What I Wish I’d Known About Sales With Martin Knowles

Tom Happe shares hard-won lessons on B2B pipeline generation, LinkedIn outreach, sales focus and building conversations that lead to real opportunities.

In this episode, Owen Cole, Director at Paragon Marketing Projects, joins host Martin from Lead Forensics to cut through the noise on what actually makes outbound work in today’s B2B landscape. From two decades in sales to running a team of nearly fifty SDRs across multiple industries, Owen has seen the patterns that separate teams who scale consistently from those who stay stuck chasing their tail.

In this episode, Andy Laws, Sales Development Leader at Databricks and Founder of Rev Rocket, joins host Martin from Lead Forensics to challenge some of the biggest assumptions in sales development right now. From scaling the BDR function at Braze through to IPO, Andy's seen what works at speed and what quietly breaks teams when no one's paying attention. He shares the one structural mistake he sees companies making with their SDR comp plans, why the rush to replace reps with AI is backfiring for a lot of orgs, and a surprisingly simple signal most reps are completely overlooking when deciding who to reach out to. We also get into what Andy's professional cricket career taught him about performing under pressure, and the single piece of advice he wishes someone had given him on day one as an SDR. If you're building pipeline or leading a team that does, this one's worth your time.