Christy Middeke

senior Success Manager

Starting her career in SaaS Software Sales as an SDR with Amy’s old company, Christy dove straight into the world of sales, forming relationships via cold outbound calls and emails. She quickly learned the grind of a start-up and what it takes to be successful in sales. Later she pursued a closer role in healthcare until Amy went after to bring her onboard as the 8th Sharp Chick at AK Operations.

Christy is now serving Salesforce and Hubspot clients to drive more meaningful sales generating campaigns with her kind demeanor and relentless drive. Her experience as a rep and SDR translates as she’s empowering reps to hit their numbers. Never losing her competitive nature from her previous sales contributor roles (and sports), she quickly felt at home with the AK Ops culture and pace. Christy spends her days executing like a workhorse supporting clients with small sales teams.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Christy lives with her husband, Tanner, daughter Brooklynn, and puppy Stanley. Fun fact… until Amy got old, Christy and Amy spent a lot of time on the soccer field together. Now you can find her hanging out with friends & family, working out, and enjoying time outdoors.

CHRISTY LIFRITZ
D7A6194-2-1

From Amy:

“I’ve been watching Christy’s career evolve deeper and deeper in sales until it was time to recruit her and bring her sales-closer experience into my team. There’s literally nothing you can’t love about Christy – her incredible sense of humor, her exceptionally fun attitude, her passion to win, and her intense love for her family just to name a few. Christy brings a steadfastness to our team with a hustlers mentality and I’m so glad I have a front row seat to watch her light sales teams on fire!”

These are my faves

My family

My family

Soccer

Soccer

Coffee

Coffee

Being outdoors

Being outdoors

Drinking games

Drinking games

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These are not my faves

Winter

Winter

Tea

Tea

Liars

Liars

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Christy’s Clients Rock!

K1x

If you’re looking for an outbound partner who delivers, and sometimes overdelivers on their promises, look no further than AK Operations. Excellent service. Thoughtful approach. Outstanding results.

Scott Turner
Senior Vice President, Marketing

Sotero

Our engagement with AK Ops provides real-time feedback on marketing and outreach tactics, immediately spotlighting the most effective strategies and areas that need refinement. This invaluable data not only solidifies confidence in the sales team's approach but also enables companies to discern and fine-tune their most resonant messages. This iterative feedback loop ensures that messaging and targeting remain dynamically aligned with market demand, to build predictability and confidence in sales outcomes.

Anne Gotay
VP Marketing

K1x

AK Operations has provided our lean startup with scalable process automation, sales enablement, subject matter expertise and most importantly - results! Amy’s small team of elite performers are smart and tireless. They love what they do and so will you.

Carmen Malatino,
Vice President of Revenue Operations

ServiceSkills

Working with Christy has been an amazing experience. She has a wealth of industry knowledge & experience and has been instrumental in creating strategies that have helped us reach our goals. She's quick to think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions to help us get the results we were looking for through our partnership with AK Ops. 

David Friedman,
Managing Director

StageConnect

Amy Kohl and AK Ops have completely blown us away. After kicking off mid-June, they hit their 45-day goal in 20 days by booking us 20 meetings. The speed at which they make things happen is shocking—they have violence of action! Every time we’re looking at a new goal or objective, we’re used to a report taking a week or two to build. With the AK Ops team, it’s either the same or next day. Every expectation has been met or exceeded. Our two closers now feel like they have the horsepower of a fully-staffed, well-tuned sales org behind them. We’re incredibly happy and plan to work with AK Ops for as long as possible.

Cole Morgan,
CEO & Founder of StageConnect

Crowdsmart

As a small startup, we were challenged to develop new qualified leads and a robust pipeline quickly. Instead of hiring an army of SDRs, training them, and managing them going forward, we chose a modern sales approach with AK Ops. AK Ops are experts in digital marketing and lead development techniques. They developed a dynamic process to drive quality outbound communication and lead generation. They complemented this approach with weekly analytics to manage our progress. This allowed us to focus on the most important work of turning these leads into customers.

Sam Rapp,
VP of Partnerships at Crowdsmart

VertifyData

AK Ops is a true extension of the Vertify team. Amy, Sara, and Christy are rockstars. Each of them brings a different level of expertise that when combined creates a dynamic, analytical, and unbeatable integrated demand generation approach.

Matt Klepac,
VertifyData, CEO

VertifyData

I believe the most important factor that can make or break a startup is having the right people in place on your team as you work to execute your strategy. More than anything else, this is why we have been thrilled with AK Operations – and not just AK herself… this especially includes Mallory first, and now Christy and Sara!

In 90 days, Amy and team have been instrumental in most of the areas I would consider critical to our go-to-market success, including:

  • Contributing greatly with ongoing thought leadership and solid, foundational planning
  • Assisting us in identifying the right data points and patterns as we look to measure results.
  • Providing us with the ability (and agility) to iterate quickly as we continue to look for ways to accelerate our progress.
  • They balance a wealth of experience and know-how with creativity and collaboration.   
  • They are aligned with our goals with a passionate commitment towards achieving results.

If you are a revenue leader and your priority this year is to build a successful, scalable, and predictable revenue machine in the ever-chaotic world of startup sales, AK Operations should be your first call!

Cortney Smith,
VP of Sales at VertifyData

We ♥ Serving Sales Teams

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OUR CLIENTS ROCK

CarIQ

AK Ops significantly influences my pipeline goals by relieving me of numerous time-consuming tasks. Typically. I would dedicate several hours each week to crafting and sending content cadences. Now, I can manage my day and prospects with a level of efficiency I hadn’t thought possible.

Matt Collins
Senior Account Executive

AltaClaro

Our partnership with Sara and AK Ops has been invaluable in our journey towards success. Sara's strategic thinking, ability to pivot and commitment to AltaClaro has helped us unlock growth opportunities we could have never achieved alone
 

Meghan Esker
Director of Client Development

AIM Academy

AK Ops is taking our organization to the next level by optimizing our lead generation and sales enablement. Amy and her team are teaching us how to leverage data analytics and extend our reach through systems-based marketing and sales.
 

Dawn Brookhart
Senior Director of National Client Engagement

K1x

If you’re looking for an outbound partner who delivers, and sometimes overdelivers on their promises, look no further than AK Operations. Excellent service. Thoughtful approach. Outstanding results.

Scott Turner
Senior Vice President, Marketing

StrongArm Technologies

With a long sales cycle, it’s critical that the top of StrongArm’s sales funnel is robust enough to create an opportunity waterfall that supports our growth goals 12-18 months out. We engaged the AK Operations Team to amplify our outreach efforts and help create a repeatable top of funnel motion focused on targeting right-fit customers. Needless to say, the AK Team has revolutionized our go-to-market muscle, 4X’ing our pipeline in as many months while freeing up our internal resources to focus on closing. Moreover, the AK Team is full of domain expertise, which has paid dividends for a lean sales org like ours. Krista, Stevi & Kalie are a pleasure to work with and feel like an extension of the StrongArm team – a rare occasion with a third party vendor in my experience!

Alex Teller
Chief Commercial Officer

EarlyBird Education

Sara has been a true partner for the direct to consumer team, helping us build our sales and marketing function through supporting our customers.  She is a critical team player, attending our weekly stand-ups and bringing her expertise from marketing automations and performance analysis.  We wouldnt be where we are with our customer base without Sara's unique skill set and client management.

Kendall Moore
Parent Advocate, EarlyBird Families

Ironwood Cyber

Amy Kohl and the AK Operations team have been invaluable partners in shaping Ironwood Cyber's commercial marketing strategy. Their mathematical and statistical approach to marketing is truly exceptional. In the competitive landscape of cybersecurity services, capturing buyers' attention is no small feat. I've been consistently impressed with the AK Operations team's adeptness at swiftly identifying and adjusting strategies that yield results. Equally noteworthy is their accessibility and collaborative nature. They've consistently proven themselves as responsive and cooperative partners, working alongside us to achieve our objectives.

Jeff Stratton
Chief Revenue Officer

The Futures App

Under Amy’s leadership, our sales motion has been meticulously restructured, resulting in a more streamlined and efficient process. Her team’s attention to detail and strategic insights have enabled us to fine-tune our operational outreach, maximizing our engagement with potential clients.

Jake Hirabayashi
Founder

Sotero

Our engagement with AK Ops provides real-time feedback on marketing and outreach tactics, immediately spotlighting the most effective strategies and areas that need refinement. This invaluable data not only solidifies confidence in the sales team's approach but also enables companies to discern and fine-tune their most resonant messages. This iterative feedback loop ensures that messaging and targeting remain dynamically aligned with market demand, to build predictability and confidence in sales outcomes.

Anne Gotay
VP Marketing

K1x

AK Operations has provided our lean startup with scalable process automation, sales enablement, subject matter expertise and most importantly - results! Amy’s small team of elite performers are smart and tireless. They love what they do and so will you.

Carmen Malatino,
Vice President of Revenue Operations

BuildingLink

Over the last 7 weeks, the team at AK Operations has come onboard and I am thoroughly impressed. Tina was able to quickly ramp up and start delivering well-thought-out and strong content. Shelby is a dynamo. She has been able to develop and implement a thoughtful and deliberate process which started yielding immediate results. She is constantly iterating with a focus on KPIs which, as a CRO, makes me feel like we are speaking the same language. Amy's vision and direction made me feel immediately comfortable as within minutes of meeting her, you know that she will both direct traffic and get in the trenches in order to hit OUR targets. In short, AK Operations does not feel like a vendor but an extension of BuildingLink.

Brian Bressack,
Chief Revenue Officer of BuildingLink

Starr Commonwealth

Since partnering with AK Operations, we have a 166% increase in new sales meetings booked thanks to their demand gen and lead gen campaigns. This program has not only helped our momentum at the top of the funnel but also strengthened our sales process and enabled our reps. Not to mention the collaboration with Anna and Sara has been incredibly beneficial.

Alex Newmann,
Founder & CEO of Newmann Consulting Group

Botable

AK Operations is a game-changing revenue operations company that consistently delivers on their data-driven promises. We work directly with Anna and her exceptional work ethic and expertise have led to outstanding results for our company. Looking back, our only regret is not discovering AK Operations sooner!

Greg Waldstreicher,
Founder & CEO of Botable

Tenna

This is my second time working with AK Operations - first as an onboarding partner for a completely new installation of HubSpot (moving from Pardot) and this time to help us clean up, reorganize, and re-energize an existing installation and email marketing program. Each time I am grateful for their insight into how to tie together Marketing and Sales efforts, handoffs, and recycling. Each time I have seen a measurable increase in return on our email marketing efforts—both in increased engagement and increased value of the contacts responding. AK Operations' staff (shout out Krista and Shelby especially!) and program are a fantastic way to jump start or revive an email marketing program and their feedback also helps inform content strategy and sales journey experience.

Colleen Lyerla,
Director of Marketing Communications

StageConnect

Amy Kohl and AK Ops have completely blown us away. After kicking off mid-June, they hit their 45-day goal in 20 days by booking us 20 meetings. The speed at which they make things happen is shocking—they have violence of action! Every time we’re looking at a new goal or objective, we’re used to a report taking a week or two to build. With the AK Ops team, it’s either the same or next day. Every expectation has been met or exceeded. Our two closers now feel like they have the horsepower of a fully-staffed, well-tuned sales org behind them. We’re incredibly happy and plan to work with AK Ops for as long as possible.

Cole Morgan,
CEO & Founder of StageConnect

Crowdsmart

As a small startup, we were challenged to develop new qualified leads and a robust pipeline quickly. Instead of hiring an army of SDRs, training them, and managing them going forward, we chose a modern sales approach with AK Ops. AK Ops are experts in digital marketing and lead development techniques. They developed a dynamic process to drive quality outbound communication and lead generation. They complemented this approach with weekly analytics to manage our progress. This allowed us to focus on the most important work of turning these leads into customers.

Sam Rapp,
VP of Partnerships at Crowdsmart

VertifyData

I believe the most important factor that can make or break a startup is having the right people in place on your team as you work to execute your strategy. More than anything else, this is why we have been thrilled with AK Operations – and not just AK herself… this especially includes Mallory first, and now Christy and Sara!

In 90 days, Amy and team have been instrumental in most of the areas I would consider critical to our go-to-market success, including:

  • Contributing greatly with ongoing thought leadership and solid, foundational planning
  • Assisting us in identifying the right data points and patterns as we look to measure results.
  • Providing us with the ability (and agility) to iterate quickly as we continue to look for ways to accelerate our progress.
  • They balance a wealth of experience and know-how with creativity and collaboration.   
  • They are aligned with our goals with a passionate commitment towards achieving results.

If you are a revenue leader and your priority this year is to build a successful, scalable, and predictable revenue machine in the ever-chaotic world of startup sales, AK Operations should be your first call!

Cortney Smith,
VP of Sales at VertifyData

Streamloan

AK operates as a true part of our team – especially Anna and Sara. They are analytical, thoughtful, data driven, and fun to work with on sales & marketing – and their technical ability to manage our CRM/Hubs platform is strong. AK rolls up their sleeves to be a true team player, jumping into whatever is needed to make the business successful. They are creative and agile in nature, which is important as we learn to scale our GTM efforts.

Stephen Bulfer,
CEO / Co-founder, Streamloan

BotDoc

Imagine waking up every day with an average of 3-4 emails a day from warm leads that are being forwarded over to you. Sound too good to be true? That’s what I thought before working with AK Ops and Danielle Matthews. They are “difference makers” inside and outside of the workplace. They truly go above and beyond for their clients. Danielle is a rockstar. She is encouraging, disciplined, and equally determined as I am. I am glad to have her as my account manager.

Gavin DeWitt,
Sales at BotDoc

Worklete

Amy and team have been a phenomenal addition to our marketing efforts, becoming an integral piece of our go to market team. Lead by the amazing Sara Bray, AK has driven significant top of funnel growth through multiple channels. The amount of time and dedication to our account is second to none, allowing us to hone in on what is working, making macro and micro adjustments to achieve a broad spectrum of specific KPIs. Thank you!

Ben Kanner
CEO, Worklete

HubSpot

Amy is one of our most experienced partners. She always advocates for her customers's needs and puts them first - always. AK Ops crushes onboarding and continued usage of HubSpot for her clients. I can ALWAYS count on her for incredible engagement and results for our customers when AK Ops is behind them. Bottom line, AK Operations delivers.

Rachel Stadfeld
Principal Partner Account Executive at HubSpot