The way we carve up sales territories has been around for over a century, an arbitrary geographic location. But the way we sell has changed drastically, especially in the last decade. So why in today’s age of selling are leaders still splitting up territories this way? And is there a better way? We asked Hayes Davis, Co-Founder and CEO at Gradient Works, and he says there is. In fact, he’s so convinced there is, he and Co-Founder Jenn Davis built an automation platform that increases rep attainment by helping new business sales teams transition from underperforming territory models to dynamic book management. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

We've all been trained to create once and distribute forever. But is that really the best way to create content? Each platform is different, meaning that for your content to be as effective as it can be, you need to optimize each piece of content being put out for the channel it's intended for. In this episode, Tory and Matt talked to Sam Balter, Director of Media Content at Zoominfo and he shares key insights about some of the trends that he and his team are seeing around content. He also talks about his strategy for creating content specifically for each channel and how that affects how you need to think about your distribution strategy. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

“Facts Tell. Stories Sell” - Tory Kindlick You need to find a way to tell a story that your audience can resonate with. Stories are memorable and raw data is not. That’s why it is so important to be able to craft a narrative through the data you are presenting. So what do good stories contain and how can you incorporate those elements into your data storytelling? A good story starts with a hook A good story has an arc A good story evokes emotion But how do you incorporate these things into B2B reporting? In this episode Tory and Allison take you through the steps you can take in your own reporting to tell a compelling story that elicits action. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

In this episode, we dive deep into some of the most common questions we see on paid media. Sam Kuehnle talks with some of our expert performance marketing managers here at Refine Labs including Bob Kahns, Ryan Olestro, and Kyle Taylor to address: Optimizing for down funnel performance vs conversions Should we be investing in branded search? Should you be following Google Recommendations? How much should you focus on quality score? Should you be running competitor campaigns? Prioritizing campaigns with limited budget The difference between Google Analytics audiences and Google Ads Audiences And more…

In this episode, our panel of DDGs and PMMs includes Matt Willbanks, Matthew Sciannella, Jonathan Unger, and Bob Kahns. We took questions from the audience which included:  - How would you create demand for a new category as a marketing team of one? - If starting from scratch, what's the recommended strategy for LinkedIn Ads? - How do you make the jump from performance marketing to demand gen? - and more! Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Most marketing teams know that building a successful podcast involves more than just building an audience: that podcast and the audience it serves need to, eventually, contribute to actual revenue dollars. But a lot of podcasters fall into the trap where they get wrapped up in vanity metrics or don't have a mapped-out strategy to turn a podcast into a revenue-driving marketing tool. In this episode Tory and Matt welcome Lindsay Tjepkema, Co-Founder and CEO of Casted. They discuss the 5 stages of building a revenue-driving podcast with what Lindsay calls The Amplified Marketing Maturity Curve. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

You know the situation: Q4 hits. You're under paced to goal because everyone likes to forecast up and to the right, so Q4 has some pretty steep goals. The only problem is, Q4 is also the shortest quarter of the year; holidays, people using PTO, everyone is burned out, and a general slowdown in spending. So the question begs to be answered, "what can I do to achieve those hefty goals?"  In this episode, Ashley and Evan talk about the levers you can pull and the tactics they use with clients to ensure the best possible outcomes from your marketing efforts in Q4 (and how to make sure you're not sandbagging future gains for short-term wins). Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

In this episode, Carl and Cassidy are talking to Jessica Watts, Co-Founder at Mud City about everything outbound. Some of the topics they cover include: - Destigmatizing Outbound Sales - List Building - Value Props and Messaging - Commonalities Between Sales and Marketing - And More... Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Launching a successful demand gen program is something that a lot of marketing leaders strive for. But it's easier said than done. Common hurdles include: - Crafting a compelling point of view - Outlining a strategy - Getting buy-in from the C-Suite - Executing on both paid media spend and organic channels - And more... These are all the things that Grant Duncan has done successfully in his time as VP of marketing at Zingtree. In this episode, he talks with Sam and Sidney to discuss exactly how he did that. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Marketing and Customer Success are frequently viewed as separate parts of the organization. Marketing is typically categorized as a pre-sales role, while customer success is generally viewed as a post-sales function. Sure, there are the occasional asks where marketing needs a customer testimonial or case study, but those are not typically high priorities from either side. But what if that changed? What if marketing and customer success worked together to craft better stories that answered customer questions, decreased churn, and increased upsets and cross-sells? In this episode, Tory and Matt welcome Madelyn DePrey, Head Of Customer Success at Aircall to talk about why marketing/customer success alignment is so important. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Listening to customers to continuously improve your product is key for any company. But it's a step that many new SaaS founders skip in the initial stages of their go-to-market. Often, a founder will discover a gap in the market and go straight into building the product. In this episode, Sidney talks to Dave Rigotti, Co-founder, and CEO at Inflection.io. Dave has put on a masterclass in using extensive customer research to build the product. In addition to conducting hundreds of customer interviews, Dave dives into how they use community to continuously innovate and ensure the product is built 100% to customer needs. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Pipeline Velocity is an often confused, misunderstood metric. Every time we bring it up we get several questions. That's why we wanted to dedicate an episode of Stacking Growth Live entirely to the subject and: - How to Calculate Pipeline Velocity - How to visualize that data - Why it's important - When to use it - And more This was a live presentation that included slides. If you'd like to see those slides, you can view them here. You can also watch the full presentation with the slide deck on YouTube, here.

The Stacking Growth Podcast aims to answer real questions that our audience is having trouble with. That's why we took a poll of our LinkedIn audience to see what problems they were facing coming into Q4. One of the recurring questions that we saw come up had to do with how to create an ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). What's is the right way to do it? Is there a wrong way? How can we go deeper than target firmographics and job titles? These are all questions that Tory and Allison are answering in today's episode. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

If you've been following Refine Labs for any period of time, you know we like to categorize demand into two main buckets, capturing and creating. But there is a third bucket that we don't talk about quite as much called damming demand. In a nutshell, damming demand is taking existing demand for a product or category and redirecting it over to yours. In this episode, Tory and Garret talk about what damming demand is, when it should be used, and how you can effectively start a program to do it. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

If you scroll through LinkedIn for a few days you would think that everyone is running demand gen and lead gen is a thing of the past—it's not. We've talked to several hundred companies this year and 99% are still running lead gen. An entire generation of marketers believes that an email address is the most important thing you can get from your audience. It’s why we see gated ebooks and reports as the primary content source for entire companies. But why are so many companies still doing this? It's not an effective go-to-market strategy and sales teams can get the same leads (and more) cheaper using tools like Zoominfo and Cognism. The end goal of marketing is to drive high-quality hand raisers that WANT to talk to sales. And that is exactly what Carl and Cassidy are going to talk about in this episode. In fact, as the title alludes to, Carl is putting his money where his mouth is if you can prove (with data) that you're running a profitable lead gen strategy that wouldn't be better served being allocated elsewhere. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

You pitched leadership, finally got buy-in, and just launched your program; now what? It's inevitable that you get questioned on the effectiveness of your new strategy early on, but creating demand takes time. So what are some early metrics and KPIs that you can report on to show leadership that it's working? In this episode, Ashley and Evan go through some of the early metrics that they report on with clients to do just that. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

We get a lot of questions from customers and community members this time of year on how to finish the year off strong and plan to have a successful Q1. "What are some of the biggest mistakes you see marketing teams make as the fiscal year wraps up?" "Are there any frameworks you use to build a marketing plan?" "Where are you allocating your budget moving into 2023 and where do you think the biggest dividends will be paid in the year ahead?" Q3 is coming to an end, and as you approach Q4 planning season, these are all important answers that need to be answered. Luckily, we have a little experience helping companies finish off the year strong and planning for 2023, and that's what we're doing in this episode. In addition to these questions, we also took live questions from the audience about 2023 planning, lessons learned in 2022, and more.

On today's Stacking Growth, Refine Labs' very own Sam Kuehnle and Sidney Waterfall breakdown an intriguing question sent in by a listener: "How do you deal with the paradox of wanting immediate results but needing to preach patience to your executive team?" From setting expectations to finding the right customer insights... believe it or not, good marketing takes time. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

At this point you all know our stance on talking to customers and extracting insights through those conversations. But some of the common questions we still get all the time are:  "what is the best way to conduct a customer interview?"  "What questions should I ask?" "How do I take insights gleaned from a customer interview and inject them into my marketing strategy?" In this episode, Tory and Matt talk with Michael Ashford, Director of Marketing at The Receptionist, about how they were able to achieve exponential growth without an outbound sales team by creating a demand strategy around the insights they learned from talking with customers regularly. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

It's that time of year—leaves are changing, football is back, and it's time for ANNUAL PLANNING! It's time to look back at the previous year, figure out what's been working and start to think about the campaigns and revenue targets for 2023. In this episode, Tory and Allison go through the framework they use with clients for year-end demand planning. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Events in the past were all about getting a booth, flying in all your salespeople, scanning badges, and having conversations on the show floor. But that’s not how the best marketing teams are approaching event strategy anymore. The best strategies involve building relationships, creating content, and leaving a lasting impression. So how do you do that through your event strategy in 2022 and beyond? In this episode, Sam and Sidney dive into just that. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

One of the most informative things you can do as a demand gen marketer is do a win/loss analysis. A win/loss analysis can do many things including validating messaging, help refine your ICP, inform your content strategy, and more. Some teams are already looking into why deals are lost, but it’s rare to see companies analyzing and comparing the reasons you won deals. Looking into both of these items are key to unlocking key insights to power a successful go-to-market strategy. In this episode, Tory welcomes Director of Demand Gen, Matthew Sciannella to talk about the incredible insights he is uncovering by doing this analysis. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

When asked about marketing innovation teams are quick to reference customer insights, category creation, and creating demand. And these are all very important things (that we preach at Refine Labs often). But there's one thing that is often overlooked and is a critical part of making all of these other strategies successful—Creative! Without an innovative creative strategy to deliver the message of your newly found customer insights or new category, you're shooting yourself in the foot. But what do we mean by "innovative creative"?  In this episode, Triana, Devon, and Brianna of the Refine Labs creative team talk about how they define innovative creative and how they go about executing it for clients. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Imagine being part of a sales-led organization where the SALES team is asking marketing to stop running lead gen and start creating demand. It's a role reversal that we don't often hear, but it's the exact situation that an audience member came to us with. "What steps can I take to get my marketing team to stop running gated lead gen and start creating real demand for our brand?" In this episode, Sidney and Sam tackle that exact question. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

An economic downturn can bring a lot of difficulties for a marketing team. Decreased media spend and decreased budget for tech from customers both lead to lower overall demand in the marketplace. When demand is lower, marketing teams have to focus on the levers they can influence, independent of those variables. In this episode, Sam and Sidney talk about the 4 levers that every marketer can pull to help better capture the demand in the market.

Many companies that run an enterprise, sales-led motion are now using some form of product-led growth to move down market. This poses a lot of problems for some demand-gen marketers, as it requires a different approach in both strategy and tactics to be successful. In this episode, Allison and Tory dive into the framework that we've been implementing with clients facing this here at Refine Labs. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

In the second part of our series on variable comp vs salary for salespeople Carl and Cassidy are taking questions from LinkedIn. Variable comp vs salary is a heated topic and salespeople had a lot of really good questions including: How to you test salary if you’re already using 50/50 comp? How does it affect the buyer experience? How do you measure performance? Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Relying on people to click your ad's CTA is destroying its effectiveness. Providing the full value in the feed will win out every time and we're here to prove that to you. Curious how you can do the same internally? People don't want to leave the platform they're already engaged with. 99% of the time, even if someone is engaged with your ad, they're not clicking. So if your strategy is to use your social content to drive ebook downloads, blog traffic, email signups, or anything else that isn't native to the channel you're posting on, you are playing a losing game. Amanda Natividad calls this "Zero Click Content" and she joined Tory Kindlick and Sidney Waterfall to talk about why delivering your message in the feed is so important, the tactics you can use to create effective content that doesn't require a "click", and how to measure marketing's impact.

Sales almost always work on a base salary + commission or 100% commission. Most companies don't offer salespeople guaranteed salaries for many reasons. But the question is why? There's no other function in the business that is paid the same way sales are. Some companies will say that they can't attract top talent without the ability to crush quota and earn uncapped commission. In this episode, Cassidy and Carl dive into this, as well as several other myths around the topic, and break them down. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Does paid media influence how well a company’s marketing performs? It's a question that most marketers can relate to, but one that nobody is willing to test, because turning off paid media to see isn't an option. Well, in this episode we did just that—we tested the impact of paid marketing's correlation with organic marketing. Join Sam Kuehle and Ashley Lewin as they break down the test and results that may surprise you. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

As marketers, it's very common to become overwhelmed with data. It's important to use data to tell a story, but when doing that, you have to know which pieces to use and what is just noise. In this episode, Ashley Lewin and Evan Hughes talk about how to choose the right data to tell your story, how to structure your data story, and avoid overwhelming your audience when presenting that data. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

In this episode our General Manager, Sidney Waterfall, dishes out the best ways to create demand for your target accounts. She goes over Demand 101, Reach, and Tactics as a basic strategy to get your demand creation flowing and demand capture going. Keep an eye out for more Stacking Growth Live in the near future. 

Whether you want benchmark data or you're trying to convince your leadership that you need to be investing more time and resources into demand creation, this Stacking Growth Live is for you. We analyzed pipeline source data from six B2B SaaS companies running the Refine Labs demand playbook. We looked at: - Pipe conversions (declared intent website conversions) - Enterprise Outbound/”ABX”/Engaged Accounts - Lead Gen - Partner - Events/Field The results are astounding. In almost every case Pipe conversions significantly outperform every other pipeline source in win rate %, sales cycle length, number of opps, and pipeline velocity. But we didn't cherry-pick the best of the best just to prove a point. We also show some examples where Pipe conversions were not the top performer and dive into why that is the case. This new data paints a very clear picture of why you need to be creating demand as part of your go-to-market strategy. Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

You're a marketer who is totally bought into creating demand. You presented to your leadership and they agree and you're now just getting started on your demand gen journey. The common question that comes up is, "when can we expect to start seeing results?"  In this episode, Allison and Tory dive into that question exactly, but they go even further. They will touch on expectation setting to make sure your program doesn't get cut off before it ever has a chance to work and early indicators that tell you that you're making progress towards your end goal. Subscribe to our Bi-Weekly Stacking Growth Live HERE.

This episode is summed up with a simple question: What is marketing at your org trying to accomplish and what is necessary from a tech stack perspective to simplify and make that process as efficient and effective as possible? Marketing is not the promotion department, or at least it isn't in companies doing marketing correctly. Good marketing should be aligned with business metrics, so in essence, good marketing is good business. In this episode, Cassidy talks with Darrell Alfonso, Marketing Operations at Amazon and Author of “The Martech Handbook”.

Over the past few years, B2B SaaS marketing teams have embraced the fact that they need to invest more in demand creation functions. In order to do that, budget has to be taken from current demand capture spend. The question is, what deserves to stay and what should be reallocated to demand creation? In this episode, Tory Kindlick talks with Sam Kuehle about the formula he has used to determine just that: what demand capture budget should stay and what should go. Download the template from this episode here.

This is the first episode in a new series we are calling "Lab Experiments", where we talk to client-facing members of our team about the tests that they are currently running and the results that they are getting. In this episode, Tory Kindlick is talking with Ashley Lewin about a test she ran around messaging and positioning and how it led to a 40% increase in conversion rates.

Marketing and sales have a...colorful past to say the least. Marketing complains that sales doesn't follow up on their leads. Sales complains that the leads that marketing gives are not worth following up with. In many cases, both are true.  But when marketing switches their strategy from generating high quantities of leads at any cost, which is the reason for the poor quality, it's no wonder that sales doesn't want to follow up with them. They're the ones in the trenches and they know better than anyone what types of leads close and which ones are a waste of time. However, when marketing switches from collecting leads to creating demand, the result in the quality of "lead" that comes through gets drastically better and sales need to prioritize them. The question becomes, how can sales and marketing work together to ensure that the people coming inbound and asking for a demo are the right people and are being followed up with in the right way? In this episode, Carl Ferreira, Allison Loehman, Sidney Waterfall, and Cassidy Shield talk about how we do that at Refine Labs and how we help customers do the same.

Tory Kindlick hosted today's Stacking Growth episode with Darren Perucci to share tips about marketing with a reduced budget. We are seeing budgets being cut especially across the SaaS space due to the economic downturn, and as marketers we are being asked to do more with less. 

This episode consists of a recording from Sidney Waterfall's appearance on the Demand Gen Chat podcast, hosted by Chili Piper. They talked through leading indicators, measuring the impact of dark social, and the importance of gathering feedback directly from your customers. 

On last week's Stacking Growth Live, we covered a timely topic - how to shift your marketing strategy to match what's happening in the market. It's clear we are headed into a recession. Budgets are being slashed and therefore, there isn't as much demand to capture. In last week's event, we talked through manufacturing demand, customer insights and marketing's role in the shift, and budget & team management in a downturn. 

Tory Kindlick (VP of Demand Gen) hosted a solo episode today where he broke down the 5 most common traits he's observed in the B2B SaaS companies that are most successful with creating demand. 

Carl Ferreira and Cassidy Shield recorded a Friday afternoon conversation about the lack of innovation in outbound sales compared to that of marketing. They talk through why that is, how to bridge the gap, providing value and data as part of your outbound motion, and the four key components to outbound sales. By the end of the episode, you should have a handful of ideas for experimenting with innovation in your outbound motion. Stay tuned for a part 2 with results of Carl's outbound demand creation experiment. 

Today's episode consists of a recording from last week's Stacking Growth LIVE event, where Cassidy Shield, Tory Kindlick and Darren Perucci talked through whether or not brand and demand should be on the same team. They talked through definitions, org structure, roles and responsibilities, the nuances between brand marketing and demand marketing, and the similarities between the two.

Today's episode consists of a recorded conversation between Sam Kuehnle (VP of Demand Gen) and Tom Hunt (Founder at Fame) where Sam talks through how B2B buying has changed and how marketing orgs should be shifting their go-to-market strategies accordingly.

Today's episode features a casual conversation between Carl Ferreira and Cassidy Shield about the state of outbound sales today.

Nick Bennett (Director of Evangelism and Customer Marketing @ Alyce) and Arthur Castillo (Senior Manager, Field Marketing & Community @ Chili Piper) joined Stacking Growth LIVE last week as guests to discuss how to leverage content and community in both B2B SaaS and their personal brands.  *Snippets of this episode are spotty due to poor internet connection*

Cassidy Shield (CGO), Victoria Sakal (The Vault), Daniel Pinkston (Performance Marketing Manager) and Myles Madden (Performance Marketing Manager) hosted today's Stacking Growth episode to talk about measuring brand and demand creation. They cover leading and lagging indicators, adopting a long-term mindset, how and where to create demand, and which qualitative and quantitative metrics you should be tracking.