I specialize in building and leading high-performing FinTech revenue teams, driving scalable growth from inception to $120M ARR. 

Decisive, scrappy, hands-on leadership in implementing growth strategies, operational controls, and creating revenue efficiencies.

I’m passionate about aligning go-to-market strategies with disciplined execution, recruiting and coaching top talent, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and maintaining accountability through measurable outcomes. My teams create recurring impact for customers.

Core Expertise:
Global Sales Leadership | General Management | Inside & Enterprise Sales | Sales Development | Sales Engineering | Customer Success | Revenue Operations | Negotiation | Public Speaking | Revenue Planning & Forecasting | Product Development & Strategy

How I Help: 
• Design and execute growth strategies for complex global markets
• Build, scale, and lead high-performing teams that competitors fear
• Translate value propositions for diverse audiences and create alignment
• Drive sustainable bottom-line growth

Matt Marino

I'm 45 and I still get carded. Not flattering. Just slow. 

Hand over your ID. Pull out a card. Wait while someone checks both. 

There's a faster way.

Wink #fintech #biometrics #payments

President, WinkPay | Building identity-first, biometric payments | Scaled revenue orgs 0→$120M+ | 3x successful exits | Intrapreneur

Some of the highest-paying jobs in tech right now aren't in engineering. 

They're writers.

The premium skill isn't coding. It's communication. 

I'm seeing companies aggressively hiring people who can think clearly, shape narrative, and translate complexity into something humans actually understand.

Netflix has a Director of Communications role posted for $775K. 
Adobe is hiring AI storytellers. 
Anthropic tripled the size of its communications team last year.  
OpenAI has multiple communications roles with salaries over $400K.

I don't think that's random. As AI automates execution, the bottleneck shifts upstream.

The leverage moves to:
🧠 clear thinking
🧠 persuasive storytelling
🧠 emotional intelligence
🧠 creative problem solving

In other words...good ol' human skills.

Technical capability is quickly becoming table stakes for everyone in an org.

Interpretation, context, and narrative are your strategic advantages.

GTM leaders are showing each other their AI projects like kids at a show-and-tell. I mean that as a compliment.

Yesterday I sat in a room in Seattle with a small group of Pavilion members (shoutout to Matt Bernardy for leading this meetup). Head of Sales and Marketing, fractionals, and a CEO. All in-seat operators, running numbers, accountable for outcomes. .

We came to talk about how we're using AI in our jobs. For ourselves and for our teams.

Two things became clear fast.

1) Most companies don't have a single owner of their AI strategy. No one person is accountable for how AI gets adopted across the org. The result is predictable. Every team picks its own tools. Data lives in silos. Call transcripts in one place, repos in another, customer intel in a third. Security gaps open up. And worse, there's no internal leverage. No compounding.

The companies doing this well right now are driving it from the top down. Centralizing data, tooling, and standards so the whole org benefits, not just the individual who found a clever prompt.

The second thing was more fun.

2) People pulled up their laptops and showed what they'd built. Websites. Video edits. Vibe-coded prototypes. Internal agentic workflows. Nearly everyone was using Claude Code or Claude Cowork. Giddy. Proud. Eager to share.

The issue though...most of what people built was useful to them, but not everyone else.

People are building these small tools, tailored to their specific problems, that make them dramatically more productive.

The competitive advantage isn't the tool - it's the operator who knows how to combine tools with judgment and context to solve real problems.

For example, Ultrarunners don't win races with the best shoes. They win by knowing exactly which gear works for their body, on that terrain, in those conditions. The runner who tests and dials in their kit across hundreds of training miles has a massive edge over the one who shows up with brand-new equipment on race day.

Needless to say, the gap between operators who are building and using their own AI toolkit and those who are waiting for permission is getting wider every week.

If you're a GTM leader trying to figure out where to start, get in a room with peers who are already doing it. That's where the real answers live. 

We're going to start hosting monthly meetups in Seattle to share exact workflows and applications. If interested in joining, drop me a DM. ✌ 

Colin Parker Britni Borrelli Bruce Scheer Yikun Zhao Beth Yehaskel Nick Knutzen Maureen Sarewitz

No wallet. No phone. No ID check for age-restricted purchases. 

Just walk up, verify, and go.

Really excited about the work happening here 👇

🔥 Partnership Announcement: SUNMI × Wink

We’re excited to announce a new partnership between SUNMI (North America) and Wink; bringing biometric identity and AI‑powered checkout to the next generation of payment terminals using Qualcomm Dragonwing.

By combining SUNMI’s Android-native, camera-enabled POS devices with Wink’s biometric identity and payments platform, merchants can now deliver faster, more secure, and more personalized checkout experiences—no cards, no apps, no friction.

💡 What this means for merchants:
✅ Face & palm-based biometric checkout
✅ Shorter wait times and faster checkout
✅ Built-in fraud reduction and identity assurance
✅ Seamless loyalty and recognition experiences
✅ Designed for high-volume retail, QSRs, kiosks, and beyond

This partnership represents a major step toward identity-driven commerce, where checkout is not just faster but smarter, safer, and more human.

Want to see what AI-powered, biometric checkout can do for your business?

Connect with Wink or SUNMI to explore how this solution can transform your in-store experience. Visit us at #ETATransact:

📅 March 18–20 
📍 Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta
🚀 SUNMI Booth 625
🚀 Wink Booth 624

🔗 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e8G-THHQ

#PartnershipAnnouncement #ETATransact #SUNMI #Wink #BiometricPayments #IdentityDrivenCommerce #RetailTechnology #RestaurantTechnology #Qualcomm #FinTech #FutureOfCheckout #AlinPayments #EmbeddedPayments #Payments #PaymentsTechnology #SUNMI

Open article: SUNMI - BIoT for Business 4.0 by sunmi.com

Here's the truth about scaling B2B SaaS sales: It should be repeatable, predictable, and scalable. But for most $5M-15M founders I talk to, it isn't.

You're stuck between founder-led chaos and the $250K+ gamble of a full-time VP Sales who may or may not work out. The result? Inconsistent pipeline. Unreliable forecasts. Reps who aren't ramping. And you, the founder, still carrying the quota while trying to run the company.

Turns out that my 20+ years scaling sales teams at companies like Formstack (200% growth, $25M → $75M), PagerDuty, and ADP where I took a last-place team to #1 nationally, taught me exactly what works and what doesn't.
The result?

A proven Fractional Sales Leadership model that gives you VP-level sales expertise without the full-time commitment or risk. By the end of our engagement, you'll have a high-performing, predictable revenue engine that your team can operate independently. 

Before you say: 'So you're just another sales consultant?' No. I don't drop a deck and disappear. I work alongside your team as an Operator, Builder, and Architect, installing systems, coaching reps, and building the infrastructure you need, until you can scale without me.

Who I Work With:
$5M-15M B2B SaaS or Services companies ready to scale
Post-product-market-fit but pre-scalable sales engine
Founders who need to transition from selling to leading

Ready to turn sales chaos into sales performance? Book a complimentary 30-minute revenue diagnostic to identify your biggest growth bottlenecks: https://frprevenue.setmore.com/

Asad Afzal

There's a name for what ZoomInfo charges small sales teams. It's called an enterprise tax.
And it's completely avoidable.

I work with a lot of $5M-$10M SaaS and services companies. Small teams (5-8 reps), lean budgets, and high expectations.
It still shocks me how many of them are paying for it. 

They’re locked into annual contracts built for Fortune 500 procurement teams, not a scrappy 6-person sales floor. And when I dig into the GTM stack, people always sound proud of their ZoomInfo investment. 
Then I ask how they’re using it. 

Turns out they're using contact emails, company data, and basic list building. 
Maybe 20% of what they're paying for. 
The intent signals, advanced analytics, enterprise integrations - all awesome features - haven't been touched since onboarding.

I just saw a bill for $40K a year. Auto-renewing. Rate hikes baked in. 
GULP.

You know what I love? Clay.
It does the same job for a fraction of that. No annual contract. Unlimited users. You pay for what you actually use, nothing more.

We made a change for the client. Let’s just say the savings were put to better use elsewhere. It gave the team the option to hire another SDR, fund six months of paid ads, or simply reinvest the capital back into the business.

Clay pulls contacts from 100+ sources in real-time instead of one stale database, automatically enriches, filters, and qualifies lists so your reps aren’t wasting time on the wrong companies, and integrates cleanly with whatever CRM you're already running. The switch takes a week, maybe two. 
You're not rebuilding your stack, just swapping the overpriced piece.

Every client I’ve moved off ZoomInfo has stayed moved. Not because Clay is magic, but because the tool finally matched the stage of the business. 

If you’re a lean team still paying Fortune 500 prices, it’s time for an audit. 

When did you last check what you’re actually using versus what you’re paying for?

Fractional CRO | Turning Founder-Led Sales Into Scalable Revenue Engines for $5M-15M SaaS Companies | Pipeline, Process & People | 20+ Years B2B Leadership

A $6M EdTech company had a product universities actually needed.
But their outbound emails went straight to spam. Every single time.

Not because the product was bad. 
Because they were treating every contact the same. 

Testing Centers got the same email as Distance Education. Academic Affairs got the same pitch as Online Program Directors.
And none of it was working.

These people don’t care about the same things.
› The Testing Center director cares about preventing cheating. 
› Distance Education cares about student experience. 
› Academic Affairs cares about compliance.

One email can’t do all of that. So none of it worked. 

The second problem was their messaging sounded like every other vendor. 
Features, integrations, pricing.

But academics don't buy based on features. 
They buy based on student privacy, accessibility, academic integrity, faculty autonomy.
None of that showed up anywhere.

And their contact lists were a mess.
Outdated emails. Wrong titles. People with zero buying power.

So we rebuilt the whole thing.
≫ Split their audience into lanes: Testing Centers, Distance Education, Academic Affairs. Each with messaging built around what they actually cared about.
≫ Stopped leading with features. Started leading with privacy, equity, accessibility, and academic integrity.
≫ Cleaned the lists. Fixed their email infrastructure for EDU domains. Layered 
LinkedIn on top.

Within weeks, they were booking real meetings with people they'd been trying to reach for months. Pipeline stopped being conference-dependent and became predictable.

Academics don't respond to sales pitches. Neither does anyone else.

The companies winning on outbound show up already knowing what matters to the buyer. Everyone else is still winging it.

"Sell me this pen" was the first interview question I got on Wall Street. 
The trap is that candidates think it's a test of how well you can pitch. It's not. 
It's a test of whether you ask the right questions before you pitch.

The right answer is "What do you use a pen for? What matters to you in one?" 
Then you align your messaging based on what you heard.

Most people skip the questions and start pitching. 
That instinct follows reps deep into their careers. 
I still see it 25 years later, and it's STILL killing forecasts everywhere.

A $6M IT automation company came to me with a familiar problem. 
Their founder said, "We need more pipeline." 
I looked at the numbers. Pipeline wasn't the problem.

It was full of the wrong people.

Reps were demoing to IT teams on incompatible stacks. Chasing companies they'd never clear security requirements with. Nurturing buyers who were curious but had no budget and no urgency.

Every deal had a next step. NOTHING was closing.

As a CRO I'd seen this pattern before. A stalled forecast often traces back to one thing, nobody asked the disqualifying questions early enough.

Here's what we fixed:
- Rebuilt the ICP around stack compatibility, integration requirements, and security constraints. If they didn't fit, they didn't advance.
- Added technical qualification gates so bad-fit accounts died at the top of the funnel instead of clogging the forecast.
- Cleaned the existing pipeline. Cut 45% of active deals.

Within 90 days, win rates went up, sales cycles got shorter, and forecasts actually became reliable.

The lesson from "sell me this pen" was never about pitching harder. It was always about asking first.

Most reps skip that step. They pitch to everyone and wonder why nothing closes.

Bad fit kills more forecasts than an empty pipeline ever will. If someone doesn't have the problem, the budget, or the ability to implement, stop selling. 
Disqualify fast. Move on. Get the **** outta there!

That's not being picky. That's how you actually hit the number.

taplio

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The Battle

Matt Marino

Asad Afzal

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