Selling Intelligence (formerly Selling the Cloud)

Mark Petruzzi, Alan Rudolph
  • 4.4 (8)
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Selling Intelligence is the evolution of Selling the Cloud and designed for revenue leaders who are navigating the AI era. Hosted by Mark Petruzzi and Alan Rudolph, the show brings candid conversations with C-suite leaders across sales, marketing, and customer success on how AI is reshaping the way companies grow, sell, and compete. From agentic GTM strategies to AI-powered pipeline and revenue execution, each episode focuses on what’s actually working and how leaders are turning intelligence into performance. If you’re responsible for growth and trying to lead through the fastest shift in go-to-market we’ve ever seen, this podcast is for you.

  1. 4d ago

    Ep. 146 - Solving the Go-to-Market Riddle with Rick Nee - Part 2

    In Part 2 of Selling Intelligence, Rick Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at Alcatraz AI, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to explore the people and culture behind a scalable go-to-market organization. Rick explains why vertical specialization should go beyond assigning sellers to industries. Sales leaders need to develop enough expertise to become trusted voices in their markets, understand the problems their customers face, and bring insights that make conversations more valuable and less transactional. He shares how Alcatraz encourages sales directors to treat their vertical like their own business, develop informed opinions, participate in industry conversations, and build deeper customer relationships over time. The conversation also explores Rick’s approach to building talent from within. He explains why visible career paths for SDRs can strengthen culture and retention, how internal promotions can create momentum throughout the organization, and why leaders should look beyond the traditional SDR-to-AE path when developing emerging talent. What You’ll Learn: Building Vertical Thought Leaders: How sales directors can develop deeper industry expertise and become trusted resources for customers rather than purely transactional sellers.Treating a Vertical Like a Business: Why sellers should think like business owners within their vertical and use events, speaking opportunities, associations, customer conversations, and content to build credibility.Using Team Selling for Complex Buyers: How sales, engineering, product, and customer success can work together to build trust and support conversations across different levels of the customer organization.Developing SDRs From Within: Why Rick prefers creating internal career paths and how visible promotions can show SDRs that there is a real opportunity to grow inside the organization.Finding the Right Next Role: Why SDR development does not always have to lead to an AE position, and how leaders can identify strengths that may fit account management, renewals, customer success, or other roles.Building a Culture That Retains Talent: How internal mobility, leadership attention, and meaningful development opportunities can contribute to stronger retention in a startup environment.Key Topics: Vertical specialization and industry expertiseSales directors as industry thought leadersBuilding trusted, non-transactional customer relationshipsCustomer advisory boards and team sellingDeveloping SDRs into future GTM leadersInternal promotion versus external hiringCareer mobility across sales, CS, renewals, and channel rolesSales culture and employee retentionUsing data to continuously improve GTM decisionsThe continued importance of human selling in an AI-driven environmentGuest Spotlight: Rick Nee Rick Nee is Chief Revenue Officer at Alcatraz AI. In this two-part Selling Intelligence conversation, Rick shares his approach to scaling go-to-market organizations through vertical specialization, data-driven decision making, talent development, and strong internal culture. In Part 2, he focuses on developing people from within, helping sellers build meaningful industry expertise, and creating career paths that allow talent to grow alongside the organization. Resources & Mentions: Alcatraz AIDaniel PinkTo Sell Is Human by Daniel PinkPeter DruckerCustomer advisory boardsVertical pod structureSDR career development and internal promotionSelling Intelligence Featured by FeedSpot Selling Intelligence has been selected as one of FeedSpot’s Top 20 SaaS Sales Podcasts. Feedspot is an RSS Reader that lets you follow your favorite podcasts alongside blogs and news in one place. https://podcast.feedspot.com/saas_sales_podcasts/ 🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with revenue leaders building the next generation of go-to-market organizations. Mark (00:38) Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. If you're just joining us, this is part two of our conversation with Rick Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at Alcatraz. Go back and listen to part one when you get the chance, but you can also start right here with us. KK Anderson (00:53) Now, three things from part one worth carrying forward. Rick's team went from three people to 25 in two years while the business tripled. He organizes by vertical pod rather than by segment or geography. And each pod runs its own PL, which is why he can walk into a board meeting after his six coffees and Starbucks every 30 days and not locking himself Mark (01:15) Yeah. KK Anderson (01:16) in a room. He can walk into a board meeting with data. and return a figure instead of a headcount request. And before he changes any structure, he goes to that data, he forms his hypothesis because at the stage that he is in with Alcatraz, guessing gets really expensive really fast. Mark (01:33) Part two is the part most leaders find hardest to copy. The people, Rick, let's pick it back up. Rick Nee (01:39) Yeah. KK Anderson (01:39) All right, Rick. Okay, so let's talk about the sales director who wears a marketing hat, right? You ask your vertical sales directors, and I love this by the way, to put a marketing hat on and become thought leaders and to brand themselves as thought leaders in their industry. Like tell me why and what does that look like in practice? Rick Nee (01:59) Yeah, so it's something that I'm pretty passionate about. And I think it goes it ties back into this vertical strategy we were talking about, right? KK. So imagine you're just selling into enterprise, you're jumping from a finance meeting into an airport meeting into a higher ed meeting. there's just not enough time in the day. I you know, the data says that your average sales director, count executive spends 40 to 50% of their time internally, data cleanup, internal meetings, et cetera. Right. And so you you know that that we're always putting more on them than than they can do. So with the verticals, what we've sort of are thinking holistically is, hey, how do you become a thought leader in this so that it's a trusted relationship? To your point, with AI and just the amount of noise out there. I think. And users are astute and they know when it's transactional and when they know you're actually trying to serve them. sounds cliche, but it's true. I tell the story to a lot of folks that one of my best sales directors at my prior company, Authenticate, we had a vertical structure and he had so many trusted relationships and he was sort of a thought leader in in the threat space that the threat intel space that He was a intermediary for folks that he had sold to into their next job when they had lost their job. so he was sort of a middleman that, but he was so plugged KK Anderson (03:11) Yeah. Rick Nee (03:11) into the vertical. and now, of course, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? That end user champion that's now leaving and going somewhere else, they're gonna, they're probably gonna buy that the product at another place. But we're asking our sales directors. with the help of our product team and our product marketing team to think, okay, this is your business. This is your vertical. If you were a business owner and this was your company and you were only focused on this vertical, what and why would you do it? And that might mean, okay, I need to go to these specific shows that are focused on my industry. maybe I want to get a speaking spot. And I want to talk specifically about perhaps a pain point or how customers are being served, right? And so you get that angle. it might be associations, it might be a blog post. but all of that is, learning that happens as that sales director has time and seats. So to be clear, right, when you hire somebody. Okay, if they're plugged into that industry already, you're hiring somebody in the financial services that's coming to your company, easy, right? They're already plugged in, they probably have a pretty decent understanding. But for us, we got the right people on the bus and just said, hey, you're pretty passionate about security. You're enough about financial services or tech or whatever your vertical is, but now we're gonna ask you to dig deeper. And you're gonna do some some homework, you're gonna learn, you're gonna work with our team, our leadership team, and you're gonna start to take all of the things that you have learned. And form an opinion. Form an opinion that adds value to your end customers that you can share. Whether it's a customer advisory board, too, that's another thing we're starting. form opinions, be a thought leader. And again, there's others that are helping, but as you get into that 12-month, 18-month, two years with the sales director, then all of a sudden you're learning from them. And that's where I know when it's working. When I have a question about earports. I call our sales leader that runs critical infrastructure and I say to him, Hey, why don't they turn on this feature? Or what what did what are they doing here? And then he'll just educate me on that. And so again, I I just think the end users, they're looking for nuggets. They they've done enough inform research on your product and they probably have done some homework, but they're, you know, they're looking for How you plug them into another part of the network, maybe trends that you're seeing. It's nothing to do with necessarily selling them anything else, although that will help. and it's not transactional. and it's working very, very well for us. it's something that takes time, and you can't do it with 10 verticals of your series A. You might only pick one vertical, but I would say give it a shot. Pick that vertical where you have the best product market fit signal or the most traction and lean into that and then copy and paste once you have enough revenue or cash to to to invest in additional verticals, et cetera. So that's what we did is sort of let's pick the ones that make sense and then build out from there.

    Ep. 146 - Solving the Go-to-Market Riddle with Rick Nee - Part 2

  2. Sep 23

    Ep. 145 – Solving the Go-to-Market Riddle with Rick Nee - Part 1

    In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Rick Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at Alcatraz, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to unpack what happens after a company reaches product market fit and the challenge shifts from finding customers to building a go-to-market organization that can scale. Rick explains why revenue leaders should resist bringing a fixed playbook into a new company and instead use customer behavior, sales data, and the buyer journey to determine what the organization actually needs. He shares how Alcatraz has built its revenue structure around vertical pods, creating tighter feedback loops between sales, SDRs, customer success, and other customer-facing roles. The conversation also dives into the importance of cleaning CRM data before making strategic decisions, identifying the metrics that actually matter, and reverse engineering performance by vertical to determine where to invest people, capital, and resources. What You’ll Learn: Scaling After Product Market Fit: Why the GTM motion that wins your first customers may not be the one that gets you to the next stage of growth.Playbooks as Starting Points: Why proven sales frameworks should inform your strategy rather than dictate it.Building Around the Buyer Journey: How customer needs and sales complexity should shape hiring, team structure, and resource allocation.The Power of Vertical Pods: How organizing teams around specific industries can improve knowledge transfer, customer understanding, and feedback loops.Reverse Engineering Revenue Data: How sales cycle length, deal size, win rates, pipeline coverage, and land versus expand behavior can reveal where growth opportunities actually exist.Cleaning Data Before Scaling: Why CROs need to validate CRM data and remove misleading outliers before using it to guide major GTM decisions.Key Topics: Scaling a GTM organization after product market fitBuilding a data-driven revenue strategyWhy one-size-fits-all sales playbooks fall shortVertical pod structures and feedback loopsSales cycle and deal size analysis by verticalPipeline coverage and win ratesLand and expand revenue motionsCRM data quality and RevOpsGeneralists versus specialists in early-stage companiesUsing AI to pressure test assumptions and uncover blind spotsPrioritizing high-impact GTM initiatives instead of changing everything at onceGuest Spotlight: Rick Nee Rick Nee is Chief Revenue Officer at Alcatraz, a Cupertino-based company focused on facial authentication for physical security. As a revenue leader, Rick focuses on solving the go-to-market challenges that emerge after product market fit, using data to determine how teams should be structured, which verticals deserve investment, and where companies can scale most effectively. In this conversation, Rick shares a practical approach to building revenue organizations around real customer behavior rather than assumptions, industry benchmarks, or rigid playbooks. Resources & Mentions: AlcatrazHubSpotClaudeCRM and RevOps data analysisVertical pod GTM structuresAGS Two Millimeter Club🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with revenue leaders on building smarter, more scalable go-to-market organizations. Mark (00:30) Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi here with my co-founder and co-host KK Anderson. KK Anderson (00:37) Here's a number we're sitting with. A sales organization that goes from three people to 25 in 24 months has effectively rebuilt itself every quarter. Most leaders in that position reach for the standard playbook because it's the fastest thing available. But our guest today treated the playbook as a starting point instead of an answer and went to his own data to decide what to keep. Mark (01:00) Rick Nee is Chief Revenue Officer at Alcatraz, the Cupertino company replacing badges with facial authentication, backed by more than $100 million in capital and trusted by Fortune 100 Enterprises AI data centers, airports, universities, and professional sports teams. Rick, welcome to Selling Intelligence. Rick Nee (01:23) Thanks for having me. I am very excited to be here. this is exciting and these are topics that I'm pretty passionate about. Mark (01:28) Excellent. All right, first topic, solving the go-to-market riddle. You have said that stage the stage that energizes you the most is the one right after product market fit. When finding customers who want to buy is no longer the problem. Describe what actually changes for a revenue leader at that moment. Rick Nee (01:46) It's a great question. So I didn't figure this out so a little bit later in my career. People ask, hey, do you want to work at a startup? And that can mean a lot of different things, a series D with a thousand customers versus a pre-series or series A, where you're trying to find that product market fit. And so I think you have to like think about where you want to be on that journey. and then if we really define what product market fit means. I was listening to someone the other day from HubSpot and they said, product market fit doesn't mean two two customers that have bought your product and hey, we have figured this out. when I define product market fit, I'm looking at, okay, a subset of customers have not only bought your product, they're using it and you've retained them. And so then there's that there's that point, that drop, that inflection point where, okay, we now have a growing set of customers that not only are buying, but are also staying with us. And so when you get to that part of the journey, it often requires a remodel. And the folks and the in the way that you were going to market to get those first customers is not necessarily what's going to get you to the next level. I call folks that are in that series A, I call them pirates. They're just out there, they're with the founder. They might be that founder led AE. They're literally trying to figure out what is going to stick, right? And it often is not what they initially think. when I came to Alcatraz, they had already figured out was interested and who was buying our And so then I that what the GTM riddle, what excites me about that is then you have to take a look at it and you have to say, okay, what type of salesperson do I need? Are we an enterprise motion? Are we a mid-market motion? Are we a director? Are we channel? do we need hunters and farmers or both? what use cases and personas and verticals should we focus on? What custom what sets of customers should we say no to? So when you look at all of that based on some of those first customers, you'll find that you're gonna have to make some changes. And it doesn't mean you just rip and replace, it means there's iterations and you're still testing. But I think That is where I love to thrive, where you start to build what I would call truly for scale. I know that everybody likes to say, hey, scale. You know, everybody wants the But really thinking about how you're gonna build, because if you do it the wrong way, you're gonna build and attenuate out in a in a in a bad way, right? And so you wanna obviously get it right. But that's where I like to come in. I don't wanna go figure out if this product is gonna gain traction in the market. And some people live for that, right? And if you do, then that's where you should go. But for me, it's sort of figuring out this riddle and how do you get to the next five hundred customers or whatever set of AR, whatever your goal may be. KK Anderson (04:14) So you touched on it a little bit, but if you don't mind, go a little bit deeper and walk us through the the pieces of this riddle or puzzle, like as you call it, as you see them today, and maybe even give us give us some glimpse into what you're thinking about as you're moving into to 2027 with your how you're gonna put the pieces of that riddle together for Alcatraz. Rick Nee (04:34) Well, I mean, first you have to start with what you think about your playbook and you think about what you know, what riddle you're trying to solve. There are there are real stakeholders with real goals that may not necessarily be the ones that you you're marching towards, but they are what they are, right? You have the board, you have investors, you have the CEO, you different different folks and stakeholders that are like, This is what we need to do. So I think the lens that you immediately have to take as you're figuring out this riddle is what is the most efficient and effective way to get an ROI and to grow sales fast? And often that means reverse engineering the data, right? everyone talks about AI, but if you look at Claude and you pipe that into your HubSpot and you start to cue the different leading and lagging indicators. You should be able form a pretty strong hypothesis of what you should and shouldn't do as you march down a path, which is an annual number. and and that let's face it, the average CRO lasts 14 or 16 months, depending on which data you're looking at in this as world. So I I would say if you're you're figuring out that riddle, it let's keep it simple, stupid. Let's look at Eight to ten metrics and be clear-eyed on what we should make our immediate, what I'll call low-hanging fruit. And let's go get some quick wins as we're thinking about that remodel. Earn some trust. You can actually miss your first or second quarterly target if it's trending in the right direction with the plan, right? So I'm looking at okay, which verticals? Who do I have here that can actually Stay with the company as we as we scale. Again, a series A pirate, a hunter, might not necessarily be the right fit for a series B. You're going to look at which use cases, the sales cycling, your win rate, your your deal size land versus expand. And then through all of that, you can start to put in place what I would call your vertical structure, which I know we're gonna talk a little bit about today, but I think Most CROs that come into these roles at this

    Ep. 145 – Solving the Go-to-Market Riddle with Rick Nee - Part 1

  3. Sep 16

    Ep. 144 – Building Predictable Pipeline and Breaking Revenue Silos with Thurman Sneed - Part 2

    General Episode Description: In Part 2 of Selling Intelligence, Thurman Sneed, Chief Revenue Officer at Marigold, returns to show how the same “do the math” mindset can transform everything from account coverage and customer conversations to seller development and AI adoption. Thurman explains why Marigold moved from a round robin model to vertical specialization, how CSMs and SDRs can grow into revenue generating roles, and why a tighter ICP helps teams focus their resources where they can create the most impact. The conversation also explores how sellers can use customer data and benchmark insights to build stronger business cases and quantify value for executives. Thurman shares how his team is applying AI to sales coaching, account preparation, pipeline generation, and churn prediction, while keeping human judgment at the center. The goal is not AI for the sake of AI. It is using technology where it can genuinely improve speed, capacity, decision making, and revenue outcomes. What You’ll Learn: Vertical Specialization: Why moving away from round robin account assignment can help sellers develop deeper industry expertise and become trusted advisors.Turning CSM Knowledge into Revenue: How customer success teams can use their existing customer knowledge and relationships to identify expansion opportunities.Building the Next Generation of Sellers: Why giving SDRs opportunities to own and close smaller deals can accelerate their development and create stronger career paths.Getting Serious About ICP: How focusing on the right markets and customers can improve efficiency across sales, marketing, and customer success.Selling with Customer Math: How benchmark data and ROI calculations can help sellers turn value propositions into compelling executive business cases.AI That Earns Its Place: How AI can improve sales preparation, coaching, research, pipeline generation, and decision making without removing human judgment.Using AI to Predict Churn: Why clean, accessible data is critical for identifying customer risk before it becomes a lost account.Key Topics: Vertical sales specializationIdeal customer profile strategySDR development and career progressionCustomer success expansion opportunitiesROI based sellingBenchmark data in sales conversationsExecutive level value sellingAI enabled sales coachingSales productivity and capacityAI and revenue team efficiencyChurn prediction and customer retentionHuman judgment in AI driven salesGuest Spotlight: Thurman Sneed Thurman Sneed is the Chief Revenue Officer at Marigold, where he leads sales, customer success, revenue operations, and marketing. With a career that began in accounting and auditing before expanding into operations and revenue leadership, Thurman brings a distinctive financial and operational perspective to the CRO role. His leadership philosophy centers on disciplined execution, data driven decision making, cross-functional alignment, and helping teams turn ambitious revenue goals into practical, achievable actions. Resources & Mentions: MarigoldVertical coverage modelsIdeal Customer Profile strategyROI calculators and benchmark dataAI enabled sales coachingChurn predictionThe Two Millimeter Club by AGS🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more GTM insights from leading voices in sales, revenue, and business growth. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mark (00:38) Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. If you're just joining in, you're in the right place. And if you come straight from part one, we picked up where we left off. KK Anderson (00:48) In part one, Thurman Sneed made three things clear. He came into the revenue seat through accounting and operations rather than through a quota. And that lens is why he thinks in arithmetic. He discovered that the individual level math he assumed his managers were doing with sellers was not actually happening. And he treats every function inside the company as a customer, which is what makes the outside selling work. Mark (01:14) So in part two we get practical. Thurman rebuilt the coverage model, taught people who have never carried a quota to carry one, pointed the same math at his customers, and now deciding where AI belongs in all of this. Thurman, welcome back. Let us pick up right here. Thurman (01:33) Thank you, Mark. Mark (01:34) So Thurman, Rebuilding the coverage model. So Thurman, you inherited a model where accounts were assigned round robin and reps were specialized by platform. What was the first change you made and why that one first? Thurman (01:48) Yeah, the first thing that we did is we decided that we were going to have a vertical coverage model as opposed to round robin. And I made that first because I wanted fo I wanted our sales team to learn the customer, to, to learn the terminology, to be very specific, and to enjoy, what they were doing every day, as opposed to today I wake up and I'm gonna be serving. this industry, the next day, I get a hospital, the next day I get an amusement park. It didn't seem fair, just from a basic level, so why not assign to a vertical and become specialist in that space? KK Anderson (02:23) So and in doing that allows them to almost brand their expertise and be thought of as trusted advisors and being able to solve the business problems that your customers are out there facing. Thurman (02:35) Yes, truly to be able to solve it in a in a very meaningful way because they understand how they drive their outcome. So back to doing the math, how do they actually need to produce their pipeline, their conversions, their sales, whatever that might be, even if it's a not for profit, how do they need to drive more donations? if it's a government entity, what are they trying to produce as an outcome as opposed to it being so different in every conversation? KK Anderson (03:03) Right. And your your product at Marigold is you know, they're they're looking for they're using Marigold because they want to drive business and communications and conversions and so that's that's really important. Mm-hmm. Thurman (03:18) With specific audiences. And it's not always the same way that you drive that content KK Anderson (03:23) Right. And Thurman (03:24) to those audiences. KK Anderson (03:25) it's definitely a way to create differentiation, When you can help with their problems. So you gave people who had been processing renewals for years a quota. So they're not used to a quota. It's kind of like handing the finance guy a quota, like you got, Thurman (03:39) This is that. KK Anderson (03:39) and you told them, you know, you're gonna train them and tell them to take advantage of of what they did not realize they already knew. And so Like what what did that teaching look like week to week? We have so many, we have so many customers. I've seen it a hundred times, where all of a sudden a CSM turns into a, quota carrying member of the sales team. So tell us how you did it. Thurman (04:00) Well, one of the first things is to inject confidence in what they already knew. They have been involved in so many customer conversations. So many times a customer has has actually explained to them the pain that they are actually that they endure. And I love it when it's a case of when we bring on a new customer and that CSM is onboarding them and they're connecting with the challenge that they were having elsewhere. Right. So they have learned that or they were learning that over the years, but not necessarily turning that lens and looking at it from a different angle. What if I took these customers that I have made happy and asked them to introduce me to another department at a university? Or is literally leveraging the relationships that they had built with their customer set? Right. And so the training became more of let's inject the confidence because you know the platform better than some of our brand new sellers right now. You actually live in the platform. You've lived the customer experience. You've gone through the benchmark conversations and the performance conversations with a customer. Change that lens to someone that is reaching out that has not experienced that yet. Mark (05:12) Yeah, and I love how, Thurman, you're taking this more into the prescripted side. So let's go even a little further. you moved your SDRs from setting meetings to owning and closing the smaller deals themselves. What does that do for a seller's development, particularly an early stage seller, that handing off the meeting could never do? Thurman (05:34) Yeah, and we didn't move them holistically, but what I wanted to do was to ensure that our SDR team had a career path and that they understood that career path very early versus late. Right. And so ultimately that close closing of the deal is what we all think of, that's the account executive, But if we could help them get a little feel for why am I passing off this customer that I can go ahead and assist now? I understand why why do I need to set up a meeting and make them wait a few days or a period of time when I can go ahead and service service them? And that's what an AE needs to do, If I can solve that pain, I can hear that pain, I'm hearing the challenges. Let's just go ahead and close the deal. and when they get ready and they're further into their career, a year, 18 months into their career, and they're ready to go to That transition is so much faster. But at the same time, what it allows is it allows me to know who really does not want to do sales. Right. And do you want to be an SDR for from a career perspective? That's also okay. Do you want to transition and become a CSM one day? That's also okay. Right. But it allows those that are in this position that we traditionally think of as our bench for sales. to be able to make that career decision very early. KK Anderson (06:54) So y you put it you in one of your th your therminisms, In the in our prep video was we started talking. you put it as eighty t

    Ep. 144 – Building Predictable Pipeline and Breaking Revenue Silos with Thurman Sneed - Part 2

  4. Sep 9

    Ep. 143 – Building Predictable Pipeline and Breaking Revenue Silos with Thurman Sneed - Part 1

    General Episode Description: In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Thurman Sneed, Chief Revenue Officer at Marigold, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to unpack a simple but often overlooked discipline in revenue leadership: do the math. Drawing from his background in finance, operations, and revenue leadership, Thurman explains how sellers can turn an intimidating quota into a practical action plan by understanding their pipeline, win rates, gaps, and the time they have left to close them. The conversation also explores how Thurman’s finance background shapes the way he approaches forecasting, pipeline quality, and cross-functional leadership. He shares why revenue teams need a single source of truth, how leaders can eliminate bloated pipeline, and why sales, marketing, customer success, and RevOps perform better when they understand each other’s goals and operate as one connected revenue organization. What You’ll Learn: Do the Math: How to break quota goals into pipeline requirements, win rates, and achievable daily actions.Pipeline Gap Planning: How sellers can use existing pipeline, marketing, SDRs, and customer success relationships to build a realistic path to quota.The Value of Time: Why starting pipeline generation early gives sellers more ways to close the gap and avoid end-of-year pressure.Forecasting with a Finance Mindset: How financial discipline helps leaders identify inflated pipeline and focus on opportunities that are actually real.One Source of Truth: Why shared data and reporting create better conversations across sales, marketing, finance, and operations.Breaking Revenue Silos: How understanding the goals of adjacent teams can improve selling, customer handoffs, retention, and overall revenue performance.Key Topics: Pipeline math and quota attainmentIndividual seller forecastingWin rates and pipeline coveragePipeline quality and deal qualificationRevenue forecastingFinance driven revenue leadershipSales accountability and coachingCross-functional revenue alignmentSales, marketing, and customer success collaborationBreaking organizational silosSingle source of truth for revenue teamsGuest Spotlight: Thurman Sneed Thurman Sneed is the Chief Revenue Officer at Marigold, where he leads sales, customer success, revenue operations, and marketing. With a career that began in accounting and auditing before expanding into operations and revenue leadership, Thurman brings a distinctive financial and operational perspective to the CRO role. His leadership philosophy centers on disciplined execution, data driven decision making, cross-functional alignment, and helping teams turn ambitious revenue goals into practical, achievable actions. Resources & Mentions: MarigoldPipeline management and forecastingRevenue OperationsCross-functional revenue alignmentThe Two Millimeter Club by AGS🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more GTM insights from leading voices in sales, revenue, and business growth. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mark (00:30) Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I am Mark Petruzzi here as always with KK Anderson. Today we are talking about a phrase that most revenue leaders say and almost nobody actually does. KK Anderson (00:43) Do the math. Our guest uses it with his team constantly, and the first time you hear it, you might think it sounds a little cold, but it's quite the opposite. He uses it to take a seller who is convinced they are going to miss and show them on paper why they are not and how they can close the gap. Mark (01:02) So Thurman Sneed is the chief revenue officer at Marigold. He started his career as an auditor at Arthur Anderson, spent years running go-to-market operations. He has sat in the chief operating officer seat, and now leads revenue. Thurman, welcome to the show. Thurman (01:20) Thank you, Mark. Glad to be here. Mark (01:22) Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I am Mark Petruzzi with KK Anderson and this is the show for revenue leaders who would rather diagnose than guess. KK Anderson (01:32) Here's the thing that got our attention. Our guest spent years in operations assuming that sales managers underneath him were sitting down with individual sellers and walking them through their numbers. Then he took the revenue seat and found out that they were not. Not the team level math, the individual level math. Mark (01:49) Thurman Sneed, aka the Thurminator, I've heard that recently, is the chief revenue officer at Marigo, where he owns sales, customer success, revenue operations, and marketing. He came up through accounting and operations rather than through a quota, which makes him a rare profile in this seat and a very powerful one. Thurman, thanks for being here. Thurman (02:14) Thank you, Mark, for having me. I'm excited. Mark (02:16) So you have a phrase your team hears from you constantly. Do the math. Take us inside the first time you sat down with a rep and actually did it. What went on that that page? Thurman (02:28) Well, the first thing that went on that page was a little bit of a challenge in asking what is your current pipeline? And you might think that the person would reel that off just really quickly, but it wasn't that quick. So the but that was the first part of the math. What is your current pipeline? Okay. So once we get to that number, I ask a second question. What is your win rate? Your personal win rate. On top of what is the win rate for that vertical, that industry? What what have others experienced potentially? Especially in the c in this particular case, it was a new rep. And I wanted to make sure that this individual knew the history of this particular vertical. And so we went on a journey for every step. That win rate, I let The individual rep picked what they wanted to use versus the historical because they were more conservative than the historical. The second piece of that was all right, there's a gap there once you exhaust your existing pipeline. Let's take that gap, apply that same win rate the opposite way, right? And that's that's how much pipeline you need to be able to see that has the potential to close in the in the rest of the year. So you can think about that and say, I like to think of things in a very similar way that I do in real estate because I love investing in real estate. But how many different ways can you close that gap now with 11 months left? Way one, marketing didn't turn off. So you're going to continue to get some business from marketing inbound leads. Number two, you have an SDR that's assigned to work with you. What are you two going to work together to go get from two perspectives? One from a new division or cross-selling type of perspective, and one from a new logo in your territory perspective. But how are you going to map that out and drive the amount of pipeline that you want to see and close, still applying that same win rate to it? And then the last piece I wanted them to understand. Is don't forget that there's a CSM in the organization or CSMs, it could be plural, that are also working in your same vertical. Have you had a conversation with them? Have you become friends? Are you all working as a team to realize that part of you closing your number is actually them introducing you to people that they know, giving you referrals? And so by the time we finished that conversation, someone that was thinking, my God, how in the world am I going to hit my quota? It had been put into more digestible chunks and an action plan that they could go and take and say, most importantly, if I start this today versus starting this six months from now, I'm going to blow my quota out. Right. And that's what I KK Anderson (05:12) I love it. Thurman (05:13) want this individual to leave the table with. KK Anderson (05:15) I love it. And you if you've got someone's average deal size, you've got their win rate, you've got, their quota, you can so easily back into the number of activities that they need to generate to be able to, you know, and then have your conversion rates every step of way. You need to make this many phone calls and this many people, this percent will answer, this percent won't. The ones that answer, this percent will be a qualified, this percent won't. For the ones that are qualified, and it just goes trickles trickles down. But to the point where that every single day, well, I mean, like for me, for example, if I don't have at least 10 calls that are related to a an op a business opportunity on my calendar, there's a big problem. Right. Thurman (05:58) Yes. KK Anderson (05:59) And so, and I know that I need to reach out to, you know, a hundred people a week. And if I do that, then then I'm gonna be able to feed, feed that, feed that pipeline. And so, and you mentioned a new rep, and the new rep has a lot of resources behind them, like you said, through SDR and CSM and getting referrals. Tell me about how you apply this for like your your long-standing reps who aren't who maybe they know what they need to be doing, but they're not doing it. Thurman (06:25) It's exactly the same math, believe it or not. And the and the thing is the beauty of it being a new rep is that the new rep gets to start it from the beginning of their journey. For a rep that has been doing it, they might have picked up the habits of not doing the math and sitting down, not just at the beginning of a fiscal year, but all the time. Because once that becomes a consistent thing, they will never find themselves without pipeline. But we all know. We find we find reps that end up in a situation where they don't have pipeline and it's because they stopped doing the math. KK Anderson (06:57) That's right. Mark (06:58) So Thurman, you put time into the equation as well, not just the overall pipeline. So what does a seller understand differently once they see what eleven months buys them compared to ten months compared to less than that? Thurman (07:15) Yeah, so what a what a rep

    Ep. 143 – Building Predictable Pipeline and Breaking Revenue Silos with Thurman Sneed - Part 1

  5. Sep 2

    Ep. 142 – Measuring AI ROI and Turning Adoption into Business Outcomes with Denis Scott - Part 2

    General Episode Description: In Part 2 of this conversation, Denis Scott continues the discussion by exploring what AI accountability looks like inside boardrooms, executive teams, and private equity backed organizations. He explains why leaders must move beyond tracking AI adoption and begin measuring how AI investments contribute to business performance, operational efficiency, and long term enterprise value. The conversation also examines what separates AI mature organizations from those still experimenting with adoption. Denis shares why AI fluency is becoming a competitive advantage, how organizations can build stronger measurement frameworks, and why the future belongs to companies that combine human judgment with AI driven execution. What You’ll Learn: What boards expect to see when evaluating AI investmentWhy AI measurement is becoming essential during due diligence and company exitsHow AI maturity differs from simple AI adoptionWhy AI fluency creates stronger business outcomesHow marketing leaders can measure AI performance inside their teamsPractical ways organizations can improve AI adoption across departmentsWhy adaptability is becoming one of the most valuable leadership skillsHow to balance AI efficiency with human creativity and decision makingKey Topics: AI governanceAI measurementPrivate equity and AIBoard reportingAI fluencyEnterprise AI strategyMarketing leadershipBusiness outcomesAI adoptionOrganizational changeAI ROIExecutive leadershipGuest Spotlight: Denis Scott Denis Scott is the Chief Marketing Officer at Laradin, an AI execution intelligence company focused on helping organizations measure AI adoption, productivity, and business impact. Prior to Laradin, Denis held senior marketing leadership roles at OpenTable, Lyft, SurveyMonkey, Fanatics Betting and Gaming, CharterUp, and other leading technology companies, where he built data driven marketing organizations and enterprise growth strategies. Resources & Mentions: LaradinAI execution intelligenceAI fluencyAI ROIEnterprise AI measurementPrivate equity advisory🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with today’s leading revenue executives, AI innovators, and GTM leaders. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mark Petruzzi (00:00) Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi. Alan Rudolph (00:03) And I'm Alan Rudolph. This is part two with Dennis Scott, CMO of Laradin. Be sure to go back and listen to part one fascinating discussion. this broad, you know, where are we today in this in this AI world? But if you want to start here, let's bring you up to speed. Dennis Scott spent over 20 years in marketing at firms like Open Table and Lyft, SurveyMonkey, Fanatics, Betting, and Gaming before becoming CMO of Charter Up. In part One, he told us what brought him into Laradin, an AI execution intelligence company built to answer the question most enterprises cannot answer today. Is the AI spend actually working? He walked us through why 72% of enterprises call AI adoption their biggest challenge. I mean, just fascinating data. And how does Laradin Scott platform reveal when companies finally see their own AI usage data. Mark Petruzzi (00:59) So in part two, we get into the boardroom where we love to be. What this means for private equity bac pr private equity backed companies staring down an exit, and what it actually looks like on the other side once an organization gets measurement done right, whether they are a private equity portfolio company, other s medium sized organizations, or even the enterprise ones. We're all stressing and being challenged by the same things. Dennis, welcome back. Denis Scott (01:28) Thank you for having me back. This is great. Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation in the first one. Alan Rudolph (01:32) You know, Dennis, as I sit in board meetings where AI spend is being, addressed at a line item level, and sponsors are asking about measurement, about business value, and management teams are trying to defend what they did, why they did it, where where is my expense? Where's my capital allocation, etc.? What should a portfolio company CEO be able to show a board today that most simply cannot? Denis Scott (01:58) Yeah, this is exactly where our product lands often is in board conversations, right? And so we are finding that teams are leveraging our Larid and data to have those conversations. And so what they're really trying to show the board is is really the two thing, well, three things I should say. One, how has our organization adopted AI, So is it is it only engineering? Is it across functions? What what does it look like AI within within the the company? The second thing is, what does our spend look like on AI? And Alan Rudolph (02:30) Mm. Denis Scott (02:31) that number, whatever that number may be, naturally that leads to, well, I don't know, is that good or bad? Are we spending enough or are we doing too little? so then that naturally leads to, well, what are the business outcomes from that investment? And so as a marketer, I think about you ask those same questions around a marketing budget, Like, wow, this is an investment. What are we getting for that? How is it looking? Alan Rudolph (02:52) Mm. Denis Scott (02:52) How is it impacting the business? And so really leaders should be able to go into those boardrooms and have that conversation. And that's exactly why we find a lot of organizations coming to us and saying, I have this problem. I don't know how to answer these questions. Right. Alan Rudolph (03:07) Got it. Mark Petruzzi (03:07) So Dennis, with the world class companies that you have been the marketing leader of and the rooms you have been in with executive teams on board having to defend your budgets and proving impact, what's the difference between a CMO who can walk into that conversation with data and the one that who's still working off of andotes? Denis Scott (03:29) I think it's the a piece, and I'm glad you asked that, Mark. It's a piece that's really helped me define my own career. I actually learned early on that senior marketing leaders that were really successful actually are are able to speak to data and look at things like ROI and investments and budgets and forecasts. I think now marketing leaders are actually facing this new question, which everybody's facing, which is not only what is your marketing investment, but how are you leveraging AI with that? And being able to speak to those, I think is really starting to separate the the CMO world in many ways. I've always realized going into a conversation with CEOs and CFOs, The creative is great and they love to see that and that represents the brand, but they're naturally going to ask you, what are the outcomes? Right. And so I think AI is the same way for marketing leaders. What are the outcomes? What are you seeing from that? so I just think I've seen it all over LinkedIn that the the role of a CMO has changed to sort of almost like a part data analyst slash engineer in some ways, right? Alan Rudolph (04:35) awesome. So put your put yourself in the seat of a portfolio company six months before sale. What would you tell them to start measuring right now so that when AI adoption gets discussed during the due diligence process, you can drive the conversation versus, sort of s you know, the blank stare what as the questions get asked. Denis Scott (04:57) Yeah, I think the the idea here, Alan, is you want to be concrete, You want when posed that question, you want to be able to say, this is how we're using AI. This is how much it's costing us, and this is what we're using it for. And that's how this drives the business, right? And if you think about a conversation where you walk in and say, Hey, we have great AI adoption. we think the costs are this. I don't know exactly Alan Rudolph (05:20) Mm-hmm. Denis Scott (05:21) what it's doing. It's going to be tricky because as on those exits, a lot of that is the a lot of the due diligence is around the numbers, And so the more concrete you can be across all of those numbers, the more confidence you're gonna build in and be able to close that deal. I just think we we can't avoid that these questions are coming around AI for everybody, Mark Petruzzi (05:42) Yeah, and just to remind everyone that we use these examples around private equity for two reasons. One is we have a very successful private equity group that Alan leads for us at AGS. but even Alan is not a private equity own only guy. He's been in in in many publicly traded companies and other types of companies throughout his career. So Dennis, when you when you look at that, again when you're dealing with a public company, you have a very, very distinct process where everything is being analyzed of every quarter of every year. is is this a good analogy that we're doing with private equity? Because now private private equity has has built those kind of processes. They look at it very similar to what what needs to happen for a public company from a reporting perspective. Is there any Are there any differences or is it just a nice setup that just allows you to work with companies, whether they are, private equity owned or whether they are public organizations as well? Denis Scott (06:43) It's good question, Mark. I think about it in terms of of of one of the words I love to use for marketers as well is accountability. And I Alan Rudolph (06:50) Mm-hmm. Denis Scott (06:51) I think that's really the idea behind the process. every three months, when I worked in public companies and I worked in prepping for their earnings calls and even joining their earnings calls, marketing was always a big topic, And it was because, outside of salaries and if you were in a retail company leases. Marketing was one of the larger line items. So naturally analysts would push on that, right? And say, Well, how's this working? And I used to think to myself after we got off

    Ep. 142 – Measuring AI ROI and Turning Adoption into Business Outcomes with Denis Scott - Part 2

  6. Aug 26

    Ep. 141 – Measuring AI ROI and Turning Adoption into Business Outcomes with Denis Scott - Part 1

    General Episode Description: In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Denis Scott, Chief Marketing Officer at Laradin, joins Mark Petruzzi and Alan Rudolph to explore one of the biggest questions facing business leaders today: how do you measure whether AI is actually delivering business value? Drawing from his experience leading marketing at companies like OpenTable, Lyft, SurveyMonkey, and Fanatics, Denis explains why AI adoption is no longer enough. Organizations now need visibility into how AI is being used, where it creates measurable outcomes, and where it introduces unnecessary complexity. The conversation explores the challenges of measuring AI investments, hidden AI costs across organizations, and how executives can connect AI usage directly to business performance. What You’ll Learn: Why AI adoption alone is no longer a meaningful success metricHow organizations can connect AI usage to measurable business outcomesThe hidden AI costs most companies fail to trackWhy measuring AI proficiency matters more than measuring adoptionHow AI improves workflows when applied to the right business processesCommon mistakes organizations make when introducing AI into daily workWhy executive teams need visibility into enterprise wide AI usageHow AI measurement helps boards, CFOs, and executives make better investment decisionsKey Topics: AI measurement and ROIEnterprise AI adoptionAI proficiency versus adoptionHidden AI costsAI workflow optimizationMarketing leadershipExecutive decision makingAI governanceBusiness outcomesAI productivity measurementBoard reportingEnterprise technology strategyGuest Spotlight: Denis Scott Denis Scott is the Chief Marketing Officer at Laradin, an AI execution intelligence company focused on helping organizations measure AI adoption, productivity, and business impact. Prior to Laradin, Denis held senior marketing leadership roles at OpenTable, Lyft, SurveyMonkey, Fanatics Betting and Gaming, CharterUp, and other leading technology companies, where he built data driven marketing organizations and enterprise growth strategies. Resources & Mentions: LaradinComscoreOpenTableLyftSurveyMonkeyFanatics Betting and GamingCharterUpAI execution intelligenceAI ROI🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with today’s leading revenue executives, AI innovators, and GTM leaders. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mark Petruzzi (00:00) Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi. Alan Rudolph (00:03) And I'm Alan Rudolph. Mark Petruzzi (00:04) Every company we work with has the same exact story right now. Budget is improved, tools rolled out, adoptions declared a win in some sort of a board deck, and almost nobody can tell you with real data whether any of it has moved the business at all. Alan Rudolph (00:22) Our guest built his career on the marketing side of some of the biggest consumer brands in tech, and now he's on the other side of that exact problem. Dennis Scott spent over 20 years leading marketing at Open Table, Lyft, SurveyMonkey, and Fanatics Betting and Gaming, and most recently served as CMO of Charter Up. He's now CMO of Laradin, an AI execution intelligence company built by the team that created the original. Digital Measurement Infrastructure at ComScore. Dennis, welcome to Selling Intelligence. Denis Scott (00:56) Hi everybody and Alan and Mark, thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. Mark Petruzzi (01:00) Excellent. So we'll jump right into topic one. it and it's entitled From Consumer Marketplaces to AI Measurement, Dennis's Plant Path to Laradin. So, Dennis, you spent your career building brands people trust. they trust the the those companies with their money and their time. Companies like Open Table, Lyft, SurveyMonkey. What did you see that pulled you towards an enterprise AI measurement company at this point in your career? Denis Scott (01:27) Yeah, I think I've had the fortune of working for some great brands throughout my career, which has been an incredible experience. But one of the things that, as a marketing leader, you're always accountable for is really the the measurement, given that you're you're usually one of the largest line items on a PL. And as we all know, this AI explosion three years ago, none of us were really living in this world. And now It's sort of the topic of the day every day, every and so as a marketing leader, one of the problems I saw was this is really hard to quantify and understand. And how do we how do we figure this out? And so when I learned and heard about Laridan and the team that was running it, I almost ran to it living here in the Bay Area, being surrounded by this AI challenge and opportunity. To know that somebody is actually solving how do I think about this? How do I understand this? And how do I communicate this to leadership, to boards, to investors? Alan Rudolph (02:26) Awesome. great intro, Dennis. So Laridan's entire pitch is built on radical honesty. Love that comment about what's Denis Scott (02:34) Right. Alan Rudolph (02:35) actually happening within a company, within a company from an AI spend standpoint. And that's not always flattering, as we know in today's marketplace. So, how is marketing that kind of product different from marketing some of the journeys that you've been on more of a consumer brand? Denis Scott (02:52) Yeah, I steal from that old adage in marketing, half of my marketing is working, I just don't know which half. And so I think we should we should always be open to the idea that not everything is working. And you know, as a measurement platform and identifying opportunities for organizations through workflows, and we can get in deeper into that, I think it's actually important to share the good and the bad. Right, or I would say the good and the opportunity, right? And it is different than marketing a consumer brand because often a consumer brand, there's this this almost one-to-one relationship. Whereas in an enterprise type motion, you're you're solving across these large organizations, right? And those those opportunities that you're identifying. we are a very horizontal product working across all functions. You may not even know where those opportunities lie or where things are are going really well. And so I think you just are are talking about a one-to-many relationship and how we can help solve a f a, sort of organizational wide opportunity slash challenge, and so I think that's where. In a consumer brand, you could be talking to to people that fit your constituents, right? whatever it is. Alan Rudolph (04:05) Mm-hmm. Denis Scott (04:05) when I worked at Clorox, I worked on STP. It's like our our our target set was 18 to 34 year old males, And so Mark Petruzzi (04:11) Mm-hmm. Denis Scott (04:12) that was that one-to-one relationship. Whereas now it's like, hey, you're talking to senior executives about, yeah, how do we understand this AI investment and what are the business outcomes we're seeing from it? So it's there's still a personal element to it, but it's a much larger solved in some ways. Alan Rudolph (04:28) Got it. Mark Petruzzi (04:28) Yeah, and Dennis, what's interesting is when w as I've learned about Laradin over the last couple months, it strikes me as a company that is building that kind of consumer relationship just with executives rather than all consumers. So, and the way I look at it, especially having the the fact that I'm on two boards, any board director should be building their relationship with with Laradin because in that standpoint, these are all the things that at the board level and the senior executive level, these this is all the data you need to know, especially about something AI. And by the way, I think I'd like to take that quote you just made about marketing and make it about AI. because same thing, I know my Denis Scott (05:14) Right. Same thing. Mark Petruzzi (05:16) AI is working. I just, I just don't know which half. So and and every company, every single company, big and small, is going through that same challenge right now. Denis Scott (05:26) it's interesting, Mark. You sit in the right spot here for who our our target audience is, which is boards are asking these questions, investors are asking these questions. if you look at earnings calls a year ago, tokens didn't come up that often. Now that's skyrocketed as far as questions go, Alan Rudolph (05:43) Right. Denis Scott (05:44) But if you think about it, right, th I'm gonna make a silly statement, but if I used to say, hey, on an earnings call and I was fortunate enough to prep a lot of these and work side by side and be on these calls because marketing was such a large investment, right? So let's say marketing you're spending fifty million dollars, naturally they would say, Hey, what are you getting for that investment? How is that working? Right. Those are the right questions to ask. We often now find that in AI, it's like, hey, you're spending $50 million, what are you getting for that? And it's very hard to answer. I don't blame people. This is what we're solving, but but boards are asking those questions, investors are asking those questions, CFOs are asking those questions, And that's really what we're building and where our customers see the value is, shoot, I'm getting that question from my board and I don't know how to answer it. Right now I'm using surveys and asking people, and I think I know what people are using, and it's really kind of it's very, very challenging, to answer that. Mark Petruzzi (06:39) Yeah. And it has to Alan Rudolph (06:39) Yeah. Mark Petruzzi (06:40) be and it has to be so much more precise than that for it to really work. Meaning the the surveys, the feeling the feelings, the a lot of companies, even some big ones that I work with, are looking at wow, they just wanna get AI in the hands of their their employee base. It's not about that. It's it's it takes a lot more prec

    Ep. 141 – Measuring AI ROI and Turning Adoption into Business Outcomes with Denis Scott - Part 1

  7. Aug 19

    Ep. 140 - How Great CROs Build Revenue Engines That Actually Scale with Lance Haffner - Part 2

    General Episode Description: In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Lance Haffner, Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global, returns to discuss one of the biggest challenges facing modern revenue leaders: creating demand for problems buyers do not yet recognize. He shares practical strategies for validating market fit, identifying the right buyer personas, building effective sales processes, and knowing when it’s time to pivot. The conversation also explores the growing trust deficit created by AI in sales. Lance explains why AI should enhance, not replace, human interactions, how revenue teams can use AI to improve forecasting and sales execution, and why speed, simplicity, and transparency are becoming essential competitive advantages. Finally, he shares leadership lessons from building a CRO organization from the ground up and the timeless sales disciplines every revenue leader should never overlook. What You’ll Learn: How to create demand when buyers don’t yet recognize the problem they haveWhy validating market fit should come before scaling go to market effortsThe importance of identifying the right buyer persona before refining messagingHow continuous feedback loops help improve sales messaging and executionWhy AI should remove friction instead of replacing human relationshipsPractical ways AI improves forecasting, pipeline management, and coachingHow to recognize when a go to market strategy needs to changeLeadership principles for building high performing revenue organizations from scratchKey Topics: Creating new market demandMarket fit validationBuyer persona strategySales methodology and discoveryRevenue operations feedback loopsAI enabled sales executionBuilding trust in an AI driven buying environmentPipeline management and forecastingRevenue leadershipCRO best practicesCustomer experienceSales process optimization Guest Spotlight: Lance Haffner Lance Haffner is the Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global, where he leads the company’s global revenue organization through its next phase of growth. With leadership experience spanning staffing, HR technology, and enterprise SaaS, Lance is known for building scalable revenue functions, applying data driven decision making, and combining AI with disciplined sales execution to accelerate growth. Resources & Mentions: Papaya GlobalScott Kirby, CEO of United AirlinesAI enabled sales organizationsRevenue OperationsSales methodologies including SPICED and Challenger🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with today’s leading revenue executives, sales innovators, and GTM operators. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mark Petruzzi (00:36) Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi. KK Anderson (00:40) And I'm KK Anderson. This is part two with Lance Hafner, Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global. Be sure to go back and listen to part But if you want to start here, let us bring you quickly up to speed. Lance told us how he has moved from staffing sales into HR and then into revenue leadership by applying a business enablement mindset where he wherever he sat and what it's taken to build papaya's first ever CRO function. While the company shifts from years of product investment into a scale up phase. Mark Petruzzi (01:12) In part two, we get into how Lance is building demand for a problem most buyers don't know they have yet, the trust deficit. Lance is watching this show up directly into his AI enabled sales motion. And we'll go into and we'll analyze how he uses AI day in and day out to diagnose what's actually happening inside his sales team. Lance, welcome back. Lance Haffner (01:36) Thanks, Laura. Thanks, KK. Happy to be here again. Mark Petruzzi (01:39) Great. So yeah, let's jump into creating demand for a problem buyers do not know they have. you've compared the awareness problem you're facing to introducing a genuinely new category. How do you build go-to-market motion around the pain point most buyers don't even know they have yet? Lance Haffner (01:56) This is such a great question. And and it's it's it's been salient a few times in my my career. if you look back over the years and you look back at the new we as consumers, things that have been launched in the consumer market. I remember this this thing in in two thousand and six, seven, Apple releases the iPhone and we didn't even know we needed a handheld computer device that didn't have keys. In fact, it was absurd to think about it. I was a Blackberry fan to be honest, and I wanted my keys and I resisted for two years. Mark Petruzzi (02:26) Ha ha KK Anderson (02:28) Was it clipped on your belt, Lance? Did you have it clipped on your belt? Lance Haffner (02:32) I look, I may have had a clip. Yes, I may have had a clip. yeah. I mean look, we can go Mark Petruzzi (02:36) I'm not gonna admit to that, Lance. KK Anderson (02:38) yes you are. Lance Haffner (02:39) back to you, we can go back to the days you had the pager clipped, right? Not less, yeah, or Mark Petruzzi (02:42) Yeah, yeah. Lance Haffner (02:43) the mo onto KK Anderson (02:43) Yeah. Lance Haffner (02:44) the Motorola Razor, onto the Blackberry telephone. But I know it's a consumer, that's really a consumer application review, but this the Point still stands. We didn't know that we needed that. It's like we actually, in fact, some people took the antithesis side, the antithetical side of I hate keys, I don't want them. Not only do I not need it, is it not a pain? I don't want it. And so I think lots of CROs and businesses deal with this. You're it you're entering market with a new product. I want to be clear, sometimes it's not a new product. I, you know, in a prior job, it wasn't a new product, but it was a new application of that solution in market. but it's the same. Right? Whether it's new or not, it's the same. you're dealing with with the problem of of market awareness and creating that demand. So first and foremost, I think coming back up to my, in our prior conversation, when I talked about moving from moving into scale, make sure market fit exists. Even if people aren't aware they have pain, make sure you got a market fit fit. You're dealing with the insights KK Anderson (03:40) Right. Lance Haffner (03:40) RevOps leader's creating, your Markovs leader who should who's likely. According to RevOps, the insights your product team has, particularly your product marketing team who's done the research, competitive analysis. They're reading, the analysts and seeing what the analysts are saying about you in market, about other solutions. Do you got the market fit? Let's agree that you do. You've done the analysis. There's not just a TAM, but ultimately you have some serviceable, addressable market that you can actually sell that product into. All right. That's point number one. Don't go off the gut thesis. I try to do it all the time. I gotta be honest. I'm preaching to myself here. We we get a thesis, we have bias on that thesis, and then we go look for everything to confirm the bias. No. Go look at the data and confirm that you actually have market fit and you actually have a market that you can sell, that you can service, and that you can obtain, and you can be successful successful. Number one. Number two, I you know. If anyone can figure out how to make it really successful, a product or a pain that people don't know they need or have a pain they don't know they have, they're gonna be wealthy. by the way, people have done that. And they are, they were very wealthy. So but I don't think KK Anderson (04:42) Ha ha ha. Lance Haffner (04:44) it's it's not easy. we one of my leaders, another colleague, I have the fish, the fish can't climb the tree colleague who's who's brilliant sells mine. And another one says, Lance, I call this normalized power. Having a conversation with the buyer, I'm going through my methodology process, I'm listening for the signals, and they just don't know they have pain. and I go back to the Apple versus BlackBerry method. None of us knew we had pain. In fact, it we had maybe an antithetical view of it. Not only do I not have pain, it sounds painful to go to a screen without prescribed buttons that are, can be precise. So so there's there's this normalized pain that exists. I think the key to getting through that is two things. One, you've got the right buyer persona. sometimes go back to my example of where you have a product and market. It's not a new product and market, but maybe it's a new application, new go-to-market motion. We're thinking of it differently and how the buyer can apply that. who is the buyer though? Because the buyer might have shifted. Formerly, you might have been working with the HR department. Now you're in finance and you're particularly a layer down in KK Anderson (05:45) Right. Lance Haffner (05:45) finance, maybe with treasury. Do you have the right buyer persona? Because if you don't, you have zero chance of helping them see the pain that they're that they they have. Okay, number one. So be dogged about landing on the right buyer persona and let that feedback loop happen. Listen to the sales calls, receive the sales feedback. Why am I not converting? Why am I disqualifying? Listen, watch, and be hyper quick. On pivoting. Go back to the bow tie we talked about, right? You're all on top of funnel here going through your sales stages. Your RevOps leader is acutely watching this and giving you real-time feedback and you're shifting. Could be your campaign in market right now and the pitch in the campaign. Could be a lot of things, right? But you're watching. And then lastly, I would say the process itself, and I already mentioned it, but the sales process you're going through has to be spot on because the process is there to help them identify the pain. Now, for 80 foot percent of what we sell, they know the pain. So it's easy. We know the pain before we go in generally, but we get that ou

    Ep. 140 - How Great CROs Build Revenue Engines That Actually Scale with Lance Haffner - Part 2

  8. Aug 12

    Ep. 139 - How Great CROs Build Revenue Engines That Actually Scale with Lance Haffner - Part 1

    General Description: The path to becoming a Chief Revenue Officer doesn’t always begin in sales. In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Lance Haffner, Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global, shares how an unconventional career through staffing, recruiting, and HR prepared him to lead one of the most important functions inside a modern SaaS company. Lance explains why great revenue leaders must think like business operators first and sales leaders second. Drawing on his experience as Papaya Global’s first CRO, he discusses how understanding talent, operations, and organizational strategy creates a stronger foundation for scaling revenue than focusing on sales alone. The conversation also explores the evolution of the CRO role, why today’s revenue leaders must oversee the entire revenue bow tie instead of just the sales funnel, and how Revenue Operations has become one of the most strategic functions in modern go-to-market organizations. Lance shares practical insights on aligning marketing, sales, customer success, and product while avoiding common scaling mistakes as companies expand into new markets. What You’ll Learn: Why some of the best CROs come from unconventional career pathsHow an HR background can create stronger business leadersThe difference between managing sales and leading revenueWhy the modern CRO owns the entire revenue lifecycleHow the revenue bow tie changes the way organizations scaleWhy Revenue Operations has become the CRO’s most strategic partnerHow to identify gaps across the entire customer journeyBest practices for expanding into enterprise, mid-market, and SMB segmentsWhy every go-to-market motion requires its own operating modelHow product, marketing, sales, and customer success must work together to drive growth Key Topics: Chief Revenue Officer responsibilitiesFrom HR to CROBusiness-first leadershipStrategic HRRevenue bow tieRevenue OperationsSales and marketing alignmentCustomer lifecycle managementSaaS revenue strategyEnterprise salesMid-market expansionSMB go-to-market strategyProduct marketingMarket segmentationRevenue growthOrganizational designScaling SaaS companiesPapaya Global Guest: Lance Haffner is Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global, where he leads the company’s global revenue organization. Before becoming CRO, Lance built his career across staffing, recruiting, HR leadership, general management, and revenue operations. His unique perspective allows him to connect talent strategy, business operations, and revenue growth into a unified go-to-market approach that helps organizations scale more effectively. Resources Mentioned: Papaya GlobalRevenue Bow Tie FrameworkRevenue OperationsProduct MarketingEnterprise SaaSCustomer SuccessTwo Millimeter Club#SellingIntelligence #RevenueLeadership #ChiefRevenueOfficer #RevenueOperations #B2BSales Mark Petruzzi (00:29) Welcome to Selling Intelligence. This is the full conversation with Lance Hafner, Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global. We have broken it into chapters in the description. Take it from the top or jump into the segment most relevant to where you are today. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi. KK Anderson (00:51) And I'm KK Anderson. Mark Petruzzi (00:53) Most people who end up running revenue for a company came up through sales. Our guest today didn't. He started in staffing and headhunting, crossed into HR, and built his way into the C suite from a function most operators treat as compliance, not growth. KK Anderson (01:10) Lance Hafner is Chief Revenue Officer at Papaya Global, a global payroll and workforce payments platform, where he's the first person ever to hold that title. Before Papaya, he ran general management and then revenue for a large payments and payroll business. After building his early career full cycle and staffing sales, he's also one of the most hands-on AI users we've talked to on this show, using it daily. To diagnose his own sales team's performance, Lance, welcome to Selling Intelligence. Lance Haffner (01:41) Thanks, KK Mark. Happy to be here. KK Anderson (01:43) We are thrilled to have you. Let's let's dive right into our first topic and would love to learn about your journey from HR to CRO, which is certainly an unconventional path for the C suite. And you started in staffing and headhunting sales, moved into HR, you ended up running revenue for large business units. What's kind of the through line between those roles that You didn't see at the time you were on the journey, but when you look back now you can see it clearly. Lance Haffner (02:12) Yes, yes. So great question. And thanks again for having me today. I like to say when people see my HR background in my profile or we're having, a conversation, the us I would say eighty percent are a bit shocked, but to your point, unconventional. You're an enigma, Lance, and I agree with that. you don't you don't see it. But there are a few of us out there, we exist. so I as you said, I cut my teeth in in staffing. And so my my colleagues who are staffing, head hunting, recruiting, outsourcing my hats off. And back then we didn't call it SDR, but I was an SDR and made my way into account executive. Where to your point, full cycle AE, although I did have the SDR, I qualified a lot of my own and took that from top of funnel through through close one. And even working through to make sure my my recruits started, my recruits stayed, and I got my fee. So even through maybe activation back then as well. But and that led to an entrepreneurship role, which was great. I loved it. That was also very sales focused and continuing the staffing theme. but like a lot of young entrepreneurs and small businesses, it scaled up very quickly, it scaled down very quickly. and I found myself wanting to go back to work. So I did. And I went back in recruiting client side, and recruiting sits in HR. So that's really the nexus of my kind of staffing sales beginning roots to HR. And then I turned into an HR career that I decided I loved the discipline, I loved it for a variety of reasons. But one of the things that compelled me most is I saw a lot of compliance HR, which by the way, I don't want to discount that. it's required, we need it, it's important. But I also saw the need for strategic HR, particularly how does it enable the business to grow? Which is a bit of a, if we're all if we're being honest here, folks, that hey, I'm a strategic HR professional, I want to sit at the table and I want to enable the business to grow. You hear that all the time from HR pros. How do you actually make it happen? And I think I found my way into making it happen. And and that was that was kind of the path to HR. Any questions, comments? I'll pivot over to the how how that move into revenue and sales. Mark Petruzzi (04:13) Yeah, well, it's I mean, you and I have had this discussion already in the past, Lance, and the idea of coming from these unconventional or less conventional paths, I immediately reacted to that by saying, Wow, some of the best CROs that I know out there today have come from that kind of unconventional path. Lance Haffner (04:34) Yeah. Mark Petruzzi (04:34) So I don't think that means you don't, you shouldn't go into sales if that's what you want to do. But I think that means you really have to understand, everything in an organization. You have to look at it as a business person, not just a salesperson. And when you do that and you grow throughout your career, you typically turn into a a great CRO. Lance Haffner (04:58) yeah. Mark, hey, Kim, let me tag on that. I love it because I think we're gonna talk about this a bit later, about the CRO function itself and building it from scratch. Look, go back to that HR role and I wanna visualize something you just said that I think is important. I actually my mantra for my team and I was we are business professionals who do HR. And that that very simple statement was to kind of demonstrate, visualize this. We are not HR pros, although we are, let's be honest. We are business professionals, members of this business who are here to achieve the business's objective. And we will do that through our HR practice. Whether we're ensuring governance and compliance, whether we're ensuring total rewards, compensation, benefits are competitive, whether we're ensuring we're bringing talent in, acquiring it, developing it, whether we're ensuring that the C-suite as an HR pro you are workforce management strategies and everything you're doing propels the business through its people. You're taking your your lens of that discipline and applying it to business growth. No different than the CRO. you are a business professional pro executive who has to grow the business through the functions of sales, marketing, revenue operations, et cetera. Mark Petruzzi (06:01) Excellent. All right. So you've talked about bringing a business enablement mindset to HR instead of that old compliance mindset. So tell us a little more, take us a little deeper into what did that what did that actually look like in practice? And how did it change how your business partners saw the function? And again, we could touch on this, we don't have to go deep, and then really transition it into how do you take those mindsets. and bring it into the CRO role as well. Lance Haffner (06:31) Yeah, good good question. first and foremost, I already talked through the functions of HR generally. And it it can it can expand or or contract a bit, but the functions we talked through. and it's a vast discipline, right? You have you have professionals who come up and tell the rewards and do nothing else. you have professionals who come up in recruiting and stay there, et cetera, payroll, etc. and so I think the my perspective was this. My business has an objective. It wants to grow revenue. It wants to expand in regions, whatever that's that North Star is and the objectives that they have to achieve to hit that

    Ep. 139 - How Great CROs Build Revenue Engines That Actually Scale with Lance Haffner - Part 1
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Selling Intelligence is the evolution of Selling the Cloud and designed for revenue leaders who are navigating the AI era. Hosted by Mark Petruzzi and Alan Rudolph, the show brings candid conversations with C-suite leaders across sales, marketing, and customer success on how AI is reshaping the way companies grow, sell, and compete. From agentic GTM strategies to AI-powered pipeline and revenue execution, each episode focuses on what’s actually working and how leaders are turning intelligence into performance. If you’re responsible for growth and trying to lead through the fastest shift in go-to-market we’ve ever seen, this podcast is for you.

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