Matthew DiStefano

Want to sell with me?  I'm hiring for a Founding AE at 30 Minutes to President's Club. If interested, read on.... We’ve spent the last 5 years at 30MPC building a massive & loyal audience of hundreds of thousands of sellers who've used 30MPC content to learn how to sell, uplevel in their careers and (yes!) make it to President's Club! We've recently launched our Club Pass training program for sales teams and we're looking for a Founding Account Executive to help us sell and scale it! 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝟯𝟬𝗠𝗣𝗖? 1. You’ll learn from 2 of the best sellers out there. If there was any place to master your craft in sales, 30MPC is it. 2. You’ll learn what it's like to build and grow a non-VC backed company from $2M (where we are today) to $5M in ARR. If you’re considering starting your own business in the future, you’ll learn step-by-step how we’re doing that. 3. We sell in a way that’s fun and doesn’t feel like traditional selling. Selling is hard, but it doesn’t have to feel defeating. I promise: You will have more fun selling and develop more as a professional working with 30MPC than anywhere else in your sales career. Interested? Check the job posting on my profile (details on how to apply are listed in the posting) 

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I meet and talk with 5-10 of the greatest GTM minds on the planet every week. CRO’s, VPs of Sales, CMO’s. 100% agree that getting outbound right is one of the hardest parts of their business, why? 1. Recruiting is hard again The same voices that sold tech sales as an easy path to 6 figures are now the voices saying the BDR role is dead. They sold a bill of goods to people who didn’t understand how hard this role is, are surprised these people who chose a path because it was sold as “easy” aren’t performing, and now have ulterior motives to pivot to a new message. Hard jobs are hard to recruit for. 2. Lack of Leadership 2020 through mid 2022 we had a bunch of capital bloat and talent bloat enter the market. Just like we have overvalued “zombie” companies we have overvalued “zombie” leaders who don’t know how to coach good habits for this type of market. Outbound was easy from 2014ish to summer 2022. 8 years is a long time, most of the voices we hear only know those times or only know what type of sales motion. 3. Absolute statements muddy the waters I've been around the block enough to click on their profile and see their track record. 99.9% of folks make these statements only sold transactional commodity technology, sold to GTM teams, or in most cases – only both. What works depends on multiple factors: ASP, buyer persona, and complexity of your sales process/customer’s buying process. Depending on what you sell – sometimes you are going to need to pick up the phone or send a note to get someone’s attention. That will NEVER change. 4. Generational consideration for career pathing is key BDR is still hands down the best route to market for future AE’s. You have to learn to prospect and get meetings before you can run a meeting, qualify, and manage a deal. No argument from me on CAC math – thousands of products require veracious qualification, deal management, and creating customer consensus. You can not run those types of deals and prospect. If any Voice had EVER done that type of role or ran a team that did, they wouldn’t say what they are. For BDRs to stick around for more than 14 months, you need steps in the BDR path where comp, responsibility and role grow over time. 5. Results are tanking Point 1&2. You are the equivalent of a fire fighter that starts a fire then takes the glory when you put it out. I absolutely loved the movie Backdraft – but stop it. These are the ideas of “not famous” GTM people. People who spend all day serving their customer and developing their people – not posting on this platform. They don’t care about clicks, followers, or impressions. They care about revenue and earnings. Outbound is hard. It (almost) always has been. Ya’ll need to block the noise and focus on what works for your business and try everything. Even the hard stuff. #AllGasNoBrakes #DialedIn

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Gong is freaking $. I barely use Hubspot anymore for deal management, forecasting, pipeline reviews. Their new AI features enable immediate and targeted access to this incredible wealth of information buried in call recordings. Also super powerful for identifying customer advocates and upsell opportunities, and spotting trends in customer success and product experience gaps. I know everyone in that space is fighting to build these big suites w/everything from CRM to call recording to sales engagement/sequences, but I think Gong has the biggest entry-point advantage starting in call recording, and my money is on them to win the race vs the rest. Salesforce is in a different boat - obviously SFDC will be fine regardless as the backend CRM/datalake, but they may lose ground on the front-end applications to Gong, although Slack is a game-changing asset and unfair advantage - so should be interesting.

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Tech Stack for Your Entire GTM Sales Funnel Top – Middle – Bottom In today's era of advanced sales tech, it can be challenging to determine which tools to use at each stage of your GTM funnel. Here's some good suggestions: -- Top of funnel -- → Clay - Great for pulling and enriching lead lists for cold outbound → ListKit - Also great for finding valid B2B contacts → Common Room - Real buyer Intent signals and integrations → Instantly.ai - Sending platform and DFY domain set-up → Trigify.io - Social signals from Linkedin → LeadMagic - Find valid B2B email adresses and identify mx records -- Middle of funnel -- → Vector 👻 - Off site buyer intent + onsite lead identification → Distribute - Digital sales rooms → RB2B - Website visitor identification and enrichment → Calendly - Meeting book and pre call flows -- Bottom of funnel -- → Fathom - AI Meeting Assistant - Auto generate summaries of sales meeting and record content → Airtable - CRM and data reporting ----- What's your favourite part of the funnel to operate in?

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Our latest GTM Operations framework. Trying to detail all the interconnected elements B2B SaaS companies need to operationalize multiple GTM motions.

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🚨 GTM, RevOps, and Automation/No-Code Agencies: Read this if you’re looking for your secret weapon. I know a Chief of Staff and ex-investor who’s looking to work with agencies part-time—and she’s a force multiplier. Here’s the breakdown: • 4+ years investing across multiple funds, working with countless startups. • Deep GTM, planning, enablement, and RevOps expertise from the trenches of venture-backed companies. • A next-level understanding of what your clients need to scale and succeed. If you’re ready to level up with someone who knows how to align strategy, execution, and client success, DM me, and I’ll connect you. Let’s get you the strategic muscle to scale smarter.

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This is exactly right - for any level of search and any stage of company.

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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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When I closed $1.1m in my first 6 months at Tropic, guess what I didn’t do… Aggressively DQ opps after call 1. I’ve seen a lot of advice recently about not pushing for a second call if the buyer doesn’t show real interest. 🤔 I think this is “dangerous” advice. There are so many reasons why someone might not be super excited after only 1 call: - Having a bad day - They weren’t paying attention to everything you said - The dots haven’t connected yet between their problem and your solution (read: you didn’t do a great job) But that also doesn’t necessarily mean you should casually abandon the opp. Especially if you believe your product can help them. A hard fact of sales: people buy from people they like. And a lot of us are working over Zoom. It takes TIME for a lot of buyers to build enough trust to really evaluate you. If you’re early in your career OR you aren’t DROWNING in meetings, you should mostly always try to get a second call. Crack that sale open a little further. You'll win more deals. When I was an AE, I pushed for a second call on nearly every opp. Worked for me. 🤷‍♂️ And of course, if they’re truly a bad fit, get out of there. But you can always DQ later. Worst case, free live practice. Best case, deal. And if you want to get better at earning more second calls, here’s an easy reframe: be willing to throw out the script, the list of questions, and the rules about what to do or not do on any given call. Instead simply try to... 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹. I explain this in more detail in the vid. It’s simple, and more importantly, underrated. Are you team “Aggressive DQ” or “Team crack the sale open a little more first”??

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After years of managing client accounts of various sizes and priorities in the tech world, I've learned that a Success Manager should deliver value, not just meetings. Some clients believe value is delivered through meetings, and sometimes that's true. But often, the best value you can provide is the time your client gains to close more deals and generate revenue. This involves managing expectations and finding scalable ways to deliver value. After all, no client wants to spend 1/8 of their day learning to make decisions for each step on your product. Long-term relationships, the ultimate goal of any CSM, are about being there when needed and knowing when to step back while ensuring the client still derives maximum value from the resources you've provided. Value isn't just in presence; it's in the impact. Sometimes, not having a meeting can be more beneficial if it means your client has more time to focus on their core tasks, which is why they bought your product in the first place. By equipping clients with the right tools and insights upfront, you empower them to make informed decisions independently. This not only saves their time but also builds trust in the solutions you provide. Effective CSMs know that their role extends beyond immediate interactions. It's about creating an environment where the client feels supported, even in your absence. This is where true value lies.

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The CRO is just a VP of Sales with a fancy title. Unfortunately, this is true by default in too many companies. A good CRO is extremely difficult to find. They need to have experience leading sales, marketing and customer success - not just a "good student" of these orgs. They should have knowledge of finance and accounting operations as well as IT, and draw a "dotted line" to each. They should have experience leading or leveraging RevOps and understand how this team should be deployed, when and why. Any variance from this criteria, and you're unlikely to hire "good". So, companies default to what they know: hire or promote a fantastic sales leader and give them the room to grow into the CRO role. When this is the case, it typically creates bias towards sales motions in the GTM strategy because the leader doesn't have the marketing/customer success experience necessary to do it the right way. With the average tenure of a CRO hovering around 18 months, learning curves and ramp for CRO's are luxuries you can't afford. You'll be replacing them or eliminating the role before you realize any tangible value from the hire. Hiring a CRO for the first time, or filling this role again after a failed hire both require organizational readiness and a strong committment to change. Ensure that change is positive by hiring the right person first. #CRO #RevOps

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Unsolicited financial advice to salespeople: If you work for a company that's CRUSHING it through hypergrowth, and you're making a ton of money: Don't go buy a home at the upper end of your affordability limit. Why? Because hypergrowth companies OVERPAY during the hypergrowth phase. And salespeople often believe this will last forever.\ Many times, hypergrowth companies are not worried about efficiency. Just growth. But then, when they reach a critical mass as a company: They focus on efficiency far more. They focus on profitability far more. And, they become less dependent on having ultra talented people on the frontlines, since they're so big they can't really be stopped. You know what all that means? Bigger quotas. Changed comp plans. I've seen some sellers go from earning the 'land of milk and honey,' buying their dream home, only for the music to stop in a couple years and they're slammed financially. Close your deals. Make as much money as humanly possible. But... try to sock away a lot of it. Your future self will thank you. Freedom > stuff. P.S. Add $50k-$100k in additional annual income in the (free) SaaS Sales Accelerator Challenge: https://lnkd.in/ghFYKqDB

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Some Exit Five business stats from May: → First month over $200k in revenue → Biggest trial month ever (213 new trials) → Added 1,280 new newsletter subscribers (crossing 18k subs) → Best revenue churn month ever → Third month in a row of comment growth in the community → Launched and sold out our first in-person event for September (200 tickets) → Adding two new team members; team will be 5 full-time people in 2 weeks (one offer accepted, one soon to come) → 0 a-holes on the team and counting We're building the best content and community for B2B marketers that want to advance their skills and grow their career. There is so much noise about marketing. Our goal with Exit Five is to be the signal for B2B marketers. We'll help filter through the advice on LinkedIn, the search results on Google, and give you one place to go to improve your skills in B2B marketing and grow your career. We have true product market fit and we're just getting started. Thanks for all of the support here (LinkedIn continues to be our number one source of new business). PS. Maybe now we could order some swag??

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Marketers looovveee to rebrand themselves. Remember when a "growth marketer" did things that weren't paid media?! 🙄 I've been a "content marketer" a "growth marketer" an " inbound lead" a "lifecycle marketer" and a "product marketer." I do "GTM" and "acquisition" and "demand gen" and "marketing strategy" "CRO" "funnel marketing" There's some variation in each of these (obviously), but everyone's just circling the drain trying to name what actually grows startups these days. Thank you to Kyle Poyar for naming the new trend. It's helpful and I'll use it in my copy...as I keep doing Marketing for Startups-whatever we decide to call it.

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Some of the worst Account Executives have one thing in common...   Buyers feel uncomfortable answering their questions.   These AEs are mostly doing the right thing:   - They're asking lots of questions - They're digging into priorities - They're asking about problems - They're not pitching too much etc.   But prospects just don't open up about anything real. They give short answers to questions.   Now, the best AEs are masters at...  Getting buyers to share STORIES   They don't pepper prospects with dozens of logic-based questions.   They phrase questions in a way that gets a buyer to open up about how they feel.   Here's an example:   Let's say you sell an HR solution. This solution helps combine all HR functions (payroll, recruiting, workforce management, etc.) in one place.   Your buyer is using a separate solution for all of those. ️ Bad way to dig for pain   "What don't you like about your current HR setup?" "What's the biggest challenge with your HR setup?" "How much time is your team spending every week manually processing payroll?" "How much do you like your current solution on a scale of 1-10?"   These aren't terrible questions. But they're vague and feel too much like an interview or interrogation.  A better way to dig for pain   Get more nuanced with questions. Get in the buyer's day-to-day.   1) Get specific with questions:   "When did you notice that your disconnected HR tools were a problem?" "Mind walking me through the last time you onboarded a new employee?" "When you want to run payroll, what feels harder than it should be?"   2) Ask great follow-up questions:   "Can you give me an example of that?" "Tell me more..."   3) Compare/contrast using customer stories:   "An HR leader earlier today was sharing a big focus on international hiring moving into 2025. The process required a lot of work from their team to set up hiring in new countries. And many countries were pretty fuzzy about the paperwork required. I'm curious, how does this compare to your experience hiring international employees?"   Load stories into the front of your questions.   ~~~   These techniques will help you open up buyers so they'll participate in discovery with you.   What's your favorite discovery question?   DM me and let me know.   And don’t forget to follow to catch the Dreamline Digital podcast. #ae #marketplace #accountexecutives #salesteam

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Three Tuesday Thoughts: (1) Stage O Opps for Meeting Booked stage: almost always a good idea: 1. Forces the conversion from Lead > Contact earlier which reduces some complexity of managing both Leads & Contacts 2. Ensures Opps are created by SDR/BDRs who are typically better at following process and creating the Opp the correct way 3. Opp created from the correct Contact for more accurate tracking 4. Helps AEs as they can work exclusively out of Opps, Contacts, Accounts 5. Avoids activity object data retention issues in SFDC (2) Trying not to get IRL event FOMO So many events happening right now. But work and life have other priorities. FOMO still hitting hard though. (3) How you do the work = the quality of the work I realize this more and more every day. HOW you perform work is equally (and sometimes more) important than the actual work that is produced. Soft skills really matter in the perception of the work. Things like communication, responsiveness, project management, alignment. We feel this acutely at CS2 (as we're essentially in the business of selling expertise/work), but I think this applies in-house as well. For Ops people, it's not just about the technical builds you complete and the problems you solve. They are important, but focus on your communication skills, how you show up to meetings, the questions you ask, and how you keep your team aligned. And you'll likely level yourself up faster than learning a new hard skill/tool.

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The role nobody planned for but every scaling company needs. Have you heard of the GTM Engineer? (the role reshaping how companies grow) They emerged from: → Sales ops grinding reports → Marketers tracking attribution - like me 👋 → RevOps fixing processes → CS building scalable solutions Why? Because GTM Engineering isn't about any single function. It's about seeing the whole growth engine. What makes them different: • Data fluency • User empathy • Strategic vision • Process design • Technical depth • Problem solving • Systems thinking • Business acumen • Continuous learning • Change management To the accidental GTM Engineers: Keep connecting dots. 𝘞𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘸! To the intentional ones: Keep breaking silos. So much more to discuss as this function takes shape.

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