Eric Gilbert

Sales was a mess. Then they handed it to me. Back in 2023, I was VP of Marketing and was asked to take over Sales as well. I stepped into a world I thought I knew well from the outside, but now I had to lead it. I kept reminding myself of something Udi Ledergor once said: “Marketing’s job is to make sales easier.” I wasn’t going to teach the team how to sell. I was never a salesperson, and we already had a great team of sellers. But I could make it easier for them to do what they do best. So I asked myself: How do I actually help Sales sell? Then I stepped in and saw the chaos: - Outdated one-pagers - Random follow-up emails - Clients lost in email threads - AEs juggling deals with no structure It was nothing like the structured world of marketing campaigns and cadences. Everything was manual. Best practices were tribal knowledge, if shared at all. I wanted to fix it. Systemize it. Make sure our AEs spent their time selling, and our clients had a seamless experience. The fix? We rolled out a digital sales room: Aligned A joint effort between Product Marketing and Sales Leadership. Now, every deal lives in a single digital workspace: - Pricing - Collateral - Mutual action plans - Engagement tracking - Clean. Shareable. Always up to date. The impact: - No more chasing PDFs or approvals - Internal champions close loops faster - Deals close faster with higher conversion rates The value of giving clients one professional, centralized place to evaluate us? Priceless. That clunky and messy buying process? Gone. Clients now feel more confident. More in control. More ready to buy. This post isn’t about a specific tool (though our sales team will vouch for Aligned any day). It’s a reminder: If you want your team to win, do not just ask them to grind through the manual work. Give them systems and tools so they can focus on what matters most: Selling. Make sales easier. Make buying easier. Hit your targets.

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Most CMOs think their CFO just wants to slash budgets. Most CFOs think their CMO spends without accountability. Both are wrong. The real disconnect isn’t about spending. It’s about speaking different languages while looking at the same business. I’ve sat through hundreds of exec sessions watching this play out. The pattern is always the same: CFOs don’t hate spending. They hate waste. And the best CFOs? They’re often the best Chief Growth Officers in the room. The disconnect happens because: → CMOs report on campaigns, CFOs want to talk growth levers → CMOs celebrate attribution wins, CFOs can’t find them in the P&L → CMOs focus on first transactions, CFOs care about long-term impact The breakthrough comes when you realize: Your CFO isn’t asking “Can we afford this?” They’re asking “Will this meet our efficiency targets?” Here’s how to speak their language: 1️⃣ Start with their financial targets ↳ Is the priority faster payback or maximizing long-term return? 2️⃣ Align on how to measure it ↳ (hint: it’s about LTV and CAC) 3️⃣ Set the cadence for targets ↳ And the rules of engagement if you miss—or exceed—them 4️⃣ Change your team’s narrative ↳ No more defending “the budget.” Start talking about investment efficiency. The best growth teams don’t work around finance. They work with finance. Because when your CFO becomes a growth partner—not a gatekeeper— that’s when marketing becomes growth. * * * 📈 I talk about the mechanics of turning data into growth. Follow me, David Manela, for more.

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A month ago, I flew to NYC to speak at a MailCon panel with Nick and Taylor. Ours was the only B2B session at a B2C email conference, and that got me thinking: Cold Email is difficult. So when you’re stepping into it from B2C emails, you might be tempted to use some of your B2C strategies. But here’s what I’d say to someone who is planning to switch from B2C to B2B Cold Email: 🔷 In Cold Email, your offer, targeting and timing matter much more than volume. 🔷 Many marketers coming from B2C email might want to lead with their offer and features. But in Cold Email, that’s not the way to go. 🔷 The goals are different, and so are the main metrics we use to measure success: for B2C it’s open rate and clicks, for us cold email folks, bounce rate and positive replies are more important. 🔷 In Cold Email, you’re reaching out to people who don’t know you. They haven’t signed up for your lead magnet or bought your product. You need a reason to reach out specifically to the people on your list. 🔷 Cold emails are mostly plain text. B2C emails include html templates. 🔷 B2C and B2B emails need dedicated tools. A cold email tool won’t work for sending newsletters and mass offers. An email marketing tool won’t work for sending targeted cold emails. And that list could go on. But all in all, think of them this way: 👉 B2C emails are like you’re advertising by distributing flyers at a conference – anyone who wants to, can opt in to take a flyer and use your offer. 👉 Cold emails are more like you’re coming up to a specific person at that conference, and starting a conversation. There’s a place for both. Just don’t confuse one with the other. P.S. To everyone who came to our MailCon panel: thank you. And special thanks to Adrian, Taylor and Nick - it was awesome to speak with you at the panel, and hang out afterwards. 🙂

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Top revenue performers have options. If you want to attract and keep the best, you need more than competitive comp plans. 🎯 What actually matters: — Clear career progression. Specific paths and timelines, instead of vague promises. — Real-time transparency. Show performance metrics now, not in quarterly reviews. — Leadership that gets it. Revenue leaders who've done the job themselves earn trust. — Culture of winning. Celebrate success, learn from losses, and set aggressive but achievable goals. The bottom line: Treat revenue professionals like the revenue drivers they are. Give them what they need to succeed, and they'll choose to stay and perform.

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Partnership leaders aren't burning out from failure. They're burning out from success. Here's the brutal irony: The better you get at "doing more with less," the more your executives expect you to do exactly that. We've gotten SO good at hitting our numbers with spreadsheets and manual processes that we've accidentally taught our executives that partnerships doesn't need resources. We drive 3x better metrics than sales with a fraction of the budget. We juggle 16 different roles and somehow make it work. So executives think: "This person is crushing it with nothing. Let's see how much more we can squeeze out before we invest." Instead of: "This is incredible ROI. Let's give them what they need to 10x this." We've become victims of our own resourcefulness. Every time we pull off a miracle with duct tape and determination, we reinforce the idea that partnerships thrives on constraint. Every time we hit our numbers despite having no tools, no budget, and no support, we prove that we don't "need" resources. But here's the truth: The best partnerships leaders I know are burning out. Not because they can't handle the work. Because they're being asked to scale infinitely without being given the tools to do it sustainably. My advice? 1. Don't ask for resources until you've proven you can drive success. 2. Set the expectation upfront that once you prove revenue traction, you'll need proper resources to scale. 3. The moment you hit that initial traction, go back and (kindly) demand what you need. Before you're forced to keep doing it all with a skeleton crew. Stop making miracles look easy. Start showing the real cost of running partnerships with manual processes and insufficient headcount. Prove that you know what you're doing, then fight for the resources that partnerships deserves. Otherwise, you'll be stuck holding the whole thing together with your bare hands forever.

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PSA Ask your vendor for proof. Not fancy demos, not fancy slides. PROVE IT. Give them a test, make it time-bound. Get them to show and explain. No more Global Delays in getting to proof of value.

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One of our core values at Nerdio is simple: no hierarchy. If someone on our team has an idea or a challenge, they don’t need to run it up the org chart. They can call, email, or text me or Vadim directly—no permission needed, no gatekeepers, no wasted time. We designed it this way to remove friction and move fast. The more steps it takes to ask a question or solve a problem, the slower the company runs. But here’s the caveat: saying “my door is always open” doesn’t guarantee people will walk through it. Some hesitate, unsure if it’s really okay to skip a level—or nervous to speak freely with a leader. For it to work, every team leader has to show it in action. The more leaders invite open conversation, the more people will share what’s really on their minds. It’s the same principle behind our “Nerdio Break Room.” Anyone—often individual contributors—can invite me (or each other) for ice cream and a candid chat when I’m in their area, and the most useful, unfiltered insights often come from those sessions. The “Break Room” is just one example, but the principle is the same across the company: when leaders make it safe and easy to speak up, people do it. And when they do, ideas move faster, problems get solved sooner, and trust gets built in real time.

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We're moving from systems of record to systems of action. That's my big takeaway from $150M+ raised in past 6 months. It's a bet on the future of work for GTM teams. In that future: -Reps never log into a CRM -Activities log themselves -Insights surface without being asked -Forecasts reflect reality, not optimism. -Teams operate from a unified, intelligent system of action. So what happens to the systems of record, like HubSpot and Salesforce, in a world that demands system of action? Their role is being rewritten. Because teams don't need another database. They need a silent infrastructure that provides 3 core things. Clarity. Context. Coordination. It becomes the engine that tells you what to do next. Congrats to Clay Unify Octave Sweep Actively AI and Landbase The next wave is here. And its going to be a lot of fun.

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"Our product is too expensive!" - Reps love this one as a loss reason. Really? You're sure? I pull the data. 12% got closed lost for price. TWELVE PERCENT. But that one loud rep has the whole team convinced we have a pricing problem. One of my favorite questions to as my leaders is this. Volume vs Volume. Is this a high volume problem that is just LOUD. Or is this a high volume problem that there is ALOT of it. This is what kills sales organizations. We chase the LOUD problems instead of the A LOT problems. The Loud vs Real Problem Reality Check: 🔊 LOUD: "The script doesn't work!" 📊 A LOT: Nobody's actually using the script (0% adoption tracked) 🔊 LOUD: "Marketing gives us garbage!" 📊 A LOT: 63% of MQLs never hit the right number of follow ups 🔊 LOUD: "The product is too expensive!" 📊 A LOT: Reps skip value discovery in 67% of calls 🔊 LOUD: "That competitor is killing us!" 📊 A LOT: Lost to "no decision" 5x more than any competitor Here's what happens in every sales org: One rep hits a weird objection three times. Suddenly it's "THE objection we need to solve." Meanwhile, 80% of your deals are dying in discovery and nobody's talking about it. Why? Because discovery death is quiet. It doesn't bang on your door screaming. The Data I Actually Look At: Not: "What are reps complaining about?" But: "What's happening in 100+ deals?" Not: "What's the latest fire?" But: "What pattern shows up in the numbers?" Not: "Who's yelling loudest?" But: "What does the scorecard say?" How to Stop Chasing Ghosts: 1️⃣ Track Everything If it's not measured, it's not real. Period. 2️⃣ Minimum Sample Size One rep's bad week ≠ a trend. Get 50+ data points minimum. 3️⃣ Follow the Math, Not the Mouth The loudest person in the room is rarely the most accurate. 4️⃣ Ask "By How Much?" "Leads suck" → "By how much did quality drop?" "Script fails" → "What's the conversion rate?" 5️⃣ Look for CHANGES - is anything new, or was it always that way. If it was always that way, it's not what's causing the drop. The Brutal Truth: Your loud problems are usually edge cases. Your real problems are boring and systemic. But we love solving loud problems because they're: Exciting to talk about Easy to blame Make us feel like heroes While the real problems quietly eat your pipeline alive. Stop managing by complaint volume. Start managing by data volume. The loudest problem in the room is rarely the one killing your quarter. Find the quiet killers. They're the ones that matter. Volume vs Volume ya'll.

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Want to ruin your team’s confidence, confuse your customer, and burn yourself out? Step in and solve every escalation yourself. I learned that the hard way. Early in my leadership career, I told my team: “If anything escalates, loop me in. I’ll help fix it.” And one day, they did. A customer was frustrated, the CSM was stressed, and I immediately went into hero mode. I emailed the customer directly. Took over the conversation. Built a resolution plan. I led it all and “saved the day.” Or so I thought. But here’s what really happened: 🚫 The CSM felt defeated. Questioned their ability to lead the partnership. 🚫 The customer started bypassing the CSM and coming straight to me. 🚫 I was suddenly drowning in work I shouldn’t be doing. And worst of all? I unintentionally broke the relationship, on both sides. The reality is, not every escalation needs a savior. What it needs is a leader who knows when to coach instead of take control. Now, when an escalation hits my radar, I do these 5 things instead: 1️⃣ Slow it down before speeding it up Take a beat. Understand the root cause. De-escalate emotionally before acting tactically. 2️⃣ Coach, don’t commandeer Support your CSM in building their response strategy. Help them lead with clarity and confidence. 3️⃣ Stay in the background (unless you really need to be front and center) Let your team own the narrative. You can shadow the call, but let them drive it. 4️⃣ Reaffirm roles Customers need to trust the CSM as their partner. Your presence should reinforce, not replace, that trust. 5️⃣ Debrief and develop Escalations are learning moments. Recap what happened and how to handle it even better next time. Leadership isn’t about jumping in to save the day. It’s about building a team that knows how to navigate hard days without you. How do you handle escalations on your team?

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I'm noticing something that should worry anyone who's built their competitive moat on being 'human' - suddenly, everyone and their B2B SaaS mother wants in on it too. For years, "human" branding felt like the scrappy underdog move. In 2023, when we crafted our brand strategy for Todoist, we prioritized our “human” brand attribute in order to position ourselves against Google/Apple/Microsoft. But now AI's bot-filled enshittification of the internet is pushing companies of all sizes toward human positioning as a defensive play. We’re seeing: - Generic "behind-the-scenes" content that honestly could apply to any company - “EmPloYEe AdVOcacY” without letting the employees be themselves - Companies suddenly posting "day in the life" content that feels like stock footage with a personal caption “Human" branding is about to become as meaningless as calling yourself "innovative" or "customer-centric." If everyone's human, no one is. A framework I'm thinking through: 📍 Get hyper specific about your human traits: Don't just be "authentic" – be playfully honest about productivity chaos, or brutally transparent about your failures, or whatever. Own the unique human characteristics that actually tie to your category. 🎁 Make it product-relevant: Your human brand should connect to the exact problems your product solves. Admitting that most productivity methods fail spectacularly hits different than aspirational 'crushing your goals' messaging. 🛠️ Build systems that scale humanness without killing it: Figure out how to systematize human connection without corporate-washing what made it special. (Hint: letting actual employees own content pillars vs. everything going through brand filters) As human positioning gets commoditized, the differentiator shifts from *being* human to *how* you're human. The brands that get specific about their version of humanity – and resist the urge to sanitize it – will keep their edge.

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