Kim Graves

Olipop’s Rebrand Unlocked $500M Sales—Here’s How ** What made Olipop stand out in a crowded market? A simple, smart rebrand built to connect deeply. Here’s how they nailed it: ✅ 1. Focused on Their Mission → Healthy soda made approachable, not boring. → Their rebrand focused on joy, not restrictions. ✅ 2. Simplified Their Design → Clean labels with pastel colors and bold fonts. → Easy to spot, easy to remember. ✅ 3. Told a Relatable Story → They shared why they care about gut health. → Stories connect better than product pitches. ✅ 4. Aligned With Their Audience → Targeted health-conscious millennials. → Messaging felt personal and authentic. ✅ 5. Highlighted Their Unique Edge → Real ingredients, real benefits, no fluff. → They backed promises with proof. 💡 A great rebrand isn’t just about design—it’s strategy. Connect mission, design, and audience for real impact. ♻️ Reshare to inspire bold branding moves. 🔔 Follow Kai Brands for insights on building impact!

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Churn rates in SaaS are often taken for granted. A 5% churn rate? Sounds manageable until you unpack the numbers. If you're losing customers at that rate every month, you're left with less than half of your original users by the end of the year. The average B2B churn rate might be lower due to the methodical decision-making process, but there's no getting around the fact that B2C companies are more susceptible to quicker exits. Voluntary churn is where the real battle lies, as buyers pull the trigger on cancellations for reasons ranging from budget cuts to outright dissatisfaction. So, what's the play? You need to visualize your churn as a strategic battleground. Whether it's by tightening your onboarding processes, identifying churn indicators early, or even tailoring your cancellation offers, the aim is simple: keep the customers you’ve worked hard to acquire. Churn isn’t just a metric—it's a mindset. Let's debate: Is it smarter to accept a higher churn as a given in a rapidly changing market, or is the focus on reducing churn at all costs a more sustainable strategy? Keep it civil, folks. https://lnkd.in/ehMpvWed

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we're making progress with a Slack app that automates driving more & better practice / outputs / behaviors with your AEs & other sellers… goal: make role-playing practice more manageable, realistic, & consistent while applying it to actual deals during prep ofc we're plugging into AI for some fun feedback loops too 😊 our next phase is seeing how more teams react to decide what to build for early customers. we can focus on anything you're looking to improve right now: outbounding, cold calling, disco, negotiation, storytelling, improv, forecasting, testing champs, etc... let me know if you want to test it out with your team, or it's easy to get started with the link below. thx!

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Hot Take: Hating on Signal-led and outbound means you don't get either or don't understand how to build it. We are having the best pipeline month in company history and about to beat our best quarter after going signal led(Q2 '24 results to follow). How did we do it = Stacking Signals!! The key to success here is that each signal is not a solution, you need to stack them together and triage them to get your best strike zone. Here is the list of signal's I captured manually. An OKR for me this quarter is to add more to my repository of signals and I plan on doing this by integrating all these signals into Common Room and further track their activity for unique trigger and conversion events. In an ideal world I plan on "Big Brothering" my leads/signals to see if they become hotter over time and convert. These are some of the signals we are working with currently and you can find the resources of signals from Common Room in some of the links i'll share. 1) CRM signals: Lookalike customers and prospects in your deal committed stage. 2) Social Signals: Community engagement, Dark social conversations. 3) Website Visitors: De-anonymized 4) Product Signals: Sign-up's, lookalike sign-ups and sign-ups engaging with competitors. What's fascinating is that these signal produced leads are converting to qualified opportunities and closed won 37% faster. These are also outperforming our inbound demo's and hand raisers. This is the current workflow and how as a PLG org, stacking the above signals and doing a bit of manual work is a must. I'll stress again - all these signal's without the right enablement and sales talent will fall short. Enter Debdutta Saha 🧘‍♂️ - This is how Deb stack's our signals and build's glorious qualified pipeline. Step 1: Deb tracks all sign-ups on our Tablea dashboard and looks for unique sign-ups. Aka has somebody hit room limits or has somebody invited other internally to sign-up. These events increase the score and turns the sign-up into a signal. Step2: We check de-anonamization took to check visitors on our site and validate who to reach out to. 40% activation failures exist in PLG and this signal combined with the above shows us sign-ups that might be in market and actively evaluating. Step3: Then we look for unique trigger signal to get a better sense of the org - aka do they have open headcount, are they hiring for roles that are end users of my product. Here is a repository of signal's from Common Room that you can use https://lnkd.in/gSC6Px-9 Step4: We prospect and talk to all ic's to learn what could be ATL messaging for the leaders that will help us convert an account to an opportunity. The above is just 1 of many play's we run. The hypothesis is that by integrating all my signals and product data into Common Room, i'll be surfaced more wins to go after. I'll share Q2 results soon - playbook in comments. #sales #khantent #management

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I’ve released 19 episodes of The Sour GTM SaaS Takes Podcast. Check out who I’ve interviewed & 1 of their 5 sour takes👇👇 EP 1 - Jared Robin ⏭, Founder & CEO of RevGenius Sour Take 🍬 Outbounding in a community isn’t the same as showing up and being active EP 2 - Amelia Taylor, Strategic Advisor at Capchase Sour Take 🍬 50% of playbooks created are copies of another creator's playbook — creating your own will take you WAY further EP 3 - 🔶🔸Mason Cosby🔸🔶, Founder and CEO of Scrappy ABM Sour Take 🍬 The current lack of alignment between marketing and sales is largely marketing's fault EP 4 - Melissa Gaglione✨, Head of Sales at Sendspark Sour Take 🍬 Take care of your body before your pipeline EP 5 - Tim Davidson, Founder of B2B Rizz Sour Take 🍬 ABM should be most of B2Bs GTM strategy EP 6 - Christina Brady, CEO & Co-Founder of Luster Sour Take 🍬 AI to replace humans will slow us down, AI to help improve human performance will speed us up EP 7 - Nate Branscome, Founder AE & Sales Leader at HockeyStack Sour Take 🍬 Orgs who claim they are data-backed, are rarely data-backed EP 8 - 👾 Alex Virden, PMM Advisor Sour Take 🍬 Calling PMM misunderstood is a crutch EP 9 - Morgan J Ingram, Founder and CEO of AMP Sour Take 🍬 Connect and blind pitching is the worst thing you can do on LinkedIn EP 10 - Kathleen Booth, SVP of Marketing & Growth at Pavilion Sour Take 🍬 GTM execs are leaving a ton of money on the table if they don't build a personal brand on the social platforms where their customers are active EP 11 - 🎁 Katie Penner, Head of Sender Relations at Sendoso Sour Take 🍬 Traditional influencer marketing is stale EP 12 - Julia Carter, Sales Leader at Kargo Sour Take 🍬 Mass exporting prospect lists is why you aren't hitting your goals EP 13 - Todd Busler, Founder & CEO of Champify Sour Take 🍬 People are overly obsessed with automation EP 14 - Cortney W., Strategic GTM Advisor Sour Take 🍬 Get a mentor that disagrees with you because it will teach you a new perspective and the art of understanding both sides of the conversation EP 15 - Dale Dupree, Founder & CEO of The Sales Rebellion Sour Take 🍬 Don’t trust people at a new company just because they pay you more EP 16 - Daisy Chung, Director of Sales at Orum Sour Take 🍬 Cold calling is the best channel to grow your sales career EP 17 - Brianna Doe, Founder & CEO of Verbatim Sour Take 🍬 You can have a great online brand and still have a terrible personal brand EP 18 - Travis Tyler, Sr. Social Media Manager at Motion (Creative Analytics) Sour Take 🍬 Don't have hiring conversations if you don't have a job description written up EP 19 - Ashley Faus, VP of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio at Atlassian Sour Take 🍬 Stop mapping content to linear funnel stages, use content depths and intents instead #saas #gtm #b2b P.S. Want to know the other sour takes these leaders had? Link to the podcast and my website in the comments 🔗

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AE’s stop asking your SDRs to do your job. Focus on creating long-term connections and deeply understanding your prospects.

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The way most SaaS companies structure sales leadership compensation creates inter-team competition in a *NEGATIVE WAY* that costs millions of $’s in revenue and 100’s of hours of headaches a year. Here’s why (and a simple change you can make to fix it): Typically sales managers are compensated on the performance of their direct reports. For example, if their 8 Account Executives crush their targets, the manager's compensation reflects this. This sounds reasonable, right? But what about the rest of the sellers? What about the other 25 Account Executives who need to succeed for your company to hit its growth goals? Sales Managers have different strengths and need to be incentivized to help the ENTIRE sales organization, not just THEIR team. That’s why every time I started a new sales leader role here’s what I did…. I switched the manager comp plan so 20% of their variable earnings were based on the total sales orgs performance, not just their direct reports. I often got pushback, but this simple change always led to stronger collaboration, teamwork, and unity. And helped us avoid account controversy, resentment and entitlement. Sales leaders aren't coin-operated, but they are human and humans respond to incentives. Make sure you're incentivizing the right behavior. And create one team.

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There are two ways to solve gaps in signal-based selling. Only one is guaranteed to work at scale. 1) Revenue Enablement Provide continuous training for (a) every new hire who joins a team and (b) every 6 months to refresh reps on essential information, workflows, and processes. Many factors can impact the effectiveness of enablement activities (from the comprehensiveness of training materials to the trainer’s institutional knowledge, to how closely the individual reps were paying attention that day). Enablement only becomes harder as more people and processes are added to the mix because there are so many moving parts. 2) Revenue Operations Through automation, RevOps can reduce gaps — especially from human error — that cause friction or inaction among reps. Specifically, end-to-end automation. Most common “automations” in signal-based selling usually don’t go far enough. Therefore teams are overly reliant on enablement touchpoints to stay aligned. Ex: A champion moves to a new role and this is automatically updated in Salesforce This automation gets the process from point A to point B, but still relies on multiple human touches from B to Z. End-to-end automation ensures that essential tasks throughout an entire workflow are set up to keep the process moving toward an end goal. It anticipates gaps and opportunities for human error from point A to point Z (meeting booked). Ex: A champion moves to a new role, the CRM record is updated, a rep is notified, and a multi-step persona-specific email sequence is triggered. Would every rep follow this process if it was entirely manual (even with enablement training)? Probably not. That’s why every signal play should be accompanied by clear workflows enabled with end-to-end automation. The play can scale with your team. Signals without action are just noise for reps. Automation guarantees signals get actioned.

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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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If we build this feature I can guarantee we will close $5,000,000 😸 How many times have we heard this? The loudest voice in the sales team usually wins too. They influence the Product roadmap and Product goes off to build something to chase down that revenue promise. I've been pretty guilty of this myself. This week I got asked for a feature that could significantly alter our roadmap. I asked Adam Liska & Devang Agrawal can either of you validate how many people have asked for this? 🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑 We were falling into an all too familiar trap... Trusting instinct & false positives / negatives This is how companies have been running for years, ask someone a question, trust their opinion. But what does the data say? Yesterday, Glyphic released AI Search, an ability to uncover insights and find critical information across all of your customer conversations. Ever wanted to know these; 💡 How have we articulated our value proposition to enterprise-level clients? 💡 What challenges have buyers faced with our competitors? 💡 When was the new XYZ feature requested? 💡 What positive outcomes have clients reported after implementing our product? Now you can & more! So what did we do? We asked Glyphic. Nobody had ever asked for it and truthfully they were not true ICP. However glamorous the logo was. Guess who's having a tough conversation later 💔 Don't build product that 1% of your customer base is asking for unless you can validate the fact many others are experiencing this pain too. Let data tell you the true story. OR, just ask Glyphic 🤷‍♂️ P.S - If you're reading our feature roadmap, we're shipping #1 this quarter, #2 is this product & #3 is Q4. #4 we're still exploring but know reps love this feature ❤️

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🚀Sarah Wang from Andreessen Horowitz dives deep into the power of partnerships in her 2022 talk with Crossbeam (Bob Moore)👇 🖐️ "Partnerships are more important than ever. Specifically, because you are bringing in pipeline, shortening sales cycles, and increasing conversion rates." Other things she is saying in the video: 🗣️ "Partnerships is the #1 hire that we hear our early companies making. Our best-performing companies are relying very heavily on partnerships." 🗣️ "We’re more willing to bet that the $100 million company goes to $200 million because of how consistent their partner-generated pipeline is. That team could literally go to sleep for a year and come back, and they’d be at $200 million." Every company looking to scale and stay relevant should take note. Partnerships are no longer a 'nice to have'; they're essential for exponential growth! 🌱➡️🌳 Original video: https://lnkd.in/eKk6gtQH Website: https://lnkd.in/e7GppKVf

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The path from $1m - $50m ARR is a graveyard for sales leaders. The average tenure for CRO / VP of Sales is under 18 months. You almost never hear of the same sales leader leading a company from $1m to $50m+. Why is it so rare for sales leaders to level up as the company scales? The "$0 - $1m" sales leader struggles to get to $10m. The "$1m - $10m" sales leader struggles to get to $50m. And so on. You see so many examples of this across the B2B SaaS industry. Working in an early stage company is kinda like playing jazz. Everyone member of a jazz band has their speciality, but the music comes from how they improvise and push each other to play. As you scale, the company looks more like an orchestra than a jazz band. Each section of an orchestra is highly specialized. The music is structured to blend each section together to make a sound - a symphony. Sure, a jazz player can learn to play in an orchestra. But it is rare. In the same way, the $0-1m sales leader can learn to be the $10m or $50m leader. But this kind of personal growth is uncommon. It requires a level of self-awareness and a commitment to learning that most people don't have. I've heard this trait called "dynamic range" - the ability for a leader to improve their skills to match the stage of the company. When you have a leader on your team who shows dynamic range, invest in them. Give them the opportunity to learn how to play in an orchestra.

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I loved Hannah Clark and Daniel Danker 's recent podcast episode. The best piece of advice was on scaling product organizations. Daniel mentioned that when scaling, he avoids the trap of more of the same and instead figures out what they should be doing as he scales. To paraphrase, what are the 10X ideas that they should incorporate? Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/guYMfMm3

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hey RevOps - if you're a high-velocity SMB shop selling a large number of small deals, how should you grant quota credit to AEs? 🤔 Signature date? Payment date? Contract effective date? Like most things in RevOps, simple questions like this do not have simple answers. This question was posted in the RevOps Co-op Slack group recently and the community provided some 🔥 feedback like: 📍 Signature date seems to be the most popular choice, but always with a big caveat 📍 That caveat relates to the amount of churn or turnover when it comes to signed deals that don't pay - if the AEs are closing crumby customers that don't pay, then you want to use payment date instead 📍 If you have deals that get signed far in advance of the contract effective date / subscription start date, this adds additional risk to revenue - so may want to consider using the contract effective date instead 📍 Some folks do a mix; for example, 50% at signature, and 50% at payment (or some other metric, like 6 months after deal signature) 📍 In all cases, you want to make sure the structure is set up to drive the behavior you want to encourage without a huge delay between the work done and incentive provided Anything else you'd add to this list? #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #compensation #incentivemanagement

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Hey folks! Rare opportunity to join Zapier's executive team running sales and success and reporting to me. Fair warning this role isn't for just any sales or success leader. We aren't looking for someone hoping to attach themselves to a great opportunity and surf the wave. Zapier has grown substantially in our self-serve business, but sales is a relatively small percent of the company. If we'd raised a bunch of money (we didn't) an easy way to think about it is that the self-serve business is a growth stage company, but the sales side is a series A company. There's a lot to figure out! While we aren't abandoning our SMB roots, we are ready to expand upmarket. We launched a dedicated Enterprise plan on April 2 and in May had our best sales month yet. On top of that we have a lot of new product that we expect to be pretty compelling inside larger organizations: Tables, Interfaces, Chatbots, Central, and Canvas. If you're a sales or success leader that's eager to build something nearly from the ground up, roll your sleeves up, spend time with customers, sell to customers yourself, and figure out the model for Zapier's expansion upmarket, I hope you'll check this out. For the right person this can be a career defining opportunity.

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🌟 Just wrapped up Deel's 2024 SKO, and it was AMAZING! Meeting the people we interact with daily was truly special for a remote company like ours. 💻✨ For those of us in Sales, it's a team effort all the way. I've never closed a sale alone—so many incredible people help carry us over the finish line. 🙌 I won an award, and it really touched me. 🏆 The roller coaster of emotions in our job is something not many understand. Last night, I took a call at 10:30 PM with a teammate who always goes above and beyond. Everyone at Deel does, in so many ways, it's hard to put into words. ❤️ Someone asked me what makes a great salesperson. Here's my educated guess: 1. The good sell a product, the great solve problems. To be great, you need to genuinely invest in the prospect's problem, and to be exceptional; you have to solve that problem or damn well try. 🔍💡 2. Managing emotions is key. This job can be a roller coaster; you have to stay stable even when deals—and life—are up and down. Breathe; it will be okay. 🧘‍♂️ Remember, sometimes you get lucky and have a great year, but we're more than the numbers - you're more than the numbers, so take a moment to pause and see that. Do this job because you love solving problems, and you'll find joy and longevity—no matter the outcome. 💪✨

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A friend trying to Set up Cold Outbound Asked me how the entire process goes - so here's the end to end process for dummies to get started: #1. Introduction to Cold Outbound - Definition: Using channels like LinkedIn and email to send offers to potential customers - Best suited for B2B businesses with relatively high-ticket products - Not ideal for B2C or low-ticket products/services #2. Initial Steps 2.1 Mapping Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) - Define your solution and target audience - Identify the best person to target within organizations   - Early-stage companies: Founders or product owners   - Mid-market/enterprise: Department heads or specific roles #2.2 Lead Generation - Use tools like seamless.ai or apollo.io - Map out ICP and gather lead information:   - Names   - Emails   - LinkedIn accounts #3. Email Infrastructure Setup 3.1 Domain Management - Never use primary company domain for cold emails - Create similar dummy domains - Use .com, .org, .co extensions - Purchase domains from reputable sources (e.g., GoDaddy) to avoid blacklisting 3.2 Email Accounts - Set up 2-3 inboxes per domain - Use Outlook or Gmail infrastructure for best deliverability - Aim for a 50-50 split between Outlook and Gmail 3.3 Email Sending Tools - Options: Smartlead, Instantly.ai - Connect all inboxes to these tools - Instantly has done for you inbox setup 3.4 Inbox Warming - Warm up inboxes for 2-3 weeks before sending campaigns - Crucial for maintaining good domain and inbox reputation #4. List Preparation - Clean your email list using verifiers (e.g., prospeo) - Ensure you're only sending to active, verified emails #5. Email Copy Best Practices - Keep emails short and catchy - Use pattern interrupts instead of standard greetings - Personalize messages for each recipient - Avoid attachments, images, or links in the first email - Optimize for replies (positive or negative) - Provide easy response options - Avoid unsubscribe links in B2B emails #6. Spam Prevention - Use tools like Mailmeteor to check for spam-triggering words - Review and adjust copy to improve deliverability #7. Campaign Execution - Upload your list to your chosen email sending tool - Set up campaigns with optimized timing - Follow up and focus on getting replies #8. Scale and Optimization - Send 25-30 emails per inbox per day - Calculate total daily and weekly email capacity - Continuously optimize your approach #9. Advanced Techniques 9.1 Intent-Based Outreach - Use tools like Valley to capture intent - Automatically enrich data on website visitors - Send highly personalized messages on LinkedIn to interested prospects #10. Key Tools Mentioned - Lead generation: Seamless.AI, Apollo.io - Email sending: Smartlead, Instantly.ai - Email verification: Prospeo - Copy checking: mail meteor - Intent capture and personalised LI outreach : Valley 🏔️ Remember to always stay compliant with email regulations and focus on providing value to your potential customers.

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Here is a spooky Halloween story for you: 💥 We had product-market fit for 10 years at RevBoss. Then, we lost it. 💥 Over the last year, things have changed at RevBoss. Our NPS dropped, client referrals slowed down, and results weren’t what they used to be. For 10 years, we thrived. Now, we’re in the middle of a massive pivot. ❓ Why? Because outbound email—our bread and butter—doesn’t connect like it used to. AI, channel fatigue, and changing markets have forced us to rethink everything. Here’s what we’ve done: - Restructured the team. - Launched new products. - Doubled down on client success. It’s been tough, humbling, and—believe it or not—energizing. 🚀 The hard lesson: When you lose product-market fit, you need to ruthlessly pivot. We’re turning the ship and paddling in a new direction.

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