Power in Partnerships 🤝 ft. Daniel Cmejla | Revenue Reimagined Ep. 020

The go-to-market playbook is rapidly shifting from brute-force outbound to community, evangelism, and nearbound partnerships. In this episode, Daniel Cmejla breaks down how Apollo.io transformed its organic social presence from 40,000 to over 3 million monthly impressions. The secret lies not in buying an army of influencers, but in aggressively nurturing organic advocacy. By immediately acknowledging and supporting every user who says something positive about the brand, Apollo turns casual fans into lifelong evangelists. Beyond community growth, Daniel highlights how the proliferation of AI and tech stack consolidation is transforming the SDR role. While AI tools will drastically reduce tedious prospecting and shrink team sizes, they won't replace human sellers. Instead, reps will evolve into highly efficient 'Community Development Reps' who leverage warm introductions from affiliates, influencers, and community events. Finally, Daniel emphasizes the importance of a product-led culture. Exceptional marketing can only take a company so far if the product doesn't deliver. By building an accessible, all-in-one platform and partnering with creators on mutual business goals rather than transactional posts, Apollo has positioned itself as the most loved sales technology in the B2B space.

Discussed in this episode

• How AI and automated prospecting tools will inevitably shrink SDR team sizes but make the remaining reps drastically more efficient.
• The emerging concept of the 'Community Development Rep' who focuses exclusively on following up with warm influencer and event leads.
• Apollo's zero-spend strategy of individually messaging every single person who posts a positive mention of their brand online.
• Structuring top-tier influencer partnerships around mutual business goals rather than transactional pay-per-post retainers.
• Leveraging a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) to honor power users, gather product insights, and drive enterprise upsells.
• Identifying where industry influence lives by directly asking customers what podcasts, blogs, and thought leaders they follow.
• The ongoing consolidation of the B2B SaaS tech stack as buyers seek accessible all-in-one platforms over expensive point solutions.
• Why building a product-led growth (PLG) motion allows marketing teams to focus on community building instead of fighting for initial traction.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Introduction and Daniel's role at Apollo
2. 2:00 — Why Daniel would choose Partnerships as a revenue function
3. 4:30 — Apollo's affiliate program and nearbound partnership power
4. 7:15 — How AI will disrupt and reshape the SDR role
5. 10:00 — Testing the Community Development Rep (CDR) model
6. 13:45 — Building organic evangelism without massive ad spend
7. 17:30 — Creating a Wall of Love from organic brand mentions
8. 21:00 — The truth about paying influencers vs mutual collaborations
9. 25:20 — Navigating the massive consolidation of the sales tech stack
10. 30:15 — Why product-led growth convinced Daniel to join Apollo

Key takeaways

• Reply immediately to every positive brand mention you receive.
• Map influence by asking customers whose content they actually consume.
• Build influencer collaborations around mutual business goals, not paid posts.
• AI will shrink SDR teams but exponentially increase their effectiveness.
• The best marketing strategy requires an undeniably excellent product foundation.

Transcript

Find me an SDR who loves prospecting. They love doing a ton of research on accounts. Like maybe you'll find one, but they probably love it because of the results they get, not the task itself. So, like in the future, tools like Apollo will completely eliminate or almost entirely eliminate the task of prospecting.

What's up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagine podcast. We are stoked to have Dan Schmel here with us. He is the VP of community at Apollo.

And what does that mean? That is all things field marketing, customer marketing, social media marketing, evangelism, PR, and community. He also was the former VP of brand and community at the small little company you might know about called Chili Piper, where he was super instrumental in helping the growth that we've all seen for them, uh, and a friend of the show. Man, thanks for being here.

It's an absolute pleasure and honor to be here. Uh, and I can't wait to chat. Awesome. That that's because of me, Dale, not because of you, just to be.

Yeah, hey, I'm getting to know Dan. So, this is great. Um, so, first question, it's time to reimagine your role in revenue. You can't be in marketing anymore.

You got to head up a different part of the go-to-market function. What what function and why? Oh, good question. Um, I'm glad I didn't prepare in advance for these.

So they're truly a cop. Uh, I want to add a caveat here that uh, I'll I'll say my answer, but it's not like I am trying to claim this role at Apollo or anything. Because the partnership's team at Apollo is incredible. It's run by an incredible SVP of partnerships and revenue operations, Henry, and then the team itself is run by Jennifer Rema, but I do think there's a lot in common between partnerships and community and partnerships and marketing.

So, I would probably go into the partnership side and then just keep doing the same stuff, but from a partnership's perspective, and I'd have to watch on the sideline as social media and things unfiled, but partnership. Yeah. Going with partnerships for for 500. Awesome.

Partnerships is a unique one, and I think a lot of people, um, don't emphasize the power of partnerships. And also other areas that you oversee, such as brand, social, community enough. And a lot of what we're hearing and seeing now, um, in LinkedIn, outside of LinkedIn, is kind of this nearbound partnerships and go-to network type, um, method, if you will. And I don't think that's been any more apparent than the way Apollo has activated their social community, right?

Like I I don't think there's a day that goes by that I don't see someone posting and raving about Apollo. So talk to me a little bit about how partnerships helps with what you're doing on that kind of social and evangelism side, and how you guys have been able to arguably be the leader in that space, right? Like I think your your LinkedIn, if I'm not mistaken, says something, and I'm trying to pull it up while we talk here, about the most loved sales technology on planet Earth or something like that. Like, that didn't come out of nowhere, right?

Yeah, this is a really sorry. Yeah, a really good question. Um, you know, in the past, I worked in politics, and you know, I managed groups of volunteers, and there's a saying in politics that is also one in sales where it's meet people where they're at, right? Because advocacy can take so many different forms, right?

And for me, advocacy isn't about, hey, you're an advocate, we're going to place you in this box, but it's about uniquely meeting people where they are and empowering them to be themselves. And ideally, what they want to say is at the intersection of what Apollo wants them to say, right? So we'll try and find that balance there by supporting them. Part of the reason it's so great for partnerships is one of the incredible things that Jennifer and Jessica and Henry have done is they built this amazing affiliate program where people can refer Apollo and get revenue.

You know, a lot of companies do this, HubSpot has an incredible one. You'll get 20% of the lifetime customer value of anyone you refer. I know people who make a lot of money slinging Apollo. Yeah.

So it's like that's part of the reason Apollo is so great. It's like we're never going to ask anyone to, uh, to post on our behalf and give them money for it. Um, in fact, we're actually doing an ad, because this thing has come up recently where people are like, I love Apollo. Everyone's like, this is an ad.

So we're actually going to reach out to those advocates and do an ad with them about how the previous thing wasn't an ad, which is pretty funny. I'm excited for that. But, um, but the idea is that like, partnerships is an excellent mechanism to bring about employee evangelism, executive evangelism, but most importantly, partner evangelism, because the story that you're trying to tell together is ideally one of mutual value. And if you picked the right partners where recommending Apollo to their customer base is actually the thing that'll make them look good, then ultimately, you don't have to ask them to do anything, uh, because they'll want to do it themselves.

This is where I see actually forward-thinking companies going. Like everyone's talking about AI killing the BDR role, what's happening with AI is going to kill the BDR role. I actually think this affiliate partner workstream go to network nearbound stuff is actually putting more jeopardy on the BDR teams, which it sounds like Apollo's got to been upfront in trying to push them out to pure AEs, etc. Well, no, we love SDRs.

You know, we're a tool designed for SDRs, right? We're the ultimate prospecting tool. But what I do think is going to happen is there's going to be a reset. And this isn't my knowledge.

I was talking to Sad Khan a while back, who's on our advisory board. And he said like Awesome. As an SDR manager, I look forward to all these AE tools. And it's not going to replace AI tools.

And it's not going to replace the SDR, but there will be resetting where a team of 20 becomes a team of 10 or even a team of five, because there are aspects of their work they no longer need to do. Prospecting. Like find me an SDR who loves prospecting. They love doing a ton of research on accounts.

Like maybe you'll find one, but they probably love it because of the results they get, not the task itself. So, like in the future, tools like Apollo will completely eliminate or almost entirely eliminate the task of prospecting. And other other aspects of it, like we had one person on our team at Apollo, uh, Casey, uh, he used our tool, we call it Auto SDR, and uh, he booked a thousand meetings in a quarter alone. And 40% of those were with named accounts.

So, you know, I I actually think that the SDR manager is probably pretty excited for some of these new AI tools, because it's so hard to be an SDR. Uh, it's always going to be hard to be an SDR, because you're one of the lower-ranked people, so they're going to push you really hard. They're going to give you a quota that not everyone can attain, so they can maintain a high level of rigor within that team. But, uh, like there's going to be a resetting.

These teams are going to shrink in size. Uh, they are also partially being replaced by the nearbound partnership type type stuff we see, especially within somewhat clicky industries like B2B SAS. But I actually think that won't replace SDRs either. It'll just bring about a new type of highly achieving SDR, who encompasses some of the tools of social selling, relationship selling, partnership selling.

We're running an experiment next quarter under Zoe Hartsfield team, where we're going to try and see what would happen if either Zoe or a consultant operated, uh, in what we're calling what she's calling, a community development rep. So like, what would happen if we took an SDR and we said, hey, we want you to focus on the follow-up from events. Anyone anywhere in the company who says, uh, you know, they're not an AE, and they get a demo request, they pass it to that community development rep. We work with influencers to get warm intros.

We work with affiliate partners to get warm intros. So ultimately, I don't think the role of SDR is going to vanish, but it is going to change. The teams will probably be a little smaller, and they'll be more efficient. And that's why accessibility to these AI tools is so important, because we don't want to create a world where you need to be venture-backed in order to have a team that performs twice as well as someone else.

And that's why Apollo, we raised this 100 million, you know, we're the first sales tech unicorn of the year, uh, because, you know, we're trying to create a future, uh, where AI doesn't entrench power further. It's it's accessible to everyone and uh, anyone can set it up. In some cases, you can use light AI automation within the Apollo platform entirely for free. Wow.

Um, to a lot of things that you said, and I mean that in a good way. There there's not a lot of companies out there that I think are so forward thinking, um, in the way that they are utilizing AI, and the way that they are running experiments, and the way they're looking at partners versus communities. Like we hear everyone say like, oh, you know, nearbound. Like we know go to network works.

I mean, no no shit go to network works. Um, but it's not as simple as, hey everyone, go find your friends and like connect us to people who know them. Like that that is not a strategy. When you talk about utilizing your advisors, your evangelists, you you said something that I want to there's a couple things I want to double click on, but you you were very clear in saying, none of these are paid ads.

And there there's a lot of back and forth on LinkedIn and I'll upset some people here and that's okay. Um, about whether it's okay to be paid to speak for a company, to be a brand ambassador. In fact, Zoe Hartsfield made a um, very direct post on LinkedIn about the fact that like, hey, like this is happening. I do it, meaning her.

Suck it up if you don't like it, too bad, so sad. Um, and I don't necessarily disagree with her, right? I think that being paid to be a brand ambassador or brand evangelist has its place if you use the product, if you can speak to the value of the product, if you are within the ICP and you you your community, your followers are in the ICP is very different is not going out there and paying people. And there's a lot of speculation with a lot of the stuff back and forth between Apollo and Zoom Info that you've bought this army to go out there and post for you.

But you deliberately said you're not paying them. So with that, why are people, what have you done to make people so passionate about Apollo? Because what I've seen, it's not, oh, hey, Apollo's great. It's like, holy shit, like we are really going to come to the defense or or the the um, the the promotion of Apollo, much more than any other brand I've seen out there.

Uh, yeah, so I am so glad that you asked this question because it's one of those things that I've tried to nuance in LinkedIn posts to explain because we do pay some people, um, some things, but but there's a nuance to it. And the the fact of the matter is, like, uh, my philosophy of marketing is about first understanding what are the spaces that hold influence and then you want to deploy your voice to those spaces. Everyone's like, how do you determine the places that hold influence? It's really simple.

Find your customers, your best customers, your prospective customers, close one, close loss, and just ask them. What podcasts do you listen to? What people do you follow on social media? What events are you attending?

What blogs do you listen to? Who do you respect the most in your space? You can kind of power map out this this idea of of what's influencing people. The next step for me was to take that list and cross-reference it with our customers.

Oh, okay. Here's a person, you know, who loves us, who's a customer, and they're an influencer. All right, let's reach out to them and see what happens here. So, at that point, you have like multiple different groups.

So I want to split into three groups. So you have your influencers, people whose basically they make a living off taking paid contracts and advocating for projects. Then you have your uh, kind of members of your sales community, and then you have your customer advisory board. And I would add a fourth level there that you just have your organic evangelism.

Whenever someone provides a moment of organic evangelism, that should be a red flag to your entire marketing and customer marketing team. Who is this person? Why did they evangelize for us? How do we get them to evangelize for us again?

And the first step and probably the most significant step I took day one when I joined Apollo was anyone who got a positive mention of Apollo anywhere, got a really nice response from us. And we reached out and we asked them why. And we asked them how we could support them. And that's incredibly powerful.

Like imagine you're a simple thing, though, right? Simple. Yeah. It's so simple.

But like imagine if you were like, I am in love. I love this person. And they just didn't reply to you at all. Like how many more times are you going to go to that mountaintop to shout it until you feel like isolated and and hurt and rejected, right?

So that was the first step, replying to all those people. We did that with zero spend. Uh, the second step was we built a customer advisory board. Who are the people amongst our customer base that, um, can advocate for us the most or give us the best product feedback or hold the keys to the largest potential upsell.

Okay, how do we reach out to them? How do we honor them? How do we provide value to them, right? That's another group, completely unpaid.

They advocate a lot for us because they know we'll be there for them. We'll prioritize CS, uh, requests, which we're totally overwhelmed with as a company. Um, they will, uh, you know, we'll we'll help them recruit someone. We'll feature them from our company page.

We'll help them build their brand, things like that. Then we get to the level of, uh, oh, go ahead, Dale. No, no, no. I I'm like super interested in this because the challenge I I've done this with a lot of like uh, technologies I like and you're right.

You send a note and all of a sudden it's like crickets and it's like, well, okay, I won't do that again. So I'm super I'm super excited that you guys are doing that for people that are advocating for you guys that you guys haven't even asked to advocate for you. Ever feel like keeping your CRM updated with call notes is a nightmare? You're not alone.

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And then and then like that often becomes something even cooler. I can actually, uh, should we should we risk a a screen share right now? Wow. Yeah.

We have we have we have we have we have editors, go ahead. All right. So, this is our wall of love, and this is two days ago. One, two, three.

Here we go. We're looking at the last week. These are all like incredible bits of advocacy. So we have someone go through whenever anyone mentions anything positive about Apollo anywhere.

We reach out to them, we ask if we can get their permission to use it to put it on the wall. Then our content team or our our product team reaches out further. We dive deeper with these folks. Some of these folks are advisors.

Some of these folks are cab members. Most of them are just regular people who love Apollo. Um, but, um, basically, uh, the idea is like when you find someone like that, that's truly precious. That is so much better than anything else, having someone really organically advocate for you.

So, so just cherish those people. Okay, now we get into the controversy, the Zoom Info versus Apollo, Clint Post controversy. One thing I will note is that whenever there's these like Zoom Info versus Apollo battles, it's just an epic day for our Tom. I I I can't imagine.

Yeah, like honestly, it's often times it's the people who say really negative things about Apollo. Uh, and then our customers come to our defense. Those are the ones that drive the most eyeballs to our website, and those convert into real revenue. But basically, when it comes to working with influencers, I'm not saying we don't pay anyone.

And that that post you're referring to is really uncomfortable for me, because I decided to message the poster and try and explain. And then in real time, I'm seeing these edits, and I'm like, it says, hey, Apollo doesn't pay anyone. I'm like, well, that's not accurate. We do pay people.

And it's like, okay. And it kept getting clarified. It was crazy. But basically, like, the reality of it is, if you're going to work with only the upper echelon of influencers, they have the power.

They choose who they want to work with. Uh, and especially not everyone, but the upper echelon do. So when you reach out to them, it's not like, hey, how can I get you to post about Apollo? It's, hey, what are your goals?

What do you want? What is your business? What's the next step for your business? How can Apollo support you holistically for your business?

We look at some of these partners like look at Alexine and Women Sales Pros. Like at Chili Piper, I was the first ever sponsor of that community. And we built it in a way that they could get more revenue from it. And then I come back at Apollo.

You know, seven out of the eight women on our leadership team are or or exact, uh, managers on our sales leadership team are women. That's a community that Women in Sales is going to want to partner with. So I'm like, what's your fee? And you know, she gives me a fee.

It's a monthly retainer. And then we build a collaboration around an idea. How do we evangelize for the idea that companies are successful when there are more women in positions of sales leadership? All right, great.

Now, I'm not going to tell Alexine to post about that, but she will post about that because it benefits her and it benefits us and she wants us to renew. So basically, like when you work with a lot of these partners, I never pay them per post. I never say, hey, you have to post X times within a month. I say, let's build a collaboration off providing value to each other.

I'll provide value to you, you'll provide value to me, and then the offshoot of that is them posting. But it's almost like that metaphor with the jello, right? If you squeeze too tight, it's going to go right through your fingers. Working with influencers, I find is best, um, when you ask them what their goals are, and then you try and help them.

And we're a large company with a large brand. We can help folks. Uh, So it sounds like sounds like every sales process that you run, like, what's the value you're going to deliver for both sides? Like, a relationship or a uh, uh, a contract or however you want to do it.

There's value on both sides. So what is the value that you're delivering? What's the value they're the value they're delivering, hopefully, is the same as what you you guys are delivering. I'm I'm curious.

Let's switch it up a little bit. Um, what's the best So we have a lot of startup uh, people that watch the podcast. Um, how can Apollo help the startup companies? How can they help them not only first execute a process for data and outreach, etc.

but then grow with Apollo as they get bigger? Oh, you're going to ask me a product-related question. You realize I'm a soft skills marketer, right? Hey.

But your title has so much in all around it. So I'm super curious how you guys uh, position that. Yeah. So there's this kind of confluence happening in sales tech where it's so hard to jump between so many tools.

And there's so many options out there that it can be overwhelming and it can be exhausting. Especially for RevOps folks. Like look at the inbound side. I'll take an example outside of Apollo.

You have an inbound funnel. You have your form, you maybe have like a Chili Piper routing thing. Then you have a chatbot. Maybe you have like a lean data lead routing solution.

A lot of companies are building out their lead routing rules in four different tools. So you change one thing It's crazy. And you have to change it four times. And like that is exhausting.

It's not sustainable. And there's a consolidation happening. So I do believe there's a consolidation happening. But ultimately, like the last 10 years of SaaS has been like all of these amazing tools that didn't exist before.

Call recording, what Gong has done, and Chorus, is just spectacular. It's amazing. Uh, inbound lead routing, Chili Piper, what they've done is incredible. Like, um, you have these AI automated plays tools.

Like when someone changes jobs, like a user gems type function. The vision of Apollo is that you should be able to have all these tools. Like it's been a decade since they first came out. They're no longer revelations.

We are working on getting complete parity with best in best in class. Like Apollo's call recorder is not as good as Gong right now. But if you're like a bootstrapped founder or a early You can't afford Gong. Yeah.

You can't. Like, but but you need that you need conversational intelligence even if you're a one-person founder starting a company so that you can get product insights from these calls. You need to record them. So the vision behind Apollo.

And you'll helping get. So. Everyone needs all the helping yet. I mean, that's why I record every every every call.

So the vision with Apollo is to basically give people a platform that allows them to have access to all of these best-in-class tools in a way that's accessible, that's not overly expensive, and then to grow with you. I will admit, we have some work to do to grow into the enterprise, for sure. We have some great clients out there, but we're primarily an SMB and mid-market tool for now, expanding into the enterprise. They're kind of begging us to come up there, kind of like, kind of like HubSpot's model.

Yeah, I like the model. But basically, what it what what Apollo will enable you to do is turn go-to-market into something that normally takes weeks or months and do it in days, right? We can look at your CRM and then identify all the contacts that should be in there that aren't. We can clean all that data for you.

We can enrich all your data for you. We can set up sequences. You can use the LinkedIn Chrome extension to pull someone from LinkedIn and drop them into a sequence. We can use AI to help you write your emails, helping people all around the world with language barriers and things like that.

And that AI model is developing really fast. You can record your calls. You can score leads. And it's basically the there's an appetite in the market for a platform like this that is accessible, that we're not we're going to charge as little as possible versus as much as possible for it.

And, uh, and a lot of founders want to grow with that. So that's part of the reason there's so much love for Apollo, because this stuff otherwise, they have to cobble together six, seven figure tech stack for some of this stuff. And with Apollo, they can get it and they can use it and they can use it fast. Um, so I would say the primary benefit is that, uh, you get access to all of these tools, maybe not best in class for call recording yet, but we're coming for that fast.

70% of our resources go to engineers. So I don't know if that answered your question. Yeah, totally. Dale's going to have to read it back, cuz he's a little slow.

But I I I think I I think it answered it. But here's something I love about you. Like, you are so real and so raw. Like, you're not coming on here being like, we have the best data, the best sequencer, the best call recording, the best lead score, like you're very candid about, listen, like, this is good.

This is great. This is going to be great. And this is why and where we're investing. And you don't see that in a lot of people.

And I think that that to me is also why people gravitate towards your brand, um, is the transparency of this is where we're really good. This is where we're good and going to be really good. And we're not going to bullshit you. We're not going to tell you that we're phenomenal at everything, but we can help you with everything.

And you as a startup founder, bootstrap founder, you don't need Gong right now. Listen, I have a lot of love for Gong. Um, Me too, me too. But but it's overkill for a lot of people.

So why go pay for something that you don't necessarily need right now? I got a question. Go ahead. I do think we have the best data.

We got the best data. Um, and we got we got a lot of the other best stuff, too. I think if you're like a massive enterprise using engagement, there's probably some work we can do on preparing. Like I I ask this question a lot of time, uh, when I'm talking to Zoom info customers, I say, does Zoom info spark joy?

And they'll be like, no. But I asked someone recently about this, someone at Red Hat about outreach. I was like, does outreach spark joy? And they're like, yes, it sparks joy.

And like the reality of is, there's a different tool that's good for many different circumstances. We're probably just of the belief that you should probably start off with something like HubSpot and Apollo. And then you can either become an expert in that and expand into other areas or or diversify your tools, but like if you're going to buy these expensive tools, you got to make sure you have the enablement in place to use all the bells and whistles. Apollo has all the bells and whistles, but it's just not going to cost you an arm and a leg for it.

And we'll be there to grow with you as we go. Last thing here, I know I'm rambling, but I think another reason people like Apollo is because the rate of technological development is so fast, right? Like they know we're going to grow alongside them, deploy new stuff, deploy new features, make our tool better. Yeah.

Yeah, I I appreciate that. And I I do think the the evolution of sales tech or tech in general is just changing every month, every three months, every six months. Like we're always trying to catch up. Um, I mean, you ask me every day how the fuck do I log into HubSpot.

So like. Yeah. Yeah, that is true. That's true.

I do have my ops guy that helps me out all the time. Um, awesome. So part of our uh, uh, part of our community is all about giving back. Uh, we give more than we receive.

And so you've been generous to uh, offer something up. So let's let the audience know, Dan. Uh, yeah. So I'll preface this with some, what is it, you know, Chaldini's principles of persuasion, you need authority, right?

So since I joined Apollo, when I joined, we were adding about 800 followers per month. We're adding an average on our LinkedIn company page. We're adding an average of around 6,000 right now. Wow.

You look across the last year, Gong has grown more than us. Outreach is basically tied for us, because last week they randomly added 3,000 followers. I I track these things super granularly. But basically, we've passed all of our competitors in terms of growth.

We've grown from 40,000 organic impressions on the company page per month to around 600,000. Then we started tracking user-generated content, employee evangelism, executive evangelism. The total number per month, just organic impressions, just on LinkedIn for Apollo in one month is, you know, it varies between 2.5 and 3.

5 million when it was 40,000 before. Crazy. So it's like, I'm like a niche within a niche, but I do think, you know, at Chili Piper, when I started, we were getting about 5,000 impressions per month. And then we were one of LinkedIn's top startups.

Apollo wasn't eligible for LinkedIn's top startups this year, because we're over six years old. But I think we might have been up there. Uh, I know because in LinkedIn, you can set the competitors. So I set all the people at the top of LinkedIn's top startup list as our competitors, because I want to, you know, compete with the best.

And, uh, we're doing pretty well. Yeah, so the offer is, I'll sit down with you. I can't guarantee that we'll get gains for it, but I'll audit your LinkedIn for the last month. We can take an hour-long session, uh, and then I'll help you build out a content calendar for a week.

And I can't guarantee it, but there's a good chance that that content will outperform the previous week's content. Uh, I've done this a few times now, uh, at different companies, and I'm excited to provide value to your audience however I can. I know I'm learning a lot just chatting with you all. So whatever I can do.

Awesome. I love it. This is, um, we we get a lot of really good offers. We're very blessed, um, that our guests give back.

This this might take the cake. I I I think we're going to have to do like what once we hit 30, Dale, we're we're going to have to do like a a recap of everything we've given back, um, to the audience. This this is right up there. Um, we normally go right into rapid fire, but I I do have one question before we do rapid fire that I I would love to know.

Um, you did great things at Chili Piper, right? I followed your journey there, um, big fan of a lot of folks over there. You could have gone to a number of places when you left. Top three things that made you say Apollo is where I'm going next.

Um, well, David Malpass, the SVP of marketing, uh, did a really incredible job of recruiting me. And like I kind of high stakes thing, I think, uh, I reached out to Apollo and three days later, got an offer. Uh, Wow. But I reached out, uh, to Apollo while I was in Morocco, um, uh, working with Chili Piper, and then there was a large layoff, uh, like a week later.

Yep. Uh, and I have so much respect for the people at Chili Piper. Um, but, you know, um, I'm trying to find a way to say this. There in the most recent downturn, a lot of companies didn't get the expansion that they wanted, because there were layoffs across the industry, right?

Yeah. Um, but I'm of the belief that there's also a consolidation coming. So, when a tool like Apollo or a tool like Chili Piper, maybe doesn't grow within an account as fast as it could, even though they have like incredible CSAT, incredible NPS, really high net revenue retention. Um, there's like a broader piece there.

Like I personally got really jealous of qualified. Like while I was at Apollo, I was chopping at the bit. I was marketing against qualified, right? Because I believe the future of that inbound lead conversion will be your chat, your form router, your booking link.

It's all the same set of rules, right? Your, uh, your like lean data type, uh, lead distribution software. It's the same thing. So it's like, when I worked at Apollo, I was like, where can I find a company?

People say sales is marketing's best friend, but I actually think it's product. Where can I find a company that's just obsessed with product? That they have an engineer as the CEO, that they have very little go-to-market function. They have a PLG motion, which enables them to invest more into product, because they have to spend less time on GTM.

And that was Apollo. They were the company that was building the most the fastest. I am the of the belief of the concept of a personal customer advisory board. So I have a group of about eight mentors I reach out to at every major step in my path.

They all were like, go join Apollo, do it. And it was also really fun to be at a company that maybe hadn't done the best job at marketing before I arrived. Lots of low-hanging fruit with building the best product always being the top priority. Because no matter how good your marketing is, at the end of the day, if you don't have the best product, eventually that marketing will fade or it'll be exposed.

And I do believe Chili Piper had the best product while I was there. Um, but, um, I think there's a bigger, there's a bigger slice of the cake at Apollo, and I was really excited. Uh, and then they so the first reason is product-focused. The second reason was I wanted a badass boss who could be a mentor.

David Malpass, bunch of really successful exits at Autodesk, at Invision, all over the place. And then the third factor, um, was that when I reached out to them, you know, I also at this point, I had five consulting gigs set up. Um, they convinced me that before entering the consulting route, it's the best opportunity for me to continue to learn at a high pace at a company that's large enough. Um, and they also told me I could I could hire, uh, some of my old team back.

So that was pretty exciting. It was like, I was heartbroken when I left Chili Piper because, um, because I like, you know, Meduli, our social media manager at Apollo, she's like my arm. Like, I can't function without her. So, I had a good hunch that if I joined Apollo, they would reach out to me and want to work with me.

And that did end up happening. So, I hired two two of my former employees. And, uh, we were just able to start a lot faster. Um, so those are the three reasons, but on top of it, there's an umbrella where it's like, I want to be at a company where I can win.

Love it. And, uh, that's been happening. All right, let's go rapid fire. Uh, these questions have to be answered in 10 words or less or Dale hits the button and cuts you off.

Um, all right, here we go. What song would best describe your revenue strategy? Uh, Paparazzi, the first half of it is the Lady Gaga version, and the second half of it is the Kim Dracula version, which is like, uh, okay. That's good.

Oh, I love it, though. If you had a crystal ball, what's one revenue trend or strategy you predict will take center stage in the next 12 to 18 months? So from trend to like just regular strategy. I'd say community functioning is still a trend.

More people will hire community marketing operations. Totally. What is, um, one lesser known tactic that you use that's actually made a surprising difference in the way you drive revenue. Not stuff that I've mentioned before.

Those don't count in my 10 words. Um, This is small, but soliciting ideas from those around you, customers, advisors, people in sales, people in product. Love that. That's great.

Absolutely. That's great. Last one, earlier in the show you said you were going to lead up lead the partner group. It's tomorrow morning, you grab a cup of coffee, tea, whatever your your vice is.

What's the first thing you're doing as the head of partnership? I'm calling Jennifer Rema and congratulating her on her promotion to SVP of partnership. Oh, I love that. That's awesome.

And then I'm going to ask her how she does it all. I love it. Daniel, Daniel, Dan, thanks so much for joining us, man. Where uh, where can people find you?

What's the best way to get in touch with you? Let's uh, let's let's let's blow up your uh, your connections. As if you need that. Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Uh, the URL is LinkedIn/greatmarketing. I snagged that one pretty early. Um, Nice. Yeah.

At LinkedIn/in/greatmarketing. That's it. Um, Yeah. My, uh, that's where they can find me.

And, uh, you know, one person I'm excited to chat with, uh, you know, my top takeaway if anyone is here now and they're like, what's the last bit of knowledge? It's just, um, it's to really listen to your customers. Um, and when there's a first moment of advocacy, it might seem like something small. Someone says, oh, I like Apollo.

But that's the spark that leads to someone advocating for you 10, 50, a hundred times. So your rate of return advocacy, those who advocate once who advocate multiple times. That is where you want to focus your effort. Everything else can be tossed aside.

Happy customers elevate their voice. That is, I think, the future of marketing. Also, the spooky stuff behind is because of Halloween. I love it.

Dan, thanks so much for joining us. Have a wonderful day, everyone. Cheers.