Episode #225:
Naomi Brezi, Chief Revenue Officer at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, explains how to lead through constant transformation without burning out teams or customers. She frames today’s trust recession and shows why credibility must be earned at every touch. Naomi maps a dual-track plan that balances quarterly targets with long-term brand and people investment. She closes with practical ways to protect morale, pipeline, and relationships.
“You can’t over-communicate when you’re leading in times of uncertainty. You have to communicate more and more often, and you have to really make this a practice. This really helps build that trust and honesty.” – Naomi Brez
Naomi unpacks the trust recession, dual-track growth, and retaining A-players during reorgs. She shares practical plays like tiered ABM, disciplined ICP focus, transparent town halls, and KPI-aligned accelerators that safeguard culture and pipeline while delivering quarterly results.
Follow Naomi Brezi on LinkedIn
Follow host Steve MacDonald on LinkedIn
[Transcript]
[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspective podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. Today, we have a super interesting guest and conversation. We have on Naomi Brezi. Now, Naomi, you are a multiple-time Chief Revenue Officer at B2B companies, PE-led companies. You’ve helped lead transformations, large transformations within these companies, and, in fact, that is a growing area of expertise of yours. You’re just finishing up an entire coaching program that ties very much into that, that I’m gonna let you talk a little bit more about. But we know that change is constant and transformations are constant, and how we navigate those are so important to how we navigate success inside of our companies.
[00:00:52] Steve MacDonald: So we’re gonna talk about taking the turbulence of that and turning it into long-term tenure of the people that are most important — our high-performance teams. And so I’d love to, though, before we get started, which I’m excited about, let you just maybe explain a little bit more about your background before we get started.
[00:01:12] Naomi Brezi: Sure, and thank you, Steve. I’m very excited to be here today. I’m really looking forward to our time together. You know, I’ve been really fortunate to work in higher education, edtech, workforce development, and adult learning for probably about the last 15 years or so of my career. And through that time, I have built kind of a little niche or knack for myself to really help organizations in these spaces when they have underperforming sales teams or they’re really looking to go through a significant go-to-market change.
[00:01:46] Naomi Brezi: I’ve led some very large teams and very large books of business, and I’ve also helped organizations build from the ground up. So, everything from startups all the way up to really large organizations in the space. But most recently, as you mentioned, I’m currently getting my professional coaching certification from the International Coaching Federation, which is the gold standard — think Harvard University of coaching credentials. I’ll be finishing up that study here in a couple of weeks, and it’s in leadership and organizational development.
[00:02:39] Naomi Brezi: I just think this, given my background and what I look to do, is really to help transform organizations to scale and grow under a PE environment. It’s really gonna help make a difference for a lot of these teams — not only in the way that I show up as a leader, but how I help move that organization forward from a scaling and growth perspective. Maybe take them to exit or acquisition and really help to build those leaders that report to me so that they can build the stepping stones to their own careers.
[00:02:59] Steve MacDonald: Well, so I want to start in and just dig in because that sounds phenomenal — your background. One of the biggest things in a change transformation that’s always happening is we have to look at the underlying currents, the trends that are happening in the marketplace that are affecting our ability to be successful — in how we’re training our teams and how we’re adopting those different challenges.
[00:03:22] Steve MacDonald: And there’s something that you and I called the trust recession. It’s happening right now. I wanted to throw out just a couple of stats. Like, if any of us have looked at the most recent LinkedIn Edelman Trust Barometer — 32,000 respondents worldwide — those 32,000 respondents, 61% of them said that they thought leaders in organizations like ours are being intentionally misleading. Intentionally misleading.
[00:03:51] Steve MacDonald: A whole other study talked about how B2B buyers — 74% of them — think that the customer evidence that we’re presenting to them, they can’t rely on it, they can’t trust it. And that’s how we package the value that we present. This is an erosion of trust, and we know it. It’s, you know, been well documented — the B2B self-service buyer’s journey. They’re waiting longer and longer to want to talk to us because they want to do their own due diligence in advance. How does this trust recession shape B2B decision-making and the teams that you’re bringing together and training? How does that impact what you’re thinking and how you’re approaching that?
[00:04:34] Naomi Brezi: What a deep question, Steve. You know, it’s really hard right now. Trust is an issue, and it’s not only an issue in sales and marketing and client success. When I have teams, or even when I am in front of a client and really trying to bridge that gap between wanting to provide a solution to a challenge or a need they might have and, you know, building that trust factor — lack of trust is showing up in everything that touches us today.
[00:05:07] Naomi Brezi: I don’t think, you know, you turn on the news, and we are being asked not to believe what you see and not to believe what you hear, and it’s just everywhere. I think AI also adds a layer to the uncertainty. You know, technology has made it so that, in many respects, buyers are already coming to the market with a lot of information and knowledge.
[00:05:35] Naomi Brezi: So, in my industry in particular — higher education, workforce development, and edtech — it’s a little bit unique because it’s very much relationship-driven, which I think, in a lot of ways, you don’t find that too often in other industries. Other industries sometimes can be a lot more transactional, and a college president or a university president — they really want to sit down across the table from one another.
[00:06:10] Naomi Brezi: Have open, honest conversations about their short- and long-term planning. And as a sales executive or sales leader, you really need to be able to come as a thought leader and subject matter expert to bridge that gap. So I think when we look at, you know, how do we bridge the trust factor that’s in business, you have to be very clear.
[00:06:39] Naomi Brezi: Well, let me back up either one. You have to listen, because if you don’t listen to what problem or challenge is trying to be solved for, and you’re just thinking, how do I answer this really quickly just to, like, move the sales forward, you’re not going to be able to provide a thoughtful response to what their challenge or what goal they’re trying to solve for.
[00:07:02] Naomi Brezi: You have to provide clear, concise messaging. Everybody wants data and proof points, and they’re gonna take that immediately and go out to, like, OpenAI or ChatGPT or whatever AI system they’re using and immediately check to make sure that it’s true. And you really need to build credibility at every single touchpoint with a client.
[00:07:29] Naomi Brezi: And I think this is fairly common knowledge — sales and marketing right now is not at a single point of entry, especially when you’re talking about selling into the mid-market and enterprise space. We need to build relationships from the top down. So, from the top, yeah, the guy or gal that’s ultimately gonna sign that contract and choose the budget to say yes, but then also with the people that are going to implement and be your partners in the execution of whatever that contract says.
[00:08:04] Steve MacDonald: So I have to tell you, I’m just gonna continue to throw some of the biggest challenges that we all have here, because what you mentioned there is that it’s a relationship-based business. And any B2B company that has an ABM process, where you’re selling into large transactions that could take six months, eight months, a year, or more to close a deal, it is all about creating the relationships. And the foundation has to be on trust, right? So I love everything you were saying there, but now I could look at that and I could say, okay, I clearly understand that.
[00:08:51] Steve MacDonald: But we have to balance everything with a very short-term revenue focus — I mean, even more so in PE-backed companies that are looking for an exit, right, within X number of years. The heightened focus on short-term versus long-term development and relationship building can be at odds. How do you, kind of working in that environment, how do you balance those two objectives?
[00:09:12] Naomi Brezi: Well, listen, I’ve been there multiple times, and it’s a really hard balancing act, especially as a Chief Revenue Officer that’s trying to make transformative change while still hitting, you know, your quarterly numbers. It could really feel like you’re walking a tightrope. On one side, there’s the pressure of the forecast, but on the other side is the need to reinvent how you’re going to market so that the company can really be successful long term.
[00:09:47] Naomi Brezi: I think when you think about account-based marketing in that context, the choice is really how do you build momentum on both fronts — so the short-term quarterly goals and the need to be able to provide that PE company that might be looking to go out to exit the consistent and predictable revenue plays.
[00:10:08] Naomi Brezi: But how do you also build for the long-term future? One of the things that I’ve done that has helped me to be successful is, when I enter into a new working relationship, I always go to the data and I analyze it. But it’s not the only key metric that I look at. So, of course, I look at client metrics, I look at marketing metrics, I look at sales metrics, but I also want to talk to the clients because, at the end of the day, the clients are really at the center of everything that we should be doing as sales, marketing, and client success individuals.
[00:10:47] Naomi Brezi: What has been successful for me is really market segmentation. So I might break up my client base, if it’s large enough, into different client segments. Tier 1 might be strategic accounts where the ABM play is heavily invested in personalization, executive roundtables, and joint innovation solution sessions.
[00:11:17] Naomi Brezi: Thought leadership, I think, needs to read and play through all of this, but more so within those strategic accounts and really position us — the sales organization or the service organization — as a partner and a thought leader. Those strategic relationships typically have, in most cases, if we’re lucky, multi-year contracts, and they’re more long-term plays that will help lay the foundation for more of the long-term focus in the future of the organization.
[00:11:46] Naomi Brezi: Accounts that maybe fall into Tier 2 to Tier 3, and you can call them mid-market accounts or small- to medium-sized business, or whatever segmentation works in your industry — these really need to make faster, more rapid, intent-based outreaches and much quicker sales cycles.
[00:12:09] Naomi Brezi: Because this is what can really influence and help you as a Chief Revenue Officer or as an executive sales leader to really make those quarterly goals. So, it’s like a balance. It’s like a barbell or a seesaw. Sometimes one side will be a little bit more up than the other, but you want to try as much as possible to have that balance so that you can plan for long-term growth.
[00:12:35] Naomi Brezi: While still making those short-term goals, it’s a critical piece, and organizations that don’t make the time for that more long-term growth can have that come back to haunt them a couple of quarters down the road.
[00:12:52] Steve MacDonald: You know, it’s interesting because you’re not gonna go into a board meeting and somebody’s gonna say something like, hey, you know, on the marketing front, how is the brand development going, right? How is our work in internal culture and our change transformation? They’re gonna come in, and they’re gonna say, how are we doing on this quarter’s quota, and what does next quarter look like?
[00:13:14] Steve MacDonald: Right, that’s the focus. When you do that, there’s another balancing act I wanted to ask you about because you talked about clear segmentation, right? And there’s always a tendency to define — and that’s defining our segments, defining our ideal customer profile, right? And we know if we bring in our ideal customer profile, those are the ones that we’re best suited and resourced to serve.
[00:13:41] Steve MacDonald: They’re the ones that are gonna churn less, they’re gonna take fewer resources to facilitate. But there’s always the desire and the lure of bringing in deals that are outside of that segmentation, outside of that ideal customer profile, because we’ve got a quota to hit, right? How do you think about that balance? Because short term it helps in the quota; long term it never helps in the development of the business.
[00:14:09] Naomi Brezi: I think it can be a slippery slope, and you have to be really, really careful. And I think, you know, depending upon the business and the organization — for early startups or organizations that are in their first couple of rounds of seed funding — it could be really difficult to say no to revenue that’s coming in when you desperately need it and you need that new logo or that new piece of business to be able to go out there and promote. It takes a lot of discipline to really focus on your core business and be successful at that. For larger organizations,
[00:14:50] Naomi Brezi: It’s a little bit easier to do. You might have a larger budget, larger P&L, where maybe you can absorb a little, you can experiment to see, you know, let’s try this under one or two contracts and see if our business can absorb this and if it makes sense for a longer-term play. My advice would be to really be disciplined about your business — where your core strengths are.
[00:15:16] Naomi Brezi: Really try to understand who your ideal customer profile is and who your buyer is, and really position your organization to the strengths that you have and that you offer in the market. Because pivoting too soon to something that you’re not a hundred percent sure of for short-term gain is going to suck a lot of your people resources. That, in an early startup or early seed company, is like — your people are your resources and are everything.
[00:15:49] Naomi Brezi: So really keep your team and your strategy focused on your core business and your core disciplines, and serve your customers and your prospects as best as possible in what is your real strength, and not try to just go after every shiny object that appears.
[00:16:08] Steve MacDonald: You know, you just said something in there — your people and org is everything, right? And we talk on the podcast to, you know, only C-suite executives — CEOs like yourself, CMOs, COOs — and we’ve always asked them this question, which is: what are your two greatest challenges for creating long-term sustainable growth? And the number one challenge above everything else, mentioned over 70% of the time, was the greatest challenge was internal alignment and coming together internally.
[00:16:41] Steve MacDonald: We think of our challenges as, you know, outside impacts — outside trends, COVID, and competitors, and things like that — but really getting our house in order and all of us basically on the same playbook. So, you and I had talked about how constant change and transformation not only impacts alignment, but these reorgs that happen within — it can be extremely upsetting, right?
[00:17:11] Steve MacDonald: To kind of that balance and having a consistent focus on where we’re going and what we’re doing and who’s in charge. Tell me a little bit about this constant reorg and how it affects internal alignment and just overall success.
[00:17:28] Naomi Brezi: I mean, like, listen, I’ve lived in organizations where, unfortunately, you set off the C-suite or the executive team, the ELT team, with the best intention and try to be aligned.
[00:17:40] Naomi Brezi: But you go through quarter after quarter of downsizing and shifting priorities, and what happens to your talent — and especially good talent — is they begin to ask themselves, what does this mean to me? What does this mean for me, my family, my income? I want to put a pool in the backyard. Am I gonna get the commission that I was hoping for?
[00:18:04] Naomi Brezi: Am I gonna be down on, like, what’s the financial position of the organization? It really crushes morale, and it will stall the execution of a really good go-to-market strategy and a transformation. My approach has always been to communicate as much as possible, as much as I can. Given the fact that I am sitting in the C-suite and I am privy to confidential information, I try to be as clear as possible, as quickly as possible, about why we’re changing what we’re changing and what’s not.
[00:18:39] Naomi Brezi: I think the hardest thing to do as a Chief Revenue Officer is when change does occur and downsizing does occur and priorities are constantly shifting. It’s really being courageous enough to set realistic performance windows. Sometimes a board or a CEO wants to change the people, but they don’t want to change the goal.
[00:19:06] Naomi Brezi: And that can be really crushing and unrealistic for a team, especially in service organizations, and one like higher education, workforce development. It’s driven so much by relationships that when you’re constantly changing their primary point of contact, at some point the client is gonna lift their head up and say, what the heck is going on? You have to protect that performance window. You have to communicate. You have to, as a Chief Revenue Officer, really be brave enough to push back against the CEO and board to say, listen, we have fatigue in our organization. The teams and the talent don’t understand, like, why in one week, Megan, we’ve made three different major announcements, and we’re not protecting the health of our pipeline, we’re not protecting our people, and we’re not being clear to them or to our clients to be able to build that runway to success.
[00:20:02] Steve MacDonald: There’s just so much that goes into this, those constant changes that you’re talking about. They can happen when there is misalignment in the C-suite, and there is, we just talked about it. That’s the number one challenge every organization has to some degree, a very big challenge with misalignment internally. How do you use alignment as a growth multiplier versus having it as a challenge that leads to constant reorgs and chaos and our high-performance team members thinking, how does this impact me? There’s so many negatives to that, but if we come into alignment, give us the positive side. Like, what does it do for us if we can actually get that alignment internally?
[00:20:50] Naomi Brezi: Um, well, I mean, it changes things, right? It can change the trajectory of an organization. It builds culture. It builds a team that wants to perform and will go the extra step on the last day of a quarter. And I’ve seen this. I’ve been privileged enough to have sales leaders and the salespeople that will take that extra step and make that one more phone call to get that deal signed at four o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday at the end of a quarter. You really have to have a strong internal culture. That goes back to the thing that we talked about at the very beginning, which is trust.
[00:21:31] Naomi Brezi: You know, there are some things that you can put around this to keep the team engaged. As you’re undergoing transformation, whether you’re launching a new product or shifting your go-to-market strategy, or there are changes in leadership, as we mentioned, all of this can be unsettling not only for top performers but for everybody within the organization.
[00:21:52] Naomi Brezi: So, a couple of the things that I have done as a leader to really help retain not only my top performers, but I want everyone in my organization to be successful. One of the first and easiest things that I do is really recognize my team and my team members for them going above and beyond. I’m not just talking about, like, on a quarterly basis we hand out plaques.
[00:22:16] Naomi Brezi: I’m really talking about tie their accomplishments to the larger transformation and change that we’re going through, and why that made such a difference. That’s one. Another thing that I’ll do is really look at the compensation, and sometimes when you’re going quarter to quarter as a Chief Revenue Officer, you can say, okay, next quarter, this is where we really have to shine, so let me put in a compensation accelerator that is gonna get me more contract renewals or is gonna get me more multi-year contracts so that the team can continue to build relationships and drive revenue.
[00:22:57] Naomi Brezi: So I’ll look at compensation, and I’ll look at some small sales SPIFFs or things that I can do to make sure that the behavior that we’re driving towards, the KPIs that we’re driving towards, is reflected in the compensation piece. And then again, it’s that communication piece. You can’t over-communicate when you’re leading in times of uncertainty.
[00:23:20] Naomi Brezi: You have to communicate more and more often, and you have to really make this a practice. I’ve been asked questions. I hold monthly town halls with my entire team. I lead a very large team here recently, and sometimes I get asked questions and I’m like, I know I can’t answer that, or I don’t have the right answer.
[00:23:41] Naomi Brezi: And I’ll say, listen, I appreciate the question. I don’t have an answer for you right now, but I promise that I will circle back on this before our next town hall with more information that I can share with you. This helps really build that trust, this honesty. I try to show up in my leadership. Part of my leadership flows is the authenticity and my leadership style.
[00:24:03] Naomi Brezi: I hold people accountable. I’m a very serious business person, but I too like to have fun. I am vulnerable, and I do show up that way in my leadership style because it just honesty helps to really build trust during turbulent times. We’re all in this together. Like, listen, I’ve gotten some of my best ideas from people sometimes that are three or four levels below me, and seeking that kind of collaboration and that spirit of we’re all in this together.
[00:24:37] Steve MacDonald: I love how you took trust with our external buyers as one of our greatest challenges and brought it back around to building trust internally with our teams, because we can’t execute without our teams. It’s why PE companies, VC companies, they invest in the team first, the idea second, because you can actually make a lot with an okay idea if you have a great team.
[00:25:02] Steve MacDonald: What I wanted to do is I wanted to ask you one of the most important questions I’ve asked yet, and I’ve asked some pretty big doozies, and you’ve done a really great job. But we’ve talked about so much, right? You have your peer community of other B2B, C-suite leaders that are listening into our discussion here, and our brains can only retain about two or three things at a time.
[00:25:24] Steve MacDonald: If there was one takeaway you wanted people to take away from our conversation here today to make sure that they got the most important message that you wanted them to have, what would that be?
[00:25:38] Naomi Brezi: The one thing I would say, especially if you’re in a PE environment, play the long game, even when you’re managing quarter to quarter. As somebody that has led companies that sometimes are just looking quarter to quarter and hitting that number every single time, if you don’t invest in your brand, your people, if you don’t listen to your customers, a year or two later, you’re going to find that your pipeline is going to dry up and you’re gonna be left scrambling.
[00:25:56] Naomi Brezi: So the numbers are a great milestone of success. For me, when I look back on my career and how I want my daughter, who’s now an adult in college, or people that I’ve led, to look back on Naomi as a leader, I hope my legacy is, you know, man, we went through some really difficult times quarter to quarter, but she invested in me and helped me to achieve my financial and career goals. And I also want clients to feel the same way. She really listened to what our needs were, and while we may have had difficult conversations from time to time, she was always up to the honesty and worked hard to help us make our goals come true and our challenges lessened.
[00:27:07] Naomi Brezi: So I really hope that the numbers are awesome, but look for where you can make the most impact with your people, because your people will help you through those difficult times.
[00:27:17] Steve MacDonald: Well, I wish we had about another three hours because we’re, like, but what I’m taking away from our entire conversation here is trust is something that runs through absolutely everything.
[00:27:32] Steve MacDonald: That transparency, that honesty, it builds relationships externally and internally that we have to rely on. If we don’t have those relationships, we will not be successful. So we are in the relationship business first and foremost, in any way. That’s my takeaway from what you’re saying here.
[00:27:51] Naomi Brezi: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ll give you one other thing. I’ve been out in the workforce for a while now. I started my career on Wall Street in banking. I don’t talk about this too often, but I was on a trading floor, and I was fortunate enough, after a couple of years, to be seen as a high-potential employee to help the bank launch a new international payroll product.
[00:28:14] Naomi Brezi: I was like their salesperson, first person, enterprise salesperson, hired for the launch of this new product. The people back then that I called upon, I can still call today, and they’re not gonna be my buyer, but I can still call them and say, hey, this is what I’m doing now. Who in your organization can you connect me with that I can have a conversation with?
[00:28:37] Naomi Brezi: Is there somebody in your organization that might be interested in hearing more about X, Y, and Z? Nine outta ten times, those relationships from many years ago have continued to serve me today, and I really work hard at building my network and fostering the new relationships I have as well to help not only myself but them be successful.
[00:29:03] Naomi Brezi: It’s a two-way street. I’m asking somebody for an introduction in their organization. I always ask, what can I help you with? What’s going on in your world?
[00:29:12] Steve MacDonald: It can’t be underscored enough, and I think everybody here is taking this takeaway and saying, I need to dig deeper in my relationships. You can’t overinvest in the relationships.
[00:29:26] Steve MacDonald: And you know what’s interesting is I know people are gonna have questions, and I wanna make sure that they have an avenue. Is it okay if I give out a link to your LinkedIn profile?
[00:29:36] Naomi Brezi: Absolutely. I love to connect. I’m a big networker, and if I can help somebody be successful in their own career journey or through a transformation they might be working through at work, I would love to give them some time. I’d be happy to give them some time.
[00:29:51] Steve MacDonald: Well, great. And I just wanted to wrap up and say that the mission of the podcast here is to bring different perspectives, different insights from different industries and careers, and bring it all together so that we can all help each other and be that rising tide that lifts all boats. And you were fantastic today. You were a big part of that rising tide, and I just wanted to say thank you.
[00:30:11] Naomi Brezi: Well, thank you. This was a lot of fun. I really appreciate the questions. It kind of got me thinking about a lot of different things, and I hope that this helps your audience achieve what they’re looking to achieve out there in a turbulent world.