David Zeff ✌️

Head Of Sales

Whistle

Our global team of over 100 Whistlers has supported over 300 B2B companies, many of whom have gone on to raise a total of over $2Bn or have been acquired. In a given month we deliver over $15M in qualified pipeline for our clients using a combination of cutting-edge technology, evidence-based systems, and world-class talent. 

Whistle is built on the principles of integrity, transparency, and deploying best practices at all times. 
We work with fast-growing tech companies needing an outsourced SDR provider as well as enterprise companies looking to offshore vetted and skilled Marketing and Sales talent, with native English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin speakers that are ready to grow your company.

You can learn more about how we help businesses grow at www.whistle.ltd.

Chief Executive Officer

Sinorbis

Strategic Advisor tasked with building a world class enterprise sales team and sales development process to ensure that key business objectives are met. Working directly alongside the CEO, VP Marketing and VP Business Development to create a scalable sales process, and facilitate the training and onboarding of account executives and business development representatives.

Strategic Advisor, Board Member

Exceed.ai - Exited to Genesis

In my role as Head of Sales at Exceed, I built the entire end to end sales process and was responsible for all sales, processes, operations, creating the company’s first marketing, sales, product and support alignment and building strategic partnerships.  

My role also saw me working closely with investors, as we raised a $4M Series A & subsequently were acquired by Genesys.

Graduway - Exited to K1 Investment Management

Responsible for the creation and management of Graduway's North American business unit. My role included leading a team of account executives and sales development representatives to exceed company sales targets in key verticals. 

In my role, I was also responsible for creating the K-12 category, which became the highest performing category in the company and for creating and managing teams for both the K-12 and Enterprise divisions. I was also tasked with creating partnerships with key stakeholders & regularly lead thought leadership sessions around the world.

Experience in enterprise sales, creating targeted marketing campaigns, public speaking, brand ambassadorship, partnerships, conference exhibitions and strategic campaigns.

With thanks in part to the performance of my team, Graduway successfully raised $12.7M in Series B Funding from Susquehanna General Equity Partners and was purchased by Private Equity firm K1 Investment Capital in 2017.

Vice President of Sales, USA

Graduway

As employee #8 (3rd sales hire), I was involved in many aspects of growing the company from its modest beginnings above a coffee shop to becoming a leader in Alumni Engagement technology, empowering over 1,000 of the worlds best Higher Education and Non Profits.

I served as an account executive across North America and the UK and my personal contribution represented approximately 25% of total company sales. Responsibilities included B2B enterprise SAAS sales, contracts, RFPS, competitor analysis, strategic campaign development, client management and liaison, event management, exhibitions, public speaking and conferences.

Senior Account Executive

Vice President of a team of 15 Sales Development Representatives for B2B sales across global markets. 
Responsibilities included hiring, training, and development of Sales Development Representatives, team management, creation and accomplishment of targets in line with company objectives, campaign creation, and inbound marketing strategy, overseeing registration for multiple events with hundreds of attendees across the world.

VP Sales Development

OneFitStop - Exited to Private Investors

OneFitStop is a revolutionary SAAS platform for fitness professionals, enabling total client and business management. OneFitStop was awarded an Australian Government Research and Development Grant in 2013 and has raised $17M to date.

Responsibilities included founding the business, concept development, technology design and creation, product testing, marketing strategy and implementation, sales development, investor relations, industry partnership development, supplier management, sponsorship and exhibitions.

OneFitStop was sold in October 2015 to a consortium of private investors.

Co-Founder, CEO 

Fitness First Australia

Responsibilities included development of a new Fitness First training centre, providing high quality health and fitness services to hundreds of members and assisting in the management of the personal training team and member relations.

I also worked alongside Rebel Sport and Lorna Jane to promote fitness services to hundreds of customers.

Franchise Owner

Mergermarket

Responsibilities included analysing and predicting market trends, specialist reporting on forthcoming mergers and acquisitions in the Australian marketplace in the services, defence and manufacturing industries.

Financial Reporter

With over 10 years of selling technology to hundreds of SMB and Enterprise companies across multiple sectors, I have begun to wrap my head around the art of sales. 

I've been a part of 3 exits - one as a founder and two as a founding sales lead. I'm a people person, who loves to connect, lead, share experiences, coach, strategize and implement. I enjoy writing and sharing ideas and look to work with sales leaders and founders who are creating the impossible.

I have built and scaled full cycle business units and as an individual contributor, I have signed large enterprise deals with over 500 companies. 

I take that knowledge into Whistle, a revenue generation company supports over 150 customers through best practice sales and marketing. We offer the best people, processes and full transparency and are proud to work with leading B2B brands worldwide. To learn more, head to www.whistle.ltd

Businesses, much like rockets, either reach the moon or blow up. 
We're here to prevent the latter.

Whistle is built on the principles of integrity, transparency and deploying best practices at all times. Our goal is to help each of our clients to their next 100 B2B customers and we do so by attracting conversation ready prospects to our customers using a combination of cutting edge technology, evidence based systems and world class talent. You can learn more about how we help promising businesses grow at www.callwhistle.com.

Scoro

I tried to make a belt out of watches…
Turns out it was a waist of time.

Ops and Finance leaders face a unique kind of pressure. You’re expected to keep everything running like clockwork, from project delivery to budget control, while also driving efficiency, scaling operations, and making smarter, faster decisions.

The problem?
Most teams are drowning in disconnected tools, scattered data, and endless manual workarounds.

The result: missed deadlines, costly surprises, and a lot of late nights.

In my role, I connect with leaders who want to:

↳ Get complete visibility across projects, finances, and resources in one place
↳ Spot issues before they spiral into expensive problems
↳ Align every team around the same goals, timelines, and numbers

It’s not about “adding another system.” It’s about removing friction, streamlining processes, and freeing up capacity so your team can focus on growth, not firefighting.

If that sounds like the future you’d like to work toward, I’m always up for a conversation (dad joke optional).

Business Development Representative

EPN - Emerging Professionals Network

Ambassador of The Emerging Professionals Network (a subset of the ISP)

Hollywood, scrap that, History hasn’t exactly painted the profession in the best light. Typically denoting the slimy, conniving, and pushy traits that were required in order to succeed. Yet there are still some of us that love the profession.

Worryingly, however, in the past couple of weeks 2 people that I've spoken to have decided they've had enough. Whether it be through a lack of support, coaching & guidance, or not wanting to rub prospects up the wrong way by forcing them down a rabbit hole.

Are we doing enough to support young sales talent or are we inadvertently stunting the growth of budding sales professionals with the sheer abundance of sales hacks that are out there?

The Emerging Professionals Network (EPN), a subset of the ISP created to help overcome the stigma surrounding the profession and provide a learning partner to budding sales professionals that are looking for the training, coaching and support that is so badly lacking at the vast majority of sales orgs.

Now, I’m not saying there’s not enough information out there, there’s tons of it. You just have to take a few scrolls of your LinkedIn feed to be bombarded by “5 tips to smash your number”, “10 ways to crush cold calls”, “7 emails to guarantee a response from even the frostiest of cold leads” and the like.

But I think this just adds to the stigma.

I love learning new things and take a great passion in testing and optimising my approach (a nod to the scientist in me), though 18 months ago I reached a point where I felt I had tried every hack that I had seen on LinkedIn, Google and through various newsletters, to no avail. So much so that I was wondering whether sales was for me.

…And I don’t want any other person that loves sales to feel that pain!

Ambassador

Supero

When is Social Selling, selling on social? 
... Never! 


Around 3 years ago I was on the Swiss border, in France. I'd taken a week off of work to visit my Sister-in-law, Brother-in-law, and (resulting) niece. 

It was March and the weather was beautiful, the sun shining but there was still just enough snow on the mountains for a good days skiing. After a day on the slopes, we returned home to a news flash - “Macron to address the country at 7 pm.”

You may have guessed… it was the announcement that we would be going into lockdown. 

See I try my best to be a glass half full kind of guy, so while we’d just witnessed a devasting pandemic in which many people lost loved ones (myself and my partner included), work, general quality of life and freedom, I try my hardest to find the silver linings - If I really think about it, there were a couple. Notably, I was able to spend 2 months confined with my niece (watching her develop and grow in person, rather than through a screen) and I had the ability to review whether I was in the right line of work (I wasn’t). 

After some soul-searching and countless conversations with my old man (Alex Abbott), we decided that it was the right time to start up a Sales & Marketing Transformation agency... right in the middle of a pandemic.

I'd always been fascinated by sales. As a movie buff, the role had been somewhat idolised... albeit for the wrong reasons. Hollywood - scrap that, history hasn’t exactly painted salespeople in the best light. In fact, it has shone a light on the conniving, slimy & predatory traits that make a “successful” salesperson. 

However, times have changed. 1 thing remains constant, times of breed innovation within the field of sales. From the birth of the Challenger Sale during the 2008 economic crash, to the rise of Social Selling as result of COVID. As larger proportions of our buyers cycle is being done digitally, we as sellers, must learn to walk digital corridors more efficiently, if we are to succeed!

After working in sales for around 2 years, as an SDR/BDR. I reached a point where I felt I had tried every hack that I had seen on LinkedIn, Google, and through various newsletters, to no avail. 

My meeting generation rate was 1.3% and I felt like I was banging my head against the wall (and I'm sure this was how my prospects felt when they received my outreach).

I knew something had to change...

Thanks to the guidance of Alex Abbott, Tim Hughes, and Adam Gray, I was able to completely change my perspective and my approach. I moved from sales-centric to buyer-centric. I started using Video and social to build my personal brand, communicate authentically and create conversations in personal and non-invasive way. 

Not only did I start enjoying the work again, but I also started booking and sitting a whole lot more meetings. My meeting generation rate jumped to 9%, so for every 100 people that I asked for a call, 9 people accepted and showed up to that call.

That's a 6.7x increase!

As a result of the change, the business pivoted from executing on behalf of clients to empowering them by training the same methodology that brought us such success. 

I became a full-cycle sales rep, drinking my own champagne by creating a sustainable pipeline engine, selling training courses and delivering value to clients.

Conversation Creation Consultant 

Generating qualified pipeline for clients such as: Insider, FSMartech, Digital Response, Thunderhead (now Medallia), Guild, Radiate B2B, and BluprintX

Insider. 
Mar 2021 - Sep 2021 · 7 mos

Why did the Cookie Monster quit his job in MAdTech? 
↳ Because Google blocked 3rd party cookies

We rode the industry waves as Google joined Apple, Mozilla, and Microsoft in axing 3rd party cookies, disrupting digital advertising as we knew it. This shift amplified the importance of 1st party data, making it a stronger value driver in our outreach.

Business Development Lead @ FSMarTech
Mar 2021 - Sep 2021 · 7 mos

Helped grow a the community to the point of acquisition by MarTech Alliance. We helped FS firms maximise their MarTech investments to improve CX and drive effectiveness.

Business Development Lead @ Digital Response
Mar 2021 - Dec 2021 · 10 mos

Why did the marketer get off the trampoline?
↳ They were worried about their bounce rate.

On the frontline when Apple’s iOS15 update shook email marketing. As Apple Mail dominated the market, its tracking limitations forced a strategic rethink for metrics and engagement. We stayed agile, kept clients informed, and adapted quickly to the evolving landscape.

Business Growth Advisor @ BluprintX 
Oct 2021 - Oct 2022 · 1 yr 1 mo

How many Marketers does it take to change a light bulb?
↳ None, they automate it! 

BluprintX opened my eyes to the real power of marketing automation and alignment across people, process, and platforms. I got to engage with marketing leaders, work with cutting-edge tech, & engage in events!

Business Growth Advisor @ Radiate B2B 
Jan 2022 - Oct 2022 · 10 mosJan 2022 to Oct 2022 · 10 mos

What type of Revenue Generating activities does Dracula do? 
↳ A-COUNT-based

At Radiate B2B we empowered teams to leverage ABM & Intent data to generate more pipeline. Think of it as switching from digging blindly in the sand to using a metal detector: smarter targeting, better insights, more meaningful conversations.

Outsourced Business Development Representative

The Institute of Sales Professionals

The divide between how modern buyers buy and how we sell, is evident...

🙅 72% of buyers would prefer a rep-free experience! (Gartner)

🤷 Only 23% of B2B buyers see sellers as trusted resources for solving business challenges (Miller Heiman)

🤦 Just 3% of people see salespeople as trustworthy (HubSpot)

Yet quite frankly, this has all been self-inflicted! We have been reluctant to react and adapt to the drastic shifts in buyer behaviours, preferring to do more of what we know, in an attempt to plug the hole in our pipeline.

...And it's having dire impacts on not only the health of our pipelines but also the health of our people:

😣 79% of salespeople report they are feeling stressed!

🥵 89% are reporting burnout!

🧠 25% have been diagnosed with mental health disorders!

It's completely unsustainable...

At the end of the day, for any sales org, the greatest USP is its people!

So what are you planning to do in 2024 to protect and reinvigorate your people, so that they are equipped to re-engage your prospects?

Business Development Manager

SDR Leaders of EMEA

Many EMEA SDR Leaders are often alone, their bosses are in the USA & they are often first-line leaders. With the added pressure of being at the heart of driving 30-40% of a company’s revenue, we are not setting our leaders up for success.

The "A Day in The Life of an SDR Leader" podcast gives you the chance to meet like-minded peers, gain valuable insights & best practices, in the most unique of leadership challenges; leading multicultural, multilanguage teams

We speak to SDR Leaders in EMEA about their role, how to get the best out of their teams, their tech stack and any trends they’re seeing that will influence the above.

Podcast Host

Vidyard

Why was the traditional Sales Director afraid of video?

🎶 Because video killed the cold calling star! 🎶

____________________________________

Video has always been close to my heart. I initially trained as an actor and then decided to pursue a career in Sales... I guess I have an affinity for professions that involve a lot of rejection (make of that what you will). 

Sales is a performance profession and one that is only effective when built upon a strong relationship-focused foundation. I've been on a journey to achieving a truly buyer-centric approach over the last couple of years, implementing a social selling strategy further enabled by video (and Vidyard). 

Since making this change, my meeting booking rates increased by 6.7x!

___________________________________

Hollywood - scrap that, history hasn’t exactly painted salespeople in the best light. In fact, it has shone a light on the conniving, slimy & predatory traits that make a “successful” salesperson. The vast majority of buyers have been burnt in the past and are now cautious of it happening again.

As a result, "72% of buyers would prefer a rep-free experience or to complete a purchase without having to speak to a rep" (Gartner). 

Modern buyers are empowered, opting to "complete up to 90% of their buying process before making themselves known to vendors" (Forrester). GTM leaders are aware of the impact that changing buyer behaviours (56%) & the ensuing digital skills gaps (52%) will have on profitability over the next 10 years (PwC’s 26th annual CEO Survey) but too many are unsure of the next step.

Not a nice feeling considering Gartner's prediction that “by 2025, 80% of buyer and seller interaction will take place on digital channels.”

So how can we effectively bridge the digital divide between modern buyers and sellers via asynchronous selling?

Sales Development Representative

MKTGmanago

Throughout my childhood, I remember my father having to work on evenings, weekends, and holidays. His work ethic was and still is incomparable. Yet at the time, I could tell he wasn’t quite getting full satisfaction. When he left his position at Oracle to start up his own business, I was thrilled... and foolish enough to join him on the journey.   

Our goal, to enable businesses to overcome the following challenges:  

6-9 out of 10 Marketing Strategies fail due to poor execution, almost 50% of MarTech capabilities go unused and marketing budgets are declining. Furthermore, couple that with more data than we can 'shake a stick at' and human attention span dropping below that of a goldfish (2020), creates a stark and challenging environment for even the strongest of businesses trying to compete on customer experience.

We saw Personalisation & Orchestration as the two activities that have the greatest effect customer engagement. More specifically, the depth of personalisation (number of data sources utilised) and frequency or rate of implementation (of new modules/sequences; over-arching the success of this was, of course, a testing & optimisation mindset which has a direct impact on business performance and continued progression. 

To ensure that we enabled our educated and empowered our clients to achieve the above, we created a job title: Business Growth Adviser, which essentially entailed the roles and responsibilities of an SDR, AE & CSM. I found this role a real eye-opener as I had exposure to every step of the client buying cycle and responsibility for the continued relationship, and while it definitely lead to some working weekends, what I learned during my time in the role was invalauble.

We have since pivoted a couple of times, and changed our name and branding, to Supero: https://www.yoursupero.com/

Business Growth Advisor 

Rezultize

I was on the Swiss border, in France. I had taken a week off from work to visit my Sister-in-law, Brother-in-law, and (resulting) niece. 

It was March and the weather was beautiful, the sun shining but there was still just enough snow on the mountains to get a good day skiing in. After a day on the slopes, we returned home to a news flash - “Macron to address the country at 7 pm.”

You may have guessed… it was the announcement that we would be going into lockdown. 

See I try my best to be a glass half full kinda guy, so while we’ve just witnessed a devasting pandemic in which many people lost loved ones (myself and my partner included), work, and general quality of life and freedom, I try my hardest to find the silver linings. If I really think about it, there were a number of silver linings, I was able to spend two months confined with my niece (watching her develop and grow in person, rather than through a screen) I had the ability to review whether I was in the right line of work (I wasn’t) and because of that I was able to find the right line of work. While my time at Rezultize was short, it provided me a great learning experience as I enter the world of B2B sales, within an industry that was under going a rapid pace of change; MarTech. I worked alongside some experts in the field and my passion and hunger to develop my skills grew almost as quick as the industry itself (+5,233% since 2011)

Lido de Paris

After not paying attention during language classes in school, I was desperate to learn a language and there is no better classroom than the country itself. 

Also, it just turns out that a love interest of mine lived in Paris. I originally only planned on staying for 3 months therefore found a job waiting tables at one of Paris’ many cabarets. I fell in love with with the city, the food (& wine) and the girl I chased out here (my current girlfriend).

Waiter

Asia

This time I was joined by one of my best friends, we decided to buy motorbikes and travel our own routes off-piste, so to speak. This was incredibly refreshing as we were able to visit places that were off the beaten track (quite literally - there were a number of times that we pushed the bikes to their limits!). We got to spend time at home shares, and learnt that the people that have the least, give the most and live an overall happier life

A highlight of mine, was spending 5 days in the Maliau Basin in Borneo, a conservation area located within a crater that is believed to have been created by an asteroid, meaning to enter you have to scale the cliffed walls; the first day entailed a hike (we were climbing most of the time) around 1.5km up, and this was just to enter to enter the basin. Fun fact - The basin contains 12 different types of forests.

Traveler

The "Weird Al" Yankovic of Sales!

I’ve always had an old-school streak. I’m the kind of person who starts a new idea with pen and paper, listens to Nat King Cole on repeat, and thinks business works best when people speak to each other like… well, people.

... And being people-centric means respecting the most valuable resource anyone has, their time.

Time is the one thing we can’t earn back, and yet it’s the resource most easily wasted. Meetings that should have been emails. Reports that take hours to compile but seconds to go out of date. Projects slowed by chasing information that should be at our fingertips.

"Time is what we want most, but what we use worst." ~ William Penn

Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to helping organisations run smoother, smarter, and with less noise.
Because in today’s world, it’s not about more systems, more spreadsheets, and more meetings. It’s about clarity.

I’ve seen first-hand how easily complexity creeps in: projects overrun because information lives in too many places, budgets slip because the numbers don’t match, and teams work hard but pull in different directions.

Ops and Finance leaders carry the weight of untangling it all, often without the time, clarity, or breathing space to step back and see the bigger picture.

I believe there’s a better way: one source of truth, fewer moving parts, and more time for the work that actually moves the needle.

That’s where conversations start. Real ones. Human ones. The kind where we talk less about “systems” and more about the outcomes they should deliver.

Also… I’m a big fan of dad jokes. I don’t have kids yet to groan at them, so if we work together, consider yourself warned.

Jordan Abbott (M.ISP)

If you were about to board a flight and saw the pilot with a guide dog...

You probably wouldn’t feel too confident about where that plane is headed.

And yet, this is exactly how many service businesses operate every day.

Not by choice, but because leaders are forced to make decisions with delayed, scattered, or incomplete data.

You can’t see what’s happening right now,
so you rely on what happened last week, last month, last quarter.

Patterns I'm starting to notice:

↳ Utilisation that updates weekly, not daily
↳ Margins only visible after month-end
↳ Capacity planning shaped by gut feel
↳ Time, projects and billing spread across different tools
↳ Dashboards always “a few days behind the truth”

When visibility drops, the business doesn’t necessarily fall apart.
But it does slowly become more and more reactive.

Small inefficiencies compound.
Teams lose confidence.
Leaders second-guess decisions.
Firefighting becomes normal.

It’s not mismanagement.
It’s lack of visibility, which silently drags on operational performance.

The highest-performing service businesses treat visibility as a requirement, not a luxury.

Because you can’t steer what you can’t see.

Where does “flying blind” cost your team the most time or confidence?
... And what’s the decision you wish you could make with real-time data?

Jordan Abbott ⏳

“We couldn’t even have a conversation about profitability. The data wasn’t there.”

... Is what I heard from an FD recently!

The more leaders I speak to, the more I’m realising how common this is.

Different systems.
Different numbers.
Different versions of the truth.

And when no one is quite sure which version is right, everything slows down.

Profitability & risk is harder to see.
Decisions happen later than they should.
small delays often turn into bigger consequences.

Curious to hear your perspective:

What tends to slow your teams down when trying to see the real picture?

taplio

The Battle

David Zeff ✌️

Jordan Abbott (M.ISP)

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taplio

The Battle

David Zeff ✌️

Jordan Abbott (M.ISP)

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Engagements

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jordan Abbott (M.ISP)'s LinkedIn Performance

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