Meet the Host: Aaron Owens

Aaron Owens: Welcome to growth driver. I'm Aaron Owens, and I am stoked to be hosting expert deep dives on season two of growth driver. Welcome to

John Common: growth driver brought to you by intelligent demand where the best minds in B2B are redefining growth. 

Aaron Owens: So what are expert deep dive sessions? Well, first of all, They are shorter and they will be 100 percent focused and specifically built for the expert practitioner because we're going to be talking about exactly what you have to do to meet your biggest revenue goals.

So if you are responsible for any part of modern go to market at your company, you're going to want to subscribe your entire team and follow along because we're going to go So, behind the curtain, peek under the hood of some of the most mature growth engines out there with growth leaders just like you.

These growth leaders might include some of our ID experts who are leading the charge every day on innovative go to market strategies. We might be bringing in some of our partners who are innovating every day on the platform side. We'll be bringing in clients and friends who are in the trenches figuring this stuff out just like you are.

But there's one promise I want to make. On every single episode, you're going to walk away with something that you and your team can implement in the next 30 days or less. So what kinds of things are we going to be talking about? Well, we're going to talk about audience definition. So building your ideal client profile, building your target account list, segmenting and tiering that list, and all the things you need to do to make sure you're talking to the right accounts to ensure that you can.

Deep engagement with 30 to 40 percent of your target account list. We might talk about sales strategy. What are the kinds of things that are working today for SDRs to reach a decision makers and influencers on your buying committee so that you can get six to 11 percent close rates with higher, uh, Average contract values and with with shorter sales cycles and look what marketing podcast would not be complete without at least talking a little bit About AI.

So what are the AI tools that are actually being used by companies like yours and moving the needle and Which ones are just kind of bullshit hype. So in short Expert Deep Dives on Growth Driver is where academic theory rubber meets the in market execution road. So why am I here? Why am I leading this Expert Deep Dives journey?

Well, I am head of growth consulting here at Intelligent Demand. ID is one of the top tier go to market and revenue growth agencies in North America. And I got here with a combination of a little bit of dumb luck, probably a lot of dumb luck, honestly, and quite a bit naive hubris to not know when crazy ideas were too crazy to try.

But most importantly, a long list of great mentors and teammates who, who helped me learn the ropes and help me avoid and recover quickly from mistakes. And I want to pay that forward now by giving you access to those same friends, those same mentors, and my own scar tissue. So what is my scar tissue?

Well, I'm a recovering political consultant. And while I might have learned early on that I'm not going to change the world, Through politics, one thing I did carry with me is that every vote counts. And that's true whether the audience is voting with ballots or their wallets. And the most important vote that we can all make is where we put our attention and who we choose to engage with, which is more important today in B2B go to market than ever before.

So since then, since leaving the political world, I led strategic communications at a 400 million a year energy company. I led the turnaround with full P& L responsibility of a failing division of a GE subsidiary. I led. integrated sales and marketing for private equity portfolio companies, including one that's now been on the Inc.

5000 seven times. I co led the growth team at one enterprise company where we transformed the growth strategy from don't shrink to become the fastest growing in our industry two years in a row. And what I'm most proud about is that all of that. Was in incredibly boring industries where we didn't have sexy SAS and AI to get attention.

We had to earn it by having smart strategy and really expertly implemented tactics, but it wasn't all rainbows and roses. Along the way, like half of the other podcasts hosts out there, I launched a SAS company through an incubator. And we crashed and burned spectacularly because I didn't listen to the market.

I've been fired from senior leadership roles because I pushed initiatives that were more aligned with my ego than corporate strategy, like I've made the bad hires, I've implemented the wrong technology, I've implemented poor strategy, and all of that has taught me even more than any of the successes mentioned before.

So I hope you can see now that growth driver expert deep dives is not about theory. We are going to talk about practical advice that you can execute with your team in the next 30 days or less. And don't worry. There's not a whole lot of hand wavy agency pitch either. These are cold, hard, easy. Insider secrets where we're going to talk about how to build really great go to market strategy.

What does that look like? How do you implement really effective integrated revenue plays? How do you lead great creative rev ops? How do you manage media in today's changing environment? How do you get good analytics and reporting and how do you enable your sales team when the buying committees and the buying process is changing so quickly and more so I hope you're as excited as I am for growth driver expert deep dive sessions in season two.

If any of this sounds interesting, I want you to subscribe and make sure you subscribe your team as well because we're going to be sending bonuses from time to time for some of these episodes and I want to make sure that you get them. So I'll see you in the sessions.