Crissy Saunders

Our team of seasoned experts deliver our GTM Operations Framework that enables GTM teams to execute and report on their GTM strategy with ease. We help companies: 

- Stop losing customers due to friction in their buyer experience
- Give their GTM team the visibility and insights they need  
- Pull their marketing and sales team out of the chaos
- Implement, integrate, and leverage their full GTM tech stack 

Currently working with some of the best in B2B tech including Gong.io, Notion, G2, Coupa, Coursera, Skedulo, ModelN, R-Zero, and SalesLoft

Find out more at www.cs2marketing.com

Chief Executive Officer & Cofounder

MKT1

MKT1 Capital is an early-stage fund, led by former marketing leaders Emily Kramer and Kathleen Estreich. MKT1 invests in Pre-Seed thru Series A B2B startups across industries and helps startups build marketing.

Limited Partner

Chili Piper

Advising Chili Piper on their GTM strategy and product roadmap to create a platform that will improve, innovate, and optimize the customer experience and operations for inbound leads.

Partner Advisory Board Member 🌶

Syncari

Company advisor for Syncari - the data automation platform that unifies, cleans, and synchronizes a company's most mission critical data and delivers truth to all teams.

Advisor

Women in Revenue

Cofounding board member of non-profit focused on empowering women in B2B sales and marketing through education, events, and mentorship. Currently helping lead the charge on communications, recruitment, and our 1:1 mentorship program. Join us at womeninrevenue.org!

Cofounder and Board Member

Walkzee

The first free online application (web, iOS, Android) connecting shelter dogs who need a walk to dog lovers looking for a walking buddy. 145% funded Kickstarter and featured in The Huffington Post, Tech Cocktail, Bustle, Playboy, The Daily Dot, Inquisitr and many others. Due to lack of shelter sign up - walkzee is currently "on paws"

Cofounder

Agari

Developed digital marketing campaigns with a multi-channel approach to accelerate pipeline creation across the global regions. Operationally, I developed a model for program creation adopted by the entire marketing organization. I also structured a data set for reporting on lead to pipeline ,and set the cadence and standard for pipeline analysis to drive smarter decisions in demand generation and across the marketing teams.

Sr. Manager Demand Generation

Managed demand generation programs, revenue operations, field sales enablement, and sales development worldwide for the fast-growing email security leader named 2014's Gartner Cool Vendor in Security Technology.

Demand Generation Manager

Jive Software

• Led Implementation and training of Marketo for global marketing team
• Improved lead generation, nurturing, and scoring resulting in creating company’s largest 
amount of pipeline in history
• Built Revenue Model and enhanced Lead Process for qualification
• Built Reporting to give insight on effectiveness of lead generation programs and its impact 
on pipeline created and influenced in both SFDC and Marketo

Global Marketing Operations Manager

Marketo

• Created best practices and weekly training of internal users as manager of Demand Center
• Led technical execution of Enterprise white spacing for over 30k accounts for both United 
States and EMEA
• Executed brand new lead scoring, hand off, and prioritization of leads to the Sales 
Development team that resulted in a 70% increase in opportunities in just two months

Marketing Operations Manager

• Created and defined success criteria for 15 marketing channels used for all programs
• Managed Marketo’s lead scoring as well as demographic scoring that improved Sales 
Development Representative productivity and effectiveness by 30%
• Implemented Marketo’s first direct mail channel programs for both demand gen and 
outbound efforts that has achieved over $1.14 million in pipeline

Marketing Coordinator

CEO at CS2 I Helping B2B SaaS Grow Without Growing Pains I podcast host🎙 I B2B Revenue Growth Architecture & Mar/Sales Ops I Mama x2

I'm the Co-founder and CEO at CS2, a GTM Operations agency that helps B2B SaaS companies execute and report on their GTM strategy with ease.

With almost 15 years of experience in GTM operations and strategy, myself and our team support clients with our proven strategies that deliver real results.

We are also always looking to be the most forward-thinking agency around and continue to push our methodologies further each year as buyers, technology, and the B2B landscape changes.

Myself and the CS2 team are some of the top thought leaders helping GTM strategists, leaders and operators and share our knowledge through our free weekly newsletter, our YouTube videos, our podcast, and here on LinkedIn.

For more ways to connect with me:

- Subscribe to our YouTube channel for videos and podcast episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@revenuegrowtharchitects/featured

- Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: Get original commentary from myself as well as exclusive access to content and tools. https://www.cs2marketing.com/revenue-growth-architects#subscribe-to-newsletter

- Check out the latest resources on our website: https://www.cs2marketing.com/revenue-growth-architects

CS2 is a B2B marketing and revenue operations agency for high growth tech companies. Advising on all things marketing and revenue operations, marketing tech, and helping companies operationalize their marketing function so they can scale.   

Currently working with some of the best in B2B tech including Gong.io, Sendoso, Coupa, Coursera, Alfresco (Hyland), Skedulo, ModelN, Eightfold.ai, and SalesLoft

Find out more at www.cs2marketing.com

Scale Venture Partners latest State of GTM AI report is one "whitepaper" ☠️ that is totally worth the read.

Its discussion of how companies can go from Phase 1 (using AI mostly for individual productivity) to Phase 2 (using it to drive department-wide results) is spot on.

However, if you don't have the time to read it and want the TL:DR on how to get to phase 2 -  here are their recommendations and my thoughts on them...


1. Ops needs to be driving the initiatives (not just leadership).

In fact, GTM/Rev Ops-led AI initiatives were 20% more likely to have positive outcomes. Not a shocker to me and you know why!

2. Hire GTM engineer(s)

I see both 1 & 2 as related. 
In my opinion, the wise thing to do for companies would be to have a separate group or even just one person who is really driving these initiatives. 

A lot of the operations will still need to run as it usually does, but having someone or a team solely dedicated to researching and testing out AI initiatives will see better results because it will actually get done. If you don’t have the people-power, hire an agency!

3. You need to identify the top use cases internally through your own auditing and research.

Ops folks do this all the time for their projects, so this is just another reason why ops should lead the initiatives. 
The easiest places to start are by interviewing sales/SDRs and looking at important parts of the customer journey and operations foundation that can be best improved with AI.

4. Empower functional teams to experiment by using tiger teams and setting up AI Hackathons.

I somewhat agree with this. However, I think that GTM teams need to work together to ensure that anything they are using or building supports a cohesive and better (not worse) buyer journey and sales process.


5. Adopt a “buy and build” strategy and use your GTM engineer talent to build internal capabilities and complement them with best-in-class vendors.

Love this advice! I want to emphasize that stockpiling tools without a strategy will not get you anywhere. Your team can get so much out of a few tools plus the ones the GTM team is already using! (i.e., n8n & Clay paired with SFDC, HubSpot, Gong).


What do you think? And are you in Phase 0, 1, or 2? Would love to know.




ps. Kudos to Craig Rosenberg Kristina McMillan and my friends Matt Amundson and Sydney Sloan who contributed to the report.

CEO at CS2 I GTM Operations For B2B Tech I “Cooking Up GTM” on Substack

Bringing on a new tool to the GTM Ops tech stack? Don't demo it in a silo.

Everyone who could end up being a user or benefit from the tool (but not use it) should....

see the tool 
understand why it's being used
understand how it will be used
buy-in to the vision of the product
sign-off on it

Stuff happens. People can leave or teams can change.

So purchasing decisions should not be happening in a silo.

I've been noticing a pattern with GTMOps teams and their tech stacks lately—they're renting when they should be buying. What I mean is this: 

Teams know their current systems need updating or lack the AI features they actually need. 

So instead of investing in meaningful improvements, they do the bare minimum to get by. It's like renting a house—you're not going to spend thousands renovating a place you don't own. You keep it functional and always have one eye on what's next.

The problem? There's rarely a clear timeline for when "what's next" will actually happen.

When will the budget be there? Do you have the bandwidth to implement something new? Do you even know what the right solution looks like? These questions keep teams stuck in limbo, underutilizing tools they're already paying for.

When you're buying a house, you work with a real estate agent because they know the market and can guide you through the process. The same applies here.

For GTM teams that are strapped for time or don't have someone leading the charge on tech strategy, bringing in an agency or consultant who understands modern go-to-market frameworks can be a game-changer. 

They can do the research, help you make informed decisions on when it's worth investing in a different tool or solution, and actually execute the changes when it's time to move.

The market is moving at rapid speed so some of these decisions to hold off or move forward are tricky! It's totally fine to not want to invest in a tool when you might get rid of it, but it's also risky to not invest time into them when you have any idea on when that will be.


what do you think? do you feel this way about a certain tool in your stack? which one(s) - you can name a category instead of the exact name lol

It's one thing to talk about AI use cases, it's another to show receipts.

Charlie Saunders took over the Cooking Up GTM newsletter this week and dropped a pt 1 post with 5 AI use cases we have in production.

Yep - working and finding value out of!

Those 5 use cases are:

>> The future of enrichment and targeting (aka enrichment 2.0)

>> AI mini agents in n8n to do a very manual task

>> Assisted content idea generation

>> Sales Meeting Prep

>> Complex formula assistance

Go find Cooking Up GTM on Substack or head to our YT channel to find the video walk through. Or just comment to me that you need both.

My toxic trait is looking at rescue dogs I know I can't adopt but sending them to Charlie Saunders anyway.

WORLD RECORD ATTEMPT: 1st Clay Table to get an old dog ADOPTED.

Two things happened yesterday: 1. I saw a few Clay World Records and... 

2. Crissy was messaging me about adopting a dog from Mutville (a dog rescue for old dogs in San Francisco). 

With two young kids and a 13 year old dog in the house we can't take on any more. Unfortunately. 

So we had an idea.... Can we create a Clay table to help get Strength (a 16 year old Shih Tzu at Muttville) adopted?

The table:

• Finds people in the local area who are into fostering and adopting dogs
• Builds a Google maps link to give them directions on how to get to Muttville from where they are located 
• Uses AI to draft an email based on their Linkedin profile and Strength's profile, and includes the link they can click to drive right there

And because Clay can almost do anything... it WORKED.

And if you are into adopting dogs Strength is still available. And a good boy. 

#clayworldrecords

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