The Innovative Revenue Leader

Seth Marrs
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Management

This podcast explores the future of sales performance, giving Chief Revenue Officers and other growth leaders the insights, tools, and stories they need to lead with confidence. Through candid conversations with top executives, analysts, and tech innovators, we uncover how to harness data, optimize talent, and build tech-enabled sales teams that win. Listeners will walk away with actionable strategies to drive growth, outpace change, and future-proof their revenue engine.

  1. 13h ago

    Operations to Strategy - Curtis Schroeder - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #58

    Welcome back Curtis Schroeder to the Innovative Revenue Leader Podcast! Curtis is a sales strategist, researcher, former managing director at Oracle, former Gartner senior advisor to CROs, and the Head of Research and Insight at Varicent. In this episode, host Seth Marrs and Curtis dissect the newly released 2026 RevOps Skills Index and examine how the pressure for efficient, scalable growth is rapidly reshaping revenue operations from a back-office reporting function into a core strategic driver. You’ll learn why relying on cutting-edge AI and data science gives companies a temporary 3-month competitive edge before the broader market catches up, how top-performing revenue organizations are closing the "readiness gap," and why rockstar RevOps generalists are essential for translating raw data into executive recommendations. Whether you are a CRO re-architecting your revenue plan or an operations practitioner fighting for a seat at the executive table, this conversation delivers actionable, research-backed insights to elevate your GTM execution! Takeaways: The "Moneyball" Decay Curve: Just like sports analytics in the NBA and MLB, early adopters of AI specialists and dedicated data scientists see immediate win-rate bumps, but that competitive moat levels out once hiring catches on across the industry.Operations Becoming Strategic: RevOps is not abandoning operations; rather, deep operational knowledge around quotas, territories, capacity, and compensation has become the primary asset for steering organizational strategy.The RevOps Readiness Gap: While practitioners see their roles evolving and expectations rising around AI, a significant gap remains between executive expectations and company investment in upskilling internal teams.Generalists as Translators: While specialized AI and data engineers drive efficiency (with data showing over 50% of teams with dedicated data scientists beating targets), high-performing teams still rely on strategic generalists to shape the business questions and translate data into executive impact.Stop Reporting the Weather: Practitioners must shift away from sending backward-looking dashboard updates; true strategic value comes from pairing insights with concrete, forward-looking recommendations leadership can stand behind.Quote of the Show: "Take one analysis maybe that you normally send as a report... and bring it to your leader, not as a reporting the news or the weather, but bring it as a recommendation that you'd stand behind." - Dr. Curtis Schroeder Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtisschroeder/Website: https://varicent.comWays to Tune In: Innovative Revenue Leader Website: InnovativeRevenueLeader.ai Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hn0sJKCzneggQj3j4XKo3?si=02c4c44769dc41bb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-revenue-leader/id1843401468 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/48477601-e33b-4c80-a4af-739863e58131 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-innovative-revenue-leader-6233089

    Operations to Strategy - Curtis Schroeder - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #58

  2. Oct 28

    Re-Air | Listener Favorite: The F1 Problem - Joseph Miller - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #57

    This week, we are revisiting a listener favorite! Seth Marrs sits down with Joseph Miller, Co-Founder of Vivun and Chief AI Officer at Hudson Bay Capital Management, for a masterclass on navigating the shift from traditional SaaS architectures to live, agentic workflows. Rather than viewing AI as a passive assistant for call transcripts or post-meeting summaries, Joseph outlines the emergence of agents that sit at the table as real-time deal participants. He pulls back the curtain on what it took to disrupt Vivun from the inside out—rebuilding on knowledge graphs and ontologies while navigating extreme market uncertainty. Together, Seth and Joseph unpack why adopting AI requires organizations to rethink their entire operational machinery, how buyer expectations are moving toward instant value, and why human judgment becomes the premier asset in an age of automated execution. Key Takeaways: AI has entered the room: The real frontier of AI isn't asynchronous prep or automated follow-up emails; it is domain-grounded agents joining live conversations, answering complex technical questions in real time, and removing cycle delays.The F1 car dilemma: Buying powerful agentic technology without adapting your sales processes leads to failure. Organizations must learn how to operationalize the sudden influx of capacity rather than running legacy plays with high-speed tools.Disrupt before you're forced to: Navigating technological shifts requires "building into the fog". Vivun isolated a skunkworks unit to build zero-to-one without legacy constraints when LLMs emerged, proving that waiting for total market clarity leaves you out of position.Grounding beats prompt tinkering: Large language models struggle with multi-hop domain reasoning out of the box. Real enterprise reliability comes from structuring institutional intelligence into knowledge graphs and ontologies.Compressing the "second date": Buyers increasingly demand immediate answers on security, architecture, and compliance. Resolving technical hurdles in a single live interaction eliminates weeks of scheduling lag and accelerates win rates.Redefining human value: As machines take on the overlapping slice of tasks they can run autonomously 24/7, purely human capabilities - strategic judgment, empathy, and high-level synthesis - become the primary differentiators.The power of wide exploration: Drawing from his background across fusion research, quantitative finance, and SaaS, Joseph emphasizes that cross-disciplinary exploration builds the pattern-matching needed to innovate through uncertainty. Quote of the Show: "If I put you in a Formula One car, you don’t drive it like you would your daily beater. You have to learn how to be a different driver in that kind of vehicle. And that’s exactly the situation we’re in... now everyone has an F1 car and you're like, 'Oh man, we gotta learn how to drive these things.'"  - Joseph Miller Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/likeascientist/Website: http://www.vivun.com Ways to Tune In: Innovative Revenue Leader Website: InnovativeRevenueLeader.ai Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hn0sJKCzneggQj3j4XKo3?si=02c4c44769dc41bb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-revenue-leader/id1843401468 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/48477601-e33b-4c80-a4af-739863e58131 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-innovative-revenue-leader-6233089

    Re-Air | Listener Favorite: The F1 Problem - Joseph Miller - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #57

  3. Oct 21

    AI ROI Comes from the Business, Not the Tech - John Arnold - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #56

    Take your enterprise AI adoption, go-to-market strategy, and organizational governance to the next level with practical insights from Creatio's latest benchmark research on 600+ business and IT decision-makers. It’s time to move past the fear of AI headcount reduction and start applying AI to unlock true capacity, scale customer relationships, and drive 10X productivity gains. Who better to guide you through this transition than former Forrester Principal Analyst, AI go-to-market strategist, and Head of Product Marketing & Strategic Advisory at Creatio, John Arnold? You will learn why 89% of enterprise leaders view AI as a team augmentation tool rather than a headcount cutter, how establishing strong AI governance actually accelerates execution speed, and how to evaluate your company's AI maturity across both depth and breadth. Get motivated to re-engineer your workflows, eliminate administrative CRM burden, and scale your growth platform for the future! Takeaways: Augmentation Over Displacement: 89% of enterprise leaders plan to use AI to augment current staff and build new capacity, while only 9% expect headcount reductions.The 3-Step Automation Framework: Sustainable enterprise AI value starts with automating basic workflows, redeploying operational savings into growth hiring, and then re-automating advanced strategic work.Governance Precedes Confidence and Scale: Enterprise governance isn't a bottleneck - organizations with fully established AI governance feel 71% more confident scaling AI across the enterprise.Measuring Maturity in Depth and Breadth: True AI adoption maturity requires both operational depth (embedding autonomous agents into core tasks) and organizational breadth (rolling out AI across all GTM and back-office functions).Unlocking Human Sellers: Eliminating administrative CRM data entry frees up sellers to do what humans do best - build high-value relationships and double quota capacity. Quote of the Show: "ROI doesn't come from AI. ROI comes from the business. ROI comes from what the business does." - John Arnold Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoldmarketing/Website: https://www.creatio.com Ways to Tune In: Innovative Revenue Leader Website: InnovativeRevenueLeader.ai Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hn0sJKCzneggQj3j4XKo3?si=02c4c44769dc41bb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-revenue-leader/id1843401468 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/48477601-e33b-4c80-a4af-739863e58131 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-innovative-revenue-leader-6233089

    AI ROI Comes from the Business, Not the Tech - John Arnold - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #56

  4. Oct 14

    Beyond the "Red Widget" - Todd Abbott - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #55

    Take your revenue engine, data architecture, and go-to-market execution to the next level with practical insights on unifying sales, marketing, and product data, deploying enterprise AI, and eliminating friction in your pipeline. It’s time to move past rear-view mirror dashboards and subjective anecdotes to build a true "science of sales" culture. Who better to guide you through this transition than former Avaya CRO, multi-time startup CEO, and Co-Founder of RevLens.ai, Todd Abbott? You will learn why traditional CRM data warehouses fail to deliver predictive value, how to point Gen AI models at unstructured engagement data to spot deal risk months in advance, and why aligning sales, marketing, and product around a single source of truth eliminates executive friction. Get motivated to optimize your tech stack, protect your proprietary sales intelligence, and empower your frontline leaders with actionable insights that drive revenue growth! Takeaways: Unifying the Go-To-Market Triad: Real revenue alignment happens when product, marketing, and sales operate off the exact same underlying data set rather than competing anecdotes.Moving from Rear-View Dashboards to Predictive AI: Traditional dashboards only report on past results; Gen AI pointing at data lakes allows leaders to uncover "unknown unknowns" and deal patterns in real-time.The Danger of Unintended Deal Behaviors: Unstructured data analysis reveals critical deal risks, such as reps de-scoping proposals to fit budgets, which often results in a 0% win rate.Protecting Proprietary Sales Intelligence: Enterprise organizations must consider private LLM deployments behind clean rooms or firewalls to prevent exposing core winning methodologies to public AI training models.Why the Rep is King: Technology should simplify the seller's job; true sales leaders stay connected to frontline reps to eliminate workflow friction and accelerate deal velocity. Quote of the Show: "The beauty of Gen AI and LLMs is that you don't need structured data or static dashboards to find insights. It’s about pointing AI at your entire engagement history to uncover the hidden correlations between winning and losing." - Todd Abbott Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-abbott-659b891/Website: https://www.rev-lens.ai/ Ways to Tune In: Innovative Revenue Leader Website: InnovativeRevenueLeader.ai Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hn0sJKCzneggQj3j4XKo3?si=02c4c44769dc41bb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-revenue-leader/id1843401468 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/48477601-e33b-4c80-a4af-739863e58131 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-innovative-revenue-leader-6233089

    Beyond the "Red Widget" - Todd Abbott - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #55

  5. Oct 7

    Bounding Analytics for Revenue Leaders - Ellie Fields - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #54

    Take your revenue analytics, data integration, and RevOps execution to the next level with practical insights on bounding AI-driven analytics, unifying GTM workflows, and empowering frontline sellers. It’s time to stop drowning in hundreds of unused dashboards and start delivering targeted, trusted data right where your sales reps work. Who better to guide you through this transition than seasoned enterprise executive, former Chief Product & Engineering Officer at Salesloft, and CEO & Co-Founder of Ridge AI, Ellie Fields? You will learn why the future of analytics lies in deep workflow integration rather than isolated data silos, how to leverage AI to translate business questions into performant visualizations, and why establishing a few "canonical dashboards" brings organizational clarity. Get motivated to eliminate guesswork, align RevOps with executive leadership, and turn raw data into a shared, actionable asset that drives predictable revenue growth! Takeaways: Workflow Integration Over Point Solutions: Modern revenue teams thrive when analytics, CRM, and sales engagement live in a tight, integrated loop rather than isolated systems.Moving Beyond Dashboard Overload: Having 500 unused dashboards creates confusion; RevOps leaders should focus on 4-5 "canonical dashboards" for shared visibility while using AI to answer ad-hoc questions.Bounding AI for Data Reliability: Dropping non-data experts into raw, unbounded AI data environments yields inconsistent answers; proper guardrails ensure data accuracy without requiring sellers to become data scientists.Data as a Shared Communal Artifact: Revenue growth requires aligned definitions; shared visual data allows teams to agree on underlying metrics (like churn or pipeline) and move straight to execution.Connecting Products to Business Outcomes: Sellers don't want to spend time building reports; embedding contextual data directly into their daily workflow drives immediate tool adoption and performance. Quote of the Show: "Data is only a way of thinking about and representing the world. The goal isn't having 500 dashboards - it's giving people a shared, trusted view of data so they can stop arguing over numbers and start taking action." - Ellie Fields Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliefields/Website: https://www.ridgedata.ai/ Ways to Tune In: Innovative Revenue Leader Website: InnovativeRevenueLeader.ai Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hn0sJKCzneggQj3j4XKo3?si=02c4c44769dc41bb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-revenue-leader/id1843401468 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/48477601-e33b-4c80-a4af-739863e58131 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-innovative-revenue-leader-6233089

    Bounding Analytics for Revenue Leaders - Ellie Fields - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #54

  6. Sep 30

    Beyond Administrative Automation - Puru Amradkar - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #53

    Transform your sales enablement and rep execution with game-changing insights on real-time AI augmentation, automated pre-call research, and continuous coaching feedback loops. It’s time to stop losing deal momentum due to subject matter expert bottlenecks and empower every seller to act as a fully prepared quarterback in high-stakes buyer meetings. Who better to break down this shift than 20-year technology veteran, former Microsoft and ServiceNow product leader, and Co-Founder of Team8, Puru Amradkar? You will learn how sub-second AI latency enables "whisper mode" and on-demand virtual subject matter experts, why AI-driven role-play ensures reps are actually prepared before stepping into live meetings, and how to capture unbiased post-call feedback. Get motivated to eliminate administrative prep grind, build dynamic live collaboration canvases, and connect pre-call preparation seamlessly to post-call deal execution! Takeaways: Eliminating SME Bottlenecks: Real-time AI tools allow virtual "clones" of subject matter experts to assist reps on live calls via whisper or on-demand modes, preventing deal momentum loss.The Continuous Sales Loop: True revenue acceleration requires connecting pre-call preparation, real-time in-call augmentation, and unbiased post-call analysis into a self-improving feedback loop.Automated Research Meets Interactive Prep: Rather than spending hours digging through account history, sellers orchestrate AI agents that gather context, test buyer assumptions, and drive prep through interactive role-play.Gated Call Readiness: Implementing competency scoring during pre-call role-play prevents reps from going unprepared into multi-million-dollar meetings and alerts managers to step in when needed.Dynamic Live Collaboration: AI-powered shared canvases eliminate clumsy screen-sharing handoffs between reps and technical engineers, surfacing real-time slides and battle cards dynamically during buyer conversations. Quote of the Show: "The hardest problem right now in the B2B world is real-time augmentation in a live call - bringing voice, video, and text together in sub-second latency to help a seller handle objections on the spot." - Puru Amradkar Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/puruamradkar/Website: https://www.teameight.ai/ Ways to Tune In: Innovative Revenue Leader Website: InnovativeRevenueLeader.ai Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hn0sJKCzneggQj3j4XKo3?si=02c4c44769dc41bb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-revenue-leader/id1843401468 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/48477601-e33b-4c80-a4af-739863e58131 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-innovative-revenue-leader-6233089

    Beyond Administrative Automation - Puru Amradkar - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #53

  7. Sep 24

    Connecting Pipeline to Conversion -Dina Vaccari - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #52

    Take your GTM architecture and sales productivity to the next level with powerful insights on self-learning systems, buyer intelligence micro-loops, and conversational context. It’s time to move past passive analytics dashboards and build an AI-native revenue operating system that automatically identifies what works and executes the changes for you. Who better to guide you than former Outreach and Amazon product leader, and current Head of Product for Zoom Revenue Accelerator, Dina Vaccari? You will learn how Zoom transforms unstructured customer conversations into actionable workflows, why acquiring Common Room unlocks surgical ICP targeting, and how to balance AI enthusiasm with realistic human adoption. Get motivated to capture rich context across all channels, empower sellers with digital role-play teammates, and connect pipeline generation directly to long-term customer retention! Takeaways: The Evolution of Systems That Learn: Modern sales tools are shifting from detective-style dashboards to codified systems that continuously learn what works, what doesn't, and automatically make necessary adjustments.Connecting Conversation to Completion: Zoom is evolving beyond meeting software into an end-to-end workflow engine that captures conversation context and helps sellers execute tasks directly.Building Micro-Loops Across the Buyer Journey: Combining conversational intelligence (ZRA) with buyer intent signals (Common Room) creates closed-loop feedback from initial meeting booking down to closed revenue and customer retention.Surgical ICP Targeting: Leveraging rich buyer intent data enables revenue teams to create hyper-specific account segments and multi-thread the right stakeholders with personalized messaging.Unstructured Data as a Competitive Asset: Capturing unstructured data from softphones, SMS, and in-person meetings provides the foundational context required for true AI-driven sales orchestration. Quote of the Show: "The majority of tools in the revenue orchestration space are really not a tool unless you have the truth of the customer conversations that are happening. You have to understand what's working, what's not, and what to change." - Dina Vaccari Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinavaccari/Website: www.zoom.com Ways to Tune In: Innovative Revenue Leader Website: InnovativeRevenueLeader.ai Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hn0sJKCzneggQj3j4XKo3?si=02c4c44769dc41bb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-revenue-leader/id1843401468 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/48477601-e33b-4c80-a4af-739863e58131 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-innovative-revenue-leader-6233089

    Connecting Pipeline to Conversion -Dina Vaccari - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #52

  8. Sep 16

    Beyond the Feature War - Kylie Fuentes - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #51

    Take your go-to-market architecture to the next level with powerful insights on closed-loop AI systems, persona-led revenue experiences, and human-centered design. It’s time to move past static prompt engineering and isolated point solutions to build an integrated revenue intelligence layer that perpetually learns from every customer interaction. Who better to teach you than former Salesforce SVP, former Zilliant Chief Product Officer, and current Chief Product Officer at Salesloft, Kylie Fuentes? You will learn how connecting the dots between sales planners and sales doers creates true operational efficiency, why designing for simplicity in the natural flow of work drives higher adoption, and how focusing on core human behaviors supersedes competing in feature-for-feature wars. Get motivated to eliminate workflow friction, harness rich revenue context, and unlock real personalization across the entire buyer journey! Takeaways: The Power of Closed-Loop Learning Systems: The next frontier of B2B revenue tech isn't manual prompt engineering, but building systematic loops where AI perpetually improves based on actual seller actions and closed deals.True Personalization in B2B Workflows: After 15 years of industry promises, generative AI and context graphs are finally unlocking customized, dynamic workflows tailored to individual sellers and buyers.Unifying Sales Planners and Sales Doers: Bringing together revenue forecasting (Clari) and execution (Salesloft) creates a single canonical data model, giving leaders aggregate visibility while giving reps focused, actionable task lists.Designing for the Natural Flow of Work: Modern AI architecture decouples the logic layer from the interface, allowing intelligence to be served up passively through voice, mobile, or third-party tools like Claude.Focusing on Human Problems Over Competitor Features: Product and revenue leaders succeed by solving deep, visceral customer pain points and replacing manual workarounds rather than chasing vanity feature lists. Quote of the Show: "No seller decided to get into business so they can tab around on 15 screens... When you put intelligence in a layer that can be consumed directly in the natural flow of work, that is going to be the real unlock for adoption." - Kylie Fuentes Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyliefuentes/Website: https://salesloft.comhttps://www.marzo.ai Ways to Tune In: Innovative Revenue Leader Website: InnovativeRevenueLeader.ai Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hn0sJKCzneggQj3j4XKo3?si=02c4c44769dc41bb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-revenue-leader/id1843401468 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/48477601-e33b-4c80-a4af-739863e58131 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-innovative-revenue-leader-6233089

    Beyond the Feature War - Kylie Fuentes - Innovative Revenue Leader - Episode #51
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About

This podcast explores the future of sales performance, giving Chief Revenue Officers and other growth leaders the insights, tools, and stories they need to lead with confidence. Through candid conversations with top executives, analysts, and tech innovators, we uncover how to harness data, optimize talent, and build tech-enabled sales teams that win. Listeners will walk away with actionable strategies to drive growth, outpace change, and future-proof their revenue engine.

Information

  • Creator
    Seth Marrs
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    57
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Sandler Systems, LLC. 
  • Show Website
    The Innovative Revenue Leader