If you’re still running your marketing, sales, and customer success teams in silos, you’re playing an outdated game. The old marketing playbook—the one that separates demand generation, sales conversion, and retention—is broken. In today’s landscape, where customers expect relevance, trust, and personalized engagement, you need a new approach.
Michael Maximoff, co-founder of Belkins, knows this better than most. In a recent conversation on Growth Leap, he broke down exactly what it takes to scale a business in the modern B2B world. From hitting eight figures in revenue to reinventing the B2B appointment-setting model, his journey offers invaluable lessons for founders, sales leaders, and growth strategists.
In the episode, we distill Michael’s insights into a practical guide for sustainable growth—focusing on acquisition, retention, and operational alignment. If you’re serious about scaling, buckle up.
Most founders make one critical mistake when launching new campaigns or entering new markets: they give up too soon.
Michael puts it bluntly:
"You need to be curious about what else can be done there. And then, and then you start doing it and then you're going to fail miserably one month, two months, three months. Then a lot of people give up. Then you do the four months and the five and the six months, and things start popping up."
That’s why Belkins commits to a 12-month runway for any new initiative.
If you’re testing a new ICP (ideal customer profile), expanding into a new vertical, or trying an unproven marketing strategy, three months won’t cut it. Set realistic expectations and budget for at least a year before deciding if something works.
Takeaway: Growth is a long game. If you expect overnight results, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Most companies obsess over lead generation—but forget about keeping customers happy.
Michael credits Belkins' rapid growth to its dual focus on both acquisition and retention. Early on, he and his co-founder split responsibilities:
separation of responsibilities helped them scale faster while keeping churn low.
A key factor? Retention metrics were directly tied to employee compensation.
"Our customer success team had skin in the game. 50% of their pay was their base, and 50% was tied to the retention and success of their clients."
This meant everyone—from sales to customer success—was incentivized to bring in the right customers, not just close deals for short-term wins.
Takeaway: Growth isn’t just about closing more deals. If you’re not thinking about retention from Day 1, you’re setting yourself up for churn.
The old funnel looked like this:
That model doesn’t work anymore.
"Marketing alone, working in a silo, is not able to generate demand. Sales teams that don’t know how to generate demand themselves just complain about not having enough pipeline."
So what’s the fix?
Michael’s approach is to break down the walls between sales, marketing, and customer success.
One way to do this? Shared KPIs.
At Belkins, sales, marketing, and customer success all track the same core metrics—not just their department-specific goals. That forces collaboration and ensures everyone is aligned on revenue, not just leads or close rates.
I experienced this challenge firsthand when I was working on changing company culture and improving cross-team collaboration. We had separate teams doing great work, but they weren’t speaking the same language. Sales was focused on hitting their quotas, marketing was obsessed with MQLs, and customer success was dealing with churn in isolation. It was clear we needed a single source of truth.
To fix this, I made it mandatory for every meeting to start with a quick review of our dashboard with key metrics. This habit forced everyone to look at the same data and discuss it from a shared perspective. Instead of vague discussions about “how things are going,” we had clear numbers to guide our conversations. This shift didn’t happen overnight—there was resistance at first. But once we got buy-in and made data transparent across departments, the results were undeniable. The alignment created accountability and helped everyone see how their work directly impacted long-term revenue.
Takeaway: Your teams can’t afford to work in silos. The best growth teams integrate sales, marketing, and customer success into a single revenue engine.
Watch the full episode
Forget the days of sending thousands of cold emails and LinkedIn DMs.
Conversion rates on traditional outbound are plummeting. Why? Because buyers don’t engage the same way they did five years ago. I personally receive hundreds of direct outreach messages across various channels every week, making it nearly impossible to engage with them all in a meaningful way.
Michael’s strategy is less about volume, more about trust-building:
This soft touch approach is far more effective than generic outbound.
"The misconception right now is that you need to play the old game—scrape a list, blast a thousand cold emails, and pray. That doesn’t work anymore. The real game is making five emails matter as much as 500."
Takeaway: Outbound still works, but it must be layered with relationship-building and content-driven engagement.
The best businesses in 2025 will stop thinking in terms of funnels and start thinking in terms of customers.
And most importantly—growth takes time. If you’re expecting results in three months, you’re not thinking long-term enough.
Want to learn more from Michael? Check out his newsletter, From Zero to Agency, on LinkedIn for deeper insights.
But if you take away one thing from this—make your marketing, sales, and customer success work together as one machine. That’s how you scale in 2025.
02:03 Michael's Journey and Belkins Overview
04:32 Strategies for Scaling and Financial Management
07:12 Focus on Acquisition and Retention
08:12 Subscription Model and Client Retention
12:50 Aligning Sales and Marketing for Success
19:08 Modern Marketing Playbook
22:29 Cross-Department Collaboration
24:04 Joint KPIs and Communication
25:43 Streamlining Team Collaboration with OKRs
26:13 Unified Projects for Better Team Involvement
27:02 Effective B2B Sales Strategies
28:36 Building Relationships for Lead Generation
36:17 Understanding and Engaging Your Prospects
Where to Find Michael
Where to find Michel:
