Aaron Ross wrote Predictable Revenue, the outbound playbook that built Salesforce’s first $100M+ outbound sales engine and got copied by thousands of companies. Then he watched everyone run the same play, and AI let them run it a hundred times faster, until buyers stopped answering.

In this keynote he explains what actually broke, why “more activity” makes it worse, and what to do instead. A candid, funny talk from the one person who can’t blame the playbook… because he wrote it.

What your people leave with:

• Stop “pushing the pull door.” Why teams always fall into the trap of selling to the wrong people, how to identify where demand is actually pulling you and how to focus on the customers & problems you are best placed to serve. 

• The Trust Drought. A simple way to map the trust a company already has (customers, champions, referrers, former colleagues) and turn it into pipeline.

• The Sameness Trap. Why using AI to send more makes you invisible, and how to use it to go deeper with fewer accounts.

• Cold emails that still work. Real emails that got billion-dollar CEOs to reply, and what made them different.

• Relationships-as-a-system. How to make growth repeatable and durable, without relying on one hero rep or one lucky quarter.

Best for: revenue and GTM conferences, CEO and founder groups, sales kickoffs, private equity portfolio events.

Also billed as Predictable Revenue in an Unpredictable World for clients who know the book and want the name on the poster. Same talk.

Aaron Ross wrote the playbook on making revenue predictable. His own life has been anything but. After making eight figures, he gave up the rights to his bestselling book, watched the buyout that was supposed to pay for it fall apart, and spent years getting it back. He went from zero to nine kids in seven years (ten now, half adopted) and moved the whole crew from the US to Scotland a few weeks before the world shut down.

So he knows a thing or two about being scared and doing it anyway. This talk is about how people keep going when the market, the pipeline and the voice in their head all say “wait”… or something less printable. Expect real stories, some laughs, and a handful of moves your people can use the next morning.

What your people leave with:

• Nobody knows. Why the leaders who look certain are guessing too, and how to move without waiting for permission.

• Act without having every answer. Separate what you can influence from what you cannot, and make the next decision with the information you have.

• Go talk to people. The simplest way out of being stuck, and the unglamorous one most people skip when they’re anxious.

Best for: the “drive, determination and resilience” brief: sales kickoffs, company all-hands and leadership offsites in an anxious year, founder groups, associations.

Also billed as From Impossible to Inevitable: Keeping Your Nerve for clients who know that book.

The keynote changes how people think, because it pushes them in the exact opposite direction of every other message they’re hearing. The workshop is where they do the work. In a small room of 10 to 40 people, Aaron takes the ideas off the stage and puts them to work on your business: pick the specific segment where you can win, get belly-to-belly with the customer’s problem, and find where demand is already pulling.

It runs as a keynote-plus-workshop package: about two hours with content and exercises interleaved, or a half-day for teams that want to go deeper. It works behind either keynote.Best for: leadership teams, offsites and internal events with 10 to 40 people.

Speech formats

• Keynote: 45 to 60 minutes, usually with Q&A.

• Keynote plus workshop: his most common format. About two hours, content interleaved with exercises.

• Half-day workshops, masterclasses and multi-session masterminds.

• Hot seats (optional): Aaron pulls an audience member on stage, unrehearsed, and spends five minutes getting to a moment of insight that is useful to them and to the crowd. Ask for it if you want interaction, not a lecture.

• Virtual: available, though he is much better (and prefers) in the room.

He has spoken to audiences of 5,000+ and run workshops for 10.