Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer at Sales Assembly | Developing the GTM Teams of B2B Tech Companies | Investor | Sales Mentor | Decent Husband, Better Father

I’ve spent my career trying to solve one puzzle: how do you scale sales teams without losing what makes them great?

Before Sales Assembly, I lived the highs and lows of hyper-growth - leading revenue teams, juggling targets, and realizing that growth without structure eventually collapses under its own weight. The lesson stuck: great teams don’t just grow fast, they grow well.

That’s the idea behind Sales Assembly. We built the preeminent skill development platform for B2B tech companies: part training, part community, part therapy for GTM leaders trying to do more with less. We help teams move faster, stay aligned, and actually enjoy the process of getting better.

Somewhere along the way, I also became a General Partner at VentureOn Partners, Chapter Head at Pavilion, and mentor with Techstars. I’ve spent a lot of time with founders and operators who are chasing the same thing: building something that lasts without taking themselves too seriously.

A client and friend once described me as someone who “builds community through authenticity,” which I’ll take as the polite version of “tells it like it is.” That’s probably fair.

Outside of all that, I’m a decent husband, a better dad, and a walking Simpsons encyclopedia (seasons 1–11 only, of course). I travel when I can, laugh often, and still believe a good team - and a good joke - can get you through just about anything.

Matt Green

Your champion just rewrote your proposal in language her CFO would approve. She texted you on Saturday with intel from a leadership meeting you weren't in. Know what that looks like? 

Someone whose bonus depends on your deal closing.


Here's how one AE in the Sales Assembly ecosystem figured this out: 

She was working a MM deal that felt solid but wasn't moving. Champion was responsive, took every call, forwarded emails to the right people. Standard stuff. 

Then during a casual convo, she asked something she almost didn't: "You seem really motivated on this. What's going on?"

Turns out the champion's quarterly bonus was tied to getting this exact type of solution implemented before end of quarter. Her leadership had made it a goal. She needed this deal to close as badly as the AE did!


Believe it or not, everything changed after that. The champion started coaching the AE on exact language to use with her CEO. Shared what the CEO had said in a recent leadership meeting and suggested weaving it into the talk track. 

She'd gone from supporting the deal to co-building the pitch.


That deal closed. They still text each other to this day.


Now think about what DIDN'T happen. The AE didn't uncover this through a formal discovery framework. Instead, she asked one human question in a moment where she was paying attention.

And that's the thing very few folks teach in champion development. You can MEDDIC until you're blue in the face, but the single highest signal indicator of whether someone will actually fight for your deal is whether their compensation, promotion, or reputation depends on the outcome.


When someone's bonus is on the line: 

- They don't wait for you to ask for introductions. 
- They set up meetings before you request them. 
- They don't pass your proposal to procurement. They rewrite it. 
- They don't go quiet between calls. They reach out with intel you didn't know existed.

A friendly contact responds when you reach out. A real champion reaches out when you haven't. 


Do this exercise this week: On your three biggest open deals, can you answer these about your primary contact: 

1. What happens to their compensation or visibility if this project succeeds? 
2. What happens to them personally if it stalls? 
3. How are they measured on the initiative your solution supports?


If you can't answer those, really think hard about whether you actually have someone who will fight for your budget line in a room you're not in.

Sales Assembly facilitator Jon Rydberg nailed it: if there's no clear winner or loser when a deal dies, the deal is going to die. 

You can set your watch to it.

Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer at Sales Assembly | Helping B2B tech companies improve sales and post-sales performance | Decent Husband, Better Father

A CS leader in one of our peer groups tracks everything. NPS, CSAT, adoption, etc. Still got blindsided by three ENT churns last quarter. Combined $840K ARR = gone.

They had oodles of data at their fingertips, but they were measuring the wrong kind.

NPS tells you how customers felt last quarter.

Support tickets tell you what broke last week. 

Product adoption tells you what they did last month. 

All LAGGING indicators. By the time any of those metrics move, the decision to break up with you has already been made.


Leading indicators tell you what's GOING to happen. And there's real research backing up what stuff actually predicts churn before it shows up in a dashboard somewhere.

Login frequency is the most obvious one and the most ignored. HubSpot found that targeting users who dropped below one login per week cut churn by 15%. 

If someone stops showing up, the clock is ticking.


But logins alone miss the picture. Feature breadth matters more than raw engagement. 

Customers using 5+ core features churn at almost 1/3 the rate of single-feature users. The depth of adoption creates pain in the ass switching costs that no competitor can easily overcome. 

If your CSMs aren't tracking which features each account actually uses, they're flying blind on stickiness. And that's a shitty place to be when renewal season hits.


Another big one: WHO is logging in, not just how often. 

When admin and decision-maker engagement drops but regular users keep humming along, that's often the clearest signal your customer is shopping around. 

The people with budget authority are quietly shopping while their team keeps using your product out of habit. By the time the regular users notice, procurement already has three proposals on their desk.


The move here is to build a lightweight early warning system around 3 things. 

1. Login frequency trends by week, not month. 
2. Feature adoption breadth per account, tracked against your core value workflows. 
3. Stakeholder engagement patterns, specifically whether the economic buyer and admin users are still active or going dark.

None of this requires a new $100k CS platform. Pull login data from your product analytics. Cross-reference feature usage against your top five value-driving workflows. Flag any account where decision-maker activity dropped in the last 14 days. 

One Salesforce formula field or a simple dashboard in Gainsight or ChurnZero can automate most of it.

Lagging indicators tell you what's broken. Leading indicators tell you what's breaking.

While you can still fix it.

Jen Allen-Knuth

Founder, DemandJen | Sales Trainer & SKO Keynote Speaker | Dog Rescue Advocate

I help B2B revenue teams stop losing pipeline to buyer status quo. I'm a former Enterprise seller who carried quota for 18 years, closing 7-figure deals with Fortune 500 brands. Now, I run DemandJen, a sales-training firm trusted by Autodesk, GE, G2, IBM, Bloomberg, Instructure, Sprout Social, and more.

From conference stages to company Sales kickoffs, I'm known for:

- Buyer-Centric Frameworks – Practical playbooks for defeating buyer status quo in outbound pipeline generation, running executive-level discovery, building a point of view on cost of inaction (COI), and gaining consensus with larger Enterprise buying groups. 

- Story-First Messaging – Techniques that replace product pitches with problem-centric narratives that buyers remember.

- Engaging Delivery – A direct, humorous style that keeps even your most tenured reps taking notes.

Featured in Forbes, Sales Hacker, and 200+ podcasts, I combine real-world stories with data-driven insight to move audiences from inspiration to application. When I'm not on the road, you’ll find me in the Chicago suburbs chasing my 4 rescue dogs and 4 step-kids.

Head of DemandJen

Delivering SKO keynotes & virtual workshops that won't put your teams to sleep.

B2B Sales & Marketing teams have tried to earn buyer time and attention with a strategy of "more". 

More dials.
More emails.
More content.
More "value" and ROI.

But, 2023 showed us "more" is expensive and no competition against today's risk-averse B2B buying teams.

Instead of motivating the team to do “more”, I help empower teams to defeat customer status
quo and to make their sales conversations a competitive advantage.

Meet Mara 🩷

She’s a 7 year old, 59lb girl with the most gentle demeanor (especially with kids). 

Dogs like Mara always have a harder time getting adopted. She’s older + she’s a pittie mix. It doesn’t make her any less deserving of love. 

Every dog should be judged by their own demeanor. Not breed sterotypes.

We have a husky who never makes a peep and is scared of his own shadow.

We have a pittie who would throw herself in front of a bus to protect our kids. 

Mara is calm, easygoing, walks nicely on a leash, and does amazing in daycare. She’s a complete love.

Mara deserves a loving family. Will you help share her? 🩷

Available at Many Paws Global Rescue in Palatine, IL.

Photo credit: Nicholas I. Knuth 📸 

PS - I know many of you have pitties, too. I love seeing your photos in the comments - please share them!

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I just read a post from a CEO who was in disbelief that a customer churned b/c they're going to try DIYing the vendor's AI solution.  It included the quote - "Good luck, see you in 6 months when you realize how hard it is."

I think we're going to see a lot more of this from tech companies in 2026. This isn't me picking on anyone. DIY is a really tough competitor. And, it hurts to lose to it. 

But, wishing for a customer's failure has never served me well in Sales. 

It's understandable that our knee-jerk response is to name all of the reasons why DIY is a bad idea. 

Often, our points are valid. 

But, the delivery is defensive. We erode trust because we fail to be collaborative or helpful. 

Instead, here's something that worked for me when I was up against DIY:

#1 - I asked questions about how they were thinking about rolling it out. Not "gotcha" questions. Qs that were genuinely curious in nature that helped me understand their beliefs/assumptions. I sought to understand (vs. seeking to correct them). Often, this exposed a flawed assumption. 

#2 - I shared ideas/tactics from other execs that were taking a DIY approach, so they could learn from them. I stopped fighting against DIY. This built trust.

#3 - Lastly, I offered at least one idea for how I could partner with the team as they thought through their DIY approach. I prescribed suggestions on areas where I knew DIY typically fell down. It gave me the chance to get in with the teams and illuminate the roadblocks that made DIY harder than they assumed.

More of those DIY deals started to convert. Not all of them. Just more of them.

TLDR - there's a great Brent Adamson quote - "Before you tell someone why they're wrong, first tell them why they're right". 

When competing against DIY, I stopped trying to be "right". I started trying to be useful.

I'm no LinkedIn expert, but I don't think we win by taking what works for someone else's content and trying to copy it. Here are 3 people who I think embody what it means to a have a voice on here that is totally and completely their own.  

Sara Uy
She grew like crazy on here after filming herself making cold calls every week. She's relatable because she was never trying to impress you. She showed the good, bad, and ugly. She took a job-to-be-done that makes many sellers nervous and she did it in front of the entire LinkedIn community. My favorite comments from her followers are the ones where sellers say, "You inspired me to pick up the phone more". Sara didn't copy what bigger creators were doing. As a result, she's at the top of every Sales creator list. Right where she belongs. 

Tas Bober
The queen of sharp wit. Her expertise is paid ads landing pages. But, she finds 100 different ways to make it fun. She's unafraid to say how she feels + doesn't shy away from constructive debates. When I met Tas for the first time last year, I felt like I already knew her. She does a great job balancing SME content with human content. I'm pretty sure if I was given 10 random LinkedIn posts, I could pick the one she wrote. Her voice is so uniquely hers. 

Shali Rana Reed
She's the people's champion. You can feel Shali in your corner when you read her posts. It's impossible not to click "see more" when her posts appear in the feed. She's one of the best at sparking curiosity in her hooks, without making it feel corny. You never know if it's going to be a pun, a serious post, or a work post. I like how she keeps us guessing. She has this no-nonsense energy about her. Big sister energy, in the best of ways. 

Your turn. Whose voice stands out to you as completely their own?

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taplio

The Battle

Matt Green

Jen Allen-Knuth

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