Pipeline Meeting - Marketing Podcast About Sales

Brandon Kim is the VP of Marketing at Crystal, a powerful personality data platform that sales and marketing teams are using to increase sales. It works by understanding your prospects better, primarily with the DISC assessment.

Brandon shares how they believe more personalized communication is the future. Whether that's one-to-one conversations, multi-stakeholder B2B deals, or any number of other use cases for the product.

Noteworthy topics include Myers-Briggs, DISC, Enneagram, adaptive selling, and how the Crystal LinkedIn extension and free assessment tools can help people get a sense of how the product works.

Find Brandon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-kim-39aaa529/
Find Crystal online: https://www.crystalknows.com/

Skip ahead:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:28) - What is adaptive selling?
• (01:51) - Personality assessments
• (04:31) - Value for sales
• (05:28) - How Crystal works
• (09:10) - Uses outside of sales
• (10:04) - Applying to ABM
• (12:08) - Follow Brandon Kim
• (12:45) - Outro

Madison Zimmerman has taken full lifecycle marketing on as head of marketing at Property Meld, a proptech (property technology) B2B SaaS company. Our discussion includes:

Generating new leads through webinars. Making webinars that people actually show up to and find interesting -- it's true, it's possible.
* Managing inbound with HubSpot. How marketing and their outbound BDR team use HubSpot for marketing and sales automation.
* Quantifying pain to justify pricing. Their custom scorecard drives their sales process and helped them increase their prices.
* Coordinating with customer success. Beyond generating leads, their marketing team focuses on win rates and retention, all in HubSpot.
* Trying new technologies. They implemented a new lead concierge tool called Chili Piper. It works and they learned something else, too.

Find Madison Zimmerman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madisonzimmerman/
Learn more about Property Meld: https://propertymeld.com/

Janelle Amos helps companies craft--and execute--demand gen strategy. Not just any companies, though. She specializes in working with B2B SaaS startups that are anywhere from seed stage to series C rounds. We discuss:

• Who she helps. There are three typical scenarios when a head of demand gen might be called in to help. She talks about all three, and two tend to work better than the third.
• Why marketing first. Janelle explains why she thinks marketing, and demand gen strategy, should come first when a startup is starting to see traction. She contrasts this to a sales-first approach.
• Why marketing now. She explains how timing is key. There are several specific things she looks for in the market and the product that help her understand if demand gen strategy can help.
• Supporting sales. Janelle shares interesting insight into how the right demand gen strategy can set up the sales team for success. And beyond a nice to have, it may be vital for the success of that sales team. When done right, they can jump in and do their job--selling!
• The ideal tech stack: Always a tricky topic, but Janelle talks about a few different popular tools and how they come together like HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, Outreach, and Salesloft.

We cover more topics like the specific tactics she recommends in B2B SaaS, repurposing long form content, sales cycles, message testing, and internal communications for your campaigns.

Janelle Amos on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janelleamos/
Elevate Growth: https://elevate-growth.com/

Emma was the first marketing hire at Mystery, and in her time with the company, it has evolved a lot. They've gone from only 10 people to 70 and counting and she shares what she's learned along the way.

• Measuring brand marketing: Never an easy topic, Emma shares how brand is rooted in everything they do and has been from the beginning. There are ways they measure though, like impressions, visits, and through the success of their product and growth marketing teams.
• Why now for virtual events: The company has seen a lot of growth, in part because people are more interested in virtual events than ever. Think Zoom fatigue and quiet quitting being major headlines in the press.
• Demos that don't suck: They make an experiential product. Emma talks about how they've used this to their advantage in the process of introducing new prospects to their product.
• Experience design plus data science: There's an interesting angle they're taking which is bringing principles of data science to make virtual events that scale. Emma explores this.
• Connecting sales and marketing: Sometimes the best way for your sales and marketing teams to talk to each other is for them to... Talk to each other. Mystery uses their own product to bring the two teams together. Learn how it impacts sales and marketing alignment. (Hint: It works!)

Emma Biskupiak on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ehunsaker/

Mystery on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trymystery/

Learn more about Mystery: https://www.trymystery.com/

⚠️ Please note: This is an old episode of the Pipeline Meeting podcast. In August 2022, the show relaunched in a new format. For the most recent episodes, please visit the podcast page.

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Let's talk about what made it into the beta release and the problems he's trying to solve with Intro CRM. Learn how freelancers and entrepreneurs can quickly add deals; integrate with tools like Basecamp, Trello, and Asana; and forecast your cash flow.

The overall theme for the episode is making the most of the leads you have. If you have a leaky funnel, it's not much good pouring more leads into it—particularly if you're bootstrapping.

Harris is looking for ideas and feedback about how to make Intro CRM better. He's been able to generate interest and traffic, convert sign ups, but once people are in the app they aren't as active as he'd like to see. He needs to get folks to activate and use Intro CRM before leaving. Setting up their account, adding deals, etc. He shares how he's doing it right now and past approaches... But now clearly it's time for something new. Get a sense of the current process by signing up for Intro CRM.

Sign up for Intro CRM →
See how the Basecamp CRM integration works →

There's also a new social platform called Clubhouse. Harris received an invitation and is trying to get the hang of it. Are you on Clubhouse? Find him @harriskenny.

This show also won an award! Pipeline Meeting was given Honorable Mention in the 2020 SaaS Podcast Awards. Sincere thanks to the MicroConf community for their support. There were so many good shows, including a few that I listen to regularly:

IndieHackers by Courtland Allen →
Build Your SaaS by Justin Jackson and Jon Buda →
Software Social Podcast by Michelle Hansen and Colleen Schnettler →
See all the award-winners and honorable mentions →
Learn more about MicroConf →