In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Brandon Pipkin, VP at Autobahn Consultants and co-author of Rock Your Business. Together, they explore why companies scaling from $50 million to $500 million face a different set of challenges, why traditional operating systems can become less effective at that stage, and what leaders need to address to continue growing successfully.

Brandon shares practical insights on leadership teams, mission and vision, communication, processes, and the role people play in sustainable growth. You’ll hear actionable strategies for identifying gaps in your organization, evaluating whether your leadership team can support the next stage of growth, and building the structure needed to scale without leaving value on the table.

02:06 Why Middle-Market Companies Need a Different Playbook
06:57 How a $156,000 Fraud Attempt Exposed Business Vulnerabilities
09:52 Inside Rock Your Business: Leadership, KPIs, Talent, and AI
12:19 How to Know When Your Company Has Outgrown Its Systems
13:46 Why the Right Leadership Team Is Critical to Scaling
15:30 The Most Common Gaps Holding Growing Companies Back
17:37 What CEOs Should Evaluate Before Their Next Stage of Growth
19:04 Rapid-Fire Questions: People, Processes, and Scaling

https://www.autobahnconsultants.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonpipkin

Brandon’s Book:
Rock Your Business
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544551851

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand180 Podcast where we just don’t talk about growth. We challenge the assumptions behind it. And I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency and your host today. Today, I am joined by Brandon Pipkin. He is a VP at Autobahn Consultants, and we just had Jonathan Slain, the CEO of the firm on the podcast, and it’s a very interesting topic. Autobahn Consultants is built for companies scaling from $50 million to $500 million and beyond, and he co-authored Rock Your Business. Companies over $50 million are rare, most of them private. They sort of run in a black box. The team wrote the playbook for the stretch of the road. Brandon, it’s great to have you here. So I’m excited to dig deep into the book. 

Brandon: 

Great. Thank you. Glad to be here. Sometimes I think I’m probably the most boring guy in the world, and yet I’ve loved my life and the fun stuff that I’ve been able to have. I served a two-year volunteer assignment overseas, and that was my introduction into sales. I didn’t even know I was in sales at the time. I was trying to give away something people don’t want, religion. Used to be a pretty devout guy. And so I was selling, not even knowing that I was selling. I’ve since kind of moved away from that, but that’s where I cut my teeth, was in sales there and learned how to communicate and talk to people. I would talk to people on the street, stop them as they were walking by. And we went and knocked doors every day, ringing doorbells in apartment houses. It was such a great experience. 

And I came back and fell into a sales role after that, stayed in sales, sales management for some time and then moved into sales training and then joined Autobahn two and a half, three years ago now. And it’s been this fantastic ride where we get to focus on advising these great companies, these wonderful leaders who know how to put the pedal to the metal and enjoy the view as they go along. And we help them grow and we help expose some of the cracks that growth exposes. We help shore those up and we help them get to the places they always dreamed of getting to with the people that are important to them. 

Linda: 

That’s awesome. Thanks, Brandon. So got a question on this book. So why now? Because you’ve kind of written it like another recession book. Nobody really knows where we’re headed, but instead your team wrote the book Rock Your Business. So why does the middle market need its own playbook? And what did you see in this $50 to $500 million client that maybe can be helped by this book that was put together? 

Brandon: 

In 2019, Jonathan and a co-author, Paul Bel Air wrote Rock the Recession. And if any of your listeners are old enough to remember what happened in 2020, you might say they were prognosticators because it released, I think it was six months before the pandemic. And it’s not that Paul and Jonathan are extraordinarily gifted at foreseeing the future, although they’re very gifted in many areas. It’s just that we always know there’s a natural cycle to the economy and there’s always a recession on the horizon. It’s like winter. It’s coming. Sometimes it comes a little later. Sometimes it’s not as harsh. Sometimes it comes earlier. It’s always on the horizon. And so that book was built or written to really help business owners understand how to prepare for and thrive during a recession. 

Rock Your Business is the yin to the yang. So Rock the Recession is how do we navigate through these tough times? Rock Your Business is the call it a roadmap, although there really is no roadmap after you get to $50 million. It’s the travel companion idea roadmap, and I’ll tell you what I mean by that in a second, of how business owners after $50 million can succeed. Very few businesses make it to a million dollars, even fewer make it to $10 million. The businesses that make it to $50 million are incredibly rare and there isn’t an operating system like there is when you’re smaller. EOS, Rockefeller Habits, those kinds of platforms and systems are great to help businesses grow to a certain point, but then they break, not because they’re not great systems, but they’re not built for the $50 million and beyond. And so leaders in that segment are often left to kind of figure it out and maybe have a networking group with other $50 million leaders, which is exactly why we love YPO, EO, Vistage groups. 

We love working with them because they understand the power of travel companions. So we’re Autobahn, everything is car themed, and we are the travel companions who have travelled this road and helped others travel the road from $50 million to $500 million. That’s what was missing in that segment is a custom operating system for those businesses with the specific help that they and their leaders need, with the specific help that they need to streamline and operationalize what they need to, and with the unique cracks that start to develop at 50 million. 

Linda: 

Yeah. No, that’s great. So you didn’t write the book on your own and neither did Jonathan, you really engaged the entire team. So what was the decision by engaging the entire team and how did that bring value to the book? 

Brandon: 

Yeah. Well, it’s sure brilliance, sheer brilliance to involve everybody else in the book because I have never sold a business to a Fortune 500 competitor, but Jim has, the president of Autobahn who wrote a couple of chapters in the book. I didn’t run Nike Mexico for their football division, their soccer division, but Rafa did. I’m no marketing expert, but Yaz is. And so what happened was Jonathan pulled together 21 of us total from the team and had us each share our expertise and what we know about growing businesses and what we have experienced so that it wasn’t a myopic view of this is one person’s view of how it can be done, but rather here are multiple experts’ views. And sometimes even within the chapter, you’re getting multiple views because for instance, the chapter on KPIs was written by three of the authors and you’re getting unique perspective into that so that as a leader, you can take that, hear what resonates with you in the way that it resonates with you, even as the authors sometimes are providing some countervailing arguments to one another. 

So we red team ourselves and we want leaders to do the same and that’s why there’s brilliance in 21 voices getting involved in it. 

Linda: 

That’s great. The founder sort of builds that team that carries the thinking behind it. They’re not completely doing it all by themselves, although sometimes they may feel that way, but I think the great piece is that the book has been written by everybody. So you had a fraud scenario, which we talked about with Jonathan, sort of the case in point. And I think you talked about that in the book. Is that accurate? 

Brandon: 

Yeah. Yeah, that’s in the book. 

Linda: 

And it cost your company about $156,000. You had recovered the majority of it, but still lost around 21,000. Yeah. So if you could give me sort of the short story behind that, I think that would be helpful and how you may have covered that in the book. 

Brandon: 

Yeah, that’s great. Now listen, there are really significant world events that happen and we remember where we are when they happen, when we hear about them. And this is not on the world scale, but I remember where I was when Jonathan and I talked about he woke up, he checked the bank account like he does every morning and saw that $156,000 had vanished from the account. And he thought it was some error, he wasn’t seeing it right, checked the wrong account, whatever it was. And as he dug into it, he found out that over the course of a few transactions, $156,000 had been funneled out of that account. And as he dug into it, we learned that we had been the victims of a cyber attack or call it a social engineering attack. So it’s a very sophisticated attack where they got into our email and spoofed email addresses and made it look very legit, “Hey, I need you to transfer this amount of money over to this account.” And it looked so legit that the person transferring it didn’t think to check on it. 

And they had a second tier to it as well that made it look like it was even more legit. And what we learned through that experience is it’s important to have the right insurance coverage. That’s one thing. Number two, what we learned is we could either be really frustrated with AI and think, “Wow, this cost us a lot of money.” But rather it became a $21,000 lesson, which could have been $156,000 lesson. It became a $21,000 lesson in the importance of getting out in front of things, not only protecting ourselves, but then sharing with our clients, “Here’s what we need to do. Here’s what we should have done.” We have an MSP, a managed service provider. They were about to apply an update that would’ve been helpful. So it was just bad timing and bad couple of things and some of the training wasn’t in place that needed to be in place. 

So we learned how to protect the house. We teach our clients to do the same thing. We really jumped into the AI game based on that. And that has been a game changer for us because I don’t think it’s hyperbole when I say there was electricity, there’s the computer, internet, iPhone, smartphone, and there’s AI. It will revolutionize the way we interact with each other, the way we do work, the way we do business. We’re just at the beginning stages of that. So that experience, that fraud experience helped jumpstart us into the AI world and do the same thing for our clients and get them ahead of the J-curve so that they can be incredibly productive in the coming years. 

Linda: 

I mean, it sounded like you were doing a lot of the right things, but it sort of exposed, I guess, a structure gap. And I’m sure a lot of companies have that and potentially an insurance gap that I learned a little bit about myself. So if you were to kind of look at each individual, they wrote a section of the book, what are some of the sections that are in the book and what are you covering? 

Brandon: 

I’d love to tell you about my favorite sections, which are every part of the book. So Catherine Slain, she is a former pediatric intensivist, so a child ER doctor. She wrote a chapter on leadership and talked about the importance of leadership and knowing how much to trust and when not to trust team members because they don’t have the experience and they don’t have the skills that they need for certain things. Jim, Rafa, and Matt all talk about KPIs. There’s another section on the talent engine and using behavioral profiles to make sure you get the right people in the right seats. A great chapter that is really interesting, and you’re probably not going to find in a lot of other business books about $50 million to $500 million, is the imposter syndrome where three of the authors talk about almost every successful person at some point deals with this imposter syndrome and thinks, “I may not belong in this room. 

These people are very capable. These people are really on the forefront, and I don’t know that I belong here.” So we included a chapter on that because we know that very successful people deal with that. And even if it isn’t the owner’s founders that we deal with, their executive teams are very much feeling that as they look around the room at the other executives and at other people at similar companies. And we have a chapter on AI, a full dedicated chapter on AI, which is co-authored by Jonathan and our AI specialist, Hudson Shank. Hudson is this unbelievably brilliant recent grad business and computer science double major who can translate business to the AI piece. And I’ll be out doing an AI presentation with him 9:00 AM in the morning. Claude or ChatGPT will have just dropped a new feature the night before. Somebody asks about it and he said, “Yeah, I was playing around with it last night and I found the X, Y, and Z and it also takes this and this.” He’s already formulated an opinion on it in the time that it’s been out for the 12 hours that it was out. 

So it’s a lot of fun to read these chapters and to hear the different voices from those different people in those different subjects. 

Linda: 

Yeah, no, that’s great. When you’re dealing with a CEO and they have a system that they feel like is working, how would you sort of approach it if you think they’ve maybe outgrown their current system, like there’s some holes and gaps that they really need to get addressed. What are the types of things that you would do in that instance? 

Brandon: 

Well, I’ll start by using the old analogy of the two guys who are out on the porch and they’re sipping lemonade, having a great conversation, and the one guy’s dog is laying on the porch with them, but he’s whimpering the whole time. So the friend says, “Well, why is your dog whimpering? He’s laying on a nail. Why doesn’t he get up off of the nail?” Well, he’s really old, he’s tired, and the hassle and the energy required to get up off the nail is just too great. So it’s easier to stay laying on the nail. A lot of CEOs for as capable as they are, CEOs, founders, et cetera, they’ve gotten to the point where they are just by sheer grit and sheer willpower. And they start to build teams around them. And at some point, they don’t recognize they’re laying on a nail. They don’t recognize that there’s a lot of pain here that they’ve gotten used to because in their mind, they’ve put in so much effort, so much energy to get to this point, thinking about doing other things. 

Sometimes doesn’t make sense to them. One of your previous guests talked about this, the founder burnout. What I like to talk about is we are an EBITDA expansion and founder relief engine. We help make sure you’re not leaving millions of dollars on the table when you exit at some point because you can’t run the business forever. So when you exit, we’re going to help make sure that the people that you care about are taken care of, that you don’t leave millions of dollars on the table, that you have a legacy, and we want to make sure in the process that you’re not burning out as the founder. So all of that to say, your question is, what do we do? How do we engage with them? The first thing we like to do is help the founder understand we’ve got to offload a significant portion of things onto your executive team. 

And what that means is we’re going to look at your executive team and we’re going to tell you one or two of them are probably not going to make it. 

That’s just what we find. And it’s not surprising if there’s a Greiner article, Harvard Business Review from the late ’90s, a guy named Greiner wrote this article that the same level of leadership that takes us to one level will not get us to the next level. And that doesn’t always mean the people. The people can keep up with it if they’re willing to step up and change and engage differently. But what we find is not every executive team member is willing to do that or they might be lacking a team member and not even know that that was the key that would unlock some things for them. So long way around the barn there, the first couple of things we do is we’re going to investigate and diagnose what’s going on right now, what does their strategy look like, what do their systems look like? 

The best way I can say it is we’re going to look at people, we’re going to look at plans, we’re going to look at processes, and then we’re going to look at platforms and see where the cracks and the holes are in those, but we’re going to start with the people first. 

Linda: 

That makes sense. I mean, when you usually tackle scenarios like that, are there sort of common denominators that you see across the board, like the systems or the workflows or whatever? Are you finding common denominators when you’re finding these holes and gaps? 

Brandon: 

Yeah. This is where I want to do the face palm emoji. When I first joined Autobahn, Linda, I thought, hang on a second. Mission, vision, values, that was old and tired in the ’90s, and we’re talking about that. And what I didn’t understand is that very successful businesses do not have their mission, vision, values nailed down. And the problem with that is that it’s really hard for everybody to get on the same page because there is no same page for them to get onto. So one of the key denominators that we find is there’s a lack of clarity around what are we trying to do, why are we trying to do it, and how are we trying to do it? 

So we’re going to start there. We’re also going to start with communication downstream. Every company we deal with has a communication issue. It’s not surprising. If you think about the lines of communication in a business, it’s the number of employees times that number minus one. So an employee group of 100, you have 100 times 99 lines of communication. So 9,900 lines of communication in that business. It’s an insane amount of information and communication to manage and no company does it well without some help. We are also going to look at the problems and pains that they’re having in that moment that revolve around people, right people right seats, plans, mission, vision, value, strategy, platforms, their technology, AI, et cetera, or their platforms or processes, sorry, processes or platforms. So we’re going to look at where they have holes in each of those and start to shore those up. 

Linda: 

So if I’m a CEO and I’m listening in today, do you have a couple of immediate takeaways that I should just go back and check on or do or whatever the case may be? 

Brandon: 

Yeah. The first thing you’ve got to do is evaluate your leadership team and just be real. That’s the first thing. Most CEOs, founders, et cetera, they want to reward loyalty and they’ve been laying on the nail and/or they’ve been laying on that nail and it’s hard for them to do a realistic objective look at their executive team. That’s where I would start. If I were a founder, I would really evaluate them and determine who’s going to make it and who probably isn’t. And we have a hack: If you’re wondering if the person is the right person, they’re probably not. 

And oftentimes the founder just doesn’t quite want to get in touch with that. Some other things that I would recommend, go to recession.com. That’s a URL that we own, recession.com, and take the full 20 question rock the recession quiz to see how ready you are for recession, because it will also expose other operating areas in the business. It will help you understand where you’re strong and where you’re not for good times and for recessions. And then we can talk about some of those areas. 

Linda: 

That’s a great URL. I don’t know how you got that, but – 

Brandon: 

Isn’t it great? Yeah. 

Linda: 

That’s amazing. That’s impressive. That’s awesome, Brandon. So I have some what I call Rapid Fire Questions. You can answer them in one to two sentences. Are you ready? Ready. The most dangerous debt a scaling company carries. 

Brandon: 

People. The wrong people on the team, the right people in the wrong seats, that debt will cost you. 

Linda: 

Great answer. Love that answer. And the one system founders hold onto, far too long. I’m definitely guilty of that. 

Brandon: 

Their gut. 

Linda: 

Love that.  

Brandon: 

I love intuition and I believe we should trust our gut. And when you get 20 million plus, you need systems, processes, and to involve other people. Yes, lead the business with your gut, but you can’t run the business with your gut. 

Linda: 

Okay. And a bigger lie, we’ll fix the process later, or we’re too small for that to happen to us? 

Brandon: 

Probably we’re too small for that to happen to us. You can still fix things later. It’s going to be painful, but thinking it’s too small to happen to us will be a bigger problem. 

Linda: 

Okay. And the biggest gap between those 50 to 500 million dollar companies in one word? 

Brandon: 

People. 

Linda: 

I knew you were going to say that. 

Brandon: 

 It’s not even close. It’s people.  

Linda:  

Yeah. So that’s awesome. So one chapter of Rock Your Business, every CEO should read first, like if they had to pick a chapter. 

Brandon: 

It’s probably the first chapter, Lead Like Lives Depend on It by Catherine. 

Linda: 

No, that’s great. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we close off? 

Brandon: 

Touching again on that people part of things, we are a strategic planning firm and Jonathan, Jim, Rafa, Hector, the consultants are very smart, very capable. They know how to look at KPIs, business metrics. Deb Dixon knows how to run a sales team and get the sales metrics right. And they’re very skilled, very capable at the systems of it. As I’ve touched on, if you don’t have the right people, then the plans, then the processes, then the platforms, you’re going to get in your own way and keep tripping. 

My background is in organizational leadership with a specialization in HR and OD. It’s the longest title for a bachelor’s that was ever created. I didn’t even tell you the full title of it. But even though we are really good at the systems and the plans and the strategic planning and the hard side of things, we know that it starts with the right people. Get that right and we can fix the rest of the things from there. 

Linda: 

That’s great. Awesome, Brandon. So I would love for you to share how people can get in touch with you, where to buy the book, maybe mention both books, that would be great, and to check out your website. So I’ll let you take it from here before we close.  

Brandon: 

So the website is autobahnconsultants.com. Autobahn’s spelled like the German highway, A-U-T-O-B-A-H-N, consultants.com. I’m [email protected]. Love to connect. You can find me on LinkedIn, Brandon Pipkin. You can buy either book at Amazon, Rock the Recession, Rock Your Business, pick up both. Then you have the Yin and the Yang, Audible. Listening to the Audible is quite fun actually of Rock Your Business because each of us read our own chapter pieces. So you’re going to hear South African, you’re going to hear Mexican accent, you’re going to hear Midwestern Nasal, which is what Jonathan calls his. You’re going to hear all the different accents of all the areas and cultures represented on the Autobahn team. And you get to hear it in their own words, which I think is really special. 

Linda: 

That’s great. Thank you, Brandon. Pick one system in your business today and apply it. You have plenty of takeaways here. If you like what you heard, please hit like, share, comment, or subscribe. Definitely connect with Brandon directly, pick up the book. That would be great. Thank you for listening to the B2B Brand180 podcast. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and you can reach out to mill, M-I-L-L. Agency (mill.agency). I’m also pleased to announce that we just launched the Brand180 Reality Check. There’s 12 quick questions to find out where your brand actually lands. So if you click on brand180.mill, M-I-L-L.agency (brand180.mill.agency), you can check that out. Thank you for listening today.

How ready is your brand for growth?
Take the free Brand180 Reality Check: 12 quick questions to uncover your biggest brand blind spots before your next stage of growth.
https://brand180.mill.agency/

In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Jonathan Slain, advisor to middle-market companies and co-author of Rock Your Business. Together, they unpack how Jonathan’s company fell victim to a sophisticated AI-enabled fraud attempt involving email compromise and voice impersonation, and what the costly experience taught him about cybersecurity, risk, and leadership.

Jonathan shares practical insights on strengthening payment approvals, evaluating cyber fraud and social engineering insurance, and keeping employee security training current as AI threats evolve. You’ll hear actionable strategies for protecting your business from AI-enabled fraud, identifying gaps in existing safeguards, and building a more vigilant organization without letting fear of technology get in the way of growth.

01:22 How an AI-Enabled Fraud Scheme Cost the Company $21,000
03:47 How AI Voice Spoofing Can Bypass Traditional Verification
12:24 The Four Safeguards Every Business Should Review After a Fraud Attempt
14:45 Cyber Fraud Insurance and Social Engineering Coverage Explained
16:20 How Much Cyber Fraud Coverage Should Your Business Have?
17:49 Why Ongoing Employee Training Is Critical as AI Threats Evolve
19:13 Rock Your Business: Scaling from $50 Million to $500 Million
21:11 Rapid-Fire Questions: AI Fraud, Risk, and Leadership

https://www.autobahnconsultants.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/slain

Jonathan’s Book:
Rock Your Business
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544551851

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand180 Podcast where we just don’t talk about growth. We challenge the assumptions behind it. I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency and your host today. Today I’m joined by Jonathan Slain. I’m very excited for him to come in today. He advises middle market companies in the $50 to $500 million range and beyond. He helps them scale through recessions, disruptions, and now a new layer of risk, AI-enabled fraud. So listen up if you really want to learn a few things today. So earlier this year, his own company was hit by a sophisticated fraud attempt. Bad actors got into their system, spoofed the voice of a trusted team member, something you wouldn’t expect, and convinced his team to send $156,000 payment for a client that didn’t exist. They recovered most of it, but the lesson still cost $21,000. And it changed how Jonathan thinks about risk, systems and leadership. 

He also has a new book called Rock Your Business, which we’re going to cover in another podcast in more detail, which he co-wrote with 21 members of his team and he now works with CEOs and leadership. So I’m really glad to have you here today, Jonathan. I think this story will resonate with a lot of industry today because we’re all facing this and we’re all just a little scared about what could happen with AI. So thank you again for coming in, Jonathan. Anything else you want to add that I may have missed? 

Jonathan: 

No, I love this opportunity to be on the show. The lesson that I wanted to talk about today cost me $21,000, so want to get my money’s worth out of being able to share it with the audience, that’s for sure. 

Linda: 

That’s awesome. All right, so let’s just call this out. So most companies don’t get burned by fraud because they’re careless. They get burned because of the bad guys that are using AI faster than leadership is actually keeping up with it. So I’d love for you to get started, tell your story a little bit. 

Jonathan: 

For sure. And I want to start out with defending us and just saying I don’t think that our AI policies were even weak. It was just that they were expired. They were just outdated with everything that’s happening in the market and all the changes and the transformation that AI is bringing for good and for bad. That’s what happened. But it was back in February. It was right after President’s Day. I remember taking the long weekend with the family and I was a little lax in checking our business bank accounts because of the holiday. The bad guys probably know that, so it’s a smart time to attack. But logged into check our bank accounts and the balance looked low. It was lower than I expected. It was actually four transactions that totaled $156,000 for debits that had gone out of our account. And so at first, the stages of grief that you go through. 

So at first there was some denial and I was looking for an explanation. I was like, “Well, maybe it was one of those double payroll months or maybe we had some special payment that went out that I forgot to account for.” But I immediately called our accounts payable person and just asked what was going on. And her response was that she had sent the four payments I had asked for over the past week, just as I’d asked for them. She was like, “I double checked it. You emailed me to send out the payments to that new vendor of ours.” And that’s that sinking feeling in my stomach hit because I was like, “Hmm, pretty sure we don’t have any new vendors who I wanted to send $156,000 to over the past week here.” 

So in digging through it, the bad guys had gotten into our system and the first thing that they did we learned afterwards was that they put my email in what the tech people call a sandbox. So I wasn’t seeing all the emails that were purportedly going out from me to the rest of the team.  

And so if you looked in my sent items, I couldn’t see any weird looking emails. It was only later that we figured out how they did that. And so these requests went to our team member and ultimately she asked the bad guys to verify their information. They sent her a phone number to call. She called it and it sounded like one of our other team members giving permission for her to make those transfers. And so I believe that they were using AI to spoof the voice of one of our other team members to make it sound as if they were approving these transactions since they were large amounts for our business at least. 

Linda: 

That’s amazing because this is the moment I think every CEO just dreads because in your case you have some solid policies, you set up sort of a backup to verify the spend, you set those limits on the payments. So it’s like your team did the right thing. 

Jonathan: 

Yeah. I mean that’s the thing here. We’re in the consulting business. We have these conversations with other teams all the time to make sure that we’re doing all the double checks before large amounts of money transfer. And we were just behind because the bad guys figured out a way to get ahead of what was at the time best practice for verification. In the aftermath of it, a couple of things happened. I called my insurance company and they were like, “Yeah, you should really have cyber fraud insurance with social engineering coverage.” And we were like, “Well, yeah.” 

Yeah, I mean, exactly. It’s a great time to share this with me now, but social engineering is the industry term we learned for when the bad guys create a situation, they socially engineer a situation to trick you into doing something that you wouldn’t have done otherwise. So basically, I guess the insurance form of protecting you from entrapment. And the insurance companies don’t love social engineering coverage, I don’t think. So it’s not like they’re front and center with offering it. They were able to find some small portion of our property insurance that had a $10,000 limit. So good news, instead of losing 156, it was more like 146. We were going to be able to get a little bit of a return there. But now we have plenty of social engineering coverage. And I recommend after going through this that our audience, your audience, carry five to 10% of revenue in cyber fraud insurance with social engineering. 

So that means for a $50 million business, they should really have at least five million of coverage because often these kinds of losses can be five, 10% of revenue. They can be big amounts fast. So talked to insurance, that wasn’t very fruitful, except now we have much better insurance than we did before. Talk to the bank next. And the bank was like, “Yeah, you really should have two people that have to verify every ACH going forward.” And it’s a product that the banks offer, a fraud protection product. And I think I had gotten an email from the bank and maybe even talked to my business banker and they had mentioned it in passing. But again, looking back, the bank mentioned so many different products, Linda. I feel like they’re always trying to sell me credit card protection or debit protection or this or that. And when it happened, I was frustrated that my business banker didn’t drive over to my office and shake me and force me to have that coverage, but we though we were so ahead of it. We were like, “Well, any large amounts, we have AP call and verify them. What else do we need to do?” 

Linda: 

Yeah. Did they recommend on the ACH just any size or only a high amount? 

Jonathan: 

Yeah, great question. Depending on the bank, they have different. Some banks will let you set a threshold so that transactions over 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, whatever’s appropriate for your size business need dual verification. I don’t believe that our bank allows that. So it is annoying that every ACH, even the ones for 50 or $100 need double verification, but now we have that. So now we have the better insurance, we have the better banking. And the third thing was that we have a great managed service provider that looks out for all of our computers and making sure that all of our security is there. In debriefing with them though, they were like, “Hey, we were two weeks out from a patch that would’ve prevented the bad guys from getting into your systems.” 

And the issue there is that if they do early patches, and they explained all this to me after, I didn’t really understand at the time, but if we do early patches, you would’ve had to renew your Microsoft license two weeks early and then you would’ve lost out in two weeks. And so yes, knowing what I know now, that would’ve been cheaper, but ordinary run of business, they usually don’t renew your licenses early. So we’re in a better place now. And then the last one is that, Linda, probably the place that I would take the most responsibility as the founder CEO is I don’t think we had done a good enough job of training and retraining our team on what was possible and just making sure we were all staying as vigilant as possible. 

Linda: 

Yeah, that’s a great point. I guess the uncomfortable truth is AI doesn’t just fake data, fakes people. So they can mimic and it’s becoming more obvious, especially in business and in these instances when they can actually mimic the voice of someone you trust. 

Jonathan: 

This happened back in February of this year. Now fast-forward, we’re seven or eight months later, it’s getting close to being able to mimic video in very realistic ways. So what happens when somebody thinks they’re on a video call with you and it’s spoofed AI Linda or spoofed AI Jonathan? That’s I think where a lot of this is going. So again, it’s just training the team to be able to think about what’s possible and evolve as quickly as the technology is and not be remiss about it. 

Linda: 

No, I mean in your case, it’s like the email looks real, the voice sounds real, the process is followed, the money’s gone before anyone knows there’s even a problem. So it can be scary. So it’s kind of like I think a big wake-up call for any business that’s out there. And I’m glad you were able to at least recover the majority of what you have. That’s the happy ending to the story is that we did file with the FBI like you’re supposed to. You give them all your paperwork. It was a very unsatisfying experience. You submit the paperwork to the FBI and after filling out an application or a form that takes a couple hours, you hit submit and it just goes, “Thank you for the form. You’ll probably never hear back from us.” It doesn’t say those exact words, but basically it’s like you might hear back from us in 12 to 16 weeks and you probably will never hear back. 

And Linda, it’s the craziest thing. We didn’t hear anything. Two months later though, I’m checking my bank accounts because now I’m every morning and there was about $120,000 was returned and we contacted the bank just to confirm. I wanted to go to the bank and just take it out in cash and just before they found their mistake, they had able to recover part of the funds. So between that and the small bit we got back from insurance, it’s a $21,000 lesson that I can share instead of. If it was still $156,000 loss, I’m not sure I could tell the story and still be smiling here. 

Linda: 

I can’t blame you. I mean, you think about it. I mean, I like the three points that you made. This is really important for businesses to listen in here. Because it was a multi-step process, it’s like one failure point during that approval process doesn’t slow down. It threatens the whole process for any sort of company. So if you have that gap that’s exposed, and that’s where I think AI gets a little scary, I think for companies that need to start to think about, okay, how are they going to protect their assets? How can we make sure nobody gets impersonated within the company? So you talked about the three fixes. Is there anything else that you think would be valuable to our audience? 

Jonathan: 

The three biggest are checking your insurance, checking with your bank, and then checking with your managed service provider about computer security. And the fourth one that I mentioned briefly is just training your team. I think for me, it’s like we make everybody take a course on a security when they first join the business, and then we promptly don’t do anything to keep up that training. Everybody here rolls our eyes when we have to go through and watch those terrible videos about the hackers and how to not open up and click links on phishing emails. But again, just what we’re trying to do is to have some fun with it. So instead of sending everybody links and then begging them to go watch the videos, we try to bring in lunch, have some fun with it, do the training together, make fun of the training together, but then take it seriously and just make some time to talk about what it looks like. 

A lot of our business is helping companies use AI for good. And so for us, it’s just part of our daily flow that we’re also thinking about what are different ways that the bad guys could be using it and how do we protect ourselves? But really, I think just trying to have some fun with it, Linda, making an open conversation at your company is better than just sending everybody a link and then asking them over and over and again if they’ve watched the required videos. That’s not what we’re really after. We’re really after a cultural change. We have to be even more vigilant because we are a pretty careful company. It’s just we are being careful about something about outdated ways of going about it. 

Linda: 

Yeah. No, great point. So you talked about the social engineering with the insurance. Some things I have never heard of, and I too, like you, am on top of my insurance. So that coverage, I think it’s good for the leaders out there to listen in, maybe take a look at that, see if you have a good solid cyber policy, see if that’s enough. If it’s not enough social engineering, it sounds like that’s an add-on. Is there anything else you think our audience should know when it comes to that coverage? 

Jonathan: 

The one easy thing to do for the audience would be just take your policy. I know mine’s close to 200 pages. We use ChatGPT, we use Claude, Gemini. I don’t care which AI model you like, just take your policy and drop it in and just ask it what kind of social engineering coverage you have, and then also ask it if it’s got any recommendations for you. And I think you’ll be amazed at the quality of the response. And then you can take that response and forward it to your insurance broker and just ask them what they think. And then it’ll tell you very quickly, it used to be that none of us. I’ll just speak for myself. I don’t know about your audience. Maybe they were reading the 200-page insurance documents that they got. Personally, I probably was a little lax going through every page, but now the great thing about AI is it just democratizes all of our ability to understand so much clear what is in those documents and just have more say in the process. 

Linda: 

Yeah, that’s great. I mean, it’s not necessarily about buying more insurance, it’s just buying the right insurance and finding out what they do have and don’t have, because I think that’s one of those things that business leaders may just buy without really completely getting a full understanding of what the coverage is. But I do love the multi-step approvals processes that you put into place even though they were in place, but having to make sure to put these processes in place so people are not getting tricked. You also mentioned a percentage, I think, of revenue, what you would recommend. Can you just go back to that a little bit? 

Jonathan: 

Yeah. In conversations back and forth with Claude, it’s about five to 10% of revenue is where I think companies should be for their cyber fraud protection. And then for social engineering, that could be a sub limit underneath your larger cyber fraud policy. And again, I’m not an insurance agent, so you should all talk to your brokers and figure it out. But I think, again, the reason for social engineering is that I don’t think most of us can know or can figure out or stay ahead of the bad guys. That’s what makes them the bad guys. I would like to ensure that risk that they will probably be a step ahead of me. And so no matter what they come up with next to trick me or to potentially trick the audience, that’s where I think insurance can be especially valuable to cover. 

Linda: 

Yeah. And to your point, I think training seems to be one of those things instead of, like you said, sending out an email, really having an intentional training process and collaborative training process so people are really learning and understanding how serious it can be. I mean, it’s an expensive lesson, right? 

Jonathan: 

Yeah. I think in your business, I think a lot of it is it’s more fun when you need to do a new creative brainstorming to probably get everybody in the firm together to bring in, to get Taco Tuesday and have everyone do a creative brainstorming together. And some of our other clients, they are sales-focused organizations and they like to do a power hour where if we’re going to do cold calls, let’s get everybody together. Let’s do all the cold calls together. Nobody likes doing it, so some shared misery can make it go better. And similarly here, nobody really likes doing their cybersecurity online training. So again, if we can do that together and get some cultural build out of it, I think that’s a nice way to move it forward and advance it. 

Linda: 

No, that’s great. And then inside your book, you really talk about this in more detail, which like I said earlier, we’ll cover that in another podcast, which I’m also looking forward to, but maybe you can just give us a quick synopsis of the book and what’s inside. 

Jonathan: 

Sure. So Linda, at the end of June of this year, we published Rock Your Business, and this is our second book in the Rock series. So we published Rock the Recession, and now we’re back with Rock Your Business. And it’s really what we’ve learned about how companies can grow from 50 million to 500 million. So for the companies in your audience that are either aspiring to get to 50 million or at 50 and want to go beyond towards 500 million, it’s everything we’ve learned over the past decade. And it’s not just me talking. I figured that would bore people. So we actually, our firm, Audubon, has 21 team members here, and we all got together and teamed up. So 10 teams and each team wrote a chapter in the book. And then I do some of the intros to the chapters just to bring it together. 

Linda: 

No, that sounds great. I’m sure that was probably a good exercise. So it’s probably a great team building exercise in addition to actually being able to publish something of value to the audience. 

Jonathan: 

Yeah, we had a lot of fun with it, and it goes back to a lot of people. We shared our bucket lists with each other at Audubon, and we discovered a lot of people had it on their bucket list to publish a book. And we were like, okay, well, that seems like one we could knock off together. So we were able to have some fun writing it. And then probably the most fun was that we decided to all go to the studio and read our own chapters for the audiobook. So if you’re more into audiobooks than you are a book book and reading it yourself, that can be a fun way because you can hear accents. You’ve got my flat Midwestern nasal accent that you get to enjoy. We’ve got some South Africans on the team, some Mexicans on the team. So a lot of different fun accents while you’re listening to Rock Your Business. 

Linda:  

No, that’s great. And like I said, we’ll cover that, so I’m looking forward to that. So I’d love to do some rapid fire questions. You can answer them in a sentence or two. 

Jonathan: 

Great. Let’s do it. 

Linda: 

Alright. The biggest myth leaders believe about AI-enabled fraud. 

Jonathan: 

The biggest myth is that they’re immune. So speaking for myself, I thought I was really ahead of it. It’s a lot of our business. I never thought the bad guys could trick me. So the myth is thinking that we’re immune to it. 

Linda: 

Yep. Okay. Awesome. The wrong fixed companies throw at a fraud and structure problem. 

Jonathan: 

Yeah, I think it’s not necessarily a process solution. So there are some process steps you can take, but I think this one comes back to the people. And so again, for me, it’s what could we do to better train our people and not necessarily just fix our process because I think that the bad guys will be able to keep attacking the process. We need vigilant people. 

Linda: 

Okay, great. And one question every CEO should ask before approving the next large payment. 

Jonathan: 

The question there is just, do I know what this is? Have I done my due diligence? And then I’m also a big fan, like I said, of using AI to help now as a double check. So using AI on your own side to double check things going out helps avoid fatigue. Because if you’re in the midst of approving lots of payments, how many good decisions can you make in a row? I think the AI can really help us because AI doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t have bias. It doesn’t have emotion. 

Linda: 

Yeah, that’s great. So Jonathan, this is a real shift. I think it’s because it’s not about getting paranoid about technology. It’s about recognizing AI and it’s changed the risk game quite a bit with everybody’s systems and training and accounting. So I would love for you to share how individuals can get in touch with you and also mention your book again. That would be great. 

Jonathan: 

Sure. Our website is autobahnconsultants.com, spelled just like the highway in Germany. So autobahnconsultants.com. And the book is Rock Your Business. It’s available on Amazon. And those are the two best ways to learn more about us and to get in touch. 

Linda: 

Awesome. Well, you heard it today from Jonathan Slain. There’s a lot of great tips in here. Definitely listen to it twice, three times to make sure you get everything out of this episode. And if you like what you heard today, hit like, share, comment, or subscribe.

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In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Chaz Horn, B2B sales expert and creator of the business case process. Together, they explore why companies may be losing revenue even when they have strong products and leads, where value gets lost throughout the buyer and customer journey, and how a structured business case can help close those gaps.

Chaz shares practical insights on replacing traditional discovery calls with value-driven conversations, aligning marketing and sales, and reinforcing value after the contract is signed. You’ll hear actionable strategies for improving close rates, shortening sales cycles, and creating more opportunities for referrals, upsells, and cross-sells.

01:55 Why Revenue Leaks Aren’t Always a Lead Generation Problem
07:32 Where Revenue Gets Lost Across the Buyer and Customer Journey
12:26 Aligning Marketing, Sales, and Customer Experience Around Value
15:24 The $200,000 to $3.9 Million Story
22:00 Not Product Service, It’s Customer Experience
23:55 Rapid-Fire Questions: Lead Generation, Sales, and Positioning

https://masteryofb2bsales.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaz-horn

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast, where we don’t just talk about growth, we challenge the assumptions behind it. I’m Linda Fanaras, the CEO of Millennium Agency and your host today. Today, I’m very excited to be joined by Chaz Horn. Chaz has actually been- he spent years studying one question: Why do good companies lose revenue even when they have great products, great people and a proven track record? What he found was surprising and most companies aren’t losing deals because of competition. They’re losing revenue because value isn’t being communicated at the right moments in the buyer’s journey. That discovery led him to what he calls the business case process. It’s a framework designed to create value before the sale, during the sale, and after the sale. And the numbers are really hard to ignore us. So we’re going to be talking about that today and ways to increase your close rate, shorten sales cycle, and dramatically provide higher customer lifetime value. 

Chaz, welcome to the show today. I’m excited to bring you on. It’s great to have you. 

Chaz: 

Linda, great to be here. What a great introduction. Wow, you said it so well. It’s so true. 

Linda: 

Awesome. Yeah, you sound great too. I’d love to just get started. So I’d love to call something out right away because most companies think that they have a sales problem, they think they have a marketing problem, they think they have a lead generation problem. But what if one of those are not actually the problem? What if it’s actually revenue that’s leaking out of the business long before the proposal is sent and long after the contract is signed? That’s what we’re seeing. They spend thousands of dollars on leads. They’re running all these nurturing opportunities, and we see it on the marketing side. And growth really can be hard and the issue is really value and worked with a lot of different industries. So what was the moment you actually realized the biggest revenue problem wasn’t lead generations or sales trading? It was like the lack of structure and the business case. 

Chaz: 

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I probably saw hints of it throughout my career. The big thing that leaders have to know out there is that if there’s a problem in the business, Jocko Willing said this so well in his book, Extreme Ownership, if there’s a problem in the business, it’s the leader’s fault. And we can get so caught up in doing things the way we did them yesterday and continuing to do that today because we did it yesterday and tomorrow. It’s like having blinders on and we miss out in seeing things peripheral. And so it wasn’t until I was talking with a client and we were going through the process and I was starting to be more flexible about my thoughts and whatnot because I can get so caught up because my process works, it’s proven, and my clients get results. But my client said something and I was a lot more flexible. 

And that’s one of the five pillars of resilience, flexibility. And they said, “Well, how about if we bring up a business case?” I’m like, “Okay, tell me more.” And I was very hesitant. “Well, we want to do this at the beginning and then over here. “And then I talked to another client about doing this and they said,” Well, how about here, here, here, put it. “And so as we started executing on the business case, I realized that it impacts them at the buyer’s journey. That’s when you’re first reaching out, lead 

Business development, marketing, which you do, Linda. And then they get into the sales process and talking with a salesperson and everyone has a discovery call. I mean, every one of my clients, before we get started, what’s your sales process? What do we do? Boom, boom, they have a discovery call. How do you differentiate yourself if every one of your competitors has a discovery call? I’m not going to go down this. I was going to go into the amygdala, but with the discovery call, there’s alarms going off in your buyers, your prospective clients, your prospect’s head about a warning because they’ve had bad experiences before. Do you ever remember a time where you had a good sales experience or far in between? So I though, okay, we’re not having a discovery call. We’re going to have, like if you’re an operational company, like one of my SaaS customers, they have an operational SaaS product. 

So they do an operational assessment. So that’s different, but it’s not just changing the name of something. It has to be something of value. So we’re not just putting icing on a rotten cake that looks beautiful on the outside, but when you get down into it, they’re like, this really means nothing. So we started implementing and executing and tweaking and I started realizing, oh my goodness, when you go to business development and marketing and start using the language of providing value with the business case, this is not about you coming in and us drilling you with a bunch of questions. It’s about providing clarity. Who doesn’t need clarity out there? Everybody. And what happens with clarity? You have confidence and with confidence, what do you do? You move forward doing what you should do. So throughout marketing, sales, using the business case, and then within the first meeting, I create a business case for people. 

I just did one earlier this week. They became a client to provide value on what’s the problem? What’s it’s costing them? What’s the cost of an action? And how do they get around this and what’s the ROI? So by putting this together, it gives them a framework where they have clarity. It’s in writing. And then we move from a short meeting into a longer meeting to analyze the business case. And then once they onboard, when they start using it, then they onboard the client and that leads to tracking them throughout the customer journey. So buyer’s journey to onboarding to customer’s journey. So it makes everything more seamless. And I know I use language and when something is different and people have been doing things a certain way for decades or a sales process, they’re like, “Well, what’s different about this?” There’s so much there. And so I appreciate the question so we can drill down deeper and really explain this for people. 

Linda: 

Yeah. And I think part of what you’re doing here is you’re providing some value. You’re putting this business case together for a prospective client, providing value for their own company to give them insight that maybe they’re not able to look at because they’re in their company. They’re busy doing their day-to-day, whether it could be even strategic long-term visioning or it could be just tactical things. But having an outsider, I think, come in and do that is helpful. So I know most organizations, they just assume revenue loss happens when they lose the deal. But that’s not really where it starts. It starts before the meeting. I know we’ve talked about this. It continues during the sales process. It accelerates even after the client signs. So the scary part is that most leaders don’t see what’s happening. And it seems like that might be another factor is that it’s through the whole process, to your point, it’s not just on the front end. 

Chaz: 

Yeah. Let me hit this succinctly. So with business development, I was dealing with another SaaS company. I work with a lot of SaaS companies. And the business development or SDR, BDR, whatever you want to call them, who is responsible for scheduling meetings, qualified meetings, he would schedule the meeting, 40% show up rate. Meaning if this person, his name is Greg, which scheduled 10 meetings, four people showed up. So something is broken with that process. And this is an area where revenue is leaking because you’re paying this person to reach out and connect with people and schedule meetings all that time to schedule those 10 meetings and four people show up. And those four weren’t really as qualified as they should be. 

So what we did for Greg is we instituted the business case. Back to what you said, Linda, and it’s a great point about value. If I would create a business case previously, I would charge them 500, $1,000 to create a business case. But with AI and with your AI agent taking notes, you can simply set something up in any AI, Claude, I use Claude projects. So it creates the business case for them once you have it set up correctly. So instead of six hours to create a business case, it’s done in five minutes just by copy and pasting. So Greg, when going through the. I haven’t unlocked the four deadbolts to schedule meetings. It’s the four deadbolts to get their attention, keep their attention, leverage their attention, schedule the meeting. And so what he did is he’s leveraging their attention. He would say, “Doug, what we do is we create a business case for you. 

It’s complimentary. This is going to give you absolute clarity on where you are, where you need to go. What are those roadblocks keeping you from getting to your goal? How to overcome those? What’s the ROI if you fix this problem? And what is the COI, the cost of inaction if you do nothing? 

And with this, you’re going to get clarity and with clarity, you’ll have confidence.” Oh, okay. Now they show up. They’re getting something of value, I mean legitimate value. And now they’re engaged in the process and they review it after the first meeting and the second meeting. So Greg, he went up to a 75% or a seven and a half out of 10 show up rate and they were more qualified. And now their sales cycle was reduced. And I like to use onboarding instead of closing, rather onboard someone than close them. 

So their onboarding percentage went up and it worked well. And the salespeople, their closing or onboarding percentage, again, as I mentioned, went up by 21% within this company. This is after it’s handed off from either marketing, this case was Greg, to sales. The stakeholders, decision makers, if you want to use a different word, they showed up engaged. They were able to leverage this business case to get more stakeholders into the meeting. And the cool thing about the salespeople is it took the pressure off them because they just saw it as different as opposed to, “Oh my goodness, I’m going to have to ask these questions.” And even if they don’t say that on the outside, on the inside in their brain, there is a fear. The flow is much more natural. It’s about one person with a problem, one person with a solution coming together to work congruently in alignment with one another so that they can solve the problem and you help them get to the place where they overcome their obstacles and reach their goals. 

It’s about transformation. 

Linda: 

Yep. Yep. No, that’s perfect. I mean, when we talk about the revenue leaks, we talked about four key areas. We’ve got marketing and business development. We’ve got the buyer’s journey, the sales process, the customer journey. It seems to me that all of those have to really flow pretty seamlessly or you could run into some problems. So because if your positioning isn’t attracting the right people and you’re creating friction before conversations actually start, if your buyer’s journey isn’t creating value and you’re kind of fighting to get that second meeting, and then your sales process isn’t continuously reinforcing the value, that’s based on your positioning, you’re extending those sales cycle. I know this is a little long. And your customer is more, your journey is more reactive because you’re kind of adjusting. You’re not really clear and concise on what you’re saying, what you’re offering, and how you’re bringing them through the journey, any one of those journeys. 

So I would assume doing that, you’re kind of leaving opportunities on the table. So would you say that that could be the case? 

Chaz: 

Big time. And you know because you, we’re kind of. I do sales and I understand marketing. By the way, when you have sales and marketing working, I don’t know why. So many companies, marketing and sales, they have this type of relationship and it’s totally fine. They’re two sides of one coin. So you know within positioning, and that’s so important. We know the language, but a lot of times people don’t understand what positioning means. It’s you put yourself in a certain place so it’s just obvious with your messaging, your copy, your content, with the words you use so that as soon as they hear you, they understand and realize, wow, they get me and they see you as an authority and this is something new and different. It’s like, wow, that’s different. 

Who else is actually creating something of value with just after one meeting? I’m not talking about something cheap, fluffy, because buyers are more educated than ever before and they can smell fluff a mile away, maybe 10 miles away, maybe even a hundred miles away. Yeah. So when you position with the business case, it provides value and it just makes the conversations go seamlessly. People need to know and understand how to position it and what to say and how to say it. That’s the thing I’m still tweaking and improving and whatnot. But all of the conversations I have when the business case is here at business development or marketing in the sales conversation with my clients and then the onboarding and then customer journey, which is huge because there’s a lot of revenue leaking there. It’s each and every step of the process here. This brings them together in one process that’s in alignment and then it succinctly moves from step to step to step to onboarding to customer journey. 

And then typically my clients with this process, with the business case, my customers see an increase in referrals, upsells and cross-sells by 30% minimum. That’s a conservative estimate. People don’t even realize they have a gold mine right underneath their nose. 

Linda: 

Right, right. True. We talk about the discovery call. So old hat is like, okay, let’s do a discovery call. But at least when you’re going through this process, you’re offering something of value. I mean, I think a lot of the prospects today, like you said, they’ve already done the research. They’ve compared the vendors. By the time they’ve got to you, they’ve consumed all this content. So when they get to you, it’s not like, “Hey, let’s have a discovery call.” If it’s more like, “Let’s get down to the bolts, nails and bolts or whatever, screws and bolts. Let’s do a business case for that first meeting. There you’re bringing value.” So you talked about introducing the business case from the first conversation that we had. So how does that change the dynamic between that first meeting and the second meeting? 

Chaz: 

Yeah, I love that question because it’s transformative. You set it up and so they enter the meeting, and I’ll just use a recent case. Sanjeev. Sanjeev, first meeting is going to be a half an hour. That’s it. Half an hour. And we’re going to create your business case. And I’m going to be redundant here on purpose. This is so you get clarity. And with clarity, you’ll have confidence. This is going to show you your obstacles, why they’re happening, how to overcome those, the ROI if you do, and the COI if you don’t. So this is going to give you that clarity that will give you confidence on what to do. And in between the first meeting and the second. So I’m already setting it up, the process for them, so they know in their mind there’s no hidden agenda. I’m just laying it right out. 

I’m going to email you this in between the first meeting and the second meeting. And then we’ll go deeper and analyze this in the second meeting. And that’s usually typically an hour. Then at the end of the second meeting, now it depends upon the size of the company, smaller or bigger. But if I have a company that’s typically somewhere between one to 20 million, typically it’s a two-call onboarding, two-call close. If it’s a larger company, then it may be a couple other meetings. But the thing is, let’s talk about some of the larger companies because many times you have a business development person. A lot of times it’s because of fear. I used to be there. I just put up a YouTube video about this when I was first getting into sales. You reach a middle level manager because you feel like they’re more along your level and the CEO is like, “Ah, that’s a waste of time.” The business case helps give you confidence to talk to the CEO. But even if you don’t get the CEO, the C level in the meeting, you set up the agenda so that the C level or the other stakeholders’ decision makers will receive a copy of this. Now you have a much higher percentage of decision makers going into the second meeting and they’re engaged. 

One of my clients, Max, said, it’s like, “Chaz, I never had this happen before.” I’m like, “What happened? I emailed the business case and I sent it to the C level. They weren’t in the meeting. And I had someone respond to this. It’s like, you know what? You really need to add this.” So they’re engaged in the process. When you have them have homework to do or skin in the game, they’re engaged. A lot of times people will set the process up and they schedule the next meeting or they don’t schedule a next meeting when they end a meeting, which is a huge mistake. And then people aren’t engaged like, “Oh, I’m meeting with Chaz today. He’s trying to sell me something.” They’re not engaged. You got to get them engaged so you differentiate yourself from everyone else and they see you as providing actual value because you’re speaking to the things they actually care about themselves. And you’re like, wow. I know there has to be neuroscience. There’s something about their own words being in black and white, talking about problems they’re facing and them reading it that just changes the entire dynamic of the conversation. People show up, as I said, more engaged. And the closing percentage, I was at 100% closing percentage this month, and then I had someone that wasn’t a good fit. This was for me personally. So he blew my 100% closing percentage this month. But it’s still better than it has been because of the business case. 

Linda: 

Right. You told me about, well, I call it the $200,000 to $3.9 million story example that you shared. And it was done through referrals, upsells, cross-sells. So you had actually implemented that business case and the numbers. So what are some of those things that you did to help that company? 

Chaz: 

Yeah, that’s amazing. This is where I took something from my past and I put it together a business case. I’m like, oh my gosh, they work together. So typical process, you go through this buyer’s journey, you go to onboarding, and then it gets handed off to operations depending upon how you’re set up. So once you onboard them, that business case becomes the scope of work and it gets handed off. So all the details, all the dos, don’ts, what not to do, what not do. So there’s not scope creep into what they do when they onboard. A lot of my clients struggle with that. And that’s a revenue leak, by the way, because you’re providing more services above and beyond what you said. And then it gets handed off at the onboarding. This is such a beautiful thing, Linda. They create, let’s just say you have. 

Which one of your company colors? 

Linda: 

Black and blue. 

Chaz: 

So let’s call it a blue pass. In this one company went from 200,000 to $3.9 million in 12 months. They had a blue pass. So now at the onboarding, and this, oh my goodness, this saves so much revenue. You at the onboarding are going to schedule proactively check-in calls to review the blue pass. In the blue pass, whatever your company color is, don’t get hung up with a blue pass. It doesn’t even have to be a color pass, just is a pass. It has all the information on where they were, what it was costing them, the mental anguish, the monetary costs in the business. Now you review it, let’s say every 30 days or every 60 days and say, John, okay, so this is where you were. Remember the problem there? Oh yeah, I wanted to forget about that. Well, we solved this, this, this. 

And you have this again in black and white within the blue pass or whatever you want to call the pass. And so it looks like right now we’re providing pretty good service. It might say an A minus, but what would you say? No, it’s right there. And the important point here, if you don’t communicate what you do for them, they won’t realize the value that you communicate. And so many businesses do this. So it’s not about following up. It’s like, “Hey, do you know someone else we could serve? Hey, how are things going?” Those are all questions. It’s like, “Hey, how are you today? Good, but busy.” It doesn’t go below the surface. This engages them because it has the information and they see progress and it’s tracking them. So when you review this, it’s like, yeah, I would say definitely an A minus or A plus. Now, if it’s a bad score, that’s okay. You can use this proactively to come back and have a corrective action. But typically when you follow this process, the customer experience is going to be up. 

And that’s the most important thing Gartner just did a pull. Not product service, it’s customer experience is what they care about. Now as they’re talking about, yes, you’re doing a great job. Now they’re in the mode to purchase more from you. John, we didn’t talk about this when we onboarded you. This is something we can do to help expedite the process. Would you be opposed to looking what this would be like in your company if you implement? No. It’s like, what are they going to say? I mean, they could say, “I don’t want to.” And that’s fine, but most of the time they say yes. And so now you’re putting together something for them and now you just had an upsell or a cross-sell depending upon what it is. And then the referrals is, “Would you be comfortable referring us to another business?” I mean, they’ve already given you all these good scores, of course. 

And then you just ask them, “Who do you know that you could refer us to?” Instead of like, “Hey, is there anyone out there that you, well, I’ll think about it,” and then nothing happens and you follow up and follow up. This makes sure with a proactive conversation, being professional, engaging them in a deeper, more meaningful way, that you talk about the things they care about and that’s overcoming their problems and reaching their goals. And they see you as someone who is up here because no other business. Every time I talk to a business, I never talked to a business that had a proactive way that was effective of following up after the onboarding. It was all reactive in firefighting mode. So this company went from 200,000 with upsells, cross-sells and referrals to $3.9 million. That was the most they did in 12 months, in a year. 

12 months later using this blue pass to 3.9 million because it engaged them on a deeper level and they saw the value that they were providing for them. 

Linda: 

That’s awesome. No, that’s great. Thanks, Chaz. That’s helpful. So let’s jump into what I call the rapid fire questions. So I have bad news for you because you have to answer these in one sentence. Maybe I’ll let you have two sentences. What’s the biggest myth about lead generation? 

Chaz: 

Biggest myth about lead generation is that you get leads from a demographic list. Only 3% of those are really in a place to be interested in making buying decision. 

Linda: 

Okay. Most common sales mistake companies make today? 

Chaz: 

Not having a proven selling process and selling system that their salespeople operate within, or if the founder’s selling, they don’t have a proven process. 

Linda: 

Okay. And then what’s costing companies more poor positioning or poor sales execution? 

Chaz: 

If you have poor positioning, then you’re going to generate leads. Leads that aren’t qualified. And you’re going to attract the wrong people and repel the right people. So it’s that, but you have to have the sales side. So I see those as two sides of one coin. 

Linda: 

Awesome, Chaz. So thank you. This conversation hopefully changes the way people think about revenue, right? We know that growth isn’t just about getting more leads and running them through the internal system. It’s actually about maximizing value at every stage of the customer life cycle. Before the meeting, during the meeting, during the sale, and definitely long after the contract signs, which is what we just talked about, because that seems to be a really important area to help businesses grow and sort of uncover those revenue links. So if there’s one thing you want our audience to take away? 

Chaz: 

It’s the little things done consistently that are killing your business and are causing you anguish. And if you don’t have someone that comes in and points out those little things, then you’re going to keep doing the same thing today that you did yesterday and tomorrow, and you’re not even going to know why you’re not reaching your goals. It’s going to seem like you can’t get through this ceiling. It’s those 1% changes that are made. And with someone from the outside speaking life into your business, you’ll know what to do and what not to do. And that not only will take your business to the next level, it will give you peace of mind as a business owner or founder. 

Linda: 

That’s great. So Chaz, I’d love for you to share with the audience how they can get in touch with you today. 

Chaz: 

Yeah, you can reach out to me on my email, [email protected]. First, last name, you see it right here. [email protected], not chaz.horn or chaz. That’s [email protected]. And just put Linda in the subject line so I’ll know who this is because I get lots of spam. Seems like I’m getting more and more these days with people being able to scrape my email and send me things, or just reach out to me on LinkedIn. And again, with LinkedIn, I had 82 connection requests just the other day, and I already saw today I have 15 and it’s early. With Linda, so I know where you’re coming to me from so I can connect with you. Those are two best places to find me. 

Linda: 

That’s great. So for our audience today, make sure you just don’t listen to what Chaz said today. Just apply it. You can take a look at your business, identify where value’s being lost and ask yourself where are things leaking. So definitely connect with Chaz. Reach out for that business case. I think you’ll find some huge value there. If you like what you heard today, please hit like, share, comment or subscribe. And if you need to connect with him as well, there’s also masteryofb2bsales.com, right Chaz? Is that also another website? 

Chaz: 

Yeah, that’s my website. I need to tweak it. I mean, people could go – Okay. 

Linda: 

Well, we will skip that. 

Chaz: 

Yeah. But if you go to my, here’s a complimentary gift. I wrote the book, the B2B Blueprint to Predictable Sales. So if I could give you the link, if anyone wants that book, it’s complimentary on me. And it walks through some of the things that we’re talking about today. It’ll be very helpful for you. 

Linda: 

That’s great. Okay, awesome. So if you’re ready for your own B2B Brand180 transformation, visit mill.agency or you can hit lindafanaras.com. We’ll see you at the next episode. Thank you for listening today.

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In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Aly Samaha, known as the Follow-Up King, who has generated millions in sales by re-engaging leads others had given up on. Together, they explore why quiet prospects are not necessarily lost deals, why traditional follow-up often fails, and how sales teams can revive opportunities already sitting in their pipelines.

Aly shares practical insights on non-assumptive language, handling common objections, and following up without sounding pushy or desperate. You’ll hear actionable strategies for reconnecting with prospects, creating value in every interaction, and turning overlooked leads into new revenue opportunities.

01:54 Why Quiet Prospects Aren’t Necessarily Lost Deals
03:09 Why Salespeople Give Up on “Dead” Leads Too Soon
05:18 The Three Reasons Prospects Ghost You
07:26 What to Send a Prospect Who Went Quiet Months Ago
11:10 Non-Assumptive Language: Following Up Without the Pressure
12:58 The Breakup Message That Gets Prospects to Respond
16:22 Handling Price, Budget, and “Let Me Think About It” Objections
20:11 How to Revive the One Deal You Thought Was Dead

https://alysamaha.com/linda

https://www.facebook.com/samsonsamaha

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Most people think a quiet prospect is a lost prospect, but my guest today has made two and a half million dollars in cash proving that is wrong. Most of it from leads other people had already given up on. He works one or two calls a day and that’s it. So stick around because by the end of this, you’ll have the exact words to send to the deal that went quiet on you three months ago. So welcome back to the show. I’m Linda Fanaras and today’s guest is Aly Samaha. He’s known as the follow-up king and Aly has done $2.37 million in cash over the last two and a half years working one to two calls a day and most of it comes from dead leads. It’s great to have you here on the show, Aly. 

Aly: 

Thanks Linda. 

Linda: 

So let’s start with the number because that thing is something people won’t believe. $2.37 million in cash, two and a half years, one or two calls a weekday, most of it from leads other people had already thrown out. So how is that even possible? 

Aly: 

Yeah, it’s simpler than most people want it to be. I mean, most sellers, they treat a quiet lead as a dead lead. They walk away and go buy a new one and you run an agency, Customer Acquisition Costs (CACs) are getting higher and higher every year. I do the opposite. I go back and talk to the people who already said yes to something and raise their hand to something. Something changed in their life or they got in another direction. I’d rather just go back to those guys and see if they’re still in the game. And most of the time people who don’t buy still have that problem. So that deal doesn’t need convincing. It needs the right message at the right moment. And if you do that once or twice a day instead of chasing 50 new strangers, you land at a better number. So it was good for me because I didn’t need to hop on as many calls and I could make more money and it’s good for the client who shouldn’t have been given up on. 

Linda: 

Yeah. And I think a lot of times we’re always focused, especially if you’ve got that sort of hunter that’s been doing sales, they’re always looking for the next shiny new object. So everybody else’s instinct is to go buy some more leads, which is what we just talked about. That’s a whole industry, right? What made you turn around and go back to those dead leads instead? 

Aly: 

That’s a great question. I actually came from an operations marketing background and founder background. So I knew that it cost a lot to leave stones unturned. And so somehow I had that owner mentality and I wasn’t the first person to realize it. It was actually the leaders within the organization that were like, “You have a lot of potential.” And I was like, “What? How do they know that?” And they were in the CRM seeing how much I was following up with people. So I just felt it was the normal thing to do. A lot of closers, what they do is, like you said, they’re always looking for more and the next shiny object and then next inbound lead. And I didn’t realize I was the only person with a squeaky clean pipeline. So I guess it’s just coming from a background where I know the pain of leaving stones unturned and applying that to the closer realm and being a professional and seeing that it pays off. 

It doesn’t pay off immediately. Some people were getting paid for me more than me in the first few months, but month three, month four, once that pipeline’s getting worked the way I was doing it, I was beating everybody in there. 

Linda: 

That’s awesome. So you use this line that I’ve heard you say, and I’d love for you to explain it. You say, “A prospect who goes quiet is not saying no.” So what are they actually saying? 

Aly: 

Yeah. So oftentimes what they’re saying is not right now or not like this. Or some people don’t even have a reference point of investing in themselves. Some people don’t have that pulsating pain right there. Let’s talk like a concrete example here. So somebody who’s maybe investing in career coaching and you’re pitching to them a 30K program that helps them land their desired role. They might be thinking of that as half a home and no thanks. But the moment that they have a job loss pending, they have a high stake or they have a job interview with Facebook that they’re completely unprepared for that pays 400K, then it starts making sense. I’m paying 10% in order to land that thing with a high level of certainty. Okay, now it makes sense. So oftentimes it’s just not the right time. And that’s not BS. Sometimes it’s just really the case. 

And so if you can stay top of mind in their world and a great mentor of mine said, it’s not time that kills deals, it’s lack of proximity. And I love that because it’s true. Some deals take time because whatever reason, it’s not fitting their world right there right then. And so what I’ve realized is if you can remain top of mind in their world, and if you can be coming from a place of service and value provision, people will thank you for how much you follow up. But if you’re coming from a place of need or if you’re coming from a place of pushing or making the other person feel like they’re not in control or that’s not going to work. So there really is a human element to it that you have to come from a place of service and really care and really care to collaborate with that person to get them to their goal. 

If they feel that, you’re good. But if they feel like you need the deal more than them, it’s not going to work. So oftentimes it’s just not the right time or the sense of urgency is not there or the logistics are not there at the moment or so many other things. Sometimes a lot of people tend to think, ah, they’re BSing or whatever. Yeah, sometimes they are, but many times they’re not. 

Linda: 

No, that’s great. Because you’ve said in the past, there are like three reasons anyone ever ghosts you. So only three. So I’m really curious, what are those 

Aly: 

Three? I would say there’s three rules that people violate. They make a prospect feel stupid. They miss something and nobody likes to feel stupid. When somebody feels stupid, they’re like, okay. They have the luxury of ghosting you. It’s not a phone call where you have that tight frame going on. Fall off is really, you got to make sure you’re following basic human principles. The other one is they feel trapped. They feel cornered. And nobody likes to feel cornered. People like to feel in control of their decision or they feel pushed. So if somebody feels pushed, what does that generally say that you need the deal more than they do the moment they smell that commission breath like most people say, or they sense that, then you lose a deal. And I think that’s the number one thing that closers mess up because you asked that great question at the tail end. 

And why? Because let’s be real, closers are competitive. Closers are dealing with a competitive environment within the organization where they want to be number one top dog, where they sometimes treat a prospect like a prospect and not a human. And so at the end of the day, if you’re operating from that mentality, then you seem like you need the deal. And sometimes it’s not because you need the money, but because you need the recognition from your organization or your management or your team or your pod or whatever. And so something one of my mentors taught me that was outstanding was it’s okay to be married to the process, to be outstanding every single day and everything that you do, but be detached from the outcome. If you do that, then you’ll be outstanding, but you won’t be needy. And guess what? If you’re not needy, you’ll be even better. 

So a lot of people think, oh, if I let go of the outcome, I’m going to perform weaker. No, you’re not because you’re married to the process, you’re married to the controllables, you’re married to the things that you can do to move the deal forward. And if you focus on those things, you’re going to get what you want and you’re going to get the frost of what they want as well. 

Linda: 

Perfect. Yep. Absolutely. So let’s just jump into the tactics a little bit. Someone listening has a deal that went quiet like three months ago as an example. So they’re going to open their laptop right after the episode. They’re going to go, okay. What do you think is the first message that person should send to that prospect? So what would those sort of words actually be along the lines of those words? Yeah, there’s 

Aly: 

A few good ones I like. One of them is, are you still looking to goal? Are you still looking to goal? Have you found a solution to goal or are you still looking? That’s another way of putting it. You can make it humor. Some people respond better to humor. Dang, did I get ghosted here? But the best one, if it’s been an extended period of time, a few months would be, are you still looking to go? It’s so simple, but it works. And it’s so simple because if they’re not still in the field of looking for solution, then there’s no conversation to be had. But oftentimes what is like somebody who doesn’t go to the gym or doesn’t sign up for a program or doesn’t get support, guess what happens? Their situation just continues the way it was. And guess what that means for you as a closer? 

You’re in a better position because now they have more weight towards the fact that they’re unable to solve that problem on their own. So when you’re coming back to them from a place of service and curiosity, you have likely more urgency coming from their end and more of the seesaw tipped in your direction because that weight of time and lack and inability is just evident by the passing of time and the lack of a solution. 

Linda: 

A lot of people, salespeople might be just like, “Hey, I’m just checking in.” And I think because everybody sends it, it feels sort of harmless, but it doesn’t work. 

Aly: 

The problem with that is it gives the other person nothing. It has no value. There’s no reason really to reply. And it sounds like you need something, not that they need it. So it’s you kind of tapping them on the shoulder to ask where your deal is. And that doesn’t work. If somebody is conditioned to open up a message from you and get zero value, they’ll ignore it. And guess what will happen when they see it again? They’re just conditioned. There’s no value from this person. So you want to make sure that you delete that from your lingo because it offers zero value. And if your follow-up doesn’t realign them with a goal, with a simple question like the one I shared, are you still looking for? Or client testimonials just came in today. Remember how you’re telling me that you’re really concerned about interviews? 

Here’s somebody who screenshot and she bombed the interview. She thought she bombed the interview and she was the number one pick for the organization, her dream company. Here’s the funny situation where she had a back and forth with the client success manager and was sharing that experience. That’s it. Is that valuable? Yeah. Why? Because you’re showing that person something that first of all is going to make them realize that the opportunity is there and it’s possible and that their fear can be overcome. And that person communication with the CSM shows that we’re people that can help people. And it shows raw ability to share something that’s recent, that’s timely, that’s relevant. That’s value. It doesn’t have to be a grand slam 90 page PDF that walks them through every part. It’s not it. A lot of people just overthink follow. It’s really just about how would you talk to a friend? 

And it’s relevant, it’s timely, and it’s related to our conversation. By the way, I remember a conversation and that’s coming from the fact that I’m bringing up something relevant. 

Linda: 

That’s probably helpful. Yeah. 

Aly: 

Yeah. 

Linda: 

You talked about what I call non-assumptive language. What is that exactly? 

Aly: 

When you’re communicating via text, you want to make sure you’re always starting something off with, not even sure if this is relevant. Immediately what it does is lowers resistance levels. So now what you can do is, not even sure if you’re interested, Linda, but our CEO who has one, two, three accolades and has helped people get outcome that you’re looking for is offering a free ask me anything where you can hop on again. I know it’s a little bit of last minute, but is that something you’d even be interested in? If you are, let me know and I’ll pop over the link so that you can join. It’s so non-assumptive. It’s a non-assumptive sandwich essentially. You what I mean? Start non-assumptive, end non-assumptive. Middle value packed. If you can do that, my God, it’s just like if you give them a way, it’s a very interesting psychology. 

If you give somebody a way out of your community, they step in. It’s unbelievable, especially in texting. It’s like, I’m not even sure if you’d be interested or not even sure if this is still relevant for you, not even sure if the timing makes sense for you. And then make it a grand slam offer that’s relevant to them. And then close with, throw links your way if it’s not relevant, but just let me know if you are and I’ll get you in and make sure that our CEO answers your question first. How many people are going to say no to. And you know what? Even if they don’t respond to that, you’ve reminded them of who you are and the value you can provide to them. So you don’t always have to get a response to every one of your questions, but just reminding them who your CEO is. 

Just reminding them that you can help the problem. You’re staying top of mind in their world, and that has added value to your conversation. 

Linda: 

I’d love to talk about that breakup line. If there’s one breakup message, can you maybe walk me through that a little bit? 

Aly: 

One of the campaigns that I ran for what, million a month companies, well over eight figures, and that got a 40% reply rate, which is insane. I didn’t even know that until somebody on the team, marketing team was like, “Hey, you want to jam out on a new one? The last one got four.” I was like, “What? 40%?” And the reason why is people responded mostly to the first question, which was what I shared with you as a really good question, which is, are you still looking for? Or the last question, which was, “Hey, I’ve reached out a few times. Haven’t heard back. Is this something that’s been pushed down the priority list for you? If so, just let me know and we’ll close your file.” Or, “Hey, is this not a priority for you? Should I close your file or do you still want to have that conversation?” So you can start with that where they’re like, “Okay, I have a way out. Let me lean back in.” Or, “Is this still relevant for you or should I close your file?” Either way, you’re giving them a way out of the conversation, which is a very, very, very effective way to get people to lean back in. 

Because the person who’s willing to walk away, simple walkout strategy. Since I don’t know how far back even Harvard negotiation project getting to yes, FBI, anybody who’s willing to walk away from a deal is usually the one who’s the one in control. And it’s not about acting. Again, a lot of this stuff does really have to come from, are you really somebody who is not needy? Are you really somebody who wakes up with gratitude? Are you really somebody who comes from a place of sincerity? Are you really somebody who believes in abundance? And when you operate the way I operate, which is there’s plenty of deals in the pipeline, then you actually believe that. 

But if you’re just salivating for the next inbound lead that’s going to come by somebody who’s controlling your pipeline and paying for, you’re just not going to operate from that same. I operate like I literally have a swipe file of follow-up stuff, and I know I can go on for a year and I’ll still be coming from a place of value. So really rewire yourself to believe that because if you fake it, it’s not going to work. 

Linda: 

Yeah. I like coming from a place of value. I think that that’s key for me. Checking in, how’s everything going? Blah, blah, blah. 

Aly: 

It doesn’t feel good, right? Let’s go back to a simple principle. If something doesn’t feel good to you when you send it off, it’s probably not good. You’re a human. You have an emotional guidance system. How do you talk to a friend? If it feels like you’re not talking to a friend, it’s probably weird. A lot of people get off the call and they’re damn good at it. I’m not the best closer. I’m just not. I know that for sure. I’m good. I’d say maybe in the top 10% maybe, but I’m not the top 1%. I don’t think so, at least. Some people might argue against me. But when I get off the call, I maintain that sincerity and authority. And some people just get weird. And I don’t know why. It’s a very interesting dynamic, but they get weird. And it feels like maybe because they feel like, “Oh, I didn’t get it on the first call. 

I’m on defense now.” You are on defense. That’s pretty damn true. In follow-up, they are more in control of the deal than you, for sure. They are. You are on defense. If you don’t play defense well, you’re going to lose. So you got to know how to play it in a human way, just like a friend who’s going to ghost you if you make them feel stupid, push, cornered. These guys are the exact same. There’s no difference. 

Linda: 

Yeah. Let’s play a little game here. So let’s say somebody says to you. I have a couple of objections, so I want to just kind of walk through those. Number one, like, oh, it’s too expensive, which everybody has heard, or it’s out of our budget. Or it might be something like, let me think about it. So what would your responses be? 

Aly: 

It’s very similar to on the call, except I break things down. Oftentimes what people do in follow-up and text is they try to get everything done in one massive paragraph, which doesn’t work. It’s like ping pong. Deal with one thing at a time. So first thing is just like on a call, I don’t argue. I agree and get curious. At the end of the day, totally fair. Some people ask compared to what you could ask, is it more about this being outside of your budget or you don’t see the value? So it’s isolation to some degree. You got to find out a little bit more clarity what they mean by that. And if you’ve done a good job on the call, you know their logistical situation. You know if finance is actually a barrier. You know if value is a barrier. You know if certainty is the barrier. 

So the most important thing is don’t get defensive. You get clarity first because if you’re solving the wrong problem, doesn’t matter how good you are, you’re not going to solve it. It’s a waste of time. And they could totally ghost you and it’s over. So I get them talking about the cost of where they are. So for example, I could say, yeah, finances aside, is this something that you feel would get you to your goals? Finances aside, is this something that will help you get that six back in the next three months so that you can be on the beach and feeling confident? Finances aside, is this something that you feel would help you land that data role that you’re looking for? Finances aside, is this something that’s going to help you land on top gigs where you can speak on stage and find it? 

Yes. Why? So I can ask why. A lot of these things, you’re just building up the yes factor once again. If they’re realigned with their goal, then you get on the side of collaborating. So diffuse, agree. Diffuse DAC is what I always use. Diffuse, agree, collaborate. Diffuse, not a problem. And I get some clarity. Agree. Is this something that you still want to do? They’ll say yes. If they don’t say yes, they’re in no state. If somebody’s in no state, they’re in fight or flight. If they’re in fight or flight, you’re not going to close them. Whether it’s on a call, especially in follow. Then collaborate. Awesome. So you really want to do this, but it’s just about the finances. Yes. All right. So how about this? And no pressure. Again, you’re being non-assumptive. Why don’t we at least explore what’s possible from a financial perspective so that if there’s a way forward, we can take that. 

If not, at least we know what’s possible. Sound fair enough? They’ll say yes. Most of the time they’ll say yes because you’ve isolated. And then let me think about it. Is almost always a smokescreen. So that one’s totally different. So when they say that, of course, they should get some though. Or you just give them a. And they say, just so I know everything, is it price? Is it timing? Is it your partner’s not on board? You should know a few things that might make them think. And this usually comes up on the call. It doesn’t come up on fall off. So this is more of a call thing. So it’s always a smokescreen almost just like partner. So usually, unless in your case, actually there’s a lot of B2B. So in B2B, many times a partner’s required. So let’s talk think for a sec. 

So think, you want to find out what of three main things, price, timing, decision, making capability is it. If you isolate one of these, it’s usually finances, right? Or certainty. And so what you do then is you realign. Or if it’s timing, then again, it’s usually tied to certainty because is it about that lack of priority or do you literally not have the time allotted to do this? It sounds like you’re not going to get any more free time. Again, you just want to isolate and deal with it based on what the real situation 

Linda: 

Is. So I have a last one for you. So somebody listening has one deal, they’ve just been bugging them, right? The one that they thought they were going to close and then it just went dead. Should they do anything about it this week? What are your thoughts on that? 

Aly: 

It’s really simple. There’s a way forward. So it’s usually not the one that requires a lot of thought. Step into human. Step into the fact that you can only screw up a deal if you break one of those rules that I mentioned and send a short human message. Not a polished long paragraph and not just checking in. I hope you’re taking notes so far. So the light one that gives them the easy way back. So, “Hey, did I get ghosted? Or are you still looking to outcome?” And at the end of the day, worst case is stay zero. What have you lost by following up? But if you ask one of those two things, and some people use memes to kind of break the. I’ll tell you a funny story. There’s a gentleman that I was following up with. I am not joking. He literally was saying that he got busy doing his taxes. 

And I said, “George, what’s going on? Are you doing taxes for the whole town?” And then I swear, I swear. And then I said, “Man, is your LLC structure that complicated, George?” Things like that cracked him up. And you know what happened in the end? He actually had a complicated LLC structure and he explained to me. He’s like, “Yeah, I have three LLCs.” So humor works really well. As long as it doesn’t make him feel stupid. So you got to be smart with how you follow up. And you should have built rapport on the call. If you’re an a-hole and you didn’t do a good job on the call and you violated one of those principles on the call, you might want to have one of your team members step in because you violated the rapport and just say, “Hey, I heard the conversation didn’t go so well with. 

We come from a place of service and at the end of the day, don’t want something permanent here in the relationship. So Aly really cares about you, wanted you to make sure fully taken care of, doesn’t want to have his ego prevent you from getting what you’re looking to do. Would you want to hop on? I heard that barrier for you was X. I’m really good at helping solve that problem.” Something like that. Sometimes you violated one of those principles already, so you want somebody else to kind of step in and solve the problem for them, but you shouldn’t do that. At the end of the day, we need to raise our standards as sales professionals to be number one service providers. 

Linda: 

Yep. Those are great points. So Aly, this was great. So I’d love for you to tell people where they can find you and what the follow-up king is. 

Aly: 

Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me on Facebook, facebook.com/samsonsamaha, S-A-M-S-O-N, Samaha, S-A-M-A-H-A. If you want to follow, I give all of my best stuff away there. Also, I’ve done something special for Linda and anybody who’s listening here. My name, A-L-Y-S-A-M-A-H-A, alysamaha.com/linda, L-I-N-D-A. You’ll get a free audit, which means that you’ll be able to find out exactly how much money is leaking in your pipeline down to the dollar. And you’ll also get the opportunity to submit one deal that’s bugging you, and I will personally respond within 40 hours telling you exactly how to overcome it. So golden opportunity for you, that deal that’s bugging you, for me to handle it personally, done for you. Do it, submit it, and I will personally hand write every single one of those. And yeah, at the end of the day, what I do personally as an offer is I work with organizations who are looking to leave zero stones unturned. 

So B2B high ticket organizations who are looking to literally give me their entire CSV, downloaded any dead leads, and I work them. I guarantee outcomes with that. So at the end of the day, if you want zero stones unturned in your pipeline and you want the ability for me to literally hand write everything all the way back to closer call booked or deal closed, I do that as well. I really appreciate you, Linda, for having me on today. And I hope people submit this audit and get my support because at the end of the day, nothing makes me happier than seeing people revive something that they thought was dead, especially organizations when their eyes light up. And I really, really am grateful for all the leaders in my life who recognize this ability that I had before I did, because that shows leadership. When you can recognize, but it also shows that they’re smart because a lot of people are just chasing this idea of more and it’s one of the most costly things, especially in this day and age. 

Customer acquisition costs are going up and all of these things are going up. So you want to find out what you already have at your disposal because they’re way closer to yes than somebody who needs a whole bunch of new touch points and warming up and has a lot more noise in their world than they did once they contacted you a few months ago. 

Linda: 

That’s great. Awesome. So there we have it. Thank you, Aly Samaha. Thanks for coming on today. It was a great episode. And for our audience of a deal sitting in your inbox that you just gave up on, go find it before you do anything else and definitely connect with Aly. So again, I’m Linda Harris from the B2B Brand180 Podcast. I’ll see you next time and make sure you check out the comments. And if you like what you heard today, hit like, share or subscribe. And don’t forget about your 60-second revival audit at alysamaha.com/linda. 

How ready is your brand for growth?
Take the free Brand180 Reality Check: 12 quick questions to uncover your biggest brand blind spots before your next stage of growth.
https://brand180.mill.agency/

In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Jenna Hannon, founder and CEO of Hatter, an AI search agency helping brands increase visibility in Google and AI-generated answers. Together, they explore how AI is reshaping search, why traditional SEO strategies are no longer enough, and what businesses need to do to stay discoverable in the new era of AEO.

Jenna shares practical insights on the differences between SEO and AEO, building content that AI platforms actually cite, and measuring success beyond traditional search rankings. You’ll hear actionable strategies for improving AI search visibility, creating content that aligns with how buyers search today, and positioning your brand to compete as search continues to evolve.

01:02 Why Brands Are Losing Google Traffic in the AI Era
01:32 SEO vs. AEO: What Most Agencies Are Getting Wrong
02:14 Building Content That AI Search Actually Recommends
03:45 How AI Chatbots Are Changing the Customer Journey
08:32 The First Steps Every CEO Should Take with AEO
11:34 Measuring AEO Success and Staying Ahead of Competitors
12:10 How to Audit and Improve Your AI Search Visibility
13:10 Rapid-Fire Questions

https://www.gethatter.ai

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennahannon/

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Some brands are watching their Google traffic drop by half, not because they got worse, it’s because it’s the way people search today, and most companies haven’t really caught up. So my guest today built her business around this exact shift. So stick around because we’ll be covering how to optimize for the new Google. Welcome back to the show. I’m Linda Fanaras. My guest today is Jenna Hannon. She’s the founder and CEO of Hatter. They are an AI search agency that helps brands get found first in Google and in AI answers. She was the first marketing hire at Uber Eats and has worked as a fractional CMO from Multisensor AI, Form Kitchens. Hi Jenna, welcome. It’s great to have you here. I’m excited to dive into this topic. It keeps coming up and I think people are really confused, so today we’ll be able to clear up a few things. 

Jenna: 

Thanks, Linda. Glad to be here. 

Linda: 

Yeah, great. So let’s get started. Some brands are seeing Google traffic drop by up to 50%. So is that real and what’s actually driving that? 

Jenna: 

Yes, it is real. So we’re seeing it across the board with clients. We’re seeing both impressions drop significantly and actual traffic to your website. And what’s been impacting that is AI. So if you’ve been on Google lately, you’ve probably noticed that more of the real estate in Google has been taken up by AI overviews, which means that all of the listings are being pushed down, which is going to impact both your impressions in Google search and your click-through, which is traffic. 

Linda: 

A lot of agencies today claim that they do AEO, and you said most of them are just SEO agencies with a new label. Can you explain to the audience what the real difference is and what do they have to do to really be providing AEO? 

Jenna: 

Yes, absolutely. So we are actually an AEO native agency. So we started a couple years ago during the shift. We weren’t an SEO agency before that, but most agencies in the space are SEO agencies that have now rebranded to doing AEO or answer engine optimization, which is helping you show up in AI. It is slightly a different game. So when we do an audit, we will see that brands that have been dominant in SEO for years are now not showing up compared to their competitors in AI search. So the strategy of how you show up is different. And let me say a few concrete things of what these SEO agencies were doing in the past. So a lot of SEO agencies were doing website technicals. So a lot of the package that you’re buying from an SEO agency is they’re going to come on my website, they’re going to do the technicals, they’re going to do on-page optimizations. 

A lot of those best practices no longer app, especially when it comes to website technicals. Of course, your website still needs to load and there’s still the basics, but most of AI search is about content. And so the content on your website is what’s being picked up. It’s what is training the LLMs and that is now what’s being cited in AI answers. So that changes your SEO strategy fundamentally. If your package from your agency is all about website technicals and on-page optimization, that’s actually not going to work towards AI search. So you want an agency that knows how to build a strategy and the tactics towards AI search, not SEO. 

Linda: 

Right. That’s a great point. So what would be a couple of those tactics? 

Jenna: 

Yeah, on the AI search side. So as I mentioned around content, so what we see in the data is when we do an AI visibility audit, so this is saying, okay, how often does your brand show up in AI? So we’re basically running simulations and we are typing in the prompts and we’re doing this thousands of times to see how often your brand shows up compared to your competitors. What we see is that the citations are often coming from first party content. What that means is your website. So I think there’s a lot of talk right now about all of the different places that you need to show up in order to move the needle in AI search. I hear a lot about Reddit or LinkedIn, but really we see that websites are showing up in industries and competitor sets. So the content on your website is the foundation. 

So if your website is not teaching LLMs who you are, what you do, why you’re better than your competitors, you’re likely not going to show up in AI answers. So the first step in terms of tactics is building out all of that content on your website and making sure that it’s consistent in messaging. And it’s no longer those SEO tactics where it’s very long pages targeting keywords. The content needs to be very specific about your business. So the very first thing we do tactically with clients is we build out a resource strategy of what content needs to exist on your website that will be recommended in the AI answers that you care about. 

Linda: 

So that’s a great point because I’ve been doing this for a while. So on the SEO side, it used to be just implement keyword or whatever the case may be tags and things like that. And then it went to sort of long form and then it sort of backed off into not so important. And now we’re kind of back into, it doesn’t sound like it should be long form from what I’m hearing. It sounds like it should be very specific. So can you differentiate for the audience what is really important? Is it being specific to the offering and then including some of the key factors that AI is looking for or is it still long content but it just needs to be adjusted? 

Jenna: 

It’s more the latter of what you’re saying. So it’s building out content that’s commercial. So when I say commercial, it’s educating both the LLMs and your prospects exactly what you do along that buyer journey. So let me give you an example of this. A common piece along the buyer journey is comparing you to your competitors. So a piece of content that you likely want on your website is actually comparing you to your websites on all the things you know that your prospects care about. That could be feature level, it could be pricing, it could be differentiation in positioning, but that is a commercial request that someone is making in ChatGPT when they are researching a solution that you want to show up in. 

Linda: 

Got it. Okay. Marketers don’t understand a lot of different things like the AI chatbots or ChatGPT or Perplexity and Gemini and how all these things actually interact with SEO. And I don’t know if there’s a way that you can share how that process might work on the backend. 

Jenna: 

Yeah, such a good question. So there still is an SEO component. So when you were typing in a question to ChatGPT, for example, that LLM is still likely going to run a real-time search. So 60% of the time when you’re asking ChatGPT something, it’s going to do a real-time search to come up with an answer. The rest, so the other 40% is the model being trained every three to six months. So what information is on the internet when the model is trained is going to show up in the answer. So there’s still an SEO component to AI search. The difference is the real-time search is going to be very specific. The way that users use AI is different than how they use Google. So when you go to Google, you’re used to typing in a keyword. It can be fairly broad and you’re getting a list of links that you’re going to go through. 

When you’re in AI, when you’re going to ChatGPT, you’re asking something much more specific. It’s not keyword-based. And so you want to make sure that your content is answering all those specific questions that your user has throughout the journey because now what they’re doing, instead of going to Google and going through a list of links based on a keyword, they are now going to ChatGPT and doing full research in a conversation with an AI chatbot. 

Linda: 

That’s a great point. So if you actually had five minutes with a CEO who had zero AEO knowledge whatsoever, what would you tell them to do first? 

Jenna: 

Absolutely. So the steps of what they should do first is actually quite easy. The first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to go to an AI chatbot and you’re going to tell it your website and you’re going to say, “What are the top commercial questions that my prospects likely have that they would type into ChatGPT? Give me 50 to a hundred of those questions that my prospects will likely ask about my solution or my business that would surface a result that would recommend a company or a brand. Once you have those list of prompts, you’re going to know your business better than anyone else. So you’re going to go through those prompts and say, we know how our customer buys. We’ve been in business for a long time. We understand our customers. And you’re going to go through that list and make sure it’s actually the right questions. 

Once you have your final list, that turns into your content plan. You need to make sure that the content you develop for marketing answers those questions and you want to answer every single one of them. It can start with content on your website, but it also needs to extend to all of the content that you create. So we’re kind of back to marketing 101. We’re down the customer journey. I actually like this better than SEO because there’s not a lot of hacks. You’re not trying to mine for keywords that are so far from your core business. You’re actually just going back to your business and educating your users. I would say the big thing that we find makes the most difference in once you are executing that content to answer those questions is making sure you are very clear on how you are different or better than your competitors. 

So this is back to marketing positioning. So you need to be very clear and very consistent because AI answers are very good at understanding industries, getting into niche industries, and then recommending based on the differences between the competitors in those industries. 

Linda: 

That’s great advice. And I do have a question. Are you telling the audience they should put those answers in a blog, in the actual content, in a Q&A that sits on a separate page? Any preference or it just doesn’t matter? 

Jenna: 

It doesn’t really matter. There’s some tactics that will work better than others, but just having those answers on your website is what’s important. So if that’s updating your homepage and your product pages, that’s going to help move the needle. If you’re building a knowledge base or FAQ, that will help move the needle. If you’re putting these in blogs and answering them through individual blog posts, that will also move the needle. 

Linda: 

Yep, that’s great. And how should companies really measure their ROI? Is it just leads that are coming in? Is it quality of leads? 

Jenna: 

So it’s all about leads. So the way that we often measure with clients on the B2B side is how many of your prospects on an inbound phone call are mentioning they found you on ChatGPT or Cloud or Perplexity. That’s really the best way to measure. 

Linda: 

Yeah. And then how does your product address some of the challenges that are out there today? 

Jenna: 

Yeah, so our product is exactly that workflow. So the first step is auditing. So adding your website and your competitors. And then we actually run that for you. We run the questions that we think your customers will ask, and then we send those to you to review. And then you can see how often you are showing up in those queries versus your competitors. Once you know that, that tells you, oh, where are the gaps? Where are we not showing up in places that we should be that our competitors are showing up? So then our tool actually helps you create content. We have a service business as well where we do the content piece for you. So we’re creating fully AEO optimized content, but we also have users that use the tool self-serve. And then you’re publishing that directly to your website. So you can do that in our tool or on the service side we’re publishing to the website. 

You’re measuring how often that content is being cited or how often your overall visibility as a brand is lifting in AI answers. 

Linda: 

Great. So Google in five years, do you think it’ll be bigger or smaller? 

Jenna: 

Bigger. 

Linda: 

One brand doing AEO right today that you can put your finger on? 

Jenna: 

One of our clients is doing very well are called Swimply. They have almost 90% visibility. 

Linda: 

Okay. And if Google traffic hits zero tomorrow, what’s the first move? 

Jenna: 

Your website. 

Linda: 

That’s phenomenal. So what’s the biggest myth about AI search that you wish could actually go away? 

Jenna: 

Reddit. 

Linda: 

That’s interesting. One word for what most agencies are getting wrong about AEO. 

Jenna: 

I need two. It would be multi-channel. A lot of AI search agencies right now are selling, we’re going to do multiple channels for you, which is going to be more effective in increasing your visibility in the AI chatbots. Unless you execute those channels well, it’s not going to move the needle. And for most businesses, that’s too many channels. So what I mean by those channels is they’re recommending that businesses start investing in YouTube, LinkedIn content, Reddit content. And for most businesses, that’s really expensive. And some of the AI search agencies are selling it as a reasonable price point, but when we see the output of the content that they’re putting across those channels, it’s not good. It’s far better as a business to pick one or two channels and truly invest in it. So this is back to classic marketing. So you don’t want to pick a channel just for AEO. 

You want to pick that channel because your audience is genuinely watching YouTube and you have great content to share there. That’s why we always go back to and say, “Hey, is your foundation, which is your website in order and do you understand your positioning and is your content educating your prospects? If that’s not done, let’s start there. And then we can start thinking about the next channels because running all these channels at once poorly is not going to move the needle. 

Linda: 

Fantastic. Any major big takeaways you’d like to share with the audience before we wrap up today? 

Jenna: 

I think the big thing to share is that there’s a big opportunity here. So for us as an agency, we look at a lot of brands and anytime there’s a new frontier in marketing, it’s about those who go and act on it first. And so we very much see in industries incumbents being beaten by smaller players that are investing in AEO earlier and faster. I think it’s actually exciting. It is adding a little bit more work, but it’s a big opportunity for businesses. 

Linda: 

Thanks for coming on. This was a great conversation. I think it’s insightful. It’s new information. So it’s great to share that with the audience today. I would love for you to share how they can get in touch with you. 

Jenna: 

Absolutely. So they can visit us at gethatter.ai or reach out to me on LinkedIn. So I’m Jenna Hannon on LinkedIn. I’m easy to find. I post a lot there about AEO and marketing, or they can email me directly at [email protected]. 

Linda: 

That’s awesome. Thank you, Jenna. Well, thank you for listening to the B2B Brand180 Podcast today. Hopefully you received some great insight and if you like what you heard, please hit like, share, or subscribe. And again, I’m Linda Fanaras, and I’ll see you next time.

How ready is your brand for growth?
Take the free Brand180 Reality Check: 12 quick questions to uncover your biggest brand blind spots before your next stage of growth.
https://brand180.mill.agency/

In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Alec Broadfoot, founder and CEO of VisionSpark and author of Hiring Your Right Number Two Leader. Together, they explore why leadership misalignment is one of the biggest barriers to scaling entrepreneurial companies and how founders can overcome it by building the right leadership team.

Alec shares practical insights on identifying the ideal second-in-command, aligning visionary thinking with operational execution, and avoiding the common hiring mistakes that create organizational bottlenecks. You’ll hear actionable strategies for improving leadership alignment, empowering executives to focus on their strengths, and building a company that can grow without relying on the founder for every decision.

01:13 Leadership Misalignment: The Hidden Growth Killer
03:00 Why Every Visionary Needs the Right Number Two
04:22 Setting Expectations and Aligning Around Vision
06:06 Why Founders Struggle to Get Teams to Execute
07:42 Hiring for Alignment Instead of Experience
09:58 Defining the Ideal Number Two Leader
14:33 Practical Advice for Founders Ready to Scale
15:48 Rapid-Fire Leadership Questions

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alecbroadfoot/

https://visionsparksearch.com/

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast. This is the podcast where we will explore ideas, strategies, and leadership decisions shaping the future of business growth. I’m your host, Linda Fanaras today, and we’ll be diving into one of the biggest hidden growth killers inside entrepreneurialship companies, which is leadership misalignment. Our guest today is Alec Broadfoot. He’s the founder and CEO of VisionSpark. They’re a premium executive search firm based in the Columbus, Ohio. And for more than a decade, Alex and his team have helped fast growing entrepreneurial companies make some real critical people decisions by putting the right leaders in the right spots. And his retention rate is over 95%, which is very, very impressive. So just to give you a little bit of background on VisionSpark, they’ve been recognized as one of the Inc. 5000 lists for three consecutive years. So congratulations Alec on that. That’s pretty exciting. And he’s a sought after speaker, a member of Strategic Coach, author of Hiring Your Right Number Two Leader, and someone who spends a great deal of time helping founders solve one of the hardest problems in business leadership. So welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast. 

Alec: 

It’s great to be here, Linda. 

Linda: 

Yeah, it’s great to have you. I think this conversation will hit home for a lot of entrepreneurs because I think most founders think that the company bottleneck is strategy, marketing, sales, but in often reality, it’s when leadership just doesn’t align. So if you have a founder that’s running at one speed and then you got a team that’s operating at another, let’s kind of start there. Where does this misalignment silent killer actually start when it comes to scaling a company? 

Alec: 

It’s really having the wrong leaders in place. So oftentimes leaders, and I’ve done this myself, but hire friends and family, or maybe it’s that executive assistant that has been super loyal to you and you move them up through the ranks, but you get to a point where they have reached their capacity, and so you’re trying to grow another phase. And so maybe you’ve gone from point A to point B and you’re trying to get to point C, but you can’t with the current leadership. So there’s something called the leadership Lid. It’s a concept by John Maxwell, and that is that if you’re a 6 out of 10 leader, it’s impossible for your department to be a 7, 8, 9 out of 10. And oftentimes the 6 out of 10 leaders don’t hire individuals underneath them that are 7, 8s, 9s. And so the leadership is really the bottleneck. So number one, we as founders got to get out of the way. We got to stay with our superpowers and unique ability, and then we have to hire the right leaders that can help us grow and scale. 

Linda: 

Yeah, no, that’s a great point because I think entrepreneurs, they’re visionaries, right? They’re builders. They can see in the future, they move fast, they see these opportunities that are coming and going quickly. So they’re kind of always ahead of the game. But I think that most organizations are not really designed at that sort of founder’s brain speed. So what do you do when the founder keeps accelerating while leadership is struggling, just to figure out, okay, what does this person really want to do? What is this vision? How do I get this all put together? There’s a lot of friction and confusion, and even I’ve experienced it myself with my own team. It’s like it also creates bottlenecks. So how do you address all that when you have a leader who has the thoughts in their mind and maybe is expecting everybody else to have those same thoughts too? 

Alec: 

Yeah, that’s great. That’s very common. And leaders can get frustrated because why can’t they understand or why can’t they see things the way that I do? So the healthy companies, the healthy leaders, they’ll often hire a number two or a second in command or an integrator that essentially runs their business. And that’s why I wrote a book on that. Those organisations do really well, that number two, that integrator, they act as a barrier, a translator, someone that can help prioritise the vision they are making sure the business runs well. Visionary’s going to have several ideas today, really good. And that number two’s job is to determine what idea is relevant, what’s best, how are we going to grow and scale? And we’ve seen that from books like 10 X is easier than two X or the science of scaling is that when there is a simplified vision, that’s when companies can scale. 

Linda: 

That’s a great point. So what happens when you bring in that number two and you think maybe they’ll be able to take your vision and move with it, but maybe they don’t have the same level of enthusiasm or priority that you may have around these initiatives that you’re thinking of or that you want to get executed, especially from a founder’s perspective? 

Alec: 

Yeah, it’s important to get on the same page. So when you hire that number too, that integrator, you really want to set expectations of what success looks like. You got to communicate your vision. What’s your three-year vision, one year vision? What are your 90 day goals at the end of 90 days? What has to happen for you to be really happy with that leader’s success? And it’s to have frequent communication around that vision. When there’s no communication, when there’s no expectation set, when there’s no vision sharing, that’s when companies really get into trouble. 

Linda: 

It seems like sometimes that second person almost needs to be a little bit of a mind reader and definitely an executor. I’m not an expert in your field, of course, but it seems like those would be some of the key priorities that would be important. 

Alec: 

Yeah, very much so. Yeah. 

Linda: 

Do you want to tell us a little bit about your book? Just maybe you can touch on that a bit. 

Alec: 

Yeah, so it’s meant for very busy visionaries, entrepreneurs that don’t have a lot of time, maybe they have a little ADHD, I have a little bit of that myself. So it’s meant to be consumed very quickly and get the general ideas. So it’s all around hiring that right number two leader, how they can gain more time, have more freedom, and create a bigger impact. So one is why is it important to hire the right number two leader? And the second part of the book is what attributes, what are the indispensable traits that you want in that number two leader? It’s not that they have to have a great resume. 

Linda: 

Yeah, I think from a founder’s perspective, I would see a lot of frustration. Why can’t my team just execute my ideas? I mean, it’s so simple to them. I think because they’ve spent, and I always find this, especially even with bringing on new staff, it’s that A CEO may have these ideas that they’ve been thinking about for months or weeks, and they’re trying to figure out, well, why doesn’t anybody else embrace these same ideas? Because they actually haven’t been, and I almost want to say educated in that vision in a really good way. I would think that you would see that as well on your side. 

Alec: 

Yeah, we see that a lot and we see a lot of visionaries who are frustrated because their leaders don’t have the level of mental acuity that they have. And so that mental acuity is a really important factor. It’s not an IQ measurement, it’s a learning speed. And what we’ve seen is that leaders who have higher mental acuities, they can innovate. They can come up with new ideas and embrace new ideas from the visionary much quicker. Those that have a lower mental acuity, maybe they did great in school, maybe they’ve been a great leader, but they rely so much on their past and they really struggle to innovate, come up with new ideas. And so that’s where leaders fail. So we’ve had met with clients that can’t tell you how many times where the leader feels like they’re the smartest person in the room. When we actually evaluate their leadership team, we can say, you’re actually right. You are the “smartest guy in the room.” 

Linda: 

Right. So how do you work with, I mean, let’s say you bring in a number two or you bring in a team, or whatever the case may be. How do you make sure that they have the qualifications and sort of that acumen necessary to work with a leader? Because every leader has a unique personality, a unique style about them, and it’s not only getting to execute on the leader’s vision, but it’s also being able to connect with a leader and making sure that you’re sort of moving in the same place. So could you talk a little bit about that? 

Alec: 

Yeah. It’s all part of step one of our Hire with Confidence blueprint, and that is really understanding who the leader is, what they value, what their vision is, what their core values are, what the culture is, that is critical. And so a lot of recruiters will just throw resumes over the fence. 

There’s not any sort of matchmaking or alignment. So it’s so important to get that first step correct, that we’re on the same page. So we call it a blueprint because we actually develop something called a position profile that maps out exactly who we’re looking for in that role. So we’ll start with the target, and by the end we’ll have a bullseye of who we’re looking for. That visionary sees that they look at the position profile and they say, you got it right, you’re spot on. That’s exactly who I’m looking for. And so we create this really compelling ad that attracts dozens if not hundreds of candidates. And also we have a database of candidates that are in the pool, and then we vet them. We go through and we vet them. So we do some resume interrogation. We’ll vet their mental acuity, their other mental aptitudes. We’ll evaluate them in 12 areas of what makes a great leader. So every one of them goes through a leadership study interview. So we may start with 200 candidates by the time we’re done, and we’ll have two or three candidates that our client chooses from. And so it’s all part of the Hiring with Confidence blueprint. 

Linda: 

That’s great. I mean, I would think that most CEOs will tend to hire based on, oh, I might need somebody who’s technical, or I need somebody who has great organizational skills. But on the other side of the stick, it seems like they need to find somebody that really fits the gaps within the company. So let’s talk about the number two leader. What is exactly a right number two? How would you go about figuring out what that is? 

Alec: 

Yeah, so a number two or an integrator, they essentially run the company. They oversee all divisions, so operations, HR, finance, marketing, sales. So they oversee all of those other leaders, and then that frees the visionary, the founder, the entrepreneur, to focus on what they do really well. So their superpower. So maybe it’s inventing, creating, maybe it’s discovering new verticals, it’s problem solving, relationship building. And so that visionary gets back to what they do really well, and so they’re able to make a much bigger impact. We have found that when that happens, there are several byproducts. One is the visionary has a lot more energy, they also have a lot more joy, and they have a lot more freedom of time. They’re sleeping better, more time with their family. And then that number two that we place, they learn that it’s their dream job. They’ve been waiting their whole life to do this work, and so their family is blessed. So it’s really rewarding for us to do what we do when we get to make a difference in the lives of others. 

Linda: 

That’s great. Let the visionary be the visionary and the other person be the operational, and it seems to be like a good marriage. When you’re hiring that number two, are you also trying to build out those leadership teams that also help compliment the number one and number two, or are you mostly focused on number one and number two? 

Alec: 

About half of all of our searches are that number two role, but we do many other leadership level and director level positions. So right now my team is helping a few clients hire that head of sales and marketing. We’ve got some operations leaders, some controllers, CFOs, any of the positions that are going to allow our clients to have that business that runs without them. 

Linda: 

Do you find that a lot of founders when you go in, do they already have somebody in that number two? 

Alec: 

Sometimes they do. So I would say about a third of the time they have someone already in place and that person is not doing a great job. They’re struggling, they’re pulling out. Yeah. 

Linda: 

And do you think a lot of it is based on the structure of the company or do you think it’s based on the founder and the way that they sort of manage and execute on their behalf? 

Alec: 

I think it’s both. And so we worked a lot with companies that run on EOS or another operating system. Oftentimes they have the right structure, but they know they have to hire that right number two, so they can really roll out that operating system. Other times, it’s that founder that gets in the way. And so we have seen visionaries, they can be micromanagers or they can be the exact opposite. They can be abdicators, and sometimes we’ll see them, I call them helicopter visionaries. They’re kind of hands off and then all of a sudden they fly in like a helicopter, a helicopter parent, and they kind of manage a situation. So we help coach those visionaries. Oftentimes, they’ve never hired a position before. So the intentional clear visionary is someone that is going to get tons of return out of their investment in this position. 

Linda: 

I can absolutely see that as from a CEO’s perspective, flying in trying to fix something and flying out, which actually adds a lot of confusion for sure, I would imagine. If you have a team that’s sort of like sales/marketing alignment or even operational, they don’t know how to prioritize the business, is there ways that you work with the companies to make sure that everybody sort of stands for the same thing? And so let’s say you have a CEO, they have their own idea that might not totally align with that number two person. So there’s multiple messages going on in the company, which can sometimes stagnate growth. I’m wondering if you see that very often and maybe how you would address something like that. 

Alec: 

Yeah, we see that sometimes, those companies that do have an operating system. That is less rare because they all share the same business plan. Maybe a 10-year big, hairy, audacious goal, and then it may be a three-year vision, a one-year, then 90 days. And so most of the time, most of those individuals, they tend to have a lot more clarity around that, and they’re oftentimes aligned. Those companies that don’t have an operating system, it’s critical that that visionary maps out what their three-year vision is so that number two and other leaders can align. 

Linda: 

So if you were to give founders, I think, a good solid takeaway on maybe how to best balance vision and execution, what would your recommendation be? 

Alec: 

Number one, I would start with writing everything down that they do. Just write it all down, whether it’s responding to emails, working with customers, solving customer issues, solving employee issues, everything they do. And it can also include creating, inventing, spending time speaking, write everything down, and then go through and delineate which ones they love doing, which ones do they like doing, which ones do they resent and hate? And then to envision, what would your life be like if you just got to do things that you love and created the biggest impact for your company. And then what’s left over is what you should have your leadership team do. Your number two, your executive assistant. That is number one, is to really do some self-inventory. 

Linda: 

That makes complete sense. And I think to your point, once that’s done and once some of those responsibilities shift over, then the CEO or innovator gets more energy to do the things that that person wants to do, which is most likely create. So I’d love to jump into what I call some rapid fire questions. If you would be open to that, which means you have to answer them in no more than two or three sentences. 

Alec: 

Alright. 

Linda: 

Number one, what is the biggest hiring mistake founders make? 

Alec: 

Is hiring someone based on resume. 

Linda: 

I was just going to say hiring for experience instead of alignment. So best leadership trait in scaling a company? 

Alec: 

Mental acuity. 

Linda: 

On the self-awareness, what kills momentum fastest? 

Alec: 

Really hiring the wrong people. 

Linda: 

And then one word that defines great execution? 

Alec: 

Yeah, hitting your three-year vision. Yeah. Can’t say that in one word. Yeah. 

Linda: 

Right? Alright, here’s your trick question. So, tennis or pickleball? 

Alec: 

Tennis, all the way. 

Linda: 

You look like a tennis player. Yeah. 

Alec: 

Yeah. 

Linda: 

Awesome. Thanks for all your insight today. I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your leadership alignment strategies. I think everything you said really makes a lot of sense. And honestly, from a CEO perspective, it’s easy for them to just keep hiring on the backend instead of really thinking, alright, need somebody on, I need a second person that can really take my concepts and ideas and move with them. So I’d love for you to share how people can get in touch with you. 

Alec: 

Yeah, so if they’re interested in the book, it’s called Hiring Your Right Number Two Leader. It’s on Amazon. Also, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. My company page is https://visionsparksearch.com/. 

Linda: 

Awesome. Thanks for joining us today. And if you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe, share it with your team, and leave us a review. And remember, the companies that scale fastest aren’t driven by just great vision. They’re supported by the right leadership and structure to execute it. Thanks for listening to the B2B Brand180 Podcast.

How ready is your brand for growth?
Take the free Brand180 Reality Check: 12 quick questions to uncover your biggest brand blind spots before your next stage of growth.
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In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews William Anderson, senior business and consulting leader, strategic advisor, and author of The Room Goes Quiet: How to Close High-Stakes Service Deals by Owning Customer Risk. Together, they unpack why even the strongest B2B solutions often fail to close when buyers lose confidence in the people behind them.

William shares how executive decision-making is driven less by product features and more by trust, credibility, and perceived risk ownership. You’ll hear practical insights on how leaders can recognize “the room goes quiet” moments during high-pressure conversations, how brands unintentionally erode trust over time, and why credibility has become one of the most important competitive advantages in modern B2B relationships.

00:01:18 Why Strong B2B Solutions Still Fail to Close Deals
00:03:13 The Trust Breakdown Behind Stalled Executive Decisions
00:05:19 A Real Example of Winning Trust in a High-Stakes Deal
00:07:33 Why Business Decisions Are More Emotional Than Leaders Realize
00:10:39 How Sales Teams Accidentally Damage Credibility and Trust
00:11:58 The “Room Goes Quiet” Moment in Executive Decision-Making
00:15:10 How Brand Promises Break Down in Real Business Environments
00:18:07 Rapid Fire Questions on Leadership, Risk, and Strategic Selling

https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-anderson-b65a0b

https://www.virtuosostrategy.com/

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Welcome back to the show, the B2B Brand 180 podcast. Today we’re going to cover a couple things regarding high stake B2B deals because they often stall when the solution itself is strong. Our guest today is William Anderson. He is a senior business and consulting leader, a strategic advisor, and the author of The Room Goes Quiet: How to Close High-Stakes Service Deals by Owning Customer Risk. It’s great to have you here, William. 

William: 

Thank you so much for having me today, Linda. 

Linda: 

Absolutely. So William focuses primarily on executive decision making, strategic selling transformation environments, and the psychology behind why complex business decisions actually break down when it gets a little personal and a little tough. 

William: 

Busy stuff from B2B, right? 

Linda: 

That’s right, that’s right. Absolutely. So I would love to start a little with the title of your book because it immediately creates this sort of tension. The Room Goes Quiet. Anybody who sat in one of those boardroom strategy meetings, sales pitches, whatever the case may be, knows exactly what that feels like. 

William: 

It’s interesting coming around to the title of that book because it actually formed after I was already well into the writing project and going back and looking at a couple of the case studies that I used. I kept keying in on that moment. That room goes quiet, everything goes still moment. You know, Linda, there’s this common belief as we all live in this B2B world, that if our solution is strong enough, if we have a strong enough solution, if we have the right inflexion point, if we just come with the right answer, the deal’s just going to close and everything will be easy. We’ll get through procurement, we’ll get through branding, marketing will be able to get the message out there, everything’s good. And then we see so many business owners, especially in the B2B world, B2C also, but really in B2B who then are scratching their heads going, why are my deals stalling? I have the best thing out there. 

And the thing that I’ve seen, what really drove me to write this book was that Executive Decision Point, that EDP, if you will, is really not based around how strong our solutions are. It’s really based around, are you going to stand with me as the customer? Are you, my vendor, going to be my partner? Are you going to be there with me and help me own the risk? And that ends up being one of the biggest, if not the biggest buying decision out there. And it, it’s a really critical thing to understand. And I was noticing in a lot of my advising work in just my leadership work as a whole, that was consistently being missed and I felt like it was something that, yes, it’s one of those things that all of us that are in this industry are like, we’ve been there, but then we got to stop and go, well wait, if we’ve been there, why aren’t we acting like we know this? 

Linda: 

Exactly. So let’s kind of run through this scenario because I think one of the biggest frustrations in businesses watching strong opportunities actually lose momentum unexpectedly. They seem like they’re going great, the buyers are engaged, the strategy is solid, everyone seems like they’re aligned and suddenly the deal slows down or just disappears. So why do you think so many high stake B2B decisions stall even if the solution itself is so strong? 

William: 

What I was just talking about is that trust point. Everything is high stakes, and when I say everything is high stakes, when we put ourselves in our customers’ standpoints, when we put ourselves on the other side of the table, even we know and in our own businesses, we feel like the smallest mistake is something that we have to rush to fix, we have to rush to address. That type of mindset, that go from fire to fire mindset, even when we get out of the firefighting, we’re always on the precipice of preparing for when are things going to go wrong. From a buyer’s standpoint, I see this over and over, it’s not a procurement, it’s in that decision maker. When you’re in that room and you get that moment of quiet, a shift just happened and that shift just went from you might have the best solution out there, now as the customer, I no longer trust that you’re going to be there with me, that you are just here for your invoicing, that you’re just here to put your checkbox and you’re going to move on to the next customer. If I don’t believe you’re with me, I’m going to pick somebody who may not be as strong as you. And the reason we see that stall is because now I’m thinking about that. I’m stopping and evaluating quietly, are you going to be there? Do you have my back if something goes wrong, we all know something goes wrong all the time when it goes wrong, am I going to be important to you? 

Linda: 

Yeah, that’s great. And I think to your point, trust is a big factor. Do you think leaders sometimes misunderstand what buyers are actually hesitating over if they are pitching something? 

William: 

All the time. I’ll share a story, personal story of a situation I was in, and I think this really illustrates well. I was out leading my team, we’re in a customer conversation and everything looked good on paper. This was a done deal. We at that moment, we were just finishing things up and the tech case was strong, our case studies were strong, our plan was solid. We had Gantt charts and project plans, everything was covered, we were ready and we presented everything. And the CFO leaned back and looked right at me and she asked, she goes, I just don’t see how this doesn’t become another budgetary nightmare. She says, this a big project, big transformation. What’s going to be different with you? I watched my team go to instinct in that moment, and the instinct I think for all of us in that moment is to jump to process, to sell harder, to feel like we’re about to lose things. 

And having seen this happen multiple times in my career in this case, literally put my hand out to kind of comfort my team and slow them down from doing their instinctual jump. I closed my laptop, I looked her in the face, the CFO in the face locked eyes with her, and I said to her, you’re absolutely right. Not that this is going to become a budgetary nightmare, but there’s going to be pushbacks. Your concerns are a hundred percent valid. Let me walk you through three of the key things that are probably going to go wrong in our first six months. And then after I walked through those, I said to her, I want you to think for a moment about if I’m able to anticipate that now, and I can give you all the process and everything else, but the reality is, if I’m here and telling you this is what’s going to be our challenges, imagine what we’re going to be able to partner together to do to handle the things we can’t anticipate. Things are going to blindside us. That moment, just reading that moment, right? That won me that deal. 

Linda: 

That’s great. So how much do you think on the decision making side in these types of environments is actually emotional versus analytical? 

William: 

The analysis and the numbers if you will, that hard analysis is getting easier because anybody can go out right now, type into AI, what happens if my brand manager quits? What happens if my marketing team gives the wrong message? Anything you’re solving for, you can go type into AI and say, give me a worst case scenario. So the data becomes really easy. So all of a sudden we’re seeing emotion, confidence being asked by technical questions, being fed by the easy access of the tools we now have. So there’s this real move towards judgement, I believe. I’ve heard these phrases a lot about it’s the AI revolution that we’re stepping into now, personally, I think we’re stepping into a judgement revolution as leaders on both sides of that B2B conversation as an offer and the person making the offer, the person taking the offer and looking for the solution. We all have to lean really heavily into that human judgement and realize what are the key emotional things that we’re masking with the data so we can clear our heads and really focus on what’s important. Confidence, reducing risk, hugely important. Always think about it that way. 

Linda: 

Trust is one of those words that every company talks about, but few of them really define what that means. So I guess in your experience, what actually creates trust when it comes to complex sales or consulting or transformation scenarios? So what does that mean to you? 

William: 

It’s really two factors for me. It’s honesty, transparency is part of that honesty, and the other side is acknowledging it, understanding what your role is in this conversation, and then really deciding that you’re going to step up and be a partner, that you’re going to step up and be trustworthy. Right now, there’s a key part of that. Some of your other guests have actually talked about this in a great way, talking about being transparent in sales and how do you put your brand out there and make sure your brand is reliable. And I think this is huge. You can say all the right things. We’ve gotten marketing down to such a great science that you can market yourself all day long. The minute you don’t follow up and live, walk in the shoes you built, walk in the shoes that you sowed, the minute you don’t deliver to your brand, you lost it, you lost the trust, and now it’s going to become known. 

Linda: 

And that actually brings me to my next question because I think that’s a good example of how you can damage trust even though maybe they think they’re doing the right thing and they don’t, are there other ways that you see where they’re actually damaging that trust factor? 

William: 

I see this a lot because I’m in a lot of rooms right now where I’m advising sales teams and go-to-market teams, and every sales manager will tell you, they may not say it out loud, but you get a couple of drinks in ’em, get ’em in private, they’ll tell you getting to that end of quarter and just checking the box, especially in public companies, in the large enterprises, check the box, get the money into the end of the quarter, discount, whatever you have to do, get the deal off the table and closed. I have seen that ruin more deals because you’re building in dishonesty and it’s huge, right? All of a sudden you’re creating these false sense of urgencies and customers are not dumb. People on the other side of the table don’t want to be sold to. If they wanted that, they’d go buy used cars. 

Linda: 

Right. Well, that’s a great point. So let’s move into risk ownership and I guess what I’ll call executive judgement, because there’s a major theme in your work and it’s risk ownership. So how should leaders think differently about risk when the consequences of a decision are personal, visible, maybe they’re tied to a reputation or career outcome? 

William: 

Two sides. When you’re sitting in the room and you are facing that moment, it’s not always clear to realize you’re in the moment. I’ve been in boardrooms, part of my advising. I’ve sat in the boardrooms and provided this insight. I had a really good situation. I was in the room, I was a seventh member. I was advising on behalf of one of the senior directors of a board, and chairman of the board presented sort of the direction for the year. They all went through their discussion. The whole board raised the pivot and the conversations that are going to be the risk. And there was a moment where everything got quiet and it was right after, in this case, the CTO had presented one of the major pivots around their technical moves for their platform. And after the board meeting, we pulled everybody together to do a bit of a debrief. 

And I asked, I said, did anybody pick up the major major risk ownership moment there? And everybody was like, well, I mean the whole thing is risky. And they went through all these different answers and I was like, I want everybody to stop and think about this particular moment. I had had permission keeping it private to take some transcripts. So I was able to pin it down to the exact moment. And I’m like, did everybody notice how uncomfortable this? It’s that room goes quiet moment, this moment. I said, the key here is when you hit that silence moment, it’s silent because everyone in the room is evaluating, am I going to own this? To step across this line? And who’s at risk? Who is about to take ownership of a failure or a success? And everybody thinks failure. They don’t think success. So on that side, when you’re in that room, not even inside of sales, when you’re just in a big decision like that, listen for those moments. Sometimes it’s only two or three seconds of silence, but that room goes quiet moment. That quiet moment of silence is a decision where somebody is deciding, I’m going to step up and own this. 

When you’re on the other side and you are coming in from outside to provide a service, to provide a solution to your customers, think about that. That’s your opportunity to really solidify that trust. You earn the trust by recognizing that person in the room with you that you are selling to, pitching to, kind of bringing this idea and solution to, when they stop, they’re evaluating if this goes wrong, when this goes wrong, what am I going to do? That is your moment to reassure them. And it’s not always by jumping into your solution. That’s your moment to personally reassure them. You’re there with them. If you win that moment, if you own that moment, you can’t be stopped. At that point, you’re just solving solutions together. 

Linda: 

Right. This conversation becomes super relevant, especially for marketers and business leaders, when we talk about connecting the brand promise and the execution and credibility and all that. How does strategy, positioning, execution typically break down in these real business environments to make sure they’re all interconnected? 

William: 

So it all depends on what your history is. Not to name and blame, but let’s look at what’s going on with Disney right now. Disney has this entrenched mindset, entrenched brand, incredibly strong. They have done so well by their fans. Disney people love Disney, very little can push a Disney person out of Disney. 

Linda: 

Exactly. 

William: 

But we’re starting to see Disney making decisions that is eroding the faith of their brand. We’re seeing Disney people coming out and saying things on videos like I’ve been costed out of going to my favorite place in the world. 

And that’s a really tough thing. It is sad for me to see from the outside. My wife is a massive Disney fan, so I have to live through this personally. But the longer you’ve had your brand, the longer you’ve lived up to your brand promise, the more runway you have that you can do some things wrong and still recover. But if you don’t see that things are going sideways, if you are making bad choices and undermining your own brand promise, the loyalty to your brand is going to erode. And that makes it an even steeper cliff to fall off of. Once you lose your most passionate people, man, they don’t go to apathetic. They turn on you. 

Now, if you’re new to branding, you have less of a runway to recover. So now you have to be hypervigilant about what is your brand promise. I often warn executives about this. I have a lot of executives who will tell me what their company does, what their brand does. Every time I go into an advising engagement, I also ask people outside, what do you know about these people? What do they do? And it’s always interesting to me that it is very rare that it’s a hundred percent matched. In fact, I would say it’s very rare that it’s even a 75% match. And that’s an important thing to do is understand not what you think your brand is, but what is your brand actually? What is your message? 

Linda: 

And standing by some of make sure you stand by some of that because I think that sales cycle can really negatively impact it. And I think Disney’s just a great example of something like that. So I would love to ask you what I call some call rapid fire questions, which means – 

William: 

Yeah! 

Linda: 

Alright, great. So what kills trust fastest in business? 

William: 

Dishonesty. 

Linda: 

That’s great. 

William: 

Lack of credibility. 

Linda: 

And what’s the biggest misconception about strategic selling? 

William: 

That your solution will carry the debt. 

Linda: 

And what’s one sign a deal is quietly falling apart? 

William: 

Ooh, I really like that question. So from a quick answer, it is those side looks around the room. When you say something, and I know this is more than the quick answer, but when you say something and you’re confident, the quiet that follows is nobody’s looking at you. They’re looking around. Ooh, something just went wrong. And you better real quickly figure out what that was. 

Linda: 

What do you think executives underestimate most when it comes to transformation initiatives? 

William: 

Components involved in a true transformation and the level of effort. 

Linda: 

Awesome. 

William: 

Every transformation’s a heavy lift, and they involve more than just what you think you’re changing. 

Linda: 

Right. It’s probably more complicated than you think. What’s one quality every strong leader needs in high pressure environments? 

William: 

Credibility. 

Linda: 

Yeah. Do what you say. Say what you do, be honest, be transparent, communicate. 

William: 

Yep. Also, the curiosity I think is also an important aspect there. Want to learn about the people around you. Want to learn, the biggest thing in the go-to-market work that I do, the thing that I advise the most senior people going out to the market and the most junior people going out to the market is be curious in what the people across the table, the people you’re trying to reach your customers, be curious about them. Especially in B2B, right? It’s almost like dating. When you’re dating, you sit down at that first dinner, you sit down at that first coffee and everybody tells you don’t talk about you, talk about them, ask them questions. Same thing here. Ask them questions, figure out what they’re doing. Ask dumb questions because it’s going to give you insight on what’s important to ‘em. 

Linda: 

Great. That’s a good point. So this has been an incredibly important conversation. It gets, I think, underneath the hood of business and into sort of the psychology of actually how these decisions are actually made. And I think to your point, listening is more important probably than talking. And we know that that’s the case, especially when it comes to sales. So for leaders listening in today, whether you’re in sales, consulting, marketing, transformation, executive, what would you say? One of the key takeaways is they should get after reading your book? 

William: 

I absolutely would love them to read the book. I absolutely would love them to ask me questions. Challenge me if you think something I put in the book is not quite spot on, please challenge me on that. The one thing I would say is credibility is where trust, execution, leadership, brand, it all comes together. So driving credibility and then being willing to step up and own that moment of risk, own that risk with whoever’s across the table from you, whether you’re in a boardroom, a sales call, whatever that is, that is the thing. I think if anybody reads my book takes that away, I’m super happy at that point. 

Linda: 

So William, I would love for you to share with the audience how they can get in touch with you. 

William: 

So the easiest place to get in touch with me is on virtuosostrategy.com. That is my website. So there’s a book landing page there, there’s a library there of my writing. I also do a fair amount of long form writing on both Medium and on LinkedIn so I can be found in both of those locations. And The Room Goes Quiet, it’s available everywhere that books are sold right now. And this is my first book. So I’m still in that honeymoon period where I’m loving feedback, good, bad, indifferent. So I love people to engage with me on that. 

Linda: 

That’s awesome. Thank you, William. So that was William Anderson, and he is the author of The Room Goes Quiet: How to Close High-Stakes Service Deals by Owning Customer Risk. And we just learned about how owning that risk goes. So if you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you subscribe, leave a comment, or share this conversation with your team or leadership group. And thanks for listening to the B2B Brand 180 podcast. If you need to get in touch with me, visit lindafanaras.com or mill.agency. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next time.

How ready is your brand for growth?
Take the free Brand180 Reality Check: 12 quick questions to uncover your biggest brand blind spots before your next stage of growth.
https://brand180.mill.agency/

In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Mike Barton from AudioEye to unpack one of the most overlooked barriers in digital marketing today: website accessibility. While most companies focus heavily on SEO, lead generation, and customer experience, many unintentionally exclude a significant portion of their audience because their websites are not built for accessibility.

Mike shares how inaccessible forms, vague links, missing image descriptions, and poor site structure create real obstacles for users with disabilities while also impacting conversion performance, SEO, and AI discoverability. The conversation explores why digital accessibility is no longer just a compliance issue, but a business growth opportunity tied directly to customer experience, loyalty, and revenue.

00:01:24 Why Most Companies Overlook Digital Accessibility
00:03:08 Accessibility as a Customer Experience and Revenue Issue
00:04:44 The Legal Risks and Growing Pressure Around Accessibility
00:06:46 How Screen Readers and Assistive Technology Actually Work
00:07:30 The Three Biggest Accessibility Failures on B2B Websites
00:13:39 Why Accessibility Impacts SEO and AI Search Visibility
00:15:32 The First Steps Companies Should Take to Audit Their Websites
00:18:14 Rapid Fire Questions

https://www.linkedin.com/in/omnibarton

https://toddcaponi.com/

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast where we don’t just talk about growth, we challenge the assumptions behind it. I’m Linda Fanaras and I’m the CEO of Millennium Agency and your host. Today I’m joined by Mike Barton and Mike works with AudioEye. They’re a company at the forefront of digital accessibility, helping companies really ensure that everyone, including people with disabilities, can actually use their websites and have great digital experiences. He brings a marketer’s lens to a topic most companies barely think about or even talk about. So Mike, it’s great to have you here today. 

Mike: 

Yeah, I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Linda: 

Yeah, so let’s call this out. Let’s get started. So most B2B websites today, they’re unintentionally shutting the door on a massive segment of their audience. Especially – it’s not that they don’t care, it’s not that they don’t want to invest in digital because they’re not really building for accessibility, even though I think roughly maybe 25% of the US population and 16% of the global population has some form of disability. So if your website isn’t accessible, you’re not just leaving revenue on the table, you’re making it impossible for people to do business with you. Your work sits right there at the center of all of this, and I’d really like to dive in and talk a little bit about what you do and also how you help companies fix these digital accessibility gaps. 

Mike: 

Before AudioEye, I never worked in the accessibility space, and like you said, as a marketer for those 15 plus years working at Adobe and other companies creating you name the type of content, digital content, video, written, interactive pages, landing pages, et cetera. I sadly not once during any of those times and any of those companies did I say, I wonder if this experience will work for somebody who’s using a screen reader who’s blind or somebody with a mobility issue who can’t use a mouse and has to tab with a keyboard, can they get through our conversion funnel? Again, not because I didn’t care or lacked empathy, it just wasn’t something that I had thought about or talked about. So that’s partly why I love coming on podcasts like yours is to just raise awareness and talk about it. At the end of the day, it is exactly what you said in your intro, which is opening the digital doors so that people can access your site. And so many companies today are focused on the customer experience, right? They’re focused on how do we differentiate ourselves through that digital experience, through not just our products and services, which in many ways can kind of be commoditized, it’s that experience that can differentiate you, and yet despite that focus, they’re still not including in that cohort people with disabilities, which can be a significant portion of traffic that’s already coming to their sites. 

Linda: 

So what actually woke you up to this problem? I guess it’s kind of a critical moment, especially for businesses to pay attention to this topic. So I’m just curious what sort of said, okay, yeah, it’s time to really do something about this. 

Mike: 

Actually, it was almost accidental. I was at a soccer game with my daughter, came across somebody who I had used to work with at another tech company who had just started working at AudioEye. And so he was telling me about it and similar story for him, right? He’s like, totally illuminating, I hadn’t thought about this. And immediately it was just like, yes, this makes sense. And that was the same light bulb that really went off for me realizing, hey, this is not only a purpose driven company and something that’s good for the world, but something that actually in making your site accessible for people with disabilities, you are impacting the customer experience. You are making your site more SEO friendly and today’s LLM AI world, making your site also more accessible for the LLMs who are now sending agents or having users query various questions about companies and industries and things like that. So we’re also lifting all these other marketing channels and making them more efficient and more effective. 

Linda: 

And I think to your point, it’s not just checking off a compliance box, it’s actually a customer experience. So it’s a revenue issue and in some cases it could be even, I would think a legal risk issue as well. So if users with a disability can’t navigate your site, they can’t use your forms, can’t understand your content, then they definitely will not become leads or customers or they may not even, they may have the grounds to I’m assuming sue under ADA, would you say that could be the case? 

Mike: 

Yeah, a hundred percent. And we’ve seen that in the last couple of years, lawsuits have doubled, they’re increasing at the state level, even more and more from people who are not able to go online and do something. And again, take a step back and think about everything that you did yesterday online, right? You’re probably checking the news, you’re communicating with friends and family, you’re working, you’re maybe checking your finances, maybe you went to a doctor and they uploaded your test results into a patient portal. All those things that we all try to do on a daily basis. People with disabilities encounter issue and issue and barrier and barrier that either triple, quadruple the amount of time it takes them to do something or in a lot of cases they just can’t because their assistive technology that they’re trying to use can’t understand the way the page is built or coded, not using accessibility best practice. 

So yeah, because they have been going at it for so long and have not been able to get companies to think about it and prioritize it, unfortunately, suing is their, here’s my method of getting somebody to listen and pay attention. And so we have found in the past, a lot of companies come to us because they got a demand letter, they got sued. But we are seeing that transition more and more where people are starting to say proactively not only do I want to avoid the lawsuit, not only do I want to be compliant, but also I am seeing the benefits. So it’s not just like something our legal or a compliance team is pushing, but the marketing team is starting to say, Hey, this should be part of our tech stack, this should be the way that we make it maybe is part 5% of the overall marketing tech stack, but it makes the other 95% that much more efficient. 

Linda: 

That makes sense. We primarily work in the B2B sectors, tech firms, pharma, manufacturing, and to these leaders, what does digital accessibility actually mean to them? And I guess how should companies really be thinking about it? 

Mike: 

So I think breaking it down at the most basic level, when I got into the space, I had no idea how a person who is blind would use the internet. That’s, I think, a misconception, people just assume, well, they can’t, so they don’t, and that is completely not the case. And so they use something called a screen reader, and that screen reader literally reads the code on the page out loud to them. So it will read the navigation, it will read the alt text of the images, it will read the link description. This is, I think especially important for B2B companies. It’s reading the form and helping them understand whether it’s fill out a demo or contact us for more information or download these best practices. Hopefully the download itself is also accessible. We do an annual accessibility index where we go out and we crawl thousands and thousands of business sites, and every year there’s three common issues that occur from homepage to your deepest page, which is that the images don’t have sufficient alt text descriptions. 

Linda: 

Okay. 

Mike: 

So again, that screen reader that’s trying to tell that person who’s blind and describe it isn’t able to, it might be super vague, it might not even be there. You get the same thing with link descriptions. If you have that best practice guide and you just say read more, why am I reading more? So being descriptive. 

But I think the biggest thing for B2B marketers is understanding that if your forms aren’t built correctly and someone’s trying to go in there, again, they’re at the last stage of that funnel, they want to engage with you. They’re trying to give you their information, but if it’s not labelled correctly, it might just say input field one, input field two, input field three. Even if it does have some of that specificity, great. They make a mistake and then the error pops up and the error isn’t built correctly. So they don’t know what the mistake is and they just have to abandon ship. 

So what we really find is that a lot of the issues happen at the moment of conversion, and that’s where that impact really starts to add up that you have a percentage, again, of a population who’s already coming to you. You’re not spending more to try to attract them. They’re there. And again, going back to what you said at the beginning, you’ve just shut the digital door on them and said to them, go to a competitor. 

Linda: 

Yeah, I mean, marketers are worried about leads, turning them into customers, eventually turning them into revenue, but if somebody’s using a screen reader and they can’t understand your links, their forms are too difficult to complete, that doesn’t matter how strong your campaign is or how much money you’re actually spending on at the door is basically closed. So I think what’s broken on most sites, you’ve seen a wide range of sites and diagnostics. What would you say is fundamentally broken across a lot of these websites today? 

Mike: 

The first thing I would say is just the number of issues is always a surprise to people in general. So we have an accessibility scanner that on our site where you can go and put in your website and it’ll scan and give you a quick readout. We find that the average webpage has between 60 and 200 accessibility issues. That’s not website, that’s webpage. So every page has that number of issues, which is typically I think a lot more than people assume they have. We have a great development team, we’ve got great processes in place, but most of those teams aren’t thinking about just that next step of accessibility, best practices. 

And so the volume is high. But then as we start to look at some of those high impact, it’s the things I said before, which is images without the alt text description, again, think about how many images are on any typical homepage or product page or even content page. Then the link descriptions, which is another big one, the forms, those are the top three that just constantly, especially with how fast teams are updating sites and changing content, those are kind of the little things that can slip through. And if we don’t spend that extra little bit of time making this descriptive, then it won’t hurt anything. But the reality is for people with disabilities, those turn into barriers that, again, they just hit it and they’ll try because they’ve been trained to do their whole lives is try to get around your lack of accessibility. And when they just hit that wall, they go elsewhere. 

And the interesting thing that we haven’t talked about is people with disabilities. We talked about the number of them in the US in the world, but they have an $18 trillion spending power. So it’s also a significant portion, and they’re super loyal. They have such trouble finding sites that work and companies that are prioritizing their needs that when they finally do find one that’s accessible and makes it easy for them, again, customer experience, they’re going to go back, they’re going to be loyal, and they’re telling their friends, they’re telling their family, and those friends and family want to support those companies that make it easy for their friends with disabilities. 

Linda: 

So alt tags, things like that. Are there other small structural changes that can actually make a really big impact for usability and conversion? I know there’s probably a lot of different things to look at, especially when it comes to images and text and all that. 

Mike: 

The web content accessibility guidelines, and there’s 86 of them I think at the latest. And they go through a whole plethora of, with navigation, heading structure, page layout. There’s all these essentially rules that are very binary. You’re either doing it or you’re not, that help people understand if the way they’re building it is accessible. It’s a lot. It’s overwhelming. I think a lot of developers see that and they’re like, whoa. That’s partially actually probably why a lot of companies initially are like, yes, let’s do it. But then it feels overwhelming. Companies like AudioEye come in and use technology, a combination of technology and audits with experts to take some of that burden off developer teams. There is a lot to know, but really it’s foundationally around building it so it is accessible and usable by a screen reader and other assistive technology that they might be using. 

Linda: 

No, that’s great. I would envision with uplifting the website with tags and so on. And so you’re helping SEO, so can you speak a little bit about that? Can you walk us through any how maybe some accessible or descriptive links can benefit users in search performance? 

Mike: 

Yeah, yeah. In fact, I’ll talk a little bit about AI and LLMs, which I think is the other side of the coin essentially, because doing the same thing. But that’s what we’re seeing more and more is that when user goes to, we’ll say Claude and asks, what’s the best B2B software for X purpose? And it’ll send out its agents, do the research and bring back the answers when your accessibility tree is built appropriately. So again, you’ve got the clear architecture, you’ve got the links, the forms, all that description in there, those agents are able to more quickly understand the business, the value there, the content there. And so the LLMS are using fewer tokens. It’s easier on them, so they’re going to prioritize those sites in what they bring back. And so we are seeing not only on our own site as we continue to make it accessible and see the impact on our rankings and LLMs, but we’ve seen the same thing with SEO, that those best practices of adding the content that answers the question quickly and cleanly describing, again, as few words as possible, but with as much specificity as possible, what’s in those images, what’s in those links. 

It just adds those keywords. It gives the right level of density and context from an SEO or AEO and GEO perspective is more and more becoming what those crawlers are looking at and rewarding. 

Linda: 

Great. No, I would think a lot of leaders look at this as risk mitigation versus I would think they had the opportunity to reframe accessibility as sort of a growth lever or customer experience strategy, not just like a compliance requirement. And that in itself can be valuable, at least to this, I would say to the team. So let’s make this actionable. So if I’m a B2B marketing or digital leader listening and I’m like, okay, oh boy, we probably have some gaps. What are sort of the first two to three moves a company can make? 

Mike: 

Yeah, I’d say one, find a scanner like the one I mentioned earlier, AudioEye has one. There’s many out there where you can just go put in your site and get that quick. Okay, how inaccessible am I? And again, I share this with lots of people and it’s always interesting to me. They’ll say, okay, I’ll go do it. And then a day or two later, I’ll get an email being like, holy cow. That was very shocking to me. And I’ll also remind them with all those web content accessibility guidelines, automation actually can only detect about half of them because there are contextual, there’s complex issues to look at that really require human judgement of is this accessible or not? So when you get an automated report that might tell you you’ve got an average of 75 issues per page, it’s only capturing a portion of them. 

So that’s like the floor of your problem, not the ceiling. So I say start there because again, it helps you see, okay, this is actually a problem. And then from there, I think it is looking at your internal organization and processes and understanding and really acknowledging, do we have the resources? Do we have the time and the effort for our developers to go out and learn best practices, to be able to build appropriately. While the intent is always there, the actual, when it comes to all the priorities that then flow down that usually we found with our customers ends up not being the case. 

And so I think from there it’s understanding, okay, if we don’t have the capability, where can we go to work with companies who can have experts, who can do audits on the other 50% that automation can’t, who can help us understand what they can fix through JavaScript injection that helps update that page so it is readable by a screen reader. And then in many cases, like with AudioEye, we can fix about 95% of those issues. So we’re handing the developers a much smaller and manageable list of things that really need to be handled at the source code. So again, I think it’s start with awareness of where your site is at, and then kind of just look at how mature are we really going to be from an accessibility perspective. And with that maybe not optimistic view, but more pragmatic view, then determining how you’re going to attack it with the right level of partner. 

Linda: 

Perfect. So that’s great. Thanks Mike. So I’m going to ask you some rapid fire questions. 

Mike: 

Let’s do it. 

Linda: 

All right. What’s the biggest misconception about digital accessibility today? 

Mike: 

The biggest misconception is that a person who has a disability doesn’t want your product or service. 

Linda: 

Right. And most overlooked accessibility issue on websites today? 

Mike: 

Those three: images, forms, and links. 

Linda: 

Okay, so one thing, every B2B website should fix this quarter, same thing or? 

Mike: 

Your conversion flow. And I think for most B2B, it’s going to be that form is your critical. I’d say look at that plus one to two pages before, and if you’re only going to do one audit or one thing, focus on that conversion, and that will have probably the biggest impact. 

Linda: 

Awesome. If you were to give me accessibility in one word, what would that be? 

Mike: 

Equality. 

Linda: 

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Thanks Mike. So this is definitely a critical shift. I think companies need to really start thinking about making their site accessible for anyone who wants to be there. It just seems like it’s a no-brainer. It’s about redefining who gets to participate in the digital space. It should be available for anybody. So I would love for you to share a little bit about you, where people can get in touch with you, and we can take it from there. 

Mike: 

I’m on LinkedIn, Omni Barton comes from my early days of working at Omniture, which is web analytics at the time. Happy to connect with people as we’ve talked about at AudioEye. And again, if you have a choice between going and checking your accessibility scan or connecting with me online, I would go to that accessibility scan and just really use it as that first step towards, as we’ve said, doing something that will both benefit people with disabilities and the world at large. And also in the end, have a good impact on the work that you’re doing and the audiences that you’re trying to serve in your business. 

Linda: 

Yeah, great advice. Definitely great advice. I think it’s definitely something that’s overlooked. If you found this valuable today, don’t just listen. Definitely apply it. Audit your website, fix the basics, open the digital door to more audience. And if you like what you heard today, please hit like, share, comment, or subscribe, and let’s keep raising the marketing bar when it comes to digital experiences and for all users and drive actually real impact. If you’re ready for your own brand 180, visit https://mill.agency/ or https://lindafanaras.com/, we will see you in the next episode. Thank you.

How ready is your brand for growth?
Take the free Brand180 Reality Check: 12 quick questions to uncover your biggest brand blind spots before your next stage of growth.
https://brand180.mill.agency/

In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras sits down with sales leadership expert and author Todd Caponi to challenge one of the biggest problems in B2B sales today: broken pricing and negotiation practices. They unpack why traditional discount-driven sales tactics are eroding trust, slowing deals, and training buyers to believe the price is never really the price.

The conversation explores Todd’s “Four Levers Negotiating” framework and how sales teams can replace reactive discounting with a transparent, structured approach built around volume, payment timing, commitment length, and deal predictability. You’ll hear practical insights on why quarter-end discounts often backfire, how transparency accelerates trust, and what leaders can do to create more confident, collaborative negotiations that benefit both buyers and sellers.

00:01:24 Why Traditional Sales Negotiation Needed to Be Challenged
00:04:23 What Happens When Salespeople Get Nervous at the Finish Line
00:07:13 Creating a Structured Approach to Proposal and Negotiation
00:10:05 Replacing Reactive Discounting with Strategic Decision-Making
00:12:46 Taking Emotion Out of Pricing Conversations
00:13:21 How to Respond When Buyers Push for Bigger Discounts
00:16:52 Transparency, Trust, and Collaborative Negotiation
00:18:37 Rapid Fire Questions

https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddcaponi

https://toddcaponi.com/

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

[00:00:00] Linda: Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast where we just don’t talk about growth, we challenge the assumptions behind it. I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, and your host today. I’m being joined today by Todd Caponi and Todd is a multi-time C-level sales leader, a behavioral science expert, and the author of The Transparency Sale and the Transparent Sales Leader, and his newest book, Four Levers Negotiating. 

Todd, it’s great to have you here.  

[00:00:35] Todd: It’s great to be here. That little countdown music up my, uh, it was starting to groove a little bit.  

[00:00:39] Linda: You like that? Yeah, I know, right? Just, uh, makes it a little bit more exciting. Right. 

[00:00:45] Todd: There we go. Yep.  

[00:00:46] Linda: So let’s get started. So, B2B pricing is broken. It’s not because pricing is hard, but it’s because we’ve kind of made it unbelievable sometimes. 

So for years we’ve trained buyers to think, you know, no one actually pays full price for anything. Everybody wants a deal. But today we’re going to talk about a couple different strategies that you’ll be sharing to individuals today. So we’ll learn where buyers can access reviews, benchmarks, even AI-driven pricing insights. 

That game doesn’t feel just outdated. It destroys credibility. So Todd, your work takes a direct aim at this. I know that. So what made you decide this is needed to be challenged now, and what is like, why is it now?  

[00:01:24] Todd: Well, it’s funny when you say now, because for anybody watching behind me, I, I’m a collector of sales history. Maybe the only person on the planet that’s ever said that, but I’ve got books from late 1800s, early 1900s. Both phones, LPs, magazines, like it smells like your grandma’s basement in here.  

But, you know, one of the things that’s funny to me is I’m holding a book right now. This is from 1910 written by Thomas Herbert Russell. It’s called Salesmanship Theory and Practice, and it’s funny, 116 years ago, one of the headlines in one of the chapters says, buyers know more nowadays. Like, that cracks me up. It’s 116 years ago, and we’re still saying those things today.  

He goes on to say that, you know, the knowledge of buyers is increased, and they’re no longer disposed to pay what is asked of them unless persuaded in their minds that the sellers regulate their prices on some sound basis. Some sound basis.  

And so why is it that in 1910 we could get away with that? That was always the case. Like we knew, we as human beings, we know that if we think somebody’s getting a better deal, we’re coming after that deal, right? We don’t have confidence that the price is the price, then we’re going to start pecking away at it. 

And when I look at 2026, like you said, we’ve got the rise of AI exposing people’s pricing models. We’ve got peer groups that are connecting and talking about like, “Hey, what are you paying for them? What do you, what did you ask for? What did you get?” The sharing economy. There’s technologies out there that are exposing this stuff. 

I just don’t think that it’s any longer sustainable to have every one of your customers paying a different amount based on how well or poorly you negotiated it. I’ll add this other piece, like you said, that like nobody believes that the price is the price. It’s funny when you think about that “some sound basis” that Thomas Herbert Russell said that like you would never go to the grocery store and fill your cart and go to the cashier and be like, um, I have a budget issue. I need 20% off. They’d be like, buy 20% less jackass like, it doesn’t even make sense. Right? 

[00:03:41] Linda: Right. 

[00:03:42] Todd: Because we make that decision to buy because we think the price is based on something. In the business-to-business world we’ve established over many years that from the minute we propose, like the word propose, proposal is literally defined as a suggestion. We’re basically going, here you go. And then the minute we start getting asked for anything, we start giving. And so, I think the B2B world has created a “some sound basis” issue. Yeah. And I think there’s a pretty simple way to fix that, that we can talk about here, but it almost has to happen now. I’m probably biased, but I just don’t think what we’re doing… is sustainable. 

[00:04:23] Linda: Yeah. So, you brought up a really good point, and I guess I’m just trying to determine like at that moment of a deal when it actually is like seeming like it’s going to happen. You know, it seems like that’s when a salesperson changes, right? 

[00:04:39] Todd: Mm-hmm.  

[00:04:39] Linda: They kind of hedge and they like obscure and they’re like flat out say things that maybe are true or they give in too much. So, can you just talk a little bit about like what happens, what’s causing that sort of, do they get nervous? Are they afraid they’re going to lose the deal? 

[00:04:55] Todd: Yeah, I mean that was really the core of all of this happened back when I had gotten my first leadership promotion. And yet, growing up, like sales for all of you, when you’re trying to sell, really the right lens is obviously to focus on customers achieving optimal outcomes, right? Like you’re supposed to be a partner to them. Build a relationship.  

And then you’re right. You know, we get to the goal line, the customer says yes, and we’re like, all right, subconsciously, I’m going to start lying to you now. Not going to tell you what a good deal is. You’ve got to figure that out, right. In the B2B world, many people are learning from former FBI hostage negotiators, like I’m releasing hostages from a bank, heist techniques, or it’s a big labor agreement. Or we’re trying to negotiate a settlement between warring nations and going, let’s apply that to your software purchase. Or you’re buying some bowling balls like it’s, it’s bananas, right?  

But that’s what we do. We change personalities. We start focusing on our own outcomes. Because that’s the trigger when you said yes, now it’s about me and my outcomes.  

[00:06:00] Linda: Yeah.  

[00:06:00] Todd: And so, yeah, we get nervous, we get anxious, we think we’re going to lose the deal. It’s so close. Right? And so that’s when the lying begins. And like I said, how can we have every customer paying a different amount based on how good or bad you were at negotiating it? I just think that gets exposed here in the short term.  

[00:06:20] Linda: Yeah. And that’s actually a great point, because I think even from a buyer’s perspective, they’re thinking, Hey, if I don’t push back, if I don’t ask for a deal, then I’m getting, you know, excuse my language screwed, or I’m overpaying, or whatever the case may be. And it just seems like that is the thought process behind all that. And do you know why that occurs?  

[00:06:40] Todd: If you went and you’re buying a car?  

[00:06:42] Linda: Yeah.  

[00:06:43] Todd: Like you know that if you don’t get something, you’re going to walk out of there feeling pretty crappy about something.  

[00:06:49] Linda: Right. 

[00:06:50] Todd: That’s just human to human. And I believe the B2B world is the same way that until we feel that we are getting the best deal possible given our circumstances, and we are paying the same or less than every other customer under similar circumstances. Just inherently as human beings, we don’t want to feel like we got a bad deal.  

[00:07:12] Linda: Right.  

[00:07:13] Todd: And so what I advocate for is a structured approach to the way you present, propose, and negotiate your deal that’s based on the things that drive every B2B company in the world. It creates a foundation, a sound basis, but it provides the flexibility around the things that are valuable to both organizations.  

[00:07:30] Linda: Right. No, great point. So how does that get into play? You know, we’ve got this push pull relationship. We’ve got a sales guy that starts hedging. We’ve got the buyer that’s like, cut me a deal. I mean, what does that structure actually look like?  

[00:07:44] Todd: The book is called Four Levers Negotiating because every for-profit company in the world, your business model, probably your pricing model is based on four things. That’s what makes it easy but powerful because it’s empathetic, right? The people that you’re, it’s the things that drive their organizations too.  

And those four things, number one is volume. So your pricing is probably based on how much stuff the customer’s buying. Products, technology, services, hours, locations, bowling balls, whatever. But like more is better than less. You probably have tier discounts based on you buying more, so that’s number one.  

Number two is the timing of cash or how fast the customer pays for your stuff.  

[00:08:28] Linda: Okay. 

[00:08:29] Todd: Your pricing is probably based on some, let’s say it’s upfront, annual net 30 payments or something like that, and that every for-profit company in the world would prefer you to pay faster versus slower. So faster, good, slower, bad.  

Number three is the length of commitment, or how long you commit to our products, technology, services, whatever it is, longer, better than shorter, and that’s probably reflected in your pricing, but organizationally, you have more value from longer commitments than shorter commitments. 

And then number four is the timing of the deal, or essentially deal predictability. Every organization thrives when it can predict revenue, predict so that investors have confidence, predict so that they can make the right resource investments, predict so that they can resource what you’re going to buy. 

And so volume, timing of cash, length of commitment, timing of the deal. What I advocate for is you establish your pricing based on those four things. You communicate that early, you propose it that way clearly, and then literally every concession request that comes up on behalf of a customer, you can go back to those four. 

If you want, you could commit to more. You could pay us fast, commit longer, help us forecast. You want to pay slower? Cool. Your pricing’s based on net 30 upfront, annual. If you want to pay slower, you can, but something else needs to be adjusted to make up for it. You can literally, it’s the simplest, stupidest thing in the world. Right? But it creates that sound basis and it gives you security around those things. Yes.   

[00:10:03] Linda: Yeah. It gives you structure. Yeah. What happens, I think, is discounting is what a reaction, you know? The first thing is like, oh boy, let me cut you a deal. Okay, I think I can get you a discount. Let me talk to my boss. But it’s not that you’re taking this model and you’re replacing the structure. So like you said, it’s not a reaction anymore. You’re actually making a decision based on the levers, is what I’m hearing you say. So those levers can be chosen to, whether it’s, like you said, more volume, faster cash, longer commitment, maybe it’s deal predictability. So there’s no question, there’s no games, there’s no enough, and you explain this to your prospects. Is that correct?  

[00:10:40] Todd: Exactly. Cards face up.  

[00:10:41] Linda: Yeah. 

[00:10:42] Todd: It creates that sound basis, right? That when you walk in, and what you just said something that was really the reason that this came up is back in 2008, I had gotten promoted into my first revenue leadership role. This was a big deal. The rep gets word from the customer that, Hey, we want to move forward with you, we’ve got to do something about the price and the commercial terms. And the rep was immediately like, I’ve got to call my manager. 

And the buyer from the customer was like, you know what? We’re not playing the car dealer game. Whoever your manager is, get them on a plane. Let’s get in a room. And so that’s essentially what started this. I then walked into this room and they had their whole procurement team ready to kick my butt, like one of those tear ’em up negotiations and I’m like, I’m terrible at this. 

I had had a conversation with my CFO week earlier where he was sharing, Hey, our business is driven by how much people buy, how fast they pay, how long they commit, and then predictability or when they sign. And so I started the conversation nervously like, Hey, can I share the four drivers of our business? 

And then they asked for a massive discount and I was like, wait, remember those four things I wrote? Maybe we can use those as a path to get you as close as possible because our pricing’s based on those four and the whole fists up, the drool, like that went away, and instead of it being customer vendor, it became a bunch of people sitting at the table collaborating around the things that really drive both of our businesses. 

We walked out of the room with them paying for a whole three-year deal up front, and they helped us predict our business. They got part of the way to the discount they wanted. We got value for every dollar we gave away, but the most important thing.? Is that anxiety, that lying, that hostage negotiating technique, word art, psychological tricks that we play all went away. 

And I was like, wait, that was easy. That felt good. We built trust to the goal line. Maybe I’m onto something. That was 16 years ago, so it took me this long to write the book on it.  

[00:12:46] Linda: Yeah. You know what’s great about it actually, now that we’re, you know, you’ve taken the emotion out of everything. Before, it’s always an emotional thing. It’s like, oh, am I getting, you know, taken advantage of? But no, it’s just like, this is the way it works. You know, pick and choose. You really, you’re almost putting it back in their court because you’re saying, Hey, you decide if you want a bigger commitment, I can get you a bigger discount. If you pay faster, I’ll give you a bigger discount. 

So let’s say, let’s pressure test it a little bit. So let’s say we have a buyer and they’re like, we need a 30% discount. You know, what does like a salesperson say to that next?  

[00:13:21] Todd: Step one on all of this is, let’s not forget to be human beings. You just said 30%. 

So what I would ask is, tell me about the 30%, right? Is that a budget issue? Is it a cash flow issue. Is it a perceived value issue? Like just have a conversation. In many cases, the analogy I often make is like when I’m teaching this, a lot of times if like I’m at a kickoff or a sales kickoff. 

I’ll ask the audience like, how many of you when you checked into the hotel here, so raise your hand, if you asked the person checking you in, if there were any upgrades available. And like, you know, 10 hands go up. Like, how many of you actually got said upgrade? None of their hands go up. And then I said, why did you ask, and was there ever a moment where you thought, if I don’t get this, I’m not going to stay here? And they’re like, well, no, and I asked because I might get it.  

[00:14:16] Linda: Right.  

[00:14:17] Todd: So we’ve got to remember the human element of this is understanding where’s the 30% coming? Like be humans. Always step one.  

[00:14:24] Linda: Yeah.  

[00:14:24] Todd: And understand like why are they asking? Why didn’t you ask for 60% off?  

[00:14:28] Linda: Yeah.  

[00:14:28] Todd: Step two then is to take a step back and educate them again around your pricing model.  

[00:14:34] Linda: Yeah. 

[00:14:34] Todd: They’re like, alright, cool. Like you need 30% off. Great. Just by way of education. Our pricing model is really driven by four things. Volume, how much you buy, timing of cash, how fast you pay, length of commitment, how long you commit, and then this mutual alignment around timing. 

Maybe we can go through the four of those and see if we can get you a little closer. And then step three is to go through each one, all four. If you need 30% off, you can actually gain economies of scale by committing to more or, if it’s a dollar amount, maybe you’re buying too much stuff and we need to lower that. Like the grocery store analogy.  

[00:15:08] Linda: Yeah.  

[00:15:09] Todd: If there’s an opportunity to accelerate payment, that’s something we’re willing to pay you for. If you can mutually align around timing, there’s value in our ability to predict. You go through them, see how close you can get, and if the answer is they can’t do any of them, then sorry. Like, I mean, our price is our price.  

[00:15:25] Linda: Right. 

[00:15:26] Todd: And it becomes a conversation, collaborative sound basis building, confidence building, anxiety goes away. One of my large clients, so as I was negotiating a big deal to do a bunch of workshops for a company, I sent them my contract. They added a paragraph into it early, and the paragraph is, it’s called Most Favored Nation (MFN) language. 

But essentially what it is, is the customer writes: Todd, we need you to guarantee that we are paying the same or less than every other customer that is buying a similar package. So most sales reps, organizations, they’d look at that and be like, no. because it literally has a, we reserve the right to audit. 

And so they literally, when they put this paragraph in there, like, Todd, sorry, we’ve got to have this paragraph in here. And I looked at it and I was like, no, that’s cool. And they’re like. That’s cool? Like, well, yeah, your pricing’s based on these four things. The answer is always yes. You’re paying the exact same amount as anybody else that’s investing in the same stuff. 

And it will always be that case. You know, my pricing goes up over time, hopefully, but, you know, as of this moment, absolutely. They literally were like, well, we don’t need to negotiate anymore. Signed. And so like you, you’re literally, you’re building that confidence, but you speed your close cycle too because they’re not keeping picking at you trying to get at more because, you just proved to them and you put it in writing that the price is the price based on the four levers.  

[00:16:52] Linda: Yeah. And I think to your point where you’re not kind of negotiating, going back and forth, maybe fighting, creating those negative emotions, it’s so clear and cut and transparent that they probably feel good about it. Like they, like that just takes that whole component away. So it’s like, okay, we, we almost worked on this together.  

[00:17:12] Todd: Whole point. It’s transparent. I, I’ve got so many analogies that I could share, but I’ll say a couple of things. Number one is just remember that the minute you give away anything for free is the minute you tell the customer the price isn’t the price, right? And now you load everything down and they come after more, right? 

Like, if I’m walking my dogs and I find a $20 bill under a rock, I want to get the, get done, right? Like, go get the dog, I want to get back inside. It’s cold, it’s rainy. But once I find that $20, I’m like, I’m no longer cold or wet. I want to find like, is there more money here now? 

[00:17:48] Linda: Yeah, right.  

[00:17:49] Todd: But the same thing happens the minute a customer even says, Hey, uh, we need net 60 payment terms instead of net 30. And we kind of Tommy Boy and go okey dokey.  

[00:17:59] Linda: Yeah.  

[00:17:59] Todd: We’ve now told the customer that, hey, our price wasn’t really based on net 30. What else can they be asking for? We lose leverage. 

And so if you always go back to the four. And just go alright, you want to pay slower? Cool. Our pricing’s based on net 30, we can adjust some other stuff like commit to another year. We pay you in the form of slower payment terms. That’s cool. Right? And the lever, they all move and, just stop giving stuff away for free, especially those painful, fake quarter end discounts.  

[00:18:29] Linda: Yeah. 

[00:18:30] Todd: Those are the worst way to lose leverage. Lose confidence that your price is your price, and literally slow down your deals.  

[00:18:37] Linda: Alright. One negotiation myth leaders still believe? 

[00:18:41] Todd: That quarter end discounts accelerate purchases. They slow them down.  

[00:18:46] Linda: Perfect. Most misunderstood part of pricing.  

[00:18:51] Todd: The foundational element of pricing confidence. I believe that we are missing a huge opportunity to drive revenue because we have not taught individuals to deliver pricing with confidence.  

[00:19:05] Linda: Perfect. What’s the biggest mistake sales teams make today? 

[00:19:08] Todd: That they can create fake urgency by creating a discount. It literally does the opposite. 

[00:19:15] Linda: Right. And every time a discount is given, what is actually happening here? 

[00:19:21] Todd: Well, we are eroding confidence and trust that our price is actually our price, and we are inviting the customer to ask for more.  

[00:19:30] Linda: And what’s one word that defines negotiation today?  

[00:19:33] Todd: Transparency is my one word for what the future of negotiation should be. 

[00:19:39] Linda: Yeah. Awesome. You know, this sort of reframes everything when it comes to pricing, sales, negotiation, restore that integrity that I think a lot of salespeople lose during their, you know, career. So you’re actually negotiating as a system, so you’re building more trust and I think it just makes it all around much, much better. 

So where can they get the book and where can they connect with you?  

[00:20:03] Todd: Yeah, so the book is available anywhere you get your books in any format. Unfortunately, my publisher didn’t have me narrate it this time, so it’s a different narrator. Okay. My first few books I got to narrate. 

Toddcaponi.com is a good place. I share a lot of my nerdery there. LinkedIn, Todd Capone, follow along or if you connect, let me know where you heard me. And then my hobby is sales history. So if any of you are interested in that, I just unload via the Sales History Podcast, just 15 to 20 minute monologues where I research a topic from as far back as the Roman Empire on sales, and share what I’ve learned and a lot of people seem to dig it, so you can check that out.   

[00:20:43] Linda: That’s awesome. That’s great. And then the name of the books? 

[00:20:45] Todd: Four Levers Negotiating is the new one. My most popular one’s my first one, The Transparency Sale. And then the Transparent Sales Leader. It’s not really about being a transparent sales leader, it’s actually a framework for revenue leadership, optimized by science on a bed of transparency. So if you’re just looking to create a structure for revenue leadership, it’s a good place to check out.  

[00:21:05] Linda: That’s awesome. Great. Thank you so much, Todd. 

And to our audience today, if you found this podcast valuable and you got some things out of it, don’t just listen, apply it to your day-to-day working and also we would love for you to like, share, comment, or subscribe, and let’s just keep raising the standard when it comes to B2B leadership and sales. And if you’re ready for your own brand 180, please visit mill.agency and you can connect with me on lindafanaras.com and we’ll see you in the next episode. 

How ready is your brand for growth?
Take the free Brand180 Reality Check: 12 quick questions to uncover your biggest brand blind spots before your next stage of growth.
https://brand180.mill.agency/

In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras speaks with Eli Igra Serfaty, CEO & Co-Founder at MAIA Digital, about why so many executives are still behind on one of the most important B2B platforms. They break down the gap between simply posting and actually building a presence that drives trust, credibility, and meaningful business conversations.

The discussion focuses on what a high-performing LinkedIn strategy really looks like, common mistakes leaders make, and how to shift from lead generation to opportunity generation. You’ll also hear a practical framework, ARC—Attract, Relate, Convert—that executives can use to turn LinkedIn into a consistent driver of visibility and growth.

01:39 The LinkedIn Gap: Why Executives Are Still Behind
04:20 Posting Isn’t a Strategy: Why Activity Alone Falls Short
07:38 Executive vs. Company Presence: Who Should Be Showing Up?
11:04 The Biggest Mistake Executives Make on LinkedIn
13:41 What High-Performing LinkedIn Strategies Actually Require
18:17 Distribution Over Posting: Building Trust, Authority, and Reach
21:57 The ARC Framework: Attract, Relate, Convert
23:20 Rapid Fire Questions

https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-igra-serfaty/

https://team-maia.com/

Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency

Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Linda: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 podcast where we deliver the strategies, perspective, and mindset shifts. You need to make 180-degree turn in your branding, leadership, and growth strategies. I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, and your host today. Let’s get started with the hard truth. If you’re an executive and you’re not actively using LinkedIn today, you are invisible to a large portion of your market because this year in 2026, LinkedIn is no longer a platform. It is actually your digital reputation. Today’s guest is Eli Igra Serfaty from MAIA Digital, a leading LinkedIn agency focused exclusively on B2B executives and organizations. Eli and his team help leaders turn LinkedIn into measurable growth through strategy, content, and amplification. From startups to Fortune 500 companies, his work sits at the intersection of visibility, credibility, and revenue. Eli, welcome. I’m really excited to have you here today. I think LinkedIn is such an important part of any business owner, entrepreneur, CMO, anybody who has any type of organization, so it’s great to have you here today. 

Eli: 

It’s great to be here, Linda. Thank you for having me, and I’m looking forward to hopefully by the end of the episode creating a 180 shift on how people are thinking about LinkedIn. 

Linda: 

Yes, and I’m hoping before they leave today, they’re going to learn maybe at least 3 top tips why LinkedIn has become one of the most underutilized growth levers for executives, what a modern executive presence actually looks like just beyond posting and how to turn LinkedIn into a scalable business asset. So we can get started. What has fundamentally changed? Where is LinkedIn today and why are there so many executives still behind the 8 ball when it comes to LinkedIn? I’d love to get your perspective on that. 

Eli: 

Awesome. Let’s dive in. So Linda, you come from Microsoft. You used to work there. I think what many people don’t know about LinkedIn is that Microsoft acquired them in 2016. LinkedIn’s been around since 2002, way before Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, the other social media platforms. And since 2016 when it was acquired for 26 billion, a really major acquisition where today I think LinkedIn alone brings in $18 billion. So I think it was a pretty good investment on their part. LinkedIn has 1.3 billion members today. Very different than where it was traditionally. Many of our listeners, executives, CMOs, who have been around in business for many years may think that LinkedIn is just for job seekers or for hiring managers. But today it is the number one platform for B2B professionals for relationship building. It is not a social media platform. It has social media elements, which we’ll discuss, but it is at its foundations a platform to build relationships, to have trust with your audience with, it could be clients, it could be hires across 1.3 million members. 

Today on the platform there are 65 million decision makers. There’s 10 million C-levels, right? So we can understand that the audience is there in difference from other platforms, also in its usage are actively looking to make buying decisions are actively, they’re not just scrolling to have a good time on social media. They’re usually there for work. What’s really important to understand is it’s still very early. It’s a growing platform, and I think what’s really interesting to help people understand of how early it is is only 1-3% of users on LinkedIn today create content.  

Linda: 

Wow.  

Eli: 

It’s a very, very small amount. So those who decide to get on to the stage and speak, imagine you’re in a stadium and around you, you have every single person who could be of interest. It’s your current clients, it’s your future clients, you have your partners, you have your investors, you have your employees, your current employees. That’s also for retention, your future employees that you want to hire. They’re all just looking to see you to visible- to build that relationship with you. That’s really what makes it so powerful. So I think that’s where it was and where it is today from a metric standpoint. 

Linda: 

Yeah, that’s great. I think perception and behavior is so unique with executives or CMOs or businesses today as far as LinkedIn is concerned. I think a lot of companies just say, okay, we need to post 3 times a week on LinkedIn, and then that’s the end of the conversation around LinkedIn, and that’s just, honestly, it’s not enough for the company to just be active on LinkedIn. I mean, would you agree with that? 

Eli: 

100%. It doesn’t lie just within the marketing team and just 3 corporate posts or a post here and there and a repost from the CEOs, A CEO isn’t active just because he re-shares or has something go up. Really utilizing LinkedIn today is turning it into a centralized growth engine. It is the only platform that we have as individuals and as companies, especially B2B, where we can get every single person onto that platform from the company. So we have the company page, we have the executives, we have the C-levels, we have the VPs, we have the subject matter experts, we have the employees as well. All of them should be on LinkedIn, engaging with each other, which is also influencing the success of the post going up, but also commenting and engaging with, again, investors, clients, partners. It will draw more eyeballs into this ecosystem, and you can’t do that with other platforms. 

Where are you going to get your executives, your employees? They really go on Facebook and it’s fragmented across the other platforms. But here we’re able to for several different objectives. It could be for HR, right? A company could be thinking, okay, now we really want to hire better talent. We need more talent. Great. So then there’s specific things that we’re able to do within LinkedIn and who should be visible. Imagine if your company has employees who are now visible to other employees or job seekers. It’s like, great. They can understand why they should be working for your company. If you’re looking for sales, again, that’s always the easiest to understand of why LinkedIn influences sales you want to get in front of. Investors can also do that. I think what’s also interesting and important to note in B2B is 95% of your market isn’t looking to buy today, right? 

5% is only looking to buy today and actively make that decision. And we know that typical sales cycles in B2B are much longer, 9 to 12 months on average, several stakeholders and the need for frequency and touchpoints. So now when you take beyond the founder and you take the employees, you take all the different departments, you take the executives, you take the company page, again, all cohesive on LinkedIn, you’re able to really get across different decision makers. You’re able to, especially we’ve been talking about organic, if we put on top of that LinkedIn ads and then do thought leadership ads or do anything, any other campaign, then we’re able to be very surgical and who we want to target and get this content in front of. The more that you build there and the foundations have to be organic, the more you build there and the more you get your organization into LinkedIn, the more you’re able to work with. 

Linda: 

When you’re talking about those sort of strategies, are you looking at that from more of an executive perspective or a company perspective? Because I know there’s a lot of executives that are not visible on LinkedIn at all, that’s more of a corporate focus. I feel like they need to be visible obviously, but when you’re talking about some of these strategies, is it from an executive perspective or a corporate perspective or both? 

Eli: 

It’s from both. So ideally within the organization there should be an active company page. There’s frequently the consideration or discussion. What’s more important a company page or a personal profile? Both. They both serve different purposes and different audiences and especially large organizations, more recognizable brands, more resources do allow them to be on both places. Within LinkedIn, maybe we’re not talking about go be on every platform. We’re talking about be on LinkedIn, but make sure that you’re in every place within LinkedIn, so you have a company page and that’s the corporate page, and that’s important because people are doing their due diligence. Again, whether it’s clients or employees, they’re going to a company page to check them out, and if it’s not maintained and there’s no activity and frequent content, then it’s a missed opportunity. Whether people are searching on LinkedIn or on Google, again, someone types your company on Google, the first thing that’s coming up, probably even before your website is the LinkedIn page. 

So that’s the corporate side, and then you have the executives, which yes, the CEO, the CMO, the CPO, the CTO, all of them should have a presence on LinkedIn, different voices, different audiences, right? A CTO will be speaking to the technical audience, the CEO or the CMO can speak to other audiences and have different strategies under them and together with them, there’s the employees that amplify both of those channels, liking, commenting, sharing, but also creating their own content. And then you have employees who are now not only more effective in their jobs because they’re now able to get their messages out or the company’s message out to different audiences. They’re also now more engaged. And internally companies will see higher retention because they have employees who now are being invested in with training, they’re getting recognition, they’re feeling more connected to the company because they’re able to talk about their work, be proud of their work, who they do it with, what they do. 

And now you’re creating this flywheel that’s really again, HR, sales, marketing, fundraising pretty much. And that’s exactly what we focus on when we meet a prospect and we’re considering working together, we’re not diving straight into, well, what metrics are you looking to gain on LinkedIn? What are you looking to achieve in your business? What are the main things in the next 6 to 12 months that you need? And some will say, well, I’m about to go and hire my series A or my series B. Great. There are things that we need to do to get in front of the investors ahead of time, not today. When you want to open the round months before or you’re going to a new market or you’re looking to hire for a different position, or even you’re looking to improve conversions or retention, these are all things that can be influenced through LinkedIn. 

Linda: 

Is there one thing that executives just get wrong when it comes to LinkedIn? 

Eli: 

There’s several things. I think one of them, it starts from a mindset. Again, it’s that paradigm shift of great LinkedIn is not just a social media platform or just for job seekers. I understand why I as the executive need to be there and why my company should be there. And I guess that also ties into another hesitation, which sometimes people will say, well, I don’t want my employees to be visible because then they’re going to get poached and they’re going to leave the company. It’s like, no, your employees aren’t going to be leaving because they’re building a brand and contributing to the company from there, if they’re leaving, there’s a whole nother element and discussion on why that’s happening.  

There’s a lot more good to be gained from them being present on LinkedIn than being poached, right? If he is a star employee, these HRs are headhunters. They’re going to find him or her and get to them. But if they’re visible and you’re focusing more on, great, how can I focus on keeping them engaged, keeping- incentivize them? If you get your employees to be active, make sure that you recognize it. Make sure that you and their managers are saying, Hey, Linda, I noticed your post. Good job. Hey, great engagement. Celebrate them, right? Send it in Slack. Do it at the all hands. Get them excited about it so that they understand that it’s not just, oh, marketing sent out a nice templated email with a few things to upload or to or share. It’s like, guys, no, no, it’s not just a side project. This is a core strategy for our company. We’re going to be there as the executives and the employee initiatives always work better, of course when they see the executives there. 

So if we’re talking about priorities, where they should be first start from yourselves, walk the talk, have the leaders being active because one that will be super effective from when your clients see you as the leaders and the founders being active, but it’ll also help the employees say, well, great, I see them. I also want to get involved. And you don’t have to start in the entire company. It can be a big win to start. We typically start with 5, 10, 15 employees, get them to start the groove and then other employees start seeing them. It’s like, oh, this looks great. Oh, this is fun. Oh, I heard about the can I also get involved? And then we open another group and they join, and then it becomes really a whole ripple effect into the whole company. 

Linda: 

Perfect. I know we talked about a few pieces related to this, but what does a high performing LinkedIn strategy look like and what are the non-negotiables? 

Eli: 

It can vary depending, but I think each individual should be aiming for at least 2 to 3 posts a week. Ideally 3 posts a week, minimum once a week, don’t need to be at 5. I like to give a scale to people to understand, and if we’re looking at the time investment that’s needed, again, whether you’re doing it on your own or you outsource it and you have someone supporting you, it’s usually about an hour a day that needs to be done. And if I look at what needs to be done on, what should the executive listening saying to himself, great, well, I’m going to do it alone for now. It’s putting in your calendar for an hour, whether it’s 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes in the evening, and you’re doing a series of actions. You’re inviting people into your network every day. 

You can invite around 30 people a day, 150 a week, depending on what days. Look at it a weekly basis, 150 people a week. You need to continuously add people that are relevant, whether it’s future employees, partners, investors, so that when you are posting, they’re able to see your content. You should be commenting every day. It’s not just posting, it’s also commenting. Yes, it does take time, but commenting on 5 or 10 posts can really sometimes even be more effective than a post itself. When me and you, Linda, post the algorithm decides who’s going to see it based off a bunch of parameters and our networks. But when you comment, you have the ability to go, whether it’s the direct client or person that you want to get in front of and comment right in front of him or her so that he sees your face, he sees your comment and is able to click on your name and come to your profile. 

Or maybe you’re commenting on someone that your people of interest are also in the common section and hanging out there. So then they have the ability to discover you through that comment. And then there’s also, the third thing is starting the conversations. It’s looking at the engagement, it’s looking at the profile views, ideally starting with those people because those people are not cold outreach, those are already lukewarm. If someone viewed your profile or liked or commented, that’s some level of intent or engagement or interest. So starting a conversation from there may not necessarily lead to a sale, but it could lead to an opportunity depending on who that person is. Of course, if you need to do a cold outreach can also do that as well. Again, depending on the role, depending on the profile. But that’s kind of if someone was thinking what he could do himself, it’s commenting, it’s posting 3 to 5 times, usually a post a day from a corporate page. 

We do look to do more. And then LinkedIn ads, everyone here who hasn’t tried LinkedIn ads, and I do want to point out that it’s different. People may be looking at LinkedIn today and saying, great, I see LinkedIn saying I can boost a post rather than LinkedIn ads. So the format that I want everyone to be familiar with coming out of this episode, Linda, is called thought leadership ads. Thought leadership ads is LinkedIn’s newest format for LinkedIn ads, which is the capability from a company. So if we have an overlying company page, you go into the campaign manager there and where we would traditionally take a company page post and promote to the audience that we determine. LinkedIn now allows us to take a personal post, let’s say your CEO’s posts or an employee’s post and add budget behind that and then decide exactly the audience that you want to see, the revenue that they have, the seniority, the location and so on. 

And then they’re able to see the personal profile posts at scale. And what I love about that format is that it doesn’t only work internally. It can also be done with third parties, people external to your company. So if you have a partner or a client or anyone saying something about your company that you want other people to see, you can take their words with your budget and then put it in front of the exact audience that you would want someone third party talking about you and your brand, which we all understand the power of that rather than us talking about our own brands, right? 

Linda: 

So you’re not posting, but you’re distributing strategic content. 

Eli: 

The ability to distribute on LinkedIn and create trust, credibility, and authority at scale is exactly where LinkedIn comes in. And I said in the beginning that LinkedIn is a relationship-driven platform. To create relationships, whether it’s online or offline, we know this at home with friends: it takes time to build trust, to build familiarity. That doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen by posting once. You need to post consistently, right? There’s the frequency. A month posting once every 2 weeks probably is not going to be enough, posting several times a week over the next 120 days. That’s already a great starting point to then look at it and say, great, are we reaching the right audience? How’s our content doing? What do we need to talk about more? What do we need to talk about less? What’s usually something that they get wrong is that they quit too early. They say, well, I heard this awesome episode with Eli and Linda and they started a few times. They maybe didn’t see what they were expecting. And we can talk about also the algorithm, the impressions that are happening today on LinkedIn, and then they stop after a week or two.  

LinkedIn is long-term. The things that we’re discussing here, Linda, are over 6 months, over 12 months, over the next 18 months, and this all aligns with B2B and the nature of how these deals work and these relationships work. That’s why I always come back to it because we need patience. You need patience and consistency, and if you focus on bringing value to your clients or to your audience and consistently showing up, I don’t know how long it’ll take, and I don’t know what it’ll be when it comes to you, but I have no doubt that life-changing opportunities will come your way to your company’s way. If you do all of this and you’re out there and you’re allowing people to understand who you do, what you do, how you can help them. 

Again, it depends on who the person is or what the company is or what stage it is. Things will come. LinkedIn isn’t just a lead generation. Sometimes people just think lead generation. I look at it more as opportunity generation. Because when you’re out there and you’re visible, opportunities will come your way. That could be a podcast invite, that could be a sale, that could be a hire and so on. 

Linda: 

No, that’s perfect. If you boil it down a little bit, you’re talking about LinkedIn. It’s not just about content. It’s not just about posting here and there. You have access to a tremendous audience. You have access to having great conversations. You have access to building these relationships that bring new opportunity. And there may not be other ways to do that, especially in this global national environment that we’re in today. It’s not like you’re going to a trade show every week. I mean, maybe some companies do, but if you’re looking to make connections, LinkedIn provides a great vehicle for that. So definitely. 

Eli: 

I’ve met incredible people all around the world because of LinkedIn. Some of them have just formed into friendships, and that’s super valuable and many have turned into business opportunities. What I also enjoy about LinkedIn is I find the conversations and the things that we’re able to learn there, not only to sell, we’re able to really, they’re stimulating as opposed to other platforms that are a little bit more toxic and a little bit more wild west. 

Linda: 

Yeah, no, that’s a great point. There’s anything else you wanted to cover? 

Eli: 

One thing if it kind of just to give an overarching framework to maybe help people remember the things that we discussed. So I like to look at it as ARC, Attract, Relate and Convert. Right? So the first part to attract people really starts from your profile. It’s you have to optimize your profile. We were talking about content and being and commenting and having a presence, but everyone here should make sure that your profile is optimized, that it looks good, that it’s aligned, that it’s a strong first impression just as you would invest in your website. You don’t want people coming in that you’ve brought in and then dropping off and not understanding how you can help or why you’re the right person. 

So once you have that profile and you start with your presence and you’re creating content and you’re commenting and you’re out there, you’re able to attract people and get people to start saying, well, who is this? Who are they? Ask those first questions. From there, the relating part with them to relate, that takes time and that you’re able to nurture with your content and with your comments as well. And then when the time comes to convert them into whatever the opportunity is, they will be more receptive to it once they’ve seen you and they become familiar with you and they’ve built that relationship through that content, through that journey that you’ve been able to bring them towards. 

Linda: 

Perfect. That’s awesome. So what’s the biggest LinkedIn myth executives still believe? 

Eli: 

That they have to be influencers. 

Linda: 

Okay, awesome. So if you were to pick one, is it content or engagement, which matters most?  

Eli: 

Content. 

Linda: 

What’s the biggest mistake you see consistently? 

Eli: 

Quitting too early. 

Linda: 

There you go. And one word that actually defines LinkedIn’s success in 2026. 

Eli: 

Consistency. 

Linda: 

Awesome. Eli, this was a great podcast. I appreciate all your insight on LinkedIn. I think we know LinkedIn is not optional anymore. It’s not a “nice to have.” It’s actually a leadership tool and it’s a corporate tool and executives I think who understand that are the ones that will outpace the others. So I would love for you to share how people can get in touch with you, your company. 

Eli: 

So this will probably not come to a surprise to anyone, but you can find me on LinkedIn, me and my co-founder, Shay Thieberg, and we have our company page as well, MAIA Digital. We’re talking about best practices and trends and anything that’s important to LinkedIn. Feel free to, if you have any questions from our episode or ideally after 120 days that you really gave everything here a try, feel free to reach out and say that you came from this episode and I’d be happy to help with anything from there. Our services, if there’s anything that we can help with LinkedIn, anything and everything LinkedIn, we’d be happy to help from company pages to thought leadership for executives or to training your team so that they can also be on LinkedIn. 

Linda: 

That’s great. Thank you. Thank you for listening in today. If you found this valuable, please hit like, share, comment or subscribe. And if you’re ready to rethink how your brand shows up, visit https://mill.agency/ or https://lindafanaras.com/. We’ll see you at the next episode.