the mvp of 2023

Krista Branham

Director of ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT & ONBOARDING

After kicking off her career in the private equity world and finance, Krista took a leap of faith in pursuit of meaningful, metrics-driven work as the fifth AK Ops Sharp Chick. 

Krista now serves some of the largest sales teams supported by AK Operations thanks to her ability to problem solve with quick implementation changes and leveraging the right amount of automation to enable her reps. On top of her design chops in Hubspot, Krista can knock out some of the best sales copywriting which makes her a top performer month over month. 

Don’t be fooled by her initially shy demeanor because Krista is a strong, honest, and driven powerhouse when it comes to her work. 

Krista lives in St. Louis with her husband, Neil, and baby, Brooks. She enjoys spending quality time with her family, countless hours on the golf course, and snuggle time with her sweet pup, Norman.

Krista Branham
D7A6194-2-1

From Amy:

“I wholeheartedly believe Krista found her home here. She embodies the perfect combo of wicked smarts, hilarious fun, immense passion, and an endlessly competitive spirit. After knowing her for nearly half of my life and watching her from afar, I knew she had what it’d take to join me. Rallying sales teams and driving to hit sales goals can be super hard, but Krista sure makes it look easy.”

These are my faves

My Family

My Family

Golf

Golf

Winning

Winning

Go-Getters

Go-Getters

Baking

Baking

Organization

Organization

divider-dark_pink

THESE ARE NOT MY FAVES

Clutter

Clutter

Losing

Losing

Liars

Liars

Snakes/ Spiders

Snakes/ Spiders

divider-dark

KRISTA’S CLIENTS ROCK!

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

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

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

a)plan Coaching

I've never had a resource like this in sales. It's changed my ability to close and be more effective with my pipeline. You guys taking completely cold leads and sourcing Enterprise deals has been huge for us.

Jenna Slater,
Director of Business Development

a)plan Coaching

AK Ops was and is some of the best money we’ve every spent. They created a repeatable and predictable process for our sales that was game changing for us and enabled us to grow to the next level. 

Michael Counts,
Founder & Chief Experience Officer

Sparrow Connected

We recently graduated from our AK Operations partnership. Their team has been instrumental in our success and growth over the last year including a 400% increase in real pipeline opportunities! Their program works and they generated the pipeline they committed to. Krista and Sara generated the opportunities to help us go from a founder-led sales organization to a scalable sales team. The AK Ops internal goals aligned to ours and we always felt they were part of our team. I will come back to AK Ops when we’re ready to tackle another part of our business’s revenue growth!

Chris Izquierdo,
CEO, Sparrow Connected

Instant Teams

The AK team has brought the knowledge where we have gaps. They quickly came into our CRM and company to make immediate improvements to our sales operations. We are about 4 weeks into our partnership with Amy and Krista and already noticing a major impact to our top of the funnel! Specifically, Krista has been amazing. She is attentive to my questions and concerns. I am started to end all of my communications to Krista with, “I so appreciate you”, because I truly, truly do. She has added a great deal of value to our sales team and how we operate. This allows me the time to focus on other revenue generating activities. 

Liz Scruggs
VP of Sales, Instant Teams

Green Clean Commercial

Working with Krista & the AK team has been successful. Krista is very thorough, organized, and attentive to all matters. She works hard to keep us busy day to day. We are looking forward to growing our business leads with AK!

Elliott Stipes
Owner, Green Clean Commercial

Atomation

Krista has been working on the Atomation account since we launched and has been a great partner! She’s always willing to answer questions and do what’s needed to get the best results from our campaigns. I love our dashboard! A single view shows me everything I need to know about campaign performance and where we need to improve to drive conversion from the top to the bottom of the funnel. 

Rebecca Skubish,
CMO, Atomation

DenimSocial

“What more can I say about the AK Operations team? The results speak for themselves. Whether it be diving deep into our analytics to refine our campaigns, coaching up our sales team on best practices, or collaborating with marketing, Krista and AK has quickly proven to be an invaluable partner of our team at Denim Social.”

Doug Wilber
CEO, DenimSocial

We ♥ Serving Sales Teams

Contact Amy!

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