dead, but I do think traditional channels have become less effective depending on the industry and type of product or solution that you sell. So it’s leading to a decrease in conversion rates, which forces you to think about innovative solutions.

I think event-led growth solves a lot of these things as an overarching theme. It comes back to a people-first mentality, where people should be front and center, not the company.

There are so many companies that are putting brand spam out there. They’re just putting noise out there, but they’re not really adding to the conversation. I think it comes back to the people and the people that work for these companies.

I feel like I’m a good example of that where people associate Airmeet with myself now that I’m here. When I was at Alyce before this, people associated Alyce with me being there.

So I think event-led growth is going to solve this through really five different ways.

1. Virtual networking events. You have to make it engaging. You have to create a space for personal engagement and relationship building. So it helps overcome the disconnection of that hybrid or remote workplace.

With Airmeet specifically, we have Tables. I could go jump on a table with you and say ten other people, and we could just have a regular authentic conversation.I can get to know you, maybe someone else drops by. We can just have conversations.

2. You have to offer customized experiences. It’s catering to specific needs or interests of your target audience. How can you differentiate through the sea of information that’s out there with the events that you’re doing?

So many people run an event, but they don’t have any plan to distribute the content after.

I just did an event with Mark [Kilens, Airmeet’s CMO]. We have a plan for how we’re going to take all these clips that we’re creating. I’m going to put them on LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube shorts and things like that. We’re putting ourselves out there, we’re sharing how we think, we’re sharing how other people want to engage in the conversation, but we’re customizing it.

3. Leveraging the event data, which is what we call event intent. We get so much information from these events that we can then use to create specific content around pain points that we’re uncovering through polls, or through the chat, or we can see how many emojis are being used, how many people are coming on stage and talking about specific things.

4. Foster community building by creating opportunities for thought leadership. How can a B2B marketer establish himself as a trusted source of information and build lasting relationships? Being a subject matter expert myself, I feel like this is something that I’ve really doubled down on. How can I be that go-to expert for our sales team, for our CS team, for speaking at external events?

5. Utilizing event-led marketing automation. How can you streamline everything? We use HubSpot, so we basically streamline all of the information from the events that we do so that they’re more actionable for the teams that are looking at this.

How do you create content around your events? Do you have a content distribution framework?

Yes. Basically, there are eight ways to fuel your content engine with events. We call it the great eight.

So, you have events as the core thing, but all these other things that spin off from it are the framework that we’re building now. This is all the distribution we do after the event, with playlists, courses, podcasts, social clips, pillar pages, content bundles and ebooks.

We’ve done it with a few events and we’re trying to do a better job with it.

You mentioned leveraging intent data. So, what are some of the other ways you can connect the sales team to the actual event?

What we do right now is we get them to engage and invite their key prospects, key customers, things like that. We put together an event pack with everything they need to know about the event itself:

• What is the event about?
• Who’s talking at the event?
• Some social media copy
• Some email copy
• Who you should they be targeting
• Specific dashboards in HubSpot of people that could be a good fit for strategic or mid- market or SMB

They have everything they need to basically say, “I’m gonna go and target these people.”

You recommend using polls and chat conversations during events. What are some of the best things that you’ve seen that actually work? What kind of polls or what kind of questions work best?

I think the polls that ask something where it’s like on a scale of one to five how comfortable are you at something? Let’s say, for example, how comfortable are you creating content from the events that you run on a scale of one to five?

And we can see all of the answers. So if we say, alright, this specific audience is scaling towards one or two, meaning they don’t feel as comfortable, then we can change our talk track a little bit to be 101 level. Whereas if they say four or five, we can get a lot more tactical. We can dig deeper. It just allows you to get better intent signals and keep your conversation going.

What is a good way for a sales rep to follow up with a prospect who attended the event?

They could ask something like, “Hey, what did you think of this specific session?” Or maybe it’s like a multi-session type of event, so, “Hey, what did you think of such and such session earlier on content and how it ties into events? I personally really like this piece.”

You’re just starting to build that relationship, you’re not asking them about the platform or saying, “Hey, you should check this out.” But you’re furthering that conversation and that dialogue, so that they get to know you as an individual versus just a company.

They’ll feel more comfortable over time, maybe opening up to you and be like, “Hey, you know, this was pretty cool.” Or, “I remember Nick came out to me and talked to me at this event. I didn’t have a need six months ago to look at Airmeet, but I’m gonna look at it now.”

I think it’s just serving up the right content and the right experiences for the people where they are in the buying site. Ultimately, do we want to sell to all these people? Yeah, probably. But we’re not going to go out and reach out to them, but we have a PLG model. We have a free offer, so people can experience the platform if they want without having to worry too much about our sales team pitching them on everything.

What about getting every attendee into an email sequence after the event. Do you think the email nurture still works or are people tired of it?

I think it still works if it comes from an actual person. If a brand, like, let’s just say, Airmeet Marketing is sending you an email, you’re not going to care about that. But if you get an email that says my name and it’s talking about something specific, you’re probably going to open it because maybe you recognize my name and you are like, “Hey, I wanna see what Nick has to say.”

But maybe the offer isn’t ready for you or right for you or maybe it’s just not something that works, but you’re still going to open it because of the person versus the brand.

At Airmeet we’re sending everything as an actual person. Whether it’s emails, blogs, a book, whatever, we want people to associate the company not as a brand, but to think of the people in the brand.

The post Nick Bennett on Event-Led Growth appeared first on RevGenius.

Below is our interview with Andrew:

Introduce yourself to our audience.

Tell us who you are and what you are currently focused on. My Name is Andrew Miller! Im from Toronto Ontario. I am also your Head of Onboarding here at RG. Currently, I am focused on the being better every single day of my life!

How did your journey lead you to Peek?

I am truly blessed to work for such an amazing company. After COVID I bet big on travel to return. So i went to go work for a Travel Company

What advice would you give to people who are looking to get into an Account Executive role?

Never stop improving. Honestly, I know you hear this rhetoric all the time. But the AE role is ultra competitive, you have to sharpen your skills everyday.

What gets you out of bed every morning?

David Goggins. I listen to that man every morning. (Yes, I listen to motivational speeches every morning.)

What would you say your personal superpower is?

My curiosity. I genuinely want to know everything about my clients! Nothing bothers me more than when i forget to ask something!

Why should other sales and marketing professionals join RevGenius?

You get to see me in onboarding? No seriously, im your onboarder. Ive learned so much in the masterclasses that has directly impacted my sales and my pocketbook. Also the mentorship has been huge for me.

The post RevGenius Member Spotlight: Andrew Miller appeared first on RevGenius.

Below is our interview with Ehidiamen:

Introduce yourself to our audience. Tell us who you are and what you are currently focused on.

Thanks, my name is Ehidiamen Ebhomielen, called Diamen for short, Nigerian based in Dublin Ireland, since 2007,Currently working as the Business Development Manager for HappierLeads, a web traffic identification tool that provides intelligence on potential prospects. Also, I host the RevGenius Tuesday EMEA roundtable meetings. I am focused on building and driving HappierLeads customer base via outbound activity and Partnerships. Also increasing RevGenius EMEA membership and engagement. When I am not doing that, I focus more on personal efforts in terms of writing my first book, enjoying time with my lovely wife and traveling.

How did your journey lead you to HappierLeads?

Engagement, I just moved on from another company with a similar role after two years.

Saw a Facebook request for beta testers on a SaaS startup group, (Feel free to reach out to me if you like the name of the group). Tested the product, liked the offering gave feedback to the CEO of the company and from there inquired about their current sales efforts, which was self generated at the time primarily inbound, offered my services and terms and have been there ever since.

What advice would you give to people who are looking to get into Business Development?

It’s a process and you have to go through that process. It takes time, on the flip side how much time that process takes depends on you, being flexible to learn and implement best practice in an ever changing industry is key but work on mastering fundamentals on what is required of your position is critical.

What gets you out of bed every morning?

Opportunities, each day brings one, you prepare for it you can get more than that think compound interest

What would you say your personal superpower is?

Vision has always been my personal superpower. However, execution is the power I use to pays the bills.

Why should other sales and marketing professionals join RevGenius?

You are not alone and the concept is not new. However it used to be that you work for a company and if you are lucky you can get support from a colleague, manager, team or say the company itself. You could possibly be a member of a club or associations of fellow professionals who meet how many times a week/ month? Well with the rise of communities you are able to 10x that kind of support and have that access to resources, industry best practice in realtime. Circling back to the question on advice, leveraging a community like RevGenius can help you ramp up your skill level or process to your aspirational goals. Engagement is key. It’s like working for a team and that team working for you. Only thing is that the team is 17,000 plus strong and growing.

The post RevGenius Member Spotlight: Ehidiamen Ebhomielen appeared first on RevGenius.

We recently interviewed Cliff Simon on his career and personal journey.

Read our full interview with Cliff Simon below:

Introduce yourself to our audience. Tell us who you are and what you are currently focused on.

I am a Revenue Leader who has spent the last 11 years in sales, and the last 7 in the SaaS ecosystem. Currently, I serve as the VP of Sales and Revenue at Carabiner Group, a Salesforce Consultancy, where I’m focused on taking the company from $100K ARR to $50MM over the next 5 years. I have a passion for processes and data driven decision making. I’m also a certified Revenue Growth Architect.

How did your journey lead you to Carabiner Group?

I actually met my CEO on RevGenius. I’ve started my B2B career at Verizon where I was really successful in selling IoT. I’ve had several roles since then in SaaS, particularly Fintech, both in Midmarket and Enterprise and was award winning in many of them along the way. I’ve always wanted to build something and this was an opportunity to do just that with a great team around me.

What advice would you give to people who are looking to get into the executive seat?

Tackle the problems that are plaguing your CEO and don’t be afraid to be creative. Come to them with solutions. Bringing in good revenue in addition to that never hurts. Do what you say you’re going to do.

What gets you out of bed every morning?

My wife, son, and soon to be daughter. I want a life for them that I didn’t have for myself and I want to be able to lead them with a good example of how to live a life that honors God.

What would you say your personal superpower is?

Taking complex ideas and breaking them down so that a 5 year old can understand it. I’ve always had a knack for taking information in, digesting it and being able to relay those concepts with a high level of accuracy immediately afterward. It’s amazing how many times a piece of content or concepts in a book jump off the page and into real life

Why should other sales and marketing professionals join RevGenius?

Its a wonderful community where some really knowledgeable people come to give back. We all had someone who took a chance on us in our careers. This is a place where we can lift up the next generation and create lasting friendships. Like anything in life, you get out what you put into it.

The post RevGenius Member Spotlight: Cliff Simon appeared first on RevGenius.

Below is our interview with Kate Erwin:

Introduce yourself to our audience. Tell us who you are and what you are currently focused on.

Hey, I’m Kate! I’m the Content Marketing Manager at Mailshake, a SaaS company that helps sales reps automate their outreach. I’m completely content-obsessed and spend most of my time crafting, consuming, and contemplating content. In addition to my full-time gig at Mailshake, I’m an editor here at RevGenius Mag and I started my own media company, Hack/Slash Media, with my friend and former colleague, Aimee Maroney.

How did your journey lead you to Mailshake?

I feel like I have RevGenius to thank for that—at least in part.

I’ve been a copywriter and content marketer for just over 9 years, but I’m fairly new to the sales space. I got a job at a sales tech company and didn’t initially know much about sales at all. Needing to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could, I joined RevGenius and soaked up so much knowledge.

When I applied to work at Mailshake, my involvement with RevGenius stood out. I think it helped my odds. (I hear a lot of people applied for my job.)

What advice would you give to people who are looking to get into content marketing?

Figure out whether you want to go deep on one subject or write about a wide variety of topics.

If you work at an agency, you’ll need to become proficient at pretending to be an expert on whatever you’re writing about. If you’re lucky, you’ll gain familiarity with a handful of clients and get to stick to those. But there will be times when you have a deadline and you don’t know what you’re doing, and you’ll have to pretend you do and you just have to be comfortable with that reality.

There are content marketers who specialize in writing about one thing. And there are content marketers who focus on being able to write about anything. I’m in the latter camp, but if I had to do it all over again, I’d likely try to have some focus. Now that I’m focused on the sales space, specifically, I have found that the content I create is much more impactful.

Also, practice summarizing what you’ve read and putting complex subjects into plain language because that’s most of what you’ll be doing as a content marketer.

What gets you out of bed every morning?

Making meaningful connections. There’s no better feeling than knowing that something I created is resonating with someone, educating them, or making them feel less alone.

What would you say your personal superpower is?

I can have a conversation with anyone.

Why should other sales and marketing professionals join RevGenius?

Other than the fact that it’s done wonders for my career, I’ve learned so much here in RevGenius and I’ve met so many wonderful, driven, and helpful people. I’d highly recommend it to anyone in a revenue-generating role.

The post RevGenius Member Spotlight: Kate Erwin appeared first on RevGenius.

We’re lucky to have Kelsey as a RevGenius member and working for one of our amazing sponsors, Dooly.

Below is our interview with Kelsey Calabro:

Introduce yourself! Tell us who you are and what you are currently focused on.

Hi everyone! When I’m not ghostwriting and copywriting for tech C-suites through my agency (heretic : the agency) you can find me as a Customer Success Manager at Dooly. I’m passionate about building communities, being a part of them, advocating for customers, and helping people however I can. When I’m not at my desk, I might be trying my hand at surfing the Portland, Maine beaches, hanging with my dog, or eating oysters and driving around with music blasting on any given weekend.

How did you end up starting your own agency and working full-time at Dooly?

I hate saying COVID was what I needed, but professionally and creatively, it gave me a lot of space and time to reconnect with my goals. Two of those being: starting my own business and being a part of a tech team that would allow me to be creative, hands-on, and collaborative. As soon as I met the Dooly team I knew it was where I needed to be.

What advice would you give to people who are looking to break into tech or start their own biz?

Oufff, a tough one cause I could say a lot. For anyone looking to break into tech I will constantly back getting involved in micro-communities, getting comfortable with your voice and presence on LinkedIn, and looking into Aspireship if you’re truly new to it all.

For anyone starting their own business? You’ll never feel 100% sure and the fear factor is constant, so just go for it. There’s no better feeling than seeing it gain momentum.

What gets you out of bed every morning?

Aside from the potential of seeing John Mayer post a new Instagram story? … Being able to talk to the people in my life and the thought of getting to walk to the ocean every day.

What would you say that you do better than anyone?

Reading people. Whether that comes in the form of reading the room or being able to gauge where someone is at mentally and emotionally without them saying so; it allows me to be a chameleon to the conversation and my environments.

Why should other sales and marketing professionals join Communities?

For starters, it costs nothing (usually.) Secondly, whether you’re looking for connections or opportunities, the simple step of getting involved and getting to know people will lead to so many open doors it’s almost unbelievable. The more you continue to show up, the more it will show up for you.

The post RevGenius Member Spotlight: Kelsey Calabro appeared first on RevGenius.