Pre-Sales Unplugged: Leadership Playbook

I'm excited to announce this week's Friday Coffee guest. Joining me this Friday is Michael Kurson, Co-Founder of FirstTouch. I've had the opportunity to work closely with Michael and his team over the past 6 months, and one thing has always stood out to me: ▪️ They're willing to challenge conventional wisdom. ▪️ While much of the market chased AI-generated outbound at scale, ▪️FirstTouch doubled down on helping companies build authentic relationships through social selling and what they call "Operationalized Social." We'll talk about: ▪️ Building a startup ▪️ Finding product-market fit ▪️ Modern GTM ▪️ AI in sales ▪️ Why relationships still outperform automation ▪️ What the future of revenue teams looks like If you're a founder, sales leader, marketer, or just interested in where B2B is heading, I think you'll enjoy this conversation. 📅 Friday, July 24 🕑 2:00 PM ET See you there. Arvi Carkanji

Most sales leaders are still guessing at top of funnel. More tools, more sequences, more noise, and demo numbers barely move. Jack Porter 🐋 Porter has the opposite problem. He is 24, co-founded WhiteWhale two years ago, and his team has already run over 1,800 demos combined across 2025 and 2026. WhiteWhale sits inside 700+ sales teams, so Jack doesn’t JUST know what works for his own company, he knows what is actually working across the industry right now. On this episode of Pre-Sales Unplugged we get into: - How WhiteWhale went from an idea nobody would pay a dollar a month for to a real business, built off 200+ cold calls with zero product - What is actually working in cold email, LinkedIn, and cold calling right now versus what everyone assumes still works - His take on hiring and AI, straight from a recent post that got people talking - What it is like building a company before you turn 25 If you lead a GTM team or you are the one carrying the number, this is a conversation worth your 45 minutes. Catch it live on LinkedIn Live, Wednesday July 22 at 11:00 AM ET.

Are you automating dysfunction or relevant processes for your company? Mark Nix Had some awesome insights on our latest podcast episode: Before scaling your organization, consider these key insights on getting your strategy right: 1. Process Over Technology 2. Validate Before You Scale 3. Value Engineering 4. Proof of Value 5. Don't scale the wrong thing. 6. Optimize your processes first to ensure your technology deployments actually drive success. Mark is someone who has been in every angle of the sales engineering and solutions departments... from IC to leadership and now from LP investment standpoint through Stage 2 Capital. Listen to the full podcast Episode 23: - 🎧 on your favorite podcast platform: https://lnkd.in/eZ_6r8BZ - 🎥 if you'd rather watch on youtube: https://lnkd.in/efK9tEpb #SalesEngineer #ImplementingAI #Automation #Leadership #ValueEngineering

One of my favorite parts of being in NYC this week was getting to meet some of my clients in person for the first time. Starting with Tamir Verthim... Honestly? When we finally met face to face it felt like I'd known you forever!! You're an amazing person, is the best way I can summarize it! 🙌🏻 I didn't get to take pictures with everyone (next time 😄) but I have to talk about the team for a second. Apono has been quietly building something special. Crushing their quarters. Growing their team. Building with culture at the center of everything they do. Every single time I talked to anyone from their team or leadership there was one consistent theme: "We are building something truly valuable." And they meant it. And then there's Jon Flowers.. I had the pleasure of working alongside there. Always fun to work with. Always keeps it 100% real. Katya Taershmidt - ★Always Hiring★ and Yael Cholow I'll have to meet you guys in person next time hopefully :)) Pranav Bhojraj and Craig Lowell I know you guys are crushing it there so keep going!! 🙌🏻🎉 This Monday they announced they are being acquired by 1Password 5 years of building. And now this. 🔥🔥🔥 Rom Carmel 🚀 I didn't get to meet you in person but I've heard your name in the best way possible from every single person on your team. That says everything about the kind of leader you are. Congrats to the entire Apono team. It has been a genuine pleasure working and getting to know all of you. Can't wait to see what's next!!

Tamir Verthim dropped one of the most mature takes on leadership I've heard in a while and honestly every manager needs to hear this before they lose their next top performer. Because the way you handle someone walking out the door says everything about the kind of leader you are. Watch the clip And if this resonates, the full episode is packed with this level of thinking from start to finish. Link in the comments 🎙️

Most SE leaders are not ready for what fast growth actually demands. You land the budget. You get the headcount approved, the team is crushing it and the company is growing. And then the real work starts. Hiring decisions that have to stick. Onboarding that actually produces reps who can perform. A culture that does not fall apart the moment 20 new people walk in the door. Diana Cappello is living this right now. She joined Yoodli AI Roleplays as a team of 2 and is scaling to 6 in H1 alone. She is not just building SE onboarding. She is building the AE and SC programs too, while still carrying a bag and leading the team. On this episode of Pre-Sales Unplugged, we are getting into: • How to scale fast without changing everything that made your team good • What real onboarding looks like and where leaders consistently fail new hires • How to get hiring committee consensus on what good actually looks like • What is coachable vs. what is not, and how to tell the difference early • How to stay an effective leader when you are also still an individual contributor This one is for SE leaders, GTM managers, and ICs who want to understand what it takes to build and scale a high-performing pre-sales team the right way. Join us live: Tuesday, May 26th at 12:00 PM ET / 9:00 AM PT Drop a comment if you're coming. See you there. #PreSalesUnplugged #SalesEngineering #GTM #SaaS #Hiring #Onboarding #Leadership

Most leaders lose their best people and never get them back. The ones who do? They built something different: a culture where people don't just work for you, they want to work with you again. This week I'm sitting down with someone I've genuinely loved working with as a client, not just because he gets results, but because he's the kind of leader that makes people want to come back. Meet Tamir Verthim, VP of Customer Experience at Apono, the cloud access management platform helping companies like Intel, HPE, and Monday. com move fast without compromising security. Tamir's career has taken him from Sales Engineering at HP all the way to leading CX at a company that is disrupting the cloud access management space. And along the way, he's built something most leaders never learn how to crack: a reputation so strong that the people he's led keep finding their way back to work with him again. We're going deep on: → What it actually takes to build a team people want to return to → Leadership that drives results without killing culture → How great CX and great SE leadership overlap more than you think → What Apono is solving in the cloud security space.. and why it matters for GTM teams → How to build a winning culture and team that drives results in this competitive market. I know I’m going to be taking a ton of notes here personally.. BUT whether you're a leader trying to build something worth coming back to, or an IC trying to figure out what separates good managers from the ones who change careers..make sure you don’t miss this one! 📅 Join us live on LinkedIn: May 18th @ 10 AM EST (will also be 🎧 Available in your favorite podcast platform + YouTube.)