Evan Hamilton

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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💬 The struggle of leading an #EmployeeAdvocacy program is real 💬 As an advocacy leader, you're not just a content creator, you're the driving force that inspires your colleagues to share your content and engage with your company’s voice. Every day, you face pushback. "I'm not a marketer" "I don't know how to make this sound like me" "It's not my job" We all know the incredible power of a network and how positioning your advocates as thought leaders on LinkedIn is a complete game-changer. For them. For you. For the brand. ✨ But here’s the thing—building your presence across social media isn’t easy. And neither is encouraging an entire workforce to share content. It CAN feel overwhelming to find the right words, stay authentic, and keep your audience engaged, especially if you're not a natural marketer. Well, worry no more 😉 👉 I am excited to announce that Oktopost is introducing something new: Advanced AI for Advocates! 🚀 It's an AI-powered tool to help your advocates quickly customize, create, and share content in their own unique voice. No more stress, no more guesswork—just authentic content creation in seconds. The power to shine as a thought leader starts now! Go ahead, and share the how-to with your team: https://okt.to/SnHur5 #EmployeeAdvocacy #SocialSelling #ThoughtLeadership #B2BMarketing

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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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Matthew Volm is a repeat startup founder—his latest being RevOps Co-op, a community for RevOps pros with over 13,000 members. (They also have a ton of great educational resources, well worth checking out.) RevOps Co-op actually started as a community in support of Matt’s software company, but when he saw the need for more education and resources for the RevOps field, he pivoted and hasn't looked back. During our chat we discuss: 🤓 the crucial interplay between finance and RevOps 📈  how RevOps pros can build their finance acumen 💥 living through the tech bubble 🥊 the hot debate on unified vs. split RevOps functions 🤗 the community-led business model 🔮 what the future holds for RevOps Some key takeaways: 1. Successful RevOps has to be more than sales operations. It needs to encompass the entire revenue engine, including marketing and post-sales. This shift is driven by the increasing complexity of go-to-market strategies and the need for seamless handoffs between teams. Great RevOps teams should drive efficiency across the end-to-end customer journey, with particular emphasis on post-sale activities like customer success, renewals, and expansion revenue. 2. Financial literacy—e.g., understanding financial outcomes, metrics, and how RevOps activities translate to business results—is crucial. This knowledge allows RevOps professionals to make data-driven decisions, build stronger business cases, and communicate more effectively with leadership. If you don’t have an FP&A background (perhaps you’re an English major like me), you may want to improve your financial acumen through on-the-job learning, collaboration with finance teams, and supplementary courses or training. 3. Failure is part of the founder’s journey. 90% of what you’ll do when creating a startup is not going to work. You need to have the stubbornness and tenacity to face this failure, get whacked in the face, and keep pushing forward. Failure is OK. 4.  RevOps is increasingly involved in high-level business strategy, particularly in go-to-market planning. This trend reflects RevOps' unique position in overseeing the entire revenue process and its ability to identify inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement. By focusing on critical handoff points and conversion rates throughout the customer journey, RevOps can drive significant business impact.

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A successful post-launch strategy isn’t just owned by Product Marketing — it’s a symphony of collaboration. How do we create a smooth, scalable process? It starts with clear ownership and seamless coordination across teams. 𝟭.  𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽: Make sure there’s a clear process for gathering and acting on insights across teams. 𝟮.  𝗖𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀-𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Sales, Customer Success, Engineering — post-launch success depends on ensuring all teams are pulling in the same direction. 𝟯.  𝗘𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 & 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: Equip customers with the tools they need to succeed and partner with Customer Success to identify growth opportunities that keep the momentum going. Institutionalizing these processes creates lasting value, builds partnerships, and drives continued success long after the launch.

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Territory design is crucial to setting up your sales team (and business!) for success. But with so many strategies to choose from, how do you decide on your approach? The folks over at RevOps Co-op get into the nitty gritty 👇 https://gag.gl/Nm2xoO #RevOps #Data #DataQuality

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I’m so excited to be leading a session as part of the CMAweekly Masterminds 2024 series all about my two favorite topics — onboarding and adoption! Join me next Thursday, August 1 to talk about all things in these critical parts of the customer lifecycle! I’ll share my experiences (good, bad, and ugly), the guiding principles around onboarding and adoption that I live by, and hopefully leave you with some ideas of ways you can get your customers excited to get started and grow with you. https://lu.ma/1bsb96a2

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Here's an often-overlooked acceleration hack for content leaders: Spend the time to give good feedback, with clarity. Feedback can either expedite the next rev by empowering your team to take action or send them on a wild goose chase trying desperately to interpret your guidance, slowing down the process and creating chaos and confusion. An extra 5 mins spent can save hours or days of swirling. (Trust me, I've been there, staring at a poorly worded or nebulous response to a piece of content that leaves me scraping the barrel for clarity and next steps.) Not all feedback is created equal. Here's how I think about giving feedback to accelerate work across the team: Level 1: In-Line Edits with Track Changes ✅ Pros: Quick 🔴 Cons: Very little amount of knowledge transfer 👉 When I use: Minor edits, just get it done Level 2: Comments ✅ Pros: Quick + ability to add more context to edits for some knowledge transfer to make future project faster 🔴 Cons: Comments can be misunderstood without precise and specific writing 👉 When I use: Minor knowledge transfer or additional context needed Level 3: Loom Video (my personal favorite method) ✅ Pros: Relatively quick (< 5-10 mins), much better ability to explain complex concepts and provide clarity/context 🔴 Cons: Takes a little more time and effort 👉 When I use: Need to explain detailed instructions or complex feedback Level 4: In-person or Zoom meeting ✅ Pros: Highest fidelity of explanation and ability to provide clarity in real-time 🔴 Cons: Takes the most time and requires scheduling a meeting 👉 When I use: If the possibility of misunderstanding is high or I need more context before giving feedback The best feedback empowers your team to move forward with confidence. The worst feedback creates chaos and confusion. Choose wisely.

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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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As I’m diving deeper into RevOps, any recommendations for a solid RevOps 101 course? Whether it’s a quick crash course or something more in-depth, I’m all ears! Drop your favorites in the comments 👇 #RevOps #Learning #Operations

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Curious what folks currently think about product marketing having its own tech stack in the future. In my experience we've always used what our marketing/sales counterparts have, never anything specialized for the work we do. Competitive platforms like Klue are one example of what could be included. I know Ignition is working on a GTM platform. Do we think this has legs to become an actual stack? Will we get more defined budget for these things, or does our interconnectedness within the company make it too difficult? I'm fully undecided on this. We pull from so many departments and areas it feels difficult unless we become the hub discipline for tech that others latch onto, and I'm not sure I see that happening anytime soon. #productmarketing

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Most feature launches land with a thud... ... even the truly valuable ones... and it's no mystery why. 👇 They are often left to wither without ever being mentioned again. This is due to a lack of commitment from the business as a whole in seeing it through. But YOU, as a PMM or PM can bake in a higher likelihood of success from the start by making a plan to properly surface the feature in your app to users for whom it is a great fit for. You can even use this strategy from Google Analytics for retention or feature winback campaigns. #product #productmarketing #productmanagement

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It's Monday, and I'm thinking about adding friction to customer and user experiences on purpose. #CX and #product folks spend most of their time thinking about ways to reduce friction and increase ease in customers' experiences. But, sometimes, friction is good. For example: - Adding friction to safeguard users against accidentally making critical changes that can't be undone by adding additional steps, confirmations, or time to execute the action. - Friction can be useful to mark an action or feature as particularly valuable or important; even adding friction to a Sales process can augment the value that a person feels toward a product or service. This is why making a service easy to buy and difficult to cancel so often backfires - it creates an unintended recency bias that utterly destroys a person's relationship with your brand. An easy Sales experience is great, but a thoughtful, specific Sales experience can make a customer feel like an extra perfect fit for a product or service. - Friction can be useful to introduce health safeguards or behavioral changes in products (think work-life balance features that notify people trying to message you while your notifications are snoozed that you won't be notified, or how your car won't pair a new bluetooth device while you're already driving). - Good friction can change perception. Some applications of perception-augmenting friction feel to me like downright manipulation, but others simply help contextualize an experience. A simple example is a time-limited cancellation policy for an appointment - it adds friction to the cancellation process, sure, but it also helps people to perceive that appointed time as valuable. I think a lot about the intersection between friction and value, and the ethics of removing friction to create seamless experiences vs. the ethics of adding intentional friction to influence behavior and perception. There's a big 'ol grey area between those two lines, but I think products and experiences are at their best when any intentionally created friction helps guide people to use an opinionated product in the way it's intended, or feel a greater sense of confidence that they've made a purchase about which they feel a sense of achievement and settled-ness. What do y'all think? #CX #UX #userexperience #experientialdesign #ui #productleadership

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Territory design is crucial to setting up your sales team (and business!) for success. But with so many strategies to choose from, how do you decide on your approach? The folks over at RevOps Co-op get into the nitty gritty 👇 https://gag.gl/Nm2xoO #RevOps #Data #DataQuality

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Day -5, Customers - 4, ARR - $0 If you aren’t a force multiplier as an IC, you won’t be as a manager In some cases I have seen people make bigger impacts on culture as an IC peer vs team lead. IC’s can - set the standard - educate their peers - sympathize and empathize - problem solve by truly understanding the problem Impacting a culture can seem daunting, if you are struggling to get started, show up with relentless positivity and you will figure it out from there

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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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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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