Manny Medina

Your POC process is probably why you're not closing enterprise deals.   After analyzing POC outcomes across our portfolio, the data is clear: Companies with structured and priced POCs close 3x more deals than those running free pilots.   Why charge? Price signals seriousness. Even nominal fees filter serious buyers from tire-kickers. Frame your pilots as fixed-fee engagements: Say "we structure this as a 4-week, fixed-fee engagement to quantify value and build your business case."   Be sure to clarify pricing expectations in the process: If your pilot costs $5K but commercial deals are $100K-$300K based on the value unlocked, state this explicitly to avoid anchoring.   Here are 5 best POC best practices we see:   1. Define success criteria, not scope Align on specific KPIs, business outcomes, and who signs off before writing a line of code.   2. Time-box ruthlessly with weekly checkpoints POCs should run 30-90 days max. Set weekly or bi-weekly checkpoints to maintain urgency.   3. Pre-commit the path to commercial discussions Before starting any pilot, confirm that hitting the success metrics will trigger stakeholder presentations and commercial negotiations.   4. Demand access to the full buying center Technical users alone can't close deals. Ensure you meet decision-makers and budget holders during the POC, not after.   5. Document like a contract Formalize scope, terms, and deliverables in the agreement. Include specific responsibilities for both sides, data access requirements, success metrics, timelines, and post-POC commitments.   --   POCs are where your enterprise motion gets built. Treat them that way.   I wrote a guide to AI pricing with Madhavan Ramanujam and Joshua Bloom that discusses these ideas in more detail. If you're curious to dive deeper, I'll leave that link below. Also, Madhavan just released a new book called Scaling Innovation that also explores these topics. Highly recommend!

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We've evolved Exit Five to be much more than "B2B SaaS" --> That's been my background working in B2B SaaS, and Exit Five started as my podcast/private community, so no surprise a lot of the early members and content centered around SaaS. But as we've evolved from my little thing to thousands of members and marketers from around the world, we've had a strong pull from people saying Hey, B2B marketing does not mean B2B SaaS and they are right! That's why we made a shift in our community recently to split out into subgroups. For the past three months we've had success with a "B2B Not SaaS" group and "Women in B2B Marketing" and it feels almost obvious today, why didn't we think of this earlier? So now we'll have leaders/ambassadors for a bunch of subgroups and we'll continue to scale Exit Five to be relevant to anyone that works in B2B marketing, which is a much bigger universe than the world of B2B SaaS. Now, I am biased and I *do* think marketing is marketing and lot of the lessons in SaaS apply to other businesses and vice versa, but I also know that there is HUGE value in hearing from your peers as each industry has their own nuances. SO: now inside of Exit Five we have industry subgroups for FinTech, HealthTech, HR, Manufacturing, MarTech, Women in B2B Marketing, Non SaaS - and more to come. PLUS we added local chapters including Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, NYC, Toronto, Austin, Chicago, Phoenix, Halifax - and more to come by demand. We've also shifted the membership experience to focus more on peer groups and matchmaking, since you can just yell at other people about marketing on LinkedIn, you don't need E5 for that and I want E5 to be different than what you get with social media feeds. It's not a discussion board, it's a site for professional development. If you take it seriously and treat it like an investment. If you never do anything - much like the gym - you'll wonder why you pay for this thing. Thanks to our members and early ambassadors and leaders for giving us great feedback and helping to shape the future. I think community/peers is more important now than ever, and we wanted to give you a home base with people from your industry and your city. I think this update is great and if you want to join us in E5 you can hit our site and signup for a month. If you don't want to participate in the community that's totally fine too. We have invested heavily in our newsletter (approaching 50,000 subs) and our podcast (will cross 1M all-time listeners in Q4) plus we do free monthly live trainings (some might call them webinars). We're also going to be adding two more in-person events in 2026 and I'm excited about the future. There's so much momentum in marketing because of what's happening with AI and it's been super fun to have a front row seat for all the changes. - Dave

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Most startups build software the hard way. Full-stack teams. Big burn. Slow to scale. Quavo did it differently - and it worked. They launched a purpose-built SaaS product in a complex space (fraud & dispute resolution for Financial Institutions), grew 60% YoY, and just landed $300M in growth capital. The playbook? Focus on your IP and core value. Leverage a platform. Deliver real outcomes to clients fast. Then scale. Read the full story from my recent interview with Joseph W. McLean Co-Founder & CEO of Quavo. https://lnkd.in/eT4x5_N4

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Being a PMM leader is easy. CEO wants PMM to be strategic and drive revenue. CEO also thinks the main job is writing pitch decks and datasheets - and that AI can do most of it, so budgets get cut every quarter. Sales wants PMM to deliver messaging/assets that win deals. Sales also uses their own talking points in the field, leaving the market confused by 10 different stories. Product wants PMM to validate roadmap bets and guide go-to-market. Product also pulls PMM in after launch decisions are already made, and skips beta programs or VOC because “we don’t have time.” Marketing wants PMM to fuel campaigns with sharp positioning. Marketing also just wants MQL volume, so anything that doesn’t generate leads tomorrow gets ignored. CFO wants PMM to show pipeline impact. CFO also assumes PMM can do it with zero budget because “you’re not demand gen.” Recruiting wants PMM to help hire more PMMs. Recruiting also writes job descriptions that blend 3 different functions and then asks why great candidates don’t apply. The C-suite wants PMM to act like a strategic growth lever. The C-suite also can’t decide who owns it - with the CPO and CMO fighting over headcount and priorities - then wonders why the function feels underpowered. Pretty damn easy, right? Oh, congrats - after making it this far, your backlog just grew by 5 😂

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GTM Engineer might be the hottest title in tech right now, but the work has always been there. Some wear the title. Others just do the work, connecting systems, stitching insights, enabling teams, and pushing go-to-market efforts forward without the fanfare. Whether your org calls them GTM Engineers, Revenue Ops, or just “the person who makes everything work,” they’re often the difference between activity and real impact. If that’s you, this asset will help. It’s a clear, no-fluff breakdown of what great GTM execution looks like and how to improve it. Built to support the people behind the motion. Enter Peel Playbook - GTM Engineer Edition (of course as a Talkable) Talk to it - steal the great ideas - link in comments

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Speed wins. It always has. In SaaS times, engineering velocity used to set the pace. You could only go to market about as fast as you could ship. Maybe sell and market slightly ahead of capabilities, but not too much. That era is over. Tech moats are fading, and it’s easier than ever to build. Now the constraint is: Can you tell the market, enable your team, and capture demand before someone else does? All 👀 👀 👀 are on GPT-5 this week. Our GTMfund team has been testing it out with portfolio companies, and here's what we've found so far: - Strategy, creative, analysis, and launch happen in one workflow. - Marketers can ship interactive tools without waiting on engineers. - Reps can train on real calls, not outdated decks. - Your next GTM plan can ship before your competitor’s offsite even ends. Speed has moved upstream, and GPT-5 puts that speed in the hands of your GTM team. It's amazing to see what application companies can do with it. We broke down what changed and how to use it (including sample prompts) in the latest The GTMnow Newsletter.

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PMMs shouldn’t waste time updating battlecards. In this quick walkthrough, our team shows how you can generate a “Why We Win” battlecard using nothing but a single prompt in Ask Klue. It pulls from verified sources (think win-loss, Gong call transcripts, public sources, and Klue content) and produces an output sellers will actually use. This is what happens when your compete program gets an AI boost: better outputs, and your team gets their time back from tedious work.

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