The B2B Sales Blueprint is a podcast hosted by Paul Perrett, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Firmable, created to address the lack of transparency within the sales and go-to-market community. The show was born out of Paul’s frustration that professionals in these fields aren’t sharing their real stories - particularly around what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t.

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Everyone says an $8–10K ACV is too small for BDRs, too small for outbound. Kyle Norton built a profitable outbound engine at exactly that price point – and helped scale <a href="http://owner.com" rel="nofollow">owner.com</a> from ~$2M to nearly $100M ARR doing it.In this episode of the B2B Sales Blueprint, Paul Perrett (Co-founder &amp; Co-CEO, Firmable) sits down with Kyle Norton, CRO at <a href="http://owner.com" rel="nofollow">owner.com</a>, to unpack the contrarian GTM decisions behind one of the fastest-growing vertical SaaS companies in the world.Kyle explains why he replaces &#34;best practice&#34; with &#34;high probability practice,&#34; how to reason from first principles to make low-ACV outbound work, and why the real bottleneck in AI adoption isn&#39;t the technology – it&#39;s change management. He also walks through his four-level framework for AI sales sophistication, from simple prompts to a full GTM &#34;harness&#34; to recursive, self-improving revenue systems – plus how the CRO role itself is being rewritten.Whether you run a sales team, own GTM strategy, or you&#39;re figuring out how AI actually changes revenue operations, this one is dense with practical, hard-won takeaways.In this episode: – Why low-ACV outbound can be wildly profitable (and the exact math to prove it) – The friction-removal mindset that gets reps to adopt AI – The 4-level AI sophistication ladder and what a &#34;GTM harness&#34; really is – Why the data layer is non-negotiable groundwork – How the modern CRO must think like a systems architect – Building a culture of &#34;rugged flexibility&#34; and servant leadership Guest: Kyle Norton, CRO at <a href="http://owner.com" rel="nofollow">owner.com</a> | Host of The Revenue Leadership PodcastHost: Paul Perrett, Co-founder &amp; Co-CEO at FirmableThe B2B Sales Blueprint by Firmable – operators, founders and revenue leaders on what actually drives B2B growth.Learn more about Firmable: https://firmable.aiSubscribe for new episodes.

Episode 10: Why "Best Practice" is killing your sales team

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Most tech companies expanding into New Zealand skip the local team entirely. Lowry thinks that&#39;s exactly why so many of them fail to earn trust in market.After eight years trying to escape a career in corporate law, Lowry talked his way into a partnerships role at Vend, one of New Zealand&#39;s most formative (and wildest) SaaS success stories, then helped Xero build what may be the most effective channel partnership motion in SaaS history: 60 to 70% of its growth driven by accountants and bookkeepers. Now he&#39;s Airwallex&#39;s first employee on the ground in New Zealand, building the local sales team from scratch inside one of the most ambitious fintechs in the world.In this episode, Lowry joins Paul Perrett to unpack why product partnerships fail without customer overlap, why &#34;we&#39;ll just sell in remotely&#34; doesn&#39;t cut it in categories built on trust, like payments, and what he actually screens for when hiring a sales team from zero in a market with a brain drain problem. Lowry has seen sales and partnerships from nearly every angle: corporate lawyer, product partnerships lead at Vend, channel strategist at Xero, and now country lead at Airwallex.Together, they get into why customer overlap is the only early signal worth trusting in a partnership, why New Zealand&#39;s 25 to 35 year old talent gap is reshaping how companies hire, why curiosity and hunger matter more than sales pedigree when your product is genuinely complex, and why low ego, not raw talent, is the trait he won&#39;t compromise on when someone&#39;s revenue numbers say keep them and the team dynamic says otherwise.Why you should listen:If you&#39;re building or scaling a go-to-market team into a new market, or wrestling with the tension between hiring for skill versus hiring for fit, this episode is a grounded look at what actually works. Lowry doesn&#39;t romanticize the journey; he&#39;s candid about the partnerships that wasted his time, the risk of hiring someone your team can&#39;t function with, and why &#34;hire the best&#34; is easier said than done in a small market.This is a conversation about earning trust through local presence, why AI is quietly reshaping how finance teams evaluate vendors, and why the difference between a partnership that compounds and one that goes nowhere often comes down to a single, boring question: do we actually share customers?

Episode 9: The Real Reason Your Best Salesperson Might Be Killing Your Team (Low Ego Beats High Talent)

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Most sales orgs think they&#39;re &#34;doing AI.&#34; Alex McNaughten thinks they&#39;re kidding themselves.Across hundreds of conversations with B2B sales teams, Alex keeps seeing the same pattern: an AE running a clever ChatGPT workflow here, a sales manager with a cool Claude automation there, impressive in isolation, invisible in aggregate. No compounding, no consistency, no real ROI anyone can point to. He calls it isolated experimentation, and he thinks it&#39;s where 99% of sales organizations are still stuck.In this episode, Alex joins Paul Perrett to unpack what it actually looks like to move from scattered AI experiments to a real system, one where a &#34;digital teammate&#34; builds, runs, and self-improves your sales operations every day. Alex has lived the sales talent problem from every angle: intern turned VP of Sales at 20, founder of Sales Leaders (advising 140+ tech companies across Australia and New Zealand), co-founder of Apprento, and now co-founder of Grow AI, the company behind Taylor, an AI teammate built to run the operational backbone of a sales org.Together, they get into why span of control is quietly expanding from 6 reps to 15 to 20 per manager, why the profile of a great sales hire has shifted from &#34;organized and disciplined&#34; to &#34;builder DNA,&#34; why hierarchy is flattening as agents absorb the admin layer, and why &#34;we built it ourselves&#34; is a much harder sell now that tokens aren&#39;t free and the ROI math actually has to work.Why you should listen:If you&#39;re a founder, CRO, or sales leader wondering whether your team&#39;s AI usage is actually moving the needle, or just making everyone feel clever, this episode is a reality check with a roadmap attached. Alex doesn&#39;t deal in hype; he deals in what&#39;s actually reliably running inside real sales orgs today, what&#39;s still human by design, and what separates teams compounding real advantage from teams collecting cool demos.This is a conversation about hiring in an AI native world, why confidence (not information) is the real unlock for new reps, why in office culture still matters even when remote works fine, and why the gap between &#34;AI did something cool&#34; and &#34;AI is a system we can trust&#34; is bigger, and more important, than most sales leaders realize.

Why 99% of sales teams are experimenting with AI, and almost none of them have a system

Most sales orgs think they&#39;re &#34;doing AI.&#34; Alex McNaughten thinks they&#39;re kidding themselves.

Across hundreds of conversations with B2B sales teams, Alex keeps seeing the same pattern: an AE running a clever ChatGPT workflow here, a sales manager with a cool Claude automation there, impressive in isolation, invisible in aggregate. No compounding, no consistency, no real ROI anyone can point to. He calls it isolated experimentation, and he thinks it&#39;s where 99% of sales organizations are still stuck.

In this episode, Alex joins Paul Perrett to unpack what it actually looks like to move from scattered AI experiments to a real system, one where a &#34;digital teammate&#34; builds, runs, and self-improves your sales operations every day. Alex has lived the sales talent problem from every angle: intern turned VP of Sales at 20, founder of Sales Leaders (advising 140+ tech companies across Australia and New Zealand), co-founder of Apprento, and now co-founder of Grow AI, the company behind Taylor, an AI teammate built to run the operational backbone of a sales org.

Together, they get into why span of control is quietly expanding from 6 reps to 15 to 20 per manager, why the profile of a great sales hire has shifted from &#34;organized and disciplined&#34; to &#34;builder DNA,&#34; why hierarchy is flattening as agents absorb the admin layer, and why &#34;we built it ourselves&#34; is a much harder sell now that tokens aren&#39;t free and the ROI math actually has to work.

Why you should listen:

If you&#39;re a founder, CRO, or sales leader wondering whether your team&#39;s AI usage is actually moving the needle, or just making everyone feel clever, this episode is a reality check with a roadmap attached. Alex doesn&#39;t deal in hype; he deals in what&#39;s actually reliably running inside real sales orgs today, what&#39;s still human by design, and what separates teams compounding real advantage from teams collecting cool demos.

This is a conversation about hiring in an AI native world, why confidence (not information) is the real unlock for new reps, why in office culture still matters even when remote works fine, and why the gap between &#34;AI did something cool&#34; and &#34;AI is a system we can trust&#34; is bigger, and more important, than most sales leaders realize.

Episode 8: Your Sales Org Is About to 3x in Size (Without Hiring Anyone)

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Most sales teams are still trying to scale pipeline the old way: hire more reps, add more tools, push for more activity, and hope the numbers move. But Rakesh Patni believes that playbook is being rewritten. The next era of go-to-market will be built around systems, signals, automation, and AI agents working alongside sales teams to help them move faster, make better decisions, and prioritise the accounts most likely to buy.In this episode, Rakesh joins Paul Perrett in Singapore to unpack how AI is changing the mechanics of B2B sales. From his early years building a trading business, to founding companies, advising global technology leaders, and leading AI and automation research at IDC across Asia-Pacific and Japan, Rakesh brings a rare mix of operator experience and enterprise AI perspective.Together, they explore why data quality is still the foundation of any GTM engine, how buying signals are changing outbound prioritisation, why the role of the SDR and AE is evolving, and what it means for CROs to manage not just people, but eventually a hybrid human and AI workforce.Why you should listen:If you’re a founder, CRO, sales leader, RevOps operator, or anyone trying to understand how AI will actually change go-to-market, this episode goes beyond the hype. Rakesh breaks down where AI creates real leverage, why most organisations fail to turn pilots into ROI, and why the best sales teams will stop thinking in terms of isolated tools and start thinking in systems.This is a conversation about the future of sales, but it is also practical. How do you use signals to prioritise outreach? What should an AI agent actually do? What does a great sales hire look like in an AI-native world? And why might the next competitive advantage in B2B sales come from how fast your GTM system can learn, decide, and act?

Episode 7: Stop adding reps. Fix your GTM system.

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Most founders think sales hiring is hard because the talent pool is thin. Scotty Freeman (Apprento) thinks the real problem runs deeper — we don&#39;t know what we&#39;re hiring for, we fall for the person who talks the most, and we rush through the parts that matter most. As co-founder of Apprento, New Zealand&#39;s leading sales acceleration platform, Scotty has spent 20 years building, breaking, and rebuilding the sales talent lifecycle. In this episode, he unpacks what actually predicts sales performance (it&#39;s not experience), why onboarding is where most companies quietly fail their new hires, how AI is reshaping both the rep&#39;s role and the sales leader&#39;s, and why the SDR isn&#39;t dead, just misused. Timestamps - 00:00 Intro and who is Scotty Freeman- 01:48 How Scotty fell into sales (and the stat that&#39;ll surprise you)- 04:18 Co-founding a business with 13 people- 05:43 What Apprento actually is and how the model works- 09:16 The SDR hiring boom and why the unit economics never made sense- 10:02 How to hire your first salesperson: advice for founders- 11:03 What to look for in an SDR when experience is off the table- 14:09 Raw aptitude testing and the Five Eyes framework- 19:46 Reference checks: why happy ears kill good hires- 21:34 Onboarding: why most companies fail their new hires in month one- 24:19 The origin story of Grow (AI sales coaching)- 28:15 How AI is widening the gap between great and average sales leaders- 32:50 How AI is changing who you hire- 34:51 Will AI kill SDRs?- 37:26 Quickfire round

Episode 6: How Scotty Freeman identifies top sales talent (before anyone else does)

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Most sales teams measure booked meetings, celebrate connect rates, and throw junior hires at their outbound motion – then wonder why pipeline is dry. Ricky Pearl from Pointer Strategy has been inside the sales teams of over 100 Australian startups, and his diagnosis is blunt: the barrier to outbound isn&#39;t the technology. It&#39;s the psychology. And most companies are making it worse by giving their most strategic function to their least experienced people.In this episode, Ricky breaks down the unit economics of outbound, why the phone still converts at 17.5% on average (and up to 40% with the right data), and what it actually takes to build an SDR function that makes commercial sense – before you hire a single rep.Why you should listen: If you&#39;re a founder, head of sales, or revenue leader thinking about outbound, this episode will save you from the most expensive mistakes in the playbook. Ricky doesn&#39;t trade in theory – he trades in numbers, frameworks, and hard-won lessons from the coalface of Australian B2B sales. Whether you&#39;re questioning if outbound is right for your ACV, trying to work out when to hire your first SDR, or just wondering why your sequencing stopped working – this one&#39;s for you.

Episode 5: Booked meetings are vanity. Stop counting them.

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It’s never been easier to do outbound.And never harder to make it work. Most sales teams aren’t struggling with effort.They’re struggling with focus. Outbound is noisier than ever.Response rates are collapsing.And buyers are making decisions earlier, with or without you. In this episode of B2B Sales Blueprint, Tara Salmon steps in as guest host to interview Paul Perrett on what’s actually changed in modern go-to-market. Drawing on experience scaling Aconex and MessageMedia, Paul shares how different sales motions require different systems, why most teams misunderstand attribution, and how data changes how you prioritise and win. This is a practical look at what actually works in B2B sales today — and where most teams are going wrong.

Episode 4: Modern go-to-market is broken. Here’s how to fix it with Paul Perrett.

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Most sales teams aren’t losing deals.They’re never even in them.Buyers now ask, get answers, and decide before your sales team even knows they exist.In this episode of The B2B Sales Blueprint, Paul Perrett sits down with Chris Perrine, who built G2’s APAC business from a home office into a regional revenue engine. This is a real look at what it takes to scale B2B sales in APAC, and why most global playbooks break when you try to apply them locally. What you’ll learn• Why most pipeline problems start with visibility, not effort• How buyer behaviour is changing in an AI and LLM-driven world• What actually works when scaling B2B sales in APAC• Why US GTM strategies fail in regional markets• The biggest mistakes teams make as they scale outbound If you’re building, scaling, or leading a GTM function, this will reshape how you think about pipeline.

Episode 3: From the ground up to scale: lessons from building a B2B revenue engine in APAC with Chris Perrine

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What does it really take to build and lead high-performing sales teams across multiple markets?In this episode of B2B Sales Blueprint, Paul Perrett sits down with Luke Williams, Vice President, Americas &amp; APAC at Evotix, for a practical conversation on modern B2B sales leadership.Drawing on experience across APAC and the US, Luke shares lessons on scaling sales teams, evolving sales methodologies, coaching reps more effectively, and adapting to a world where AI is changing how top performers work.Key themes explored in this episode:From SMB to enterpriseWhy the real shift is not just deal size, but sales motion, buying complexity, and how leaders manage deals.How sales methodologies evolveWhere frameworks like Challenger, SPICED, and MEDDICC fit as teams move from high-velocity sales to more structured enterprise motions.Coaching and deal inspectionHow strong sales leaders create more rigour through qualification, coaching, peer review, and better deal visibility.Expanding into the USPractical lessons on narrowing your ICP, focusing on the right verticals, and avoiding the mistake of trying to tackle the whole market at once.AI and rep performanceWhy AI is not replacing great salespeople, but helping the best reps improve faster and raise the bar for the whole team.Hiring for curiosityWhy adaptability, learning mindset, and what Luke calls “XQ” are becoming more important in modern sales teams.

Episode 2: What got you to $10k deals won’t get you to $250k with Luke Williams

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In this debut episode, Paul Perrett sits down with his long-time “partner in crime,” Leigh Jasper - Co-founder of Firmable and Aconex. Leigh shares his journey from being a self-described “naive” entrepreneur to leading one of Australia’s first successful B2B SaaS companies. Key themes explored in this episode: The Reality of Early-Stage SalesLeigh reflects on the “toughest six months” of his professional career, learning to sell out of necessity, cold calling, and building a sales organisation from the ground up. The Foundation of Sales IntelligenceWhy high-quality external data is the essential first step in any sales process, and why “if you get that wrong, pretty much the whole rest of your process is wrong.” The Role of AI in SalesA discussion on how AI and LLMs aren’t replacements for salespeople, but rather “co-pilots” or “sidekicks” that handle the grunt work and research, allowing humans to focus on connection, strategy, and closing. The Power of SignalsHow identifying meaningful events such as job changes or social activity creates “smarter data” that helps sales teams engage the right person at exactly the right time. Sales as a ProfessionWhy the best sales leaders approach the craft with discipline, cadence, and continuous learning, just like any other established profession.

Episode 1: From Aconex to Firmable: Why Leigh Jasper built again

The B2B Sales Blueprint is a podcast hosted by Paul Perrett, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Firmable, created to address the lack of transparency within the sales and go-to-market community. The show was born out of Paul’s frustration that professionals in these fields aren’t sharing their real stories - particularly around what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t.