Amberā Pualani Cruz

When done right, partnerships can be the most efficient GTM motion. One key is getting buy-in from your CRO and other C-suite leaders. Here's some advice on how to make that happen!

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If you're an AE with a large territory, here’s how to maximize your impact and income: Try this: 1. Have an open conversation with your manager 2. Think like a CEO vs an Individual Contributor 3. Obsess about learning from your MOST innovative customer 4. Develop a distinct POV that’s centered around executive legacy 5. Design your calendar in a purposeful way Swipe through the carousel for more details → Click repost ♻ if this was helpful. 🐝

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When I graduated from Enterprise to Strategic Accounts, I had to improve my ability to create a compelling narrative for F500 executives…and fast! Here's how I did it: BACKGROUND: In December 2017, I left an Enterprise AE role at a late-stage startup where I was a top producer. I took a leap of faith and joined a Strategic Account team at a public conversational AI company focused on acquiring new Fortune 500 logos. I knew little about their industry or solution. I joined the new team in January 2018. OUTCOME: Generated $27.3M in ARR in 42 months (breaks down to winning ~$650K ARR/mth) and achieved 278% to my target. PROCESS: Here's the 9-step system I designed to make it happen… → STEP 1: Brought to life the company’s distinct POV Instead of pitching a product or solution, I needed to position a whole new category. → STEP 2: Defined all of the things only our company could do Got good at talking about the top 3 - 5 killer things that made the biggest impact with our clients. → STEP 3: Created compelling headlines Flipped those key outcomes into thought-provoking headlines. These guided my: - Outreach - Presentations - Narrative proposals → STEP 4: Explained the outcomes using simple language Used the “grandmother test” and explained my outcomes simply without jargon. → STEP 5: Defined the business impact that matches the executive I was targeting Connected the dots between how our outcomes helped that specific executive level up their career. I wanted it to feel like I was inviting them into a special “VIP club” where they could learn from others (for which I only had the password). → STEP 6: Got clear on who’s using the solution today and why my prospect should care Peer validation is essential, but I needed to go above and beyond what everyone else does and understand who I recommended to that prospect and why. Remember: An off-putting client reference can do more harm than good. → STEP 7: Developed a list of impact questions These questions quickly got to the heart of understanding whether a transformation was worth pursuing. Analogy: If you're an expert at summiting Mt. Everest, you need to know if these climbers are motivated and capable of getting to the top with your help. → STEP 8: Developed impact statements Like impact questions, I inserted these statements in my conversations, which naturally led the prospect to ask, “Interesting, tell me more.” → STEP 9 (BONUS): Organized all of this into a spreadsheet Created a tab to organize all of this information for each account If I was doing this today, I’d get help from ChatGPT or SDRs to fill in the blanks. GIFT: I want you to try this out for free. I’ve already done the hard work for you, including real-life examples I used for each step above so you can see and hear what it looked and sounded like IRL. Read the detailed breakdown & snag the free “The Simple Strategic Selling System” framework here: https://buff.ly/3qI8G0B 🐝

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When CEOs crush hard on their new product, they can easily lose objectivity. Hearing excitement from a few early adopters doesn't necessarily mean you have a hit for mainstream customers. You need to detach and view your product as the market does, warts and all. Listening (really listening) to direct feedback from target prospects and your front-line employees is crucial for getting it right. See link to my full article in comments below.

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I love this post—it's hilarious to see a RevOps person reporting to a sales leader and admitting to skewing data to make their boss look good. I agree that having separate ops people for each group creates dysfunction since everyone interprets data differently. But there's a time and place for everything. It's like saying every SDR team should report to sales—that's too broad. For instance, an inbound SDR team might be better suited under marketing. My take is that larger companies should have a centralized operations team reporting to a third-party group. It doesn't have to be finance; it could be operations or strategy. In small companies, I'm more open to having functional operational support. It's beneficial for a marketing ops person handling processes, reporting, website, ABM, etc., to report directly to marketing leadership. This way, they can establish processes without getting sidetracked by irrelevant projects from a centralized team that has no clue about marketing. You gotta treat this on a case-by-case basis and consider the people involved. If you have a great data-driven finance leader, it might make sense to put operations under them, for example. Every situation is unique, but the general rule of thumb is: small companies should have ops people under their functional leaders wearing multiple hats, while bigger companies should have the operations function report to an independent third party.

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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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Free resource for those wondering "do I really need to rearchitect my GTM?" Hopefully it helps some folks reorient around the LinkedIn GTM hype. I have had so many conversations about the pressure revops/GTM/founder leaders feel to completely reimagine their GTM process in light of a recent wave of tools such as... - Signal-based selling - Intent and scoring - Clay - AI for GTM And in our recent outreach for our SDR Relief Fund, so many replies indicate how often SDR/BDR teams get laid off. Let's take a first principles approach to this instead, and talk about the problem. And if you can go through this, get to the end, and say you've taken these steps, I think you'll either find: A) Product does not have PMF. It's back to the drawing board *like the drawing board of the founders back when it was just an idea in their heads* B) Experimentation reveals TAM is smaller than imagined but there is profitability to be had within a couple niche sectors - that's great, as long as you didn't raise too much you can plan to reach profitability with those sectors while building for other sectors or launching something new... or (crazy idea) enjoying your life C) There is a real need for automating manual work. Great, there are tons of excellent tools for this now. Get help from 🤖 Jacob Tuwiner and Joe Rhew and Brigitta ☀️ Ruha. Ocean.io, Keyplay are worth testing here. D) There is a need to better manage, enable, and use AI/Clay/etc to supercharge SDR/BDR teams so that they can all succeed, not just have a small subset succeed. Sit down with Scott Martinis, Jordan Crawford, Alex Boyd and feel way better about the work in front of you. Another title for this could be "don't get drawn too deeply into the hype; figure out what you need and evaluate from there." I know this doesn't answer the questions out there like "what is Clay?" but it's really a tool for solving some (not all) of the problems mentioned here. So you'll get there.

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For anyone who needs to hear it… mainly sales, revops, finance, customer success and marketing leaders… 👏 Work on your pipeline 👏 and bookings modeling/forecast 👏 together. 👏 A pipeline model is a shared goal. It should be tied to headcount capacity, win rates, conversion through the funnel, and budget considerations/constraints. It’s not all on finance or sales or marketing. Argue about it. Agree to disagree. Push to be as accurate as possible, but take some bets. Do it together. 🙏 Oh and don't forget... works towards a model that includes Stage 2 or Stage 3 ($ & #) as part of the model. And doubly don't forget... to build expansion into your model as it becomes more repeatable and you introduce more products. Cheers!

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The path to $10MM ARR is about finding your repeatable, scalable sales motion. The formula is simple, but not easy. It looks like this: Effort + Enthusiasm + Messaging + Lead Quality = Results When you are scaling a sales team, your job is to manage the inputs. Those are the things on the left side of this equation. If you can reduce the variability of the inputs, you will have more consistent results. Put another way. Consistent inputs leads to consistent outputs. Let's break it down... 1. Effort is the driver for your sales performance. You cannot scale without consistent effort. Effort includes the velocity of sales activity (phone calls, emails, meetings, etc.). Effort also includes the way that you execute your sales activity. This is your sales process and sales playbook. You can improve the quality of your effort with learning and development. 2. Enthusiasm is an amplifier for your effort. You have to act like you want to earn the business. A little enthusiasm goes a long way in closing more business. I've found that you can't teach enthusiasm. You must hire for it. 3. Messaging is how you get prospects to believe what you believe. Your messaging is your value prop. It's how you approach your ICP. It's the way that you convince customers that their current version of the world is no longer acceptable and they must make a chance. The best messaging illustrates the consequences of inaction. 4. Lead quality drives your conversion rate You have to stay focused on your ICP. The more variable your lead quality, the more inconsistent your sales results. The best effort, enthusiasm, and messaging are helpless if you are focused on the wrong accounts. This is the formula for predictable, repeatable, scalable sales. Manage the consistency of your inputs and you will have consistent outputs. What about you? What's your formula for repeatable results?

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Want to know the most critical meeting in your customer journey? It's the kickoff call. So many SaaS founders underestimate the power of a strong kickoff call. It's not just another meeting - it's the foundation of your entire customer relationship. Get it wrong, and you're setting yourself up for churn before you even start. Nail it, and you'll unlock a flywheel of retention and referrals that can supercharge your growth. I've developed a 3-phase strategy that transforms kickoff calls from a potential liability into a powerful asset. Want the full playbook? I've broken it down step-by-step in my latest video, including the exact SOP we use at SaaS Academy. Check it out now ↓

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The most underrated role on Go-To-Market teams: Revenue Operations A great Rev Ops leader gives your revenue team leverage. I waited too long to hire for this role, instead choosing to do the job off the side of my desk. I was being lazy. I didn’t fully understand what “sales operations” or “revenue operations” meant. I hadn’t taken the time to sit down and write out the job description. But once I found the right person, it was like the world opened before my eyes. Our Rev Ops leader was my partner in running the revenue team. They were involved at the strategic level and at the tactical level. They knew where all the bodies were buried. So what does Rev Ops do? I’ll do my best to list some of the key responsibilities: - build the revenue model - weekly sales forecast - select, implement, and maintain the tech stack (CRM, sales engagement tools, etc) - design sales compensation plan - run the sales compensation report monthly - own the TAM data in the CRM (super important!!) - analyze sales team performance - manage lead distribution The list goes on. If you have 3 or more sales people on your team and you are planning to scale, hire a Rev ops leader ASAP. Who is your favorite Rev ops leader? Tag them!

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Change time! I’m psyched to soon be joining DataSnipper to help them further accelerate their Demand Generation efforts! After securing a $100M funding round only 2 months ago, DS is gearing up for the next part of their growth journey. This inevitably means I’m also leaving Gainsight. Gainsight has been a pretty wild ride. From building out inSided’s success in B2B SaaS and Customer Success and a potential Series B, to eventually being acquired by Gainsight and delving into the demand side of all of their products, buying other companies—I would say I have been pretty fortunate and my journey has been one of many highs and successes. For this I’m grateful. I’m also grateful for the astonishingly good & fun people I’ve met along the way. Robin van Lieshout for putting up with me through times of crazy growth, an acquisition and many future dinners to come. Nick Mehta and Monika Saha for giving me the chance to uplevel my skills, and hopefully also some of the organization. Jordan Sher, Lauren Olerich, Silvina El Baba, Matthew Wasley, Robin Merritt, Kellie Capote, Rea Stambuk, Silvia Atanasova, Trisha Mistry, and many others for making every day that bit more fun and a learning moment. I’ll continue to follow GS closely. This will also be the first time in 7 years that I don’t work directly with some of my (now) best friends like Udit Lakhotia, Pascal Debets, Bas Klomp, Joris Dieben, Becky May, Anne Willems and many more. This will be weird, but there’s eternal love here! ❤️ Finally, this will also be the first time in 7 years that I don’t work directly ‘in’ Customer Success. Now, I love this industry and won’t forget it. I’ll look for ways to keep contributing to the community as I have in the past (more on that later) as I’m bad at letting go and invested so much already ;-) I’ve met so many amazing people that are a part of this community, that it has become a pretty intricate part of my professional career and network. That’s something to nurture for sure and I know it. As for Datasnipper. Founded by this company has seen CRAZY growth, has incredible PMF, and a Marketing team that’s ready to take all that to the next level. Plus, being in Marketing means I’ve been close friends with Finance & financials for years :D It only makes sense! lol. I’ve been blown away by the results, culture, and mission—making it a no-brainer to sign up. Thank you Vidya Peters, Bas Willems, Sam Brown and many others in the leadership team for the opportunity. LFG, I can’t wait.

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Leaders: it can feel like everybody has their own priority and their own metrics... Do you relate? 😕 We asked Rashida Goryawala, a Lead RevOps Strategist at RevPartners, how to ensure your entire C-Suite is on the same page ahead of 2025 planning. Her answer? You **have** to start with alignment on shared values and principles. That way, if things get out of hand, you can go back and remind people where you started. At RevPartners, we stand out in the HubSpot ecosystem because of the RevOps principles that we bring to your team to help you scale and drive growth. 🚀

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📖 A short story on why we built peoplemetrics.fyi for startup people teams... When Adam and I started Open Org, we: 1️⃣ Ran cohorts working with People and Talent Leaders who wanted to use transparency as a lever for positive change 2️⃣ Spoke to 20+ People Leaders every week about the challenges they were facing in role ...One thing kept coming up time and time again as a top-tier problem: Influencing Execs Specifically... 👉 “how to get buy-in from the rest of the leadership team to change how we work” So we started doing some ad hoc 1:1 coaching sessions to help 🆘. We’d work on things like: 📈 Business case 📚 Story-telling 🏗️ Foundations they’d need to help bring others on the journey. ✅ Some exec teams would respond to the stories built upon internal data: Example: “Our {metric} is too high, and our exit interviews and engagement survey themes show opportunities 'abc', therefore we should pull lever 'y' and in doing so expect business outcome 'z' over time period 'x'” 😩 But the majority wanted more before they redistributed budget. They’d say things like: “OK, but your business case is based off the premise that our {metric} results are poor. I want to know how poor. I don’t know what good looks like here. Also we’re in {insert industry} and we have this {headcount} and we’re also {startup stage}. Show me market context so I can understand how far behind we are.” At first, this was kind of weird to me. 🤔 Comparison is the thief of all joy etc.... But I get it, there’s a lot of pressure when you’re making big decisions and so even a little bit of extra signal, like market context, is helpful to support a change. Anyway, we looked for this external data to try and help... 🔍 All we found were... - Outdated benchmark reports - Big company/enterprise size reports - Deloitte/McKinsey style stuff - Specific vertical benchmarks (some amazing tools out there for comp and bens) BUT... Not a lot out there for startups and scale-ups that was: - Relevant - Contextual - Recent - Broad (e.g., full spectrum of org health metrics ref: people and talent) So we decided to build a prototype, Adam on QA, me on Dev. 350 People & Talent Leaders joined the private beta and we’ve been improving the product & building the user base ever since 🚀 Here's what Startup People Leaders can NOW do that they couldn't do in 2023... 🚀 Track & Benchmark 18+ metrics vs other companies, comparable by size, headcount, funding stage (Seed > Series D) 🚀 See trends in that data across different quarters 🚀 Tell more powerful stories with your data 🚀 Build your team's data muscles Just the beginning. Excited to see where this continues to go! Startup People Leaders, hit me up if you’d like a peek at the platform 🙂

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"Are You Just Chasing Partner Referrals? Stop." The quarter’s almost over. Revenue targets are looming. Partners have customers. But here’s the thing: You’re asking the wrong question. If you’re treating partners as nothing more than a lead-gen source, your partnerships are going to fail. Here’s why. Partnerships are a long-term, scalable strategy for exponential growth—when done right. They drive long-term revenue and customer loyalty by delivering complementary solutions that solve real, strategic problems. It’s not just about getting referrals—it’s about creating value that benefits everyone. When partnerships are done right, they align with your larger growth goals and foster collaboration across teams. To succeed, you need: - Executive buy-in, all the way down to product, sales, marketing, and customer-facing teams. - Strong, multi-threaded relationships across your partner’s organization. - The right resources, processes, and internal alignment to operationalize them. From experience, companies that treat partners as transactional lead sources often see diminishing returns over time. But those that invest in true, strategic partnerships consistently build stronger revenue streams and customer trust. So, instead of asking, “Where are the referrals?” maybe ask this: “How can we operationalize partnerships to better align with our growth strategy and deliver more value to customers?” #SaaS #Partnerships #RevenueGrowth #CustomerSuccess #ExecutiveLeadership

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When I first joined Frontify and the partnership team, I quickly got used to using Gong for all my external calls. The funny thing is, more often than not, the people I'd speak to would also get very excited about it and ask if they could get it too (mind you, this was BEFORE the big AI hype). So naturally, when Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈 invited marketers to talk to him and learn more about how to leverage Gong for marketing, I was excited to hear more. While talking to Udi, I was reminded again about what a great tool Gong is (yes, I work for a SaaS company, and I love software, so what) and how easy it is to leverage for direct feedback at scale from your customers and prospects. Thanks so much for the insightful session, Udi!

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Optimize your process for what’s best for your buyer. Not what’s best for you. See how that changes your tactics, strategies, priorities, and tooling. Example: How many of your buyers are asking for your sales process to be MORE robotic? Less personal? Less strategic? None. So why would you build an outbound system that has robots own all the outreach? You wouldn’t. You’d design a system that’s more thoughtful, strategic, creative, and human. AI-powered, of course. But not fully AI-outsourced. #gtmai #sales #sdr

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For those of you starting in a marketing leadership role or have been in it for a hot second, here are my five tips on not getting fired as a marketing leader. 1. Support a top and bottom number: Start with bookings and pipeline. Work with finance, revops, and sales to build a model and forecast for 12 months out. Not enough data? Give an educated guess and adjust over time. Not enough data is NOT a good excuse. 2. Understand the Efficiency of the GTM Channels: This is a harder one because there are many different ways to measure a channel's efficiency. Be sure to align with finance to get the right number for your board meetings. Build the model across the entire GTM team, not just marketing. 3. Lead Alignment Efforts: positive alignment between sales, CS, and marketing as foundational in high-growth SaaS. If you are joining a company, start with sales and the CEO. Move on from there. 4. Over-Prepare for Board Meetings: Add additional time to red-team your slides with your peers and the CEO (the boss). Be sure to reintroduce challenges from last quarter and how you solved them. Must have slides = Quarterly Wins & Challenges, Pipeline/Bookings/Funnel Conversion, Special Topic, Quarterly Look Ahead 5. Be a little irrational: Best version is a quote from Rory Sutherland. “It is much easier to be fired for being illogical than it is for being unimaginative. The fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors.” Go forth and prosper.

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Looking to expand your territory and crush your quota? 👊 In this episode of In Your Corner, our CEO and Founder, Henry Schuck, shows how enterprise account executives can identify new accounts to target in just a few clicks. Using ZoomInfo's Advanced Search, sellers can easily find accounts within their territory that aren't existing customers and connect with contacts who are most likely to engage. Watch below to see how it works. ⬇️

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