AE @ Gong | Closed Won 🦙 | 5x President's Club

Creating raving fans @ Gong. Founder of Closed Won. Dad to Monty 🐾 

Brian LaManna

Most painful (lost) deals I remember.

-One that had a DocuSign out for signature around March 15th, 2020. The team took a few extra days to look it over... COVID hit... and they never ended up signing.

-6 month evaluation, decided they were going to move to us from a larger competitor, and then not realizing they had an auto-renewal. I take fault for not pressing harder on this.

-21 month deal cycle that continued to push quarter after quarter for a variety of excuses, despite promising interest. Nothing as painful as a super long deal cycle with twists and turns. Eventually turned it Closed Lost.

-Running a successful evaluation with someone who told me "I am the decision maker and signer on this" ... when it came to sign, someone else blocked it from happening. Lesson learned... if someone blurts out "I am the decision maker" .... they are most definitely not the decision maker 🤣


Quickly learned to never celebrate a deal until it's signed.

Time really does kill deals sometimes.


P.S. Redesigned the website around Closed Won Club at https://closedwon.xyz/ ... how do we like it?

AE @ Gong | Closed Won 🦙 | 7x President’s Club

Corrina Owens

chief evangelist @ purple cork 💜 | 4x B2B SaaS Marketing & ABM Leader | GTM Advisor | Podcast Host

I help B2B SaaS brands build account-based marketing (ABM) programs at scale.

Ready to move upmarket or have a new product launch? ABM could be for you. 

I'll be able to take on new clients in May 2026—let's connect to discuss how I can help you hit your targets.

Fractional ABM

Sometimes we don't look back enough.

I'm constantly comparing myself to my future self (and of course, the other baddies out there), but damn, comparing myself to my past self?

Damn, girl. 🔥

Founder @ Fractional ABM | my ABM programs build pipeline for B2B SaaS

Account coverage campaigns work best when they’re simple.

The framework I keep coming back to is a simple, 𝘁𝘄𝗼 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲:

 • 𝗜𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁: actively in sales conversations/retargeting 
 • 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁: not showing buying signals yet

Here’s what this means for marketing:

𝗜𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 → show testimonials, case studies, custom workshops, etc.

𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 → build brand awareness around the pain points you’re solving.

The mistake is trying to force everything into “top / middle / bottom of funnel.” That’s where systems break down and the message gets muddy.

That simplicity leads to cleaner campaign decisions and a smoother buyer journey.

I break this down more on Spara’s Agents of Revenue with Spara.

Do you have clear “in market” vs “not in market” plays you're running today?

The look I give when a target account list hasn't been enriched:

“How many accounts should we target for ABM?"

100?
500?
10,000?

It's one of the most common questions I hear.

And it’s almost always the wrong one.

ABM isn't defined by the size of your list. I've seen companies target 25 accounts and fail. I've seen others target hundreds and build real pipeline.

What matters is whether sales and marketing are actually operating as one team.

Are they using the...

•⁠ ⁠Same logic for selecting accounts?
•⁠ ⁠Same understanding of why they matter?
•⁠ ⁠Same definition of success (# meetings held, pipeline generated)?

That last bullet naturally feeds into the next question...

“How do you determine the types of programs to build out?”

Typically, you need to identify what are the 2–3 high-impact buying signals that generate meetings, pipeline, and increase sales velocity.

Before you think about adding 10 more accounts to your list, first ask if your teams are aligned enough to make any of them count.

Before you build account plays, you need a clear view of your ICP as it exists today and a target account list that actually matches it.

When you start there, it changes what happens upstream:

•You stop chasing “more MQLs” to compensate for weak conversion.
•You build focused coverage with a real why behind each account.

That foundation also changes how sales and marketing work together.

Instead of waiting for hand-raisers, you can plan accounts together and run coordinated plays across the right personas.

I broke this down on Agents of Revenue with Spara: https://lnkd.in/eTddXrKd

I just got back from an exec offsite with CROs and CMOs where we talked about signals for hours, and I kept coming back to the same thought I've had for years:

we overcomplicate this.

Every ABM platform promised pipeline prediction, but many of us failed because we were beholden to their model. And the tweaking it required to get it there was manpower, hours, and hours of consultations. 

We're closer than we've ever been to getting to true prediction, but it still comes down to understanding these four questions when building your GTM programs:

❔WHO should this come from? 
(should the message come from your CEO, a specific AE, a product line...who has the best shot at landing?)

❔WHAT should we be saying? 
(is this a 3rd party validation moment or a warm-up play, like an event invite?)

❔WHEN is the right time? 
(the signal IS the timing trigger.)

❔WHERE will this land?
(direct mail, outbound: call or email, channel is the most underutilized lever I see.)

📌 Not all signals are designed to produce immediate pipeline.

Some signals predict pipeline more directly, like a past champion landing at a net-new account.

Some warm up pipeline, like a company hiring for roles that require specific systems you integrate well with.

You can build world-class signal-based ABM programs if you can answer all of the above.

The most common event “win” I hear about is also the thing quietly breaking the program.

When your CEO is still personally inviting half the room, you’re setting up your process to not scale.

And honestly… I go back and forth on this...maybe this “strategy” shouldn’t scale.

BUT, if the success of your event depends on one executive’s network, if that’s the only thing filling the room, you don’t have an event motion...you have a very well-connected executive doing pipeline development.

Where do you land on this? How have you moved away from a purely exec-driven event?

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