Most founders build their go-to-market strategy around the next customer, not the company that will one day acquire them. Host Midori Verity, Founder & CEO of FireCoach, sits down with Richard Terry-Lloyd, Chief Revenue Officer at Netlify and an early Salesforce rep when it had about 50 employees, to unpack the SaaS sales lessons that cut churn, helped Salesforce move upmarket, and still hold up in today's AI-driven market.

In this episode of Revenue Rearview, you'll learn:

- How switching from monthly contracts to annual contracts paid monthly reduced churn at Salesforce and surfaced the real economic buyer, at no extra cost to customers

- How to use inbound leads as a map for outbound prospecting and move upmarket with lookalike accounts

- Why your exit strategy should shape your go-to-market strategy today: know your number, your timeline, your acquirer, and your moat

🎙️ Host: Midori Verity, Founder & CEO, FireCoach

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/midoriverity/

👤 Guest: Richard Terry-Lloyd (RTL), Chief Revenue Officer, Netlify

Richard has spent 25+ years scaling SaaS revenue teams at Salesforce, SuccessFactors, Zuora, and AppZen, including helping grow Zuora from $3M to $300M.

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardterrylloyd/

🔗 Netlify: https://www.netlify.com

🔥 Revenue Rearview is presented by FireCoach, AI sales practice for revenue teams:

https://firecoach.ai/?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=rr-ep06

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Welcome to Revenue Rearview

00:16 Living out of a 4Runner and selling steel in Baja

02:00 The Silicon Valley cohort that shaped his sales career

04:18 Joining Salesforce at 50 employees

07:17 How annual contracts cut churn at Salesforce

09:24 Benioff's SimCity vision: building a platform

12:34 Netlify's pivot from enterprise sales to product-led growth (PLG)

16:12 Rethinking Midori's FireCoach growth plan

17:06 Exit strategy: who is your acquirer?

18:29 Your number, your timeline, your moat

21:09 Wrap-up and where to find Richard

▶️ Watch on YouTube

Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/@firecoach-ai

How to Fix a Flopped Sales Call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgVT9vlNvaU

📈 Follow Revenue Rearview on Spotify for more on sales leadership, go-to-market strategy, and building better sales teams.

Want to know the strategy behind $1B+ categories - like VRBO and HomeAway? What does it take to build a company when the market you're entering doesn't even exist yet?

Melissa Fortenberry has spent her career answering that question.

She helped grow HomeAway and VRBO from the early days of the vacation rental category, later became Chief Product Officer at RVshare, and is now the founder and CEO of HeatSense, a wearable technology company helping teams proactively manage heat strain in athletes.

But this conversation isn't really about technology.

It's about understanding your customer, finding the real problem worth solving, and building trust when you're creating a completely new category.

Melissa shares the lessons she's learned from growing companies, defining new markets, and learning what actually drives customer satisfaction. She explains why education is one of the most powerful tools when you're creating a category, how partnerships can help you reach an audience faster, and why founders need to stay focused on the one thing their customers actually care about.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why validating a painful problem should come before building a company.
• How HomeAway and VRBO used education and partnerships to help create the vacation rental category.
• Why finding channel partners can be more effective than trying to reach every customer one by one.
• How to build trust with partners by creating long-term relationships and bringing them into the process.
• Why understanding the core driver of customer satisfaction matters more than constantly adding new features.
• How Melissa learned that homeowner satisfaction was directly tied to how much money they made through the platform.
• Why founders should always look for a clear path to revenue and understand their unit economics.
• How HeatSense evolved from a consumer-focused product into a team solution for college football programs.
• Why personal relationships and founder-led outreach are critical when entering a new market.
• Why creating a new category means educating customers before you can sell to them.

Link and Resources

Connect with Melissa Fortenberry

Website: https://heatsense.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-turner-fortenberry-139b39

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🔥 PRACTICE THE DEAL BEFORE IT'S REAL.

→ Build a smarter sales team every week. Practice the deal before it’s real with FireCoach.ai.

Learn more: https://firecoach.ai/

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What happens when you build a $50 million company, grow too fast, and realize the biggest thing holding the business back is the people running it?

Michael Lovitch has lived through it.

He went from special education teacher to tech sales, then built a seven-figure psychology-focused audio company, helped build Real Dose to $50 million in annual revenue, co-created Baby Bathwater, and is now building Zodiac.fm, a consumer SaaS company exploring astrology, human design, sound, and technology.

But this conversation isn't really about building a $50 million company.

It's about what happens when success stops working.

Michael shares the mistakes that nearly took Real Dose down, why he believes they should have hired an experienced CEO much earlier, and how starting Zodiac.fm forced him to become a beginner again. He also breaks down the persistence, networking, affiliate marketing, and relationships that helped him build his earlier companies.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why persistence and outreach matter more than a perfect growth strategy.

• How Michael built his first seven-figure company through affiliate relationships and refusing to take no for an answer.

• How Real Dose scaled to $50M/year and how rapid growth exposed leadership and infrastructure gaps.

• The leadership mistake Michael believes could have saved the company: hiring experienced executives and building an advisory board.

• How Baby Bathwater was created by rejecting the mastermind model and prioritizing community and real connection.

• Why starting a new SaaS company forced Michael to admit what he doesn’t know and ask for help again.

• Why building a personal brand is hard when you never wanted to be the face of your business.

• How Michael went from skeptical of astrology and “woo” to building Zodiac.fm.

Whether you're building your first company, scaling a growing business, or starting over in a completely new industry, this episode is an honest look at the mistakes, relationships, and reinvention that happen behind the success story.

Link and Resources

Connect with Michael LovitchLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lovitch/

Learn More About Zodiac.fmhttps://zodiac.fm

Ready to build a sales team that gets smarter every week?

Stop relying on hope, heroic salespeople, and expensive trial-and-error.

-> FireCoach.ai turns your best sales conversations into an AI-powered sales operating system that helps every rep ramp faster, handle objections with confidence, and close more business.

https://firecoach.ai/