Beyond the SaaS Playbook: How Non-SaaS Teams Drive Pipeline with Sandra Rand

#265 Non-SaaS Marketing | In this episode, Matt sits down with Sandra Rand, a fractional head of marketing who works with early-stage, non-SaaS B2B companies. She’s led marketing for PE-backed, self-funded, and services-based businesses, where big budgets and SaaS-style playbooks aren’t the norm. She’s also building the Non-SaaS Marketers subgroup inside Exit Five to support others facing the same challenges. Matt and Sandra cover:How non-SaaS teams drive growth without demos, PLG, or huge lead volumeWhy events, word of mouth, and referrals often outperform funnels in these orgsTactical ideas for gifting, partnerships, and pipeline-building on a lean budget Whether you work in SaaS or not, you’ll walk away with creative, scrappy strategies to build trust and drive results in B2B. Timestamps (00:00) - – Intro (03:09) - – Why Exit Five launched the Non-SaaS group (08:29) - – What makes non-SaaS marketing different (11:49) - – Budgets, sales cycles, and team structure (16:39) - – Why brand and trust matter more (18:49) - – Events > funnels in non-SaaS (28:03) - – How to build brand on a budget (33:33) - – Word-of-mouth and referral tactics (38:13) - – Gifting and relationship-driven growth (44:13) - – Scrappy, creative plays that actually work (49:43) - – What’s next for the Non-SaaS community Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.com Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/ Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership *** Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut. Why are we spending all this time on marketing… just to push buyers to a “Request a Demo” button? Even if they’re interested, no one wants to click that. No one wants to “talk to sales.” They just want to try the product for themselves! Good news: now they can - with Walnut. Walnut is the interactive demo platform for marketers who are done hiding their product and want to put it front and center. You can build guided, self-serve demos in minutes. No engineers. No developers. No waiting. Embed them on your site. Drop them in emails. Let buyers explore your product on their terms - at any stage of the funnel. And the best part? You get the data. See what features prospects are engaging with, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. 500+ companies use Walnut - including Adobe and NetApp. Their teams save 400+ hours a year building demos… and have prevented over 1.5 million minutes of bad ones. So if you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product, go check out Walnut.io (and tell their team you heard about it on the Exit Five podcast!).