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Hello and welcome to the Exit Five Weekly Newsletter - read by 25,000 B2B marketing professionals around the world. Exit Five is a membership site designed to help you build a successful career in B2B marketing. Join 5,000 other members at exitfive.com.

By the way - this email was designed in Knak which helps you create email and landing pages in minutes without having to write code. Learn more about Knak here.

👮 "It's so valuable that I feel like I’m stealing from Dave Gerhardt"

Some one said that about their Exit Five membership last week on LinkedIn.

While *we* think it's priced fairly – you do get a good bang for your buck.

And while you're making your New Year's Resolutions... why not get yourself a little gift to help with any career oriented goals on your list?

You'll get:

• Instant access to thousands of mentors in B2B marketing + monthly 1-1 matching
• Hundreds of community sourced templates for just about everything
• Community knowledge archive - past threads with research and insights from the community shared with each other

Plus - you can try for 7 days for free. If it's not for you, just cancel.

But we think you'll love it 😉

Start a free trial today and get a head start on your 2025 goals.

🚀 4 Tips For Getting Sales on Board With Your Next Launch

Honestly, I'm kind of over New Year's Eve.

It's always the same – a ton of hype that just falls flat.

Kind of like when you put a ton of work into a big marketing campaign just to realize your Sales team hasn't even opened email you sent them.

So to close out the year, we're sharing a gew lessons from Kira Federer, VP of Marketing, SMB Advertising at Paramount about how she create launches that sales teams not only notice, but are pumped to use.

Tip #1: Bring Sales in Early

If sales wasn’t part of the process, they won’t feel invested in the outcome. To create materials they’ll actually use, get their input from Day 1.

How to Do It:

• Build a Launch Team: Include one or two sales reps on the core project team. Not just managers, but people who are in the trenches every day.
  
  
• Ask the Right Questions: What objections do they hear most? What tools would make their jobs easier?
  
  
• Test the Pitch: Collaborate on messaging early to make sure it resonates before you finalize materials.

Why It Works: When sales has a hand in creating the materials, they’ll feel ownership and excitement about using them.

Tip #2: Time Your Launch with Sales Priorities

Too many marketing launches fall flat because they’re planned around product deadlines. Not when sales is ready to focus on something new.

How to Do It:

• Look at the Sales Calendar: Avoid busy times like end-of-quarter crunch or mid-summer vacations. Plan launches when sales teams have bandwidth to absorb and use new materials, like at a Q1 kickoff or slower months in the sales cycle.
  
  
• Hold Off for Maximum Impact: If you have something big, hold it for a moment when you know sales can give it their full attention.

Bonus tip: Tie your launch to an all-hands event like SKO. That makes sure sales leadership is onboard and creates buzz among reps.

Tip #3: Deliver Exactly What Sales Needs (No More, No Less)

Sales doesn’t want a 50-slide deck. They want tools they can actually use in their calls.

How to Do It:

• Give them Options: Offer flexibility with assets like:
  
  • A one-pager for quick reference.
  • A single, high-impact slide that fits into existing decks.
  • FAQs that address common objections.
    
    
• Customize for Accounts: Go the extra mile by pre-selecting target accounts that align with the campaign and share those lists with reps.
  
  
• Make It Plug-and-Play: Pre-draft email templates or LinkedIn posts so reps can easily share without starting from scratch.

Why It Works: By focusing on what’s useful (and doing a bunch of the heavy lifting for them), you avoid creating content that collects dust.

Tip #4: Make the Launch Feel Like an Event

Take a page from Kira’s playbook and build excitement.

Have sales leaders share how they’ve tested the materials and the results they’re seeing.

When sales hears success stories from their peers, they’ll be much more likely to buy in.

P.S. Exit Five is “closed” for until the New Year, so I’ll be checking my email less than usual (at least that’s the idea 😅).

Here’s the link to the full interview with Kira if you want to listen to it while you’re ringing in the New Year 🥳

Any fun plans? I'll be in bed by 9 :)

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

✉️ The B2B Event Playbook: Building Revenue-Driving Events in 2025

Events are back, baby.

From small gatherings like dinners to large scale customer conferences and webinars, events are back in B2B marketing in a big way.

But throwing events without a strategy is like burning money.

Whether it’s hosting your first user conference, investing in a sponsorship booth at a tradeshow, or looking into hosting micro-events like dinners – you need a solid strategy to back up your investment.

Our first Exit Five Live session of 2025 is all about B2B events. We’ll be joined by event experts Stephanie Christensen (Director of Marketing at Zuddl) and Kristina DeBrito (Director of Strategic Events at Iterable); hosted by Exit Five founder Dave Gerhardt who will share how we’re running events at Exit Five.

You’ll learn:

• The key metrics to track to show ROI on your event plan in 2025
• How to get buy in from key stakeholders
• What’s working for B2B marketing leaders right now (and what’s not working)
• How to do follow up post event
• We’ll also cover some lessons from virtual events too

Plus, there will be plenty of time for live Q&A so you can get your burning questions answered by our panel of event pros.

Join us live

🏢 OPEN ROLES

Who's Hiring Right Now?

HOT JOB OF THE WEEK: Neuron7 is hiring a Content Marketing Director to own their content ecosystem to create a top-of-funnel strategy that drives engagement and qualified leads. Fully remote, US only.

Interested? Apply here.

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• Global Payments is hiring a Principal Content Strategist, SMB Professional Services
• Global Payments is hiring a Principal Content Strategist, Higher Education
• Opus Training is hiring a B2B Growth Marketing Manager
• Paramark is hiring a Head of Marketing, Founding Marketer
• Wynter is looking for marketing leaders to participate in their research

See All Open Roles >>

Have an open role and want to make sure the best B2B marketing talent sees it?

Just reply to this email and we'll send over more info on how you can post it on our job board + get it in front of 25k+ marketers.

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