Christy Middeke

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.