Joe Fontana
Chief Marketing Officer at Amzai
Joe Fontana is Chief Marketing Officer at Amzai, which he joined in March 2026. Amzai runs event programs for conference organizers, B2B technology companies, law firms and life sciences companies, taking on the campaigns, logistics and communications so its clients keep the strategy. The same month he published his book, Fred Flintstone Selling in a George Jetson World. Before Amzai he was Managing Director, North America at BuyerForesight, a B2B demand generation and market intelligence platform, and Vice President of Sales Development at GDS Group, where he led a team of more than 30 SDRs. He was also the founding VP of Sales and Marketing at Dextego, an AI sales coaching platform. Earlier he built the Academy sales division at Duarte from the ground up, led the US market build-out for DatacenterDynamics as SVP of Sales, Americas, and was VP of Audience Development at The Conference Board. He began by founding and running his own sales consultancy, VJL Consultation, for 11 years.
On Pipeline
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How to Run B2B Dinner Events That Actually Drive Pipeline
Joe Fontana, Chief Marketing Officer at Amzai, runs intimate dinner events built around a buyer's pain. A subject matter expert leads the room, and any sellers there come with questions. He argues the pipeline from events is usually lost…
Key takeaways
- Put a subject matter expert from your company in charge of the dinner, and have any sellers in the room come only with questions.
- Keep your branding to the menus, and leave feature talk, awards and case studies out of the room.
- After the dinner, have the SME run the first follow-up call before a seller takes over. Joe Fontana says that call is typically 40 minutes.
- Skip the demo sign-up code at the door. One sales team that tried it got one demo from 13 people in the room.
- Plan backwards from the number of opportunities you want, such as five or six, then choose the event that gets you there.
In Joe's words
"The moment this prospect feels like a prospect, you're done."
"The only person who knows that that person is a prospect is the seller."
"And more often than not, you're not having the conversation. You're witnessing a conversation."