Summer Poletti
Chief Sales Strategist | Panel Moderator |Speaker | Host, Revenue Remix
Redlands, California, United States
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Summer Poletti has spent her career inside growth-stage companies; in the seats, not watching from the sidelines. She has run marketing, sales, partnerships, and customer success across dozens of B2B companies, co-founded an investor-backed fintech, and built a sales strategy consultancy that builds custom sales strategies and playbooks so founders and CEOs avoid failed sales hires and grow revenue without adding headcount.
She hosts Revenue Remix, named a Feedspot Top Revenue Podcast for 2025 and 2026. In 2026 she's been featured on podcasts and on stages such as TechCon SoCal, SF Tech Week, LA Tech Week, OC Tech Week, San Diego Startup Week, and AI Builders Global Conference.
Her panels are designed around story arcs, pulling in experts to talk about the same topic from different perspectives. Her talks and workshops are built for founders and CEOs who are investing in sales and want to avoid expensive mistakes or wasting money they can't get back. She believes that speakers shouldn't just inspire, but should also leave the audience with something actionable they can do when they return. The real value is when inspiration actually moves the business forward.
She speaks at B2B, founder, and women’s leadership events virtually and in-person in Southern California, the Bay Area, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
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Why the Smartest Founders Fail at Launch (It Isn't the Idea)
Smart founders stumble at launch. Most of the expensive mistakes trace back to it, and they get made months before launch day. Summer works with scaling organizations and sees the same pattern again and again. This workshop brings those lessons to early founders so they stop wasting money and time they can't get back.
You'll walk through the five most common launch mistakes and what good looks like for each, then work out which one to fix first.
What you'll leave with:
- The five most common launch mistakes and how to spot each one in your own plan
- What good looks like for each, so you know what to aim for
- Your top one or two priorities to fix first, not an inspirational message
Who it's for: early-stage founders, including portfolio founders supported by angel groups, accelerators, and university programs.
Format: interactive workshop, with length adjusted to your event.
Growing Revenue Without Adding Headcount
Most growth-stage companies aren't struggling because they lack ambition. They're scaling their problems. More people, more tools, and more AI on top of broken systems doesn't produce profit — it produces a more expensive version of the same problem. This talk covers the five most common profitability gaps — follow-up, sales process, marketing alignment, customer success, and partnerships — and shows leaders how to identify which one to fix first.
Build Your Personal Brand Before You Think You'll Need It
How to build career capital that belongs to you — before your employer makes the timing decision for you
You’ve spent years building a career. You’re good at what you do. You have a strong reputation, a network, a track record, and people who know your value.
But how much of that actually belongs to you? If your job disappeared tomorrow, would the market know what you’re good at — or mostly the people inside your current professional bubble? Would your network create opportunities? Could someone who doesn’t already know you find evidence of your expertise and results?
And if your Plan B is consulting, fractional work, advisory work, or simply finding another senior role, how long would it take to turn your experience into your next reliable source of income? Those questions matter more right now. The corporate job market is brutal. Layoffs, reorganizations, AI and economic uncertainty are changing jobs and career paths quickly. And senior professionals don’t always get to choose when their next transition begins.
Meanwhile, going independent can look like the obvious safety net: I know how to do this work. I’ll just do it for myself. What you don't see on LinkedIn are nearly as many posts about the slow pipelines, unstable revenue, credibility rebuilding and years it can take independent professionals to establish sustainable demand.
The safest time to build your next option is while you don't need it yet. In this live 60-minute workshop, you’ll learn how to distinguish the career capital attached to your current position from the portable capital that goes wherever you go.
You'll identify where you're most exposed and walk through five practical ways to strengthen your personal brand, reputation, relationships, proof and visibility without turning career preparation into another part-time job.
Before you leave, you'll choose the two highest-leverage, lowest-lift moves you can start now. You need to make sure that if the timing of your next career move isn't yours to choose, you aren't starting from scratch.
This is not a quit-your-job workshop or a formula for becoming a consultant. It's for senior professionals who want more control over whatever comes next — even if they fully intend to stay where they are.
Why Sales Hires Fail and How You Can Stack the Odds in Your Favor
Most new sales hires don't meet expectations: about 48% fail, and only 6% exceed them. $150K is the floor. $500K is the real cost when a hire doesn't stick, and in founder-led or founder-dependent companies it usually isn't the person's fault.
This session isn't about hiring better. It's about what has to be true before you hire at all, whether it's your first sales hire, your second through fourth as you scale a small team, or a re-hire after the last one didn't work out. The strategy almost never lives anywhere but the founder's head, and you can't onboard someone into a system that doesn't exist. That's not a people problem. It's a sequencing problem, and there's a right order to solving it before the search even starts.
You'll see the six most common gaps behind failed sales hires, why each one matters, and what good looks like. Summer shares a real client case study: a financial services founder who built the system first saw revenue rise 20% within six months of the hire, and the hire is still on the team nearly two years later.
What you'll leave with:
- A clear view of which gap is costing you the most right now
- What good looks like for each gap, so you know what "fixed" means
- A one-page scorecard to take back to your team
- Your top one or two priorities and a do-now / do-next plan, not an inspirational message
Who it's for: CEOs, founders, and owners of growth-stage companies planning a first sales hire, scaling a small team, or replacing a hire that didn't work out.
Formats: 15-minute TED-style talk, 60-minute presentation, or 3-hour interactive workshop.
Summer Poletti
Chief Sales Strategist | Panel Moderator |Speaker | Host, Revenue Remix
Redlands, California, United States
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