Corey Quinn: How to Build a Business Everyone Wants to Buy | Ready Set Exec

What if your best sales tactic wasn't a CRM sequence or a LinkedIn ad but a tin of gourmet cookies?Corey Quinn was CMO at Scorpion when the company grew from $20M to $200M in annual recurring revenue. He spent $3 million a year sending gifts to cold prospects and generated a 10% send-to-appointment rate when cold calling gets sub-1%.In this episode, he breaks down everything he learned about building a category-dominating brand, escaping founder-led sales, preparing for an acquisition, and why the marketing rules most founders follow are killing their business value.About Ready Set Exec: Founded by Managing Partners Patrick Shea and John Pezoulas, Ready Set Exec is a premier North American executive leadership recruitment firm specializing in Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, and Operations. We replace hiring chaos with a repeatable process, boasting an average time-to-hire of 39 days and a 100% placement success rate.Chapters:02:10 Category kings: why one brand wins 70-80% of any market 08:59 What percentage of revenue should go to marketing? 13:12 Cost per acquisition: the right way to measure marketing 24:56 Gift-based outbound: $3M/year on cookies and what happened 37:37 What multipliers PE firms will pay (and why) 48:44 The two forks: commodity vs. premium consultative path 51:13 Will AI eliminate the entry-level sales grinder?Connect with Ready Set Exec:John Pezoulas LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpezoulas/Patrick Shea LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-jm-shea/Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ReadySetExecListen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6clqPWbF2yFRlsFUOXY0CO?si=UuOAbZeiQMKpgSjV5Od5_gListen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ready-set-exec-the-podcast/id1837951413Connect with Corey Quinn:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyquinn/#B2BMarketing #AgencyGrowth #ContentMarketing #MarketingStrategy #GiftBasedOutbound #CategoryKing #Specialization #AgencyMandA #FounderLedSales #ExitStrategy #BusinessPodcast #Podcast2026 #MarketingKPIs #EnterpriseValue #AnyoneNotEveryone