The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)

#395 | Dasha sits down with Freya Ward, Associate Managing Director at Headley Media, to talk about why MQLs get a bad rap and what to do about it. Freya explains why the problem is usually the framing rather than the tactic, how renaming MQLs changes how sales handles them, and what you should rename them to. They also get into how to run a workshop that aligns the team on what counts as a qualified lead, and three specific fixes you can make today for better sales and marketing alignment. 

Show notes
Gareth James at Hallam on getting brand investment signed off by finance directors: https://hallam.agency/blog/investment-for-brand-how-to-get-sign-off-from-finance-directors/

Timestamps: (00:00) - Why Freya quit marketing to join the sales team

(09:02) - Is the MQL actually dead?

(10:02) - Rename the MQL to qualified outbound leads

(11:22) - Why every marketer has speak the sales, finance, and other department’s languages

(16:47) - Three rituals that keep sales and marketing aligned

(20:47) - Build your MQL definition from deals that closed

(24:43) - Why Dasha's BDs report into marketing

(26:26) - Fix #1: make lead rejection a required CRM field

(31:46) - Fix #2: assign someone to nurture dead leads

(38:00) - Fix #3: pilot alignment with one SDR

Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Brought to you by:
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.

Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. 

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Visit hatch.fm to learn more

#394 | Dave takes his phone to the conference floor at HubSpot's UNBOUND in Boston and asks 5 B2B marketing leaders two questions: what are you doubling down on at work, and what are you doubling down on in your personal life? He opens with thoughts on why strategy and positioning matter more than tactics now that AI makes everyone sound the same. Then you'll hear from Jonathan Hunt of HubSpot on treating brands as live experiences, Palmer Houchins of G2 on balancing AI efficiency with effectiveness, Sangram Vajre of GTM Partners on the power of one-on-one conversations, Jess Cook of Vector on personally rebuilding her company's website with Claude Code, and Amit Sharan of Tatari on the importance of exploring new channels and how they're creating video content built to be found by AI search.

Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Brought to you by:
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.

Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. 

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Visit hatch.fm to learn more

#393 | Dave interviews Katie Miserany, Chief Communications Officer and Head of Marketing at SurveyMonkey, about why the company rebranded to Momentive to go upmarket and then reversed the decision after going private. Katie explains why sales believed nobody would spend six figures with a company called SurveyMonkey, what changed under the new CEO, and why she now sees the monkey as an advantage. She also covers her path into marketing from communications, why more comms leaders are moving into C-suite marketing roles, and the advice she followed when she took over the function: get close to the growth team and ask your basic questions early so imposter syndrome doesn't cost you the learning.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Why Katie Feels Like She’s Gotten Twenty Years of Experience in Seven at SurveyMonkey

(05:41) - Why Sales Thought Nobody Would Buy From a Company Called SurveyMonkey

(07:06) - Creating Our Brand Vision and Bringing it to Life

(12:33) - The Campaign That Didn't Move the Needle

(17:04) - Everyone Knows Us - The Version of Us From 2009

(20:08) - The Tactic That Lifted Click-Through by 73%

(25:19) - The Journey From Comms to Head of Marketing

(31:18) - What Comms Actually Does

(37:14) - How to Determine if You Need a Meeting vs an Async Update

Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Brought to you by:
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.

Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. 

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Visit hatch.fm to learn more

#392 | Everyone’s talking about AI agents right now. It's hard to know what's real and what's just LinkedIn noise. If you haven't built an agent yet, it’s hard to know where to start. If you have built agents, you might be looking for ideas for what to build next.
Wouldn’t it be great if a pro marketer would just share their screen and walk you through their best agents? Here's what I built, this is what it does, and here's how much time it saved me this week.
We agree! That’s why we brought in seven B2B marketers to show the agents they built, and are using at their companies today. Check out this episode of Exit Five Live.

Timestamps

(00:00) - Intro

(03:18) - What an AI agent actually is, and common challenges marketers face with building them

(06:06) - An AI chief of staff, and an agent that hunts for new brands

(10:39) - Claude skills that edit a draft, and an agent for LinkedIn ads creative

(16:11) - Sales call data as an agent's brain, and testing messaging with AI personas

(20:40) - 2,600 personalized landing pages, built and refreshed by an agent

(24:44) - A daily learning digest that turns into a private podcast

(27:30) - Getting a dozen editing skills to work together

(31:43) - Inside the landing page agent: research, edit mode, running at scale

(35:53) - How the cool hunting agent finds and scores new brands

Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Brought to you by:
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.

Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. 

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Visit hatch.fm to learn more

#391 | Dave sits down with Hailey McDonald, VP of Revenue Marketing at Sprout Social, to talk about what revenue marketing looks like inside a 16-year-old social intelligence platform with 30,000 customers. Hailey explains why demand gen has become the hardest role to hire for in B2B. She shares her core framework, how she maps segments against solutions, and how that turns into budget, channel bets, and pipeline tiers by vertical. Dave and Hailey also get into what it takes to go from  sales-led company to product-led growth, and what north star metric she uses instead of leads or pipeline. You’ll also hear how reading market signals keeps you from over-investing in a segment that's never going to close. Finally, the difference between a marketer and an executive, whether big companies can vibe-code their way to startup agility, and the truth about incentives.

Timestamps: (00:00) - Meet Hailey McDonald, VP of revenue marketing at Sprout Social

(00:49) - Why revenue marketing is the hardest role to hire for in B2B

(05:26) - Shifting a sales-led company toward product-led growth

(08:44) - Getting clear on ICP and why segmentation matters

(10:23) - The segmentation framework: mapping segments to solutions

(14:55) - Turning segment priorities into budget and channel bets

(19:42) - What a campaign team does

(31:34) - AI, vibe coding, and keeping a big company current

Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Brought to you by:
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.

Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. 

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Visit hatch.fm to learn more