Sergiu Bungărdean

I run a marketing business called Demand Hive and work as a marketing consultant.

At Demand Hive, we unf*ck your messaging in 3 weeks by helping you clearly explain what you do and rewriting your homepage so you can win more projects.

Through Hey Sergiu, I work directly with founders on consulting, advisory, and custom marketing projects. This includes quick input on specific problems, ongoing support, or hands-on help on clearly defined initiatives.

I’ve done this for 100+ founders across design agencies, IT companies, software houses, consultancies, solopreneurs, and more.

Founder & LinkedIn Personal Brand Manager

We help solopreneurs, founders, coaches, CEOs & executives build their personal brand on LinkedIn in order to increase visibility, generate inbound leads and improve credibility.

I need less than 10 minutes to place an order for a $1,000 smartphone, $3,000 laptop, or $40,000 car, but I need 3 sales calls and wait for 2 weeks to get an offer for a B2B service.

Does no one see a problem here?

Marketing and sales will always be hard if you overload the buying process.

There are 2 simple rules a lot of founders miss:

1) Make it clear.
2) Make it easy to buy.

Then it's just a matter of distribution, which isn't hard to do.

P.S.: Most of the marketing and sales problems are often because of your messaging. Fix it.

B2B Messaging & Marketing Consultant | Founder of Demand Hive & Hey Sergiu

Today, I turn 29.

I put together a list of 29 things I learned so far:

1. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
2. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
3. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
4. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
5. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
6. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
7. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
8. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
9. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
10. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
11. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
12. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
13. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
14. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
15. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
16. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
17. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
18. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
19. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
20. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
21. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
22. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
23. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
24. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
25. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
26. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
27. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
28. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year
29. Stop writing bullsh*t lists every year

See you at 30. 🤘

The moment your car starts making a weird noise, you turn the music down and pay attention.

Before that, you’re just chilling and enjoying the road.

I see this happen every day with B2B services.

Everyone promises big outcomes and prospects reply with, “Cool, but I’m fine for now.”

They’re fine because they don’t hear, feel, or see any noise.

And that’s usually because you don’t talk about it.

You've been told to focus on outcomes, promise the sun and the moon.

But people don’t buy those in plain sight. At least not if they’re not trying to get rich overnight.

They pay for specific solutions that make their pain go away and then generate an outcome.

That's why a lot of businesses fail because of messaging.

They never make the prospect turn the music down and pay attention.

And if you don’t do that, it doesn’t matter how good your service is.

They’ll keep enjoying the road and pick someone else the moment they hear a weird noise.

A founder told me they know their positioning very well. When I asked what it is, they said they need to search for it in Google Drive.

Perfect.

Because when a prospect is looking for a solution, they obviously ask for a Google Drive link.

Then they spend 15 minutes scrolling through a 30-page PDF, hoping to find a sentence that explains what the business actually does.

That’s how buying works, right?

The same way you don’t take a headache pill if you don’t have a headache, people don’t pay for services if it’s not clear what problem they solve.

Literally, one of the easiest ways to make your marketing more effective and your pipeline more predictable is to clearly tie your solution to a specific problem (or set of problems).

Not outcomes or big promises. Problems.

And once you have that, say it clearly on your homepage, content, emails, everywhere.

This is just a small part of what we cover in the Messaging Sprint at Demand Hive.

If you’re ready to fix unclear messaging, here’s more: https://lnkd.in/dJpdfTCq

I always tell founders that the biggest cost of bad messaging isn't revenue. It's their time. Money comes and goes, but losing 6 months of opportunities and momentum hits 10x harder.

If you’re not willing to invest €2,000 in a messaging project, at least copy-paste the structure in the image below and try working through it yourself.

Or if you just need some help or a second brain, I also do 1-hour consulting calls. Just DM me.

I’ve had clients add €50,000+ worth of leads to their pipeline or charge up to 4x more just by fixing their messaging.

You don't have to hire me, but you really can't afford to sleep on this.

I’ve been doing marketing and selling B2B services since 2010. I can say this confidently:

Things changed a lot in 2025, and 2026 will push this even further.

Marketing is saturated in every possible way.

1. Everyone can use AI, spend a few hundred dollars, and reach thousands of people.

2. More business owners are using AI to do certain marketing activities by themselves.

3. There are hundreds of service providers that promise the sun and the moon for a pizza.

The ones who will feel this the most are business owners.

1. With everyone doing things, the competition is getting bigger and bigger.

2. Using AI for marketing activities might feel like progress, but it's often a trap.

3. It becomes difficult to find skilled people who can provide hands-on support.

My take?

The businesses that will make it in 2026 and beyond will stop treating marketing as a set of isolated activities.

Things like posting, ads, emails, funnels, etc.

Instead, they will think in terms of a full selling process.

You should worry less about "what should we post today?" and focus more on "what should we do to sell our service better, easier, and faster?"

This means you need to master and focus on both marketing and sales at the same time.

P.S. Just my 2 cents. Curious how you see it.

"Our pipeline and revenue are unpredictable."

This is what several founders told me this week.

I'll tell you exactly what I've told them:

Predictable revenue requires repeatable understanding.

People need to:

- Recognize themselves in the problem you describe
- Understand quickly if you are relevant to them
- Know when they should book a call with you
- Know why you instead of the alternatives

If they don't, only a small percentage of them will push through.

Those are usually referrals or people already half-convinced.

The others will just leave without saying a thing.

I think you don't realize how much you're losing if your messaging is not clear.

If your content doesn’t bring clients or your outreach gets no replies, it's usually because of this:

You're either not talking about a problem at all or you're talking about the wrong one.

I've said it 1,000 times before: people don't buy because of "isolated outcomes."

They buy because something hurts right now.

That's why "increase revenue" alone doesn't work, but "we keep getting leads that don't convert" does.

You need to identify the problem and its symptoms, then use them as input for your marketing.

I know this isn't easy, so I turned this way of thinking into something practical: Push Until It Hurts GPTs.

3 custom GPT prompts that help you:

- Uncover the real problem you solve
- Identify the daily symptoms people actually feel
- Turn those symptoms into content and outreach

Get all of them for €9: https://lnkd.in/d2jkgrpj

(no paid ChatGPT subscription needed)

How can you tell if your messaging is unclear?

Easy. Look at these three signals:

1. Your sales pipeline and revenue aren’t predictable month to month.
2. Prospects are sometimes confused about how you can help them.
3. Marketing efforts don’t pay off, so you rely mostly on referrals.

Now, here’s how to read them:

If 1 out of 3 is true, it might be a messaging issue. Dig deeper.

If 2 out of 3 are true, there’s a high chance messaging is the problem and it needs attention.

If 3 out of 3 are true, it’s definitely a messaging problem and it should be fixed sooner rather than later.

That’s it. ✌️

I’ve seen quite often lately how founders struggle to book sales calls because they don’t match their messaging with the way prospects think and act.

Because of this, they just make the entire sales process heavier and often prospects give up.

I’ve recorded a quick 1-minute video to explain how this works and how to solve it:

Positioning the Exceptional. Build your post-exit venture in public ✍🏼 Ghostwriter + Strategist.

If you want to :

- Sell your B2B services through Linkedin that CFOs beg to buy
- Close $1M in deals (minimum) without building a personal brand
- Cash in on sales through LinkedIn everytime you post  
- Outsmart every competitor in your market

DM me "window" for early access to my private program



Stéphanie Lauer

I hate sales calls, so I stopped doing them. And it’s how I’m going to make 7 figures. 

Instead, I mastered inbound, writing with enough sauce that buyers show up ready to buy, and I close deals in messages without having to persuade them.

I’ve noticed most of my sales come through emails anyway.

Mostly because I usually already know why someone is here before they even open their mouth.

Like, you come in and tell me you crossed $10M. I believe that.

What I’m actually listening for is:

The demand you’re currently generating through ads is slowly eating at you, micromanaging your team, you’re clearly fed up managing shitty buyers and spending way too much time dealing with people who question everything in your process.  

Because that’s the problem.

UR GETTING DEMAND BUT IT SUCKS.

And you don’t fix that on sales calls.

You don’t fix that by explaining more.

You fix it by writing to people who are already in crisis, loaded pockets who already know something’s off and are actively looking for someone who can handle it for them. 

Those people want your rules.

They want someone to say:

this is how it works

this is the plan

this is the price

And they relax when they hear that.

They bend because they’re relieved someone finally has structure.

This is why vague content kills sales.

You can shock people with your hooks and have DMs full of “this is so true.”

And still sell nothing.

Because none of that answers the only thing that matters at this level:

Can you actually deal with my problem?

Your writing has to do one thing.

It has to make it obvious that you know exactly what’s happening in their business - and that you know what to do about it.

When that’s clear, you assume the money is already in your account. That’s it.

That’s how inbound works.

A lot of people don’t have their best year yet because they keep doing shit they hate. 

People say “just do it consistently.”

But if you hate it - like really hate it - you’re already losing.

And that’s why you continue to attract buyers you hate -  and continue to choose them.

A lot of ceos tell me they hate them too, but its whats “required of them“ - thats to vet their buyers. My thought is this: You have sales people to take care of it. If you‘re still doing them U NEED TO UNDERSTAND your buyers better. And to climb to $30M you need to attract better buyers. 

I‘ll leave you with that.

I partner with founders (at $5M–$30M) so their buyers say yes to 1M+ deals. Subscribe below:

No alternative text description for this image

I’m going to tell you a slightly evil plan for getting a manufacturing group $1M+ clients/ per quarter on LinkedIn. An honest breakdown:

In the beginning, we pulled in the WRONG clients. Pre-seed inventors with no VC money. We were talking about products and it attracted people who had no funding behind their name.

So we stopped talking about products and started talking about the moment where everything can go wrong in hardware.
Pre-production. The moment of hell.

The moment where money has already been committed, timelines are fragile, one mistake can cost six figures, and nobody inside the company wants to be the person responsible if it fails.

Almost no business actually knows their buyer’s crisis moment.

They’ll say shit like:
“We help companies build products”
“We do end-to-end manufacturing”
“We scale businesses”

That’s really useless.

This is the question I use to vet every inbound in 2025:

“What is the exact moment your buyer panics internally?”

Why i’m punitively precise on that angle:

Every deal has multiple trust battles:

- Do they trust you
- Do they trust your mechanism / method
- Do they believe the mechanism works for their situation
- Do they trust you to execute it 
- Do they believe it delivers the result

We rode that angle relentlessly. Even if it got boring.

Now that manufacturer is closing $1.2M clients/ per quarter on Linkedin. 

This is where a real positioning strategist matters.
Someone who understands LinkedIn well enough to wear the angle out properly.

And moving into 2026 I’m adding a new layer to our strategy:

We’re launching our own products as a group and showing every real manufacturing decision in public, so when buyers hit the moment they’re scared to decide, the trust is already pre-sold.

That is doing two things:

1. Pulling in bigger buyers
2. It opens doors to media that has nothing to do with LinkedIn.

You could absolutely run this yourself if you’re a manufacturer.

Or you partner with someone who’s already burned the cycles figuring it out.

That’s what we do here.

I control demand for a few manufactuers and across all of them, I’ve noticed the same thing: TAKE NOTES. 

The moment they own a mechanism - and we push that mechanism everywhere - buyers handle their own objections at every stage of the sale.

We’ve done this through lead magnets and through long-form breakdowns.

But the real shift happened when we pushed the mechanism hard on LinkedIn and made all of their marketing about how the work actually gets done.

There’s this idea floating around that “buyers don’t care about your method.”

That’s bullshit - at least for this class of buyer.

There is a massive difference between:

- someone buying a $3K SaaS tool
- and a buyer about to risk six or seven figures on a manufacturing decision

Those buyers want to see how the machine works.

Here’s what’s actually happening under the hood with every serious prospect:

You have multiple battles to win - in order.

1. Do they trust you?
2. Do they trust your mechanism?
3. Do they believe the mechanism works for their situation?
4. Do they trust you to execute it under pressure?
5. Do they believe it reliably delivers the result?

We let assets do the heavy lifting before the conversation even starts.

This is how.

We take their real process and put it under a microscope.

1. We break the process into distinct stages
2. We give each stage a specific name
3. We wrap it in technology or systems that are built in-house 
4. We explain exactly how each stage works
5. We show how each stage connects to the next
6. We lead everything to a clear end result

Now something important happens.

Instead of being skeptical of the entire process, prospects can be skeptical about one stage at a time.

That’s good.

Because each stage now has its own focused asset that goes deep on that specific risk, that specific decision, that specific concern.

So objections stop being emotional and vague:

“I’m not sure this will work…”

And become precise and solvable:

“What happens at Stage 3 when copycat manufacturers in China replicate your design at half the price - and how do you prevent it?"

That’s when deals move.

Prospects want to see the machinery exposed.

Prospects want to see you naked - operationally.

And 2026 is going to reward exactly that.

Hyper-specific mechanisms.

Because it removes uncertainty before they ever have to ask for reassurance.

CLOCKED IT????

That’s how manufacturers sell faster, with less convincing, and bigger mandates.

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Sergiu Bungărdean

Stéphanie Lauer

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taplio

The Battle

Sergiu Bungărdean

Stéphanie Lauer

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Engagements

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