REVENUE STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP

Apollo

The World Cup might be over, but the buzz around soccer isn’t dying down.

AI GTM platform Apollo has struck a multiyear deal with Major League Soccer team the San Jose Earthquakes, becoming both a sleeve sponsor and official GTM partner. The Earthquakes’ sales team will be equipped with Apollo’s GTM platform that includes tools for prospecting, workflow automation, and data enrichment.

“It’s that combination of both brands and getting our brand out there, coupled with real results that actually drive the bottom line for businesses,” said Apollo CEO Matt Curl. “With the partnership with the Earthquakes, we’re not just putting our [logo on a sleeve]. It’s really about helping them accomplish their business objectives.”

Kickstarting revenue

Apollo is providing its AI tools and platform in a bid to align the club’s revenue-generating functions, including group ticket sales, sponsorship pipeline management, inbound lead routing, and season ticket renewals. Ian Anderson, chief strategy officer for the Earthquakes, said the move will make the sales team more efficient.

“Sports teams really are operating as a consumer go-to-market engine,” he said. “We have people on our sales teams, our service teams, and our marketing teams that are constantly looking to sell more, sell better, sell smarter, and bring more people into our ecosystem. What we’re really hopeful for at the highest level is more revenue generation, and how we get there is a mix of taking the tools and products that we currently provide to our sales and marketing organizations, which are pretty patchwork at this point, and bringing them all together into one solution.”

Read more on Apollo’s next growth phase.—LI

      

From The Crew

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REVENUE STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP

In an era where tech stacks and investments in agentic AI are near the top of business leaders’ to-do lists, the fundamentals of revenue enablement—from coaching to consensus building and alignment—are still very much in fashion. Bernadette McClelland built a career in sales leadership working for multinationals like Xerox. Today, she uses her platform to help leaders drive their top line through coaching and mentorship. Her upcoming book, Sales ≠ Revenue: The Five Leadership Decisions That Do, examines leadership patterns that negatively impact revenue, helping leaders become more aware of these behaviors and how to prevent them.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What was the inspiration for your book?

I thought, “There’s got to be more than just sales training that’s stopping numbers not being made. The economy is part of it—all of those external factors are part of it—but what else is there that perhaps is not being looked at?”

I came up with the premise: The belief is that sales creates revenue. That is the reality, but I’ve got to counter that [belief]. I’ve got a point of view that negates that: I believe revenue follows the leader. Think of a Russian doll. The outside doll is revenue. That’s what we see [and] measure everything on, but revenue doesn’t exist on its own. It’s the outcome of everything that is happening underneath it, and so underneath what’s happening is the leader either has influence or doesn’t. Their role is to multiply their influence in the team, the business, the industry.

What happens under pressure for all of us is that we stop leading from intention and we start reacting from instinct. That leader under pressure doesn’t become someone different; they actually become more of who they already are…We all say pressure reveals character; I thought another point of view was that pressure reveals patterns. Under pressure, the leader, instead of coaching, starts jumping in. Instead of listening, they start making assumptions. Instead of looking at opportunities through the lens of the buyer, they’re looking through the lens of their own bias. Instead of building capability, they are wanting to solve problems themselves. This is identity. This is identity-based.

Read about the trickle down of leadership decisions on the sales funnel.—LI

      

IT STRATEGY

Morning Brew Inc.

There are good surprises, bad surprises…and then there’s AI surprises.

The lattermost is all too common, according to a new report from Harness, which found that almost three-fourths (72%) of companies experienced a surprise bill or an unexpected spike in AI costs within the past year. (The findings were based on a survey of 700 global FinOps and engineering leaders.)

Unexpected costs aren’t the only thing emptying enterprises’ pockets. Harness found that a little over one-quarter (26%) of overall AI spend is wasted. To put that into perspective, that’s about $130,000 down the drain for companies with a monthly AI budget of $500,000.

The visibility issue. In its report, Harness said surprise AI bills and wasted spend are byproducts of three structural issues within companies. One is gaps in visibility, which Harness’ FinOps Advisory Director Patrick Brogan told IT Brew is partly driven by provider sprawl as organizations tap multiple AI providers at once for services.

“[Providers] have different telemetry, different billing metrics, different ways of sort of valuing tokens, etcetera,” Brogan said. “And it makes it very hard to look at each of those invoices in the silo of one invoice and understand what you’re looking at and not just understand the bill, but trying to understand what the value you as an organization receive by burning tokens, by deploying AI agents, etcetera, into your organization.”

Keep reading for more on the ownership of AI costs.—BM

      

active pipeline

Stat: $15 billion. That’s how much Intel is aiming to raise in a common stock offering, fueling AI-related growth opportunities. (Reuters)

Quote: “Meta’s mission since our founding has focused on putting power in people’s hands. If our beliefs and principles lead, then the balance of power will favor individuals and a better future for everyone.”—Mark Zuckerberg (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: Waymo is growing faster than ever. So are its glitches. (the New York Times)

The benefits and hidden costs of AI scribes (Healthcare Brew)

They may also be contributing to rising medical costs and could lead to higher insurance premiums, experts say.

Employers are paying less for certain IT tasks: report (IT Brew)

Tasks like maintaining technical equipment and analyzing system performance were associated with lower pay.

Why Lalique thinks Japan is ready for its next chapter in luxury retail (Retail Brew)

The French luxury retailer’s president of its Japan operations told Retail Brew about its latest Osaka boutique.

Forget sifting through endless listings. Revenue Brew and CollabWORK highlight only a handful of roles each week, chosen for your interests and industry. Click here to view the full job board.

• Customer Success Manager at LiveRamp
• Business Development Manager at E Tech Group
• Account Executive at United Site Services
• Customer Success Manager at iCIMS
• Staff Revenue Operations Business Analyst at Micron Technology, Inc.