AI for Revenue Leaders: The AI Hat Podcast

If your revenue team is hitting a ceiling despite adding headcount and new tools, the problem isn't your people - it's your architecture.

In this episode, Mike Allton sits down with Amanda Rubin, SVP of Revenue at Frameplay and former EVP of Growth at Enthusiast Gaming, where she drove four consecutive years of revenue growth. Amanda unpacks what she calls the "architect's mindset" - the long-view, systems-first approach that separates true Revenue Leaders from sales managers who are simply trying to hit this quarter's number.

You'll hear how Amanda built scalable GTM frameworks from the ground up - first with nothing but a color-coded Google Sheet, and now with an AI-powered tech stack that eliminates admin drag and gives sellers back the time they need to actually sell. She breaks down exactly how she structures account lists, ladders sales teams, and deploys tools like We Flow, Fyxer AI, and Apollo to create a revenue engine that scales without breaking.

What you'll walk away with:


Why the difference between a Sales Leader and a Revenue Leader changes everything about how you build your org


How to structure account tiers so no opportunity falls through the cracks


The AI tech stack Amanda is architecting right now at Frameplay - and the honest truth about what it takes to implement it

Connect with Amanda Rubin: LinkedIn

Resources mentioned:


We Flow - AI-powered activity tracking and pipeline intelligence


Fyxer AI - AI email organization and post-meeting draft automation


Apollo - Sales sequencing and outreach automation

Download the free Executive Guide to Shadow AI: theaihat.com/shadow-ai

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Meeting Follow Up Basics

00:23 Podcast Intro Theme

01:32 Welcome and Mission

01:56 Scaling Chaos Problem

02:33 Meet Amanda Rubin

04:05 Sales vs Revenue Leadership

05:53 Revenue Architect Mindset

07:07 GTM Narrative and Positioning

08:01 Designing the Sales Org

10:21 Frameworks That Break

11:14 Account Lists and CRM Discipline

12:44 Tiering and Activity Tracking

13:36 People Roles and Incentives

15:18 Enthusiast Gaming Playbook

17:29 Packaging and Storytelling

19:41 Building Seller Pods

22:07 Diagnosing Capacity Leaks

23:27 Support vs Sales Spend

24:29 AI for Spec Sheets

24:52 Wildfire GPT Brain

25:59 Shadow AI Governance

27:15 Fix Workflows First

27:42 WeFlow Setup and CRM

30:51 Conference Intelligence Dashboards

33:33 Fyxer Inbox and Followups

35:09 Apollo Sequences and Outreach

36:37 Frameplay Pitch and Audience

39:06 WeFlow Activity Warnings

41:25 Fail Fast Tool Decisions

42:56 Story Before Headcount

44:01 Connect on LinkedIn

44:42 Final Shadow AI Reminder
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Your prospects stopped Googling. They're asking ChatGPT which CRM to buy, asking Perplexity which marketing automation platform solves their problem, asking Gemini to compare your category - and AI is recommending your competitors, not you. This isn't a "future of search" problem. This is a pipeline problem. Right now.

Kevin White, Head of Marketing at Scrunch (and formerly leading growth at Twilio Segment, Retool, and Common Room), saw this crisis coming and built the measurement infrastructure to fix it. His clients are seeing 100% to 260% visibility gains in AI search in just 60 days - and tracking customers who convert specifically because they appeared in ChatGPT answers.

In this episode, Kevin deconstructs the "Citation Economy" - why chasing Reddit mentions is a trap, which citation sources actually drive AI recommendations in your vertical, and the exact workflow his team uses to go from "invisible in AI" to "recommended by LLMs" in under two months.

You'll learn the diagnostic every Revenue Leader should run Monday morning to find out if your brand exists when prospects ask AI for solutions. You'll discover why the "long, long tail" of AI search (20+ word prompts vs. 5-7 word Google queries) creates greenfield opportunities for brands willing to architect intent-driven content. And you'll hear how Scrunch's Agent Experience Platform delivers AI-optimized content to LLM crawlers without breaking the human website experience.

This is not theory. Kevin walks through Scrunch's own dogfooding - how they use their product to track competitive intelligence, diagnose content gaps, and systematically close citation opportunities. He shares the specific technical optimizations that actually move the needle (spoiler: it's not just adding FAQs). And he reveals how agentic workflows - using Claude Code to build marketing apps, automate spreadsheet enrichment, and analyze customer calls - are reclaiming hours his team used to lose to manual synthesis.

If your marketing team thinks they're winning because they rank on Page 1 of Google while your pipeline bleeds invisible in ChatGPT, this episode is your wake-up call. Kevin delivers the audit, the workflow, and the hard truth: you can't optimize what you don't measure.

Run the diagnostic. Close the gaps. Win the prompts that matter.

Show Notes & Transcript: https://theaihat.com/your-prospects-arent-googling-anymore-scrunchs-kevin-white-on-the-ai-visibility-crisis/

CHAPTERS

00:00 LLM SEO Lore

00:36 Podcast Intro Theme

01:45 AI Hat Welcome

02:10 Why Google Rankings Fail

02:53 Kevin White Joins

04:14 Wake Up Call Moment

07:15 Measuring AI Visibility

10:34 Citation Myths Debunked

13:57 Long Long Tail Search

16:45 Three Citation Buckets

19:07 Workflow To 260% Gains

24:15 Shadow AI Ad Break

25:25 Making Sites AI Readable

29:57 Dogfooding Scrunch Tactics

32:19 Top Priorities This Quarter

35:33 One Prompt Audit Trick

37:16 Where To Connect

38:40 Final Wrap Up

Kevin White on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevbosaurus/Scrunch: https://scrunch.com/
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If you're a VP of Sales watching your revenue team paste customer data into ChatGPT, you don't have an adoption problem - you have a governance crisis. Your best people are uploading signed NDAs to Claude and feeding pipeline data into Perplexity because 70% of their day is admin drag, and AI is the only thing fast enough to keep them above water.

Financial services tried to ban AI. It failed spectacularly. So they built governance frameworks that let teams move faster and sleep at night.

Dr. Angela Murphy - known as Payments Elsa - reveals the "Amnesty and Orchestration" playbook she architected for banks navigating the GENESIS Executive Order. She's a PhD strategist, 2024 PayTech Women Emerging Trendsetter, and advisor to financial institutions on AI governance and ethical AI mandates.

You'll learn the three-step governance audit every Revenue Leader should run this quarter - before Legal does. Angela shares real stories of teams using ChatGPT for payment disputes and compliance workflows, creating massive liability. She reveals the conversation framework to surface Shadow AI without triggering panic, the three policies you can implement in 30 days, and why explainability isn't compliance theater - it's revenue protection.

This isn't a "fire your team and replace them with bots" episode. Angela proves ethical AI can surface hidden revenue channels, identify products to sunset, and reveal sales cycle biases costing you deals.

The regulatory hammer is coming. Financial services just got hit first. Will you architect governance now, or audit the damage later?

Download the Executive Guide to Shadow AI at theaihat.com/shadow-ai.

Subscribe to AI for Revenue Leaders: The AI Hat Podcast and stop being a Pilot Purgatory statistic.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Ethical AI = Revenue Growth: Find Gaps, Biases & New Channels

01:24 Show Intro & Theme Song: Welcome to The AI Hat Podcast

02:56 The Shadow AI Compliance Time Bomb (Real-World Examples)

03:43 Meet Dr. Angela Murphy (Payments Elsa) + Why Banks Try to Ban AI

07:41 Shadow AI in the Back Office: Spreadsheets, PII, and Manual Ops Risks

11:04 Why Revenue Leaders Should Watch FinTech: Payments Rails & Stablecoins

13:04 Genesis Executive Order Explained: “Suggestulation” and What’s Coming

16:24 From Fear to Frameworks: Finding Low-Hanging AI Wins with Guardrails

19:24 Resource Break: Executive Guide to Shadow AI

20:33 Orchestration 101: Tool Inventory, Training, and Policy from Existing Governance

23:33 Explainable AI: Decisions You Can Defend (Underwriting Example)

27:51 Ethics, Bias & Revenue Outcomes: Avoid Lawsuits and Unlock Better Decisions

31:19 Biggest Misconceptions: You Can’t Ban AI—and Education Isn’t Optional

37:30 Monday Morning Action Plan: Start the AI Policy, Audit Tools, Target Pain Points

40:46 Where to Find Angela + Final Wrap and Next Steps

Show Notes & Full Transcript: https://theaihat.com/why-your-sales-teams-shadow-ai-is-a-lawsuit-waiting-to-happen-a-fintech-cros-governance-playbook/
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Your sales team spends 70% of their time on admin work - not selling. Do the math: if your top AE makes $120K and only spends 30% of their time on revenue activities, you're paying $84,000 for data entry and CRM updates. That's the Admin Drag tax killing your pipeline velocity in 2026.

But here's the real problem: you bought AI six months ago (Gemini, ChatGPT, Einstein), rolled it out with a 45-minute webinar, and… crickets. Adoption is at 14%. Your VP is asking what you're paying for.

This isn't a technology problem. It's a leadership problem. You installed software when you needed to redesign the workflow.

In this episode, Mike Allton (Director of Partner-Led Growth at Agorapulse) deconstructs the 95% AI pilot failure rate and shows you exactly what Revenue Architecture looks like in practice. You'll discover:

• The real cost of manual meeting prep (90 minutes vs. 8 minutes with Gemini's Scheduler)• How to build a "Digital Crew" that automates research, briefing docs, and objection prep• Why Gemini's 2 million token context window changes everything for sales intelligence• The 3-day audit that reveals where your team is hemorrhaging time• How to move from "Human-in-the-Loop" to "Human-on-the-Loop" automation

Stop installing tools your team won't use. Start architecting workflows that reclaim 25-30 hours per rep, per week.

Resources: TheAIHat.com/speaking

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 - Introduction: The $600K Call She's Unprepared For

00:02:20 - The $84,000 Admin Drag Tax (Do the Math)

00:03:41 - Why 95% of AI Pilots Fail (It's Not the Technology)

00:04:05 - The Da Vinci Workshop: Building a Digital Crew

00:05:17 - Pilot Purgatory: The 6-Month Failure Timeline

00:07:06 - The Old Way: 90 Minutes of Manual Meeting Prep

00:08:48 - The Digital Crew Way: Gemini Scheduler in Action

00:11:48 - Why Gemini Is Structurally Different

00:12:16 - Native Workspace Integration (Friction Removal)

00:12:36 - The 2 Million Token Context Window

00:13:20 - Multimodal Native (Not Franken-Botted)

00:14:23 - Grounding with Google Search (The Accuracy Engine)

00:14:43 - The Scheduler: The Agentic Unlock

00:15:36 - Your Homework: The 3-Day Time Tracking Audit

00:17:01 - How to Architect Your Digital Crew (Workshop Info)

00:17:45 - Closing: Stop Installing Software, Start Architecting Systems

Show Notes & Transcript: https://theaihat.com/geminis-scheduler-just-fixed-sales-meeting-prep-and-killed-the-90-minute-research-grind/
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$1M in sales. $500K saved. Zero new headcount.

Your sales team isn't ignoring dead leads because they're lazy - they're drowning in admin drag. While you're debating whether to hire two more SDRs, your competitors have stopped asking "Who do I hire next?" and started asking "What system do I build next?"

Will Del Principe (Growth & Solutions Engineering Leader at Thoughtly) reveals how AI voice agents have crossed the quality threshold - handling objections, qualifying leads, and booking meetings at scale. Will personally drove close to $1M in sales in 6 months using voice agent workflows, and his clients are generating hundreds of thousands per month by reactivating dead pipeline.

You'll learn:

Why voice agents are fundamentally different from chatbots (and why that matters for stalled pipeline)

How to design re-engagement campaigns that resurrect cold leads without damaging your brand

Quality benchmarks for evaluating voice AI providers (70% of prospects don't detect it's AI)

The mindset shift from headcount scaling to system architecture

The low-risk pilot strategy for testing voice agents this quarter

Who this is for: VPs of Sales, CROs, and RevOps Directors in mid-market to enterprise B2B who need workflow architecture that produces measurable P&L impact - not pilot purgatory.

Download the free Executive Guide to Shadow AI at theaihat.com/shadow-ai

CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Introduction: The Efficiency Crisis Killing Your Pipeline02:08 - Your Sales Team Isn't Lazy - They're Drowning in Admin Drag03:27 - Meet Will Del Principe: $1M in Sales Using AI Voice Agents03:58 - The Coffee Invitation: When AI Crossed the Uncanny Valley06:00 - What Is a Voice Agent? (And Why It's Not Just Another Chatbot)08:05 - The Podcast Guest Analogy: How AI Removes Bottlenecks Without Replacing People11:14 - Mixing Outbound and Inbound: The New Campaign Architecture13:20 - Why You Can't Cold Call with AI (And How to Get Consent)15:07 - The Handoff: When Does AI Transfer to Human Sales Reps?16:22 - Reactivating Dead Leads: 650 Meetings Booked in 90 Days18:04 - Mid-Roll: The Executive Guide to Shadow AI20:23 - Quality Benchmarks: What Makes a Voice Agent Sound Human?24:22 - The Thoughtly Roadmap: Omnichannel AI Personas Are Coming26:49 - From "Who Do I Hire?" to "What System Do I Build?"28:10 - How to Pilot a Voice Agent: The Low-Risk, High-ROI Use Case29:47 - The CRM Graveyard Audit: What Would 10% Reactivation Mean for Your Revenue?31:02 - Where to Learn More About Thoughtly31:46 - Outro: Download the Shadow AI Guide

CONNECT:Will Del Principe - Thoughtly: thoughtly.co | thoughtly.co/demoMike Allton - The AI Hat: theaihat.com | theaihat.com/shadow-ai

AI for Revenue Leaders is your operational playbook for the Agentic Era. Host Mike Allton deconstructs how practitioners are deploying sanctioned AI to hit quota and reclaim sales capacity lost to admin drag. Stop guessing. Start architecting.
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