How to Make Outbound Work and Build Pipeline in 2026 (with Jen Allen-Knuth, Founder of DemandJen)

From The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five) by Exit Five

April 3, 2026 · 48 min · Episode 343

About this episode

Jen Allen-Knuth discusses strategies for effective outbound marketing and pipeline building in the context of modern challenges.

#343 | In this session from Drive 2025 titled “ Building Pipeline in the Shiny Object Era”, Jen Allen Knuth unpacks why deals stall even when your product is objectively better, how the explosion of shiny tools and AI noise is making it worse, and why most teams are unintentionally fueling the problem with me-centric messaging. Jen shares the two zero-dollar exercises every team should run to quantify how much pipeline they’re losing today, align sales and marketing around the true blocker, and rebuild outbound messaging that creates curiosity. PS. Want to join us at Drive 2026? Head over to exitfive.com/drive to grab your ticket. Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/ *** Brought to you by: Knak - A no-code, campaign creation platform that lets you go from idea to on-brand email and landing pages in minutes, using AI where it actually matters. Learn more at knak.com/exitfive , or check out the MCP server by clicking this link. Vector - A contact-level ads platform that lets you build audiences from actual people on your site, clicking your ads, and…

People in this episode

Host: Dave Gerhardt

Guest: Jen Allen-Knuth

Topics covered

outbound marketing
pipeline building
sales alignment
marketing strategy
AI in marketing
customer engagement

Keywords

outbound marketing
pipeline
sales and marketing alignment
shiny object syndrome
AI tools
customer engagement
zero-dollar exercises

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: DemandJen, Exit Five

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