Capel Group

We've set out to build a new type of global agency network with a focus on unlocking the value and potential of independent agencies.

I'm most excited about the mutual ownership model that we believe aligns incentives, leaves agencies founders to keep doing what they do best and opens up a new growth engine that unlocks the potential of their talent.

Chief Operations Officer

Butter - A Shopify Partner Agency

Working with e-commerce merchants across APAC / Hong Kong on their Shopify Plus strategy. 

Butter has been recognised as a Shopify Plus level partner - giving us access to the best of Shopify in the region, as well as a nice reward for the team to be recognised for their expertise on the platform.

Our expertise lies in:
- Migrating e-commerce merchants to the Shopify Plus platform.
- Geo-expansion of Shopify Plus stores to new markets, complete with localisation.
- Optimisation of Shopify stores with best in class UI/UX and Shopify web development.

Founder

NYU Stern School of Business

Spring Exchange Semester at NYU Stern studying full time. Subjects include: Valuation, Entrepreneurial Finance, Managing Growing Companies and Brand Strategy.

MBA Candidate (Full Time - Exchange)

OMD APAC

- APAC Lead for Nissan Motor Co.
- APAC Lead for Hasbro, Inc. 
- Key member of OMD's regional pitch team.

OMD is part of the Omnicom Media Group (OMG), the media services division of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC), the leading global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company, providing services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

Regional Business Director - APAC

The Economist

Asia's Acquisition Team lead, with P&L responsibilities. 

Tasked with developing regional digital innovation strategies and pilot digital programs for China and the region.

APAC Digital Marketing Lead

UM Worldwide

Global Digital Media lead for the Cathay Pacific Central Team.

Cathay Pacific Airways (HKG:0293):  Cathay Pacific, Dragonair (now Cathay Dragon), Asia Miles plus Cathay Pacific & Dragonair Holidays.

Global Digital Media Director

Responsible for digital strategy and execution across the Melbourne office. 

Main Clients: 
- Coles Group (ASX:WES): Coles Supermarkets, Coles Online, Coles Insurance, FlyBuys, Liquorland, Vintage Cellars and Coles Group & Myer Gift Cards. 
- Origin Energy (ASX:ORG)
- L'Oreal Group (EPA:OR): L'Oreal Paris, Garnier & Maybelline New York

Digital Strategist 

Agency Managing Partner | Client Leadership, Digital Experience, E-Commerce | I help large brands implement complex digital projects & platforms

With over 15 years of senior leadership experience in both global and independent agencies, I’ve developed a unique skill set that combines paid media expertise, technology implementation, plus strategic business and client leadership. 

I have worked at a regional level across APAC, managing complex businesses and navigating the needs of diverse stakeholders, including C-suite executives and multinational brands.

My experience spans the entire digital ecosystem, from leading large-scale, integrated media campaigns to overseeing the end-to-end implementation of sophisticated digital commerce platforms. 

I have:
- Managed $50M+ in media budgets, optimizing performance marketing strategies to drive growth across APAC
- Led cross-functional teams to deliver large-scale digital commerce solutions, integrating platforms like Shopify and Magento
- Collaborated with senior stakeholders, including C-suite executives, to align media and digital strategies with business objectives
- Delivered measurable results for multinational brands like Cathay Pacific, Nissan Motor Co., and Hasbro, managing complex, multi-market media operations

This combination of senior-level stakeholder management, hands-on platform integration, and deep expertise in digital marketing allows me to drive growth and innovation for large, complex organizations across the APAC region.

"Working with Michael and team was a game-changer for our digital project - providing a quality product that has driven our business to new levels.”  Sam Cooper, CEO - CCW Global

"Michael is vested in our success and his team's cutting edge approach allowed us to unlock our customer acquisition." - Oliver Rust, Head of Product - Truflation

I have worked with leading brands at a senior stakeholder level, including Nissan, Apple, Cathay Pacific, Carlsberg, Estee Lauder Companies, Hasbro, FedEx, MetLife, Tai Ping Carpets, and more.

Michael Ashton

Gaurav Patel

High Performance SaaS Sales to reach $10 mil ARR Faster | Generated 1400+ B2B SaaS Appointments in 1 year

Your sales pipeline is burning cash on expensive talent executing outdated strategies. While your team automates outreach that turns sophisticated buyers into skeptics, your CAC climbs and close rates plummet. Nothing worse than this situation.

I built the Buyer-Certainty Revenue Engine that transforms how prospects research, evaluate, and buy from you:

✓ 3-Level Buyer Intelligence: Map business, functional, and personal decision drivers
✓ Certainty-Building Narratives: Address the real psychology behind B2B buying decisions
✓ Self-Service Conversion Funnels: Let buyers research confidently without pushy sales interference

The result? Lower CAC, 1.5-3x close rates, and SQLs who arrive ready to buy.

While your competitors struggle with $200K+ sales hires who underperform, PipeBagger leverages world-class Indian marketing and sales talent at 40-70% lower cost. We don't just reduce expenses - we execute superior buyer-psychology strategies your competition hasn't discovered.

Recent client results:
→ HRTech founder: 40% CAC reduction, 35% SQL increase in 180 days
→ IoT startup: 2.5x demo booking rate with zero additional headcount
→ B2B Fintech platform: shorter sales cycles, higher close rates, consistent pipeline

The window is closing. As AI democratizes automation and global talent becomes mainstream, early adopters of buyer-certainty systems will dominate their categories. Companies that build these engines now will have a 3-5 year competitive moat.

Your buyers are already avoiding traditional outreach. The question isn't whether you'll adapt - it's whether you'll lead the change or follow your competitors.

Founder and SaaS Marketing Success Head

Helping SaaS Leaders and Sales teams create strong awareness and build trust and relationships to grow revenue with least objections and increased conversions.

We generate leads for B2B SaaS companies using our Unstoppable SaaS Growth Framework

It helps a SaaS company build lasting relationships with ICP, Top talent and Investors.

How we do it?

Using Linkedin Marketing, Account based Marketing and Targeted Email Marketing for SaaS.

Why are we focussed with SaaS only?

We love technology that solves business challenges in day to day life (we have faced them too and solved using technology).

A lot of promising SaaS products are dying because of struggling market share and organic awareness would have helped them grow.

We want to help reduce this phenomenon and help promising SaaS companies cross the US$ 100 million mark and reach Unicorn status.

We want to support the SaaS SDRs and AEs to generate more quality leads and convert them with least objections.

I'm building a team of skilled SaaS Sales, Customer Success and SaaS Content writers. DM if interested to know what in it for you.

I spent about 2 hours on a sales call yesterday.

This tech founder was amazing.

The product was amazing.

But their buyer kept saying - "Honestly... this feels like your competitor."

They chose based on price.

This is what broken positioning looks like.

This founder had 12 different value props:
💪 Faster
💪 Easier
💪 Better customer support
💪 Integrates with X
💪 Powered by AI
💪 Lower cost

Guess what the buyer heard?

"We're like everyone else, but... maybe cheaper?"

And what kills me worse: his competitor could have said THE SAME THING.

Now it's a race to the bottom on price.

I'm currently working with a portfolio of 3 more founders on repositioning. 

We're spending weeks on this. Even though it feels slow.

My first founder resisted: "GP, we don't have time for positioning. We need to close deals."

I said: "You're closing 7-10% of deals. Tighten positioning, you'll close 30%."

She locked positioning to: "40% time savings for finance teams (without training)."

Next quarter? Win rate: under 25%. ACV: up by 20%. Not bad.

She's now spending less time closing + making more per deal.

That's what real positioning does.

Why This Matters?

Generic positioning = commodity = price wars = low margins.

Clear positioning = differentiation = faster sales = better margins.

But founders resist because it feels like "limiting upside."

No. It's actually unlocking upside.

If you're a CMO/Head of Marketing, this is haunting you. Sales reps all pitch differently. Buyers are confused. Win rate sucks.

If you're a founder, you feel it too. Sales cycles are long. 

Buyer confusion = indecision.

Simple Breakdown (What Winners Do):
1️⃣ Define ONE buyer persona (not 3)
2️⃣ Identify the specific problem you solve for that persona
3️⃣ Test messaging with 20 prospects (surveys + calls)
4️⃣ Lock positioning across website, sales deck, email, everything
5️⃣ Train entire team on positioning language (reps, customer success, everyone)

3 founders did this. Revenue grew 2-4x. Not because product got better. 

Because messaging got clearer.

Is your current positioning crystal clear, or are you saying "we're the faster, easier, cheaper version"?

Gaurav R Patel

I reverse-engineer why B2B deals die (hint: buyer uncertainty, not price) | Building self-service revenue systems that buyers actually prefer

Guaranteed Growth Hack

Most B2B CEOs obsess over why deals close, but bigger money is in understanding why deals DIE.

In 2023, Mahesh Iyer and I pulled our lost deal data. Not to feel bad about it.

To understand what we're missing.

What I found shocked me.

Many of our lost deals had already decided to buy from a competitor before we ever knew they were evaluating.

Not because the competitor was better.

But because the competitor was answering questions we didn't even know buyers were asking.

Your lost deals aren't lost because of your product.

They're lost because of your positioning, your messaging, and what you're building into your content funnel.

Think about it.

When a buyer is researching solutions to their problem, where do they go?

Not your website. Not a cold email.

They go to:
→ Reddit threads where real users trash talk what sucks
→ Slack communities where peers share what actually worked
→ LinkedIn posts about the exact pain they're living
→ G2 reviews that validate whether you solve the real problem
→ Competitor content that speaks to their world
→ ChatGPT (etc)

And if you're not there? If your messaging doesn't show up in those places? 

You've already lost.

Winners study their lost deals obsessively.

Ask: 
"What was this buyer reading about our category?"
"What problems were they trying to solve that we didn't address?"
"What did the competitor say that we didn't?"

And rebuild their entire content and product strategy around those answers.

Most companies skip this step entirely. They assume lost deals were "bad fit" or "budget constraints."

Wrong.

Your lost deals are telling you exactly where your positioning is broken.

If 90% of your competitors aren't studying their lost deals?

Then 90% of them are also not updating their content, messaging, and positioning based on buyer research.

Which means if you do this work and if you actually look at what killed your deals and rebuild your narrative around it, you're not just competing. You're lapping them.

Here's how to start:
1️⃣ Pull your top 20 lost deals from the last year.
2️⃣ For each one, ask: Where was this buyer researching before they talked to us?
3️⃣ What were they reading? What did competitors say?
4️⃣ What messaging did we use that didn't land?
5️⃣ Now write down: What should we have said?
6️⃣ Build THAT into your content, your positioning, your product strategy.

That's it.

No new tactics. No bigger budgets.

You need to stop guessing about what your buyers care about and start building your entire GTM around the intelligence already hiding in your lost deals.

Every lost deal is actually free market research.

Your competitors are paying agencies 6-fig to figure out what you already know because a real buyer told you.

So use it.

Mahesh Iyer is a pro at it.

And we at Roarr  Catalyst Group are helping B2B tech founders, exactly do this.


#B2BSales #ProductStrategy #LostDeals #GTM #CompetitiveIntelligence #CRO

JSESSIONID

li_at

In 1969, Stanford psychologists ran a remarkable memory test.

One group memorizes random word lists and the second group turned them into stories.

The “story” group remembered 7x more. Roughly 93% recall vs 13% for the list‑memorisers.
​
Same words.
Different structure.
Completely different outcome.

That experiment wasn’t about “creativity”.

It was about how the brain actually stores information.

And it’s exactly where most B2B branding quietly loses.

If you sell into B2B, look at your own brand.

Your site, pitch, and deck are probably full of:
AI-powered.
Single pane of glass.
End‑to‑end.
360° view.
Trusted by X, Y, Z.

That’s not a memorable brand communication. That’s a word list.

Your buyer’s brain will treat it accordingly.

Because when the CFO, CTO, or VP Sales sits in an internal meeting... days after your demo, without your deck in front of them, they’re not recalling bullet points.

They’re recalling the story they have in their head about you.

This is where the Stanford experiment means highly to your strategy:
The control group = the way most vendors communicate.
Lots of unconnected claims. Low recall.

The story group = top of mind brands that wire everything into a simple, retellable narrative:
🔥 Who you are really for
🔥 What specific “old way” you are against
🔥 What new way you offer instead
🔥 What repeatedly happens when people choose you

That’s what makes a brand “stick” in an ocean of similar options.

Not another slogan. Not another feature.

A story structure that the buyer can actually reuse inside their company.

Think about the B2B brands you remember without checking Google.

They almost always occupy a very narrow mental slot:
❌ "The observability company for cloud teams."
 ❌ "The support platform built for modern SaaS.​"
 ❌ "The revenue engine that finally makes CRM data trustworthy."
​
You’re not remembering “15% lift in blah blah” in isolation.

You’re remembering a simple narrative that explains why they exist and when to call them.

So if you’re building a B2B tech brand and wondering why they “liked the demo” but ghost you.

Champions say “I need to socialise this internally” and nothing happens.

You keep losing to incumbents you know are weaker.

Now, if you want to stress‑test your brand, use this one‑line audit:
“Can my ideal buyer retell our story, accurately and confidently, in a room where we are not present?”

And if the answer is 'no', you don’t have a differentiation problem, yet.

You have a definite memory problem.

And the market is not kind to solutions it can’t remember.

As an example, Evernote grabbed my attention for the first time.

But, if I have to make it more recallable, this is what I'd do with it:

"Capture notes in the meeting,
turn them into tasks in seconds, 
and open your day knowing exactly what to do next.
Evernote is the working memory your real brain doesn’t have time to be."

Two more samples below 👇

Most B2B founders don’t stall under 10M ARR because “marketing isn’t working”.

But rather trying to scale a version of the business that was never built to scale.

Lets break it down.

1️⃣  Truth-1
You have a revenue issue because of some focus problem.

Under 10M, your revenue often looks like this - Different industries. Different deal sizes. Different use cases.

It reads like a strategy, without performing like any.

On the other hand, the companies that break the $10M, narrow hard.
💪 One or two core segments.
💪 One or two painful problems.
💪 One or two clear buying triggers.

And they say 'no' to the rest.

Datadog didn’t “do everything for everyone”.
It became the obvious choice for cloud‑era observability for engineering teams, then earned the right to expand.​

2️⃣ Truth-2
Your “sales motion” is just a few heroes. Founders and early AEs pull deals by force.
That works… until you hire more reps and things breaks.
Companies that scale don’t rely on heroics.
They identify and build "primary motion".

Like, Product‑led with sales assist, inbound demos, targeted outbound, or partner‑led
and turn it into a system: clear stages, real qualification, honest pipeline reviews.
So new reps can win systematically.​

3️⃣ Truth-3
You might be “growing” while building a trap.
Plenty of sub‑10M teams add ARR with
☑️ long CAC payback
☑️ thin or zero expansion
☑️ heavy discounting

The founders with durable $10M growth share a habit - They watch CAC payback and net revenue retention closely, and spend where those numbers are strong, not just on fancy volumes.​

4️⃣ Truth-4
Without RevOps, complexity quietly kills you.
By 5–10M, you’re juggling segments, motions, products, regions.
If your CRM is a mess and definitions are fuzzy, every decision is risky.

The companies that break through, invest in a real revops early:
☑️ shared definitions
☑️ clean data
☑️ one owner for the full revenue system, not just a function.​

5️⃣ Fifth truth
Your roadmap is not serving the right ones.
Companies that scale, align product with their most valuable segments’ recurring needs,
instead of building for whoever shouts latest and loudest.

Zendesk’s evolution is a reminder: when you design around clear segments and consistent workflows, you get depth, not chaos, and that’s what is durable growth.​

👉 The founder shift
From 0–5M, you win by being the best closer and chief problem‑solver.
Past that, you win by building leaders, systems and focus.

If you’re under 10M and stuck,
🔥 Clarify your true ICP using win‑rates, retention and expansion.​
🔥 Pick one primary motion and align team and systems.​
🔥 Tighten pricing, packaging and CAC payback.​
🔥 Stand up real RevOps and shared reporting.​
🔥 Upgrade leadership where you’re the bottleneck and commit to a regular operating rhythm.​

That’s what “behaving like a $10-50M company before you are one” actually means.

Less noise.

More discipline around the few things that truly compound.

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Gaurav Patel

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