Host Summer Poletti, founder and chief growth strategist at Rise of Us, opens with a stat: sellers spend about 40% of their time on admin, down from 66% or more a couple of years ago. These founders helped move that number. Each one gives you a way to cut seller admin, sharpen outbound, and grow revenue without growing headcount.

THE PANEL

Trent Ballard, Sales EQ: captures meeting data and context and makes it searchable for AI agents and automations

Kanoj Vora, Prospect AI: intentional cold outbound that earns attention instead of spray and pray

Martin Markov, Clearcue: signal-based outreach that finds companies at the moment they need your solution

Andrei Stoica, STOICA.CO: B2B marketing agency and platform that turns 5,000 target accounts into the 100 to contact this week

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Where seller time goes, and how meeting data, RevOps automation, and AI agents give it back
• Why outbound fails: ICP, timing, and offer matter more than copy
• How to run your ICP as an ongoing experiment, not a set-it-and-forget-it document
• Behavior-based ICP: define customers by what is happening inside the company, not only size, industry, and country
• Intent signals and dynamic lead scoring: why a signal loses value fast and why the first 24 hours produce the most meetings
• Channel-market fit: where your buyers are active (LinkedIn, email, phone) and why no channel is universal or dead
• Why most offers aren't compelling, and why end-of-quarter limited-time discounts fail
• The outcomes that count: rep onboarding cut from three months to one, meetings that convert to closed-won revenue, and revenue from the right customers
• Why selling to the wrong customers creates problems for customer success

ONE ACTION FROM EACH GUEST

• Andrei: run the demo to see the first 10 to 20 accounts in your market worth contacting
• Martin: name the problem you solve, trace the digital footprint it leaves, then study your closed-won and closed-lost customers for behavior patterns
• Kanoj: tie your message to your buyer's incentives and KPIs, and pair it with an offer so good people feel foolish saying no
• Trent: take more calls, review them, and iterate on discovery

WHO THIS IS FOR

Founders, CEOs, CROs, and sales and RevOps leaders at growth-stage B2B companies who want more pipeline from the team and tools they already have.

GUEST DISCOUNTS AT SUMMER'S FALL EVENTS

These founders added attendee discounts on their products. Find Summer at:

LA Tech Week

OC Tech Week

San Diego Startup Week

AI Builders Global Conference

JMS spent years inside ADP and Paycheck watching the same mistake repeat itself: a great salesperson gets promoted into sales management, expected to teach a new hire to sell exactly the way they sold, with no structure and no process behind them. Some of the best sales reps he's ever worked with became the worst sales managers, because closing deals and building a repeatable sales process are two different skill sets. Summer sees the founder-led version of the same problem constantly — a first sales hire is handed a phone and a title and expected to build the entire sales function from scratch, then the founder concludes "sales doesn't work for us" when that hire doesn't succeed.

They break down the real distinction founders miss when a sales hire fails: the difference between lead generation and closing, and the difference between rapport and actual buying intent. Good salespeople are excellent at relationships. That doesn't mean they're equipped to build a repeatable sales process, price a deal, or manage a CRM — and expecting one person to be good at all of it is exactly why new sales hires fail at growth-stage companies before they ever get a fair shot.

Also covered: why the best sales reps are the worst at documentation and CRM hygiene, why AI and automation tools are starting to remove that friction instead of fighting it, why the instinct to promote your top performer into sales management is rarely the right call, and what a real compensation and process foundation looks like before a company makes its next sales hire. This episode closes the loop on a conversation Summer and JMS started in an earlier episode about why founders shouldn't rush to hire their first salesperson [link] — this time from the other side: what actually has to be in place before that hire has a chance to succeed.

This one is for any growth-stage founder or CEO who's hired a salesperson, watched it not work out, and assumed the problem was the hire instead of the sales infrastructure underneath them. The fix isn't a better resume. It's a pricing process, a compensation plan built around what the company actually needs, and a system a new hire can walk into instead of inventing alone.

Guest: John Mason-Smith — payroll and PEO industry advisor and recurring Rise of Us partner.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

About Rise of Us: Summer Polettiworks with growth-stage B2B founders and CEOs to build the pricing strategy, sales compensation design, and process infrastructure that decides whether a sales hire succeeds — because most of the time, why new sales hires fail has nothing to do with the hire. Learn more at [link].

#SalesHiring #B2BSaaS #RevenueLeadership #SalesCompensation #FractionalCRO #GTM #FounderLedSales #SalesManagement #ScalingUp #RevenueRemix #WhyNewSalesHiresFail #B2BSales

JMS built his entire business — three companies that are really one business at their core — on knowing exactly what he won't do, and having someone he trusts to hand it to instead. He calls it capacity versus capability: just because you can do something doesn't mean you have the time, energy, or positioning to be the right person doing it. That distinction is the foundation of every partnership that actually produces revenue instead of just good intentions.

Summer and JMS unpack why most partner networks never produce a single referral. The problem usually isn't a bad partner fit — it's the absence of a process. No onboarding call, no defined cadence, no agreement on what "working together" actually means week to week. The result: two founders who liked each other, agreed to work together, and never spoke again after the handshake. Summer calls this dying in "good vibe land," and it's the single biggest reason partner programs underperform at growth-stage companies that could otherwise grow revenue without growing headcount.

What they cover: why saying no to the wrong opportunity is a sales skill, not a weakness; how to build a referral engine instead of saying yes to every project that lands in your inbox; the buy-versus-build decision every service business eventually faces when a client asks for something outside their core offer; why the right partner — a specialist who notices what a generalist never would — is worth more in referred revenue than the fee you'd make doing the work yourself; and how to set a cadence so a partnership survives past the first good conversation.

This episode is a practical look at partner-led growth for founders and CEOs who are done chasing every lead themselves: what a systemized partner network actually requires, how to know when to say no, how to turn a one-off favor into a repeatable revenue channel, and how to grow revenue without growing headcount by building the kind of partnerships that refer, collaborate, and follow through instead of quietly dying in good vibe land.

Guest: John Mason-Smith — payroll and PEO industry advisor and recurring Rise of Us partner.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

About Rise of Us: Summer Polettiworks with growth-stage B2B founders and CEOs to get out of founder-led sales and build a revenue foundation that doesn't depend on them personally closing every deal — pricing strategy, sales compensation design, and partner-led growth that lets a company grow revenue without growing headcount. Learn more at [link].

#B2BSaaS #RevenueGrowth #PartnerStrategy #FounderLedSales #RevenueLeadership #FractionalCRO #GTM #BusinessPartnerships #ScalingUp #RevenueRemix #GrowthStageCompanies #PartnerNetwork

If your B2B company is scaling from $5M to $20M in revenue, this episode breaks down exactly what you can no longer ignore. Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us, brings together three experts for a panel on what actually breaks once a company moves past $5M ARR: sales-turned-marketing operator Brandy, referral and partnership strategist Dave Plunkett, and customer success leader Divya Duvvuru.

This is the messy middle of scaling. Revenue is real, the team is real, but the systems built for a $2M company start cracking under $10M, $15M, and $20M pressure. This is the stage where "we'll figure it out" stops working, and founders still running sales personally feel the ceiling first. This conversation covers the SLA between sales and marketing, why referral partners stop producing results, how to rebuild your ideal customer profile (ICP) as you scale, and why customer success can't wait until you have a retention problem to justify it. If your company is stuck between $5M and $20M and growth feels harder than it used to, this episode names the gaps founders miss most at this stage.

In this episode:

• Why sales and marketing need a written SLA, not a handshake, once you're scaling past $5M
• The one anomaly every "ideal partner" list has, and why you can't build a referral strategy around it
• How to fix referral partners who aren't producing, and why "organic" isn't a partner strategy
• Building customer success into your growth motion before churn forces the issue
• How to motivate a customer success team to surface referrals and upsells without it feeling salesy
• How to refresh your ideal customer profile (ICP) using your last 10 wins and 5 losses
• Why sales, marketing, and customer success have to move as one system to scale from $5M to $20M
• One overlooked signal that a customer isn't getting value, long before they say they're leaving

Meet the panel:
Brandy started in sales before moving into marketing, and brings that cross-functional lens to how SLAs, ICP refreshes, and co-marketing actually work between departments at this stage.
🔗 Brandy Morton

Dave is a referral and partnership strategist who breaks down why "organic" referrals aren't a strategy, and what it takes to build an intentional partner engine as you scale from $5M to $20M.
🔗 Dave Plunkett

Divya is a customer success leader who makes the case for building post-sale strategy in before churn forces the conversation, and how customer success data should shape product and sales.
🔗 Divya Duvvuru

Your host:
🔗 Summer Poletti is the founder of Rise of Us, working with B2B founders between $3M and $20M ARR who are stuck in founder-led sales and ready to install a revenue system that runs without them in every deal. Two focused engagements move founders out of founder-led sales and reset the revenue foundation underneath it. If your revenue is stuck at this stage and you've already tried the logical fix, a revenue diagnostic conversation with Summer answers three questions: why revenue is stuck, what breaks next if nothing changes, and what leadership has to own to fix it. Before the next tense Board meeting, not after.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

When a board pushes for investment in growth, the conversation almost always lands on headcount — hire another salesperson, hire a VP of Sales, fix the pipeline. But most growth-stage CEOs are about to learn the hard way why new sales hires fail: the problem was never the person. It was the pricing strategy and sales compensation strategy underneath them.

In this episode of Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us [link], sits down with Brad Leggett [link] and Norb Garrett [link] — two operators Summer brings in to solve the problems she doesn't touch herself — to unpack the unsexy infrastructure that determines whether a sales hire succeeds or becomes another expensive line item the board questions next quarter.

Brad breaks down the two pricing buckets every growth-stage company needs before scaling a sales team: standard product pricing and custom deal pricing. Without a defined pricing strategy, salespeople either negotiate margin away out of fear or burn time chasing internal approval instead of closing deals. Brad also explains why sales compensation strategy tied to gross margin — not just revenue — keeps sales behavior aligned with what actually makes the company money, and what it takes (real cost visibility, some financial transparency with the sales team) to make that work.

Norb, who builds sales compensation strategy for companies at every growth stage, tackles the mistake he sees most often right after a funding round: overpaying on base salary before revenue can support it. His framework — smaller base pay with larger incentive opportunities that scale as the hire proves out — is the alternative to burning cash on a "rockstar" hire dropped into a company with no system for them to succeed in. He also makes the case for protecting founder equity and using phantom equity structures instead of giving away ownership to attract sales talent.

This is exactly the conversation that should happen before a board meeting, not after one. When a board asks for investment in growth, they're really asking whether the company can convert a dollar of spend into predictable revenue. A CEO who walks into that room with a documented pricing strategy, a compensation philosophy tied to margin, and a clear read on why previous sales hires didn't work is answering the board's actual question — not just requesting more headcount and hoping the math works out.

Also covered: when to productize a service-based offering and the margin lift that follows, how to compete for sales talent without matching enterprise base pay, why finance-background CEOs often struggle most to build sales compensation strategy, and when to "call the herd" on unprofitable client relationships quietly eating a CEO's time and bandwidth.

Follow our Guests:
Brad Leggett
Norb Garrett

About Rise of Us: Summer Poletti helps growth-stage B2B CEOs get out of founder-led sales and build the revenue foundation their board expects to see — pricing strategy, sales compensation strategy, and the operating discipline that turns founder hustle into a repeatable, board-ready growth engine. Learn more at [link].

Sandi opens with the million-dollar question every company should answer before signing the contract: why are you going? Skip it and you show up with a beautiful booth and no plan. From there, she and Summer walk the timeline. At 100 days out, gather a cross-functional team — sales, marketing, product, customer success, and finance — into one room to align on goals, story, and who owns what. That single meeting surfaces what teams usually miss: customers quietly at churn risk who'll be walking the floor, a speaking slot marketing already negotiated, a market shift worth building your whole campaign around. Your pre-show outreach doesn't have to be "are you going, are you going?" — it can lead with research, a point of view, or a reason to care.

They dig into booth giveaways your ICP actually wants (and why the $100 gift-card raffle is dead), the merch-store approach that beats a table of pens, tying giveaways to a creative theme, and calling your vendor to ask "what's hot, what's played out." On the customer side: the non-logoed gift that gets remembered, why sending customer success pays dividends, and how a busy booth creates its own FOMO.

Mid-event, they cover working the floor instead of guarding the booth, designating a photographer and videographer 100 days in advance, action shots over static setups, rotating the team so the booth stays inviting, and the partner "treasure map" that drives reciprocal traffic. On outreach: pulling the show manager's pre-registration list early, enriching it, running lookalike ads, and re-engaging deals that went dark.

Post-event, Summer makes her case for blocking the entire following week as sacred follow-up time — book the next step at the booth, not by email later — while Sandi layers marketing "air cover," nurture streams, the 30-second teaser that earns a 30-minute meeting, and the post-event event that catches everyone who couldn't attend. Two messages from a company you visited won't offend anyone. One dropped ball between sales and marketing will cost you the deal.

The throughline: an event is a growth lever that produces zero ROI without a plan and clear ownership. Badge scans aren't pipeline. Brand awareness isn't enough. What moves the scoreboard is coordination decided before you ever step on the show floor — including a shared definition of what a sales-ready lead actually is.

Guest: Sandi Green, Miracle Max Marketing
100-Day Event Checklist

About Rise of Us: Summer Poletti is founder and CRO of Rise of Us, a revenue architecture consultancy for growth-stage B2B companies. Summer helps founders and CEOs stop wasting money and momentum on growth strategies that fall flat — diagnosing where revenue stalls and building systems that convert. More salespeople won't fix a broken system, and more pipeline won't help if nothing moves it. It's never just sales.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts

This episode continues the Messy Middle series, expanding on the $5M-to-$20M wall conversation from a few weeks back. Today's focus: what actually needs to shift once you outgrow the playbook that got you here.

Jenna Reback, messaging strategist and founder of Blueberry Creative Studios, opens with the three questions every stalled company fails to answer clearly: why this, why you, why now. She breaks down the difference between messaging that stopped landing because the market moved, and messaging that stopped landing because the company quietly moved up-market without updating how it talks about itself. Her closing point: don't outsource your differentiation to AI. She proves it with a story about her own name that no model could have generated.

Victoria Chemko, executive coach and 24-year operator, brings her four-part framework — signal, state, structure, support — for why leadership teams thrash instead of pivot cleanly during a stall. Her case: the shift has to start with the leader before it can show up anywhere else in the business. Get honest about burnout and self-awareness first, or every other fix is built on a shaky floor.

Shimon Perry, customer success leader, makes the case for interviewing your current team as if they were external candidates for the company you're becoming — not out of disloyalty, but because keeping someone in a seat they've outgrown does nobody any favors. He also shares a controversial move from a company he worked with: requiring customer success to sign off on deals before close, and what that structural friction actually prevented.

Summer threads it together with the sales lens: why custom pricing kills a repeatable engine, why every department needs a shared, quantified goal instead of a number pulled from thin air, and why "we don't have a retention problem — yet" is the sentence that should worry every founder in this revenue range.

Lightning round closes with one thing each guest says to review this week if growth feels stuck — from messaging to pricing to your own bandwidth.

Jenna Reback — Founder, Blueberry Creative Studios. Messaging and positioning for scaling B2B companies. [LinkedIn]

Victoria Chemko — Executive Coach, 24-year operator. Works with leadership teams navigating growth-stage change. [LinkedIn]

Shimon Perry — Customer Success Leader. Builds CS functions that operate as revenue teams, not just relationship teams. [LinkedIn]

Summer Poletti is the Founder and CRO of Rise of Us, a revenue architecture consultancy for growth-stage B2B companies. When revenue is flat and the old playbook isn't working, she diagnoses where the real gap is — GTM strategy, sales hiring, partner-led growth, content infrastructure, or the revenue system holding it all together — and builds what fixes it. It's never just sales. theriseofus.com

Revenue Remix is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

The average B2B buying team now includes 8 to 14 stakeholders. In a typical SaaS deal, sales will talk to three of them. The rest are doing their own research — opening Claude, checking Reddit, showing up to the internal meeting you're not invited to with their own objections already formed. The person who goes quiet after the demo is the one who kills your deal. And you'll never know why.

This episode picks up where the Steve Krull and Glen Torregiani episode left off. Getting found by AI search is step one. What happens in the middle of the buying journey — after awareness, before the hand goes up — is where aligned deals are being quietly lost right now.

Toni Hopponen, Founder of LandingRabbit, covers how to get the knowledge locked inside your sales team's heads onto your website where buyers and LLMs can actually find it. He makes the case for ungating your best content, why product documentation is now a sales asset, and why your content needs to repel the wrong buyers as much as it attracts the right ones. If your content is attracting leads that never close, that's a message problem before it's a sales problem.

Glen Torregiani returns to cover why 90% of the current GTM stack is pointed at seller activity while buyers are making decisions without anyone. The compliance officer, the CTO, the end user — the stakeholders who don't say yes but can absolutely say no — are being ignored by most companies' content strategies. Glen walks through what persona-specific content looks like and why disqualification is every bit as important as qualification.

Summer adds the sales lens throughout: the quiet stakeholder in the room, why salespeople know why deals are lost but that knowledge never makes it into the content strategy, and how to close that loop between sales insight and content production.

Lightning round closes with one thing to audit today if you're generating leads but not closing enough of them.

This episode is part of a series. The previous episode with Steve Krull and Glen Torregiani covers AI search visibility, the dark funnel, and the free audit that proves your brand is invisible in LLM results. Look for the episode right before this one.

Toni Hopponen — Founder, LandingRabbit. Turns sales knowledge into web content that converts.

Glen Torregiani — Founder, EnAIbld. Buyer enablement for the AI era.

Summer Poletti is the Founder and CRO of Rise of Us, a revenue architecture consultancy for growth-stage B2B companies. When revenue is flat and the old playbook isn't working, she diagnoses where the real gap is — GTM strategy, sales hiring, partner-led growth, content infrastructure, or the revenue system holding it all together — and builds what fixes it. It's never just sales. theriseofus.com

Revenue Remix is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

HubSpot called it a traffic apocalypse. Neil Patel confirmed it earlier this year: bot traffic has surpassed human traffic for the first time. Inbound leads are dropping. Buyers are arriving later, with a shorter list and less patience — and most sales and marketing teams are still operating like it's 2021.

Here's what's actually happening. B2B buyers are using AI as a research assistant, not a search engine. They're asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude who to call before they ever visit your website. That traffic doesn't show up in your analytics. You're not seeing the first third of their buying journey. And if you're not part of those LLM conversations during the research phase, you're not on the shortlist before the hand goes up.

This episode is the first in Revenue Remix's dark funnel series. Steve Krull, CEO of BeFound Online, breaks down why most brands are invisible in LLM search results and exactly what to do about it — including a free audit using SEMrush's AI visibility tool that gives you proof of the problem you can take straight to your leadership team. He also covers content architecture: why a 13-piece pillar structure drives up to 35% greater organic exposure and why your first paragraph now matters more than your entire keyword strategy.

Glen Torregiani, Founder of EnAIbld, covers the other half of the problem — what has to happen on your website when an anonymous buyer finally lands on it. Why gated content is broken now that buyers can get a good-enough answer from Claude in 30 seconds. Why a bad chatbot experience loses deals before sales ever gets involved. Why 97% of your visitors will never fill out a form and what you can do about it.

They also cover query fan-outs — the related questions LLMs generate when a buyer prompts them — and how to reverse-engineer those questions into your next content strategy. Practical and specific throughout.

One critical tip from the episode: when auditing your own AI visibility, log out, open a private browser, and start a new chat. If you test from your own account, the results are biased toward your brand. You need a clean session to see what a stranger actually finds.

This episode is part of a series. The follow-up with Toni Hopponen and Glen Torregiani covers what to do once a buyer is in the middle of the funnel — the 8 to 14 stakeholders sales never meets and the content gap that's killing deals. Dropping next week.

Steve Krull — CEO, BeFound Online. 20+ years in digital marketing and AI search visibility.

Glen Torregiani — Founder, EnAIbld. Buyer enablement for the AI era.

Summer Poletti is the Founder and CRO of Rise of Us, a revenue architecture consultancy for growth-stage B2B companies. She works with founders and CEOs past $5M who need more than another sales hire — they need the system that makes growth sustainable and the diagnosis that tells them where the real gap is. It's never just sales. theriseofus.com

Revenue Remix is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Summer Poletti — founder and CRO of Rise of Us — took the project, looked at the system underneath it, and found every profitability gap covered in the previous episode of this series sitting inside the company. So she told him something most people brought in to build a sales team don't say: let's not hire yet. Let me fix this first, and then we'll decide whether hiring makes sense.

What happened

They hit his revenue goal. No new headcount.

The half a million dollars or more earmarked for payroll went to the bottom line instead, because the gaps that were leaking revenue got closed rather than papered over with more people.

The second outcome was the one he hadn't asked for. The salespeople already on the team started selling considerably more than they had been, which put more money in their pockets — and that ended a revolving door problem he'd been living with. Reps weren't earning what they wanted, so they left, and replacing them carried its own cost. Fixing the system fixed the retention problem underneath it.

Why this is the proof point

Everything else in this series is structural: what sales-readiness looks like, what to build before, during, and after a hire, and which profitability gaps to close first. This episode is the version with a number attached.

The premise a growth-stage CEO rarely tests: more revenue does not require a bigger organization. Doubling a sales team doubles payroll, and if the added reps produce just enough to cover themselves, the result is a larger company with a flat profit line. Closing the leaks first changes what the same team is capable of producing — and can change how many people the plan needs at all.

There's a version of this where the company you end up running is smaller than the one you pictured, and both the profit and the life you wanted are still there.

Who this episode is for

Founders, CEOs, and presidents at B2B SaaS, fintech, and professional services companies between $5M and $25M ARR who are about to add sales headcount, watching revenue climb while profit stays flat, or losing salespeople who aren't earning enough to stay.

If this story struck a chord, send it to someone who needs to hear it. If you're the one who needed to hear it, DM Summer on LinkedIn and let's figure it out.

Rise of Us — revenue architecture for growth-stage B2B companies. theriseofus.com

profitable growth, sales team expansion, revenue without headcount, profitability gaps, sales rep retention, B2B SaaS revenue strategy, when not to hire salespeople, fractional CRO case study

In this bonus solo episode, Summer Poletti — founder and CRO of Rise of Us — walks through what she looks for inside a $5M–$25M ARR company before anyone signs off on new sales headcount. Not the sales-readiness gaps covered earlier in this series. These are the profitability gaps: the places where revenue is already leaking out of a system that looks like it's working.

The goal isn't revenue growth. It's profitable growth — revenue up, profit up more.

The 5 profitability gaps she finds most often

1. The marketing-to-sales handoff. Marketing defines a lead one way. Sales defines it another. The buyers in the middle — sent over, judged not ready, sent nowhere — are the leakage. Where does a lead go when sales won't take it? Most companies can't answer that, and nobody is nurturing the people stuck in the gap.

2. Stalled and lost deals with no follow-up motion. Buyers fall off after the demo or after pricing. Some say no. Some just go quiet. Either way, they frequently sit untouched for years. Not-buying-ready is a timing verdict, not a permanent one, and treating it as permanent is one of the most expensive habits in a growth-stage revenue system.

3. Partners in name only. Listed in the CRM, sitting in a spreadsheet, or living in someone's head. A conversation happened, both sides agreed to partner up, and nothing was built after that. Underoptimized partnerships leave a significant amount of money on the table quietly, because nobody is measuring what they were supposed to produce.

4. Underoptimized middle clients. Not the marquee accounts and not the scrappy early customers you took when all revenue was good revenue. The accounts in the middle — underusing the product, no expansion motion, no referral motion. Building out that middle is also how you de-risk the top: one company Summer worked with had more than 60% of revenue tied to a single client.

5. Underperforming events. Event spend runs second only to payroll in some companies, with no real marketing wrapped around the event and no answer to the only question that matters: what revenue did we recognize because of this?

Why plug these first

Two reasons, and one of them answers the speed objection. Closing profitability gaps produces lift and momentum before a new hire ever starts, which means the planning window isn't dead time. And the system that hire steps into is already built to convert payroll into profit rather than just into activity.

Who this episode is for

Founders, CEOs, and presidents at B2B SaaS, fintech, and professional services companies between $5M and $25M ARR who are planning to expand a sales team, questioning whether more headcount is the right move, or watching revenue climb while profit stays flat.

Know someone scratching their head about where their leads are going, whether their events return anything, or why the partnerships they announced never delivered? Be a good business friend and send this over.

And if it sounds like you, DM Summer on LinkedIn.

Rise of Us — revenue architecture for growth-stage B2B companies. theriseofus.com

profitable growth, revenue leakage, lead handoff marketing to sales, stalled deal follow-up, partner program optimization, client expansion strategy, event ROI B2B, scaling a sales team, B2B SaaS revenue strategy, fractional CRO

That's the objection Summer Poletti hears most from founders and CEOs who already know their sales hire needs structure underneath it. In this bonus solo episode, the founder and CRO of Rise of Us answers it directly — and she answers it as a 3x founder who doesn't like waiting either.

The premise: you don't have to choose between speed and structure. You have to sequence them.

The sequence is the strategy

Most sales-readiness advice hands a CEO a list and implies everything on it has to exist before the job posting goes up. It doesn't. Knowing when something needs to exist is as important as knowing what needs to exist. This episode breaks the build into three windows:

Before the hire. Comp plan, job description, pricing strategy threaded into the comp plan, and a defined ideal client profile and ideal partner profile. This is the non-negotiable layer — you cannot write a comp plan or a job description without knowing who the role sells to.

During the search. Sales process, sales strategy, and a 90-day success plan with real metrics — longer if your sales cycle runs long. The target is day one, not offer day. Candidates in an interview loop have no visibility into whether your sales process exists yet, which means the interview window is free build time most CEOs waste.

After day one. Cross-training, sales playbook build-out, decks and enablement content, partner program, additional lead generation. Built while the new hire is ramping, staying one step ahead of where they are in the 90-day plan.

Summer's sales coach told her early in her first leadership role to stay one lesson ahead of her team and she'd be fine. She did, and she was. The same principle governs the build.

This works for small teams too, not just first hires

Companies scaling a scrappy team of one to four salespeople face a different version of the same gap. Those early reps are often founding employees — resourceful, close to the founder, operating without an execution layer because they never needed one. When the team scales, the next hires arrive with an employee mindset instead of a founding-employee mindset, and the missing structure becomes visible fast. A $20M ARR company has systems a $5M company doesn't. The fix is the same sequence, right-sized: identify the gaps, then build before, during, and after.

Who this episode is for

Founders, CEOs, and presidents at B2B SaaS, fintech, and professional services companies between $2M and $25M ARR who are hiring their first salesperson, scaling a small sales team, or rebuilding after a hire that didn't work — plus the CMOs, recruiters, CFOs, and advisors who get asked what to do first.

Know a founder who thinks they don't have time to plan because they need to grow right now? Be a good business friend and send this over. And if it sounds like you, DM Summer on LinkedIn.

Rise of Us — revenue architecture for growth-stage B2B companies. theriseofus.com

hiring your first salesperson, sales hiring process, sales onboarding plan, 90-day sales success plan, founder-led sales, scaling a small sales team, ideal client profile, sales process, B2B SaaS revenue strategy, fractional CRO

In this solo episode, Summer Poletti — founder and CRO of Rise of Us — breaks down what has to be in place inside a growth-stage B2B company before you post the job description, build the comp plan, or make an offer. If you're a founder or CEO between $5M and $20M ARR planning your first sales hire, expanding a sales team, or rebuilding after a sales hire that didn't work, this is the diagnostic conversation that usually happens behind closed doors.

The referral pattern nobody talks about

Summer is rarely called by the CEO first. The call comes from a CMO, a recruiter, a CFO, a board member, or an advisor — someone with the CEO's ear who has heard the growth plan and knows how the movie ends. The plan almost always sounds the same: let's hire a salesperson. The person listening sees what's missing underneath it.

Two kinds of CEOs planning growth

Both are planners. Both write the job description, build the comp plan, buy the CRM. The difference sits in the middle — what the new hire walks into after the HR onboarding packet is signed. One CEO builds the structure first. The other places an expensive bet on a sales hire figuring it out for them. Only one of those is a growth strategy.

The four gaps that predict a failed sales hire

Covered in this episode:

1. No defined ideal client profile. "We serve everyone, all industries, all sizes, all stages" reads like freedom and lands as paralysis. A salesperson needs to know exactly who to call, why you serve them better than anyone else, and what changes for them afterward.

2. No sales process. Knowing why buyers buy, why they don't, who sits on the buying committee, what buying-ready looks like, and what triggers the decision. Without it, your rep is being helpful to a prospect who might be price-checking a current vendor — or filling a third-quote requirement for someone else's board meeting.

3. No elevator pitch that leadership can deliver. New reps belong on the phone by the end of week one. That only works if someone in leadership can model the hook live. If they can't, trust with the new hire breaks immediately.

4. No real onboarding plan. Not the half-day with HR and the handbook. A structured ramp with metrics and milestones tied to revenue — 90 days minimum, two years for B2B SaaS in a high-trust sale, because that's when a rep in a complex sale is genuinely producing.

The magician problem

Say you find the rare full-cycle rep who can prospect, close, demo, manage pipeline, and build the strategy. They build your entire sales motion. Then a competitor recruits them. Or they quit. The question every CEO eventually faces: do you want your entire growth motion living in the brain of one employee?

Who this episode is for

Founders, CEOs, and presidents at B2B SaaS, fintech, and professional services companies scaling between $2M and $25M ARR who are moving out of founder-led sales — plus the CMOs, recruiters, CFOs, and advisors who get asked "who do I call?" before the hire gets made.

A failed sales hire is a $150K–$500K mistake at this stage. This series is about not making it twice.

Part 2 continues the series.

Rise of Us — revenue architecture for growth-stage B2B companies. theriseofus.com

first sales hire, when to hire a salesperson, founder-led sales, B2B SaaS sales hiring, sales onboarding plan, ideal client profile, sales process, VP of sales hire, growth-stage revenue strategy, fractional CRO

Founders reach for a sales hire when revenue stalls — but the real cost of getting it wrong isn't the salary. In this conversation, Summer Poletti (founder of Rise of Us, a revenue architecture consultancy for growth-stage B2B companies) brings together three operators who see this problem from different seats: a recruiter who places sales talent, a customer success leader, and a go-to-market marketing co-founder.

Together they break down what actually happens when a company hires its first — or fourth — sales rep before the system underneath them is ready. The conversation covers the financial cost, the emotional cost founders don't talk about, and the brand and trust damage that outlasts any bad quarter. They also dig into what separates a sales hire that sticks from one that becomes a cautionary tale: documented process, coaching (not just closing), shadowing, and hiring for likability without skipping the fundamentals.

Topics covered:

• Why "hire a salesperson" is often the wrong answer to a revenue problem
• The real cost of a bad sales hire: financial, emotional, and reputational
• Why founder-led sales doesn't automatically translate into a repeatable process
• The EOS visionary/operator split and what it means for early sales hires
• Why AI tools help analyze sales conversations but can't replace human judgment in hiring
• How to build your sales process in tandem with your hiring search, instead of waiting

Summer delivers this topic as a workshop for founder or CEO groups, learn more here.

Follow our Guests:

• JMS – John Mason-Smith
• Shimon Perry
• Sandi Green

Hosted by Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us (theriseofus.com), helping growth-stage founders avoid expensive sales mistakes before they make them.

Catch Revenue Remix wherever you get your podcasts and binge clips on YouTube

#SalesHiring #B2BSales #GrowthStageStartups #RevenueOperations #FounderLedSales #SalesLeadership

This episode is the quiet part out loud.

Summer met Edward Preston (EP) at TechCon SoCal, where he introduced himself as the BS meter: the person who sits between the CMO and the CRO and calls out whoever is covering their own ass at the expense of the business. Summer immediately recognized her people. She brought in Jeanne, a marketer who has spent her career actually caring whether leads close, and one of Summer's longest-standing professional collaborators from her corporate days. The three of them sat down to say the things that usually only get said after the meeting ends.

What came out of it was one of the most honest conversations about sales and marketing alignment that has appeared on this show. Not the version where everyone agrees that collaboration is important. The version where someone finally admits that MQLs have become a vanity metric dressed up as a strategy, that salespeople are often whining about leads they haven't actually worked, that marketing is building content based on what they think sales needs instead of what the front line is actually hearing, and that the CEO who shows up twice a year for an all-hands and expects the revenue number to hit is the real problem nobody wants to name.

They get into where buyers actually are by the time they show up in your pipeline, and why a salesperson using techniques from ten years ago is going to be obvious to a prospect who has already done 70% of their research before the first call. They talk about what real alignment looks like beyond the polite version: the forensic deal analysis, the call transcripts, the pricing objections that reveal your messaging isn't landing, and the two-way enablement loop that most companies only run in one direction.

EP makes the case for closing first and demoing last. Jeanne makes the case for marketing enablement as the missing counterpart to sales enablement. Summer makes the case that if all a salesperson does is take a sales-ready lead and get a signature, you don't need a salesperson at all.

And then they land where every honest revenue conversation eventually lands: accountability. What gets measured gets done. Numbers don't lie. And the companies where sales and marketing are still playing a blame game usually have a CEO who hasn't looked in the mirror yet.

This one is for every founder, CRO, CMO, and revenue leader who has ever sat in a pipeline review and known that something was off but couldn't name it. This episode names it.

Connect with Edward Preston EP on LinkedIn
Watch Summer's TechCon interview with EP on YouTube
Connect with Jeanne on LinkedIn
TechCon SoCal

Follow Summer

Subscribe to Revenue Remix on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts

#SalesAndMarketing #RevenueAlignment #B2BGrowth #SalesEnablement #MarketingEnablement #DemandGeneration #GTMStrategy #RevenueRemix #SalesLeadership #CMO #CRO #PipelineStrategy #VanityMetrics #B2BSales #BuyerJourney #SalesProcess #StartupGrowth #TechConSoCal

If you've ever convinced a toddler to brush their teeth, negotiated bedtime, or talked someone off a ledge at Thanksgiving dinner — congratulations. You've been selling your whole life without knowing it.

Summer has spent years making the case that profitable growth is more than just sales. Lolita Taub spent just as many years making the case that everything is sales. Turns out both things are true at the same time. This episode is what happens when two operators who've sat in every seat stop arguing about the definition and start talking about what actually works.

Lolita Taub is the founder and GP of Ganas Ventures, a fund investing in early-stage startups in the US and Latin America. She started her career in enterprise sales at IBM and Cisco, moved into the startup world as an operator, became an ecosystem builder, and eventually started writing checks. She's also a neurodivergent, first-generation, community-first founder who grew up in South Central Los Angeles and has spent her career opening doors and leaving them open for the people coming up behind her. Her book, What Actually Matters: Startups, Capital, and the Rules Nobody Taught Us, is the culmination of everything she's learned across every seat she's ever sat in.

In this episode, Summer and Lolita get into the unfair advantage that comes from having lived every role before you start writing checks — and what most investors miss because they've only ever done one thing. Lolita breaks down why fundraising is just sales with a different name, why founders who can't sell can't scale, and what it actually means to carry a number and let that discipline follow you into every room you enter after.

They also get into the book — not the standard book tour version, but the real story behind it. Lolita wrote it for the people who didn't inherit a network, who were told they didn't belong, who are talented but weren't handed the opportunity to match. The stuff nobody tells you until you've already made the expensive mistakes.

And then the conversation goes somewhere no other show on her book tour is going: Latin American fintech. Summer founded a fintech in 2021 targeting unbanked and underbanked communities and watching the flow of money between California and Mexico — that's when she first found Lolita. This episode finally closes the loop on that. Lolita shares what's actually happening in LATAM right now, why COVID accelerated an entirely new generation of infrastructure, and the portfolio company she's most excited about — a WhatsApp-native CRM built for the way business actually happens outside the US.

This one covers a lot of ground fast. Come ready to think differently about sales, community, capital, and who gets to build.

Pre-order What Actually Matters
Lolita Taub on LinkedIn
Ganas Ventures
Leadsales (LATAM fintech spotlight)

Subscribe to Revenue Remix on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Follow Summer

#EverythingIsSales #SalesStrategy #FounderMindset #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #LATAMFintech #WomenInTech #WomenFounders #RevenueRemix #B2BGrowth #GTMStrategy #CommunityDrivenGrowth #NeurodivergentFounders #GanasVentures #WhatActuallyMatters #FounderJourney #StartupCommunity #FintechInnovation

Back in December, this show made a real bet: bring collaborators back again and again instead of running through one-time interviews. That's not how most B2B shows handle repeat guests, and there was a real chance it would get old fast. It didn't. This episode is a thank you for finding that out with us.

Read more about the strategy behind the show: Revenue Remix at (Almost) Two Years

No guest today — just gratitude. Back to regular programming Monday.

Enterprise organizations have been navigating technology adoption, change management, and workforce transformation for decades. They have frameworks. They have scars. They have lessons that most $5M–$20M companies won't learn until it's too late — and too expensive.

Ashley Gross has operated inside those enterprise environments and spent the last several years translating what actually works into something founders can use. She cut her own workweek from 40 hours to 15 using the same principles she now teaches. Before the tools made it obvious, she was already questioning whether being busy was the same thing as creating value.

In this episode, Ashley and Summer go deep on what growth-stage companies can steal from the enterprise playbook — without the bureaucracy, the budget, or the bloat.

If you're somewhere between $5M and $20M ARR and your team is either resisting AI, blindly adopting it, or vibe coding strategies they don't have the expertise to execute, this conversation is for you.

What You'll Learn

• Why founders who DIY their AI strategy are building yesterday's solution — and the 30-minute rule that tells you when you're already in that trap
• What enterprise organizations do to protect their best people during technology transitions — and how a company of 50 can steal the same playbook
• The real cost of skipping AI governance before implementation: it's not just a data breach risk, it's a talent retention and brand problem
• Why bringing in a shiny new tool without a process is guaranteed to create more chaos, not less — and what to audit in your existing tech stack first
• Why every founder needs a business plan that exists for them — not for investors — complete with milestones they actually hold themselves to and a plan for when to cut bait
• How Ashley built her audience, her community, and her revenue stream before she ever left her nine to five — and why "build it before you think you need it" is the advice most founders ignore until it's too late
• How founders can build a personal brand that exists outside their company — and why documenting in public is both a business development strategy and the record you'll wish you had two years from now
• The difference between using AI as a thinking partner and using it to avoid a hard conversation you should be having yourself

About Ashley Gross

Ashley Gross is the Founder and CEO of AI Workforce Alliance. She's a keynote speaker, author of The AI Workweek, and has been featured in Forbes.

Follow Ashley on LinkedIn

Follow Summer on LinkedIn

Revenue Remix is produced independently and recognized by Feedspot as a Top Revenue Podcast of 2025.

#AIStrategy #EnterpriseAI #ChangeManagement #GTMStrategy #B2BSaaS #FounderLedGrowth #RevenueGrowth #AIImplementation #TechStack #PersonalBrand #WorkforceTransformation #GrowthStage #B2BMarketing #SalesStrategy #RevenueOperations

This is episode one of the Messy Middle series — a multi-part conversation about what breaks, what slows, and what has to change when a B2B company outgrows the playbook that built it.

What We Cover in This Episode

The early signals that a growth playbook is expiring The first sign is rarely revenue. It shows up as friction — the founder back in every decision, meetings multiplying with no increase in clarity, teams optimizing for activity instead of outcomes. Growth that used to feel energizing starts to feel expensive. Operationally. Emotionally. Culturally. If the founder is asking "why can't people just think like I do" — that is the signal.

When hustle becomes the bottleneck At $5M, grit and grind are competitive advantages. At $10M, they are structural liabilities. The founders who navigate this transition well pause long enough to diagnose before they double down. They separate what got them here from what needs to change. They ask: what parts of how we operate no longer scale?

Why the founding team problem is always the last thing a founder sees Loyalty to early employees is real and it is earned. But the communication rhythms, decision-making capacity, and operational discipline required at $10M are different from what built the first $5M. The role that got you here is not always the role the business needs next. The company can see it. The founder almost never can — until they zoom out.

The go-to-market mistakes that hurt the most and last the longest Two patterns show up in nearly every company that stalls at this stage. First: messaging and positioning that sounds identical to every competitor — built from the inside out, describing what the product does rather than why buyers actually buy. Second: an ICP defined by firmographics instead of triggering events. If you do not know what happened in the 90 days before your best customers bought from you, your targeting is guesswork. The revenue you realize will always be harder than it has to be.

Revenue concentration risk — the metric most founders ignore until it's a crisis If your top five customers represent 50% or more of your revenue, you are one cancellation away from a contraction event. At this stage, the middle of the customer base needs to grow. Most founders are not looking at this until it is already a problem.

The one question that tells you everything Where is your next $5M to $10M in revenue coming from? If the answer is a blank stare — that is the diagnosis. Not because growth is impossible, but because growth without a known source is not a strategy. It is hope.

Follow the Panelists

Amirah Raveneau-Bey

Maria Trysla

Summer Poletti

#GoToMarket #B2BSales #SalesStrategy #GTM #RevenueSystems #FounderGrowth #B2BMarketing #MessyMiddle #StartupGrowth #ScalingStartups #FractionalCRO #RevenueGrowth #GTMStrategy #FounderLedSales #SaaSGrowth

Antonio Nguyen and Quinn Fukawa are the co-founders of Quant Community and the architects of The 100 Experiment — one of the most ambitious community concepts in the early-stage entrepreneurship space right now. The premise: can 100 scrappy founders build a combined net worth more than Elon's billions, starting from zero?

They're at 56 of 100 and building fast.

Summer met Antonio and Quinn at TechCon SoCal — caught them mid-hustle, rolling camera and working the room the way only founders who are all in on their mission do. The follow-up conversation made this bonus episode inevitable.

This one covers a lot of ground and covers it fast. Antonio and Quinn talk about why they drove six hours from Arizona to San Diego for TechCon — not just for the event, but to meet community members in person for the first time. They break down the simple but powerful principle that early-stage founders have to live by: nothing ever has just one job. The trip wasn't just a conference. It was a community meetup, a content shoot, and a relationship deepening trip all at once.

From there the conversation moves into the Arizona tech scene — why Phoenix is becoming one of the most interesting places to build right now, what's driving the influx of entrepreneurs and infrastructure investment, and why the consistent weather and available real estate make it a serious contender for the next wave of data center and energy technology development.

Then comes the generational divide on AI that nobody is talking about honestly. LinkedIn is an AI hype machine. Instagram and TikTok tell a completely different story — younger creators and entrepreneurs pushing back hard, using AI as a convenient label for anything they don't trust or don't like. Antonio and Quinn live on Instagram. Their read on where their generation actually stands on AI is more nuanced and more honest than most of what gets published.

And underneath all of it is the question that connects every thread in this episode: are we seeing more young entrepreneurs because AI lowered the barrier to entry for everyone, or is this generation choosing entrepreneurship because corporate stopped being a reliable path? The answer is probably both. And the window is open right now in a way it won't be forever.

The 100 Experiment is built for founders who are done being entrepreneurs in isolation. If that's you, check it out.

Follow Antonio
Follow Quinn
Quant on Instagram
Quant on LinkedIn

Follow Summer

Recorded in connection with TechCon SoCal. Subscribe to Revenue Remix on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

#Entrepreneurship #YoungEntrepreneurs #StartupCommunity #TheHundredExperiment #QuantCommunity #AIEntrepreneurship #BarrierToEntry #ArizonaTech #PhoenixStartups #TechConSoCal #RevenueRemix #FounderStory #BuildInPublic #SolopreneurLife #FutureOfWork #GenerationalDivide #ArtificialIntelligence #StartupGrowth #EarlyStageFounders #CommunityBuilding

What You'll Learn

• The 60% stat: Google is keeping 60% of clicks inside AI. Buyers never see your website.
• The dark funnel: The invisible research phase where buyers decide before they contact sales.
• Three languages framework: Analysts, managers, and executives speak different languages. Most companies write for one.
• Above/below the line: How buyers jump between discovery and decision now (it's not linear).
• Content quotability: How to structure content so LLMs actually recommend you.
• MVP website approach: Start minimal. Let behavior guide what you build next.
• Why gating content kills you: In the AI age, your best stuff needs to be ungated.
• Sales/marketing alignment: It's no longer optional. It's the difference between winning and losing.

Key Quotes

Steve on AI discovery: "60% of Google clicks never leave Google. If your website doesn't show up, you're now on the backend of a robot helping your buyer decide what to buy."

Toni on speed: "Product documentation has a one-day shelf life. By the time you write it, it's outdated. That's the challenge: keeping marketing, sales, and your website aligned when everything moves that fast."

Guests

Steve Krull — Founder, BeFound Online. Digital agency for high-consideration B2B brands navigating AI discovery. LinkedIn

Toni — Founder, LandingRabbit. Content-to-page platform for founders keeping websites in sync with product velocity. LinkedIn

Catch their last appearance on the show

Follow Summer on LinkedIn

Action Items (Start This Week)

1. Test your AI visibility. Ask Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini the questions your buyers ask. Log out first. See if you're quoted. See if it's accurate. Track monthly.
2. Pull your last 10 sales calls. What did buyers ask? What language did they use? Get that on your website (FAQ, case study, help doc).
3. Map your three personas. Analyst (execution). Manager (team outcomes). Executive (market/growth). Where's the content gap?

#DarkFunnel #AIMarketing #GoToMarket #B2BMarketing #AIDiscovery #ContentStrategy #SalesMarketing #GTM #LLM #BuyerJourney #WebsiteStrategy #MarketingAlignment

Bill Stierle has spent 35 years helping founders, CEOs, and executive teams communicate their way through the moments that matter most — scaling inflection points, leadership transitions, organizational conflict, and high-stakes crisis. He's a speaker, consultant, trainer, and author of The Emotional Sobriety Solution. Summer connected with him at TechCon SoCal after seeing his thinking on crisis communication and quickly realized the conversation was going to go much deeper than that.

In this bonus episode, Bill breaks down why the mindset that builds a company to $5M is the exact mindset that stalls it at $10M — and what founders have to rewire in order to scale past it. He introduces the concept of the Magic Seven, the executive team structure designed to take a founder from vision to execution without losing the plot, and explains why the CEO's real job is language translation between business units that don't naturally speak to each other.

He also gets into the neuroscience behind why change is so hard for leaders — the front brain has 400,000 neuroconnections, the back brain has 4.3 million — and what it practically takes to upgrade your operating beliefs the way you'd update software. The Progressive Insurance and Flo story alone is worth the listen for any founder who thinks their product should sell itself.

And yes, the milk on the table story will make you rethink how you talk to your team. And possibly your kids.

Connect with Bill Stierle: https://www.billstierle.com Bill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-stierle-7314181/

Recorded in connection with TechCon SoCal. Subscribe to Revenue Remix on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

#LeadershipDevelopment #FounderMindset #ScalingBusiness #EmotionalIntelligence #CommunicationStrategy #ExecutiveLeadership #B2BGrowth #RevenueRemix #TechConSoCal #BusinessGrowth #StartupGrowth #GTMStrategy #CrisisCommunication #CEOMindset #NeedsBasedMarketing #TechConSoCal #TechCon #TechConSoCal2026

Kimberly Nelson-Wright and Taylor Chaney are the co-founding mother-daughter team behind Preflight AI, an AI governance and readiness platform built for organizations that are moving fast on AI implementation without the structural foundation to support it. Summer connected with Kimberly on LinkedIn months before this recording, lost track of her when she went quiet — and then found out why. She'd been heads down building. They finally met in person at TechCon SoCal, and the conversation that happened there made this episode inevitable.

Kimberly spent decades as a COO working across industries. She kept seeing the same pattern: executives announcing AI initiatives, nobody asking whether the organization was actually ready, and the fallout landing in HR. Taylor is the software engineer who looked at her mother's early prototype and told her she could build something better. Within one living room conversation and a quick mockup, Preflight AI was born.

In this episode, Summer, Kimberly, and Taylor dig into why AI implementations fail before they start — and what it actually costs when companies skip the readiness work. They break down the Starbucks inventory disaster, Uber's blown AI budget, and Klarna's very public lesson in what happens when customer experience breaks because no one asked the right questions upfront. They get into why "we need to reduce headcount" is the wrong starting point for an AI strategy, why your CTO is not the right person to own AI governance, and what founders and operators should actually pause and examine before they spend a dollar on tools or licenses.

Taylor also makes the case that AI isn't always the answer — and explains what she looks for when evaluating whether a company's problem even warrants an AI solution in the first place. Kim breaks down what leadership accountability for AI actually looks like, and why most organizations are structuring it wrong.

This is the same conversation happening in boardrooms and leadership offsites right now. The difference is most people are having it after the budget is already gone. If you're a founder, COO, CMO, or anyone sitting in a room where someone just said "we need to do AI" — this episode is the pause button you didn't know you needed.

Connect with Preflight AI: [URL] Kimberly Nelson-Wright on LinkedIn: [URL] Taylor Chaney on LinkedIn: [URL]

Women building things worth knowing about: Camille Terry, Founder & CEO, Charger Help: [URL] Sister Scriptors at Towson University: [URL] Bit Brothers at Towson University: [URL]

Follow Summer on LinkedIn

Recorded in connection with TechCon SoCal. Subscribe to Revenue Remix on YouTube, Amazon Music, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

#AIReadiness #ArtificialIntelligence #AIImplementation #AIGovernance #AIStrategy #B2BSaaS #RevenueRemix #GTMStrategy #FounderStory #WomenInTech #WomenFounders #StartupGrowth #TechConSoCal #OperationsStrategy #BusinessGrowth

This is the first bonus episode in the Partner-Led Growth series. After that panel showed why partnerships belong in modern GTM systems, this episode answers the question: How do you actually build them from scratch?

What You'll Learn

• Why "give first" isn't naive — it's strategic.
• The KLTR Framework: Know, Like, Trust, Refer.
• The one mistake that kills partnerships immediately.
• Pre-qualify or waste everyone's time.
• Partnership follow-up is not optional.
• Why your calendar is the partnership management tool.
• How to balance reciprocity without keeping score.

Key Insights

"Even when you're starting out, you have knowledge. You know how to solve problems they don't have experience with."

"I referred somebody I didn't really know that well but they talked a good game. My client said, 'That guy you referred was terrible.' Now I've just risked my relationship with my client because I referred too early."

"I only like to make an introduction when both parties have expressed interest to me. Cause I don't want to waste anybody's time."

"If you want to keep getting leads from that partner, you follow up in a timely manner and express appreciation."

"If you're feeling things are out of balance with reciprocity, one thing I tend to do is ask for something specific... but also stay on their radar. Post on LinkedIn, send newsletters — it's really important to include people like that because sometimes it's a timing issue."

"If you're not on the calendar, you're not going to happen. It's like date night with your spouse — you have to work on it."

Topics Covered

B2B partnership strategy • partnership fundamentals • referral partnerships • know-like-trust-refer framework • giver mentality • trust building • reciprocity • pre-qualifying introductions • partner vetting • referral follow-up • partnership communication • partner retention • calendar discipline • relationship maintenance • early-stage partnerships • professional networks • B2B sales strategy • growth through relationships • founder network building • sustainable partnerships

Guests & Resources

Sean Parnell Founder of Innovaxis

Connect with Sean

Summer Poletti Founder of Rise of Us.

Connect with Summer

Part of the Partner-Led Growth Series

This is a bonus episode in a multi-part exploration of partner-led growth.

Already Released:

• 64% of New Business Came From Partners

Coming Soon:

• More deep dives on partnerships in action

Subscribe so you don't miss the full series

Key insight: 64% of Innova Payroll's new business last year came through partners

What You'll Learn

• Why partner-led growth matters now: Outbound is noisy. Inbound is broken. Warm intros cut the line and get you on the shortlist before buyers even start evaluating.
• The partnership mistakes that kill momentum: Partners die on the vine when there's no strategy, no onboarding, no measurement. The difference between "partners in name only" and partners that actually refer.
• How to structure a partner program that scales: Intentional partner selection (ideal partner profile), mandatory onboarding within the first month, monthly cadence check-ins, go-to-market plans written and approved by both parties, partner tiering (A/B/C/D partners), and actual revenue tracking.
• Why your sales team is the linchpin (and how to support them): AEs are overwhelmed. Remove friction from partner tracking. Automate what you can. Teach reps how to find leads for partners, not just get them.
• How to measure partnership ROI: Track partner-sourced leads through specific links. Ask how prospects heard about you on sales calls (web leads are often partner referrals). Measure bookings AND revenue generated. If you're not showing the board partner program ROI, you're doing yourself a disservice.
• The real cost of not having a partner strategy: Companies competing in commoditized industries (like payroll) can't outspend ADP or Paychex on marketing. Partners become the growth engine. Without them, you're grinding harder for slower growth.

Topics Covered

Partner-led growth strategy • B2B partnership models • Partner program structure • Ideal partner profile • Partner onboarding • Go-to-market strategy • Partner tiering • Revenue attribution • Sales team alignment • Early-stage partnerships • Enterprise partnerships • Partnership measurement • Partner activation • Growth-stage revenue systems • Outbound vs. inbound vs. partnerships • Founder-led sales • Sales enablement • CRM tracking • Partner success • Scalable partnerships • GTM alignment

Connect:

Pat Ferdig LinkedIn

Danny Engels LinkedIn

Tune in to the previous episode featuring Danny's co-founder discussing why sales intelligence matters. Listen

Kathy Palmer LinkedIn

Summer Poletti on LinkedIn

Alex Wright-Gladstein is a 2X founder and CEO of Sphere, a company making it easy for everyone to invest retirement savings in a climate-friendly way. Before Sphere, she was the founding CEO of IR Labs, a deep tech company spun out of MIT, UC Berkeley, and University of Colorado that is cutting the energy use of AI in half using light to move data between chips. She raised tens of millions in VC funding, successfully navigated five co-founders. Then did it again, solo, with a completely different kind of company.

This conversation covers a lot of ground. We get into how she managed five co-founders. We talk about what changed for female founders after the Me Too movement, why the VC funding gap is still sitting at 2%, and what MIT and Harvard research actually says about where subconscious bias comes from and how it gets fixed.

Then we get into the problem Sphere was built to solve. Why it took three years for a climate tech CEO to get a single fossil-fuel-free option in her own company's 401k. Why the big asset management firms won't fix this. Why the fossil fuel sector has underperformed every other sector for 20 years and your retirement plan is still defaulting into it. And how a two-sided go-to-market strategy targeting both employees and 401k advisors is moving the needle without a traditional ad budget.

WHAT WE COVER:

— The $1 trillion hiding inside America's retirement accounts

— Why fossil fuels have had the worst returns of any sector for 20 years

— How Alex managed 5 co-founders when a prior team declined a grant over equity splits

— Why she went solo for Sphere and what she gained

— Pitching as a female founder before and after the Me Too movement

— Why the VC funding gap is still at 2% and what MIT research says about subconscious bias

— Why big asset management firms won't launch climate-friendly index funds

— Two-sided GTM: targeting employees and 401k advisors simultaneously

— 200 million views on awareness campaigns without paying for a single ad

— Equity crowdfunding and building a deliberately diverse cap table

CONNECT WITH ALEX:

LinkedIn

Sphere

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

FairBridge

Symphonic Capital

ABOUT REVENUE REMIX:

Revenue Remix is hosted by Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us. Feedspot Top Revenue Podcast 2025. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe: @RevenueRemix on YouTube

Follow Summer on LinkedIn.

401k investing, retirement savings, climate tech, fossil fuel free 401k, Sphere investing, Alex Gladstein, female founder, women in VC, venture capital women, female entrepreneur, 2x founder, MIT startup, IR Labs, co-founder equity, solo founder, VC funding gap, diverse cap table, 401k strategy, two sided marketplace, Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, Rise of Us, sustainable finance, B2B podcast

Shawn Campbell is a director at Victory Strategies, an Air Force veteran, HR executive, leadership coach, and bestselling author. He spent decades inside the US military and now works with organizations on leadership development and veteran transition. He has seen this problem from both sides — as a veteran translating 20-plus years of service into a private sector resume, and as an HR leader watching well-meaning companies fail veterans before they walk through the door.

This episode drops just before Memorial Day. Not because we wanted to do a flag-waving moment, but because the people hearing thank you for your service on Monday deserve more than that on Tuesday.

We get into why nearly one third of veteran job seekers are underemployed and why underemployment is far more dangerous than unemployment. We talk about what veterans actually bring that doesn't show up on a resume: decisiveness, stick-to-it-iveness, integrity, a bias toward excellence, and the conditioning to show up ready to work the moment the clock starts. We talk about why the language in your job posting is probably screening great candidates out before you ever see them. And we get tactical about what founders and business leaders can do differently in recruiting, onboarding, and day-to-day integration.

We also talk about invisible wounds — PTSD, hearing loss, tinnitus, survivor's guilt — and what small practical accommodations actually look like for employers who want to get this right.

WHAT WE COVER:

— The 93/31 gap: why companies that value veterans still fail at hiring them

— Why underemployment is more dangerous than unemployment long-term

— What veterans bring that doesn't show up on a resume: decisiveness, discipline, loyalty, excellence

— The language translation problem: why military jargon kills veteran job applications

— How to rewrite your job posting so you stop screening veterans out

— Where to find veteran candidates beyond LinkedIn and Indeed

— ERGs and why veterans want to work where other veterans work

— Invisible wounds: PTSD, hearing loss, tinnitus, and practical workplace accommodations

— Service animals — what employers need to know

— The McKinsey $15 billion opportunity hiding in plain sight

CONNECT WITH SHAWN:

LinkedIn

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Military Officers Association of America

Veterans Administration employer resources

ABOUT REVENUE REMIX:

Revenue Remix is hosted by Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us. Feedspot Top Revenue Podcast 2025. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe: @RevenueRemix on YouTube

Follow Summer Poletti on LinkedIn

hiring veterans, veteran employment, veteran hiring strategy, military to civilian transition, HR strategy, talent acquisition, veteran workforce, underemployed veterans, veteran integration, veteran onboarding, supporting veterans, PTSD workplace, service animals work, veteran job seekers, military skills translation, veteran resume, veteran recruiting, military leadership, leadership development, Shawn Campbell, Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, veteran unemployment, veteran underemployment, HR executives, inclusive hiring, workforce development, private sector transition, veteran retention, decisiveness leadership, leadership podcast, business podcast, B2B podcast

Steve is the founder and CEO of BeFound Online, a boutique digital marketing agency specializing in high consideration brands with complex sales cycles. He built AIQ because founders needed something that actually told them where they stood in AI search and what to do about it.

This conversation was recorded before Steve appeared on our panel episode — we're dropping it Tarantino style. If you caught him on the panel, this is the origin story. If you didn't, start here.

We get into what actually carries over from traditional SEO into AI search and what is genuinely different. We talk about why lead magnets are dying, why gated content is mostly feeding your spam folder, and what you should be doing with your contact forms right now. Steve shares specific tips your team can implement this week — schema, H1 and H2 structure, EEAT principles, content taxonomy — without hiring an agency.

WHAT WE COVER:

— Why most AI visibility strategies are old SEO repackaged and how to tell the difference

— What actually carries over from SEO into AI search and what genuinely changed

— Why lead magnets don't work when buyers can just ask ChatGPT instead

— Contact form optimization — the specific changes that move the needle on conversions

— Schema, EEAT, H2 tags as questions, pillar content — practical tips you can use this week

— Why gated content is mostly collecting Gmail addresses you'll never market to anyway

— The real cost of being everything to everybody for too long

— Service vs. product: how Steve crossed the value bridge and stopped selling hours

— AIQ: what AI visibility actually means and how to measure it

— Why the order of operations in digital marketing has changed even if the tactics haven't

ABOUT STEVE KRULL:

Steve Krull is the founder and CEO of BeFound Online, a boutique digital marketing agency focused on high consideration brands with complex or consultative sales cycles. He is also the founder of AIQ, a proprietary AI visibility scoring tool built for companies trying to understand and improve how they show up in AI search.

CONNECT WITH STEVE:

LinkedIn

BeFoundOnline

Steve's panel appearance: the Gong Killer

ABOUT REVENUE REMIX:

Revenue Remix is hosted by Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us. Feedspot Top Revenue Podcast 2025. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe: @RevenueRemix on YouTube

Follow Summer Poletti on LinkedIn.

AI visibility, AI SEO, AEO, GEO, LLM optimization, AI search, ChatGPT SEO, AI overviews, B2B digital marketing, B2B SEO, content marketing strategy, lead magnet, gated content, contact form optimization, conversion optimization, B2B lead generation, SEO strategy, content strategy, AI search optimization, BeFound Online, Steve Krull, Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, complex sales cycle, B2B SaaS marketing, website conversion, LLM visibility, ChatGPT visibility, B2B podcast, revenue podcast, digital marketing 2026, AI marketing strategy

Janelle is a three-time in-house Head of Demand Gen turned founder of Elevate Growth, where she helps B2B SaaS companies in the $5M to $15M range build pipeline that actually converts without adding headcount. Her clients have seen close-loss ratios drop from 48% to 11% in a single quarter — not by adding leads, but by fixing the right problem.

This conversation is a continuation of one we started on her show, Her Path to Revenue. We scratched the surface there. Here we finish it.

We get into the client engagement where Janelle walked in, told the CEO she was cutting pipeline in half, and delivered 600% ROI on marketing spend. We talk about what demand gen actually looks like in 2026 vs. 2022, why the self-educating buyer has changed everything, and why Janelle calls great demand gen investigative journalism.

WHAT WE COVER:

— Why 10X pipeline with zero closed revenue is a systems problem not a marketing problem

— The engagement where Janelle slashed pipeline in half and delivered 600% ROI

— Why AI didn't change demand gen fundamentals — it just made it more expensive to ignore them

— ABM PTSD: what actually went wrong and why companies are still recovering

— Demand gen as investigative journalism — building pipeline for a buyer who doesn't want to talk to sales yet

— The fastest signal that tells Janelle the problem is with sales not marketing

— Why frontline operators know what's breaking before leadership does

— Why "that's just how Jimmy is" is not an acceptable answer from a CEO

— The volleyball setter and spiker analogy that reframes the entire marketing and sales relationship

CONNECT WITH JANELLE: LinkedIn Website

Summer on Her Path to Revenue

ABOUT:

Revenue Remix is hosted by Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us. Feedspot Top Revenue Podcast 2025. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, iHeart, and everywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe: @RevenueRemix on YouTube

Follow on LinkedIn

demand generation, B2B demand gen, B2B pipeline, pipeline strategy, pipeline conversion, revenue growth, GTM strategy, go to market strategy, B2B SaaS marketing, B2B SaaS growth, marketing ROI, sales and marketing alignment, revenue operations, RevOps, lead generation, lead conversion, close loss ratio, ICP, ideal customer profile, self-educating buyer, buyer journey, B2B content marketing, account based marketing, ABM, demand gen strategy, growth stage companies, messy middle, scaling revenue, founder led sales, marketing fundamentals, AI in marketing, marketing without headcount, B2B marketing 2026, women in B2B, women founders, fractional marketing, Elevate Growth, Janelle Amos, Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, Rise of Us, Her Path to Revenue, pipeline ROI, marketing attribution, B2B SaaS, SaaS marketing, SaaS pipeline, SaaS revenue, startup marketing, scaleup marketing, demand gen engine, broken pipeline, fix pipeline, marketing systems, revenue systems, B2B podcast, revenue podcast, marketing podcast

You get the most grounded, no-hype breakdown of AI in revenue that we've had on this show.

JD Miller, CRO of the Year and author of The AI Handbook for Sales Professionals, joins host Summer Poletti for a conversation that goes well beyond what he's covering on the rest of his book launch tour. We skipped the standard AI overview and went straight to the hard questions founders and sales leaders are actually sitting with right now.

JD didn't set out to review 158 tools. He started by asking CROs what they were actually using and the list kept growing. What he found was a marketplace flooded with AI washing — tools slapping ".ai" on their name the same way companies added ".com" in the late nineties. He lived through that bubble. The parallel is uncomfortably familiar.

What separates this conversation from every other AI-in-sales episode right now: JD's PhD is in organizational communication. He studies how groups make decisions, negotiate politics, and build trust. That lens applied to revenue changes what questions you ask — and it's exactly why his book's subtitle is Reclaim Your Time and Expand Your Humanity. Not just efficiency. Humanity.

We dig into the Salesforce research showing salespeople spend 66 to 72 percent of their time on non-selling tasks. AI's biggest near-term revenue impact isn't AI BDRs or fully agentic outreach — it's giving salespeople their time back so they can do the thing only humans can do: build real trust with real buyers.

We also get into where AI goes badly wrong. Sloppy outbound at scale. Personalization that pulls the wrong field. A vegan burger company that sent JD 120 pounds of steak rub and five pounds of kimchi because their bot misread a rooftop grill page. These aren't edge cases — they're what happens when you skip governance and just push the button.

For founders at the $5M to $10M stage, JD lays out a practical maturity model and consistent advice: find the problem first, then find the tool. Summer also shares what she's been doing with clients that stopped JD mid-conversation — and why one founder cut his sales meeting time by a third.

If you're a founder, sales leader, or GTM operator trying to adopt AI without losing the human trust that actually closes deals — this is the episode.

What we cover: — The AI washing problem and what the dot-com bubble predicts about where this is heading — The 72% problem and what reclaiming that time does for revenue — Where AI creates real pipeline vs. where it destroys buyer trust — AI maturity model: where a scrappy $5–7M ARR founder should realistically start — AI governance, shadow AI, and why banning tools without alternatives creates your biggest data leak — Real AI sales fails including 120 pounds of steak rub and one confused vegan burger company — The custom GPT a founder built to clone himself and how it changed his sales motion — What a communication PhD understands about group decision-making that most sales leaders miss

Resources mentioned:

JD Miller's book: The AI Handbook for Sales Professionals AI Sales Fail competition: ai-sales-fail.com

Connect with JD Miller on LinkedIn

This is the bonus episode nobody asked for but everyone running a B2B revenue team needs to hear.

We just wrapped a panel talking about what's working in 2026—AI citations, discovery, getting recommended by LLMs. All important. All necessary. But here's what nobody said out loud: citations don't convert. Discovery doesn't close deals. Recommendations don't onboard clients.

There's no revenue without a system to convert, land, onboard, and retain.

The real problem most scaling companies have:

They're not short on content. They're short on content that does a specific job at a specific stage for a specific buyer having a specific challenge and feeling a specific way about it.

It's a diagnostic problem before it's a production problem.

Here's what I do instead: Four conversations in this exact order.

1. Sales first. They hear the same objections over and over. They know why deals stall, why prospects ghost after great demos, and what helped close the big ones.

2. Customer success second. They know what happens after the yes. The features clients don't expect to love. The use cases that emerge from real adoption. The things product never imagined.

3. Onboarding third. They hold the fears buyers never voice out loud. The technical concerns they don't want to raise. When buyers can see exactly what implementation looks like before they sign, deals move faster.

4. Marketing last. On purpose. I don't come with a list of assets to produce. I come with a set of problems to solve.

What gets built:

• Objection-proofing content
• Nurture sequences mapped to the buyer journey
• Deal room assets
• Content with a specific job

Why AI recommendations still aren't enough:

Your buyer's main job isn't to buy your stuff. Your salesperson's main job is to sell it. The person who visits your website is your internal champion. A bot doesn't know what the finance leader is thinking. It can't send the right asset at the right moment to the right person. It can't arm the internal champion while they're fighting for budget. It can't revive a stalled deal.

Real client example:

Investor-backed SaaS company. Strong product. Demos landing well. Prospects impressed. Then radio silence.

Marketing kept generating leads. Sales kept booking demos. Pipeline kept filling. Revenue didn't move.

Before I recommended a single hire or new campaign, I had those four conversations. What I found:

• Buyers weren't saying no—they were saying "not yet"
• Customer success was sitting on proof prospects never saw
• Buyers were scared of implementation but wouldn't say it out loud
• People hadn't been contacted in 2+ years

We built a content strategy to solve all of it.

This isn't instead of discovery, citations, and AI recommendations. It's in addition.

Discovery gets you found. Revenue systems get you paid.

Citations are table stakes. Conversion is the game. Recommendations are wonderful—but they don't seal the deal, onboard the client, or retain them.

In this market, when everything's in flux, a little bit of something you can count on is all we need.

If this resonates, let's talk. Find me on LinkedIn or theriseofus.com.

If you're running the same demand gen playbook from 2018 and wondering why pipeline is down, this episode breaks down what's actually changed and what's working now.

I brought together three marketers tackling the same problem from different angles:

Sean Parnell (StoryBrand & Blue Ocean certified) makes the case that clear positioning and messaging still win—even in an AI-first world.

Dave Lee helps B2B companies get shortlisted when buyers ask their LLM for recommendations instead of Googling vendors.

Gaurav Verma is running a zero-budget experiment where three content marketers are beating six inbound SDRs on pipeline.

0What we cover:

• Why AI changed buyer behavior (and why that matters more than AI overviews stealing your traffic)
• The fatal flaw with gated content in 2025: if your best stuff is behind a form, AI can't find it—and neither can your buyers
• How to build topical authority when you don't have a content team or budget
• Why "voice of the customer" language matters more now than ever (hint: buyers talk to AI like humans, not like marketers)
• The content that actually drives pipeline: case studies, comparisons, guides that aren't gated, and content that answers buyer objections
• How to structure your website so AI can actually read it (spoiler: it doesn't index your site like Google—it reads it like a person)
• Why your biggest competitor isn't another vendor—it's buyers doing nothing
• The "cost of doing nothing" calculator that works better than ROI calculators
• Wikipedia pages, press releases, and whether "LLM poisoning" actually works (spoiler: don't do that)

Key takeaway: Inbound still works, but the volume is lower and the quality is higher. Buyers are coming in later in the journey, more informed, and ready to move faster. Your job is to make sure AI finds you when they ask "who's the best."

If you're a founder, CMO, or revenue leader trying to figure out what actually drives pipeline in 2025, this is the conversation you need to hear.

Featured Guests:

Sean Parnell – StoryBrand & Blue Ocean certified marketing strategist
Dave Lee – AI search optimization expert, former HubSpot agency owner
Gaurav Verma – Running zero-budget content experiments that beat traditional outbound

Mentioned in this episode:

• Otterly.ai (LLM search prompt monitoring)
• Bing Webmaster Tools (grounding queries for AI search)
• "They Ask You Answer" (book)
• BLUF framework (Bottom Line Up Front)
• G2, TrustPilot, Azure Marketplace (review platforms AI trusts)
• EIN Presswire (affordable press release distribution)

Want more insights on building predictable revenue without wasting money on strategies that don't fit your business?

Subscribe to Revenue Remix and follow Summer on LinkedIn for frameworks, hot takes, and the occasional spicy panel where marketers actually disagree.

These four GTM tool founders saw the gaps the big platforms aren't solving — and built something new.

What broke in your current stack: Your AI search visibility is broken — LLMs can't find you and you don't know it. Your CRM data decays the minute you upload it (ZoomInfo took 5 years to update one founder's job change). Your sales intelligence tool is analyzing transcripts while missing actual buying signals. Your sales enablement pages take weeks to spin up instead of minutes.

What actually works in 2026:

Steve Krull (Be Found Online / AIQ) — Why AI can't find you and how to fix your visibility in LLM search and conversational AI before your competitors do.

Toni Hopponen (LandingRabbit) — How to create brand-aligned sales enablement landing pages in minutes using voice notes and existing brand assets instead of copying outdated templates.

Saumya Bhatnagar (Involve.ai) — Why B2B data decays in real time, why ZoomInfo and legacy data tools can't keep up with 18-month job changes, and how AI agents fix data quality automatically.

Trent Ballard (SalesEQ) — Why Gong analyzes the wrong signals, what video and audio analysis reveals about buyer sentiment that transcript tools miss entirely, and why this changes your entire sales intelligence strategy.

The ecosystem reveal: These four tools stack together to create a modern GTM engine purpose-built for growth-stage B2B companies scaling from $5M to $20M ARR. Traditional enterprise software wasn't built for where you're going.

Who this is for: Founders, CROs, CMOs, and revenue leaders at growth-stage B2B SaaS, fintech, professional services, and consulting firms who are scaling past founder-led sales and need a GTM stack that doesn't slow them down.

CONNECT WITH THE FOUNDERS:

Steve Krull
🔗 LinkedIn
🌐 Website

Toni Hopponen
🔗 LinkedIn
🌐 Website

Saumya Bhatnagar
🔗 LinkedIn
🌐 Website

Trent Ballard
🔗 LinkedIn
🌐 Website

If you're running GTM at a growth-stage company and something feels stuck—revenue plateaued, teams pointing fingers, tools not solving the actual problems—that's what Summer's diagnostic uncovers.

Linkedin

theriseofus.com

Your GTM strategy can be perfect on paper and still fail. Not because of your market. Not because of your product. Because of what's happening underneath — in the culture, in the budget conversations, and in the silence between your executive team.

This is Part 2.5 of the alignment series. If you missed Part 1, start there first, it's the episode right underneath this one.

Summer is joined again by Valerie Martin, financial operations expert who builds the systems that turn "we're aligned" into numbers you can actually see on your P&L, and Raven Page, change management consultant who works the people side — because culture is where your perfect alignment strategy goes to die.

In this episode:

• What a fear culture actually looks like (and why executives are usually the last to see it)
• Why budget conversations become territory battles instead of trade-off conversations
• What happens when visionary founders chase too many ideas — and who really pays for it
• Why change initiatives die after launch and what follow-through actually looks like
• What the individual contributor can do when leadership won't fix it

Connect with the guests:

• Raven Page
• Valerie Martin

If you're listening to this and recognizing your own organization — the infighting, the bloated pipeline, the teams that won't talk to each other — that's not a people problem. That's a revenue architecture problem, and it shows up in your numbers before most leaders are willing to admit it.

That's exactly what Summer's diagnostic uncovers. Not a generic deck. A custom diagnosis of why revenue is stuck and what leadership needs to own to fix it.

→ Curious if this is your problem? DM Summer on LinkedIn or visit theriseofus.com

Subscribe so you don't miss the insider "Too Spicy for Public" clip — your sales team is lying about pipeline, and it's not their fault.

This is Part 2 of the Revenue Remix alignment series. In Part 1, we tackled go-to-market alignment across sales, marketing, and customer success — and pushed the conversation into back-office alignment with finance, HR, and service delivery. But when I was editing, I realized we hadn’t gone deep enough on what lives underneath alignment: the culture and the numbers that either make it real or expose it as theater.

So I brought back two people who see this mess up close.

Valerie Martin is a COO who builds the operational systems that turn “we’re totally aligned” into numbers you can actually track on a P&L.

Raven Page is a Change Management Consultant who deals with the people side — because culture is where your perfectly designed alignment strategy goes to die.

In this episode, we dig into:

• Where to actually look when leadership claims everything is fine (hint: first-line managers and people business partners)
• How the forecast call doubles as a diagnostic — and what it reveals about whether your org is truly aligned or just performing alignment
• Why sales and finance don’t speak the same language about pipeline — and the cost of that disconnect
• Why the biggest financial cost of misalignment isn’t missed targets — it’s trust
• How fear-based cultures kill accountability, and what that costs you in attrition and execution speed
• The difference between transparency that builds trust and transparency that causes chaos

Part 3 is already scheduled. There was too much to cover.

If you’ve been watching revenue plateau and can’t figure out if the problem is strategy, systems, or something else entirely — this is the episode for you.

Part 1: Your Revenue Plateau Isn’t Pipeline — It’s Misalignment Inside Your Go-To-Market Team

Connect with Valerie Martin on LinkedIn

Connect with Raven Page on LinkedIn

Summer Poletti is a Fractional CRO and the founder of Rise of Us. She works with growth-stage B2B SaaS and fintech companies ($2M–$30M ARR) whose revenue has stalled. Learn more at theriseofus.com.

In this “zombie tactics” panel, Summer sits down with fractional CMO Rachel Johnson and independent marketing consultant David Lee to ask a simple question:

If modern playbooks are stalling, which old-school moves are actually worth bringing back from the dead?

Together, they dig into why the 2021 demand gen machine is breaking down—and which “zombie” tactics still work in an AI-driven, low-trust world.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why the 2021 playbook is dead (or at least undead)
  How AI, bot traffic, ad fatigue, and search changes have quietly kneecapped classic inbound, content treadmills, and Apollo-style cold outbound.
• The end of churn-and-burn content
  Rachel breaks down why high-volume “just ship it” content stopped moving pipeline—especially for companies going upmarket—and what she funds instead.
• “Stop blogging” (kinda): what Dave actually means
  Dave explains why blogging for traffic is a losing game now, and how to repurpose thought leadership in ways that still get you discovered and recommended by AI tools and buyers.
• Zombie tactic #1: in-person networking & relationship selling
  Why relying on “lead gen” alone is a trap for smaller companies, and how to treat coffee chats, local events, and real-life networking as a core GTM channel again—not a nice-to-have.
• Zombie tactic #2: smart, ABM-style direct mail
  Rachel walks through modern direct mail that actually works:
  • Why you don’t blast 5,000 cheap trinkets
  • How to use small, high-intent account lists instead of spray-and-pray
  • Where in the funnel direct mail performs best (hint: not top-of-funnel)
  • How to pair it with SDR cadences, landing pages, and nurture—not random acts of gifting
• Zombie tactic #3: modern PR as narrative control (not vanity logos)
  How to think about PR as a way to shape the story in your category, build trust signals AI and buyers can see, and become a go-to source for journalists instead of begging for “features.”
• Why none of this works if sales and marketing are still operating on separate goals, separate metrics, and separate realities—and how these “zombie” tactics naturally force tighter alignment.

This episode is for you if:

• You lead sales, marketing, revenue, or GTM and know your old demand gen channels are slowing down
• You’re tired of vanity metrics and want activity that ties directly to revenue and real opportunities
• You suspect “just do more content / more emails / more ads” is not the answer anymore
• You’re curious how to blend AI-era tactics with pre-2010 moves in a way that feels modern, not cringey

Guests

• Rachel Johnson – Fractional CMO helping early-stage companies go from no revenue to revenue with sharp, buyer-centric GTM.
• David Lee – Independent marketing consultant and former HubSpot agency owner who now helps teams adapt to the AI-driven buyer.

You’ll walk away with concrete ideas you can test immediately—and a permission slip to finally kill a few tactics that should’ve stayed buried.

In this solo episode of Revenue Remix, Summer breaks down why most sales onboarding quietly fails—and what to put in place instead so your next rep ramps faster, feels supported, and actually contributes to pipeline (without magical thinking about a 30-day close in a 6-month sales cycle).

You’ll hear:

• Why your anxiety about sales hiring is valid
  And why “they’re not closing yet, must be the wrong rep” is often an onboarding problem, not just a hiring problem.
• The hidden ways traditional onboarding sets reps up to fail
  • Company-centric training instead of customer-centric
  • Data dumps with no real-world practice
  • No clear ICP, messaging, or competitive positioning
  • Onboarding that stops after week one while the real selling hasn’t even started
• A practical, structured ramp-up plan (beyond ‘hit quota by month 3’)
  How to build realistic 30/60/90 (and beyond) milestones that reflect your actual B2B sales cycle—so you’re not expecting deals before it’s mathematically possible.
• Mentoring, shadowing & cross-training that actually help
  Why pairing new reps with top performers, letting them see good (and bad) calls, and having them shadow CS/implementation/marketing shortens the “WTF is going on here?” phase.
• How to use metrics without turning into a spreadsheet tyrant
  The small, activity-based success signals (meetings booked, pipeline built, deal stages hit) that tell you early if someone’s on track—long before full quota kicks in.
• Ongoing coaching vs. one-and-done training week
  What weekly deal reviews, 1:1s, and continuous learning should look like in the first 90–180 days so your rep isn’t quietly drowning while you assume they’re fine.
• Equipping reps with real sales enablement—not just a login
  How to align sales and marketing so your new hire knows what content exists, when to use it, and how to provide feedback when prospects consistently ask for something that doesn’t exist (yet).
• Teaching new reps to tap referrals & partners (beyond “use your network”)
  Simple, repeatable ways to build referral habits and partner motions into onboarding so they’re not relying on cold outbound alone.

If you’ve ever:

• Let go of a rep at 90 days and later wondered if they ever had a real shot
• Felt nervous hiring sales because the last one “didn’t work out”
• Or suspected your onboarding might just be “HR paperwork + product firehose”

…this episode will give you a clear, grounded blueprint for fixing it.

📌 Need help pressure-testing your current onboarding?
Check out Rise of Us to learn more.

At the time of this recording, Amy Silberman was a content marketing specialist and client success manager with Do What Works, a firm I still collaborate with today. Dave Lee and the DWW team now focus on fractional CMO work and AI-powered website audits, but the trade show strategy we walk through here is just as relevant for your next event season.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why “just getting leads” isn’t a real goal
  And what to track instead if you want to prove ROI to finance (and justify next year’s budget).
• How to plan 6–12 months ahead so your booth isn’t doing all the work
  Including what marketing assets you actually need before, during, and after the show.
• Designing clear, measurable conference goals
  From “grow our email list by 10%” to “increase trade-show-sourced pipeline vs. last year” — and how to instrument it.
• Building a dedicated trade show landing page that converts
  What to put on it (and what not to), how to align it with your website, and how to use it pre-show and post-show.
• Making your website and content actually support the booth
  Quick website audit ideas so prospects don’t bounce the second they click through from the conference app.
• Real-time conference tactics that compound your efforts
  Daily “thank you” emails, photos, and simple workflows that keep you top of mind while everyone else is just handing out pens.
• Post-show follow-up that doesn’t die in a spreadsheet
  How to tag contacts, drip on “not yet” leads, and plug everything into a defined sales process instead of hoping reps remember.

If you’re signing off on big booth and travel budgets this year, this episode will help you turn trade shows from a gamble into a repeatable, measurable pipeline engine.

Do What Works has since committed to a laser-focused AI Shortlist Audit service, find out more here.

Rise of Us has just opened up Revenue Diagnostics for 2Q. Perfect for a B2B SaaS, Fintech or professional service org that has growth aspirations for 2026 and knows that they shouldn't wait until 4Q to make adjustments. Find out more here.

Meanwhile, everyone's working hard and nothing's landing.

Before you fix the KPIs or rebuild the org chart — have you considered that your D and your S just don't speak the same language?

In this bonus episode, Summer breaks down DISC — the communication and decision-making framework she brings to every client engagement — and explains why it's the missing piece in every alignment conversation she's been having lately on Revenue Remix.

This one connects directly to the alignment series. If you haven't listened yet, they're right below this bonus episode.

In this episode:

• What DISC actually is and why it matters for revenue teams
• Why sales and finance accidentally railroad each other (and nobody means to)
• How to spot communication styles in a room without a formal assessment
• The one thing Summer learned the hard way that changed how she works with clients

Your one stealable moment: When sales and marketing fight, it might not be a lead quality problem. It might be a D talking to an S with no translation layer between them.

→ Free assessments exist. Start there. If you need a coach to make sure your leadership team works through it — that's work Summer does inside her engagements. Start with a diagnostic here.

It's never just a sales problem. It's never just a marketing problem. It's a revenue architecture problem — and it starts with understanding how your people think.

👉 A fantastic candidate in Toronto
👉 A customer in New York who wants local support
👉 A test market just across the border

In this panel, I’m joined by Toronto-based leaders Eric Hachmer and Komal to unpack what it really takes to operate across the US–Canada border — beyond “just add a worker” in your payroll platform.

We talk about why Canada is often the first global footprint for US businesses (and vice versa), and how to do it in a way that supports long-term growth instead of creating messy cleanup work for future you.

We cover:

Why “just hire someone in Canada/the U.S.” is not a global strategy We start with the common story: a key employee moves to Toronto, or a US founder decides “Canada seems easy enough.” Eric and Komal walk through the gap between employing someone cross-border and actually doing business in another country.

Structure before headcount: what to decide before you hire Eric shares why hiring is the easy part — and why your go-to-market model, sales design, and leadership attention matter far more than how quickly you can add someone in your payroll tool.

Incorporation, tax, and comp 101 (without putting you to sleep)
Komal breaks down:

• Why you should think about incorporation in Canada
• How federal vs provincial tax structures work
• Why Canadian taxes and cost of living factors into comp strategy

Benefits aren’t “copy/paste” across the border We talk through subtle but important differences, including:

• Maternity/parental leave expectations
• How stock options are taxed and perceived in each country
• Why your benefits need to be right-sized for each country

Culture, trust, and risk tolerance: the stuff the setup guide doesn’t tell you
This is the part you won’t get from your EOR or payroll provider:

• Importance and challenge of building trust
• Why Canadian teams often put more emphasis on relationship and intention before diving into numbers
• How risk appetite differs

Tech, fintech, and cross-border payments
We touch on the reality of:

• Why data residency, AML, and server location matter if you’re a SaaS or fintech selling into Canada
• How upcoming open banking in Canada (2026) could unlock new ways to move money and serve customers cross-border

A more hopeful take on “messy times” We close on why business leaders are often the ones quietly building bridges while politics gets loud — and how thoughtful, generous leadership and clear decision-making can make cross-border work a growth engine, not a headache.

If you’re a founder, CRO, CMO, or finance/ops leader thinking:

“Canada feels like the logical first place to go global… but I don’t want to step on a landmine.”

…this episode will help you see what’s really involved, what’s easier than you think, and where it pays to slow down and set things up right.

👉 Connect with Eric
👉 Connect with Komal

In this bonus follow-up episode, we get practical.

Host Summer Poletti and returning VIP David Lee (founder of Do What Works, AI Shortlist Architect, and fractional CMO) unpack two real sales-hiring horror stories from David’s agency days — and use them to build a simple readiness framework you can apply before you post that job.

You’ll hear:

The two mistakes that cost David time, money, and sanity

• Why “I’ll just hire a salesperson and let them do their thing” almost always backfires
• What happens when you hire a part-time BDR with no onboarding, no metrics, and no defined “what good looks like”
• How a virtual BDR team did everything “by the book” — booked meetings, got past gatekeepers — and still closed nothing because there was no follow-up process

Why “they have a great network” is not a strategy

• Summer breaks down the myth of the well-connected rep whose Rolodex magically converts
• Why intros and curiosity calls don’t turn into revenue without a sharp ICP, clear differentiation, and a reason to switch

The foundations you need before your first sales hire

Summer walks through what she looks for with founders who say “we’re ready for sales”:

👉 In the episode, Summer shares a lightweight qualification framework and readiness checklist founders can adapt to their own business.

What to do when leads don’t buy right away

• Why most owner-led sales orgs bleed opportunity simply because no one has time to follow up
• How an email nurture engine can quietly become your highest-converting channel
• The difference between “just checking in” and value-add follow-ups that build trust over 24+ touches

Marketing + sales: how to stop making each other look bad

• David’s perspective as a marketer who refuses to run demand gen into a broken sales process
• Why your salesperson can’t be purely an “order taker” or the only source of leads
• How marketing can arm sales with content that gives them a real reason to call back (not just “me again!”)

A healthier way to think about your first hire

• Why throwing an “experienced closer” into chaos is really setting them up to fail
• How to think about your first sales hire more like training for a marathon: prep, structure, and pacing
• When it makes more sense to bring in a sales consultant first, build the engine, then hire into it

If you’re a founder who’s:

• Thinking about your first salesperson
• Still feeling burned from a past hire that “should have worked”
• Or wondering what to fix before you scale sales

…this bonus episode gives you relatable horror stories and actionable steps to set your next hire up for success instead of disappointment.

👉 Connect with David on LinkedIn

In this mini-panel, we dig into why revenue plateaus at growth-stage B2B companies usually aren’t about “more pipeline” – they’re about sales, marketing, customer success, product, and finance all pulling in slightly different directions.

No scolding. No “you’re doing it wrong.” Just four operators and advisors comparing notes on what actually works when you want healthy, scalable revenue, not just a noisy top of funnel.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why “sales & marketing alignment” is table stakes now
  And why the real unlock is treating CS, product, and finance as part of one revenue team, not downstream order takers.
• The KPI trap that keeps teams stuck in silos Marketing measures activity, sales measures outcomes, CS measures retention—and almost no one agrees on what a qualified lead actually is.
• Customer success as your GTM secret weapon How involving CS before the sale changes who you sell, what you promise, and how long customers stay—without adding more headcount.
• Product is not your feature factory What happens when sales keeps asking for “one more feature to close this deal” and product’s roadmap gets held hostage by short-term revenue.
• Finance as a growth partner (not the ‘no’ department) How to get your CFO to trust your forecast so they’ll actually support your GTM investments instead of blocking every new idea.
• Practical ways to build internal bridges (starting this week) From “bridge coffees” to shared rituals, internal problem statements, and walking a mile in each other’s roles.

Who this episode is for

This conversation will land especially well if you’re:

• A B2B founder / CEO stuck at a revenue plateau and wondering if it’s really “just pipeline.”
• A CRO / VP Sales / VP Marketing tired of attribution fights and ready to build one revenue system instead of parallel empires.
• A Head of CS, Product, or Finance who knows you impact revenue but keeps getting brought in too late.
• Any GTM leader who wants to turn internal friction into a real competitive advantage.

What you’ll walk away with

By the end, you’ll have:

• A more honest way to talk about GTM misalignment without blaming people or departments.
• A simple starting point for shared KPIs that don’t trigger instant defensiveness.
• Language you can use with your CFO, CMO, CPO, and Head of CS to shift from “that’s your problem” to “this is our system.”
• A few stealable rituals (like bridge coffees and cross-functional problem statements) to start stitching teams together without a giant reorg.

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But your first sales hire is too important (and too expensive) to toss in the deep end and hope they swim.

In this mini-panel episode of Revenue Remix, host Summer Poletti sits down with frequent collaborators JMS (John Mason-Smith) and Sean Parnell to unpack what really needs to be in place before you add that first sales rep.

• Why “I want to grow, so I’ll hire a salesperson” is a broken equation JMS explains why half the time, when a founder says “I need a sales rep,” the real answer is: “You need a sales process, not a salesperson.”
• How founders accidentally attract the wrong salespeople Summer and Sean talk about “job-hopper reps” who are great at selling themselves into a role… and then never close meaningful business — especially when there’s no process, no messaging, and no coaching.
• Lazy, or just lost? What’s actually going wrong with new reps JMS shares the story of a rep who was “working hard” but making 10 calls a day instead of 100 because he had no guidance on what mattered and what didn’t.
• The two big levers in any sales system Volume in at the top, conversion out the bottom. If you’re not measuring these (and the steps in between), you’re guessing — not managing.
• Why founder-led sales and rep-led sales are not the same game Founders close with trust, relationships, and gravitas. Your first rep doesn’t have that halo. Expecting them to hit your close rates and sales cycles without support is setting them up to fail.
• What “good” looks like before your first sales hire
  • Clear revenue goals that are more specific than “more”
  • A basic offer, ICP, and messaging that resonates
  • At least a sketch of a repeatable sales process
  • Leading indicators defined and tracked
  • A plan for coaching, not just “sink or swim”
• How marketing, content, and AI support your first rep
  Sean dives into why cold outbound with no brand, no demand, and no content is almost always a losing game — and how thoughtful marketing + smart use of AI can keep your rep focused on the right activities.
• The pre-mortem: how to spot failure before it happens
  JMS introduces the idea of a “pre-mortem” and how founders can use AI or trusted collaborators to stress-test their plans before hiring.
• Why founders need help focusing on what they’re bad at, not just what they love
  The group talks about coaching, business mentors, and using AI as a brutally honest sounding board instead of a cheerleader.

If you’re a founder thinking about that first sales hire — or wondering why the last one didn’t work out — this episode will help you feel more confident and a lot less alone.

Meet the panel

JMS is the founder of Hirewith, a niche hiring platform for the HCM and payroll industry. He’s a former top rep who now helps founders think clearly about when (and whether) they’re truly ready for a sales hire.

👉 Connect on LinkedIn

Sean is the founder of InnovAxis, a B2B marketing firm. He’s obsessed with measurable strategy, leading indicators, and building marketing that makes sales easier instead of harder.
👉 Connect on LinkedIn

In this episode of Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti (Founder & CRO of Rise of Us) sits down with William Lieberman, founder and managing director of The CEO’s Right Hand, to talk about what healthy growth actually looks like when sales, finance, and operations are rowing in the same direction.

William has sat in the room for the messy growth conversations most founders avoid: discounting that quietly destroys margin, bloated sales teams after a fundraise, and “crushing it” top line numbers that never translate to cash in the bank.

If you’re a CEO, CRO, or revenue leader trying to scale without breaking your economics, this one hits close to home.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why “we just need more pipeline” is usually the wrong diagnosis And how CEOs miss the real problem hiding in their back office, systems, and cost structure.
• The metric William checks first to see if growth is real or fake How to look at gross margin by product, service line, and client to decide what to scale and what to kill.
• A simple rule for firing unprofitable clients (and why it’s a finance job to say it out loud) Plus: how to align sales comp so reps stop dragging loss-leader deals in the door.
• What sales should never be allowed to do alone The deal-approval process William recommends so Sales, Finance, and Customer Success all sign off on pricing and scope.
• How to use new funding without ending up with a bloated sales org and fragile unit economics Including: what to model, who to hire first, and where nearshore + AI support actually makes sense.
• Sales comp mistakes that quietly blow up your P&L Why paying full commission on signature is dangerous, and how William structures payout to keep reps invested in profitable, live customers.
• The one recurring meeting where Sales and Finance actually help each other What should be on the agenda, who’s in the room, and how to make it about solving revenue problems instead of pointing fingers.
• A practical way for CEOs to stop the “it’s their fault” food fight William’s favorite role-reversal exercise to get leaders out of blame mode and back into solving hard problems together.

About William Lieberman

William Lieberman is the founder and managing director of The CEO’s Right Hand, a firm that provides fractional CFO, CHRO, and COO services to growth-stage companies that need serious strategic finance and operations support—without building a giant back office.

He’s a long-term operator and fractional CFO who:

• Has helped CEOs navigate fundraising, scaling, and restructuring
• Knows exactly what happens when sales is “crushing it” and the numbers still don’t work
• Brings a pragmatic, operator’s lens to aligning sales, finance, and operations around real, sustainable growth

If you’re a founder or CEO who suspects your P&L is hiding more than it reveals, William is the kind of partner you want in your corner.

Connect with William

• 🌐 Website: The CEO’s Right Hand – tcrh.co
• 📧 Email: william@tcrh.co

If this episode hits a nerve, share it with a CEO, CRO, or sales leader who keeps saying “sales is crushing it” — and quietly worrying what Finance really thinks.

This isn't a people problem. It's a systems problem.

In this episode, Brian Root breaks down the hidden bottlenecks that stall growth—even when every team thinks they're crushing it. You'll learn why sales and product teams work against each other, how to stop feature bloat, and why your compliance team might be your secret weapon.

If you're a B2B SaaS or FinTech founder stuck between $2M-$10M ARR and your teams are pointing fingers instead of solving problems, this episode is for you.

What You'll Learn

The Sales/Product Disconnect

• Why customers experience conflicting messages from different teams—and how it kills conversions
• The trade-off framework that forces sales to prioritize what actually matters
• How to align sales and product without making them best friends

Shiny Object Syndrome (AI Edition)

• Why founders chase AI features customers don't actually want
• The dual portfolio strategy: hype vs. real work
• How to focus on customer need instead of board pressure

Feature Bloat & Saying No

• Why startups keep adding features that create maintenance nightmares
• The one question every founder needs to answer before building anything new
• How to use strategic partnerships instead of building everything in-house

Fractional Leadership Reality Check

• The pattern-matching advantage outsiders bring
• Why founders are either the problem or complicit in allowing it

The Compliance Hack

• How to turn your "no hammer" compliance team into innovation partners
• Why involving compliance early unlocks faster launches in regulated industries

Steal-able Moments

"Pick the Feature You're Willing to Delay"
When sales demands an urgent feature, product leaders should ask: "Which other feature on the roadmap are you okay with delaying?"

"If the Only Power Someone Has Is to Say No, They Use It Prolifically"
Compliance teams aren't the enemy—they're excluded. Invite them into ideation early, and they'll help you shape solutions instead of killing them at launch.

"You're Either the Problem or You're Allowing the Problem"
If you're the founder/CEO and your company has problems, assume you're responsible. You have the power to stop it.

"Your Customer Gets One Message From Sales, A Different Message From Product"
Even small disconnects between departments create "the ick" for customers.

"Pattern Matching Is the Fractional Advantage"
Experienced fractionals can diagnose fundamental problems quickly because they've seen the same patterns across dozens of companies.

Guest Bio

Brian Root is the founder of Rooted in Product, where he helps growth-stage companies in fintech and beyond break through bottlenecks by aligning product strategy with business goals. With deep experience in fractional leadership and navigating heavily regulated industries, Brian has worked with companies ranging from early-stage startups to Amazon. He's also training for his eighth ultra marathon and builds mechanical watches for fun—because unlike software, you can't hack your way through either process.

Connect with Brian:

• LinkedIn: Brian Root
• Website: rootedinproduct.com

In this Revenue Remix Roundtable, Summer brings back three of her top collaborators to run 2026 predictions through one ruthless filter: crystal ball or BS.

They dig into how AI agents will shape vendor research, why trusted beats loud in the new GTM reality, what happens when GenAI is left completely ungoverned, and why alignment (not more tools) is the real growth lever for B2B SaaS, fintech, and growth-stage tech.

If you lead sales, marketing, or revenue at a $2M–$20M ARR company and you’re trying to separate hype from “do this now,” this one’s for you.

What We Cover

00:00 – 04:30 • Setting the stage: 2026 predictions & the crystal ball vs. BS game

04:30 – 11:30 • Trend 1 – AI agents in B2B buying: sidekick or takeover?

• Sean on why agent-to-agent negotiation is mostly BS (for now) and the limits of AI without real pricing data
• Jenny on AI as a noise filter and claim validator, not a robot decision-maker
• Dave’s 3 jobs of the buyer: find vendors, shortlist vendors, validate vendors – and where AI fits in
• Summer on why we’re already living the “AI sidekick” era and why negotiation is a bridge too far

11:30 – 17:30 • Trend 2 – Trusted beats loud in 2026

• Jenny on why human connection + published policies, prices, and proof matter more than ever
• Dave on trust as the new currency and how case studies + proof assets carry more weight in the AI era
• Sean on old-school social proof (testimonials, thought leadership, real examples) as the “new” competitive moat
• Summer on why low-edit, authentic videos are outperforming polished AI content on social

17:30 – 24:30 • Trend 3 – GenAI in sales & marketing: governed systems or chaos machine?

• Dave on quality over quantity and why AI hates marketing fluff
• Sean on why volume is no longer a differentiator when everyone has AI, and why unedited AI content is “intern level” at best
• Jenny on using AI trained on your own work (LinkedIn exports, thought leadership, etc.) and where she still does things manually
• Summer on “human-led, AI-assisted” vs. “set it and forget it” and what “human in the loop” actually means

24:30 – 33:30 • Trend 4 – Alignment as the real growth lever

• Jenny on why misaligned data and siloed KPIs make AI useless (and why shared OKRs matter)
• Sean on marketing as macro selling and sales as micro selling, and why the narrative has to match across both
• Dave on how misaligned KPIs create the “your leads are crap / you can’t close” death spiral
• Summer on why she’s hard on CEOs and why “that’s just how Jimmy is” is not a leadership strategy

33:30 – 39:30 • Bonus – Getting the “quarreling siblings” to play nice

• Sean: set shared goals tied to revenue, EBITDA, and sales-qualified outcomes – not vanity metrics
• Dave: hold both sales and marketing accountable to new customers and revenue, not just MQLs or activities
• Jenny: stop the blame game, reset expectations, and get people together in person during work hours
• Summer: why sales needs to stop treating marketing as a vendor, stop taking solo victory laps, and start sharing credit

39:30 – End • Closing thoughts & 2026 send-off

• Summer’s final verdict

Kruti Baires isn't waiting for the system to fix itself. As solo founder of The SprintFit, she's building AI infrastructure to bridge the access-to-capital gap for women and unseen founders—builders with traction who can't get in the room because they're in the wrong city, went to the wrong school, or don't fit the pattern VCs match.

In this episode:

• How Kruti launched an AI company in 90 days and shipped 4 product versions in one year
• The funding gap reality: Why underrepresented founders can't access capital even with traction
• The $4.2B workflow failure in early-stage investing keeping great deals invisible
• Avoiding product-market fit pitfalls ("this is cool" ≠ PMF)
• Why warm intros protect the status quo vs. how AI creates systemic discovery
• How The SprintFit helps small investors discover founders they'd never see while helping founders get funding-ready

Key Timestamps: [6:32] The 90-day AI MVP playbook [10:52] When data forced a complete ICP pivot [16:02] The $4.2B intake workflow failure [22:00] Funding gap stats costing investors better products [30:27] Why warm intros might be gatekeeping [37:33] Why burnout isn't a badge of honor

Steal-able Moments:

• "Your ICP isn't who you think needs you. It's who shows up and pays." [14:18]
• "If users say 'this is amazing' but never come back, you have a demo, not product-market fit." [10:08]
• "The funding gap isn't about representation. It's costing investors better products." [23:33]
• "Warm intros protect the status quo: wrong schools, wrong city, wrong background—you're invisible." [30:44]

Bio: Kruti Baires is founder/CEO of Sprintfit, bridging the access-to-capital gap for women and unseen founders. With 17 years at Fortune 500s and startups like Salesforce, she's fixing the $4.2B inefficiency in early-stage deal flow while expanding access for founders invisible to traditional VC networks.

Connect: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kruti-baires

How we met: Women X AI comment section—proof that engagement beats scrolling.

Subscribe: Revenue Remix delivers GTM strategy for B2B SaaS founders ($2M-$20M ARR). Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube.

AI is everywhere in sales—automating emails, tracking engagement, and surfacing leads. But let’s be clear: AI doesn’t close deals. Humans do.

In this episode of Revenue Remix, I break down:
🚀 Where AI helps—and where it backfires.
🚨 The biggest AI sales mistakes I’ve seen firsthand.
✅ 5 AI + HI plays that top sales teams are using to win more deals.

💡 The truth? AI should be your thought partner, not your sales rep. The best sales teams aren’t just using AI to move faster—they’re using it to work smarter.

If you’re not testing AI + HI in your sales process, you’re already behind.

Related Resources & Links:

• Mini Pod: Is Outbound Dead? Why you might think so and what you can do to fix it
• Get the complete AI+HI B2B Sales Guide
• Be the first to read a case study exploring a recent client success
• Apply for early access to our Smart Sales Playbook program - available to the public for the first time!

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

From understanding the hidden reasons deals fall through to using email nurturing, social media engagement, and personalized outreach to stay top of mind—this episode has you covered. I’ll also share personal stories and proven tactics to turn that "no" into a future "yes." Plus, we’ll dive into how partnerships and strategic follow-up can help you win back lost opportunities.

Whether you’re a sales pro or a business owner, this episode will show you that in sales, it’s never truly over.

Related Episodes and Resources:

• Maintain a healthy pipeline with these Strategies
• Re-engage deals with these Tactics
• Human and AI partnership to write cold email templates
• Why your deals are stalled and how to fix them

Tune in, and let’s bring those dead deals back to life! 🎃

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

We’re not here to panic—we’re here to play smarter. Tune in to hear how top business leaders are navigating uncertainty, plus actionable strategies you can implement today.

🎧 Listen now to get ahead of the curve and future-proof your revenue!

Related Resources & Links:

• 2025 Predictions - what the future-focused CEO will master
• Organizational Alignment - 6 hacks to unlock growth in 2025

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

• Connect with Fleur on LinkedIn
• Check out AI Insights podcast

Related Resources & Links:

• Blog Post: Leveraging AI to accelerate B2B sales
• AI-powered smart sales playbook program

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

00:00 Introduction to Revenue Remix
00:58 Meet Fleur Prince: AI Enthusiast and Community Builder
01:55 Summer's Journey into AI
03:20 Fleur's Unexpected Path from Army to AI
08:24 The Future of Work and AI
14:20 Responsible AI Use and Ethical Considerations
24:43 Fleur's Podcast and Community Work
27:58 Balancing Work and Life: Fleur's Passion for Travel
29:57 Conclusion and How to Connect with Fleur

Find Dani...everywhere!

* Website

* Linkedin

* Read her newsletter

* Check out her book

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome01:45 Early Career and Surprising Jobs03:08 Challenging Traditional Leadership03:30 The Restorative Rebel: Book Insights08:43 Empathy and Inclusive Leadership19:32 Sustainable Business Practices33:24 Measuring Success Beyond Profit38:20 Self-Care and Work-Life Balance40:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In this episode, I’m sharing six key tips to help you scout the ideal candidate—plus a bonus tip on where to find them. Drawing from years of experience and some hard-earned lessons, I'm challenging some traditional hiring norms and offering a fresh perspective on what truly matters in a stellar salesperson. From prioritizing ethics and work ethics above industry experience to seeking relationship-building skills and a consultative approach, we’ll cover it all. And don’t worry, I’ll even tell you the best platform to run your job ads.

Stay tuned as we dive deep into each tip, helping you become more confident and successful in your hiring process. Let's get started!

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

In this episode of Revenue Remix, host Summer Poletti, fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Rise of US, engages in a compelling conversation with Jedidah Karanja, a product marketing leader in the B2B SaaS space. Jedidah shares her journey from being a flight attendant to a product marketing expert, delving into her passion for AI and her advocacy for women and girls. The discussion covers the integration of AI in businesses, the evolving B2B sales landscape, and the importance of collaboration between sales and marketing teams. Jaida also highlights her involvement with the Community Bots program, which provides STEM robotics training for girls. The episode emphasizes the balance between leveraging AI and maintaining human creativity and emotional intelligence in marketing and sales.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome01:41 Jaida's Background and Early Career03:29 Transition to Product Marketing and AI07:13 AI's Impact on Business and Marketing10:24 Implementing AI in Organizations17:08 The Future of Sales and Marketing with AI20:41 The Importance of Personalization in Sales22:03 Collaboration Between Sales and Marketing26:55 Balancing AI and Human Efforts in Marketing34:36 Empowering the Next Generation of Women39:31 Community Bots: Bridging the Gap for Women in Tech42:29 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Listen now, and get the Director’s Cut package with exclusive strategies and the “Too Spicy for Public” clip: sing up here

In this panel discussion, host Summer Poletti (Founder of Rise of Us and creator of Revenue Remix) brings together three powerhouse voices to cut through the noise and share what the smartest leaders are actually doing to win deals now:

* Stephanie Brooks — Content-led, full-stack marketing leader, consultant, mentor, and advisor🔗 LinkedIn

* Sean Paulseth — Director of Enterprise Partnerships & Sales at ZayZoon, go-to voice on AI in sales🔗 LinkedIn 🔗 ZayZoon

* Sean Parnell — Founder of Innovaxis Marketing, helping companies align sales & marketing strategies that actually drive revenue🔗 LinkedIn 🔗 Innovaxis

What you’ll learn in this episode:

* How to use AI for sales coaching and enablement without falling into the “tech overwhelm” trap.

* Why partnerships can be the trust shortcut you need when buyers hesitate.

* The risks of stalled deals — and proven moves to cut through B2B buying complexity.

* How smart CEOs are balancing innovation with risk management in a confidence crisis.

* Lightning-round advice: What to ask your team this week, and what lever to pull to shorten sales cycles before year-end.

Visit Do What Works to learn more

AI didn’t just change how teams work in 2025 — it changed how buyers buy, how content performs, and which GTM motions are still worth the effort. In this Revenue Remix Roundtable, Summer Poletti brings together three of her closest collaborators — David Lee (Do What Works), Sean Parnell (Innovaxis), and Jenny Kay Pollock (Women x AI) — to unpack what actually worked this year, what flopped, and what they’re all changing for 2026.​

You’ll hear why Dave believes classic inbound is in freefall as B2B buyers move their research into long AI chats instead of Google searches, and why your website needs to act like a database for AI instead of a pretty brochure full of fluff. Sean pushes back from his world in industrial B2B, where inbound is still strong but mid- and bottom-funnel content, open case studies, and paid discovery offers are doing the real heavy lifting. Jenny zooms in on the human side, calling out the automation binge that has wrecked inbox trust and showing how community-powered learning and ruthless clarity about “who you serve and what you deliver” became her biggest multipliers.​

They close by looking ahead: smaller but stronger sales teams, old-school touches like handwritten notes and targeted mail, AI treated as a 180-IQ intern (not an autopilot), and a buyer journey where trust and specificity beat volume every time. If you’re planning your 2026 GTM and wondering what to double down on — and what to finally stop doing — this conversation will give you a candid, field-tested filter.

Resources:

* Jenny Kay Pollock

* LinkedIn

* Women x AI

* Sean Parnell

* LinkedIn

* Innovaxis

* David Lee

* LinkedIn

* Do What Works

NYT Article

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/26/upshot/ai-synthetic-data.html

Eda Cris’ old school wax stamped letter

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eda-ciris_hustle-grit-persistence-we-all-talk-about-activity-7401689517260476416-Inut?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAQMkyEBbbS3jkNFYit4gyXzXqeISKGA2Bs&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

Trade shows can be a huge investment—flights, booths, sponsorships, team expenses—but are you getting the ROI you expect? Too often, companies walk away with a pile of business cards and no real results.

In this episode of Revenue Remix, I sit down with Amy Silberman from Do What Works to break down a smarter approach. We talk about:
✔ Why trade show planning should start 6-12 months in advance
✔ How to create a seamless pre-, mid-, and post-show marketing strategy
✔ What most companies get wrong about sales follow-up (and how to fix it)
✔ The role of landing pages, email sequences, and content in your conference strategy
✔ Practical steps to align sales and marketing to turn event leads into actual revenue

If you’re attending conferences this year and want to make sure they drive real business outcomes, this episode is for you.

Related Resources & Links:

• Related Blog: 8 Conference Season Tactics That Will Drive Higher ROI
• Book a Free 15-Minute Consultation (Let’s assess your process & find quick wins!)

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

If your pipeline is full of stalled deals, prospects who "need to think about it," or buyers who ghost after a demo, chances are your discovery process is broken. The discovery call is the most important step in the sales process—get it right, and you’ll close more deals with less effort. Get it wrong, and you’ll waste time chasing people who were never serious buyers to begin with.

In this episode of Revenue Remix, we’re breaking down the perfect discovery call (and why perfection is overrated). You'll learn:
✅ Why most deals are lost before the close—and how to prevent it
✅ The critical mistakes reps make during discovery (and how to fix them)
✅ How to separate serious buyers from tire-kickers in the first call
✅ The structure of a high-impact discovery call—without sounding scripted
✅ How AI can prep you in seconds so you show up ready to win

🚀 If you’re tired of “interested” prospects ghosting you, this episode will help you tighten up your discovery process, qualify (or disqualify) faster, and focus your time on real deals.

Related Resources & Links:

• Related Podcast: Align, Differentiate and Win: How to Stand Out in a Competitive Market
• Related Blog: 8 Hidden Barriers in Your Sales Process
• Book a Free 15-Minute Consultation (Let’s assess your process & find quick wins!)

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

We get real about:

* Founder fatigue vs. real growth bottlenecks

* What it actually takes to go from founder-led to scalable sales

* Building trust in high-stakes industries (and where most firms blow it)

* Why client success is your competitive advantage

* The systems and leadership habits that turn culture into a growth asset

Whether you’re leading a small team through big change or bracing for next year’s strategy sprint—this is your blueprint.

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianmontesrad/

Calling bold founders — Want to be featured on the show or join a panel on what’s really working in GTM? Reach out. Let’s amplify what’s next.

Our Q4 Sprint is LIVERevenueRX is a short, high-impact engagement designed to help you quickly identify what’s slowing growth now—and make the smartest moves before year-end.Learn more at www.theriseofus.com

Like what you heard? Forward this to one founder who’s figuring out how to grow with less grind.

In this conversation, Summer Poletti and Pallavi Sharma explore the transformative impact of AI on marketing, particularly in B2B SaaS. Pallavi shares her journey from a science background to becoming a CMO and discusses the concept of an AI CMO, emphasizing how AI can enhance marketing strategies and decision-making processes. They delve into the evolving role of marketing teams, the importance of personal branding, and the creative potential of AI tools. Throughout the discussion, Pallavi highlights various 'aha' moments experienced while working with clients, showcasing the speed and efficiency AI brings to marketing tasks. In this conversation, Summer Poletti and Pallavi Sharma delve into the evolving landscape of AI in marketing, discussing the importance of understanding ROI, selecting the right tools, and the future of marketing teams. They emphasize the need for marketers to adapt to new technologies while maintaining a focus on customer psychology and human connections. Pallavi shares practical tips for using AI effectively and encourages listeners to engage with AI in creative ways.

Check out Pallavi’s marketing task ROI calculator here.

In this episode of Revenue Remix, host Summer Poletti interviews Sean Shanks, president of Moneywise Payroll Solutions. They discuss Sean's journey from a paper route to business ownership, the importance of succession planning, and the current trends in the payroll industry. Sean emphasizes the balance between leveraging technology and maintaining a human touch in service delivery, especially in uncertain economic times. He shares insights on resilience and adaptability in business, highlighting the need for actionable strategies during challenging periods. In this conversation, Sean Shanks and Summer Poletti discuss navigating economic uncertainty, the importance of maintaining business consistency, and the role of personal branding on LinkedIn. They explore how payroll can create a positive ripple effect in the community and emphasize the significance of company culture as a strategy for success. The discussion also touches on the challenges of business ownership and the need for balance in life.

Most sales onboarding programs are broken. Companies hire experienced reps and expect them to "figure it out," only to see slow ramp-up times, high turnover, and missed revenue targets.

In this episode of Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti dives into why traditional sales onboarding fails—and what to do instead. You’ll learn:

✅ The biggest gaps in most onboarding programs (and how they cost you revenue)
✅ Why the classic “90-day ramp” doesn’t work for B2B sales
✅ How to align sales onboarding with your business goals for faster success
✅ The essential elements of a structured onboarding plan that sets reps up to win

PLUS: Get access to a free list of smart sales interview questions in our subscriber forum—so you can hire smarter AND onboard better.

If you're hiring sales reps, leading a team, or looking to fix your onboarding process, this episode is packed with actionable insights you can use right away.

Related Resources & Links:
This Week’s Blog: How to Hire the Right Salesperson
Free Resource: Guide to Smart Sales Interview Questions (Subscribe for free to download!)
Related Podcast Episode: How to Find a Good B2B Salesperson - Steal 6 Tips From Me

Related Podcast Episode: Grow Your Revenue Without Hiring More Salespeople - Leverage the Power of AI

Related Podcast Episode: Forget AI, These 6 Old School Sales Techniques Will Never Go Out of Style
Book a Free 15-Minute Sales Onboarding Consultation (Let’s assess your process & find quick wins!)

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

Key Topics:

Early signs of misalignment between sales and marketing The role of leadership in fostering collaboration Impact of aligned sales and marketing on business outcomes Strategies for creating effective content with sales input Practical tips for CEOs to ensure team alignment.

Find Dave at Do What Works or on LinkedIn

Explore more on www.brightsol.co

Follow Christina on LinkedIn

Takeaways

* Christina started working at a young age, driven by a desire for freedom.

* Entrepreneurs often seek freedom but may find themselves overwhelmed by responsibilities.

* Having an exit plan is crucial for any business owner.

* Emotional ties to a business can lead to identity loss after an exit.

* Defining personal values is essential for aligning with business partners.

* Investing requires thorough research and understanding of financial plans.

* Community and collaboration can enhance success in business.

* Hypnosis can be a powerful tool for overcoming limiting beliefs.

* Emotional intelligence is increasingly important in leadership.

* Taking time for self-reflection is vital for personal and professional growth.

Sound bites

* "Have a plan to exit."

* "I lost my identity."

* "Own your magic."

Chapters

* 00:00 Introduction to Christina Olsen

* 03:26 Christina's Early Work Experience and Values

* 06:04 The Entrepreneurial Journey Begins

* 08:54 Lessons from Scaling a Company

* 11:29 The Decision to Exit

* 14:17 Emotional Ties and Identity After Exit

* 16:54 Finding the Right Fit for Your Company

* 20:04 Planning the Next Chapter

* 22:39 Investments and Business Advising

* 25:21 Transformative Power of Hypnosis

* 27:22 Understanding Hypnosis in Professional Life

* 32:31 Overcoming Self-Limiting Beliefs

* 35:28 Lessons from Investment Mistakes

* 40:29 The Importance of Collaboration

* 42:39 Emotional Intelligence in the Age of AI

* 43:38 Finding Identity Beyond Titles

* 44:45 Embracing Nature and Family Adventures

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit summerpoletti.substack.com

In this inaugural episode, Summer Poletti sits down with Judy Brower, a seasoned entrepreneur who bootstrapped her way to success, grew her business into a national PR firm, and orchestrated a seamless exit strategy. Judy shares her journey, from taking bold risks to secure her first clients, to building a culture of excellence, and finally transitioning her company to new leadership.

Whether you’re starting out, scaling, or preparing for your next chapter, Judy’s story is full of practical wisdom and relatable moments. Tune in for valuable lessons on entrepreneurship, client relationships, and why planning ahead for growth and exit strategies is the ultimate key to long-term success.

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

And learn how companies of any size, with any budget, can incorporate a customer success strategy.

Related Resources & Links:

• 2025 Predictions - what the future-focused CEO will master
• Podcast: Turning Client Success into a Competitive Advantage

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

Together, Summer and Tara explore why training in AI is crucial, the pitfalls businesses face when they don’t take control of upskilling, and how to foster a culture of continuous learning without overwhelming your team. Tara also shares practical advice for business leaders on the basics every employee should know about AI, from safety and ethical use to essential skills like prompt engineering and tool selection.

Whether you're a CEO wondering how to integrate AI into your team or a professional looking to stay relevant, this conversation will inspire you to think strategically about AI in your workplace.

Tune in to learn:

• Why “BYO AI” is on the rise and how it could impact your company.
• The 3 pillars of essential AI training every team needs.
• How to create a culture of continuous learning that’s both fun and productive.
• The real risks of ignoring AI in your business—and how to manage them safely.

Don't miss this insightful conversation on preparing your team for the future of work. Available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms.

• Connect with Tara on LinkedIn
• See what Do That Dave is all about
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

If you’ve found value here, a quick review helps more revenue leaders discover the show. It takes 60 seconds and makes a real difference for a one-person operation.

Want to be featured or know someone who should be?Visit theriseofus.com to connect.

* Schedule a 15-minute chemistry call

* Explore panel participation opportunities

Here’s to 2026—more guests, deeper topics, better conversations.

In this episode of Revenue Remix, Summer sits down with Saumya Bhatnagar — co-founder and CTO of Involve.ai — whose mission is to make AI actually useful for revenue teams.

From running a hospital as a kid (seriously) to running a tech company through the chaos of scale, Saumya shares the real founder shift: moving from building cool products to building revenue.

They unpack:

* Why most AI-for-sales hype misses the point

* How bad data silently kills growth

* The danger of “set it and forget it” automations

* What early-stage founders get wrong about customer success

* And why every startup needs a “flex person” before they need a full CS team

Saumya’s sharp, funny, and brutally honest take will hit home for anyone navigating the messy middle between scrappy startup and scalable machine.

🔗 Connect with Saumya:LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/saumyabhatnagarWebsite → involve.ai

🔥 Don’t guess your next revenue move.The RevenueRX Q4 Sprint is open now — a short, high-impact project to help you pinpoint what’s slowing your growth and what to double down on in 2026.No fluff. Just clarity, traction, and a roadmap to real revenue acceleration.

👉 Get details at www.theriseofus.comSpots are limited — get your clarity before the quarter disappears.

Takeaways

* Align department leaders to scale without hiring more salespeople.

* A solid demand generation strategy is crucial for success.

* Educational content should address each stage of the buyer's journey.

* Having an expert available for buyers is essential.

* A strong partner program can help scale without adding headcount.

* Proactive customer success strategies can retain and grow clients.

* Data-driven decisions ensure resources are focused effectively.

* AI can identify underperforming areas and optimize efficiency.

* Rethink traditional business growth models for sustainability.

* Collaboration across departments is key to achieving goals.

Sound bites

* "You need an expert available for buyers"

* "AI can help identify underperforming areas"

* "Rethink older models of business growth"

Chapters

* 00:00 Vision for Agile Financial Services

* 02:51 Strategies for Scaling Profitability

* 06:05 Data-Driven Decisions and AI Integration

In this episode of Revenue Remix, host Summer Poletti speaks with Tandeep Sangra, a SalesOps Architect and GTM Consultant, about the importance of product market fit (PMF) and sales operations in driving business success. Tandeep emphasizes the need for alignment between sales, marketing, and product teams, the significance of key performance indicators (KPIs), and the challenges organizations face in achieving PMF. He also discusses the role of emerging technologies and the importance of training in effectively utilizing sales tools. The conversation wraps up with personal insights from Tandeep about balancing work and family life.

Follow Tandeep on LinkedIn

Takeaways

* Product market fit is when customers want and pay for your product.

* Sales operations streamline processes for sales teams to focus on selling.

* Key metrics like CAC and customer retention are crucial for assessing success.

* Timing your product launch is critical; research and feedback are essential.

* Alignment between teams is necessary to avoid miscommunication and silos.

* Emerging technologies can enhance sales operations if integrated thoughtfully.

* Training is vital for effective tool usage and team productivity.

* Customer feedback is invaluable for product development and iteration.

* SaaS businesses must prioritize customer engagement to maintain PMF.

* Adaptability is key in a rapidly changing market environment.

• Download the free companion guide
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

In this episode of Revenue Remix, I sit down with Morris Reichman, Founder of Payro, and Greg Javins, Director of Strategic Partnerships, to unpack a common but rarely discussed challenge: businesses struggling to make payroll—and how Payro is solving it.

We cover:
 ✅ How Morris stumbled onto this problem and built a company around it
 ✅ Why many payroll service providers resist change (and how Payro overcomes it)
 ✅ The psychology behind cash flow management and payroll stress
 ✅ How Payro partners with payroll bureaus to ensure businesses never miss payroll
 ✅ Smart funding strategies for businesses looking to stay ahead

If you’re a business owner, financial services pro, or just someone who loves a great founder story, you won’t want to miss this one.

🔗 Listen now and learn how to keep your payroll running—no stress required.

Related Resources & Links:

• Follow Morris and Greg on Linkedin
• Learn more about Payro's payroll funding for small businesses.

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

Drawing on real-world insights and actionable strategies, we’ll explore how to:

• Strengthen client relationships through proactive engagement.
• Align internal teams to prevent cracks in client experience.
• Use business reviews and referrals to deepen loyalty and drive growth.
• Leverage client success stories as powerful marketing assets.

Stick around for my fresh perspectives on how alignment and client success will be your best tools for navigating 2025 and beyond.

Companion content:

• 6 Things Future-Focused Business Owners Will Master in 2025 
• Why Strategic Partnerships Fail and How to Fix Them

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

• 6 Things Future-Focused Business Owners Will Master in 2025 
• AI Upskilling Done Right
• When B2B Selling is Slow, 4 People You Can Call
• Maybe You Need a Break Too
• Harvard Business Review on Strategy
• McKinsey Podcast
• The Insightful Leader

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

Learn how to uncover your true differentiators by understanding your clients' biggest challenges, leveraging research, and aligning your internal strategies with buyer preferences. Whether you’re battling against industry giants or refining your unique value proposition, this episode offers actionable insights to help you stand out.

With fresh reflections for 2025, Summer explores how alignment—between teams and buyer expectations—is the ultimate secret weapon in today’s competitive market. Tune in to discover how to build a sales strategy that resonates with clients, retains their loyalty, and avoids the dreaded race to the bottom.

Companion content:

• 6 Things Future-Focused Business Owners Will Master in 2025 
• Protect Your Clients from Poaching 

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

In this mini-pod, I’m sharing practical and tactical advice for owners and business leaders to stay productive during a slow week, without burning out. You’ll learn:

• Who’s still picking up the phone (hint: it might not be who you think!)
• How to give yourself a little grace while still making progress

If you’re feeling frustrated by the pace this week, this episode will inspire you to shift your focus, take action, and set yourself up for success—not just for this week but for the months ahead.

Companion content:

• Podcast episode: How to move your deals along when everyone's in holiday mode.
• Podcast episode: Strategies for finishing your year strong
• Podcast episode: AI-powered strategies to close deals and ill up your 2025 pipeline

Show notes:

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

In this episode of C-Suite Sidekick, host Summer Poletti discusses one of the most overlooked aspects of business growth: protecting the clients you already have. With competitors eager to lure your clients away, especially in fourth quarter, it's crucial to strengthen relationships and be seen as a trusted partner, not just a vendor. Summer shares actionable strategies like conducting regular business reviews, aligning goals for 2025, asking for referrals, and leveraging social proof to retain clients and drive growth. Tune in for insights that will help you retain your most valuable assets and close more deals before the year ends.

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

With the rise of AI and changing consumer expectations, sales professionals need to stay ahead of the curve. Summer offers eight wallet-friendly ways to invest in your education, from library cards and used bookstores to online courses and sales training programs. She emphasizes the importance of implementing your newfound knowledge and not letting the learning go to waste.

So, whether you're lounging by the pool or taking a break from the office, tune in to discover how you can make the most of your summer and set yourself up for success in your sales career. Let's dive in!

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

the disconnect between a founder's passion for their creation and the market's response. She emphasizes the importance of understanding market needs, validating product ideas, and leveraging AI for feedback. The conversation highlights the necessity of actionable insights and real conversations to drive revenue growth and align products with customer expectations.

Learn more about Setuply and how they’re changing customer onboarding.

Find Rachel and Setuply on Linkedin.

Takeaways

* Rachel transitioned from tech to business, enjoying building relationships.

* AI is changing the landscape for startups and entrepreneurs.

* Identifying real pain points is crucial for business success.

* Client experience is often overlooked in favor of sales.

* Onboarding is a critical phase that can make or break client relationships.

* AI can enhance onboarding and customer support processes.

* Founders should keep scalability in mind while building their products.

* Systematization of processes is necessary for growth.

* Traveling is a passion for Rachel, having visited 70 countries.

* Every client should feel valued and special throughout their journey.

Sound bites

* "Sales alone isn't enough for growth."

* "Onboarding is often overlooked."

* "Traveling is the greatest fun."

Chapters

* 00:00 Introduction

* 02:33 The Evolution of Entrepreneurship and AI

* 05:11 Deciding When to Exit a Business

* 07:54 The Unsexy Origin Story of Setuply

* 10:35 Identifying Real Problems to Solve

* 13:13 The Importance of Client Experience

* 15:54 Focusing on Onboarding for Success

* 18:54 The Role of the Onboarding Guide

* 20:03 Transforming the Onboarding Experience

* 21:20 The Importance of Continuous Support

* 23:40 Recognizing Value Beyond the Sale

* 25:00 Leveraging AI in Customer Experience

* 28:18 Enhancing Communication with AI

* 30:30 Bridging Knowledge Gaps with Machine Learning

* 32:38 Scaling for Future Growth

* 36:03 Travel and Personal Insights

B2B buyers aren’t waiting around anymore.They’re asking AI for vendor recommendations, comparing options, and building shortlists before a single rep ever gets involved — and most go-to-market teams are wildly unprepared for that shift.

In this roundtable, I’m joined by three powerhouse operators across product, AI search, and customer success to unpack how buyer behavior has changed and what revenue leaders actually need to do about it:

👩‍💻 Reut Lazo — Co-founder & Co-CEO, WomenXAIProduct leader known for building user-centric, AI-forward products that scale trust.

🤖 Dave Lee — Founder & CEO, Do What WorksAI Shortlist Architect, and one of the clearest thinkers on how GenAI is reshaping buyer discovery.

🤝 Randi Deckard — SVP of Growth, BeslerCustomer success leader and founding member of Wednesday Women.

What we cover in this episode:

89% of B2B buyers now use GenAI as a top discovery tool — and what that means for your funnel

🧠 Why buyers are in 2030 while many sellers are still in 2018🛒 The three real jobs buyers do before they ever call you (Dave’s framework)🌐 How to make your website “AI-readable” so you even show up in shortlists💬 Why messaging fails when companies automate output but not listening📉 Why NPS is fading — and what modern customer health looks like🤝 The “moments that matter” in customer success where humans must stay in the loop⚠️ The risks of over-automation (and how to avoid sounding like a bot)✨ Low-lift ways to personalize the first buyer experience today🧰 How to use AI to prep for discovery calls so you don’t get left behind

Plus: a tight lightning round full of actionable, stealable insights you can put to work this week.

And “What GTM roles are on the chopping block?” the private, too-spicy for public topic, which you can obtain in our Directors’ Cut Package. See blow.

Need the Directors’ Cut?

Get the executive briefing, the too-spicy-for-public clip, and bonus insights from the full 52-minute conversation.

👉 Directors’ Cut Package

Follow the panelists

Reut LazoLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reutlazo/WomenXAI

Dave LeeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveleehere/Do What Works

Randi DeckardLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randideckard/

Discover how Judy combined her love for creativity with her knack for business, pivoting to a career in art consulting for commercial real estate. From luxury residential murals to public art installations, Judy shares how she built her new business, tackled unique challenges, and found joy in a field far removed from her first venture.

You'll also hear about:

• Why keeping your brain active post-exit is key to longevity and fulfillment.
• The surprising power of art in creating memorable spaces and driving revenue.
• Judy’s thoughtful transition plan that set her up for a successful pivot.

Whether you’re thinking about a second act or simply curious about the intersection of art and business, this episode is packed with inspiration and actionable insights.

Companion Content: 

• Explore how Judy bootstrapped, grew, and successfully exited her first company here.
• 
  

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

In this classic episode, Summer Poletti discusses effective strategies for retaining clients and enhancing business relationships. She emphasizes the importance of treating clients as partners, conducting regular business reviews, aligning goals for mutual success, leveraging referrals, and utilizing social proof to attract new clients. The insights provided aim to help businesses protect their existing client base and drive growth, especially as the year comes to a close.

Takeaways

* Most clients won't leave just because of cost.

* Treat your clients like partners, not just accounts.

* Regular business reviews can significantly reduce client attrition.

* Align your goals with your client's future success.

* Referrals can help you hit year-end targets.

* Social proof is a powerful marketing tool.

* Happy clients are more likely to give referrals.

* Incorporate gifting strategies into customer success programs.

* Success stories can enhance your marketing efforts.

* Your existing clients are your most valuable assets.

Sound Bites

* "Cut client attrition in half."

* "Eliminated avoidable client churn."

* "Social proof is invaluable."

Chapters

* 00:00 Protecting Your Client Relationships

* 03:50 Becoming Partners with Clients

* 07:09 Leveraging Business Reviews for Success

* 09:54 Utilizing Social Proof and Referrals

* 10:41 Introduction to Go-to-Market Strategies

* 11:05 Advice for Leaders in Client Protection

Learn More About Women X AI

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

In this raw, unscripted studio session, Summer and Dave unpack what AI is actually doing to buyer behavior—and why your go-to content strategy might be failing silently.

🧨 In This Episode:

* Why traditional SEO blogging is losing ROI fast

* What LLMs read (and don’t) on your website

* How buyers are shortlisting vendors now—with zero clicks

* Tactical swap: ditch fluff blogs, write “foundational content” instead

* Where real case studies should actually live on your site

* The one type of blog post still worth your time

This is one for founders, GTM leaders, and marketers ready to cut waste and move smarter.

Our host, Summer, will share four key groups of people you can reach out to during these times to keep your sales momentum going. She'll discuss the importance of building relationships with referral partners, checking in on your current clients, reaching out to past clients who may have gone to competitors, and collaborating with your internal teams like marketing, service, and implementation.

Throughout the episode, Summer will provide valuable insights and tips on how to make the most of these interactions, such as setting structured meetings with referral partners, asking for referrals from happy clients, and uncovering success stories from your internal teams that can be used in your sales efforts.

So, if you're a B2B salesperson looking for ways to stay productive and continue building relationships during the slower holiday season, this episode is for you! Let's dive in and hear what Summer has to share.

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

Aprelle shares her journey from a traumatic experience as a waitress to becoming an entrepreneur focused on financial empowerment for women. The conversation explores the importance of leveraging AI as a tool for small business growth, the SMART framework for business success, and the need for women to embrace their unique strengths in the tech space. Aprelle emphasizes the significance of attracting the right clients, gamifying business decisions, and the global implications of AI. The discussion concludes with insights on balancing work and personal life, highlighting that there is no true work-life balance, but rather a need to design life around priorities.

Find Aprelle on LinkedIn and follow for more philosophical insights.

• Strategic Partnerships: The Cornerstone of Revenue Growth
• Anatomy of a Great Partner Onboarding (Subscriber Exclusive)

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

In this episode, Summer breaks down:
✅ Why sales and operations often clash (and why it’s NOT about bad intentions)
✅ The hidden operational barriers that are quietly killing your deals
✅ The CEO’s action plan for creating alignment—without slowing anyone down
✅ 5 simple, high-impact changes that will make both teams more effective

💡 Because when sales & ops work together, businesses scale faster, clients onboard smoother, and revenue flows with less friction.

Companion Content: 

• Organizational Alignment: 6 Growth Hacks for 2025
• Uncovering Hidden Barriers to Organizational Alignment
• Saying "N0" Strategically: Your Secret to Organizational Alignment
• The Hidden Barriers in Your Sales Process That Hinder Growth

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

Companion content:

• Mini Pod: How to Build Loyalty AND Drive Growth
• Mini Pod: The Magic of sales and marketing working together
• Blog: Reengaging Stalled Deals
• Mini Pod: How to Grow Without Hiring More Salespeople

In this conversation, Summer Poletti discusses strategies for sales professionals to maintain momentum during slower seasons. She emphasizes the importance of leveraging partnerships, engaging with clients, reconnecting with lost clients, and collaborating with internal teams to drive success. The conversation provides actionable insights on building relationships and gaining referrals, ensuring that sales professionals remain proactive even when business slows down.

In this episode, Summer Poletti discusses the challenges sales professionals face after the holiday season and offers actionable strategies to close deals before the year ends. She emphasizes the importance of analyzing late-stage deals, re-engaging stalled prospects, maximizing current client relationships, and creating urgency through effective content. The episode provides practical tips for sales professionals to navigate this critical time and achieve their goals.

In this conversation, Summer Poletti discusses the pervasive issue of burnout in the workplace, particularly among sales professionals. She highlights the signs of burnout, strategies for prevention, and the importance of taking time off to recover. Additionally, she emphasizes the role of leadership in recognizing and addressing burnout within teams, advocating for a supportive work environment that prioritizes employee well-being.

Access the entire vault of B2B Summer Sales content, designed to help owners, leaders, and sellers cope with the slower summer season. Available to subscribers only, subscription is free.

We explore:
✅ How AI is revolutionizing pricing strategies & go-to-market plans
✅ Why business leaders hesitate to adopt AI—and how to start
✅ The biggest mistakes companies make when trying to scale
✅ Where AI stops and human intuition takes over

Plus, Jenny shares how Women X AI is helping leaders upskill and navigate the AI revolution. Tune in for an insightful, practical, and fun conversation!

Related Resources & Links:

• Connect with Jenny Kay Pollock on LinkedIn
• Learn about Women X AI

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

Takeaways

* Salespeople are primarily motivated by financial incentives.

* A well-crafted sales strategy can boost revenue without expanding the team.

* Building genuine relationships is crucial for long-term success.

* Consultative selling focuses on understanding and solving client challenges.

* Strategic partnerships can enhance lead generation and sales effectiveness.

* Providing value without immediate expectations fosters goodwill.

* In-person interactions are increasingly valuable in a digital world.

* Persistence and follow-up are key to successful sales.

* Timeless sales techniques remain relevant despite technological advancements.

* Trust and relationships are the core of successful sales.

Sound bites

* "Salespeople are loyal to their wallets."

* "Strategic partnerships amplify your reach."

* "Sales is hard work and requires persistence."

Chapters

* 00:00 Introduction to Sales Loyalty and Revenue Growth

* 02:49 The Importance of Relationships in Sales

* 06:01 Consultative Selling: Understanding Client Needs

* 08:49 Strategic Partnerships and the Give-to-Get Mentality

* 11:36 The Value of In-Person Connections and Consistency

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

In this engaging conversation, sponsored by Do That Dave, Summer Poletti interviews Dipti Bhide, CEO of LittleLit.Ai, about the transformative impact of AI on K-12 education. They discuss the recent executive order mandating AI literacy for students, the importance of personalized learning, and the shift from B2C to B2B in the education sector. Dipti shares insights on building trust and safety in AI tools for children, the necessity of fostering creativity in the workforce, and her personal experiences as a mother and entrepreneur.

Learn more about AI education:

Little Lit

Do That Dave

Takeaways

* AI literacy is now mandated for K-12 students.

* Personalized learning can significantly engage students.

* The shift from B2C to B2B is crucial for educational tools.

* Building trust in AI tools is essential for parents and educators.

* Creativity will be a key skill in the future job market.

* AI can help tailor learning experiences for neurodivergent children.

* Safety measures in AI tools are paramount for children's use.

* Educators need to be involved in the development of AI tools.

* Parents want their children to have life skills, including AI literacy.

* Continuous learning is necessary to keep up with technological advancements.

Chapters

* 00:00 Introduction to LittleLit.Ai and Its Vision

* 03:39 The Impact of AI Literacy in K-12 Education

* 06:43 Personalizing Learning Through AI

* 09:40 The Shift from B2C to B2B Marketing

* 12:50 Validating the Idea and Early Rollout

* 15:40 The Future of AI in Education

* 23:01 Integrating AI in Education

* 32:01 Building Trust and Safety in AI Tools

* 38:07 Preparing for the Future of Work with AI

Summer shares her own burnout experiences and provides actionable tips to help you recognize the warning signs, like trouble sleeping, feeling easily frustrated, or losing enthusiasm for work. She emphasizes the importance of taking breaks, setting boundaries, and making time for yourself outside of work to prevent reaching the point of exhaustion.

For those already facing burnout, Summer recommends taking at least a week off to truly unplug and reflect on the root causes. Are you taking on too much yourself? Does your team need more support? Identifying the underlying issues is key to making positive changes.

Lastly, Summer calls on those in leadership roles to be proactive in supporting their teams and creating a positive environment. With 95% of HR execs saying burnout is hurting retention, this is a critical issue for every organization.

Tune in for an honest and insightful look at burnout in sales, filled with relatable stories and practical advice you can start using today. Let's dive in.

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

Join Summer Poletti as she chats with Nithya Subramaniam, a senior product designer at Clarity AI. Discover how Nithya's background in classical dance and architecture informs her approach to designing AI-powered solutions. They discuss the importance of human-centered design, the balance between business goals and user feedback, and the subtle integration of AI in product design.

Key Takeaways:

The role of classical dance in developing systems thinking. Transitioning from architecture to tech and its impact on product design. The importance of balancing business goals with user feedback. Why MVPs might not be enough in today's competitive market. The concept of invisible UX and its role in inclusive design.

Follow Nithya on LinkedIn

#ProductDesign #AI #UserExperience #Innovation

Subscribe to Revenue Remix on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on YouTube for more insights and interviews.

Connect with Julie on LinkedIn

Check out the companion blog for a deeper dive on trust, why it matters within your organization and how to improve. If You Don’t Trust Marketing, Your Whole GTM Motion Suffers

Takeaways

* Sales hiring is challenging; assessing cultural fit is crucial.

* Structured onboarding significantly boosts new hire productivity.

* Most onboarding fails due to lack of customer focus.

* Sales reps need real-world experience early on.

* Mentoring and cross-training are essential for new hires.

* Clear, measurable ramp-up plans help set expectations.

* Align onboarding with the actual sales cycle for success.

* Continuous training is necessary beyond initial onboarding.

* Sales reps must be equipped with the right tools and resources.

* Leveraging referrals can shorten the sales cycle.

Chapters

* 00:00 The Challenge of Sales Hiring

* 03:41 The Importance of Structured Onboarding

* 08:17 Transforming Onboarding for Success

* 10:34 Mentoring and Cross-Training New Hires

* 12:27 Creating a Measurable Ramp-Up Plan

* 14:19 Aligning Onboarding with Sales Cycles

* 16:40 Continuous Training and Feedback

* 18:00 Equipping Reps with Tools and Resources

* 19:52 Leveraging Referrals and Partnerships

* 20:51 Aligning Onboarding with Business Growth

This week on Revenue Remix, Summer sits down with Brian Samson — serial founder and nearshoring expert — to unpack how growth-stage companies sabotage their own hiring, why your first 10 employees shape more than culture, and what founders get completely wrong about offshore vs nearshore teams.

You’ll learn:

* Why waiting to hire a recruiter shrinks your talent pool

* How nearshoring can unlock faster go-to-market

* What really causes remote hiring failures (hint: it’s not bad vendors)

* Why Latin American teams are often your secret weapon

Brian also shares what he wishes more leaders understood about team value — and how to spot resilient talent before you make the hire.

* Brian Samson LinkedIn

* Plugg Technologies

Description:Andy Lopez turned a niche pain point — payroll tax cleanup — into a full-fledged firm serving top HCM providers. In this episode, we talk about the early napkin payroll days, what nearly stalled his growth, and why now was the right time to sell Forensic Payroll Consultants to HCM Unlocked. Bonus: Andy’s launching a podcast of his own, and he’s not holding back.

Listen for:

* How partner-first sales built his referral engine

* What founders can do when growth plateaus

* The surprising truth about payroll people (they’re wilder than sales reps)

* Why acquisition doesn’t mean “the end” — it means expansion

Links:

* Forensic Payroll Consultants

* HCM Unlocked Acquisition News

* Andy’s LinkedIn

Revenue Remix is where founders and GTM leaders talk about what really drives growth — the stuck points, the pivots, the motions that finally worked. Know a founder or leader who deserves a spotlight? Maybe you! Join us and let’s do something cool. Book a quick chat first.

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

In this episode of Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti and Dave Lee discuss the implications of market volatility and economic uncertainty on business strategies. They explore the impact of tariffs, the importance of understanding forward-looking indicators like consumer sentiment and port traffic, and the necessity of maintaining strategic planning despite economic challenges. The conversation emphasizes the importance of cash flow, prioritizing projects, and making informed decisions about budgeting and spending in uncertain times. In this conversation, Summer Poletti and David discuss the importance of understanding business impact and prioritization in uncertain economic times. They emphasize the need for innovation, focusing on customer retention, and leveraging strategic partnerships. David shares insights on how CEOs can navigate challenges with cautious boldness, while also highlighting the significance of marketing in supporting customer success. The discussion wraps up with personal anecdotes about pizza preferences, symbolizing the balance between indulgence and moderation in business decisions.

Tune in for reminders, pro tips, and a quick motivational boost to help you close out the year strong! Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms.

Companion content:

• Podcast episode: Strategies for finishing your year strong
• Podcast episode: AI-powered strategies to close deals and ill up your 2025 pipeline

Show notes:

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

Tune in now to catch all the details!

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

Learn More

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

00:00 Welcome to Revenue Remix
00:16 Introducing the New Program
01:45 The AI Gap in Business
02:37 Salespeople and Administrative Work
04:19 Challenges with Generic Outreach
06:54 The Problem with Sales Playbooks
12:38 Balancing AI and Human Touch
15:58 Making Sales Training Accessible
17:14 Conclusion and Next Steps

Spoiler alert: it won’t—especially if your organization lacks the structure, strategy, and alignment needed to support sustainable growth.

Exclusive bonus mini pod available to subscribers

Join Summer Poletti as she breaks down:

• Why a superstar salesperson from an industry giant may not thrive in your smaller company.
• The hidden dangers of skipping foundational sales strategies like playbooks and onboarding.
• Why organizational alignment between marketing, sales, and customer success is more important than ever.
• Proven steps to ensure your next sales hire becomes a true revenue driver, not just an expensive gamble.

If you’re a CEO or business owner planning your next growth move, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you avoid costly hiring mistakes and set your sales team up for long-term success.

Companion episodes:

• How to find a good B2B salesperson
• Grow revenue without increasing headcount
• 6 easy steps to better sales/marketing alignment

Show notes:

• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn

• Organizational Alignment: 6 Growth Hacks for 2025
• Uncovering Hidden Barriers to Organizational Alignment
• Saying "N0" Strategically: Your Secret to Organizational Alignment

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/anteros/street-cred
License code: YZNKQJB2HOLR4BPC

• Connect with JMS on LinkedIn
• Check out his companies

Related Resources & Links:

• Blog Post: Secret to B2B Revenue Growth: Identifying Client Needs and Serving Them Better Than Anyone Else
• AI-powered Sales Playbook: RiseAI Sales Accelerator

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

00:00 Introduction to Revenue Remix
01:06 Meet John Mason Smith
01:20 John's Early Career and Fun Jobs
03:43 Journey into Entrepreneurship
04:56 The Birth of Frankenstein PC Repair
06:03 From College to Tampa, Florida
06:51 Challenges and Lessons in Sales
11:07 The Half Suit and Other Ventures
16:51 Starting a Payroll Company
23:25 The Rise of HireWith
27:44 Transition to National Account Sales
28:03 The Glue of Astro Acquisitions
28:54 Challenges in Talent Acquisition
30:17 Preserving Industry Knowledge
31:59 The Caché Experience
33:11 Specialized Skills in Payroll
34:56 Summer's Entrepreneurial Journey
36:32 Fractional Sales Leadership
42:04 Work-Life Balance Debate
48:58 The Importance of Job Satisfaction
51:43 Recruitment Realities
55:22 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit summerpoletti.substack.com