How We Built Profound’s GTM Motion To A $1B+ Valuation w/ Mark Ebert, SVP of Revenue @ Profound

Mark Ebert, SVP of Revenue @ Profound, the answer engine optimization platform helping brands win in the new world of AI search.

Mark spent nearly nine years at 6sense, joining to build out the East Coast sales team + helped build them into the ABM category leader.

Before that, he was in the trenches at Responsys and Oracle Marketing Cloud during the marketing cloud wars against Salesforce and Adobe. He started his career as a BDR at Experian right out of college - his dad's advice being that since he wasn't going to be a doctor or a banker, he should find a way to get into sales.

Mark is based in Boston, a history buff with a soft spot for Revolutionary War battle planning, and probably the most optimistic sales leader you'll meet.

Mark cut three-quarters of the enablement org at 6sense and felt zero impact. The problem? Enablement people were running the training sessions, not the sales leaders. Reps weren't paying attention, weren't bought in, and the content was being produced to justify headcount, not to actually make the team better.

The fix: flip it entirely. Sales leaders run the room. Enablement supports. "The days of someone from enablement standing at the front of the room running sessions, I think that's long gone."

Mark didn't plan it, it happened organically. They left a sales leader candidate on the sales floor with no instructions, and within minutes he was deep in a deal strategy conversation with a rep for 45 minutes, then texted the rep follow-up ideas that night.

Mark's verdict: if you have to ask a leader to get into deals, you've already lost. The ones who do it when no one's watching are the ones you want.

"If the whole field is over 100%, being at 100% doesn't tell me much at all." Mark's real question: how did you perform against your peers?

A rep at a rocket ship company hitting quota in a rising tide is a very different animal from someone who was top 2 at a company with 5% team-wide attainment. The market you sold in matters as much as the number you put up.

Mark handed every new Profound hire a copy of Matt Dixon's The Jolt Effect on day one. The core thesis: buyers don't stall because they don't like your product, they stall because they're afraid they're going to screw up.

The best sellers anticipate that fear and bring it into the cycle proactively, before the buyer even raises it. "I don't need to wait for you to ask the question."

The 6sense thesis was that buyers are further along in their journey than you think. The Profound thesis is that the journey itself has moved to a completely new medium. Buyers are now asking Claude and ChatGPT what software to buy, and 80% of them go directly to a brand's website right after, ready to transact.

The funnel isn't just starting earlier. It's starting somewhere brands have zero presence and zero control. "You actually have to be marketing to these superhumans."

(00:00) Intro, What Profound Is Building & Why Mark Joined

(02:14) From Experian BDR to Oracle Marketing Cloud: Why Mark Left for Sixth Sense

(07:36) Why Your Enablement Team Shouldn't Run Enablement

(13:38) The Two Questions Every New AE Should Obsess Over in Week One

(17:05) The Sales Leader Who Won't Sell Is a Liability: The "Leave Them on the Sales Floor" Test

(22:21) The 3-Path Whiteboard: How Great Reps See the Deal Before It Plays

(23:24) Confidence vs. Overconfidence: The Hire Mark Worries About

(27:09) What World War 2 Teaches Mark About Running B2B Evaluations

(29:36) Why Hiring from the #3 Product Beats Hiring from the Category Leader

(31:30) The Quota Attainment Question Most Hiring Leaders Read Wrong

(33:30) The B2B Funnel Is Collapsing Inside ChatGPT

(37:31) Marketing to Your New "Ultra Customer": The LLM Itself

(38:38) Rapid Fire: Staying Upbeat, Dust, Granola & The Jolt Effect