Heather Melton

Account Executive | ex-Hopin | Listening to problems and trying to fix them 🔹 Full Cycle Sales 🔹 Creative Outbound 🔹 Below Average Golfer

What if an hour a month could fill your top of funnel and make your next fundraise easier? I help founders turn their expertise into an authentic LinkedIn presence that builds the brand awareness and community investors and customers notice.

I've always been a builder.

I started with a language school in Spain over 20 years ago and built that from scratch. Then I moved into tech sales in the SaaS space because I wanted to try building something else. That's what I do: continuously build and move into new areas so I'm constantly learning and growing.

I spent two and a half years in the bid management space, working for bid management platforms and building communities on LinkedIn. I got to know so many bid professionals, learned what they actually do, and saw their desire for systems and processes that make their work better. I'm the same way: always looking for ways to improve things.

That's where I saw the pattern. Bid professionals and founders face the same problem: they're brilliant at what they do, but they don't have systems to share what they know consistently. Marketing teams turn them corporate. Ghostwriters make them sound like everyone else. And manual posting? Unsustainable.

So I built Loro Flow to solve it. LinkedIn content systems and automation infrastructure that preserves authentic voice while scaling execution. Not just content: full GTM systems. Outbound automation. Competitive analysis. The things that fall through the cracks when everyone's doing multiple jobs.

I also created bidfolk, a community and podcast for bid professionals. That content gives me genuine joy, so it's staying. Different page now, same commitment to making the bid world better.

My toolkit: Clay (Bootcamp grad and moderator), n8n, MCP development, automation and AI for go-to-market growth. I like process, being helpful and having fun while doing both.

If you're a founder who needs systems that actually work, or a bid professional looking to connect, book some time with me. I'm always up for a conversation about building things better.

Enterprise Business Development Representative (Redundancy due to global restructure)

Helping educate customers all over Europe and Africa on how to make their events more engaging and interactive.
▪️Outbound,  Use Multi-channel approach - Social, email, calls, video
▪️120% - 220%  Meeting Quota Attainment every month
▪️Expert user - Salesforce, Outreach, Zoominfo, Sales Navigator
▪️Video tools - Zoom, Streamyard, Tolstoy, Loom, Vidyard, Google Meet
▪️Sales Training  - Winning By Design
▪️Ongoing certification - AWS Cloud Practitioner, CRM Fundamentals and Practice: Salesforce Reports, Objects, and Data Management
▪️Built out territories in BeNeLux, Nordics, Southern Europe and Africa
▪️Enterprise BDR for UK/I - experienced in mapping accounts and speaking with C-Level Prospects
▪️Cross-collaboration with marketing, SE and management to leverage company-held events and public tenders

Ok. Quick confession.

A little while ago I did the very dramatic “I’m leaving the bid world” post.

And yes. I am now doing the thing I hate seeing online.
I’m back. Sorry. I know.

Over the holidays, people reached out with genuinely kind messages. It reminded me why I like this community so much, and why I’m not quite ready to walk away from it.

So I’m staying. 😅

I’m launching a go-to-market engineering agency focused on content and media, and I’ve also set up a separate company called bidfolk for all the bid-world things.

What’s continuing:
 🔹 The podcast, every two weeks (next one announced tomorrow)
 🔹 Invented bid words and my general bid nonsense
 🔹 New ways to support the bid community
 
On my personal page, you’ll see a bit more crossover into GTM. I'm particularly focused on content, media, community and competitive intelligence. Hopefully you'll all still find value there, as there's quite a bit of crossover in the bid world.

This is me being mildly cringe, very grateful, and genuinely excited.
If you’d like to stick around, please follow bidfolk.

Heather Melton 🥾

I help founders build their brand by scaling their voice and building systems. | Clay Bootcamp | GTME

A couple of months ago I googled "what is a webhook" 

Today I'm building systems with Supabase and Claude Code. The turning point? Getting a Clay Bootcamp 🥾 scholarship and actually starting instead of overthinking it.

Here's what I've learned:
- Being non-technical isn't a limitation. It's a choice.
- The technical skills we assume are "just for engineers" are actually for anyone who wants to build systems that scale.
- Anyone who's tired of manual processes that don't work.
- The most intimidating part is starting. After that, it's pattern recognition and reading documentation.

Lots of documentation.

You'll feel stupid for the first few weeks. I certainly did. But that passes.

What doesn't pass is the frustration of knowing there's a better way to do something but not knowing how to build it yourself.
The barrier isn't age or background. It's believing you can't learn new things.
If you've been putting off learning technical skills because you think it's too hard, it's not.

The tools are better than ever. The communities are welcoming.
Start small. Google everything. Feel stupid for a bit.
Then build something that works.

So the first 123 days of 2026 haven't been great.

COVID laid me out for three weeks. 3 weeks! WTH

Ended 2025 building in Claude Code and feeling like I had it all figured out. 😂

Isn't there some saying about the best laid plans...?

Going to try starting the new year again next week.

Hope you are having a better start!

Being strategic is a process and  it doesn't happen overnight.

Being told "to be more strategic" just isn't helpful at all. How do you actually do that?

You need internal buy in and we all know that bidding is a team sport, so how do you get everyone on the same page?

On 28 Jan. at 6pm CET I'll be speaking to Gareth Meredith, Bid Centre Senior Team Leader at Softcat about just that!  We'll discuss how you and your team can approach bids more strategically.

What we’ll cover:
🔹 Training and coaching at scale when everyone learns differently
🔹 Why process should support judgement, not replace it
🔹 Making the internal case for investment using evidence and revenue impact
🔹 How bid leaders manage change without burning people out

This is the very first episode of bidfolk so I sure hope you can join! How do you guys feel about the time? These will normally be hosted over on the bidfolk page, but LinkedIn says I have to have at least 150 followers before they give me  access to LinkedIn Live. So follow please! 🙏 I'd rather not have to host it off the platform.

From Bid Factory to Strategic Engine: Building Winning Teams

A founder I spoke to spent three hours on a LinkedIn post. Three hours. On 300 words about a client win. 

He rewrote the opening line fourteen times. Changed "excited" to "thrilled" then back to "excited." 

Googled "how to increase LinkedIn engagement" twice. 

Meanwhile, his throwaway post from last week (the one he wrote in five minutes about a frustrating client call) got twice the comments. 

👉 The more you polish a post, the less authentic they sound. 
👉 And the more you optimise for engagement, the less engaging they become.
👉 The more you worry about sounding clever, the less relatable you are. 

Your best content comes from your actual work, including the messy bits. The lessons learned. The things that made you laugh or swear or both. Not from studying what "performs well." 

His post about the client win? It was fine. Professional. Forgettable. 
But his rant about unrealistic project timelines? Pure gold. Because it was real. 

You need to stop writing for the algorithm and start writing for humans. The people who need to hear from you don't care if you used the perfect emoji or nailed the trending hashtag. They care that you understand their world. 

And you can save yourself the three hours!

Turns out, everything I needed to know about go-to-market I learnt in bid management. 

Pattern recognition is always important, no matter the industry. Same problems, different contexts. 

Bid managers extract knowledge from busy technical experts under impossible deadlines. 

Founders extract knowledge from their own expertise under impossible schedules. But both are struggling with the same core problem: tacit knowledge that lives in heads needs to become explicit content that scales. 

In proposals, you learn fast that you can't rely on heroics. 

You need systems: 
- You have the technical director who knows everything, but has no time to write it down. 
- The solution architect who can explain complex concepts but only when cornered. 
- The finance team who understand the numbers but speak a different language.

Building community taught me authentic content creation and working with proposals taught me knowledge extraction under pressure. Building Loro Flow is teaching me how to combine both. The skills transfer perfectly. 

Whether you're chasing a £10M contract or your next round of funding, the challenge remains the same: how do you turn what you know into something that converts? 

Systems over heroics. Process helps you not panic. And consistent extraction leads to consistent results.

My husband has a system for decisions. 
Restaurant? Three options. 
Film? Three options. 
Weekend plans? Three options. 

I pick one. Everyone's happy. 

I've been thinking about this pattern because Claude does the exact same thing. Ask for help with anything, you get three approaches. Never one (too limiting). Never ten (overwhelming). Always three. 

The pattern works everywhere: 
🔹 Content ideas: generate three angles, pick the strongest 
🔹 Technical solutions: test three approaches, implement the winner 
🔹 Strategic decisions: map three paths, choose based on constraints 

The magic isn't unlimited options. It's having just enough choice to feel ownership, but not so much you freeze up. Three is the sweet spot. 

My husband figured it out for dinner decisions. Claude figured it out for everything else. I'm just here enjoying never having to say "I don't know, what do you think?" ever again. 

Anyone else notice this pattern in their work? Or is it just me who gets decision paralysis with too many choices?

Personal - "I noticed you're hiring BDRs." 

Relevance goes deeper. It's making a logical hypothesis about what that hiring means. Maybe it's scaling challenges. Or confident economics. Or resource pressures. 

The difference between "I noticed a thing" and "I've thought about what this thing means for your world." 

One's surface-level observation. The other's strategic thinking.
 
The challenge is that teams don't have time for that level of reasoning in their outreach. They're building product. Managing teams. Fighting fires. 

But what I've realised is that kind of reasoning can absolutely be scaled with the right systems and if you already have that kind of mindset. You can build frameworks that help you move from observation to hypothesis quickly. 

- You can make templates that prompt strategic thinking, not just surface personalisation. 

- Systems that turn "I saw you do X" into "I imagine X means Y for your business, here's how we help with Y." 

- It's the difference between spray-and-pray and surgical precision. And  looking like everyone else in their inbox and actually understanding their world.

But as always, it needs to be built by someone who understands that kind of strategy. I've always had that approach, but what I've learned is how to build the system to scale it. Make sure you don't hire someone who builds systems, but doesn't know strategy.

demandDrive

As the Director of Marketing, I oversee all of demandDrive's content, branding and promotion efforts. I also manage a team of contributors within demandDrive who are committed to improving our digital and social media presence. 

Marketing Communication Efforts - Original content creation and promotion: Blog posts, Whitepapers, eBooks, Infographics, Web Copy

Social Media Presence and Branding: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook

Sales Team Support: Generation and Management of Inbound Leads, Creation of targeted collateral

demandDrive's Partnership Program: Management and Development of a partnership network to help improve reach and presence of the demandDrive brand. 

Shared responsibility for client-facing program descriptions and productization of services, as well as other growth-focused initiatives within the management team.

Director of Marketing

As the Marketing Manager, my primary responsibility focused on leading the Marketing Communication efforts to develop original content (whitepapers, eBooks, blog posts, infographics, web copy) as well as targeted collateral for sales campaigns. 

As a Sales Development Manager, I worked with demandDrive clients to provide customized, outbound demand generation campaigns, while also acting as an extension of their own internal sales team. In addition to finding qualified leads, I worked with clients to develop their ICP and gain a better understanding of the competitive landscape for their product.

Marketing + Sales Development Manager

As one of demandDrive's SDR's I worked with clients in the software industry to provide customized, outbound demand generation programs in support of their internal sales teams. 

I would run my own personalized outbound campaigns while simultaneously working with my client to support their inbound campaign efforts. Additionally, I would collect industry and market intelligence to further establish client's ICP and understanding of their technology compared to competitors.

Sr. Sales Development Representative

The UNSUBSCRIBE Podcast

Want less of those nasty UNSUBSCRIBE emails in your inbox? Well, then you've come to the right podcast! 

We put our own spin on Sales Development to help SDRs and Managers alike better their prospecting efforts, manage their teams, and prepare them for the (sometimes cruel) world of sales development.

--

Want to be a guest on the show? Email "marketing@demanddrive.com" to get in touch!

Co-Host

Pitchfire

Working with the Pitchfire team to help spread the word on a new channel for sales - paid prospecting.

What is Pitchfire? It's the one place you'll like getting pitched. Get paid to respond to sales pitches.

Learn more: 👉 https://www.pitchfire.com/

Pitch me! 👉 https://app.pitchfire.com/@aj-alonzo

Member

DataFuel

Advisor

SDRevolution

SDRevolution is a community devoted to empowering sales development reps, trainers, and managers with expert interviews and content.

In our first series, we interviewed 7 experts on modern best practices for hiring, training, and onboarding sales development or business development reps.

Co-Founder & Creator

RevGenius

RevGenius is a group of revenue-generating sales and marketing professionals brought together to learn, share, support, and grow with each other. You can consider us your alt work family!

Modern Sales Pros

Modern Sales Pros is the world's largest community for leaders in sales, operations, enablement and related disciplines. Our mission is to help our community learn how to solve the biggest challenges they face (and would otherwise bang their heads against the wall trying to solve). Our 13,000 members learn from each other through our online message board and through amazing in-person events.

Sales Hacker, Inc.

Sales Hacker is the smartest community of B2B sales professionals on the planet.

Founding Member

Ohio Wesleyan University

As a student ambassador at Ohio Wesleyan I worked within the admissions office as a tour guide and overnight host. I also assisted the office in working special recruiting events and visit days. I gained invaluable personal skills as tour guide, giving 3-5 tours of the campus a week that ranged between 1 and 2 hours long. As an overnight host I would assist prospective students in immersing themselves into the college lifestyle. I also aided the admissions staff with large visit events and specialty tours.

Student Ambassador

Wilder & Chavez

Working as a general office intern as well as learning the ropes of a real estate and development company. This includes managing accounts and receipts, mastering efficiency in terms of timeliness and quality, preforming some general labor, and recognizing where and how to make a profit.

Intern

Helping SaaS companies unlock the potential of their SDR function🥏 Amateur Disc Golfer & Ultimate Player 🥃 Whiskey Enthusiast 🎮 Lifelong Pokémon Fan 🐶 Dog Lover

⛵ "A rising tide lifts all boats" ⛵

I’m a big believer in 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲. I love bringing people together to talk about something they’re passionate about. It’s energizing, addictive, and fuels progress.

Sales isn’t a "lone wolf" kind of job anymore. I know that first hand.

I struggled out of the gates as an SDR. I thought I knew what I was doing, that I didn’t have to follow the rules, and that I could make it on my own.

Boy was I wrong.

I learned some hard lessons early on. I was lucky enough to have the support of a great company and network of peers to pick myself back up and give it another shot - this time with a different attitude. 

The sales development community gave me the advice, direction, and wake-up call I needed to succeed in the SDR role. 

Now, as I head up the Marketing efforts for demandDrive and work to build out my own community in SDRevolution, I want to pay it forward. I’m about as sympathetic to SDRs as anyone, and I'm working to get sales development a seat at the C-Suite table.

--

There are a lot of gaps that exist in the world of sales development. As the role begins to modernize and buyers change their behavior, that gap is only going to get wider. I create content to bridge that gap and help sales development professionals:

- Understand the true value of the SDR position
- Reduce friction between SDRs <> AEs
- Educate reps on the importance of asking 𝐰𝐡𝐲
- Inject authenticity, passion, and empathy in their messaging (real empathy, none of that fake stuff)
- Realize the value in an outsourced sales development partner (#shamelessplug)

I love to talk with other sales and marketing folks (casually or on my podcast) - feel free to shoot me an email or connection request if you ever want to chat! 

Get in touch with me: 👉 https://linktr.ee/aj_alonzo 👈

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Outside of work, you can usually find me on the Ultimate Frisbee field, the disc golf course, or chowing down on a burrito from Anna’s Taqueria (best burritos in Boston, trust me). 

I’m (unashamedly) a huge fan of Pokemon (Haunter is my all-time favorite) and Dungeons & Dragons (currently playing as a Human Fighter//Monk named Thad Argentine). 

I love a good bourbon (give me an Eagle Rare any day of the week 😁)

My dog’s name is Frankie (on Instagram? Check him out instagram.com/frankie.a.pup/) and he's the goodest boy in the world.

taplio

The Battle

Heather Melton

🏁 ☀ AJ Alonzo

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The Battle

Heather Melton

🏁 ☀ AJ Alonzo

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Heather Melton's LinkedIn Performance

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