# John Heritage

John Heritage works on growth systems for industrial companies, connecting business strategy, people, and technology. Posts focus on challenges such as disconnected customer data, CRM adoption, quoting, and revenue operations.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/john-heritage/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnheritage
- LinkedIn followers: 3,089
- Topics: revenue-operations
- Based on 14 dated posts, latest 2026-09-18

## Summary

John Heritage is most useful for explaining how industrial companies can connect strategy, people, and technology to fix data and systems.

- Best for: This fits a CRM, ERP integration, or revenue operations vendor selling to manufacturers, distributors, and construction firms.
- Not for: A non-industrial software or consumer brand seeking broad awareness through sponsored posts and paid amplification does not fit.
- Check first: Ask for LinkedIn follower demographics and recent post-level results on industrial topics.

### Takeaways

- Build growth systems in order: strategy, then people, then technology.
- The problem is usually the software inventory, not the software itself.
- Clean, unified data comes before any AI conversation.

## Main ideas

- **Build growth systems in order: strategy, then people, then technology**: Heritage's core argument is that industrial companies and their vendors tackle growth in the wrong order. Technology is "the third engine," built after strategy is clear and people are ready to use it, because it amplifies strategy and empowers people rather than replacing either. The Industrial Growth System connects strategy, people, and technology to how a business actually sells, serves, and operates. It is presented as a system, not a campaign plan or a one-off CRM cleanup.
- **Industrial operators excel at operations but lag on strategy; more tactics won't close the gap**: The recurring diagnosis: industrial companies are world-class at production, operations, and describing the present, but weaker on strategy, vision, and growth. Buying software, redesigning a website, or changing agencies are tactics, not strategy. The usual growth assumption—get more leads or hire more salespeople—is dismissed as linear thinking. Strategy, in this account, means a top-down decision involving hard choices and an execution plan; a boardroom idea plus a one-page summary is explicitly not strategy.
- **The problem is usually the software inventory, not the software itself**: Each department buys its own tool: finance picks an ERP, sales a CRM, marketing an email tool, and operations a field service platform. Each solves a real problem, but together they create a new one: the same customer appears as four different records in four databases, and nobody knows which is true. The proposed fix is not another tool but a unified architecture, built after strategy is clear and people are ready to use it. A related post argues that using an ERP as the front-of-house CRM holds back marketing, sales, and customer service: revenue teams need revenue systems.
- **Clean, unified data comes before any AI conversation**: In a three-point post on what puts industrial companies at risk, "The Data Reckoning" comes first. Disconnected data is no longer just an IT problem, the post argues, but the DNA of the operation; much existing ERP and CRM data is held together informally. The conclusion is direct: clean, structured, unified data comes first, and AI activation cannot be discussed until that is addressed.
- **Systems fail on ownership and buy-in, not software**: When a good CRM dies within a year, the cause is human, not technical. Heritage names three requirements for real adoption: a named owner for the system and data; clear rules for using the system and handling exceptions; and a team that understands why it works the way it does, so people improve it instead of fighting it. This is the clearest expression of the people-before-technology argument: engineers and senior salespeople are subject matter experts the system should support, not route around.
- **Adaptability is the constant across ten thousand years of work history**: One post steps away from industrial operations to trace how humans have worked and learned: nomadic hunter-gatherers, farming communities, recorded knowledge and early scribes, elite formal education, factories, public schooling built to produce factory-ready workers, the corporate era and its credentials, the information era, and now AI and automation. The argument is that each shift changed what counted as opportunity; education systems designed for industry are now misaligned with what comes next, and the ability to adapt has always been the deciding factor.

## Work to read

- [Fifteen years watching industrial businesses grow — and seeing which tactics don’t work](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnheritage_for-15-years-ive-had-a-front-row-seat-activity-7492928811064557568-0zMk)
- [Three concepts that put industrial companies at risk](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnheritage_many-industrial-companies-are-losing-and-activity-7437476631922823169-UsSX)
- [A software inventory problem, not a software problem](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnheritage_most-industrial-businesses-dont-have-a-software-activity-7500192421901864961-hfXE)
- [Why a great CRM dies within a year](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnheritage_ive-watched-industrial-leaders-roll-out-activity-7498003247006216192-zEXi)
- [Manufacturing and construction as a specialism, not a generalist claim](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnheritage_manufacturing-construction-revops-activity-7437497664847364096-C6bn)
- [A ten-thousand-year timeline on adaptation](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnheritage_hunter-gatherers-10000-years-ago-we-activity-7459951592948084737-gP1q)

## Brand relationships

- **Evenbound** (disclosed_partnership)
- **HubSpot** (mention)

## Partnerships

John Heritage's posts do not disclose a creator sponsorship programme, rate card or published partnership format. They describe a commercial practice built around Evenbound and its "Industrial Growth System": Heritage says they build the system and that the agency uses it daily to "manufacture growth" for clients, focusing on manufacturing, construction, complex quoting, ERP and CRM integration, and revenue operations. The posts cite HubSpot industry specialist badges for manufacturing and construction as recognition of the agency's work, not as a sponsorship arrangement, and indicate no payment for creator content. A brand considering a content partnership should treat Heritage as an agency principal whose public output supports Evenbound's client work, not as a creator with advertised sponsored placements. Ask directly about collaboration terms, deliverables and pricing; the posts mention no official partnership or inquiry route.

## Alternatives

- Janmejay Bhatt: For a vendor seeking growth in India or among Indian manufacturing SMEs, and an audience of MSME owners and plant-level decision makers rather than US or European industrial revenue teams, Janmey Bhatt is the stronger choice. Bhatt covers similar ground in local terms: repetitive work shifting to systems, trade shows and cold calls losing power to AI outreach and CRM-driven funnels, and digital treated as a compounding system rather than a ninety-day campaign. Bhatt also adds an ecosystem layer Heritage does not work in. One post sets out what takes decades to build around a factory, using India's more than 7,000 MSME clusters and citing a National Productivity Council paper on shared resources, knowledge and infrastructure, with Rajkot, Morbi, Tiruppur and Pune as examples. A vendor entering India, or seeking cluster-level context for where demand actually sits, gets that framing with a named public source behind it.
- Mike Coutts: Mike Coutts is the closer alternative for a vendor inside the Salesforce ecosystem, or for a brief that needs enterprise-scale, event-anchored commentary and a financial framing of delay rather than a named operating method. Coutts writes from inside industrial companies running commercial operations on Salesforce, and the two posts reviewed offer things John Heritage's posts do not. One is a first-person read on a large industry event: a tenth Dreamforce described as thin, over 1,300 sessions, Salesforce's claim of 30,000 customers live on Agentforce, and four themes heard across roundtables, including messy data sitting under a new layer that will be confidently wrong about it, reps still losing time to administration, change management cut first, and a pace of change nobody can master. The other is the cost of delay. A manufacturer runs quote-to-cash across an ERP, a CRM the sales team works around, and about 40 spreadsheets, and the bill arrives in diligence or a value-creation review with no runway left to fix it. The related argument about the Manual Tax, where an agent placed on top of manual lead management or case handling automates the tax instead of removing it, gives a vendor language for a finance or diligence conversation.
- Celina Peerman: Celina Peerman is the better choice when the problem the vendor is really solving is people-side, and the buyer sits in plant leadership, HR, safety or learning and development rather than revenue operations. Peerman's posts frame the questions that follow an AI rollout, including what happens to my role, how decisions change, which skills will matter, and how trust is maintained, and argue that the organisations which thrive will prepare people better rather than adopt faster. That is the people-side need for a vendor whose deals stall in change management. Peerman brings organisational psychology and change-management credibility, a teaching format, and a published industry touchstone: a feature in Modern Casting, a publication of the American Foundry Society, on bridging generational differences in manufacturing, with safety, performance and culture as the outcome. The offer described in Peerman's posts is a live virtual intensive, The Human Side of AI at Work, open to multiple team members from one organisational registration with a recording afterwards. A need for a training-shaped deliverable for manufacturing leaders, rather than a bylined series attached to a product, fits these posts more naturally.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/