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The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.
[00:00:00] Jarod Greene: Hey everybody. Welcome to V5 where we spend exactly five minutes getting on our soapbox, with some of the hottest takes in all the B2B SaaS, B2B go to market, B2B sales marketing, the whole bit. It's going to be a fun one. I'm joined by Margaret Kelsey, who's the CMO of Kodaris. She's a go to market advisor, and she's also the co-host of the Don't Say content podcast.
[00:00:22] Jarod Greene: And, uh, just before we got going, we had a blast. I think what we left on the cutting room floor could be a whole podcast in itself. And so thank you for joining us for our V5.
[00:00:33] Margaret Kelsey: I'm so happy to be here. Yeah. I was like, why weren't we recording all of the intro stuff we have spicy takes that are going to be missed.
[00:00:40] Jarod Greene: That's true. That's true. But we'll get this spicy take on the record. You know how to play. You've seen this. So get into it, Margaret. What is, what is your take? What grinds your gears? what could be better in the world from your perspective?
[00:00:52] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. I think there is a lot of folks still missing this idea that software is becoming a commodity. [00:01:00] And commodities tend to compete on brand and distribution. If you think about sneakers, if you think about toilet paper, if you think about all the things that kind of are commodities in our lives, I think AI is, making that happen a lot quicker than probably we expected.
[00:01:16] Margaret Kelsey: And still software founders and CEOs and executive leadership teams. And if you're backed by a VC, the VCs that are giving you advice, their board members, all are expecting you to compete on your go to market motion, including a lot of paid, a lot of demand gen, a lot of those things, and they're completely underfunding brand.
[00:01:42] Margaret Kelsey: They're completely underfunding or not thinking about creative distribution tactics that tend to be more, like, at scale brand messaging throughout, lots of different channels. And so, what I'm seeing right now that absolutely grind my gears that I feel like I just talk about ad nauseum is [00:02:00] this idea that like we are underfunding the very thing that can differentiate your company and relying on a bunch of tactics in an old playbook that absolutely doesn't work anymore.
[00:02:11] Margaret Kelsey: And I think if you can spin up a product in a weekend or six months, why wouldn't a competitor be able to spin up that very product? And so the race is not about like technological purity anymore, where it used to be that your differentiation was your technology. ‘Cause it took so much time and effort to actually, engineer these companies.
[00:02:34] Margaret Kelsey: Now it can happen so much quicker. So how are we competing?
[00:02:37] Jarod Greene: Yeah. And it's fascinating because, you know, within that same construct, the routes to market are also less differentiated. So the only thing you have left, as you mentioned, is the brand, the authenticity behind it, the values you may expunge, the people you deal with. So when you think about a medium like this, as we talked in the pre call, it feels like it's the last one left, right?
[00:02:58] Jarod Greene: It just feels like it's the one that [00:03:00] people vibe with, it's the one that people resonate with and, you being a podcast host yourself, you've seen success with this medium. How should other people think about maybe even getting started if they're in the, I'm running an old playbook camp, but drastically need to shift it before we don't have a company anymore.
[00:03:17] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah, well, I think, founders themselves of, of startups can really start to lean into their own personal brand and start to share authentically the decisions they're making, the values they have, the changes that they're trying to do, the pivots and things like that. So, I think podcasting is a great medium because it's so
[00:03:38] Margaret Kelsey: rich in terms of media, right? Like you can take the podcast video clip, you can make it into shorter clips. You can transcribe it and turn it into a blog post or a LinkedIn post, or you can get it on tiktok. Like you have the most rich media source that you can then pull apart into different things.
[00:03:57] Margaret Kelsey: And so it does feel like the biggest bang for your [00:04:00] buck. but I think the more that founders or the executive team, the folks that are probably less likely to transition in and out of the company, the more that those personal brands can be elevated, the more people will start to feel that authentic connection with the person behind the logo and the brand.
[00:04:16] Margaret Kelsey: And I think the other really interesting thing too, is that I was just saying like the people that are less likely to transition out of your company, however, because everyone now has probably a LinkedIn account and probably their own social media accounts and probably their own personal brands that they're cultivating, you do also have to think as a, especially ahead of marketing, how am I
[00:04:39] Margaret Kelsey: supporting, even the folks like downstream at my company, to be able to be advocates of, if it's not the product itself of the values and the brand that we aspire to be, or that we've cultivated? And so I think of this thing too, if like now we have like an army of people that could also [00:05:00] be brand advocates out there in the wild for us.
[00:05:03] Margaret Kelsey: I think the interesting thing then is that you actually then have to be really specific in your hiring process where your brand values and your cultural values, which should be the same thing, actually become a rubric for your hiring practice. And that way you derisked the fact that anyone working at your company would have those values intrinsically in themselves and be showing up in a way that's supportive to your brand, rather than this top down hierarchical model of like, “you will have to have every social media post vetted by our company before you do it”, which is
[00:05:34] Margaret Kelsey: not feasible anymore, you know,
[00:05:36] Jarod Greene: Right. And then, yeah, you get to a place where then people just don't do it at all.
[00:05:40] Jarod Greene: I would say to our employees are going to be our best advocates, no matter where we work. And like you said, if you're hiring good people, you don't have to worry about bad advocacy or things that are incongruent with what you do. So it's just real strong, I think, force and function on everybody to think about “are we hiring the right people?”
[00:05:55] Jarod Greene: Are we putting the right positions? Are they advocating for the things we advocate? Is that understanding [00:06:00] shared? Is that understanding fostered? These are all
[00:06:03] Jarod Greene: topics, I'm sure we could spend a lot more time on,
[00:06:06] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah.
[00:06:07] Margaret Kelsey: the best flywheel when we're talking about the fact that like brand and all of these things matter is your internal cultural values need to be your external brand values, which then influence your content and community programs. And then you're getting insight from the content and community that your content is built for and by your community.
[00:06:28] Margaret Kelsey: You're getting insights about their problems and their own values, which then should reinforce your own cultural values. And your brand values and then that becomes a flywheel. And so I think that's the thing that's most underfunded, bringing it back to the original rant, which is like that flywheel has not been, instituted at companies in a way that we should, that actually provides the growth that you'll need to be able to compete when software becomes a commodity.
[00:06:55] Jarod Greene: I feel every part of that, because again, I think we've all heard the message, you [00:07:00] know, from our boards, from our leaders, from the team of like, how do we get our customers to just get it? Like, how do we get our audience to feel that? How do, how do we go viral? How do we get that moment?
[00:07:08] Jarod Greene: And I think as you described that flywheel is when all those things are in sync. You either do it or the likelihood you're about to do it is very high. But it's not your content strategy in itself, is going to unlock it. It's not just great people. You hired itself is going to lock it. I really love the visualization of the flywheel as the catalyst for all the things that everybody says they want, which is the awareness, the virality, the brand entity you want to aspire to.
[00:07:34] Jarod Greene: And I've never kind of heard it laid out though. I think it's beautiful.
[00:07:37] Margaret Kelsey: Thank you.
[00:07:38] Jarod Greene: So I told you these, these things go fast. I'm sure we'd talk another couple of hours, but that's our V5. So you got to bid you ado, but really do appreciate you spending some time with us. Where can folks find you if they want to listen in, check in, get to know you.
[00:07:51] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. I'm active on LinkedIn and so you can find me there. Margaret Kelsey. Um, I've got a weird like slash handle, so you [00:08:00] probably just have to search Margaret Kelsey and find me there. And then, Don't Say content is everywhere that you would listen to podcasts, so, uh, give it a follow and have it show up on your feed when we
[00:08:09] Margaret Kelsey: post new episodes every Tuesday. My inbox is always open. I'm- don't be afraid to double message me and LinkedIn because I very much usually missed the first message, but keep persistent and I'm happy to chat with anyone.
[00:08:24] Jarod Greene: Thanks for your time, man. Appreciate it.
[00:08:26] Margaret Kelsey: thank you for having me.