About
I'm a founder with two B2B SaaS exits. Innoveer (sold to Cloud Sherpas) and Spiro (sold…
Articles by Adam
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How to Actually Get the Most Out of the Applied AI for Distributors Conference
How to Actually Get the Most Out of the Applied AI for Distributors Conference
I’m back at the Applied AI for Distributors conference for the second time, and I’ve got one takeaway before we even…
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The AI In Your Pocket: How Mobile Intelligence Is Revolutionizing Sales Performance
The AI In Your Pocket: How Mobile Intelligence Is Revolutionizing Sales Performance
Remember the first time you used Google Maps? Suddenly, that clunky paper map became obsolete. That's exactly what's…
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The $1M Question Your CRM Can't Answer
The $1M Question Your CRM Can't Answer
"What Don't I Know?" Picture this: You walk into a CEO's office, armed with charts showing record sales numbers…
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Why CRM Has Failed (And What's Replacing It)
Why CRM Has Failed (And What's Replacing It)
The CRM Problem I Saw First-Hand A few years back, I founded and ran what would ultimately become one of the largest…
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CRM: A Journey, Not a Destination
CRM: A Journey, Not a Destination
When we talk about Customer Relationship Management (CRM), it often feels like we're asking people to eat their…
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9 Things Ridiculously Successful Leaders Do Every Day
9 Things Ridiculously Successful Leaders Do Every Day
Top-performing teams are worth their weight in gold. Through my podcast interviews, I've learned that leaders of these…
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11 Things All Salespeople Hate
11 Things All Salespeople Hate
Overbearing Managers Experiencing constant oversight from a manager who won't let you breathe can be stifling. While…
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The Rise of Generative AI in 2023 and Beyond
The Rise of Generative AI in 2023 and Beyond
As we head into the new year, I believe it will be ‘The Year of Generative AI’, with 2023 giving us an explosion of…
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AI is Changing the Sales Process in Manufacturing
AI is Changing the Sales Process in Manufacturing
The average company has 23 different systems and applications that contain customer information. Salespeople and…
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AI Makes Sales Reps into Confident Product Experts
AI Makes Sales Reps into Confident Product Experts
There are several manufacturers and distributors in the supply chain that are adopting AI as a mainstream technology…
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Adam Honig shared this12 years at Spiro. That's a wrap. Justin, Andy and I started the company in 2014 because we thought CRM should work for the people using it, not the people reporting on it. We didn't get everything right. We got enough right to build a business serving tens of thousands of salespeople, and to hand it off in good shape to our friends at Cordance. A few thank you's: Customers, especially the early ones. You bought software that wasn't finished from a company that wasn't proven. I won't forget that. The team. You did the actual work. I just talked about it on podcasts. Our investors. You wrote checks when the numbers didn't justify them and asked hard questions when they did. That's the right way to do it. Video below. The team, the customers, and more of me than strictly necessary. I recommend sound on.
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Adam Honig posted thisIn business, there are only three reasons you should do anything: sell more, cut cost, or make somebody happier. That’s it. Customers, employees, doesn’t matter. It still falls into one of those. But sit in on most tech conversations and it goes a different direction. “We need AI.” “We should upgrade the CRM.” “Let’s look at a new platform.” Okay… for what? If you can’t answer that in one sentence, the project is going to drift.
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Adam Honig shared thisThe fastest way to kill CRM adoption? Make your team update the same opportunity twice. Saw this on a call recently. Enter it in one system. Do the work. Then re-enter it somewhere else just to move stages. From there, it’s predictable. Steps get skipped. Data drifts. Nobody fully trusts what they’re looking at. I’ve seen this derail more rollouts than bad data. Teams don’t avoid systems because they hate process. They avoid extra work. If it takes two updates, it won’t stick. The setups that work usually decide one thing early: one place to update, everything else follows. Have you seen this play out?
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Adam Honig posted thisPeople who work in CRM have a real problem. People hate it. Not a little. Not “it could be better.” They avoid it. They delay it. They do it at the end of the day when they’re already checked out. You can hear it in how they talk about it. “I have to update this.” “I’ll do it later.” “I forgot to log that.” No one says it helps them sell. Time to move on from the world’s most hated software.
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Adam Honig posted thisI think it’s BS that most companies plan on their sales teams missing quota. They don’t say it out loud, but it’s in the math. I kept running into this when I was interviewing sales reps. Everyone knows their OTE. Almost no one actually makes it. Ask what they earned last year, it drops. Ask how many hit quota, it’s always a small group. After a while it stops sounding like execution. It starts sounding like the plan.
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Adam Honig shared thisThis guy gets it.Adam Honig shared thisAsking a sales rep to update the CRM is like asking a cat to take a bath… There will be resistance. An abundance of whining. Dramatic flailing. And somehow…they'll still end up dry. There’s a better way ✌️ 95/5
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Adam Honig posted thisEveryone wants better visibility from CRM. Fewer people want to change how they work to get it. On a rollout call this week, that gap showed up fast. The team wanted cleaner reporting, tracked calls, better forecasting. But switching phone numbers? That got pushback. Area codes mattered. Customers might get confused. It felt like extra work. So the risk wasn’t the software. It was whether anyone would actually use it the new way. I’ve seen this a lot. If the workflow doesn’t change, the data never shows up. And without the data, the tool doesn’t do much. What actually got your team to change behavior, not just log in?
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Adam Honig posted this30,000 people… gone. From Oracle. A company most people still think of as “safe.” I keep thinking about a call last week. A VP told me he’d never join a startup because it felt too risky. At the same time, Oracle is down ~25% this year, loading up on debt to chase AI, and now cutting tens of thousands of jobs to steady things. That kind of reset doesn’t creep in. It hits all at once. I’m not saying startups are safer. But “safe” jobs don’t feel that safe anymore. The people I see doing fine right now can switch roles quickly, or go build something on their own.
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Adam Honig shared thisMost field sales teams already plan their days this way. They open Google Maps, plug in a few accounts, rearrange stops by hand, then try to remember what happened after the meetings are over. It works, sort of. It is also a pain. One customer said exactly what you would expect: “I do the same thing now, but manually.” That is usually the tell. The best product feedback is often boring on the surface. Not because the feature is boring, but because the workflow already exists. The job is already there. People are already doing it. Usually with too many tabs open and zero connection back to their CRM. Routes fixes that inside Spiro. A rep can see accounts on a map, build a trip, reorder stops, then log the visit from the phone while the day is still happening. No retyping notes later. No separate route planning tool. No guessing which dormant account is five minutes away while you’re already in the area. What I like about this kind of feature is that it does not ask someone to change how they work. It takes something they already do and removes the stupid parts. That is a much better test than flashy demos. If someone looks at it and says, “Yeah, I’d use that,” you’re probably onto something.
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Adam Honig liked thisThis is the way. #maythe4thbewithyouAdam Honig liked thisFrom ‘we’ll see what happens’ to ‘this is the way.’ A sales galaxy that’s precise, optimized, and quietly unfair to your competition.
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Adam Honig liked thisAdam Honig liked this“it takes an act of Congress to figure out what’s going on in our CRM.” heard that from a CRO today they’ve been on Salesforce for 11 years and still can’t answer basic questions without digging what’s actually happening in accounts who’s doing what where deals really stand too much manual entry too many dashboards nobody trusts too much chasing reps for updates that’s why we hate CRM we think it’s antiquated it was built for manual data entry, not for selling that’s exactly why we built Spiro it captures emails, meetings, activity, and ERP data automatically and just tells you what’s going on no chasing no manual updates no act of Congress required
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Ashu Garg
A lot of the conversation around the recent software selloff is really about terminal value. During the 2022 software selloff, rising interest rates pushed down valuations, but no one seriously questioned whether Salesforce or ServiceNow would still be valuable businesses in 10 years. This time, the selloff is about something different. The market is starting to question whether the business models that justify SaaS valuations remain valid at all. One reason is that the seat model is breaking. When a team can do more with fewer people, companies stop expanding their seat count. With agentic AI, pricing will increasingly shift from predictable per seat subscriptions toward usage and outcome based models. Agentic AI also makes it possible to charge for outcomes, which puts software in direct competition with the much larger services economy for the first time. In the latest edition of B2BaCEO, I unpack what this month’s software selloff is pricing in and how the economics of software are starting to change. Full p.o.v. here: https://lnkd.in/gP25Qvzt
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Brandon Metcalf
Robert F. Smith, CEO of Vista Equity Partners, recently posted a video about the future of enterprise software that's worth watching. He describes a shift with pricing and the emergence of what he calls "agentic enterprise solutions." This is terminology that Salesforce has been talking about since Dreamforce. Context, trust, and the ability to operate at scale are what separate the winners. The specific agentic enterprise technology matters. It's certainly no secret that we are big believers in the power of Salesforce, Agentforce, Data 360, and love Slack. We also understand and are huge fans and users of solutions like Claude, and others. No single technology can or should do it all. You really need to understand the motivation behind the work, what success actually looks like for a given job, before you can determine the right technology and approach to get there. Smith makes a point that really resonates: when you're processing insurance claims or sending wire transfers, "probably right" is not good enough. He's right, and that's why getting value from AI requires two kinds of orchestration. 1️⃣ You have to orchestrate the technology, the right AI combined with well-designed enterprise software that brings structure, workflows, and accountability. 2️⃣ And you have to orchestrate the workforce, designing digital worker roles, onboarding them with context, managing their performance, and coaching them over time just like you would any employee. I go deeper on both of these in a couple of blog posts I'll link in the comments. That's what we help our customers do at Asymbl. Design, coach, and manage digital workers that drive real ROI. Technology to hire the human talent who can orchestrate alongside them. Broad platform and solution expertise to bring it all together. You can't scale digital labor without the discipline to manage it, and you can't orchestrate a workforce you can't build. Smith says this could be the most valuable chapter in software's history. We agree, and what we're building next takes it even further. Links to video and blogs in comments. #workforceorchestration #digitallabor #futureofwork #AI
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Stefan Sexl
The new CPM year is starting with a big bang: Hg is acquiring OneStream Software and plans to take it off the stock market. Reason enough for my colleagues Christian Fuchs, Kelley Lynn Kassa, and me to write a BARC commentary! We address the question of overlaps with other CPM products in the portfolio, the valuation - and the crucial question of what this means for Onestream customers. Enjoy reading - and happy new year: https://lnkd.in/dUMfHuQJ
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David VanHeukelom
Most Salesforce ISVs get positioning wrong. They try to be everything to everyone. Then wonder why deals take forever and win rates are low. Here's the reality: Your app on the AppExchange is a considered purchase. Your prospects are evaluating alternatives. Maybe 3-5 competitors. Maybe Salesforce itself. If you can't clearly articulate why a customer should choose you over alternatives, you've already lost. Here is a simplified framework to start your positioning discussion: 1️⃣ Define Your Competitive Alternatives Not every vendor in your category. Just the ones you actually see in deals. The ones you win against. The ones you lose to. The non-software alternatives (yes, Excel counts). 2️⃣ Identify Your Differentiated Value What do you offer that alternatives can't match? This could be: ➡️ Specific features they don't have ➡️ A vertical you serve better ➡️ A use case you own ➡️ Your pricing/distribution model Talk to customers who chose you. Ask: "What alternatives did you consider? Why did you pick us?" 3️⃣ Find Customers That Care Not everyone cares about your differentiation. That's fine. Build your ICP around the segment that does care. Target accounts where your differentiated value matters most. Here's the counterintuitive part: Even if you compete with Salesforce directly, you can win. Why? Salesforce serves the broad market. You can own a specific segment, vertical, or use case that Salesforce serves "good enough" but you serve exceptionally well. That's your beachhead. The output of positioning drives everything: ➡️ Your messaging ➡️ What category you play in ➡️ Which accounts to target ➡️ Your sales narrative ➡️ Your AppExchange listing ➡️ Your partner pitch. Get positioning right, and everything else gets easier. Get it wrong, and you're competing on price in a crowded market. #appexchange #salesforce #positioning
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Dale Chang
Would you pay your top sales rep $300+/hour to update Salesforce fields? You already are… 6 hrs/week on manual data entry. Another 4 hrs on forecast calls. 3 hrs more chasing contract approvals through legal. That's 13 hrs/week not selling. GTM engineering exists to get those hours back. I've tracked the evolution of GTM roles for 20+ years from sales operations to revenue operations to what we're seeing now. The shift to GTM engineering recognizes that speed requires code. The early signal came from LinkedIn, where Brian Frank ran global sales ops with a dedicated software engineering team. They couldn't wait for vendor roadmaps or IT queues. They needed to move faster, so they built their own solutions. That’s now the pattern. GTM engineers are rebuilding how GTM teams operate. They're writing code that eliminates the friction between a rep's time and a rep's quota. They're automating the admin work that buries sales teams. They're building systems that make selling time the default. The focus is ruthlessly practical: How do we reduce non-value-added time? How do we make forecasts accurate without endless meetings? How do we eliminate back-and-forth between sales, deal desk, and engineering? When founders ask me about this role, I point to time allocation. If your reps are spending more time in systems than with customers, you need someone who can code solutions, not document processes. GTM engineering is about giving sellers their time back. Everything else follows from that.
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Mike Martin
🚨 Duplicate records = hidden costs. If your Salesforce org isn’t regularly tracking and cleaning duplicate data, you’re likely wasting time, compromising reports, and risking customer trust. Up to 15% of data in an average org is duplicated—and the damage adds up fast. That’s why Plauti created the free guide: “Tracking Duplicates with Salesforce.” 👉 Learn how to: • Identify and merge duplicate records • Set up matching rules and duplicate jobs • Automate cleanup and prevention • Establish smart data stewardship practices 📘 Download the guide today and optimize your Salesforce org for accuracy and trust: https://lnkd.in/eRMAPNWR #SalesforceData #DataCleanup #Ad #DuplicateRecords #CRMTools #PlautiDataManagement
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Chris Hill-Day
Eliminating Errors: CPQ Overhaul Success From a 45% quote error rate to 0% in just 3 weeks. A client approached us with a quoting process riddled with errors and internal churn. We redesigned their CPQ rules and automated key validations, resulting in fewer errors, faster approvals, and a sales team that trusts their tools. #CPQSuccess #Salesforce #ProcessImprovement
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Saurabh Gupta
What if reps can analyze a prospect's tech stack and know exactly what to pitch, without leaving Salesforce? That’s what GPTfy, AI, and BuiltWith do. Watch the video to see how it works. How are you using AI to cut down on grunt work in Salesforce, not just adding features? #AI #Salesforce #ProspectResearchinSalesforce #GPTfy #AIUseCases
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Daniel Kube
“Boards don’t bankroll guesswork.” That’s the line echoing in my head after skimming the hot-off-the-press newsletter my servicePath™ team just shipped—“Beyond 2025: Five Forces Transforming CPQ & Rev Ops.” Here’s the espresso-shot summary for fellow C-suite caffeine addicts: AI-native pricing → margins that learn as fast as your market. Conversational quoting → reps talk, systems build the deal. Composable architecture → swap tech like LEGO, not concrete. Vertical intelligence → industry nuance baked into every click. Usage-based models → turn one-off wins into lifetime annuities. Bottom line: CPQ is set to triple to $7.3 B by 2030, and the gap between leaders and laggards widens every quarter. 🔍 Your turn: Which of these five forces is already bending your revenue model—and where are spreadsheets still tripping you up? Share a quick story below so we can trade hard-won lessons. Prefer numbers to gut feel? The full brief unpacks analyst calls, market dashboards, and an action plan for boards allergic to surprises. Read the newsletter here → [https://lnkd.in/gC6szJb5 ] — Daniel Kube CEO, servicePath™ #CPQ #RevenueOps #AIPricing #ConversationalQuoting #ComposableTech #DigitalTransformation #B2BSaaS #CLevelInsights #GrowthStrategy #ServicePath™
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