Crissy Saunders

Our team of seasoned experts builds Revenue Growth Architecture that powers efficient and predictable revenue growth. We help companies: 

- Stop losing customers due to friction in their buyer experience
- Give their revenue team the visibility and insights they need  
- Pull their marketing and sales team out of the chaos
- Implement, integrate, and leverage their full marketing and sales tech stack with ease

Currently working with some of the best in B2B tech including Gong.io, Sendoso, Coupa, Coursera, Hyland, Skedulo, ModelN, R-Zero, Drata, and SalesLoft

Find out more at www.cs2marketing.com

Chief Executive Officer & Cofounder

MKT1

MKT1 Capital is an early-stage fund, led by former marketing leaders Emily Kramer and Kathleen Estreich. MKT1 invests in Pre-Seed thru Series A B2B startups across industries and helps startups build marketing.

Limited Partner

Syncari

Company advisor for Syncari - the data automation platform that unifies, cleans, and synchronizes a company's most mission critical data and delivers truth to all teams.

Advisor

Chili Piper

Advising Chili Piper on their GTM strategy and product roadmap to create a platform that will improve, innovate, and optimize the customer experience and operations for inbound leads.

Partner Advisory Board Member 🌶

Women in Revenue

Cofounding board member of non-profit focused on empowering women in B2B sales and marketing through education, events, and mentorship. Currently helping lead the charge on communications, recruitment, and our 1:1 mentorship program. Join us at womeninrevenue.org!

Cofounder and Board Member

Walkzee

The first free online application (web, iOS, Android) connecting shelter dogs who need a walk to dog lovers looking for a walking buddy. 145% funded Kickstarter and featured in The Huffington Post, Tech Cocktail, Bustle, Playboy, The Daily Dot, Inquisitr and many others. Due to lack of shelter sign up - walkzee is currently "on paws"

Cofounder

Agari

Developed digital marketing campaigns with a multi-channel approach to accelerate pipeline creation across the global regions. Operationally, I developed a model for program creation adopted by the entire marketing organization. I also structured a data set for reporting on lead to pipeline ,and set the cadence and standard for pipeline analysis to drive smarter decisions in demand generation and across the marketing teams.

Sr. Manager Demand Generation

Managed demand generation programs, revenue operations, field sales enablement, and sales development worldwide for the fast-growing email security leader named 2014's Gartner Cool Vendor in Security Technology.

Demand Generation Manager

Jive Software

• Led Implementation and training of Marketo for global marketing team
• Improved lead generation, nurturing, and scoring resulting in creating company’s largest 
amount of pipeline in history
• Built Revenue Model and enhanced Lead Process for qualification
• Built Reporting to give insight on effectiveness of lead generation programs and its impact 
on pipeline created and influenced in both SFDC and Marketo

Global Marketing Operations Manager

Marketo

• Created best practices and weekly training of internal users as manager of Demand Center
• Led technical execution of Enterprise white spacing for over 30k accounts for both United 
States and EMEA
• Executed brand new lead scoring, hand off, and prioritization of leads to the Sales 
Development team that resulted in a 70% increase in opportunities in just two months

Marketing Operations Manager

• Created and defined success criteria for 15 marketing channels used for all programs
• Managed Marketo’s lead scoring as well as demographic scoring that improved Sales 
Development Representative productivity and effectiveness by 30%
• Implemented Marketo’s first direct mail channel programs for both demand gen and 
outbound efforts that has achieved over $1.14 million in pipeline

Marketing Coordinator

CEO at CS2 I Helping B2B SaaS Grow Without Growing Pains I podcast host🎙 I B2B Revenue Growth Architecture & Mar/Sales Ops I Mama x2

I'm the Co-founder and CEO at CS2, a marketing and sales operations agency that helps B2B tech companies grow faster without the growing pains and reach their full revenue potential.

Our team of seasoned experts builds Revenue Growth Architecture that powers efficient and predictable revenue growth. We help companies: 

- Stop losing customers due to friction in their buyer experience
- Give their revenue team the visibility and insights they need  
- Pull their marketing and sales team out of the chaos
- Implement, integrate, and leverage their full marketing and sales tech stack with ease

Our clients include some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies on the planet: Coursera, Gong, Sendoso, Salesloft, Outreach, Coupa, G2, Lever, Skedulo, ModelN, Vast, Eightfold.ai, Lacework and more.

We're ranked as a top agency on G2: 

- #1: Marketing Automation Agency 
- #1: Marketo Consulting Agency 
- #2: Revenue Operations Agency

If you want to learn more about what we do check out our podcasts, videos, and newsletter here: cs2marketing.com/fwd

CS2 is a B2B marketing and revenue operations agency for high growth tech companies. Advising on all things marketing and revenue operations, marketing tech, and helping companies operationalize their marketing function so they can scale.   

Currently working with some of the best in B2B tech including Gong.io, Sendoso, Coupa, Coursera, Alfresco (Hyland), Skedulo, ModelN, Eightfold.ai, and SalesLoft

Find out more at www.cs2marketing.com

I just watched a recorded call of marketing and sales business unit leaders talking about how broken and wrong a dashboard was that....

wasn't actually broken or wrong at all.

And honestly, it isn't their fault completely.

100% of them do not understand how the funnel is tracked

100% of them are not fully aware of the stages and definitions

100% of them have not been fully trained or enabled on the dashboards


But the confidence that they all had to say it was wrong was very interesting. And they also said some things with 100% certainty that were also wrong.

One major problem with this was that there wasn't an operational person on hand to really give them the facts and correct them.

But the BIGGER problem was that the teams were so quick to say something is "wrong" and not just saying "I think I am not fully understanding why the data is this way."

That simple statement alone can actually bring tensions down and get the team focused on trying to find answers instead of thinking there is a massive fire-alarm problem.

Don't worry though -- they are getting the answers and clarity now they need and will have the knowledge to inform how to make things better (because something can be right - but also can be improved!)

#revenuegrowtharchitecture #reporting #dashboards

The more I sit with the term "GTM (Go-to-Market) Ops" the more I feel like it is a better description of what we "do" at CS2. 

I have been pretty vocal about how both MOps and RevOps were not perfect fits so we ditched calling what we do and instead focused on naming what we deliver (aka revenue growth architecture.) 

But the term GTM Ops was always the one in the back of my head that I felt like fit the best.

But the more we hone in on what our biggest value prop is
 
which is building the foundation and processes to support a unified go-to-market strategy

the more I am a fan of it.

Here are some of my thoughts prompted by an image  Andrew Nadeau  shared and I agree Andrew that GTM Ops might be a better "target."

And I am more confident in us leaning into that name.

But what do you think? Are you a fan of GTM ops? Do you think this better represents the work you are delivering to your org?

#revenuegrowtharchitecture #gtmops #gotomarket

On a live event yesterday with Chris Walker and Charlie Saunders someone asked a great question...

“What is the difference between a signal and a touchpoint?”

There has been a big adoption of people using the term “signal” or “signal-based selling” in the market and here on LinkedIn.  

I even saw pals and awesome duo Craig Rosenberg and Matt Amundson talk about it on a clip from their podcast this week.

I like it because it’s more actionable than saying “tipping point” and more inclusive of different reasons for sales starting their outreach (ie channel , inbound, outbound etc).

But part of the confusion is some vendors are saying that all activities across different platforms made by a buyer can be a “signal.” 

And that sounds accurate - but I think the better way to look at it is…

All activities made by a buyer are touchpoints.

But “Signals” are the ones strong enough for a salesperson to action it.

>> A signal is a demo request.

>> A signal is a partner deal sent over to sales.

>> A signal is a target account who is on your pricing page.

All of these are points in which sales are on the hook to reach out and are a “right” time to reach out with a “right” message that is personalized and matches the behavior of the prospect.

So is a signal a touchpoint? Yes

Is a touchpoint a signal? Sometimes


Atleast that is how I am thinking about it right now.

Do you agree?

#revenuegrowtharchitecture #signals #touchpoints 

If you don't have a special folder in your brain where you hide big mistakes you have made or have let happen (so you don't go crazy) then you .....

are lucky

or 

haven't run a business before



#hardtruths #businessowner 

“You can do something thousands of times but still make a mistake,”


said the curling iron as it burned my face this morning. 🫠

Here is a little look behind the CS2 curtain…

𝐓𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐐𝐁𝐑!

Over the past few years with clients, we have experimented with….

Holding QBRs
Not holding QBRs
And creating just a “Client Scorecard”

But, one we thing we realized, is that the QBR meeting with our stakeholders and executives is a great chance to….

✅ Show off our value and how we impact the business

✅ Create an open conversation on how to improve the relationship

✅ Work on a collective roadmap that aligns to the business and leadership goals/priorities

And yes this is a great tool for us agencies - but it’s also an incredible thing for marketing/rev/sales ops leaders to do internally.

This is a key differentiator to being strategic rather than just tactical and reactive.

Which is advice I get asked for … alot.

So if you have the time here is a little dive into our new QBR deck template in under 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

Do you hold your own ops QBRs?

#revenuegrowtharchitecture #qbrs #agency #marketingoperations #revenueoperations 

Doing the work to understand yourself and why you think and make decisions the way you do is a powerful tool for a leader.

Early on in my career, I put a lot of self-worth into proving to myself and the people around me (including my parents) that I can be great.

The drive to be the best (even though I knew I needed a lot to learn) led to investing so much time, hard work, stress, and tears.

I was on a constant wheel of burnout and the only person to blame was myself.

I took on more and more to impress people and myself.

I had zero boundaries.

And starting our own business helped with things like working on the weekends and controlling how much work I took on - but not much changed.

I have a vivid memory of saying goodbye and watching my Dad pass and being on a work call an hour or so later and pretending like nothing happened.

Because work was safe for me. It kept me occupied and was something I could control.

Fast forward a few years and I had a child and many of my “coping” techniques were taken away from me.

After finding therapy, and even better help when I was struggling in my second pregnancy and growing the business, I truly took a turn that I have been so grateful by doing the work to really figure out my value system and parts of me that shouldn’t be changed but just acknowledged.

Having these tools gives me the ability to be a bolder, better, and more vulnerable leader.

And the work never ends.

Thank you to Hana Jacover, ACC for having me as a guest on The Hype Within
last year to be open and honest and share some of this story (and more) publicly even though its uncomfortable for me.

#careeradvice #leadership #therapy

Most B2B tech companies or agencies are selling you “the end state.”

When we are sold a product or even an operational solution - we are sold what it will do in the *most perfect scenario*:

>> The data structure it relies on is accurate
>> All of the operational foundation to support that data is there
>> It has been correctly implemented and integrated
>> It has been adopted by the end users and users are fully enabled
>> It has been staffed with owner(s) to maintain and iterate

You rarely get a tool or solution working from day 1.

You are not buying a specific thing like a lamp that you can just turn on and use from day 1.

You are buying into a vision and value of what that thing can do once it has been fully implemented.

And that usually takes people. proper foundation. clean data. resources. no tech debt.

And that means it takes time. Sometimes way more than expected.

Try to really set the right expectations and plan accordingly.

#revenuegrowtharchitecture #gtmops #tech

Your buyer experience can literally make or break a sales deal.
 
We have seen our clients (and ourselves) go with a different tool or solution based on the buyer experience being better than the experience from a competitor.

And shockingly, one of the biggest complaints from the buyer who went with a different solution was that no one followed up with them - ever.

That is leaving money on the table y'all!

Last week we did a small event with Chili Piper on the buyer experience and 
during it, we covered common issues we see from GTM Ops perspective and things you can do to prevent them.

To recap most of our tips, here are 10 things you can do to create or maintain a great buyer experience.

1. Secret shop and monitor your own inbound buyer experience regularly (you might find issues!).

2. Send meeting requests directly to a calendar booking (if they are a fit).

3. Make sure your leads make it to CRM by resolving any sync issues and monitor the error logs closely.

4. Ensure your lead/contact routing is working and correct (Or else they will be ignored).

5. Create SLAs for following up on sales-ready leads and actually track it.

6. Don't send over too many leads too early. (ie use lead prioritization based on intent signals and fit)

7. Don't stop nurturing your sales-ready leads and think that SDRs will nurture them for you.

8. Give your salespeople guidance and ways to personalize the right message to your sales-ready leads.

9. Make sure your segmentation of your audience is clean and clear. (Customers being treated like a net new prospect does not sit well.)

10. And lastly, map out your communication orchestration. So many other tools can send emails to your prospects. Understand how they might be helping our hurting the buyer experience.

Would you add anything else?

#revenuegrowtharchitecture #gtmops #buyerexperience

Co-founder of CS2 Marketing, a B2B SaaS marketing agency started in the heart of Silicon Valley and now supported by a remote team across the US. 

With over a decade of experience in marketing operations and demand generation, I am still constantly striving to learn the best ways to optimize what we call the 3Ps of Tech Marketing: People, Process, and Performance. With my learnings, as well as our seasoned teams', we help strategize, execute, and report on effective marketing tactics and processes that deliver revenue growth for our clients.

I love sharing new ideas with my network here on Linkedin, through the CS2 blog, our fwd:thinking podcast, and weekly newsletter (www.cs2marketing.com), and through the non-profit Women in Revenue that I helped co-found (www.womeninrevenue.org).

In my free time, I am a Mom to a growing toddler and use working out and cooking as forms of meditation.

Erin Willmann

My embarrassing habit is how much I touch my hair and roll my eyes when I am thinking out loud or privately.  🤦🏼‍♀️

What's yours?

One thing that we have been focusing on CS2 is simplification.

Simplification can be so important but often avoided due to many reasons.

And for teams that have big goals in mind, you can often fall into the trap of...

taking on too much
putting in too much process
or adding in way more complexity than you really should

With revenue teams/ companies really struggling to figure out how to win in this new market, many teams have found themselves scrambling or doing whatever they can to get business.

In the process, they are spending times in areas that don't make sense or doing things that long term (and even short term) are not right for the business.

Unfortunately, the best thing you can do is actually the opposite of that and to keep it simple, stupid! (K.I.S.S.)

When you keep things simple your whole team can operate more efficiently. 

When you keep things simple you don't need to spend time in areas that don't deliver any or enough value. 

When you keep things simple your customers and buyers get a better experience and product.

But don't confuse this and think keeping things "simple" doesn't mean you don't create or work on things that are elegant, sophisticated, or scalable.

It just means the areas of focus you have can easily can be executed with perfection, and provide a lot of value.

And it definitely means not falling victim to the sunk-cost fallacy.

If something isn't working -- kill it! ☠️

#revenuegrowtharchitecture #simplification #leadershipadvice

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