How Sprout Social builds revenue marketing around segmentation (with Hailey McDonald, VP of Revenue Marketing) — The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)

#391 | Dave sits down with Hailey McDonald, VP of Revenue Marketing at Sprout Social, to talk about what revenue marketing looks like inside a 16-year-old social intelligence platform with 30,000 customers. Hailey explains why demand gen has become the hardest role to hire for in B2B. She shares her core framework, how she maps segments against solutions, and how that turns into budget, channel bets, and pipeline tiers by vertical. Dave and Hailey also get into what it takes to go from sales-led company to product-led growth, and what north star metric she uses instead of leads or pipeline. You’ll also hear how reading market signals keeps you from over-investing in a segment that's never going to close. Finally, the difference between a marketer and an executive, whether big companies can vibe-code their way to startup agility, and the truth about incentives.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Meet Hailey McDonald, VP of revenue marketing at Sprout Social

(00:49) - Why revenue marketing is the hardest role to hire for in B2B

(05:26) - Shifting a sales-led company toward product-led growth

(08:44) - Getting clear on ICP and why segmentation matters

(10:23) - The segmentation framework: mapping segments to solutions

(14:55) - Turning segment priorities into budget and channel bets

(19:42) - What a campaign team does

(31:34) - AI, vibe coding, and keeping a big company current

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