Richard F. Purcell

MoxieGTM

Just as your product is constantly tested and updated, your distribution channels should too.

We manage GTM experiments from end-to-end to find your next best growth channel, quicker.

We turned our most successful experiments into software.

We replicate these same processes to close VC/PE funds, quicker.

Sign up for the weekly newsletter to get step-by-step instructions on how to run unconventional experiments that will supercharge your GTM.

https://moxiegtm.substack.com/

Founder

Rebel Fund

Tasked with replicating the go-to-market processes used by SaaS companies for Rebel's $65M Fund I and $100M Fund II.

Rebel’s mission is to identify and invest in the top 0.1% of the 40,000 tech startups that apply to each batch of Y Combinator, the #1 accelerator in the world, and is supported by founders of some of the most accomplished ‘unicorns’ (Reddit, Instacart, Cruise, and others) to ever graduate from the program.

Associate

Revenue Collective

Revenue Collective is a private, invite-only, membership organization for commercial growth operators.

Membership consists of 500+ leaders from Sales, Marketing, and Operations. 

Chapters in New York, Los Angeles, London, Denver, Boston, Toronto, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and Amsterdam.

Executive Member

Ocurate

Challenge: Large proprietary database & deep machine learning sold to political campaigns needed to expand to eCommerce.

Solution: As employee #1, built the entire foundation of product, sales, and marketing. Results within the first six months: Closed 6 enterprise deals, ACV $60K, avg sales cycle <30 days, 100% of pilots converted to annual, 75% of deals sold without discounting, every customer was referenceable

Challenge: In Q4 2022, the company moved up-market with a new product. 

Solution: Devised and executed over 30 new GTM experiments to get more pull from the market through organic conversations instead of a push from the seller through cold outreach. With a lower headcount powered by Generative AI and a Virtual Assistant, company saw only a minor reduction in meetings booked, higher conversion rate from first meeting to close, and 75% of new meetings booked were from target accounts generating over $1B in revenue.

Founding Team

CrowdAI

(acquired by Saab in 2023)

Challenge: Company sold technology as project-based revenue for three years to US Government. Needed to take a cutting-edge computer vision deep learning technology with no repeatable product and find a way to sell to commercial enterprises. 

Solution: Conducted initial market research to validate Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, and Insurance as key verticals to go-to-market. Worked backwards to find the biggest pains of each vertical and tie them back to the company’s solutions. Ran end-to-end sales cycles to close marquee logos.

Head of Enterprise Sales, Founding Team

Hustle

(acquired by Social Capital in 2020)

Challenge:  Series A funded company with product adopted by political campaigns and non-profits needed a leader to propel Enterprise expansion.

Solution: Led efforts to turn the product into an Enterprise platform adopted by the Fortune 50 and some of the most valuable companies in the world. Created a systematic process to validate and invalidate new use cases based on product/market fit which became the company’s engine for operational efficiency and future growth.
- Built and managed an organization of salespeople to turn a hypothesis into initial market analysis then into the first customer wins in a new market and ultimately to finding repeatability and predictable revenue.
- Navigated a highly regulated market by leading cross-functional teams to pro-actively de-risk Enterprise compliance and data security blockers such as GDPR, TCPA, SOC 2 Type II, and customer data deletion.

Hustle is a campaign-based, peer-to-peer messaging platform designed empower to organizations to humanize communication with their audiences while maintaining data privacy and compliance.  Texting with Hustle compliments other communication strategies and brings real human connection back in the digital era when people ignore bots and prefer to talk to real people.

Hustle is the leader in transforming how individuals and institutions build meaningful, long-lasting relationships.

Backed by world-class venture firms including Insight Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Social Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and Kapor Capital.

Director of Enterprise Sales

Partnerize

Challenge:  UK-based company built a repeatable business in the EU. First non-executive salesperson hired to expand the product into NA. Required an enterprising agitator to instill best practices and prove product/market fit.  Lean start-up mentality with no BDRs/SDRs, no sales engineers, very little brand awareness, and minimal support from marketing.

Solution:  Exceeded quota within the first year by closing deals with Fortune 500. Responsible for end-to-end sales process including prospecting, executive summaries, RFPs, sales presentations, demos, etc.
- Forged co-selling relationship with a strategic technology partner.
- Sold complex enterprise product at 2-3x the nearest competitor’s price using STRONGMAN methodology.

Performance Horizon is a technology company replacing the traditional networks connecting advertisers to their digital partners.  Clients are empowered to drive online traffic and sales based on strategic objectives such as margins, inventory, seasonality, geography, new vs. returning customers, and more.

We do this for some of the largest, most complex enterprises including Uber, Google, Expedia, Spotify, Virgin Australia, Marriott, Square, Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, and British Airways.

Our platform drives $3B+ in advertiser top line revenues across 120,000+ marketing partners in 170+ countries processing payments in 50+ currencies and providing support in 50+ languages.

Mithril (Thiel Capital) is lead investor.

Sales Director

Medallia, Inc.

(IPO'ed in 2019)

Sales Pioneer of first SMB product
Challenge:  Medallia’s first foray into SMB market.  Product was two years old and never had a full time sales person and needed to escalate revenue and process improvements.
Solution:  Led efforts to simplify sales price, update contracts, extend subscription length, optimize outbound sales activities, refresh sales messaging, and streamline sales cycle.

Catalyst for Lead Gen
Challenge:  Second lead gen rep ever hired for the company and went six months without a manager.  Needed someone to help scale the operation and efficiently (and creatively) generate pipeline.
Solution:  Tested innovations and scaled them across the sales ecosystem including sales tools, C-level messaging, prospecting blitz, a system to source leads from employees, and “chaski” deliveries to executives.

Tech Inclusion
Challenge:  As company grew, needed to increase inclusion and access to opportunities for underrepresented talent.
Solution:  Co-founded "Medallia Medley".  Galvanized grass-roots, cross functional teams and later earned executive sponsorship from Head of HR and co-founder/President.  Led weekly meetings to drive institutional change including hiring FT D&I resource, rebuilding unconscious bias workshops to include race, and expanding talent pool.

New Business

Fleetmatics (Formerly SageQuest)

(acquired by Verizon in 2016)

The foundation of my cold calling technique was built during my time at Fleetmatics.  Minimum of 100 cold calls a day selling software to blue collar business owners in New York/New Jersey who still had aol.com email addresses.

- Top selling agent in office of 40+ and fastest selling rookie in publicly traded company’s 10 year history.  
- Inducted into highly coveted and prestigious “Century Club” for sales achievement in first selling month.  Award bestowed on agents that sell 100 units in one month. Average agent sells 30/month and takes him/her 6+ months to reach 100 unit/month. 
- Innovated company’s traditional lead generation via Twitter. Led to a six figure deal in first week of launch.

Inside Sales Representative

Build better businesses by taking action on lifetime value

Richard Purcell's Leadership Purpose:

"Build and maintain meaningful, long-lasting relationships that help individuals live up to their full potential."

+++

Ten years ago Richard Purcell came to Silicon Valley from North Carolina to follow the 21st-century gold rush with nothing but his car and his clothes. 

Richard has turned his experience leading GTM at venture-backed SaaS startups into systematic processes to scale efficient growth.

His creative approach to sales & marketing has closed new business with Fortune 500 companies and some of the most valuable private companies in the world: AXA, Expedia, Square, Comcast, Verizon, WeWork, Priceline, Air Canada, RingCentral, Airbnb, Bally's, Live Nation, Affinity Gaming, and more.

"Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true." 
- Zero to One

Just as your product is constantly tested and updated, your distribution strategies should too.

Go-To-Market (GTM) tactics aren't meant to last forever. GTM has evolved from “dialing for dollars” off of printed spreadsheets to the automated personalization we see today.

The democratization of knowledge, channel over-saturation, and the rise of automation inevitably depreciates even the best strategies.

Most companies struggle to objectively test, validate, and scale GTM experiments due to the lack of creativity and unnecessary complexity.

Think about the resources needed for experimentation:

1. Marketer for crafting messages

2. Sales engineer for testing against a control group using objective success criteria

3. SDR for outbound efforts

4. New tools to facilitate campaigns

5. Sales Ops to put all the pieces together

For more mature companies, redirecting these resources from core functions poses uncertain risks many aren't willing to take. 

For less mature companies, these resources are sparse.

It's time for a new era of GTM.

GTM 3.0

If you're seeing depreciating performance in your Go To Market tactics or if you're not sure if you're ready to scale, we are here to help.

🚀 We help you know when & how to scale by objectively measuring Product-Market fit as a spectrum

🚀 We manage unconventional GTM experiments from end-to-end through strategy, messaging, technologies, outbound efforts, and measurement.

Sign up for the weekly newsletter to get step-by-step instructions on how to run unconventional experiments that will supercharge your GTM.

https://moxiegtm.substack.com/

The most entertaining beef of the past week was not Drake versus Kendrick Lamar—it was Adam Robinson versus 6sense.

Adam wrote three hard-hitting LinkedIn posts taking aim at their competitor that would make any ghostwriter jealous.

How are Adam and his team capturing the demand created by these posts?

What if you could cross-reference people who follow 6Sense's LinkedIn company page with people who reacted to one of Adam's posts and match the ICP of RB2B?

Welp...we did.

Here's what we found. . .

Reacted to Adam's three viral LinkedIn posts about 6 Sense + ICP match + Follow 6Sense's LinkedIn company page

197 people fit this criteria

ICP match + Follow 6Sense's LinkedIn company page

810 people fit this criteria

These intent signals can also be cross-referenced with people who recently visited RB2B's website (using their own tool).

Once identified, the objective is to spark a conversation from one executive to another.

Two examples of copy for the first touchpoint that has produced high conversion rates for our clients:

#1
Hi First Name - noticed you liked one of my posts about the challenges of using 6Sense's intent data. Are you currently using them?

#2
Hi First Name - saw you follow 6Sense's company page, so I'm guessing you have tried buyer intent tools. polling some folks in my network: What solutions are you using to analyze buyer intent? How well are these tools working for you?

We run comprehensive analyses of LinkedIn audiences and thousands of intent signals at the individual level such as engagement with content, profile views, the strength of mutual connections, website visitors, and more.

Every week, we deliver a select number of new high-value contacts worth high-touch engagement from one executive to another.

We are giving away this type of analysis to the first three people who comment below with their favorite beef (get creative with your answer).

#DunbarsNumber

In one hour of prospecting, Samantha McKenna and her team booked 14 meetings, which generated 9 opportunities and closed 4 deals over the course of 60 days.

How did she do it?

1. She pulled her whole team into a 1-hour meeting (including senior leadership)

1-hour meeting x $200/hr (avg hourly rate of everyone in the room) x 8 team members

= $1,600

That one meeting costs $1,600. 

Quite the expensive meeting!

2. They looked through Sales Navigator to find which of their 1st degree connections had an 'in' to their target accounts

"Your executives' networks are brimming with senior level people who also know senior level people. And execs are more likely to say yes when other execs make the ask." - quote from Sam

3. Created a list of contacts within target accounts and who can make a warm intro

4. Conducted outbound by requesting referrals

If Sam is optimizing on Return On Effort (ROE), we could have helped her reduce research and prospecting time while maximizing conversion rates.

Here is our "yes, and..." response to her process:

1. Make a list of 20 to 50 Connectors. These can be strong or weak relationships with people who have deep networks that match your ICP.

2. Prioritize target accounts based on intent signals at the individual level: open job descriptions that mention keywords tied to value prop, engagement with LinkedIn content, event attendees to industry events, competitors' LinkedIn followers, etc.

3. Determine which of your Connectors have strong ties to decision-makers who work at your hottest accounts

4. Send a blurb to your Connector asking for an intro

5. When you can’t get an intro, send an email referencing the contact’s work history with the Connector as a form of personalization.

Subject line: did you work with [Connector]?

Hi First Name - Saw you used to work with [Connector]. He's been a great advisor for us and helped inform our product roadmap. Your website says you’re hiring for Software Engineers. I wanted to get your feedback on a product we developed to monitor AI models. Open to connecting?

When we ran this play for an AI startup that sells to Software Engineers we saw:

✅  50% positive reply rate from warm intros

✅  2X higher conversion rate of outbound emails to meetings booked

P.S. - We manage Relationship-Led Growth campaigns from end-to-end at about half the cost of an SDR: lead qualification, technologies, templates, managing inboxes, and measurement.

NEW RULE: Stop sending and accepting new LinkedIn connection requests 

LinkedIn is not Pokemon Go. . .you don’t have to catch them all.

As my presence on this platform grows, so have my connection requests.

We use our product, Dunbar, to analyze each request and accept people who match our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

After I accept their request, I make a genuine attempt to build the relationship and start a conversation.

"Hi First Name - What sparked your interest in connecting? Simply trying to add more context to my connections since LinkedIn is more for content management and lead gen than relationship management. BTW - out of all our mutual connections, I have the strongest ties with [insert name of Bestie]. I consider him a friend and mentor."

Adding the reference to the Bestie shows that a human wrote the message and not a bot.

Last week, I accepted 11 LinkedIn connection requests and followed up with a version of the above message for each one.

Guess how many responded?

Zero.

Many people complain about LinkedIn becoming yet another saturated channel…and this is one of the reasons why.

After working with a wide range of clients, we estimate that the average person has strong ties to less than 5% of their LinkedIn connections.

Social media was designed to get as many ‘likes’ and connections as possible.

In contrast, the human brain can only manage 150 relationships at a time, which is known as "Dunbar’s number."

Let’s focus on building high-value relationships instead of collecting LinkedIn connections like it’s going out of style.

Who's with me?

BTW - We are building a product to analyze thousands of individual-level intent signals across first and third party media. The objective is to surface only the highest-value contacts worth high-touch engagement from one executive to another.

#DunbarsNumber

Have you been following the Barbenheimer beef between RB2B and 6sense Inc.?

Everything is marketing.

It reminds me of when Kanye West and 50 Cent started a rap beef with each other to cross-promote their albums released on the same day back in 2007.

Despite the criticism of their intent data, Deloitte named 6Sense one of the fastest-growing companies. According to a recent interview with their CEO, 6Sense generated $200M and grew 40% year over year.

This means somebody is buying 6Sense software.

Despite their dominance, there is a lot of room for improvement when analyzing intent signals.

Most buyer intent tools have one of these three things in common:

❌  Not accurate 

❌ Not actionable

❌ Collected in a sketchy way

Key takeaways from a recent demo of a buying intent platform:

1.⁠ ⁠Detection of intent signals was questionable

“We track your competitor’s salespeople's new LinkedIn connections to see if they match your ICP"

2.⁠ ⁠No ‘why’ behind the intent signal 

“We can't get specific on why we detected an intent signal at the individual level...but you can contact our support line"

3.⁠ ⁠Focused on getting as many leads as possible instead of focusing on quality

“We give you leads of everyone who is visiting your website and everyone who reacts to your content who matches your ICP”

This is why I am so bullish on intent data coming from LinkedIn. 

It’s ground truth at the individual level, and there is a wide range of proven tactics for taking action.

You can be nearly 100% confident that an individual follows one of your competitors, reacted to a post, and viewed your profile.

Would you like to know who is simultaneously viewing your LinkedIn profile, following one of your competitors, reacting to your colleague’s content, and visiting your website?

We are looking for two design partners who want to be early adopters of our new product, Dunbar.

Criteria for a design partner:

✅ 1K+ website visitors a month

✅ 10K+ LinkedIn followers

✅ Post on LinkedIn at least once a week

Ping me for details.

#DunbarsNumber

If someone visits your website one time is it worth sending them an automated email?

Patrick Spychalski from Clay announced a partnership with Adam Robinson’s new product, RB2B, to identify anonymous website visitors at the individual level.

RB2B was all the rage at last week's Pavilion dinner hosted by Bijay Alex Mathew and Kathleen Booth.

The Clay workflow can automatically enrich data from RB2B and write an AI snippet for a personalized email.

Let’s imagine you get 50k unique website visitors a month and 10% of visitors are an ICP match.

That's 250 automated emails going out every weekday.

It takes the equivalent of inbox witchcraft these days to ensure emails are delivered: secondary domains, validation, DKIM, AI, secret passwords, etc

We live in a GTM world of quality over quantity.

Here’s my wish list to increase Return on Effort by using intent data coming from website visitors:

1. Analyze thousands of data points from each website visitor and make predictions on their buying intent. 

A low-intent visitor may use Safari on an iPhone to go to the website, scroll to the About section, leave after 30 seconds, and never comes back.

A high-intent visitor may use Chrome on an Android go to the website, click on the demo video, come back a few days later, and read a case study.

2. Cross-reference a website visitor with other intent signals at the individual level. 

It’s a warm signal to visit a website. 

It’s a red hot signal to visit a website, view the profile of the founder, react to a post by their VP of marketing, and attend an event hosted by a well-known industry expert.

What are your feature requests for RB2B?

P.S. - Our vision is to do #2 on the list with our new product, Dunbar.

As the bots take over, humans will prefer to do business with other humans they already know, like, and trust.

Clay is the new, cool kid on the block.

Clay is a game-changing tool to automate research and get super detailed with targeting.

But soon Clay will go the way of Outreach and Salesloft.

It could be years from now, but you can guarantee the plays powered by Clay will eventually depreciate in performance.

Remember the AGOGE sequence?

The widespread adoption of Sales Enablement Platforms like Outreach and SalesLoft flooded everyone's email inboxes while decreasing SDR performance.

Clay will become widely adopted and everyone will be running the same plays.

The buyer will sniff out even the best automation and choose to disengage.

GTM strategies are not meant to last forever.

In the meantime, slow down and be more human.

Here are the three most popular #RelationshipLedGrowth experiments from the Unconventional GTM newsletter:

1. How to get warm intros into your hottest accounts:
https://lnkd.in/g-txqits

2. How to double inbound leads by authentically engaging on LinkedIn:
https://lnkd.in/gb4unqff

3. How to leverage the brand of LinkedIn influencers to boost demand gen:
https://lnkd.in/gcsKiAA4

Where’s the beef?

Kendrick Lamar is beefing with Drake.

Drake is beefing with Kendrick Lamar.

Kanye West is beefing with J Cole.

J Cole is beefing with no one.

Taylor Swift is beefing with Kim Kardashian.

Mike Tyson is beefing with Jake Paul.

Biden is beefing with Father Time.

Trump is beefing with the justice system.

Elon is beefing with everyone.

Google is beefing with email inboxes.

Adam Robinson is beefing with 6Sense.

What a time to be alive!

#WeekendsOnLinkedinAreMadeForSatire

Venture capital is both a gift and a curse.

It’s a gift because it funds capital-intensive technologies that can fundamentally change how businesses and individuals operate.

It’s a curse because it incentivizes poor financial discipline and creates unrealistic expectations from customers.

When cash was flowing freely, venture capital-backed startups could give everything away for free or at heavily discounted rates.

Even though we live in a world of higher interest rates and less access to capital, customer expectations have not changed with the macro environment.

Today’s customer expectations have made building a bootstrapped business even harder.

Examples of irrational customer expectations as a result of irresponsible behaviors created during Zero Percent Interest Rates (ZIRP):

“This would be a no-brainer if you could waive the setup fee.”

“I know you have to take on computing costs to deliver the pilot, but that’s the nature of your business. You have to take on that risk.”

“Can you reduce your monthly fee by 20%, but still produce the same amount of work?”

“Can we pay you Net 30 instead of due on receipt?”

These are actual quotes from our recent sales calls.

If you’re the operator of a bootstrapped software business, let’s connect and ideate on creative solutions to these problems.

Be the change.

When fundraising as a startup founder, talking to a non-decision maker at a VC firm will almost never convert to an investment.

This was a strong opinion shared by Darren Marble, CEO of issuance, and Yuri Sagalov, General Partner at Wayfinder Ventures.

But does the same go for VCs who are raising capital for their own fund?

Why not treat raising capital as a VC like a salesperson sells software to a large enterprise?

It's about creating "surround sound" by getting into the family office, endowment, or pension fund by any means necessary.

Build trust with a warm contact within a target account to get an introduction to a decision-maker.

In less than an hour, we can curate hundreds of family offices, wealth advisors, funds of funds, and high-networth individuals who are one degree away from a fund manager and showing strong signals.

#Kizuna

NEW RULE: No more websites

Some businesses only operate on Instagram.

No website.

Why?

Instagram is the preferred platform for their buyers.

Instagram is built for seamless 1 to 1 messaging.

If you’re selling a product built on top of LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is your best-performing channel, why do you need a website?

This is my logic for our new product, Dunbar.

I can tell you more about what we do with one LinkedIn post than sending you a link to a website.

We bought several domains to protect brand equity, but we don’t plan to build a website anytime soon.

Can anyone convince me otherwise?

Team Drake or Team Kendrick?

GTM edition

A) Team Drake: “Automation, baby. YOLO.”

B) Team Kendrick: “I agonize over every email and spend at least 5 minutes researching each contact before pushing send.”

C) Team J Cole: “Sending out cold emails makes me anxious. What if I mess up? I’m sorry.”

#WeekendsOnLinkedinAreForSatire

Taplio

Richard F. Purcell's Linkedin Analytics