Don McGray

Like George Constanza said, "I will do the opposite" [re: Outbound] Yep, jumping into the debate about "Outbound is dead", too. (h/t Jessica Smith for prompting it ;) I don't think it's dead. Like many, agree that it's changing. AI-driven solutions and expedited workflows *should* be taking the laborious and non-pipeline and revenue-generating activities out of the Outbound process. This doesn't happen overnight. Personalization at scale can be effective, but for industries that can *smell* it, it's equally high-risk in burning your TAM as spray-n-pray. Seems new and flashy, but to what end. I've empowered my #BDR team to "do the opposite" a la George Costanza in Seinfeld. No, we aren't leading with emails or call-tracks that say, "My name is George, I'm unemployed and I live with my parents" (though that's a fun pattern-interrupt). The opposite, to an extent, represents going back to basics with: * Quality over quantity: thoughtful outreach and engagement and pointed (but maybe not perfect) timing and relevance. * Smaller territories, target accounts and plays and programs - leveraging Gradient Works for this; highly recommend (h/t Hayes Davis, Lily Youn Jaroszewski) *Sharpening our craft by embracing cold calling b/c it's likely a better way to stick out in the 10,000% increase in prospecting noise; we're all-in on Armand Farrokh + Nick Cegelski of 30 Minutes to President's Club "Cold Calling Sucks" book + methodology *Tighter collaboration with AE's - forming POV's on target accounts and accountability around 90-day pipeline goals to ensure we're helping all reps meet their goals, too. Team effort. *Share & scale stuff that converts - I created a matrix to zero in on the tactics + plays based on Impact on Conversion & Level of Effort. the "High LOE + High Conversion" is working so far. Stay tuned ;) So, no, outbound is not dead. It's harder, and my POV is it might mean reverting back to core tenets of prospecting to break through differently.

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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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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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Corny LinkedIn post alert: 🚨 In the spirit of thankfulness, I’m pausing this week to reflect on how tough parts of this year were—and where I ended up. Let’s be real: the unknown is terrifying. But somehow, the opportunities that came pouring out of my network on this platform blew me away. Truly, LinkedIn—you understood the assignment. 👏 I’ve got to give a major shoutout to the people I’ve connected with here—not the spammy, “Hi, Caitlin, can I have 15 minutes of your time?” types, but the real connections. The ones who cheer each other on, swap advice, and genuinely celebrate each other's wins. And the best part? Meeting so many of you IRL at events felt less like a first introduction and more like reuniting with an old friend. It’s proof that this whole “relationship-building” thing actually works—if you do it right. Show up authentically, invest in people (not just profiles), and focus on building real value, not quick-hit transactions. As we slide into the holiday season, I’m carrying a huge bucket of gratitude for this community. If we’ve talked, collaborated, or even exchanged a funny GIF in DMs this year—thank you. You’ve been a bright spot. Here’s to more connections, more opportunities, and maybe a little less chaos in the year ahead. 🦃

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I love this demo from Amy Bauer. I've also been digging into some research from Slack about the challenges of getting employees to adopt agents. And some of those challenges are cultural. People don't feel like they have permission. Not security permission, but cultural permission. It's a minor beat in this demo, but notice Amy sharing an agent response with the team. That's behavior modeling and it helps demonstrate to others how to use agents and that using agents is okay.

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It’s 5:45am and I’m buying coffee in an airport. At a self-service kiosk. The UI for menu selection is easy enough. Latte, extra shot of espresso, no option for skim milk but whatever…the doc said my cholesterol isn’t bad enough (yet) to warrant meds, so let’s live a little. Enter my name to identify my order. Then I *have* to enter my phone number so I can be alerted when my order is ready. Wait. What? This is the kind of data harvesting that is wholly unnecessary. How far away do they think I’m going that a text is necessary? But I’ve already waited 10 minutes in line and I’m not going to another vendor to wait another 10 minutes, so I comply. Then…How would you like your receipt? Well, I’ve already given my phone number, so how about a text? I’m prompted to enter my phone number. Again. To add insult to injury, my name is shouted out for my order and then, 2 minutes after I have my coffee in hand, I receive a text informing me my order is ready. I get it…GenAI, personalization, immersive experiences, etc. are sucking all of the air out of the room in any conversation about digital/customer experience. But if you lose sight of the fundamentals, you could very easily inject friction into something as easy as ordering coffee.

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Feeling inspired and recommitted after last week's GTM Partners Seattle roadshow. Much like reading your favorite book or watching your favorite movie, every time you play it back, you catch something new in the content. Some of my favorites nuggets I'll take with me into this week: "When you are unfocused, you pay an optionality tax" - Bryan Brown when discussing how focus will set you free in your GTM strategy. Whether it's your external offer to the market or your internal priorities, determine where your business can grow the most and skate there with speed and clarity. "Train AI to speak like your superhuman seasoned sellers" - Angela Frackowiak dropping unreal levels of knowledge and insight into how she, Branislava Jelicic and their team at Armis are using Regie.ai to scale the operational complexity of their inbound and outbound motions. "If you ask department questions, you get department answers" - the silo'd problem-solving across the GTM teams has to stop. Elevate your cruising altitude by using frameworks that don't pit functions against each other, but rather seek to draw out cross-functional solutions (I took a great framework pic at the event for anyone who wants it). H/T Outreach for letting us drink in your beautiful office view all morning

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Today we’re sharing a snapshot of a chat we here at Retention.com had with Brendan Roeschel, VP Retention + CX at Fresh Clean Threads. Brendan’s golden metric is lifetime contribution margin (LTCM) - which means, for you non-e comm folk, the amount made from each customer over the entirety of the relationship. Brendan’s success metric is how quickly the acquisition costs of these customers are paid back once they begin to purchase. When analyzing ways to scale Fresh Clean Threads, Brendan considers increasing repeat purchase rate, growing average order value, and effectively retargeting consumers who have abandoned their carts. Brendan looked to us here at Retention.com to solve the abandoned cart piece 🔥. How quickly are you paying your acquisition costs with your lifetime contribution margin? Are you tracking your LTCM?

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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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Learn from my mistakes advent calendar... Day 3 / 12: Expecting sales to jump on inbound leads without first building trust. XDRs have the hardest job at your company and your AEs who close are a special kind of person. Despite joking about wanting the comp and flexibility, I couldn't do that job, it comes with huge OTE potential because it's so risky and subject to volatility. So I've had a couple conversations like this that went nowhere... Marketing: Hey guys, I see lots of open leads in queue. Can you follow up with them asap? They're from an event and they'll go cold otherwise. Sales: Yeah we saw a few good ones in there, we'll get to them today, promise! What my sales companions were really saying is: - We have an outbound activity quota to hit and I'll get destroyed if I don't - We're not sure these leads will help us hit our overall number - I see some crap leads in there and now I think they're all crap Lessons learned: 1️⃣ Your sales reps need to be informed to be hyped about the leads coming to them. Take the time to lay the hype groundwork. Tell them about the event you're going to and send the speaker list ahead of time. If you can help them find a couple attendees to set in advance, the quality barometer will be hit by the time they get the full list. Same for any other campaign - show them the new ad creative, tell them who you are targeting (show those juicy ICP titles and companies). Sell your salespeople, get their buy in. Show them YOU believe in the leads, explain why and show them how it lines up to help them hit their goals. 2️⃣ Make sure your reps (XDR + AE) agree on what a qualified lead looks like If you are serving hot leads, make sure the hot is quantifiable. MQLs are nice for marketers to talk about, but if your reps are spending time and credits enriching and calling leads that don't remember your brand or the eBook they downloaded, that's going to erode any trust you have built immediately. If your reps will only be pumped about your core buyer (ex: VP of Engineering) and will ignore everything else, start there and nurture your other leads first. Then expand into the next ring of your ICP (ex: Director of DevOps) once you have delivered. Then you can ask for their time and effort, it's a partnership. 3️⃣ Clean the list before they get it, one bad apple can sour the bunch We heard about a garbage lead that slipped through the cracks from a BBQ restaurant for literally 1.5 years. I'M SORRY THAT HAPPENED, OBVIOUSLY IT WASN'T A REAL LEAD. But this is where hyping the leads and aligning on the quality bar meets reality. Clean the list, AI can help, don't send them leads you know are meh. Just get rid of them, do a pass manually too. It might take an hour but it's worth the hour to make sure they all get followed up on after spending 40 organizing the stupid event in the first place. I love you sales friends, sorry for any crappy leads I sent you in the past. More to come!

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One of my favorites, Jordan Birnbaum, unpacking noncontextualized guidance and the pitfalls of "generally accepted wisdom." "The only way in which noncontextual business advice can offer value is if you think like an artist. It may be wise to borrow or, even better, steal. But following noncontextual advice without evaluating your context is like wearing a blindfold on a mountain climb because you got the directions 'up.' Then, what to make of the 'importance of saying 'No'' articles? Be intentional with focus and clear with goals, which for 97 percent of us include career development. Careers are developed by saying 'Yes'; please do not actively avoid things that might broaden your horizons." https://lnkd.in/eJe7gMvk

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Pierson Krass and I hosted a subscription workshop yesterday with some strong and growing brands in Utah. A few takeaways: 1. This format was more intimate, allowed for more questions, and a deeper understanding of how to better acquire and retain subscribers. 2. No matter the subscription platform you're using, brands are trying to figure out how to get more of them and enable the right sales funnels and retention motions. 3. In awe of Pierson talking to brands under $1m and over $10m in the exact same way. Whenever he recommended a tool it was completely sincere. Disclosed if he's invested in the app (or not). Recommended an app that wasn't his because it would work better for the brand that needed it. I love that. We will definitely be doing more of these! Thanks to those who came out and to our wonderful Utah ecommerce ecosystem. (Yes that's my food on the seat I was taking the pic!)

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I recently read a support article by Gainsight and what stood out for me was the term through-partner customer success. This was more of a reference to a feature within their offering but I still loved the phrase and got me thinking about the concept a bit further.   To me the idea of through-partner customer success talks to the collaboration between whoever is working with the customer, the customer themself and the relevant partners whose offering is adding value to ensure customer success. The partner solution or service goes even further ensuring the promise of the product is being met as products alone won’t do it.   So thinking of the benefits when the org and their partners work closely together with the customer: This ensures continued customer success right through their time with the product including a strong relationship between all parties, a smooth renewal process, greater ability to hold onto your customer and an easier way to upsell plus cross sell. There is so much chat around #nearbound, partner-led GTM, ecosystems etc and all makes sense but needs to be filtered throughout the org and this needs to become an executed strategy. One thing as a matter of fact, your customers will love you for it!!

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🔴 You can't outrun churn by forcing CS teams to drive revenue through upsells, cross-sells, and referrals. Startups are missing are missing the forest for the trees. Chasing a 120% NRR? Good luck if you're bleeding customers left and right. If you were as obsessed with stopping the bleeding as you are with hitting sales quotas, you'd be far better off. 🤯 Here’s the brutal truth: even the best CS team can't save you if have a high churn rate. Reaching a 1-2% monthly churn rate takes discipline, effort, and consistency. Many startups struggle with this because they: ❌ Don't invest in better discovery. BANT and MEDDIC is not the answer. ❌ Think Customer = Company. Companies dont buy, people do. ❌ Confuse Initial Company Profile for Ideal Company profile. ❌ Deliver customer onboarding are like a 42km hurdle race. ❌ Rely too heavily on Buyer Personas and not JTBD. ❌ They lack the courage to stick 6 months to a plan. ❌ Build ICP from a acquisition pov, not retention. ❌ Fail at refining the Initial Company Profile. ❌ Don't delivery recurring outcome/values. ❌ Have short visioned sales incentives. ❌ Can't say no to bad-fit customers. 💡 Why should you focus on reducing churn? ✅ Lost referral opportunities. ✅  It shrinks your target market. ✅ Drives up your CAC as you fill up the sales funnel. ✅ A 5% increase in customer retention = 25% to 95% increase in profits. ✅ High churn rates can tank your startup’s valuation. ✅ Compounding revenue loss. The bottom line? 💡 You can’t outrun churn. Prove me wrong. PS: 👇 Do you think high churn rates are more a product issue or a sales issue? What strategies have you found effective in reducing churn? #customersuccess #saas #startups #careercoaching  #CS #CSM #SuccessHacks #customersuccessmanager #saas  

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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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We always hear that companies want to scale using independent talent, but don't know where to start 🤷‍♀️ From workforce strategy and program ownership, to recruiting and sourcing, confusing compliance laws, and the experience overall, it's historically been kind of a nightmare. Well, now you're in luck! Come listen to some dynamite speakers from Netflix, Braintrust, Human Cloud and R1 RCM, to get insights on using independent talent as a core part of your company's workforce strategy. A our CEO Morten Petersen recently said, "If you want access to the best talent, you simply have to be able to hire them on their terms, not just as full time employees".

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🤔 I don't buy customer data platforms in my line of work--so why am I getting BDRs emailing and calling me? It's super weird! But then today I realized something...I visit Amperity and Tealium fairly regularly. 🤟 I'm not there because I'm interested in CDPs, I'm there because they're doing interesting things with their WEBSITES. 🤖 I often visit companies to see how they're handling UI/UX, customer journeys, content experiences, and more--UiPath for example, who also do a great job. 👹 Reminder for Marketers: prospectecting tools that alert you to "intent" aren't always giving you the whole story. 💜 Sorry for being a fan, not a prospect!

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The best proof is always customer proof. Qualified works.

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"It's much easier to double opportunities than it is to double conversion rates." Sam Blond made this statement almost a year ago, but it's only aged better and better as 2024 keeps moving along. I'm taking demos and talking with customers on a consistent basis. Their experiences mirror Sam's 100%. The real impact sales managers can have on their team is to increase their revenue generating activities that lead to opportunities. Sales math is sales math. It's going to require additional roles, positioning, marketing, training, coaching, etc etc to impact close rates like you want. But a simple framework in productivity can help you increase opportunities exponentially. I'm really excited for trends ins sales around outreach and even new tech leading to an incredible sales experience, but the top controllable that's keeping sales teams from unlocking exceptional growth is activities and a playbook to execute. If you do that - you could be on the path to doubling your opportunities. Keep selling 🤙

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