Categories: Podcasts
2023 was a great year for the Revenue Builders Podcast. We enjoyed hosting conversations with some truly transformative leaders, from sales executives at "Unicorn" tech companies to founders of inspiring charitable organizations. Our hosts John Kaplan and John McMahon welcomed over 50 guests whose conversations covered topics like product-led growth, selling to champions and C-level decision-makers, growing your personal sales career and making great sales hires. Today, we're sharing our top 10 most-listened podcasts of the year. Listen, save and share these greatest hits to guide you as you aim even higher in 2024.
Thanks for tuning in to the Revenue Builders Podcast this year. We're so grateful you're here, and we love to hear your comments, suggestions and discussions about the show. Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram so you can keep up with all the latest wisdom from our guests and tag us when you share your favorite episodes. If you haven't already, subscribe to the Revenue Builders Podcast on your favorite podcast player.
Listen to Our Top Podcasts of the Year:
1. Thinking Like an Executive with Dali Rajic
Duration: 1 hr 1 min
Topic:
In this episode, John McMahon and John Kaplan welcome Dali Rajic, Chief Operating Officer at Zscaler, as he discusses his career in sales leadership, starting as a first-line manager and eventually becoming a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). He gives advice for front-line managers, those coaching front-line managers, and those wishing to take their career to the next level. Dali discusses the difference between working hard and working efficiently, the anatomy of a great team culture, and explains an approach to results-based enablement.
Listen Now
2. What the Best Sales Leaders Do with Brian McCarthy
Duration: 1 hr 18 min
Topic:
Brian McCarthy is an accomplished executive and leader with progressive sales and leadership experience building and leading talented teams to achieve hyper-growth within the enterprise software and information services industry. Brian currently serves as Rubrik’s Chief Revenue Officer, where he leads the global go-to-market sales strategy.
Join us as Brian shares insights on managing and enabling sales teams. He emphasizes the importance of caring for and developing employees and the need for leaders to have a secure mindset. McCarthy and John McMahon discuss tracking deals and stages in the sales process, forecasting, and improving the probability of closing deals. Tons of lessons from two top-tier sales leaders are shared on this episode of Revenue Builders.
Listen Now
3. Driving a Sales Discipline with Carlos Delatorre
Duration: 59 min
Topic:
Carlos Delatorre is a seasoned sales leader with a career spanning several companies, including PTC, Oracle, Symantec, BMC, VMware, ClearSlide, MongoDB, Vera, and TripActions. He is also an active investor and advisor for several software companies and sits on the board at Yellow. In this episode, Carlos talks about the three basic things he considers when making a career move: market size, product differentiation, and the team. He also discusses the importance of focusing on the customer and the value proposition when selling. Additionally, Carlos delves into the complexity of a product and the selling environment, highlighting the importance of having a sales team that can effectively differentiate from the competition and create demand.
Listen Now
4. Selling to Decision Makers Part 2 with Tony Parinello
Duration: 1 hr 18 min
Topic:
One of our MOST requested guests is back for Part 2! Tony Parinello is the bestselling author of Selling to VITO - the Very Important Top Officer. A sales veteran, Tony knows how C-suite leaders think, what they look for in a sales conversation, and what it takes to get them on your side in a deal. Today, Tony is diving even deeper into this critical topic for sales success in 2023, when multiple C-suite leaders are getting more involved in every deal. John McMahon and John Kaplan talk to Tony about VITO priorities and how to win consistently with this stakeholder group in a game-changing episode for both sellers and leaders. Dig in and get in the mindset of how your team should be approaching these high-stakes conversations.
Listen Now
5. Scaling Sales and Qualifying Deals with Adam Aarons
Duration: 1 hr 1 min
Topic:
Adam Aarons is a seasoned sales executive with extensive knowledge of the risk and compliance space. Adam is well known and admired for his time as the CRO of Okta, during which Okta grew from a $1M startup to a publicly traded $300M+ ARR category winner, and now serves as CRO of Drata.
In this conversation with John McMahon, Adam discusses the keys to scaling a salesforce, including productivity per head, average deal size, and ramp times. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the ideal customer profile and where they are located. Adam also highlights the critical role of qualification in the sales process, focusing on the ICE framework (Identify pain, Champion, Economic buyer). He stresses the need for continuous discovery and the importance of establishing decision criteria. Adam shares insights on forecasting, metrics, and the value of customer success in reducing churn and driving revenue, as well as sharing his journey from rep to CRO.
Listen Now
6. The Secrets of Sales Negotiation with Tim Caito
Duration: 1 hr 5 min
Topic:
In this episode, Tim Caito, Senior Partner at Force Management, joins John McMahon and John Kaplan to discuss competencies and common pitfalls associated with negotiation. The conversation covers the perception of power and emotions, early preparation and value-building throughout the sales process, the role of champions in negotiation, handling give-gets and package options, and many more negotiation topics. Learn how these concepts apply to your sales team and the current economic environment in this episode of Revenue Builders.
Listen Now
7. Developing Champions with Richard Rivera, Pt. 2
Duration: 52 min
Topic:
This episode is a continuation of John Kaplan and John McMahon's conversation with Richard Rivera, Founder of GENNOW Sales Consulting and author of The Champion Sell. This time we discuss his formula for sales success: what he calls the E.L.I.T.E. method for aligning with the buyer. E.L.I.T.E. stands for Emotional Connection, Leading Vision, Inspiring Commitment, Trust Building, and Empowering Champions. Tune in to this episode of Revenue Builders to hear Richard break down these five game-changing strategies.
Listen Now
8. Best Practices from Elite Sales Leaders
Duration: 43 min
Topic:
The best advice comes from people who have been there, done that. In this episode, we bring you insights from three Chief Revenue Officers who have led their teams to incredible outcomes. You’ll hear what it’s like to be the first salesperson in a raw startup, why it’s vitally important for leaders to give their people a purpose, how to keep your top sales performers from leaving your company, why execution of all the details in a process matter, and other wisdom shared on this podcast. We’ll hear from Mark Roberge, former CRO at Hubspot, current Harvard Sales Professor and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital, Cedric Pech, the CRO at MongoDB and Chris Degnan, the CRO at Snowflake.
Listen Now
9. Coaches vs. Champions with Anne Gary
Duration: 34 min
Topic:
Force Management Facilitator Anne Gary joins the Revenue Builders podcast to discuss Champions. Anne is a skilled sales consultant and trainer with more than 20 years of experience in direct and indirect and channel sales, sales management, sales development, and sales operations. Hosts John and John both worked with her at PTC – she was there when PTC was a startup and helped it grow to a $10 billion dollar market cap.
In this episode, John McMahon and Anne Gary talk about the MEDDICC concept of Coaches and Champions. They discuss common mistakes salespeople make distinguishing a Coach from a Champion, as well as what sales leaders need to do to push their teams to identify and test the coveted role.
Listen Now
10. Responding to RFPs in B2B Sales with Scott Sinatra
Duration: 51 min
Topic:
Scott Sinatra is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bountiful. Scott is a serial entrepreneur and former senior vice president of worldwide sales at Glassdoor. With deep industry knowledge in HR technology, Sinatra also served as a founding executive and head of go-to-market at Glint, which was acquired by LinkedIn in 2018. In this interview, Scott shares his experience responding to an RFP during his time at BladeLogic. He discusses the importance of having a champion within the customer's organization, the need to influence the decision criteria in the RFP, and the value of training and understanding your product and competition. Scott also emphasizes the importance of making a go/no-go decision when evaluating an RFP and the need to prioritize activities that will lead to success
Listen Now
Never Miss an Episode
We publish new episodes every week. Download, listen and share them with your teams. If there's a topic you want us to cover, email us. You can subscribe to our podcast on all the major streaming platforms.
Revenue Builders Podcast Page | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Google Podcasts
