Michael Redbord

Hey all 👋 I could use some help from GTM leaders/saas folks... Who is the best *marketing leader/head of marketing* you've ever worked with? For context, we're looking to bring in a Head of Marketing here at Circle to join our GTM leadership team. We're currently approaching $25M in ARR and growing fast (~100% y-o-y). This marketing leader will help us continue to scale to $100M+ in ARR. I'm biased, of course — but this can truly be a career-defining opportunity for the right person. —You'll get to shape how we tell the story of *3* brand new products that we're bringing to market this year. —The product is fantastic. Our product/engineering teams are the best I've ever worked with. The customers are the best I've ever worked with. You have all the raw materials necessary to do truly great marketing. We're already growing fast. You'll just help us go faster. —There are lots of new channels and untapped opportunities to go after. So there's plenty of room to come in and make an immediate impact. —This role sits on our leadership team. It's a group of the highest potential GTM leaders I've ever worked with. And we're ready to truly invest in product marketing as a function. — There's LOTS of momentum in the business. Our leading indicators like pipeline, win rates, word-of-mouth, NPS, retention, etc. are all really strong and getting better week-over-week. If you know a truly great marketing leader - I'd love to connect with them. I'd be grateful if you could tag them below or shoot me a DM. And if no one comes to mind, I'd be grateful if you could share this post for a bit of reach. Thanks! 🙏 Here's the JD: https://lnkd.in/e5fzB7T6

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For any PMM having a hard time nailing messaging… Facts - There’s no ‘Don Draper’ moment where inspiration will strike in the middle of a meeting. The good news is you have everything you need. 1. Look at your wins. Find the last 6 months of closed/won deals in your CRM. Find the patterns, and talk to the AEs if you need to. Better yet go talk to the customers themselves. Why did they buy? What made them pick you? 2. Once you have a good sample, use your judgement and distill out 3-5 ‘winning use cases’. These are the foundational proof points of why you’re differentiated. And they’re real 3. Then build the top and bottom. Top = what’s the one unifying value prop across the winning use cases. Bottom = what’s the product capabilities that support those use cases 4. Document this, turn it into your first call deck, and your website nav + core pages Refine this every 6 months. Sales will love it, and customers will actually believe you #productmarketing #messaging

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When you're not in the board room, you're always wondering, "What's going on in there?". I have now worked with seven companies where I'd regularly present to a board, a mixture of PE and VC-led, and it's almost always centered around a few key topics. If you're meeting your numbers: - what's your future forecast  - how are you going to continue to grow - how will you grow faster and more efficient  - update on money in the bank and spend If you're not meeting your numbers (along with the things I mentioned above): - what is your plan to turn things around and meet your numbers (this includes new logo, back-to-base sales, and churn reduction) - what resources can they offer to help - do you have the right players in the right seat This is an oversimplification because many nuances are at play, but this is generally it. While board meetings can be stressful, almost every board I've worked with wants to be helpful. Of course, their interest is, first and foremost, that the business is healthy and growing, so there's always that undertone, but overall, they want to help. After all, they are guardians of the investments they make on behalf of others and have to report back on their performance. Think of them like they are CSMs for their investors (the folks that give them money). They need to get a great return on the investment they made on their behalf.

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My take on the next 5 years of GTM? Fewer tools, fewer people.  Yes, we’re all getting pushed to do more with less, but really if we’re going to deliver on this seamless customer journey that we’ve been talking about we need to be able to stitch together our tools, people and processes. You can get all the hot takes I shared with James Kaikis when The New GTM Playbook drops on Dec 3. Head to the link in the video and subscribe to his newsletter and be the first to know when my episode goes live!

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A few months ago we welcomed one of the most accomplished CROs in partnerships as PartnerStack's new CRO, Mike Head. PartnerStack has levelled up immediately, and I have personally learned a ton about partnerships from Mike in short order. This article shares insights from our CRO, to let you know how to get partnerships buy-in from your CRO.

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When my friend Christi Williams from Hubspot asked me to run a workshop for some Partnership Leaders on top ChatGPT use cases, I initially thought "do I have enough material for 1 hour?" Turns out, I could go on for hours* on the incredible ways you can leverage the tool, and some of the top use cases for partnering professionals we covered include: 1/ Copy writing (outbound to partners, prospect, proposals, etc) ▶ get to ~80% on your own and let GPT get you the rest of the way 2/ Data Analyses & Table Construction ▶ pump in CSVs/data files and query GPT to understand trends, takeaways ▶ not great with VLookUps? Just pump in a CSV with a table set up & ask GPT to produce a version complete with complex formulas 3/ Cross-functional collab. ▶ summarize long winded Slack threads to understand max content and what most important outstanding questions are ▶ translate your proposals into language tailored to Product, MKTG, Engineering, etc, and for international colleagues 4/ Call Review and FUPs ▶ take no notes on calls, just stay laser focused and rely on GPT to ask questions about the call and get key action items & drafted email FUPs/internal Slack messages 5/ Enablement ▶ Create custom GPTs trained up on your partner network and make this accessible to your frontline teams so they get accurate information ON DEMAND ▶ Do the same for partners; pin a GPT about your company/product in a Slack thread so your partners can get key info in real time I hope these examples are helpful; would love to hear how other GTM professionals are leveraging AI! #AI #ChatGPT #OpenAI #GTM

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I could talk about product positioning all day. Good product positioning makes it easy for buyers to see themselves, their routines, and their goals reflected in what you're offering them. Sometimes it's shifting your product positioning from "what we do" to "what we do for you". What a dream getting to meet and talk with Daniel Murray of The Marketing Millennials podcast about: ➡ Creating product positioning that resonates (and how we think about it at Recharge ➡ Sustaining brands in the routine economy ➡ Why your first marketing hire should be a product marketer, and more Check out the full episode ✨

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What a quarter. Product market fit that is like nothing I've experienced before, world class engineering talent, incredible customers, and the beginnings of a GTM machine that I am so so so proud of and excited about. Some highlights: - We blew the doors off the number. What a statement quarter by the team. 225% to plan with a clear path to doing the same thing in Q2 (and beyond). - We did a deal that would have been the biggest deal at any company I've been at up to $100M in ARR. - Healthy mix of self-serve, mid-size deals, and large deals --> on top of the above, we did 20+ NNL (including one person doing more than 10 themselves). - We are working as a team -- the culture we're building is really special. People work hard, raise the bar, want to win together, are competitive, so so smart, kind, and want to deliver a tremendous amount of value to our customers. Importantly, we are having a lot of fun doing it. - The pace and quality of our engineering is a huge differentiator. Can't overstate the positive impact of having an engineering team that is maniacally focused on building amazing experiences for our customers. - We're measuring the value we're providing. 46% more code written by developers using Codeium, 7-10X ROI, 40-70% faster onboarding of new developers, forecastably faster PR release cycles -- having an AI product / team that focuses on quantifying the impact to our customers is...the best. - We hired a lot of wonderful people. Dave Frankel, Isaac Kim, Jacob Addington, Alex Laubscher -- I am so excited you're here and so energized by what we're going to build together. Welcome! Alex Hart, Andrew Amato, Jeff Wang, Anshul Ramachandran, Varun Mohan you guys have built such an amazing GTM foundation. Very excited to be on this journey with you all -- let's go build something generational! Douglas Chen and entire wonderful engineering team -- thank you all. What you all build is incredible and I am so fired up by what we have coming in the next few months. Want to try Codeium? Check out our free tier. We're hiring in all roles -- particularly (in GTM) looking for AEs, SEs, SDRs, RevOps in Austin / Mountain View.

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I continue to be amazed at how strong Shopify is on getting frontline teams (AEs, AMs, CSMs, etc) so dialled in on how to leverage a partner ecosystem Today for example, we at AfterShip - a top rated/reviewed Plus certified App - had the pleasure of presenting to 80+ frontline Shopify Reps to showcase our deep product & commercial partnership. What makes Shopify unique in this regard is: 1/ how well they shield their employees from low-value partners, as they are super picky on who gets access to the precious calendars at Shopify, meaning reps REALLY pay attention on these 📆 2/ they are constantly investing in teaching their frontline teams about the power of ecosystem potential (after all, as Harley says, Shopify wouldn't be where it is without its partners!), meaning it's a part of their DNA/culture 3/ they are exceptional at hiring top talent, so the people we actually get to work directly with at Shopify are technically & commercially skilled to partake in legitimate partnering activities that actually move the needle. We are proud to partner with the Global Leader in Commerce and look forward to enhancing the experience for our 10,000+ merchant base. #Ecommerce #Retail #Partnerships

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I get asked a lot about survey design and coming up with good questions to create customer evidence content for different goals (e.g. competitive enablement, upsell/x-sell, ROI proof points, lifecycle, product launches). So the team at UserEvidence decided to package up our 7 favorite customer survey templates (some we developed, some we got from our customers) One day I hope to not have to think about surveys after 14 years of surveys at TechValidate, SurveyMonkey, and now UserEvidence, haha. But for now - hopefully our experience and this resources is helpful to all the marketers out there! Link to download in comments.

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Fun fact: I was the first customer of Compound Growth Marketing. When I was working at Drift as VP of Marketing I wanted to work with John Short. We tried to get him to come to Drift but he was setting out to start his own agency. One weekend I ran into him + wife + kids at Friendly Toast in Back Bay and John mentioned starting CGM. I told him the next best thing to having him on the team at Drift I guess would be working 1:1 as a consultant. John was just starting CGM at the time but I knew that he was super smart and thought about B2B marketing and driving revenue in ways that I didn't. Today - 5 years later - no surprise John has built a wildly successful agency supporting B2B SaaS companies and today their team that manages over $50M in paid spend. But they don't just manage paid. They become a partner that helps you think about the full funnel. • They helped one company build $1.9M in pipeline in 4 months with ABM • Increased Trials by 60% while maintaining the same spend level • Grew a companies SEO traffic by 40% in just 6 months  • Scaled a companies pipeline by 400% YoY while increasing spend by only 189% If you need help scaling growth and you're in B2B SaaS, John and the team at CGM would be on my short list to reach out to. Every marketing leader needs a few strong agency partners, and John and the team can be that partner to you because he's been there before in your shoes. Speaking of paid spend. The team at CGM built this helpful calculator to help you compare your budget to what the average SaaS company would spend based on your revenue growth goals. You can: • Enter your growth targets for 2025 • Enter in your average deal size • Build out funnel economics by customer segment, funnel, and channel • Understand unit economics to see how much you can spend on upper funnel metrics like MQL/A's Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/e3ij3N4E *** Disclosure: Compound Growth Marketing is currently an Exit Five sponsor, and this is a sponsored post.

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I caught up with a few excellent startup operators (also great friends) who are looking for work. They encountered one common problem in their previous roles: founder fit. Great founders are: → Strategic but also into the details → Deeply rooted in customer experience → Intense and somewhat maniacal And they know how to lead. It’s hard to find a founder with all of these traits. To my network, if you’re looking for world-class leaders at scaling sales and customer success teams, let me know.

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RevOps leaders, this is the playbook you’ve been waiting for. In a world flooded with content that often lacks substance, the RevOps Docs for Startups by LeanScale are a breath of fresh air. This guide isn’t just another rundown of the basics—it’s an in-depth, yet easily approachable, guide to the rapidly evolving RevOps landscape, crafted from real insights gathered across 50+ hyper-growth companies. Huge shoutout to my longtime buddy Joe Zaghloul and the team at LeanScale for putting in the thought and care to make something truly impactful. The format alone—structured like API docs, complete with a changelog—makes it incredibly usable and memorable. #RevOps leaders and #GTM teams will find it packed with playbooks that feel almost built-in to the process. If you’re scaling a B2B SaaS, you’ll want to bookmark this one. It’s hands-on, actionable, and unlike anything else out there. https://lnkd.in/ekrUJAW5

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Top H1 takeaway from QBR's about our Rev Org: "We're an ecosystem, not a hierarchy." (h/t Alexandra B.) We collaborate, everyone's voice matters, and we strive to put people in roles they love so they can be madly successful. Hearing this statement was validation that what we are building in the Revenue Org at LibraryPass is unique, and scalable, and contagious. And we have roles coming soon! So if you're interested in being part of an ecosystem, let's chat. Here's to an even better H2!

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Incentives matter... and there's an "incentive paradox" at play when product-led meets sales-led. When you are doing a great job with product education, have transparent pricing, and make it easy for anyone to get started, you will have inherently less meetings as a percentage of traffic. If you are measured on short term performance on meeting volume, it can be tempting to start to add friction back into the process. This is often a mistake. Product-led companies with a sales-led component will often do far better in the long run; as an easy to use, helpful, easy to learn product often attracts more champions, awareness, and funnily enough... demo meetings. You have to work transparently with other teams and to align on the goals and have the tough conversations with the stakeholders ahad of time so you don't find yourself scambling and making rash decisions. #productmarketing

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Twine now integrates with Chorus to automatically extract intel from sales and CS calls. If you're a Chorus customer, reach out so you can immediately understand the biggest issues impacting new business, expansions, and renewals. Turn those calls into company wide action with no additional effort required from your sales and CS teams 🚀 We now support integrations with more than 20 products and are always adding more, so let us know if we're missing something that your team needs! 🙌

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I recently shared that one of my favorite parts about working at Amplitude is the fact that despite being a public company, it still feels like a startup. And I think one of the key reasons for that is the high sense of ownership that everyone here has. Ownership is one of our core company values, and I love being able to see it in action every day. I share more below:

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Most GTM teams are flying blind when it comes to product data, and honestly, it’s not their fault… Let’s take customer success as an example. Success teams love metrics, but they almost universally lack access to usable data on ‘in-product’ customer performance. This means they can’t see when customers are struggling, which often leads to delayed actions—or worse, no action at all. They only realize there was a problem when the customer churns. The frustrating part is that success teams are well aware of this. I’ve spoken with hundreds of companies, and only two had optimized their GTM strategy to fully leverage product data. Yet, they all share the same desire: to have access to actionable data to help make their customers journeys better. But making that happen is really hard. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗜’𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸: 1. 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁-𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘂𝗽 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗱 GTM teams focus heavily on the top of the funnel, leaving post-signup activities to success teams and onboarding flows, typically managed by product teams. Even the best success teams can only do so much, making it difficult to identify which customers to prioritize. 2. 𝗟𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 Tracking customer performance, such as feature adoption for specific segments, is nearly impossible for GTM teams. They’re often expected to wait for data help, or learn SQL and rely on data analytics tools like Amplitude or Mixpanel, with no simple tools designed for them. 3. 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀 Team KPIs (e.g., number of outreaches) don’t always reflect customer success. The true measure should be customer performance data (e.g., onboarding, engagement, retention, expansion), which informs how much outreach is actually needed. 4. 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗹𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗱 With teams focused on onboarding, growth, and expansion, time is already stretched thin. Adding more tasks, like learning SQL or adapting analytics tools for their use case, becomes overwhelming. 𝗪𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗣𝗮𝘃𝗹𝗼𝘃 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀. 𝗪𝗲’𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝘅𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗯𝗿𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗚𝗧𝗠 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀. • We provide visibility into customer actions without needing help from data or engineering teams. Setup is quick, and customers go live in minutes. • Data without the ability to act on it is useless—we give you the tools to take action. • Your team will always know what’s happening with customers. Whether it’s a usage drop or onboarding issue, we automate the outcomes you want and alert your team when personal intervention is needed, so you can help customers quickly. • Everything is ROI-focused, ensuring you see how Pavlov drives results. Sound like something you need? Let’s chat! 💬

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Sharing RevOps co-op community best practices on something we all know is critical - designing territories to ensure the success of your sales force and, by extension, your company. The number of different strategies available make selecting the right one both challenging and critical. The team at RevOps Co-op delve deep into this topic 👇 https://gag.gl/Nm2xoO #RevOps #Data #DataQuality

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