Stacie Sussman

CRO l We're the all-star team that'll actually increase your bottom line revenue l Business Strategy l Operations l Sales l Marketing l Revenue Growth

After 17 years in media sales, I thought success meant grinding harder and steering the ship alone.

Then I looked around at the CROs I admired—brilliant, well-paid executives who looked… haggard. Burnt out. Like they’d lost their spark somewhere between board meetings and impossible targets.

That’s when it hit me: the system was broken. And I’d lived it.

I spent those 17 years running into obstacles that shouldn’t have existed, feeling like a one-woman show when sales should have been a team sport. I watched talented leaders march in place, trying the same patch-job solutions while the real problems—misaligned departments, broken attribution, CROs and CMOs working against each other—went unfixed.

For the past 7+ years, my team and I have been fixing foundations, not symptoms.

At RevUp Advisory, we take B2B businesses from duct-taped growth to marketing and sales alignment that actually works. We create cohesion between departments that have been at war, align everything with executive vision, and build operational excellence that turns chaos into consistent revenue.

Here’s the truth: we often rip out bad consulting work first. Everyone says they can drive more sales. But saying it and delivering sustainable results? Two very different things.

The transformation? Those scathing emails from bosses stop coming. Pipeline reports finally line up. Attribution makes sense. And instead of being seen as “that hopeless department,” you’re respected as the strategic partner you always were.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: companies should work smarter, not harder. And when you fix the foundation instead of patching the cracks, everyone gets their spark back.

Ready to stop the patch-jobs and actually scale? 

Let’s talk: stacie@revupadvisory.com

CRO - Revenue - Sales - Marketing - Operations - Business Strategy - Growth Plans - Customer Journey - Salesforce - HubSpot - Enablement - Training - OKRs - KPIs - Tech Stack - Pipeline - Forecasting - Sales Operations - Marketing Operations - Revenue Operations- B2B - Founders - CRO - CMO - CRM  - Pricing - Revenue Modeling - Sales Funnel - Marketing Funnel - Customer Success - Foundational Structure - ICP - CAC - LTVC - ARR - MRR - Fundraising - Leadership Consulting - Management Consulting - Sales Coaching - Compensation Planning - Workshops - Training - AI Agents - Process Optimizations - Flows - Automations - Tech Stack

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My accountability partners just served me my own advice. And it stung.

Picture this: I’m in our group meeting two years ago, celebrating another client win. We’d just helped a mid-market company build this incredible scalable GTM strategy.

My partners stop me: “Stacie, you always tell clients to pick the right channels and scale them. But what about YOU?”

Ouch.

Here I was, building go-to-market strategies for companies, helping them move beyond one conversation at a time… while RevUp Advisory  was stuck in exactly that mode.

One Zoom. One call. One connection at a time.

The irony? I was literally solving this problem for clients every day. That wake-up call changed everything. 

We took our LinkedIn Live content and strategically expanded to our C-Suite Strategies podcast and Substack newsletter.

Now we’re having meaningful conversations with hundreds of leaders simultaneously instead of one at a time.

The DMs and emails we get prove it’s working: “I couldn’t describe my attribution problem until your episode gave me the language and process I needed.”

Here’s what I’ve learned about support systems…The best ones don’t just cheer you on. 

They hold up a mirror and force you to face the gap between what you preach and what you practice.

Sometimes the most uncomfortable truth from your network becomes the catalyst for your biggest breakthrough.

Grateful for the people who care enough to call me out and push me to grow outside your comfort zone. 

What uncomfortable truth is your support system serving you that you’ll be grateful you acted on?

CRO | Fixing Marketing & Sales Alignment That Stalls Revenue | Marketing Ops l Sales Ops l AI + Process Optimization l Revenue Growth

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I used to roll my eyes at “find work you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Total BS, right?

Picture this, I’m in my Upper East Side apartment. I’m dragging two dining room chairs into my bedroom because it’s the only quiet space away from kids, nanny, and chaos.

Sitting across from my “in-house Wendy” (think Billions), mapping out how to escape 17 years of corporate sales hell.

Every day felt like Groundhog Day → subway downtown → sales calls → spreadsheets → mani-pedis → dinners → repeat. 

Someone else was raising my kids while I chased quotas for companies that didn’t listen to my ideas.

I was trying for baby #2, but my schedule wasn’t my own. 

The company was circling bankruptcy (spoiler: they did go under). 

And I kept thinking: “If I have to start over at another media agency, calling on planners getting younger while I’m getting older… I may just poke my eyes out.”

The financial pressure was crushing. 
The fear was real. 

But sitting in those bedroom planning sessions, something shifted.

What if I bet on myself instead?

Three clients lined up. Boom we were off!

Then COVID hit a year later.

There was relief. Terror. Scarcity mindset screaming “WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?”

But also this fierce determination, “I am going to make this work come hell or high water.”

Here’s what I discovered about that cheesy quote about loving your work? It’s not BS.

RevUp Advisory became bigger than I ever imagined. We don’t just change revenue trajectories → we change lives. 

The consulting work, the impact, the legacy… it all started in a bedroom with two dining room chairs and a woman who refused to stay stuck.

To anyone sitting in their own version of corporate Groundhog Day….your ideas matter too. Your brain power is being underutilized. And sometimes the scariest leap leads to the most extraordinary landing.

What’s your version of those bedroom planning sessions? 

What are you mapping out for your next chapter? Let’s hear it.

I haven’t told my LinkedIn hive this, but I have a confession. I’m a roller blader.

My uncle bought me my first pair when I was a kid during our annual summer California visits. Blue and white with pink laces. He was the fun uncle—the one who’d say yes to adventures.

Fast forward multiple decades and I find myself
in a Florida ski store looking for something my son and I could do together. 

And when I found the coral-pink Rollerblade skates that felt like destiny. Those memories of learning how to skate in Venice Beach came flooding back. 

But here’s what happened next. I’m ready for this grand rollerblade adventure and my son started complaining halfway through our rides. 

That’s when I realized this thing we could do together? Could just be something I could do. At my own pace. My own rhythm.

And oh my god, it’s the best feeling ever. I’m gliding with music in my ears, not thinking about much of anything. Getting lost in the trail. 

There’s this sense of joyful freedom that’s completely unmatched.

For years, I thought hobbies were frivolous. That you had to grind through everything on your to-do list first. 

This year I realized that stepping away might be as valuable as stepping back in.

When you do something that feels free and joyful, then return to your challenging problems? You come back with renewed energy. A totally different vantage point that might actually solve the problem.

The philosophy of constantly staying the course is doing the opposite of what we think it’s doing.

What childhood joy are you ready to reclaim? Share in the comments—I’d love to hear your stories.

PS - Here’s me on my favorite rollerblade trail.

The Mr. Rogers sweatshirt that changed how I lead with dignity.  My first job out of college was at Condé Nast Bridal Group. Not the glamorous Vogue side of the company, but a solid revenue maker run by absolute tyrants.

I watched my friend, a fellow sales assistant, get tormented daily by her boss. 

The crime? 

Wearing a Mr. Rogers sweatshirt to work. 

We weren’t making the big salaries, but this woman made my friend feel so small, so worthless, that one evening she just… left. Walked out at 7 PM and never came back.

The rest of us? We watched it happen. 

We couldn’t intervene without risking our own jobs. TBH, we were all scraping together rent in Manhattan.

But I made myself a promise that day. I will never be treated this way. And I will never treat people this way.

Fast forward to today. 

Companies literally pay me to have the tough conversations their leaders can’t handle. 

Last week, I had to tell a client their 17-stage Salesforce process was driving everyone crazy.

The difference? 
I don’t humiliate. 
I educate.

“You’re completely overcomplicating this, and no one is willing to tell you,” I said on our Zoom call. “We’ll be the ones to tell you this doesn’t make sense.”

When they got defensive (they always do), I didn’t double down with ego. I removed the titles, spoke person-to-person, and showed them what “great” looks like when you’ve only known “bad.”

Here’s what I’ve learned about dignity in leadership from those early corporate days. 

The toughest conversations aren’t about being right. They’re about being helpful. 

You can deliver hard truths without destroying people’s humanity.

In 2025 and beyond, leaders who can ask the difficult questions while preserving everyone’s dignity? 

They’re the ones who will build teams that actually want to follow them.

The bullies at CNBG? They got compliance through fear.

I get transformation through respect.

Which leader do you want to be?

December 1st isn’t the time to coast. My boss was breathing down my neck about a massive General Mills deal. They wanted to start in January, but we needed something - ANYTHING - to hit our Q4 numbers.

Most people would’ve accepted “January” and moved on.

Not me. 

When I commit, I go ALL IN.

Picture this scene. I’ve got coffee carts with our logo strategically placed in their office lobby. 

Holiday lunches. Holiday dinners. 

Phone calls up and down the entire media chain. 

I was orchestrating everything while telling my bosses exactly who to call and when to email.

But here’s what made it brutal…

This wasn’t just convincing one person to say yes. 
We needed approvals from the client team, to the head of the media agency, to budget allocation, to the brand team. During the holidays. When half these people are mentally checked out.

There were definitely “holy ****, is this actually worth it?” moments.

But they were RESPONDING. 
Taking our calls. 
Showing up to dinners. 

In my experience, when clients are engaged like that? There’s real potential.

December 19th, the paperwork came through.
7-figure deal. DONE.

Here’s what that deal taught me about sales. 

December isn’t dead money. 

Your prospects haven’t all disappeared. 

There’s still budget sitting in “use it or lose it” policies. 

Onboarding can still happen. Clients can still get serviced.

We’re officially December 1st with about 3 working weeks left before everyone calls it quits.

This is your reminder that it’s still not too late to make something happen.

What’s one deal or opportunity you’ve been putting off until “next year” that you could actually push through right now?

When I stopped being polite and started being truthful.

Week 12. Another status call with a client who’d been “working on” the same simple tasks for three months.

I watched their marketing team squirm as I asked my usual diplomatic question about progress. 

More corporate speak. 
More “we’re prioritizing it.” 
More billable hours with zero results.

That’s when I decided to stop dancing around it.

“Is this tolerable and acceptable within your organization? Are you willing to do something about it, or are you willing to just steer a sinking ship into an iceberg?”

The Zoom went dead silent.

Here’s what I learned about this fast-growing company in that moment. They’d scaled through acquisitions but never upgraded their infrastructure. One person had “volunteered” to build their Salesforce by watching YouTube videos. It worked for a single company… but not for five.

The result? 

Marketing firing on all cylinders, but sales ops held together with digital duct tape and hope.

After my blunt wake-up call, something shifted. 

The embarrassment turned into relief. 

Finally, someone had said what everyone was thinking. “Please save us,” they said. “Tell us how to fix this.”

So I pitched what I’d wanted to propose from day one - the comprehensive overhaul they weren’t ready to hear about initially. The real investment they’d been trying to avoid.

They said yes immediately.

Sometimes being brutally honest is the kindest thing you can do for a client. They were drowning in broken systems, but everyone was too polite to call it what it was.

Stop trying to solve million-dollar problems with thousand-dollar band-aids.

Your team deserves better than digital duct tape.

What conversation have you been avoiding because you’re being too polite? It’s never too late to start this December.

One skill separates successful consultants from completely burned-out ones. Learning to identify reasonable vs unreasonable people.

Here’s what I mean…

When a client’s Salesforce-HubSpot integration breaks down (and trust me, it happens), reasonable clients get it. Yes, it’s frustrating when leads can’t flow from marketing to sales. But they understand our team is working on it, we have SLAs in place, and sometimes complex fixes just take time.

Then there are the unreasonable ones.

You can present facts 17 ways till Sunday. You can bring in multiple people to explain the situation. You can appeal to logic, emotions, whatever. But unreasonable people live in their own warped sense of reality, and you’re NEVER going to get through to them.

I learned this the hard way in my corporate days. 

Had a boss who would “yes” me to death when I asked for coaching, feedback, or career advancement opportunities. But when promotion time came? Crickets. If you’re asking to be developed and someone won’t give you real feedback OR help move your career forward, that’s textbook unreasonable behavior.

Here’s what I’ve learned from two decades in corporate. Unreasonable people are like cancer in your organization. They suck the life and energy out of everything they touch.

That’s exactly why we built a “no-a**hole policy” at RevUp Advisory. 

After working with countless unreasonable people, I decided if we’re going to build one of the best consulting firms out there, we only work with reasonable people.

Setting boundaries on what you’ll tolerate isn’t just nice-to-have—it’s business critical.

What’s your experience? Have you worked with unreasonable colleagues or clients who drained your energy no matter what you did? 

Share your stories below.

Forecastio

All sales and revenue leaders face the same challenge: consistently achieving their sales and revenue targets.
Market turbulence, changing customer preferences, fierce competition, and the inability to make informed decisions in a timely manner all lead to missing sales quotas.

We can’t change the market or customer behavior, but we can equip sales and revenue leaders with the tools necessary to enhance sales performance and hit their sales goals.

CRMs are good at process automation. However, they often lack critical functionality needed by sales and revenue leaders, such as advanced sales planning and forecasting, sales quota assessment, capacity planning, real-time AI-generated insights into sales performance, and more.

This is the main reason why our team created Forecastio - to help sales leaders make informed decisions, prevent revenue leakage, and lead their teams to great results.

Having worked with a range of tech products, I know how irritating long and heavy implementations are.

Therefore, while creating Forecastio, our main focus was to minimize the time our customers spend on implementation and enable them to get value from using the platform as soon as possible.

CMO & Co-Founder

Sales Hacker, Inc.

Contributing Author

Belkins

Main goals:
1. Helping the sales team increase sales rate through the outbound channel.
2. Setting up the flow of inbound leads.

What I've done:
- Developed a marketing strategy
- New branding, and website
- Launched the Blog
- Set up content distribution
- Active work with social proof platforms
- SEO optimization and internal link building
- Developed and Launched the Belkns Growth Podcast (producer role)
- Developed and Launched Help-Center (FAQ)
- Marketing automation
- Developed new products and services

Achievements:
- In one year I managed to make Belkins a recognizable company in B2B lead generation on US and EU markets.
- According to Clutch, we are the top 1 b2b lead generation company in the US.
- Inbound Sales are more than 50% of new sales

Chief Growth Officer

Belkins is the most in-depth way to accelerate Outbound Sales. We provide a dedicated sales team, whose primal goal is to target YOUR prospects, design account-based sales campaigns and convert pre-qualified prospects into qualified Sales Appointments. We deliver a Predictable Sales Funnel Solution and support it with a detailed campaign statistic. 

📌 https://belkins.io

I analyzed the competitors and created a marketing strategy that allows Belkins to grow by 20-30% every month.

Chief Marketing Officer

Folderly

All-in-one platform for domain audit, email deliverability monitoring, and spam testing. Our goal is to help marketers accelerate their sales by helping them send emails that drive revenue

Make the inbox your only destination folder.

MyDutyFree LLC

Mydutyfree is a global duty-free marketplace, where travelers can find out about product availability/prices at duty-free stores and make pre-orders.

Jun 2017 promoted from Marketing Manager to Chief Marketing Officer reporting to CEO. 

Responsible for all global advertising, brand marketing, product marketing (software and services), partnerships, pr, research, social, CRM/lifecycle marketing, and all customer acquisition, engagement, and monetization.

Marketing Manager

Digital Forest

I am building an affiliate network for the startup.

•	Search traffic channels
•	Negotiations with partners
•	Traffic analysis
•	Reporting purchase traffic
•	Control of payments for traffic

Media Bayer

Newmark Ukraine

Sales Manager

Soft.ua

B2B Marketing Expert | Building my own SaaS startup from Zero to Market Leader. Sharing insights and actionable advice.

I transform startups into industry leaders through strategic marketing and brand development.

As Head of Marketing at Belkins, I built the brand from scratch and elevated it to become the #1 B2B Lead Generation agency in the US (Clutch-ranked), scaling revenue from $30K to $900K MRR while generating 250+ qualified meetings monthly.

I've successfully launched multiple ventures, including building the strategy, brand and marketing team for Folderly (SaaS), helping develop the business model for Wiseboard (advisory platform), and most recently, co-founding Forecastio, a sales performance management platform for HubSpot users that reached #3 Product Hunt's "Product of the Day" with zero marketing budget.

My approach combines data-driven strategy with creative execution to deliver measurable business impact. I specialize in:

- Brand development and positioning
- Growth marketing for B2B SaaS
- Content strategy that drives qualified leads
- Building high-performing marketing teams

I thrive in fast-paced environments where I can turn marketing challenges into growth opportunities. 

Let's connect if you're looking to scale your startup or need a strategic marketing advisor.

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Stacie Sussman

Dmytro Chervonyi

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The Battle

Stacie Sussman

Dmytro Chervonyi

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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);}Stacie Sussman's LinkedIn Performance

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