Revenue Problem Solvers

Operationalize
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Revenue Problem Solvers is the sales and revenue leadership podcast for founders, executives, and operators who are done with generic advice. One question drives every conversation: what's the most significant revenue initiative you've ever led, or the most challenging problem you've solved or are currently solving? The conversations span the entire GTM function from sales, marketing, ops, CS, product, leadership, and AI. Real stories. Specific lessons. No filler. New episodes weekly.

  1. 3 days ago

    He Signed the Offer. Two Weeks Later Came the Layoffs. | Steve Shauck

    Two weeks into a new CRO role, Steve Shauck got the call: they were doing a layoff. Not exactly what the recruiting process had promised. In this episode, fractional CRO Steve Shauck sits down with Karl Ortmann to unpack what happens when the company you were sold doesn't match the company you land in. Steve has run global sales teams at GE Digital and Oracle, led two successful PE-backed exits, and now works as a fractional CRO for founder-led B2B companies scaling toward their next stage of growth. He breaks down what a real due diligence package should actually include, why forecasts can hide the truth that actuals reveal, and how he rebuilt a broken revenue team without losing the people worth keeping. Karl and Steve also dig into the executive recruitment landscape right now, including a growing wave of recruiter identity fraud, why some recruiters have become accidental gatekeepers to great candidates, and Steve's case for hiring curious generalists over disengaged specialists. If you're evaluating a new leadership role, sitting inside a team that needs rebuilding, or just want a clearer read on how to protect yourself during the hiring process, this conversation is packed with things you can actually use. This episode is brought to you by Virtual Causeway, helping B2B companies get found earlier in the buying process by the right people through the right channels. Visit virtualcauseway.com and mention the show for a special rate.

    He Signed the Offer. Two Weeks Later Came the Layoffs. | Steve Shauck

  2. 31 July

    Why Growth Stalls Even When You're Doing Everything Right | Michael Kleinmann

    You're hitting your numbers. Then you hit a wall, and nothing you try seems to move it. Michael Kleinman has seen this exact wall before, and he knows why most founders never get past it. Michael built Fresh Pair from a New York City apartment into an 8-figure retailer with over 30,000 SKUs before selling it in 2011, then built one of the most-read editorial platforms in men's apparel with Underwear Expert. Before content marketing was even a category, he invented a national holiday just to win at SEO. Now he runs Powered by MK (mkinc.com), where he fixes the operational chaos quietly capping revenue for D2C and subscription brands. In this episode, Michael breaks down a real client story: a decade-old company running one brand across three separate websites, doing every task by hand, three times over, for years. He explains how he found it, fixed it, and grew the client's US revenue 100 percent and Amazon revenue 333 percent in 15 months, all while gross profit went up instead of down. If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right and still not growing, this conversation will change where you look first. This episode is brought to you by Virtual Causeway. If your sales team is spending more time chasing than closing, that's a discovery problem. Virtual Causeway helps B2B companies get found earlier in the buying process by the right people through the right channels. Visit virtualcauseway.com and mention the show for a special rate.

    Why Growth Stalls Even When You're Doing Everything Right | Michael Kleinmann

  3. 24 July

    Enterprise AI Without Guardrails? Here's What Happens | Michael Lamb

    Your team is already using AI right now, without your permission, without IT knowing about it, and without any guardrails on what data is walking out the door. Michael Lamb, Senior Director of Marketing Technologies at Mitel, has spent the past year leading digital integration through four major acquisitions while building the framework that governs how Mitel's marketing teams use AI. On this episode, Mike breaks down why most enterprise AI rollouts produce inconsistent, forgettable output, and why the fix isn't a better prompt, it's a shared skills foundation the whole team draws from. He walks through a live test where his team fed an AI a photo of a sausage as design inspiration and uncovered roughly 30 unstated assumptions the AI made on its own, the same blind spot that quietly produces generic content across every company using the same tools. If you're a revenue leader, CMO, or marketing operations lead who suspects your team is already deep into AI without a real framework behind it, this conversation gives you a practical model for governance that speeds teams up instead of slowing them down. For more from Mike, find him on LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you by Virtual Causeway. If your sales team is spending more time chasing than closing, Virtual Causeway helps B2B companies get found earlier in the buying process by the right people through the right channels, resulting in fewer cold calls and pipeline that moves faster. Visit virtualcauseway.com and mention the show for a special rate. This is the Revenue Problem Solvers Podcast, built for revenue leaders who aren't afraid to say they're stuck and need a real answer.

    Enterprise AI Without Guardrails? Here's What Happens | Michael Lamb

  4. 17 July

    Your Messaging Is Losing You Deals and You Don't Know It | Nima Chadha

    Ask five people at your company what you actually do. If the answers don't match, your messaging is broken, and it's costing you pipeline. Nima Chadha, CMO at Venti Group and founder of Offload Marketing, has spent her career fixing exactly this problem for companies working with names like SAP, Adobe, and Okta. She started in sales, not marketing, which means she's heard broken messaging from the worst possible seat, in front of a prospect who can't tell what a product actually does. In this conversation, Nima breaks down why most B2B companies describe features instead of owning a real position, why trying to appeal to everyone means you get remembered by no one, and why pouring more budget into demand generation only makes an unclear message louder, not clearer. You'll hear the simple test Nima uses to diagnose a messaging problem in any company, the "corner of the room" framework for standing out without trying to be everything, and a real story about what happens when a company hands AI too much control over its own messaging with no way to undo the damage. If you've ever struggled to explain what your own company does in one clear sentence, or watched your sales team all pitch it differently, this episode will change how you think about positioning. If you want to hear more from Nima, find her on LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you by Virtual Causeway, helping B2B companies get found earlier in the buying process by the right people, through the right channels. Visit virtualcauseway.com and mention the show for a special rate.

    Your Messaging Is Losing You Deals and You Don't Know It | Nima Chadha

  5. 10 July

    Your Health Score Is Green. Your Customer Already Left. | Lukas Alexander

    Your customer's health score looks fine. Their relationship with your team already went cold months ago, and that's the part most CS teams never catch in time. Lukas Alexander, VP of Customer Success at ChurnZero and former 8-year CS leader at Cision, joins Karl to break down why multi-year deals don't actually solve churn, they just delay the conversation you should be having in month two. They dig into why relationship data now catches churn signals earlier than usage data ever could, why seat-based pricing is collapsing as AI lets one person do the work of five, and why CFOs are suddenly adding new scrutiny to every AI-adjacent renewal, even on accounts that have been stable for years. You'll walk away with a real framework for diagnosing why customers actually leave, a way to think about hybrid pricing while AI pricing models are still shifting, and a coaching tactic for arming your economic buyer to sell the renewal internally before it ever lands on a CFO's desk. Want more from Lukas? Find him on LinkedIn or connect with him at ChurnZero. This episode is brought to you by Virtual Causeway, helping B2B companies get found earlier in the buying process by the people who actually make the decision. Visit virtualcauseway.com and mention the show for a special rate. This is the Revenue Problem Solvers Podcast, built for revenue leaders who say the things they're actually stuck on and want a real answer. #RevenueProblemSolversPodcast

    Your Health Score Is Green. Your Customer Already Left. | Lukas Alexander

  6. 3 July

    Why Your AI Rollout Might Be Increasing Your Churn with Julie Persofsky

    Is your AI rollout quietly increasing your churn? Julie Persofsky has spent her career proving customer success is a growth engine, not a retention afterthought. She took Influitive from zero to $10 million in ARR while outselling the sales team from the existing customer base, and today over 80% of her client portfolio is AI companies. On this episode, she and Karl get into what's actually happening inside B2B teams racing to adopt AI in their go-to-market, and why most of them are making their problems worse, not better. You'll hear why scaling a broken process with AI just increases churn faster, why AI agents need training and a ramp period the same way a new hire does, and why some companies are finding their AI token spend costs more than the salaries of the people they replaced. Julie also breaks down her "AI sandwich" framework for keeping humans in control of AI decisions, and why being a buyer of AI products right now is one of the hardest positions in B2B. This one's for revenue leaders, RevOps, and customer success teams trying to figure out what to actually automate before they lose control of their go-to-market motion. Julie shares more of her thinking on LinkedIn and at achieveexponentialgrowth.com, including a free go-to-market and AI-readiness benchmark and a free CS-to-sales training course. This episode is brought to you by Virtual Causeway. Visit virtualcauseway.com and mention the show for a special rate. #RevenueProblemSolversPodcast

    Why Your AI Rollout Might Be Increasing Your Churn with Julie Persofsky

  7. 26 June

    Your Sales Training Has a 35% Completion Rate. Eve Kedar's Had 80%.

    The industry average for sales training completion is 30–40%. Most companies treat that number like a ceiling. Dr. Eve Kedar treated it like a problem worth solving. At Seagate, she built the Systems Selling Academy, a global enablement program that hit 80% completion and tied directly to a 20% lift in sales growth. Her approach wasn't more content or better modules. It was community, peer coaching, and accountability built into the structure from day one. In this conversation, Eve breaks down exactly how she did it. The weekly leaderboards reported to senior leadership, the global point-and-sticker system that made teams compete across time zones, and the peer coaching sessions where managers modeled failure from the front. She also shares three actions any enablement leader can take immediately: listen to call recordings and map them to your sales process, run loss reviews instead of just win reviews, and build peer coaching into the engine of your program rather than adding it as an afterthought. Eve is the author of Build a Kickass Sales Team and Build a Kickass Online Community, and runs EK Consulting at ekconsulting.io, helping funded software companies get their reps executing consistently. This episode is brought to you by Virtual Causeway who are helping B2B companies get found earlier in the buying process by the right people. Visit virtualcauseway.com and mention the show for a special rate.

    Your Sales Training Has a 35% Completion Rate. Eve Kedar's Had 80%.

  8. 19 June

    21 Years to $10M: What a Founder Stops Doing When the Growth Finally Kicks In | Ben Buckley

    He got fired for a DUI. Started a side hustle to buy diapers and formula. Twenty-one years later, his company clears over $3 million a month. Ben Buckley is the founder and CEO of Digital Dreams, an 8-figure commercial AV integration company that has installed LED walls and enterprise security systems for Apple, Samsung, Salesforce, and Madison Square Garden. He runs it with zero paid ads, zero KPI dashboards, and zero formal sales goals. In 2019, Ben set a goal to hit $10 million in revenue. He hit it last year. And he knows exactly why it took so long — he was the one holding the company back. This episode gets into the real sequence of founder-led scaling: when to duplicate yourself in the field, how to find the hire that changes everything, why owning your customer relationship is non-negotiable, and what it actually takes to hand off sales without losing what makes you good at it. Ben also shares why he pulled back from operating in 31 states, how he gave away 10,000 residential customers for free, and what a CEO coach taught him about reference checks that he almost skipped. If you're a founder who's still the salesperson, the operator, and the closer all at once; this one is for you. You can see the work Ben's team does at Digital Dreams Installs on YouTube and TikTok. This episode is brought to you by Virtual Causeway. Virtual Causeway is helping B2B companies get found earlier in the buying process by the right people. Visit virtualcauseway.com and mention the show for a special rate.

    21 Years to $10M: What a Founder Stops Doing When the Growth Finally Kicks In | Ben Buckley
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About

Revenue Problem Solvers is the sales and revenue leadership podcast for founders, executives, and operators who are done with generic advice. One question drives every conversation: what's the most significant revenue initiative you've ever led, or the most challenging problem you've solved or are currently solving? The conversations span the entire GTM function from sales, marketing, ops, CS, product, leadership, and AI. Real stories. Specific lessons. No filler. New episodes weekly.

Information

  • Creator
    Operationalize
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    59
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Operationalize
  • Show Website
    Revenue Problem Solvers