John Eitel

Global Vice President of Sales & Success /GM North America

Proven revenue leader with 20+ years driving growth across B2B SaaS, cloud, and digital. I’ve built and scaled GTM teams in both startups and $1B+ enterprises—leading high-performance orgs across sales, marketing, ops, and customer success. Known for turning around underperforming teams, building GTM strategies that unlock new markets, and driving operational rigor for scale. I bring a rare blend of strategic thinking, executional discipline, and people-first leadership. Passionate about developing talent, driving alignment, and delivering results that matter.

Gallup Top 5 Strengths: Competition | Strategic | Achiever | Self-Assurance | Woo
Myers-Briggs: ENFJ
Enneagram: 8 Challenger

Chief Sales Officer (CSO)

Played pickleball with Morgan J Ingram  this morning.

What did it teach me about B2B SaaS? 

Absolutely nothing. 🤣

Morgan’s been documenting his pickleball journey on LinkedIn for a while now. As an avid player in Austin, I took the bait. We kept trying to make it happen at conferences, same-city trips — always a near miss. Finally locked it in this week. Thanks Andrew Mewborn  and Pete Ryan for coming through as well.

Here’s what actually stuck with me: we built a real connection on LinkedIn over sales and GTM content, then translated it into something completely different. That’s rare.

Now my brain won’t stop spinning on a traveling GTM + pickleball roadshow. Different format. Same community. Worth exploring.

Who’s in? 🎾

Helping sales teams scale human connection with AI | Chief Growth Officer at Orum

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Last week was a gut punch for a lot of people.

Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, posted: "Hope everyone enjoys their last year of meaningful work."

Block announced one of the largest layoffs in recent memory. 4,000 jobs. AI cited as the reason.

Cue the death march. The robots have won. Start drafting your LinkedIn eulogy.

The facts are the facts BUT the conclusion is wrong. History says this story ends differently. And history has been through this exact moment before — multiple times — and it always ends the same. In fact it follows an exact pattern

The printing press ended the scribing profession. It also created publishing, journalism, literacy, and — less proudly — the comment section on LI.

The loom ended the weavers. It also created a textile industry so large it employed entire cities.

The ATM was going to eliminate bank tellers. Economists were certain. By 2010 there were more tellers than before ATMs existed. Turns out when you remove the cash-counting part of the job, banks open more branches and people get promoted to the work that actually requires a human.

Every technological revolution follows the same three-act structure:
Act 1: Panic. Mass hysteria. Thinkpieces. LinkedIn posts. 
Act 2: Real disruption. Real pain. Real transition. 
Act 3: More jobs. Different jobs. Weirdly, often better jobs.

So here's my actual take:
We are not entering the era of human-less work.
We are entering the era where the human parts of work are finally the whole job.
No more four hours of manual research before a call you could have made three hours ago.
No more building lists when you could be building relationships.
No more leaving voicemails into the void when you could be having actual conversations that move real deals forward.
AI takes the busywork. You keep the part that was never really "work" to begin with — it was always just humanity with a quota attached.
The role isn't dying. It's finally getting the transformation it deserved.

AI isn't killing jobs.

It's killing the processes and workflows that were quietly killing us first.

Catherine Codispoti

Still buzzing after two incredible days in San Diego with the Orum 🥇 GTM team for our Revenue Kickoff.

Look at these faces — this is what building something special looks like.
Our theme this year was "Make Sales Human" — and it couldn't be more relevant as we all navigate this new world of AI. We spent time bonding, learning from each other, hearing directly from customers about what's working, and getting a preview of our 2026 product roadmap (spoiler: it's 🔥). We aligned on some ambitious goals and left ready to take on the next leg of this journey together.

Celebrating our 2025 winners:
 🏆 Growth AE of the Year - Dominic Papalia
 🏆 Commercial AE of the Year - Chelsea Rickman
 🏆 Enterprise AE of the Year - Allie Brotherton
 🏆 Commercial SDR of the Year - Katherine Tennyson
 🏆 Enterprise SDR of the Year - Noah Grillo, MBA 
 🏆 Account Manager of the Year - Sara B.
 🏆 CSM of the Year - Arial Haser 🥇 
 🏆 Marketer of the Year - Parker Tinsley
 🏆 SC of the Year - Dave H.
 🏆 Onboarding Manager of the Year - Jack Pizzo
 🏆 RevOps Partner of the Year - Andrew Mooney
 🏆 Rookie of the Year - Kolbie Knorr
 🏆 Orumite of the Year - Dave H.

Every single one of them overcame real adversity and challenges to win. So well deserved.

Here's what I've learned over 25 years in this business: winning teams are built on culture and good humans first. Strategy, product, and execution all matter — but they mean nothing if you don't have the right people who genuinely care about each other and the mission.

What stood out most this week wasn't just the energy or the ambition. It was watching this team show up for each other. The way people celebrated wins that weren't their own. The way veterans took time to coach rookies. The way we challenged each other in sessions and then grabbed dinner together after.

That's the foundation.

When you get the culture right and surround yourself with good people who work hard, care deeply, and show up authentically — everything else becomes possible.

That's exactly what we're building at Orum 🥇.

I'm leaving San Diego more confident than ever that we have the right mission, the right people, and the right vision to win in 2026.  Special thanks to Molly Brown and Sarah Tischer for creating such a memorable experience and event.

Go, Orum 🥇! 🚀

Orum 🥇

Account Executive @ Orum

Holistic Funnel Healer 🩺 Increasing Quality Conversations with your Targeted Prospects

Former SDR leader focused on helping sales teams get into more meaningful conversations!

Cold calling isn’t dead. Bad systems are.

Senior Enterprise SDR at Orum🥇

Strategic Accounts @ Orum

Strategic Customer Success Manager at Orum

Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Orum

Solutions Consultant

Senior Customer Onboarding Manager

Sr. Revenue Operations Manager and Data Scientist

Real Conversations 📞 Connect Faster, Sell Smarter

Senior Field Marketing Manager @ Orum 🥇

Enablement Leader @ Orum

Kolbie Knorr

Happy International Women’s Day. 💜

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by strong, remarkable women throughout my life — women who have shaped who I am, how I lead, and how I show up every single day.

Today, I want to recognize two in particular.
My mom, Pat. 

She made me everything I am. One of the hardest working and toughest women I know — and she had to be. Raising three strong-willed boys who were constantly pushing boundaries (and occasionally getting into trouble 😅) requires a special kind of grit, love, and patience. She had it all.

My wife, Marilee.

She supports me and pushes me to be better every single day. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it — she is my superpower. Full stop.

To every woman who has poured into someone else’s life the way these two have poured into mine — thank you. The world doesn’t say it enough.

I am lucky. I am grateful. And I don’t take it for granted. 🙏

Recapping Orum 🥇 RKO. Three moments that mattered most.

Moment #3(the 3rd and final moment) — the one that reminded me why culture isn't a slide deck.

The awards and recognition dinner.

Every RKO has one. Not every one hits different. This one did.

What stood out wasn't the trophies or the titles. It was the energy in the room. The kind of energy you can't manufacture, can't script, and definitely can't fake. Teammates who had fought hard battles together all year — through missed targets, a world of change, long cycles, and every flavor of adversity 2025 could throw at them — genuinely, loudly, authentically cheering each other on.

That's a winning culture. Not the version on the careers page. The real version.
Reading out the peer-submitted votes was one of my favorite moments of the entire week. Because peer recognition hits differently than top-down recognition. When your teammates nominate you — the people who see the work up close, who know what it actually cost — that means something. Those are the silent heroes. The ones pouring hours into customer success, into each other, into the mission, without waiting to be noticed for it.

We had multiple repeat recipients this year. Same names. Different year. Higher bar.

That kind of consistency is rare. That kind of commitment to raising the standard — not just meeting it — is exactly what separates good teams from great ones.

But the moment I'll carry longest?

Hearing people in the room call their shot for next year. Saying out loud - "That's going to be me next year."
Not in an arrogant way. Setting their goal and intention. And intention announced publicly has a different weight to it — it has accountability attached.

You can tell a lot about a team by how they celebrate. Ours celebrates together — and then immediately sets their eyes on what's next.

That's the team I get to work with every day.

Lucky doesn't cover it.

Recapping Orum 🥇 RKO. Three moments that mattered most.
Starting with the one that wasn't on the original agenda — and ended up being the highest-rated session of the entire week.

Not the keynote. Not the new corporate messaging. Not the rah-rah moments designed to send people home fired up.

The customer panel.

And honestly? It shouldn't surprise anyone. It never does.
There is nothing — nothing — more powerful than hearing it straight from the source. Not filtered through a slide deck. Not sanitized by a marketing brief. Straight from the people you are building better products for. The people who have bet their pipeline, their teams, and frankly their professional credibility on your offering.

That's not a small thing. When a customer shows up to your RKO and tells your team the truth, you listen differently. The room gets quiet in the right way.
This has been a non-negotiable for me at every RKO I've ever run. If you're not putting customers in the room, you're just talking to yourself with better lighting.
A huge thank you to Kevin Quirk (Sword Health), Bart Bartlett (Demand Zen), and Parker Eide (OnBoard) for giving us their time and dropping real knowledge on the team. The kind of knowledge you can't manufacture internally no matter how many internal strategy sessions you run.  Also kudos to Kerry Bodner for facilitating an excellent conversation and setting the stage.

Here's what they said that stuck:

"The phone never went away. It is back in a major way."
The reports of cold calling's death were greatly exaggerated. Human conversation is still the highest-converting channel in outbound. Always was.

"We are automating all repetitive processes that take time and cost money. We still believe in keeping humans in the loop."
This is the whole game right now. The companies winning aren't replacing humans — they're eliminating the work that was stealing time from their humans. There's a difference, and it matters enormously.

"In 2025, I committed SaaS murder."
Possibly the best line of the entire event. Tool consolidation isn't a trend anymore — it's a survival strategy. Vendor sprawl is being treated like a P&L problem, because it is one. If you're a point solution with a thin value prop, the consolidation wave is coming for you.

"We are all sick of sellers and vendors that SPAM the TAM."
Full stop. Buyers have infinite capacity to ignore bad outreach and zero patience left for it. The pivot isn't from activity to inactivity — it's from volume as strategy to relevance as strategy. Your number doesn't care why you missed it, but your customer definitely noticed how you tried to hit it.

This is why the customer panel will always be the most important hour of any RKO I run.

Your internal team can debate strategy all day. Your customers are already living it.

The best thing you can do for your people is let them hear the unvarnished truth from the humans on the other side of the deal.

Everything else is just content.

Continuing on the theme of recapping Orum 🥇 RKO. - Three moments that mattered most.

Moment #2 — and I don't say this lightly.

The best session of the week wasn't delivered by Sales leadership. It wasn't delivered by Marketing. It was delivered by our Product leader, Bob Aspell representing the focus and work of his team.

Here's the thing about a great product session at RKO: the bar is deceptively high. You're walking into a room full of salespeople who are equal parts excited and skeptical, coming off a customer panel that just handed you a live wishlist in real time. The pressure to deliver is real.

Bob delivered.

What made it land wasn't just the roadmap — it was the context around it. We are in the business of helping teams transform their GTM motion while navigating our own transformation at the same time. Staying on the forefront of an AI landscape that changes weekly, while simultaneously helping customers catch up to the one that changed last month. That's a heavy lift. It requires a team that is genuinely comfortable being uncomfortable — and experts at turning ambiguity into a product decision.

The moment that got the room: the customer panel had just wrapped. Customers told us exactly what they loved and exactly what they wanted next. Bob stepped up and, one by one, the things they asked for were already on the roadmap.

That's not luck. That's what happens when your product team lives in the field alongside the customer teams instead of building from behind glass.

Bob and his team put in countless hours with customers. It pays dividends every single time — and that session was the proof.

When Product fires up the Revenue team more than the Revenue team fires up itself, you know you've got something special.

Thank you, Bob and Team!

🇬🇧💂London Network🇬🇧💂 Orum 🥇 is coming to town in 2 weeks and we are taking over an iconic venue to kick off the first stop in the Orum 🥇Dive Bar Tour.  Come meet SDR's and SDR Leaders in the community. Please help me get the word out and come see me and the team.  It is shaping up to be a fun night with a great group.  

Thursday, March 26
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM 
Come join the Dive Bar Tour to mix, learn, and network!  Link to sign up below.

https://luma.com/95gw3icw

Had a blast joining Josh Wagner and Sean Kester on the Cheat Code and Friends Podcast — and we didn't hold back.

We got into some of the topics I think about constantly right now: the death of the linear funnel, why outbound is having its moment again, and the sales playbook everyone wrote off as "old school" that's suddenly the smartest thing in the room.

The conversation I keep coming back to though — coaching. It has always been the highest-leverage thing a revenue leader can do and the first thing that gets deprioritized when things get busy. AI is changing that equation. For the first time, you can scale the coaching layer without losing the human edge that makes it actually work.

We're all building the plane while flying it right now. This conversation was a good reminder that the teams who win aren't necessarily the ones with the best strategy — they're the ones who experiment faster, learn quicker, and adapt before the market makes the decision for them.

Worth a listen if any of this resonates. Link in the comments.

I don't know how to put this... I'm kind of a big deal. National Best Selling Author

Nothing in GTM is set it and forget it. 

The markets and the buyers are moving too fast. I remember in consulting doing ICP projects with customers, they always said we did these in the past and never used them. 

Our hook was that we operationalized them in systems. Which was true. The entire process of ICP evaluation, data capture and operational systemization of the output is maybe 100x faster than it was just 5 years ago when I was consulting. 

If you are in a high growth company the ICP needs to be evaluated constantly. The ability to have a full time "analyst" on your team with AI providing real time insights is the unlock. 

Great conversation about this and all things GTM with John Eitel on the most recent release of The Cheat Code and Friends.

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