Eduardo 'Edu' Mazal

After HLTH Inc. Vegas, I see one thing clearly: buyers have never had it tougher. This is not a post crapping on marketing and sales teams. It's really hard to stand out right now because companies aren't that different from one another. Every booth, every deck, every demo-same soup, just reheated. There's 100s of “ai-powered” flavors but most of it is pretty basic from a tech standpoint (yes I can tell what is an LLM, ML, NLP, and all the other flavors of AI) Ambient listening, building workflows, and a TON of AI agents for the phones which I'm not a fan of as it relates to patient experience. Not a lot that makes you sit up and say, wow, this is actually making things better for providers, patients, and (yes) even payors. As it relates to positioning and messaging, most companies still lead with what they *are*-not what they *do* or, more importantly, what the market actually needs fixed. And not a ton of true innovation - feels like we've plateaued again. only a handful stood out for doing something that is market moving and its VERY saturated out there - again, razor thin differentiation. What that means for revenue teams Forecasting your growth on TAM and using AI to up quotas without hiring is going to make buyers more resistant to conversations with you. The market is too crowded for lazy plays and there will be lots of missed revenue goals. Going deeper into a slice of the market or even type of service line and owning that area will give you a great harvest for your flavor of soup. The upside? What a great time to sharp on product marketing and pipeline building activities. That means using ai for strategy and learning-not just for spitting out another generic one-pager. Probably will have more thoughts on it but for now: so great to see a lot of old friends and the new faces I met. Always the best part. What’s your move in this market? #hlth2025

13

6 Comments

Hot take: call coaching without data is just opinion. And opinions don’t scale. Most teams still do drive-by coaching—listen to a random call, give subjective notes, move on. Reps get whiplash. Leaders can’t see what’s working. Pipeline suffers. Here’s Call Coaching 2.0: wire ConnectAndSell into HubSpot so coaching is automatic, objective, and repeatable. How I set this up with teams: - Capture everything: push ConnectAndSell outcomes into HubSpot—connects, talk time, dispositions, recordings. Standardize outcomes so reports mean something. - Scorecard inside HubSpot: 0–2 per skill (Open Strong, Problem > Product, Objection Handling, Next Step Locked). Link directly to the recording. Coach one behavior per rep per week. - Dashboards that matter: connect → conversation → meeting by rep/campaign; talk-time bands; objection patterns; which openers actually earn time. - Triggered coaching: workflows auto-create a task when thresholds hit (30+ connects and 0 meetings, >90s calls without a next step, too many “call me later” dispositions). Include the call link and scorecard. - Cadence: weekly 30-min 1:1, review two calls per rep; monthly film-room with top calls. Build a library of what “good” sounds like. - Scale the motion: ZoomInfo for ICP lists and cleaner data; HubSpot sequences and follow-up; ConnectAndSell for the live conversations. One system, no swivel-chair. - Compliance built-in: recording consent prompts and regional logic. Metrics I watch: - Connect, conversation, and meeting rates (by rep and campaign) - First 15 seconds: questions vs. pitch ratio - Next-step lock % - Ramp time to first 10 meetings - No-show rate on booked meetings When you do this, coaching stops being random feedback and becomes a growth engine. We’re seeing 20–40% lifts in convo→meeting rates within 60 days and faster ramp because reps know exactly what to fix next. As a HubSpot, ZoomInfo, and ConnectAndSell partner, my team at Quantum Business Solutions builds this end-to-end—strategy, RevOps, tech, and training. Want my scorecard + dashboard template? Comment “SCORECARD” or DM me and I’ll share it. If you want to implement this with your team, grab 20 minutes: https://lnkd.in/ezawe4AK

1

Feature selling? Not good. Instead: Anytime you talk about a feature, connect back to the problem it solves and/or the outcome execs want from your product. That’s it: features <> problems <> outcomes For example: You sell Gong… You have a feature called Deal Boards… The feature is basically a spreadsheet view of all the deals in your pipeline as a rep (or your team as a manager), showing: activity, deal size, sales stage, etc Here’s what BAD sounds like: “So the next thing I want to show you is our Deal Boards feature. Deal boards are great because they give each AE and anyone in leadership a single pane of glass through which to view their entire pipeline. So now any rep can stay right in Gong where they already are and manage their entire pipeline, make edits to any Salesforce field… [etc]” (btw, nobody knows wtf a “single pane of glass” is lol. stop saying that.) Here’s what GOOD sounds like: “So the next thing we should talk about is what we call Deal Boards. If you think back to the conversation we were having earlier about how you know for sure reps are constantly losing track of their opps and so they’re not staying on the ball (which is causing them to lose deals they could otherwise win if they were following up more consistently, etc)... this is going to totally eliminate that issue. [see how it ties the feature to the problem!] For example, any deal that hasn’t had recent activity is going to be aggressively flagged (and will be totally visible to their manager too) which will drive accountability. And if you talked to customers of our who had the exact same problem you have, and who were working towards a similar overall increase in bookings per rep, many of them would point to Deal Boards as one of the biggest changes they made with Gong that got them the performance lift they ultimately saw…” [see the connection to the bookings per rep outcome!] Do this for literally every feature you ever discuss in your sale. Constant repetition of the connection between features <> problems <> outcomes. Any other good tips for fixing feature selling? – ‼️Salespeople who love this s**t and are looking for new roles, I really want to chat with you. We’re recruiting AEs for startups who value sales ability > years of experience or domain expertise. Hit me up!

52

12 Comments

Many wrestle with this question once their marketing starts running. - Agencies promise execution. - Fractional CMOs bring strategy and leadership. But the real answer depends on your GTM maturity. If you’re at the stage where leads are coming in but growth feels inconsistent you may not need more marketing activity. You may need marketing ownership. Here’s how to decide what’s right for your stage → https://lnkd.in/gBD8YyFW #GTM #FractionalCMO #StartupGrowth #B2BMarketing #Envizon Maansi Sanghi

3

I agree with Davis Potter's post below that ABM should = your GTM strategy and that all teams must adopt ABM principles. I do like thinking of the accounts you target as stocks and we need to nurture the "stock" portfolio to grow. We talked about this with Jeff Pedowitz on one of our first ABM Done Right Podcast episodes: https://lnkd.in/grnGN5DX But... I believe that ABM is more than a targeting strategy that determines where + how you configure your budget, resources and capacity towards a specific subset of accounts. Many CMOs view ABM as a “specialized service” that marketing provides by focusing on targeting and messaging specific sets of accounts within the ICP. It’s a tiering and targeting strategy to fill the pipeline. They have their teams simply retrofitting ABM on top of existing content, processes, and messaging – and adding ABM technology like Demandbase and 6sense on top, rather than treating ABM as a business strategy. Many CMOs have their teams simply do list-based marketing. The list of accounts you target with your ABM, Strategic Account, or Account-based GTM programs is important. But, it’s more important to focus on the interactions that need to happen, the account experience, and how buyers feel after each social, email, digital, and live interaction. It’s not just about mapping out 100-200 target accounts using an ABM account selection system built around your company’s goals and warm CRM relationships. And it’s not just about cohorting the accounts by relationship type. If you have the wrong interactions and deliver the wrong account experiences with the right list, you go nowhere. ABM should be focused on the experiences that are being delivered to drive the greatest revenue streams possible YoY with the accounts that can deliver the greatest returns to your top and bottom line. The other part I do not agree with is...a differentiation between growth ABM and enterprise ABM. As LinkedIn limits the characters I can use in a post, I'll save my thoughts on that for later today. In the meantime, read my article below to see how CMOs need to change how they think about ABM: https://lnkd.in/epKWk2nG Davis, I hope you do not take this personally. We've had many great ABM discussions in the past and want to continue that in the future. We just have different viewpoints here -- and want our networks to see both sides of the coin.

7

1 Comment

Life of a solo PMM 💬 Sales wants enablement. Product wants positioning. Founders want pipeline. You're handling content, messaging, launches, GTM, lifecycle, and website updates. Six months in... You've shipped a mountain of work. But when performance reviews roll around. How do you show what you've achieved? Use this solo PMM framework by Dharitri Kalita (Save for later) 1. Define your north star metric For Dharitri, it was Marketing Influenced Pipeline. Instead of counting leads, it answers: Are we attracting the right accounts? Do multiple stakeholders understand our value? Are PMM activities influencing revenue, not just traffic? Pick a metric that sits between product, marketing, and revenue. Something you can actually influence. 2. Connect it to growth levers Marketing Influenced Pipeline connects to competitive win rate, deal velocity, product activation, and expansion potential. The story shifts from "PMM drives leads" to "PMM drives healthier revenue." Map how your north star metric flows into the outcomes leadership actually cares about. 3. Break it into leading indicators Dharitri gives a concrete example: MQL to SQO conversion. She tailored messaging and enablement to buyer roles, stages, and internal dynamics. Not just the first contact. Her filter for content: If it doesn't speak to pain, it's noise. If it doesn't enable a champion, it's incomplete. If it doesn't support the decision process, it won't influence pipeline. Mid funnel content like use case stories and competitive comparisons stopped being assets. They became measurable levers for win rate and speed to close. 4. Identify levers you actually control PMMs don't own everything. But you influence the core levers that shape revenue: Messaging and positioning Sales enablement materials Persona aligned journeys Conversion optimization on key CTAs ABM content and targeting Onboarding content Map each lever to its impact. Better messaging leads to stronger competitive positioning. Persona based content leads to faster progression. Better enablement means fewer stalled deals. 5. Run experiments with this filter Every initiative should answer: What problem am I solving for the prospect? Are they problem aware and need category education? Or solution aware and need differentiation? What outcome am I targeting? How will I measure it? 6. Report impact Report your influence. Once pipeline is tied to win rates, deal velocity, and adoption, leadership sees the full picture. Sales gets better conversations. Product gets better activation. The founder gets clearer ROI. P.S. Make sure you give Dharitri a follow btw!

219

8 Comments

Every small PMM team has the same problem. Too much to do. Too little time. You're doing the launch, the enablement, the messaging, the "quick take" for the CEO. Every one of them needs to be right. Which means every one of them needs customer input. Most of your week is on calls where members give you the real signal in their own words. Granola Recipes are how I pull the specific pieces back out when I need them. Three Granola Recipes I lean on every week at The Alliance: 📌 For messaging drafts. I run this before any new landing page or messaging doc: "Every phrase members used to describe [problem X] in their own words, plus the follow-up questions they asked." Comes back with 20-40 real member sentences I can lift straight into positioning, plus a sense of which corner of the problem they cared about most. Built it after realising I was rewriting the same page from scratch every quarter. 📌 For competitive intel. Once a month: "Every mention of [competitor] this quarter, and what the person said right before and right after." The right-before shows what triggers the comparison. The right-after shows how the objection got handled. Ran it last week and caught three different members naming the same new competitor - none of which had made it to our battlecard. 📌 For early warning. Every two weeks: "New topics members have raised in the last 4 weeks that weren't on my radar." Surfaces shifts before they show up in metrics - new language, new competitor names, use cases nobody was planning for. The best Recipes come from the questions you're sick of answering by hand. For a small PMM team, that's the closest you'll get to another hire. Not on Granola yet? Try it here: https://lnkd.in/eQQgxESZ P.S. What Recipes are you building? Drop them in the comments - always keen to steal a good one.

174

7 Comments

🤯 You finally land your first VP Sales role. Title, trust, targets - all on you. You bring your GTM playbook, your 100-day plan, your momentum. But then reality hits. The product isn’t where you thought it was. The ICP looks different. The founder team has other priorities. And suddenly, your biggest challenge isn’t execution - it’s alignment. That’s what happened to Frederik Messmer when joining doctorly as VP Sales. In this episode of Sales Expressed, he shares the real playbook behind learning leadership the hard way 👇 1️⃣ Don’t rush your 100-day plan. Take time to absorb. Be a sponge. No quick fixes without the full picture. 2️⃣ Don’t back down at the first pushback. You were hired to challenge. Stand your ground to founders / CXO. 3️⃣ Don’t mistake early hires for momentum. Take time to understand who it really takes. And most importantly: You need to shift from “What do I close this quarter?” to “What needs to be true in 12 months to hit the next milestone?” Highly recommended episode not only for all those transitioning from TL to Head of or Head of to VP but anyone in first leadership role. Big thanks to Frederik for sharing his journey so honestly - and a reminder that leadership is learned, not granted. --- 🎧 Links to the full episode in the comments (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Youtube)

18

2 Comments

$115,000 vanishes from your pipeline for every rep, every year. And it's not because of your competitors. David Vance, a CRO at a $1.6B company, thought his forecast was solid. He had 87 "committed" deals, all with strong champions and positive signals. Then quarter-end hit. 39 deals vanished. Not to a competitor. Not to budget cuts. They just went silent. The business cost was staggering: $420,000 gone from his forecast every single day. The truth is, these deals didn’t fail at the finish line. They died earlier when urgency quietly evaporated. Deals lose to "no decision," and this is where most sales leaders fail. They focus on features, price, and battlecards, but 40-60% of qualified deals die because buyers do nothing. The signals are already in your CRM and conversation data: calendar activity drops, email replies slow, and internal initiatives pop up in call transcripts. We’ve identified five specific moments where deals fail. We call them the Five Inflection Points. Week 1: We reviewed 100 dead deals and found 62% collapsed after urgency disappeared. They were stuck at "Why Now?" not "Why You?". Week 4: We put a system in place that alerts managers when buyer activity slows, requiring reps to prove buyer action before a deal can advance. Week 12: The results were immediate. Dead deals dropped by half. Forecast accuracy was up 31% and win rates increased by 27%. Your pipeline isn’t leaking randomly. It's bleeding predictably. The patterns are in your systems, waiting to be exposed. You can see the pattern this week, or lose another $420,000 while you wait. https://lnkd.in/ds-CFRrX

2

One of the toughest objections in sales isn’t rejection, it’s loyalty. When a prospect says "We already have a vendor,” they’re really saying, “Convince me why I should even listen.” In this episode, we break down how to: Respond without sounding defensive Position yourself as a valuable alternative, not a replacement Ask the right questions to uncover hidden gaps Build credibility that earns you a second look At Imoye Academy, we teach sales professionals how to handle tough objections with confidence and strategy, turning “we’re happy with our current vendor” into “tell me more about what you do.” 📚 Admissions are now open! Join Imoye Academy today and master the art of objection handling that closes deals, not conversations. #imoyeacademy #techsalesjobs #techsales #techsalesacademy #insidesales #coldcalling #salestraining #SalesMindset #salesprofessional

6