Maureen West

It's time for 2025 budget planning, and the alignment meeting Finance & Engineering is more important than ever. Yeah, yah. I know I'm a marketing leader, but I do think the Engineering/Finance relationship affects the entire organization when planning for the next year. This is especially true with GenAI transforming our workflows. It's crazy out there! You must back every R&D investment with solid data rather than just intuition. Lucky for us, we have Joanne Cheng as our CFO. In her latest post, she shares how Finance and Engineering can work together for more effective R&D budgeting. Read the full post to start planning with clarity and confidence: https://lnkd.in/g5dJxtx8

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📊 It’s not just about having data; it’s about having the *right* data. That’s what Hive found by adopting Gong Engage and Gong Conversation Intelligence. This powerful duo surfaced insights and next steps for John Furneaux and Hive’s sales team. They can now breeze through deals, navigate discovery calls with ease, and uncover more opportunities. The result? A 44% increase in meetings booked and 30% rise in sales opportunities. And that’s not even the full extent of Hive’s wins! Read about the rest here: https://lnkd.in/gh-7X7jG 

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"The industry’s growth, once fueled by a relentless drive for innovation and differentiation, now sputters as most companies have what they need (and if they don’t, they’re making do). Average marketing budgets have fallen to 7.7% of overall company revenue in 2024, down from 9.1% in 2023, according to Gartner’s latest annual CMO Spend Survey. CMOs are living in an era of less." This article by Gene De Libero, CCXP caught my attention because it captured data around feelings I've had as I chat with various folks across the industry who have seen cutbacks across the board. This leads to a focus on customer retention and expansion, or chasing "differentiators" that come up in the tech hype cycle (hello again AI, and don't forget Crypto). Of the strategies outlined in here, I personally favour the education and thought leadership approach, but overall there's a strong play here in the strategies for composability and the ability to "add on" to the stack you already have.

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If you want to drive impact and influence with your buyers, you want to surround them with the voices they already trust. That’s the simple explanation for the power of nearbound marketing. Including your partners in your GTM motion is a huge unlock for all parties involved. The power of ecosystem at work. At Vena Solutions, we’re focused on growth through this model and the future is bright. Orchestration for greater impact and scale through a combination of partner specialization and account based engagement, will leave you better prepared to withstand whatever comes in the future. Companies and GTM leaders leveraging these ecosystems at scale are driving: 1️⃣ More revenue 2️⃣ More customer delight 3️⃣ Happier sellers 4️⃣ More productive partners 5️⃣ Stronger bonds, both internally and in the market If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it basically is 😉 If you’re interested in getting into the details, the team at Reveal just released an awesome resource. It’s a blueprint that can help you overlay your account-based segmentation and partner marketing strategy across all GTM teams AND the entire customer journey. Talk about a game changer… You can get a copy (for free!) at the link in the comments. #Nearbound #NearboundMarketing #Partnerships Isaac Morehouse Jessica Fewless Shawnie Hamer

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💜 Gainsight + Champion 💜 We just released a killer new eBook together on how to drive growth through your hidden customer champions. With many of us in the midst of 2025 planning, this book dives into the incredible growth engine right in front of us: our customers. The ebook has practical insights on empowering champions and learnings from top brands using Gainsight and Champion. I just re-read it myself, and it's giving me all sorts of light bulb moments (yes my phone just happened to take a 100% organic photo right when I finished reading it. And yes that is my thinking pose.) Check it out 👇

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Let’s nerd out and talk about the metrics in your comp plan for #CustomerSuccess managers. I’ve been thinking about this as we work together with our new Chief Customer Officer Brent Krempges and new Chief Revenue Officer Marilee Bear at Gainsight on our 2025 strategy. If a CSM is paid with 80% base and 20% bonus, the question is - what are the measures to calculate the bonus? Here are a few options we’ve considered: 💰 CSMs Incentivized Purely On Renewals: This one is attractive, in that it ties CSMs clearly to financial performance. Indeed, the reason many companies have cut CSMs is a belief that they don’t tie to the bottom line. The downside is that in companies with multi-year contracts, a comp plan tied 100% to renewals could lead CSMs to focus 100% on the near-term and miss out on long-term risk. Of course, this can be counteracted with actively weekly management of the team. In addition, if a CSM inherits accounts (e.g., from a departing teammate) that are already going to churn, it can feel punitive to the individual. Some companies manage this issue through exceptions. 🤝 CSMs Incentivized Purely On a Shared Renewal Target: In this approach, CSMs share a collective target - perhaps across a segment or region. The upside here is to reduce the short-term focus and mitigate the issue of a CSM inheriting un-saveable clients. The downside is each CSM has a minimal impact on the overall number. 🚦 CSMs Incentivized Purely On Leading Indicators: Here, CSM bonuses are calculated based upon metrics like adoption, NetPromoter Score, ROI delivered and executive alignment. This approach focuses CSMs on the future. But skeptical CFOs might consider the CSMs in this model to be a cost center. 📈 CSMs Incentivized On Renewals AND Leading Indicators: This is a good blend. However, if the plan has too many “levers,” it can become dilutive. For example, if there are 5 metrics and the bonus is 20%, each metric only represents 4%. ❤️ CSMs Are On 100% Base: While this might sound crazy, some companies have chosen to believe CSMs are “intrinsically motivated,” versus driven purely by compensation. That being said, the goal for CSMs can be confusing for teammates. 💲 CSMs Are On the Company Bonus Plan: Here, the goal is to align CSMs with corporate goals. But this model can suffer from the same dilution as #2 above - but worse. There are many more considerations too: 🙋🏾‍♂️ Do CSMs get incentives for upsell and cross-sell - e.g., a SPIFF for leads? 🙋🏾‍♂️ Do CSMs get compensated for customer advocacy? 🙋🏾‍♂️ Do CSMs receive “accelerators” for overperformance? How do you measure the bonus calculation for your team?

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I've seen a few conversations lately about PMM charters. Charters are a powerful way to introduce, or relaunch, PMM to your org. A comprehensive charter to should outline: 1️⃣ why PMM exists at your org 2️⃣ your primary responsibilities 3️⃣ your processes and activities 4️⃣ how to leverage PMM If you're looking for another example of a product marketing charter to leverage, check out this one from Pranav Piyush on Reforge. I find the section on success criteria to be especially valuable. https://lnkd.in/gU5Q4tbK Note: you need to be a member to access this but Reforge has a free 14-day trial.

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Our partnership with Brex now gives us unparalleled insight and breadth in SaaS purchasing reports

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Financial transformation is a hot topic currently. 🔥 What I don’t often hear discussed is the importance of setting the right digital strategy to scale organizations. Aligning with business goals is key to success. Our partner, Plante Moran, can help. 💥 #financialtransformation #digitaltransformation #digitalstrategy #partners

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I help oversee marketing at a lot of companies and support a lot of CMOs. By far, it's the most misunderstood function in B2B software. This causes companies to underperform their potential, especially now that so much of the buyer's journey is self-driven by the prospective customer. The influence of sales has diminished. However, Marketing doesn't play the role that it could/should because: 1. CEOs don't fully understand marketing (but they think they do) 2. Finance doesn't know how to think about marketing investments or evaluate them 3. Sales has a mixed relationship - they need marketing desperately but don't fully understand it and go hot/cold 4. Post-sales teams (CS, ProServ, Support) could/should leverage marketing to help manage the customer journey, but there is limited contact 5. Few CMOs really understand the full domain in what is the most heterogenous function in a business (inbound, outbound demandgen, product marketing, corp marketing, customer journey, marketing operations, etc) 6. Not enough CMOs have full/strong business acumen and they know how to educate their exec peers + CEO/board on the function and influence them. Btw, because of the above, I love working with CMOs. So much upside for the marketing function to add more value in companies. I came up on the Sales and CS side, but in my PE gig, I spend more time on marketing than anything else. It's the biggest value creation lever. I've learned so much in the last 4.5 years. For this reason, I'm a big fan of what Shiv Narayanan is doing with How To SaaS. He's written a great book (Exit Ready Marketing) on the SaaS marketing function and now he's launching a C-Level Marketing training program. It's not just for marketers, it's more for those seeking to understand the function and leverage its full potential. Check it out.. https://lnkd.in/geBkVHgR I haven't taken the course, but I've read the book and reviewed the detailed syllabus. Really looks good. Encourage people to check it out. Shiv, btw, I can name a few new chapters/modules to add! Rebecca Carr, Sabra Jan Willner, Amy Love, 🦄Pablo Dominguez, Manish Goyal, Lauren Shleifer Goldstein, 🐶 Jacco van der Kooij, Kathleen Booth, Sam Jacobs, Vinay Bhagat, Bob Wright, Mike Linton, Cathy Benko, Alfonso Pulido, Chris Dent, Gail Moody-Byrd, Sara Varni, Sari Green, Alison Wagonfeld, Katrina Wong, Lisa (Ramirez) Ames, Nipul Chokshi, Jon Miller, Luanne Tierney, Deepak Bahree, Cynthia Gumbert, Micheline Nijmeh, Michael Londgren, Claire Darling, Sydney Sloan, Paul D'Arcy, Meagen E., Craig Rosenberg, John Common, Rajiv Parikh

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Ready for an agentive upgrade of your GTM? Check this out. #agentforce #salesai

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So many good data points out of this research from UserEvidence on how buyers buy. (And how marketers think they buy. Ditto sellers.) It’s no secret to any of us (or it shouldn’t be) that buyers want to learn the success stories of customers they can relate to. Same industry. Same use case. This graphic speaks volumes. When buyers tell us what they need in order to believe us, we should listen. #customers #buyersjourney #saas #saasbuyers #saasmarketing

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What problems does a post-sale customer journey solve? Jessica Armstrong Senior Lifecycle Customer Marketer at Gong explored this at a recent Product Marketing Alliance event. Before we get into the challenges that a properly orchestrated post-sale customer journey can solve. Let’s take a quick look at the difference between this kind of journey and the buyer journey. In B2B, a typical sale involves around six or seven people, so the buyer journey is a path taken by only a small handful of individuals. Who may not even be the intended users of the product they’ve just bought. Once the solution has been bought, a whole team or even an entire organization might be using it. The post-sale customer journey is all about helping that organizational ecosystem to align and start to get value from your product. This raises two major challenges: 1️⃣ After the point of sale, the circle of influence quickly decentralizes as new stakeholders and end-users enter the journey. 2️⃣ Even though you convinced the organization to invest, your work isn’t done yet – you still need to persuade the end-users that your product is worth their time. Jessica was coming up against both of these challenges at Gong. 👉 The solution? 💡 They created what Jessica calls a “split lifecycle model”. The goal of this model is to acknowledge the maturity of the account and the personas that move it forward. At the same time, we want to recognize the maturity of the end-user, while also promoting individual user adoption and value. Here's what this model looks like in practice: As you can see, we have two separate journeys → The account journey → The user journey Each with different goals.🏆 👉 The account journey focuses on managing the key stakeholders who make decisions on renewals and expansion. We nurture them, help them see value, and identify moments to engage with them about growing the relationship. The aim of this journey is to drive: → Retention → Renewal → Expansion → and (to a lesser extent) adoption. 👉 Meanwhile, the user journey concentrates on the people using our product day-to-day. It guides them toward: → Value realization → Builds product stickiness → and adoption. While this journey doesn’t directly impact revenue, it indirectly influences the decision to renew. Would you try this model?

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For Revenue Operations Directors, staying on top of market trends is essential. With the rapid growth of sales technology, evaluating RevOps tools has become more important than ever. A valuable resource for this is the HG Insights IT Spend Report, which helps identify spending trends and make data-driven decisions. In this article, key takeaways from the Sales and Marketing section of the report are highlighted, emphasizing the importance of investing in RPM software like Xactly. Read on: http://spklr.io/6043Q0w1

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My rough notes from 6sense conference this week (1000 revenue folks in Las Vegas ) as I head out - Great marketing is never a tools problem. It’s an alignment problem - 6sense now competes with every tech vendor there is. Their strategy seems to be to go broad and assimilate every rev function under one umbrella. They still partner with companies that go deep into these areas similar to Hubspot but their ecosystem play doesn’t seem as developed yet - To implement 6sense properly you definitely need agency help. Because it requires lots of internal alignment on GTM strategy and implementation takes time . See both points above - There’s no magic wand to hit pipeline numbers at a certain stage. No hacks. Just a lot of channels that have to work in synchronicity together. Common goals for the teams working together - Marketing teams are a lot more fearful than sales teams. Because their impact is always so hard to track. Even with the best attribution software some things can’t be measured - I still hate big conferences and plastic carpets. It feels artificial and performative. But I get why they work so will continue to sponsor some We did decide to organize our first user conference in March 2025 but making it much smaller (100 customers only ). No pitches. No booths. No stages. Just to let people connect and have a good time. So if you want to sponsor it please DM me Pardon the brevity of this message as it’s written in an Uber on the way to the airport

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Being a great seller is like being a great host. You don’t wait for guests to ask for what they need—you anticipate it and make sure they’re taken care of from the start. A signal–based GTM strategy is doing just that. Buyer signals allow you to pick up on cues (website visits, downloads, social media activity) that tell you when buyers are interested, or when they are ready to make the next move before they have to ask you. Learn more on how to best implement a signal-based GTM strategy in our new guide: https://lnkd.in/eedx9t9g

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Partner leaders- we've got work to do. Sam Jacobs leads a community of CRO and GTM leaders- he's one of the most thoughtful, experienced, and effective people guiding the next generation of business leaders. This week he called out how poorly defined and poorly understood the partner playbook is- not just in the broader market, but even among the community of GTM experts. There's no playbook, it's hard to plan around, and "A bunch of partnership people standing around in a circle talking about how they're undervalued won't move the needle." He is 100% right. On the other side, I just got off a call with Dan McAllister, SVP Global Alliances and Channels at Boomi. Dan successfully led partnerships at SAP, Netsuite, Box, Mulesoft, and Salesforce before this role. When it comes to recognizing the opportunities the ecosystem presents his business, defining a strategy, crystalizing a joint business plan with his peers on the leadership team, and then executing the plan, Dan is one of the best in the world. #Partnerships are not one size fits all. The gap Sam called out in understanding partnerships and the partnering community's ability to close it is real. I'd like to personally invite Sam and all GTM leaders who want to understand partnerships better to join our Ecosystem Business Summit next week to hear how the best partnership leaders define partner strategy, rally their teams to understand the partner opportunity in GTM planning and lead the business through execution. We might all be great at recognizing the opportunity partnerships present, but unless you can rally the business around it you're failing as a partnership leader. We've got work to do! Join in link in comments.

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There is often considerable overlap between Revenue Operations (RevOps) leadership and the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) roles due to the interconnected nature of strategy and execution in driving revenue growth. This signifies a move toward a transformation in Revenue executives where decision-makers combine strategic foresight with operational expertise that drives sustainable revenue growth. The opportunity for senior RevOps professionals to take on these executive roles is more relevant than ever. Here is my advice on considering this move: https://lnkd.in/eEp263QR

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