Butler Raines

Most agencies don’t struggle with strategy, they struggle with capacity. Campaigns get approved, clients get excited… and then the dev queue backs up for weeks. That’s where fractional development partnerships can come in. Senior-level developers who integrate with your team, deliver consistent quality, and scale with demand (without adding payroll). I just published a breakdown of how this model works: https://lnkd.in/gYnuek8e

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Is your team disagreeing on details like implementation or scoping decisions? Maybe the disagreement really stems from: * Lack of a shared strategy * Lack of shared understanding of that strategy * Misaligned goals * Different time horizons * Lack of a shared decision-making framework My first instinct is often to concentrate on explaining all of my reasoning in detail, but I'm trying to be better about zooming out and stating my assumptions and values more clearly.

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The customer is not always right, but they’re never wrong. That tension is at the heart of product work. We’re taught to listen. Talk to users. Run discovery. Prioritize outcomes. That’s the JTBD, customer-informed, value-driven approach. It’s where good product work begins. But then come the quotes from Jobs, Ford, and others. "If I had asked people, they would have asked for faster horses." "People don’t know what they want until you show it to them." Suddenly, we are told to stop listening and start leading. Invent the future. Anticipate what no one is asking for. It creates a real pull between two mindsets: 🟣 Listen first vs. lead first 🟣 Servant to the customer vs. shaper of the market 🟣 Validation vs. invention The truth is, most great product work sits in the middle. The best PMs are not order takers or solo geniuses. They are translators. They take what users say, find what they actually need, and build something that creates real progress. They listen hard but don’t treat every request as gospel. They lead with a point of view but stay grounded in real-world problems. Being customer-led doesn’t mean building everything customers ask for. Being visionary doesn’t mean ignoring the people you are here to serve. It is not either-or. It is a tension. And learning to work inside that tension is the real job. Curious how others think about this. Where do you follow feedback, and where do you trust your gut? #productmanagement #JTBD #productstrategy #leadership #innovation

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Why Most Ministry-Facing Messaging Fails (And What to Do Instead) If you're leading a faith-based business or nonprofit that sells to churches, you’ve likely run into this problem: You’ve got a powerful solution—a managed IT system, live streaming platform, donor engagement tool, or discipleship program—but church leaders aren’t responding. They ghost your emails. They skim your brochures. They click but never buy. It’s not because your product doesn’t help the church. It’s because your message never made it past their mental filters. Most ministry marketing fails because it skips steps. It jumps straight to the offer before winning the audience’s attention, trust, or interest. That’s where the AIDA framework comes in. And here’s the twist: we pair it with the StoryBrand SB7 framework—so it’s not just communication theory, it’s strategy that converts. What Is AIDA? Keep reading in comments 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

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There is so much hype around "AI" these days, the single key distinction (for fundraising) is getting missed: Autonomous AI vs AI Enablement. AI Enablement helps people become more efficient - awesome. There is a clear need for that. But all efficiency hits a capacity ceiling eventually, and all enablement still requires user adoption to function. Autonomous AI creates brand new capacity - there is no ceiling. It also requires zero user adoption - there is no user. The #VirtualEngagementOfficer is the only AI in the world which - directly and fully independently - generates it own revenue. Development shops want fundraisers who can raise their own salary by effectively advancing individual donor journeys through established moves management techniques. VEO's do precisely that.

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UPDATE: The stream stopped half way, here's the full reupload, https://lnkd.in/gDpCVsp2 Using Form Modes in Drupal CMS Join our free livestream to learn how to leverage form modes in Drupal for a better content editing experience. We'll cover: - Intro to Display Modes (Form Modes & View Modes) - Drupal's built-in form mode capabilities - Creating custom forms with the Form Mode Manager module - Auto-assigning user roles on registration - Assigning form modes to users with Form Mode Control Join us to learn how to streamline your content creation and editing workflows in Drupal. #drupal #drupalcms

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I’m starting a short series called PMM, Unfiltered. Not theory. Not frameworks for the sake of it. Just real lessons from building Product Marketing in fast-moving, sales-led SaaS environments. I’ll write about what actually works (and what doesn’t) across positioning, launches, GTM, and leadership—especially the things you only learn by doing the work. If you’re a PMM, founder, or GTM leader navigating ambiguity and scale, this one’s for you. More soon.

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The org chart that helped you get to 10 partnerships starts working against you at 50. Unclear ownership, reporting lines that bury the function, specialists brought in too late. Scaling a partner program requires making structural decisions that reflect where you're going, not just where you've been. On Thursday, March 26, Nelson Wang (Partner Principles), Jessica Baker(AchieveUnite), and Eleanor Thompson (Gravitee) are joining Denise Duest, MBA of HubSpot to talk through the real decisions behind building a partner team that scales:   ➡️ When to hire generalists vs. specialists ➡️ How to structure around different partner motions and how that changes as you grow ➡️ What reporting lines signal about whether your organization actually values partners Join us for a candid conversation from people who've built partner teams from startup mode through enterprise scale. Register here to attend live or get the recording:  https://lnkd.in/eFSf_g8v

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Is B2B SaaS as a category going to die? Your answer to that question should impact your product integration strategy, both as a non-software company and as a software company. In this video I’m pulling on some threads and things I’m watching or thinking about in the market to help determine the answer to whether “more integrations is always better”. Integrations WERE a moat. Are they still?

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