I started my career on the phones. I logged 75,000 cold calls before I ever moved into leadership.

The lesson that followed me out of that cubicle was simple: Volume creates activity. It doesn’t create influence.

For 15 years across Revenue.io, Inside Real Estate, and BoomTown, I watched the same pattern play out. We optimized for coverage. We treated "The Account" like a single entity. But buyers punished us for sounding like everyone else.

The market has shifted. You can no longer spam your way to a number.Real buying decisions happen in a messy group.

• The CFO feels the problem in budget bleed.
• The Ops lead feels it in the workaround eating their Tuesday.
• The VP feels it when the board asks why the number is off.

If you treat them all the same, you lose.

My work sits where Sales Development, Ops, and Enablement meet. I build systems that stop reps from guessing and start helping them shape consensus.

That is why I am at Influ2.

It is the first time I’ve seen a way to shape the narrative for the specific humans inside a buying group, before the cold call even happens. We don't wait for demand; we build the context that creates it.

The results of shifting from "spray" to "shape":

• 376% pipeline per rep growth
• 55% of new ARR from signal-based outbound
• 48% faster ramp

Based in Charleston, SC. Toddler mom x2. Terrible at unmuting on Zoom. Great at destroying waste ($, effort, time). 

Curious how contact-level signals can help your ABM motion? Happy to share what we're seeing! 

💌m.bross@influ2.com

Maria Bross

📣 It’s official: you can now find me at Influ2!

The exact problem I’ve been duct-taping solutions for over 15 years finally has a real home.

Our CRM said “Meta has engaged.”
Our reps: Sweet...what do I do with this?

The "signal" never told me or my team who to call.
What the human who engaged actually cared about.
And why us contacting was relevant to them.

So we compensated....

I rebuilt outbound plays.
I rewrote MQL criteria with marketing.
I built signal-based sequences that drove 376% more pipeline per rep.
I built 19 sequences that sourced 55% of new ARR.
I built a custom GPT because “engaged” didn’t mean “ready,” and reps were wasting good leads.

It worked.

But it required constant stitching across Salesforce, Outreach, intent tools, call data, and enablement. And burnt me out. 

And the core mismatch stayed the same:

We organized around accounts.
Buyers made decisions as individuals.
Most research happened before we were invited in.
Most of it never showed up as a click.

If we waited for visible intent, we were ghosted. 

Influ2 works at the level the decision actually happens...the human level. 

You can see which named individual was exposed to what.
You can see influence even if they never filled out a form.
You can see buying-group coverage, not just logo activity.

That matters because I care about two things as an enablement leader:
Reps walking into conversations prepared.
Buyers feeling understood instead of chased.

The culture sealed it.

In interviews, I pushed back directly on a few assumptions. I’ve learned that not every company actually wants that. S/O den kozlov 🇺🇦 for being the real deal - seeing this as a feature not a bug. 

💓 Katie Penner for making the intro and supporting me throughout. 

🤍 Hamish Stephenson 🦘for taking my call in the uber ride to meet my future leader. 

Sean Frazer for teaching me so much in such a short amount of time. ("Girl dad" energy meets AI business acumen.) 

If you’ve ever rebuilt your outbound motion because “account engagement” wasn’t enough, we should talk.

My DMs are open.

PS: Olympic Ice Technician, Mark Keown is my supporting role inspo in this new chapter (Making the sheet perfect for GTM teams with a "little rizz and a little style") 😂

Influ2 Enablement + RevOps | Destroyer of GTM waste| Toddler mom x2

"Employee Appreciation Day" got me thinking.

Past roles? Might as well have been National Grilled Cheese Day.

Pre-Influ2, I'd either miss it or spot some sappy LinkedIn post about it. 

(Like this one.) 

But a month in at Influ2? Different story.

Katie Penner (VP) is proactively Slacking me + Carlie Vollert for ideas on appreciating our SDR team.

Unreal.

Not because SDRs don't deserve it - they 10000% do.

But this level of intention by a leader to see the humans keeping lights on? 

Rare as hell.

Okay, now to the real MVPs of this post. 

Influ2 SDRs, I See You. 

You're: 
✅ asking for feedback
✅ roleplaying with zero ego
✅ testing out new approaches in live calls 
✅ building on your already impressive knowledge 

Wins/Rejection, y'all come back every day with professionalism, a growth-mindset and positivity. 

 I have so much respect for what you all do because it's flipping tough. But the ROI? Bigger than a commission check. 

The skills you build subtly trickle into real life: 

- Negotiating with your toddler at bed time
- Making a spouse sharing a concern feel heard 
- Prepping for an interview in a completely different industry and role 
- Working backwards from running a marathon 

 I'm pumped to be your teammate, a coach and appreciate each of you!

PS: Marketing/ABM leaders: If you're at all focused on influencing real *full cycle* revenue, efficiency metrics... and proving it at the named contact level. 
We should talk precision. (and possibly get my team a win today!)

Bout to hit the phones and fingers crossed land this group some meetings toward March target. 

Expecting to eat giant slice of humble pie 👀 . Wish me luck. 

Haven't cold called in ~6 months... what's the biggest change I should expect?

Most deals I've lost came down to one mistake: 

single-threading.

You find one champion. Hand them the pitch. Cross your fingers they'll sell it internally.  

(Greener reps do this all the time.)

Marketing tries to fix it in the opposite way...

Overnights Yeti tumblers to the entire building because the *account* "showed intent."  

Turns out, just an intern checking where their Bumble date worked.  

Only revenue Marketing can prove they influenced? Yeti's 

Sales takes unnecessary risk.  
Marketing burns budget across an account. 

Neither one matches how real buying groups make decisions.  

It's never one person.  
It's six, eight, sometimes ten.  
Some are deep in the research.  
Some are focused on risk, budget, or technical fit.  
One has final approval.  

Problem is that opinions start forming long before you ever join the conversation...

Group threads. Hallway chats. Shared docs.  

By the time your champion brings you in, half the group has already decided. 

That's when deals are lost.  
Not because your champion failed.  
But because no one else ever heard of you until it was too late.  

Doug Madey and Ed VanderBush from LiveRamp are unpacking this at #B2BMX next week:  

"Orchestrate Your ABM Around the Main Characters, Not the Extras."

March 9th  2:30 PM.  

I won't be there, but I'm living this every day.  

Happy to share my notes on what our brilliant customers (like Ed) are building 💪

Who will be in town?? Katie Penner is hosting what looks like the most fun happy hour in walking distance

graphical user interface, text, application, chat or text message

Head of Sales at Clazar

I work for technology companies that make life better. 

My litmus test for a tech company- can you explain what it does, in a single sentence, to your Mom? 

Prior to Functionize: 

-Clazar- we help B2B SaaS companies launch and manage their cloud marketplace (AWS, Google, Azure) offerings. 
- airSlate- we digitize paper workflows and make it easy to create them. 
- HelloSign (now part of DropBox)- made it incredibly easy to electronically sign documents. 
- Webmetrics- we monitored and tested websites to make sure they were available and performing well.
- PowerReviews- consumer written reviews that helped other e-commerce shoppers decide if a product was worth buying.
-SLI Systems- powered on-site search so you could make sure you found the relevant products on e-commerce websites.

Brian Lawrence

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Head of Sales at Artie!

Brian Lawrence 

One of the (many) things that attracted me to Artie? The office right in the heart of the San Francisco Financial District. 

The energy and buzz are palpable in SF right now. And the there has been a significant decrease in the amount of feces on the sidewalks (nice work, Mayor Lurie). 

It makes it easy to get together with folks like 💜 🔮 Will Allred when they are in town. I've known him for years and been a happy, repeat customer of Lavender 💜🔮 www.ora.im. 

But it is different when you can sit down in-person- completely different vibe than Zoom. And coffee and chocolate chip cookies are often involved. 

So if you are in the area, hit me up!

I’m moving at Godspeed.

It’s a little mantra I tell myself every day.

It’s from my favorite Zach Bryan song. I’m not a big country music fan but his music lands with me. And taking my daughters to his concert last fall majorly upped my aura points (allegedly)….

But that line just plays in my head. It isn’t a particularly religious thing for me.

It is a reminder that things in life happen at a certain pace. Maybe not as quickly as we want.

But I believe that we are all placed on this Earth for a purpose. And we keep moving towards that purpose, enduring the twists and turns along the way. 

Part of that journey is finding work that you find meaningful and doing it alongside people you enjoy being with. I’ve found that has a high correlation with my overall happiness in life.

And on this beautiful Friday morning, I’m moving at Godspeed. And I wish you all the same.

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Regardless of how strong or weak the job market, hiring needs to be a two way street built on mutual trust. 

Jacqueline Cheong asked me for two references. I gave her four because I wanted her to have a true sense of who I am and what it is like to work with me- both the good and the bad (should have told Melanie Brancaleone, MS, MBA she maybe didn't need to share all of the bad things)....

I asked Jacqueline if I could speak to one or two of Artie's customers to understand their perspective (David Stokey gave me a great reminder on the value of doing this). So, of course, she connected me with four customers!

All 4 customers were incredibly candid with me but had amazing things to say about the team and the platform. They mentioned the incredible speed with which new features were rolled out. But the biggest takeaway was that it took away an operational burden that they no longer had to think about- the ability to have real time data replication for their critical data. It said a lot that four extremely busy people were so quick to set up time with me and so thoughtful in sharing information with me. 

And, in the small world department, I got to talk with customer #1- Mike Cohen from Substack. It just happens that Lenny Rachitsky had reached out years ago to Mike to help an early investor perform due diligence on Artie. Lenny was so impressed that he also became an early investor. And he happens to be the same person who originally introduced me to Jacqueline a couple of years ago. Boom- full circle!

It's been an incredible (and at least a tiny bit overwhelming) first week at Artie. But I'm so appreciative of everyone who has been so kind and generous in helping me get up to speed. You never know how things will play out, but it sure feels like a great decision to join.

At our core, Artie helps companies move and digest data.

And in the age of AI and analytics, the most important type of data is the kind that let’s you predict who will win the NCAA basketball championship (work with me).

Fire up that Snowflake warehouse, enter some KenPom ratings and BANG- I bet you have yourself the winning team.

I was able to convince Jacqueline Cheong and our team to sponsor an Artie bracket challenge (sign up link in the comments).

- First place= $1,000
- Second place= $500
- Third place= $250

*Requirement to win- give Artie a follow here on LinkedIn.

But wait- there is more!

If your job involves data and your alma mater is in the tournament, I have an additional offer for you. If your team wins their first game- BOOM- I will send you a $50 gift card for lunch.

 If your team loses- I will still give you a $50 gift card for lunch- you just have to spend a couple minutes chatting with me around your data infra and see if Artie might be able to help.

Let the upsets begin!!

taplio

The Battle

Maria Bross

Brian Lawrence

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taplio

The Battle

Maria Bross

Brian Lawrence

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);}Maria Bross's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreBrian Lawrence's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreMaria Bross's LinkedIn Performance