Episode Summary
Steve MacDonald, CEO and Founder at Content Strategies, explains why B2B growth often breaks down inside the company, not in the market. He explains why internal alignment is the most common issue and why most teams claim to be customer-first but fail to execute. He breaks down what the voice of the customer really means and why typical sales and success motions limit honesty. He also shows how to turn customer insight into usable, trust-building enablement.
Highlights
Introduction
YouTube Short
Episode Q&A Videos
3:16 | How ABM Podcasting Builds Trust Through Real Conversations
“How do we have long-form, meaningful conversations that aren’t a pitch, but are more of a conversation between colleagues and peers? That’s where we uncover, that’s where we build relationships. You can do this through podcasting. You can get people onto a podcast and have a long-form, meaningful, deep conversation about any topic.”
4:13 | Customer Voice Becomes The Shared ABM North Star
“We're all making our own decisions based on our own biases. What we should do is all align around the voice of the customer. If we did that, then all of a sudden that's the natural alignment factor.”
2:35 | Buyer Perspective Creates Stronger ABM Messaging Clarity
“We come in, and we sell in a lane of the challenges and the problems that we solve. They don't want us coming into our lane. They want us coming in and saying, ‘Hey, this is the world of problems and challenges that I have, and I need you to think at this level.’”
2:48 | Operationalize Customer Learning Across High-Performance Teams
“What happens with most learning is it stays in the minds of the people who had the conversation and never leaves, or it becomes a transcript or report that sits on the server. If the voice of the customer learning is not shared with high-performance teams and individuals, it dies rather than helping companies win. We have to figure out how to enable teams to access that knowledge at any time and activate it.”
4:49 | Structuring Customer Insight to Strengthen Revenue Execution
“What you do first is go into these podcasts with clear goals. What is your goal for getting the voice of the customer? What information do you want, and what does your sales team really need for enablement? Our recommendation is to define the key priorities and fully understand the customer from there.”
2:37 | Trusted Partners Start With Deep Customer Understanding
“None of us wants to be vendors. We want to be partners. If we come in talking about their top five challenges, they see us as a partner, not a point solution.”
6:29 | Turning Customer Voice Into Actionable Communication Using AI
“I think about this as how we take the voice of the customer, the voice of the market, and the voice of the business, and bring them down to single statements that can be assembled together in the smallest forms of communication to make them really powerful.”
2:49 | ABM Podcasting Turns Relationships Into Pipeline Growth
“Put aside every preconceived notion that you have about podcasting right now. This is all about taking any relationship that is important to building your business, initiating it, and enhancing it. The audience for this podcast is the guest. Everything else is icing on the cake.”
Key Takeaways
Internal Alignment Drives Growth
Misalignment between sales, marketing, and customer success weakens messaging consistency and slows pipeline momentum across revenue teams.
Voice of Customer Aligns Teams
Shared customer truth provides a neutral foundation that aligns decisions, priorities, and go-to-market execution across leadership functions.
Customer Proof Builds Trust
Peer-validated customer and market evidence strengthens credibility, improves buyer confidence, and increases chances of making shortlist decisions.
About Steve
Steve MacDonald
Steve MacDonald, CEO and Founder of Content Strategies, leads a B2B growth consultancy that helps organizations turn executive insight into revenue impact. Through his ABM Podcasting platform, he partners with sales and marketing leaders to capture real buyer perspectives and translate them into aligned messaging and stronger account conversations. He focuses on turning voice of the customer intelligence into practical execution that builds trust and supports sustainable growth.
From the Guest
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Full Episode Article
Title: The C-Suite’s Top Predictions for the Future of ABM
This article is based on an interview with Steve MacDonald, Founder & CEO at Content Strategies
Introduction
Steve MacDonald, Founder & CEO at Content Strategies, has a rare advantage: he sits at the intersection of hundreds of executive interviews and day-to-day go-to-market execution. In one conversation, he captures what many B2B leaders feel but struggle to fix. Growth breakdowns are often blamed on the market, the competition, or shifting buyer behavior. Steve’s experience points somewhere else.
Internal Alignment is the Growth Bottleneck
Steve’s biggest surprise is not about tactics, channels, or budget. It is about where the real constraint sits. He explains that after “over 250 interviews now with B2B C-suite executives,” the answer to “what do you see as your two greatest challenges for creating long-term sustainable growth?” is “almost always… internal.” He adds, “the number one challenge that over like 70% of those C-suite executives said was internal alignment.”
He also points out how misalignment becomes visible to buyers. “Buyers complain all the time,” he says, because “what we read online and what it says on your website and then what the sales people are talking about and then what customer success is actually delivering to us feels like three different things.” Even though teams “are all on the same team,” Steve calls out the uncomfortable reality: “So why is it so hard?”
Customer-First Execution as a Differentiator
Most organizations say they are customer-focused, but Steve argues that is not the same as being customer-led in decisions and behavior. “Everybody says that,” he notes, but “almost nobody really executes well on that.” In his view, the problem is not a lack of intelligence on the leadership team. It is what happens when customer truth is absent.
He describes the pattern simply. Leaders across functions “are all making our own decisions based on our own bias.” Instead, “what we should do is all align around the voice of the customer.” Steve frames customer truth as a shared standard that reduces internal debate and prevents teams from drifting into siloed assumptions. “If we did that,” he says, “then all of a sudden that’s the natural alignment factor.”
Understanding Customers Through VoC Insights
Steve does not treat the voice of the customer as a survey program or a quarterly report. He defines it as a deep understanding. “I wanna be inside the head of the customer,” he says, to understand “what they think their challenges are,” “what they think their risks are,” and “what they think is important to create success.” He also highlights a more strategic layer. You need to learn “what they don’t know,” because that is where they are “open to having somebody come in” who feels like “a peer” and “a colleague,” not “a vendor” or “a seller.”
He also warns that many programs fail because the context is wrong. “You can’t have voice of the customer conversations that are run through existing business processes and departments that were set up to do something totally different,” he explains. If the conversation is routed through sales, “it’s a sales pitch,” and “the prospect has their cards against their chest.” If it is routed through customer success, he notes that the incentives still skew toward transactions, since cross-sell and upsell are often the core KPIs.
Trust Comes From Customer Reality
Buyers disengage when vendors focus solely on their product rather than the buyer’s broader business challenges. Steve points to research showing “the sales rep talked two-thirds to three-quarters of the time,” which limits real understanding. He explains, “We come in, and we sell in a lane of the challenges and the problems that we solve,” but buyers “don’t want us coming into our lane.” They want partners who understand their world and can engage at the level of their true priorities.
Trust becomes the deciding factor in whether a company even makes the shortlist. Steve explains that “trust was gonna be the currency to close deals,” and without it, companies are excluded early. The way to build that trust is through validation, not positioning. When teams support their perspective with “the voice of the customer” and “the voice of the market,” their message becomes credible proof rather than a claim, giving buyers the confidence to move forward.
Conclusion
Steve MacDonald’s perspective is practical for any ABM leader who wants measurable impact. Internal alignment improves when teams stop debating opinions and align on the customer truth. Voice of customer programs work best when they produce peer-level insight, not transactional noise. Trust grows when claims are supported by customer and market proof, especially early in the buying cycle when shortlists form.
For leaders looking to strengthen pipeline performance, the question is not whether you value the customer voice; it is how you do so. The question is whether your teams can access it quickly, use it consistently, and let it shape decisions before the deal is already decided.
ELEVATING CONTENT MARKETING STANDARDS RAISES A CRUCIAL QUESTION:
Why shouldn’t the very act of creating thought leadership content also spark new conversations with in-pipeline deals, top prospects, and high-priority customers for revenue expansion? Or serve as the cornerstone for learning and applying voice-of-customer strategies? That’s the power of ABM Podcasting—engaging B2B buyers and customers in meaningful conversations that uncover essential go-to-market insights, support long sales cycles, reinforce your market perspective, build peer-level trust, and dismantle objections that kill deals.
Steven MacDonald
Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.
Steven MacDonald
Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.
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