Josh Verrill

The B2B contact data test we just ran (and why LeadMagic is now position 1 in our waterfall) We just wrapped up a test of five contact data providers for B2B outbound campaigns. Our goal was to build a calling list of 1,000 contacts across SaaS companies in the 11-500 employee range, targeting senior Sales, Marketing and CRO titles in North America. We used the same list of target companies from Sales Navigator and ran it through each platform either natively or via Clay. What We Measured: Fill rate: % of contacts, email + direct dial required Accuracy: % of emails that passed SMTP + % of dials that connected to correct person/company Manual clean-up needed: Subjective score from our team, 1–5 Takeaways: - LeadMagic punched way above its weight especially on fill rate and dial accuracy (clutch) - SalesIntel.io was a solid runner-up but required a bit more manual deduping. Apollo and Findymail were noticeably noisier, juice not worth the squeeze. Wiza performed better than we expected but still didn’t crack the top 2. We’ve moved LeadMagic to the top of our enrichment waterfall for all clients. It’s saving us time and money on every list. If you’re still relying on one data source, you’re probably wasting more time than you think. Let me know if you want help structuring segmented lists for your team. We’re running 200–400 dials/day per rep — data quality isn’t optional anymore.

623

46 Comments

Sales was a mess. Then they handed it to me. Back in 2023, I was VP of Marketing and was asked to take over Sales as well. I stepped into a world I thought I knew well from the outside, but now I had to lead it. I kept reminding myself of something Udi Ledergor once said: “Marketing’s job is to make sales easier.” I wasn’t going to teach the team how to sell. I was never a salesperson, and we already had a great team of sellers. But I could make it easier for them to do what they do best. So I asked myself: How do I actually help Sales sell? Then I stepped in and saw the chaos: - Outdated one-pagers - Random follow-up emails - Clients lost in email threads - AEs juggling deals with no structure It was nothing like the structured world of marketing campaigns and cadences. Everything was manual. Best practices were tribal knowledge, if shared at all. I wanted to fix it. Systemize it. Make sure our AEs spent their time selling, and our clients had a seamless experience. The fix? We rolled out a digital sales room: Aligned A joint effort between Product Marketing and Sales Leadership. Now, every deal lives in a single digital workspace: - Pricing - Collateral - Mutual action plans - Engagement tracking - Clean. Shareable. Always up to date. The impact: - No more chasing PDFs or approvals - Internal champions close loops faster - Deals close faster with higher conversion rates The value of giving clients one professional, centralized place to evaluate us? Priceless. That clunky and messy buying process? Gone. Clients now feel more confident. More in control. More ready to buy. This post isn’t about a specific tool (though our sales team will vouch for Aligned any day). It’s a reminder: If you want your team to win, do not just ask them to grind through the manual work. Give them systems and tools so they can focus on what matters most: Selling. Make sales easier. Make buying easier. Hit your targets.

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30 Comments

MIT says 95% of enterprise genAI pilots are failing... TBH - doesn't surprise me one bit. This stuff is HARD. For the world I play in... the focus is AI Agents for CX, but what makes it hard? Getting to a working demo is pretty dang easy, but the last 20% of a production level build is a different story. -> You need to get transcription right: What about when a customer says "bye" or "by". The former you tell the AI Agent to hang up and the latter you wait to hear what's next. -> You need to get the edge cases right: To solve this most people just shove more into the prompt, but this is where regression happens and AI Agents start breaking process. -> You need to get APIs ready: True impact comes from automation of workflows and that requires touching a variety of systems. Many APIs are customer owned. My prediction? Many pilots will fail and a "hunger games" moment will transpire where only a few AI platforms will be left standing as the players who can actually drive customer value.

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4 Comments

I'll never believe you can build a strong culture in a Zoom room. It doesn't work. We're accustomed to it. Remote work builds efficiency, and sometimes speed. In-person meetings build TRUST. Last week, we ran our first Docebo marketing offsite since I joined in April: 40+ people, 2 days together, 1 goal... build an experience, NOT a slide deck. What made it work: >> Group activities: workouts (OrangeTheory), a game show, and real laughs (no FAKE LAUGHING). Shared experiences beat another presentation. >> Start / Stop / Continue: simple, only powerful if you follow through. >> Breaks: real downtime, which will always create the best conversations. You can't force it. >> Working styles: personality profiles (DiSC) so “collaboration” becomes concrete. Our agenda was simple but effective: connect, align, plan, commit. Day 1: kickoff, alignment sessions, Start/Stop/Continue, working-styles workshop, social evening. Day 2: reflections, GTM/ops/product marketing deep dives, Q4 priorities + 2026 vision, execution breakouts, clear commitments. Dos and don’ts that kept us sharp: > Do keep sessions short and interactive. > Do balance strategy with connection. > Do make space for reflection. < Don’t overstuff the agenda. < Don’t make it a one-way broadcast. < Don’t skip the follow-up. You don’t build culture through emails and Zoom calls. You build it by showing up and hanging out together. Twice a year isn’t a luxury for a remote team. It’s the cost of building one worth being part of.

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26 Comments

There's one person I can always count on for unexpected perspectives on what's going on in the world of SaaS CMOs today: Joseph (Jay) Roxe, CMO of Inriver. Jay and I recently talked about The Great Reinvention of the SaaS Marketing Org. Some quotes that stuck with me: - "You're either AI-first or you're unemployed." - "Adoption is the new MQL… As you put more stuff into the product, are people - actually adopting and using it?" - " From an org design point of view, you want to think of where you need person-to-person face-off. Your partners don't want to talk to your AI chatbot. They want to talk to a person who can help them, brainstorm with them, and give them context." - "One of the things I like talking about with candidates: what have they changed over the past year? How have they changed how they work based on everything that's going on?" You'll hear about: - "Firing your tech stack" and re-imagining the marketing org and how marketing gets done - Leveraging AI to build authority for situations where prospects say, 'ChatGPT told me I should talk to you' - The evolving structure of marketing ops - What a full-stack customer marketing org looks like - (this may be my favorite) Advice for rising CMOs: You have to love the process, not just want to HAVE DONE the CMO role. Intellectual curiosity about the job is not enough! - Advice to CEOs on how to identify the CMOs who are the best problem solvers Check it out at the link below. 👇

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10 Comments

"Our product is too expensive!" - Reps love this one as a loss reason. Really? You're sure? I pull the data. 12% got closed lost for price. TWELVE PERCENT. But that one loud rep has the whole team convinced we have a pricing problem. One of my favorite questions to as my leaders is this. Volume vs Volume. Is this a high volume problem that is just LOUD. Or is this a high volume problem that there is ALOT of it. This is what kills sales organizations. We chase the LOUD problems instead of the A LOT problems. The Loud vs Real Problem Reality Check: 🔊 LOUD: "The script doesn't work!" 📊 A LOT: Nobody's actually using the script (0% adoption tracked) 🔊 LOUD: "Marketing gives us garbage!" 📊 A LOT: 63% of MQLs never hit the right number of follow ups 🔊 LOUD: "The product is too expensive!" 📊 A LOT: Reps skip value discovery in 67% of calls 🔊 LOUD: "That competitor is killing us!" 📊 A LOT: Lost to "no decision" 5x more than any competitor Here's what happens in every sales org: One rep hits a weird objection three times. Suddenly it's "THE objection we need to solve." Meanwhile, 80% of your deals are dying in discovery and nobody's talking about it. Why? Because discovery death is quiet. It doesn't bang on your door screaming. The Data I Actually Look At: Not: "What are reps complaining about?" But: "What's happening in 100+ deals?" Not: "What's the latest fire?" But: "What pattern shows up in the numbers?" Not: "Who's yelling loudest?" But: "What does the scorecard say?" How to Stop Chasing Ghosts: 1️⃣ Track Everything If it's not measured, it's not real. Period. 2️⃣ Minimum Sample Size One rep's bad week ≠ a trend. Get 50+ data points minimum. 3️⃣ Follow the Math, Not the Mouth The loudest person in the room is rarely the most accurate. 4️⃣ Ask "By How Much?" "Leads suck" → "By how much did quality drop?" "Script fails" → "What's the conversion rate?" 5️⃣ Look for CHANGES - is anything new, or was it always that way. If it was always that way, it's not what's causing the drop. The Brutal Truth: Your loud problems are usually edge cases. Your real problems are boring and systemic. But we love solving loud problems because they're: Exciting to talk about Easy to blame Make us feel like heroes While the real problems quietly eat your pipeline alive. Stop managing by complaint volume. Start managing by data volume. The loudest problem in the room is rarely the one killing your quarter. Find the quiet killers. They're the ones that matter. Volume vs Volume ya'll.

155

82 Comments

If you're thinking about hosting a user conference, the math is increasingly working against you. Think about how many more tools you're using now vs 5-10 years ago. Consider the exponential growth of the revtech market serving GTM each year. Every one of those companies has thought about doing a user conference. Events remain a critical part of many company's go-to-market motion for good reason. They work! I know one company that has double attendance for their conference every year for four years now. And 100 percent of customers who attend renew. Are there attribution and correlation questions there? Yes. And who cares! The best events with the best reputations earn a spot on your customer's coveted calendar. The allure of inviting your happiest customers to come together in person is strong. But just because you build it doesn't mean they'll come. They're only going to get on a plane so often. Consider your own bar for attending a user conference when planning your own. Consider the invites you've received and turned down. My advice is to start small. Local user groups and regional events. Make those unforgettable and FOMO-inducing. Build a reputation for producing must-attend events at a smaller scale. That'll convert people willing to get in their cars for you to get on a plane for you. 

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Partnership leaders aren't burning out from failure. They're burning out from success. Here's the brutal irony: The better you get at "doing more with less," the more your executives expect you to do exactly that. We've gotten SO good at hitting our numbers with spreadsheets and manual processes that we've accidentally taught our executives that partnerships doesn't need resources. We drive 3x better metrics than sales with a fraction of the budget. We juggle 16 different roles and somehow make it work. So executives think: "This person is crushing it with nothing. Let's see how much more we can squeeze out before we invest." Instead of: "This is incredible ROI. Let's give them what they need to 10x this." We've become victims of our own resourcefulness. Every time we pull off a miracle with duct tape and determination, we reinforce the idea that partnerships thrives on constraint. Every time we hit our numbers despite having no tools, no budget, and no support, we prove that we don't "need" resources. But here's the truth: The best partnerships leaders I know are burning out. Not because they can't handle the work. Because they're being asked to scale infinitely without being given the tools to do it sustainably. My advice? 1. Don't ask for resources until you've proven you can drive success. 2. Set the expectation upfront that once you prove revenue traction, you'll need proper resources to scale. 3. The moment you hit that initial traction, go back and (kindly) demand what you need. Before you're forced to keep doing it all with a skeleton crew. Stop making miracles look easy. Start showing the real cost of running partnerships with manual processes and insufficient headcount. Prove that you know what you're doing, then fight for the resources that partnerships deserves. Otherwise, you'll be stuck holding the whole thing together with your bare hands forever.

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There's been a lot of noise lately about AI replacing sellers and client-facing teams. In my keynote at Shift this year, I'll be making the case for a different and far more exciting future. AI is changing the sales function. But instead of eliminating the role, it's elevating it. It's pushing sellers to operate at a more strategic level — one that's more tightly aligned to business outcomes than ever before. In this new world, being "ready" means something different. It means knowing what success actually looks like. It means being equipped with real-time insights and personalized guidance. It means driving consistent, measurable behavior change across revenue teams. And it means enabling transformation—not just activity. There's no doubt AI is changing the daily work of go-to-market teams everywhere. Replacing them with AI is the wrong move – instead, enable them to leverage AI to be smarter, faster, and more strategic. Trust will continue to be paramount and can't be left to AI alone. The organizations that understand this and figure out how to enable this transformation will be the ones that win. That's what we'll be talking about in just a week. Hope to see you there! https://lnkd.in/gP8ZW-SB ​

155

3 Comments

A major challenge I’ve seen partner teams struggle with over the last 20 years: Prioritization. I’ve been in that boat. The one where the team is pulled in a million directions at once. It's because we're asked to: 😅 Manage a long tail of inbound partners - We must review them all! 💬 Recruit and onboard new partners 🎯 Build strategy and show partner market fit 📕Create enablement & certification programs 💵 Run co-marketing campaigns and MDF 💰 Drive deal registration & co-selling motions 📄 Manage partner plans and QBRs... ...On top of attending internal QBRs 👨‍💻 🖥 Influence product roadmap with partner feedback 🚨 Handle compliance, security, data, and reporting 🤝Align internally across Sales, Marketing, Product, CS, Finance, and the C-suite And a lot more... 🙂 ...With what is a typically small partnerships team. That's why partner teams often feel stretched thin. It doesn't have to be this way though. One of the best things a partnerships team can do is learn to say no. No to low impact projects. No to distractions that don't impact revenue. No to “nice to haves” that drain time and energy but don’t create real customer outcomes. Every "yes" has an opportunity cost. One of my favorite ways to make sure we say "yes" to the right partner initiatives: The 2x2 framework: High Impact / Low Effort → Do it now High Impact / High Effort → Plan & resource properly Low Impact / Low Effort → Quick wins if capacity allows Low Impact / High Effort → Deprioritize and cut Partnerships will always have more opportunities than capacity. It's our job to help the team focus on the right ones that move the needle.

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35 Comments