A shared starting point: how we position the show, what tends to land, what we have tried already, and the proposals built to reuse. None of it is fixed. The fun part of media is trying things, so treat this as a foundation to experiment from, not a rulebook.
A great early focus is getting IT Visionaries sponsored out, ideally six to twelve months ahead. It is a hard-to-reach, high-value audience that mostly does not know we have the show, so a lot of the early win is simply reaching the right people. Marketing Trends is a natural next show after that. Lots of room to experiment with how we get there.
This guide is part orientation, part reference. Worth reading through once, then jumping back to whatever you need. A natural order to get going:
Curated tends to beat pure volume, though volume is not off the table. A past multi-inbox cold campaign did land Attentive, but their CMO had already been a guest on Marketing Trends, so there was awareness underneath the win. The read: outreach does best layered on existing relationships and reputation rather than spraying cold. Worth knowing as you think about channels, then experiment from there.
Enterprise tech companies that sell to IT leaders at director level and above, usually with ARR over $200M. If a prospect fits that shape and sells into CIOs, CTOs, or CISOs, they belong on the list.
A few angles that have been landing, with plenty of room to invent more:
Build a 6-episode series around a topic the sponsor cares about, for example "we are launching a series on cybersecurity and AI agents." We curate a run the sponsor would love to have their brand around, with the kind of guests they want to be connected to. This has been landing well lately because it feels purpose-built for them, not a generic ad slot.
Line up a few high-demand guests who will say yes (say, a sitting CTO at a major bank with a book coming out), then offer a sponsor the chance to be in that episode and get the intro. It flips supply and demand: we hold the access people want, and the sponsorship rides along.
Relationships beat cold lists here. Past clients move companies and call Mission back, so warm reputation does a lot of the work. Start with who already knows and trusts Mission, then layer outreach on top.
A woman-owned media network for the C-suite. A media studio producing content alongside world-class clients, uncovering the stories that shape economies, societies, and business leadership. Useful language to keep consistent across outreach.
IT Visionaries is not a CPM ad buy, and that distinction is most of the sale. We sell host-read, topic-aligned integrations that educate rather than interrupt, in front of US-based IT and security decision-makers. When a prospect compares us to a programmatic ad network, the frame has already slipped. Worth resetting it gently each time.
The listener is not one persona. They are the full buying committee for enterprise technology decisions: the technical champions who evaluate tools, the directors who sign off on mid-level deals, and the executives who greenlight budget. So the pitch is rarely "reach CIOs." It is "reach the full buying committee for this category."
The clients are usually CMOs or VPs of marketing, sometimes CEOs, at companies that sell to CTOs, CIOs, and CISOs. Mission owns the IP on every show, on purpose. That arm's length keeps the content good and uncorrupted, which is the reputation that gets executives to say yes and lets their comms and PR teams approve appearances. That moat is a big part of why we have lasted since 2017 while copycat pop-up shows tend to struggle.
Where it helps, pitch from the prospect's actual strategic moment rather than generic show stats. Before outreach, map their world: competitors, suppliers, customers, and what their market is already worried about. The Mission OS tool (in the Library) does this automatically. The principle holds even by hand: lead with their world, mirror their language, and make the sponsorship feel like an obvious fit for them specifically.
Anyone can produce content. Not everyone has the reputation Mission does, or builds the content and video strategy around what the client actually cares about. We come in as a strategic partner, making sure the podcast and video plan supports their real company goals. That is the differentiator underneath everything else. The pieces below are how it shows up.
These are the parts prospects respond to most. The first is the one nobody else can really offer, so it usually belongs near the top of a strategic deal.
The sponsor hands us their prospect list. We book those target accounts onto the show as guests (around an 85% acceptance rate), give them a great experience, and introduce the sponsor afterward. Warm intros into accounts that are nearly impossible to reach cold. This is our most valuable, least replicable offer, and the heart of the strategic package.
One audience that reaches every stakeholder in the decision: evaluator, approver, and budget owner. Framed as committee reach, not a single title.
Clips, episodes, and cutdowns the sponsor's team can use everywhere, plus customer features that double as authentic case-study content and sales enablement. Some sponsors come mostly for this: good video and themed content to be associated with, like being present in every AI conversation.
IT Visionaries sells as two distinct things. Knowing which one you are quoting matters, because the structure and the numbers differ. Both have room to move with scope and term, so use judgment.
Understand their goals before naming a price. Stephanie does not quote until she fully understands what the prospect wants, because the right structure depends entirely on that. The numbers here are floors and starting points, not an opening offer.
Strategic deals start at $20K and rise with scope and term. Brand-awareness slots aim for $10K and never go below $8K (Meter, an IT infrastructure company, came in at $8K purely for brand awareness, which shows buyers will pay just to reach this audience). The SnapLogic deck in the Library is a great format and positioning reference; its packaged pricing reflects that specific deal, so quote from this rate card, which is current.
The audience snapshot from the live IT Visionaries proposals: a top 1% global business podcast reaching the CIOs, CTOs, and IT directors who shape enterprise technology decisions.
The audience splits into the two buyers a sponsor cares about:
They are not evaluating features. They are deciding whether to bet their roadmap on a platform.
Runs the shortlist, owns the POC, writes the recommendation.
Proof we can land the names a sponsor wants in the room: past guests include the CIOs of P&G, Aflac, and Prudential, the CTOs of Texas Instruments, Roblox, and Automation Anywhere, and senior leaders from Cisco and JP Morgan.
Useful as social proof in conversations and proposals:
Across the wider network, Mission has produced for brands like Salesforce, Dell, Splunk, Twilio, ThoughtSpot, UPS, and NYSE.
IT Visionaries is the focus, but if a prospect loves the model and is not right for that audience, there is a whole slate to cross-sell. Some shows are running now with open sponsor slots; others are ready to re-launch around a new sponsor.
CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs. The IT and security buying committee.
Previously Meter · open nowCMOs, CEOs, VPs, and trailblazing marketers.
Attentive on board · room for anotherFleet managers and their teams: electrification, autonomous vehicles, safety, sustainability, supply chains.
Sponsored by Element CorpAn exploration inside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Science, deep tech, and innovation.
Sponsored by Lawrence Livermore National LabsSecurity audience. Cyera owns the show; Mission handles strategy, production, and runs the whole thing.
Client-owned (Cyera) · a Model C engagementDormant or flexible shows we can spin back up around the right partner. Good options when a prospect wants a different audience than IT Visionaries reaches.
SMB and entrepreneurship.
Customer experience and AI.
D2C and commerce.
A larger entrepreneurship and spiritual audience.
A narrative show we can shape into almost anything.
Not every prospect is an IT Visionaries sponsorship. The playbook settles the type first, because it changes the whole proposal. Spot it, confirm with Stephanie, then build.
Sponsoring one of our existing shows: IT Visionaries, Marketing Trends, The Fleet, and others. The primary lane.
Building a brand-new podcast for them. We try not to do this, since owning the IP keeps the content good and lets us bring in new partners later. But we will if it is right: roughly $25K+ per episode, or a retainer model, scoped to what they want. Like everything, the price depends on their goals, so understand those before quoting.
Coming in to run or take over a podcast they already have. The Watchtower with Cyera is a live example.
Sales has historically come back to Stephanie, because clients buy from her, the person, as much as the brand. A big reason this is a partnership worth trying is to build something that runs without that being true. Here is the honest history so we are not starting from scratch.
A fractional CRO was brought in but was not used to selling into enterprise, and the enterprise motion (shifting the angle for a CMO versus a CRO versus a CEO, by their goals) is its own game that did not click. Another salesperson was hired and it still came back to Stephanie owning the relationships and renewals. The chief of staff stood up some early sales systems, but is on maternity leave with twins and is not a sales fit.
We ran cold outbound from multiple inboxes across several domains, at volume. It did land a sponsor: Attentive came in through that channel. Worth noting their CMO had already been a guest on Marketing Trends, so she knew Mission before the email arrived. The takeaway is less "outbound does not work" and more that the wins tend to have warmth underneath them, so outreach does best layered on awareness or a relationship rather than cold-spraying.
Relationships and word of mouth. Clients move companies and call Mission back: a contact from the very first client, Salesforce, later moved to a cybersecurity company and re-engaged Mission directly. New business has come from warm reputation rather than direct outreach, which is exactly why a relationship-led approach fits.
Stephanie does not host IT Visionaries, which is part of why it has been under-sold: the show exists and performs, it just has not been actively taken to market. The model is flexible. One strategic sponsor, or several stacked brand-awareness sponsors per episode, whatever fills the calendar without putting competitors together.
The pieces that exist today. The ones still to track down are in Follow-ups.
Hear the show before you pitch it. Apple Podcasts · YouTube
The full company overview, framing Mission as an intelligence-driven curator. Read first. Password: mission
A finished IT Visionaries proposal. Best positioning reference and a template to re-skin. Password: nord
The IT Visionaries deck for SnapLogic. A clean example of the format, audience slide, partnership options, and the "what it looks like" build. Great to study; quote pricing from the rate card in section 05, not the deck.
How Mission talks about itself publicly, and the live show pages. Good for consistent language.
A related brand we may be sunsetting. Not central, but some of the language may still be useful for positioning.
An internal system we built that sources strong sponsor prospects for each show. For a given prospect it checks: whether they are positioned to win or lose in the AI shift, whether they have been a guest or are already known to us, their ARR, and whether their buyer matches who the show features (for IT Visionaries, a CIO, CTO, or CISO). It also reads their quarterly reports to surface what the CEO says they care most about, so we can mirror that language when we pitch. Stephanie will walk you through it.
The Claude project that runs every proposal: identify the deal type, research the prospect, build, and publish. Stephanie will share access.
The pieces this guide points to but does not yet contain. Track each one down, then drop in the link or the answer so it is complete.