Dave Gerhardt

Exit Five

I run Exit Five. We have a full-time team of six and we've built the top community for B2B marketers. Now 6,000+ members. We also have a popular podcast, newsletter, and run in-person events. It's a pretty cool business. I'm having fun.

Founder

Agency AI

Agency is the AI Agent for Customer Success

Advisor

Hatch

Hatch is a podcast and video production company.

GTMfund

Limited Partner

Paramark.com

Marketing measurement, experimentation, and forecasting for fast-growing businesses. Gain marketing ROI visibility with advanced statistics and machine learning — more accurate, comprehensive, and simpler than touch-based attribution.

Harvard Business School

Guest Lecturer

Drift

Chief Brand Officer

Privy

I joined Privy as CMO in December 2019, rebuilt the marketing team, and re-positioned the company as the leader in ecommerce marketing for small businesses in the Shopify ecosystem. Privy was acquired by Attentive for 9 figures in June of 2021. Privy is the #1 reviewed app for sales in the Shopify App Store. Used by 500,000+ small ecommerce brands around the world.

Chief Marketing Officer

I joined Drift in October 2015 as employee #8 & the first full-time marketer to jumpstart the company's marketing efforts. During my 4+ years at the company:

▪️50,000+ businesses used our product and we grew from $0 to eight-figures in revenue.

▪️Drift was profiled in the New York Times (Corner Office), TechCrunch, Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, and 100+ other publications.

▪️Drift was named to the Forbes Cloud 100, LinkedIn's Top 50 Startups, Entrepreneur's Top Company Cultures, 2018 SaaS Company of the Year by the New England Venture Capital Association, and a finalist for the Boston Business Journal’s Best Places to Work.

▪️We created the category of Conversational Marketing. 

▪️We created our annual conference HYPERGROWTH (which had 12,000+ marketing & sales people registered in two years and became one of the fastest growing business events in the world).

▪️We wrote the official book on Conversational Marketing published by Wiley (the book was an instant #1 new release on Amazon in the marketing, sales, and commerce categories and a top 20 business book in the United States).

▪️We created Seeking Wisdom, a popular podcast about personal and professional growth and grew to over 50,000 downloads/month. 

▪️I joined as Sr. Manager and was promoted to Director of Marketing September 2016, and then promoted to VP of Marketing February 2018.

VP of Marketing

Director of Marketing

Senior Marketing Manager

Tech In Boston

Tech In Boston is a podcast that I started in the spring of 2014 (bit.ly/tech-in-boston) and is all about sharing the stories of the people that are helping to build the Boston startup and tech community -- from CEO’s to investors to entrepreneurs and founders.

There's been over 60 episodes and 60,000 downloads to date. I’ve interviewed investors like Eric Paley, Maia Heymann, Rob Go, Jeff Bussgang, and Michael Skok. I’ve interviewed entrepreneurs like David Cancel, Diane Hessan, Mike Volpe, Mike Troiano, Chase Garbarino and TJ Parker. And I’ve interviewed journalists like Scott Kirsner, Kyle Alspach, and Dennis Keohane.

There’s also over 2,000 subscribers on the Tech In Boston email list — from people that work at companies like HubSpot, EverTrue, Localytics, CarGurus, PillPack, ArtLifting, LogMeIn, InVision, Twitter, HourlyNerd and more.

Creator

I created ExitFive.com, the top community for B2B marketing professionals. We have a full-time team of five and 6,500+ members in our private community. We also host a popular podcast, newsletter, and run in-person events. It’s community and education for marketers who want to advance their skills and grow their careers. 


Before starting Exit Five: I spent my career in marketing and grew from PR intern to CMO. As a marketer, my work helped Drift to a $1B exit and Privy to a $100M+ exit.

Founder & CEO

Exit Five is a media company focused on B2B marketing. We help B2B marketers build successful careers through our content and community. Learn more at exitfive.com

Marketing is not a department. It is a whole company effort. 

It is part of the company’s efforts to win. 

Not the arts and crafts department.

So a product team that ships regularly is the BEST counterpart to a good marketing team.

Talk to any marketing team at a company where the product team rarely ships, is slow, or the company just overall doesn't believe in the product. 

This is the number one cause of marketing fatigue. We can never get anything done!!

Product also makes it so marketing can have a steady drumbeat of things to talk about. 

I don’t think people realize how crucial the product roadmap is to marketing, and how they work together to create momentum for the company. 

It is incredible how many marketers I speak with who laugh and say something like “what product roadmap??” Or “Yeah right we don’t really have any insight or influence there.”

The CEO must unite the two. It must be part of the company strategy.

Founder: Exit Five | Former CMO | Now: building the top marketing community online and in-person at exitfive.com

People do not care about your company. They don't care about your product and your features.

They don't care about your new integration with Slack and HubSpot.

What they care about is themselves. Yes! I know! Hard to believe but we are all selfish (even the guy who thinks he's not selfish; i know you from the comments you are selfish too because you're an animal just like all of us).

ANYWAY:

If you can talk to people about themselves then you’ll have their full attention.

How can you help them? What is the selfish benefit? 

Here are five timeless principles you can think about for your customers - but beware: you must do this in their terms, in their language. Not in cringe "we dont actually know the customer" language.

1. Make Me Look Good

Whether it’s to a boss, their team, or their industry, people are wired to care about status. Can you help them impress someone? Can you give them an edge? Can they copy/paste your idea and look smart in the next meeting? I remember impressing my boss when I was 23 year old marketer being asked to build a marketing plan for a product launch for the first time. I had no idea what to do, found a great resource from HubSpot blog (the OG) and used it. She was impressed.

2. Save Me Time

Time is the one thing nobody has enough of. If you can help someone do something faster, with less friction or fewer steps, that's the way. People will pay for time savings. BUT they have to believe this. Can't just be a marketing claim. You need proof. Show the receipts. The examples.

3. Make Me Money

Capitalism seems to be the best system that exists in the world. I don't make the rules I am just observing. It doesn't seem like someone has created a better way, so yes - money matters. And whether they will admit it or not, your customers want to make more money (because they are people). Whether directly or indirectly, people are tuned in to ROI. If you can help someone drive revenue, get more leads, reduce churn, or land a raise then you’ve got their attention. Again though: MUST BE BELIEVABLE. So you must have PROOF.

4. Help Me Avoid Pain

We are wired to avoid pain. We'd almost always rather avoid pain than get some type of gain. No one likes to look stupid, feel behind, or get in trouble. If you can speak to something they’re secretly worried about -- a mistake, a missed goal, a clunky process -- and show a way out, they’ll lean in.

5. Help Me Grow

Great marketing often speaks to ambition. Career growth. Mastery. Confidence. People want to feel like they’re getting better — at their job, in their life, as a person.

There's a lot of noise in marketing right now because of tech/AI, but I'm more bullish than ever on understanding the timeless principles in marketing, and that starts with understanding people.

I hope these are helpful for whatever you're working on right now.

Founder: Exit Five | Former CMO | Author: Founder Brand

Please do not forget these four fundamental questions in marketing:

1. What is it?
2. Why do you need it now?
3. What makes it different from the other products like it?
4. Who else says it's good? (proof)

You can ABM, SDR, MQL me to death. You can get in a debate about where the SDR team should live, what metrics matter in demand gen, you can give me a list of SaaS metrics that will make you sound smart in the board meeting.

But I'm not good at any of those things.

I'm good at helping answer those four fundamental questions.

And I think they are timeless.

Are you playing the game of marketing or actually doing marketing?

If you send me one of those "Congrats on your work anniversary" DMs I will block you and call your local Police Department.

I have 8 trillion DMs from this week for an advisor position I've been in for a year and now my LinkedIn inbox is unusable.

I'm leaving LinkedIn and going all in on BLUE SKY!!!! 

is that the thing?

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