Rob Sanchez and the Art of Keeping a Growing Company Together

A prospective customer gave Rob Sanchez a revealing explanation for why Anteriad had won its business. The rival agency had capable people, but its divisions seemed unable to work together. Anteriad’s team, drawn from different parts of its own organization, arrived sounding like colleagues. The customer could tell. For Sanchez, that recollection captures a problem that has followed him through years of expansion: a company can acquire expertise far faster than it can learn to share it.

He has spent much of his working life inside the same business, even as that business has repeatedly changed shape. MeritDirect became MeritB2B, then Anteriad. Direct marketing gave way to a broader combination of data, software, analytics and campaign services. The changing names offer convenient chapter breaks. The more interesting story concerns what Sanchez has tried to carry between them.

Twelve years before the title

In 2000, Sanchez was one of the original partners in MeritDirect. He joined its executive leadership at the beginning, served as managing partner from 2009 to 2012, and then became CEO. That sequence gave him a long apprenticeship in a company for which he already felt responsible. The top job arrived after twelve years of helping build the place.

His professional roots are in sales. He describes the job as an exercise in listening closely enough to understand what a customer needs, while helping that customer see what might come next. Across a career spanning the digital transformation of B2B marketing, this has been a reasonably durable place to stand. Channels change their names rather more often than customers change their desire for a useful answer.

He helped develop the company’s omnichannel services into a performance-marketing offering. In practice, the business was expanding the ways it could find and reach prospective buyers, then connect those activities to commercial outcomes. Someone who had first known the company through direct marketing could eventually ask it for data, digital campaigns and analytical help.

The chronology also complicates the familiar portrait of an incoming CEO arriving with a fresh plan. Sanchez had been inside the partnership, making decisions alongside other stakeholders. He knew a version of the company small enough for the people building it to see their own contribution directly.

A new name, with assembly required

On March 31, 2022, MeritB2B announced its relaunch as Anteriad at the PowerB2B Growth Summit in Austin. The name meant “pointing forward.” It represented the combination of MeritB2B, the recently acquired True Influence and earlier acquisitions. There was plenty for a marketing department to unveil. There was considerably more for the rest of the company to make work.

Sanchez later called the rebrand his proudest achievement. His explanation dwelt on bringing businesses together and aligning their management and ownership teams. He described five global acquisitions in five years, each requiring a different approach. The satisfying part was the collective effort involved in becoming one organization. A new sign over the door was the visible result of a much longer job.

The product logic was concrete. In a leadership conversation with chief technology officer RK Maniyani, Sanchez discussed combining MeritB2B’s data and analytics with True Influence’s campaign execution and measurement. Bringing those capabilities together could let a marketer move from understanding an audience to doing something useful with that understanding. The same conversation considered differences in culture and process as opportunities for learning.

That makes integration an unusually personal test for this CEO. His company’s offering depends on people connecting work that used to sit in separate businesses. The more complete the service becomes, the more often someone has to understand a colleague’s contribution. An acquisition announcement can fit on a page; the relationships it requires have a less cooperative sense of timing.

The view from 4,000 miles away

International expansion made the leadership question more pointed. Sanchez has described meeting people who were weary of distant corporate managers telling them how to operate in markets those managers barely knew. His response was to preserve local leadership and give it support. He was particularly clear about the expertise already present in the Spanish business Anteriad acquired: its people knew their customers better than headquarters could.

The April 2023 acquisition of Madrid-based BNZSA added sales-development expertise and a larger presence across Europe and Asia. Founder and CEO Brahim Samhoud retained a significant ownership stake in the combined business and reported to Sanchez. The deal combined Anteriad’s data and marketing capabilities with BNZSA’s telephone-based services, extending the path from identifying a potential buyer to having a conversation.

Sanchez’s description of the opportunity emphasized regional knowledge and service in 26 languages. Language, here, is part of the operating model. A campaign aimed at a particular market needs people who understand the customer’s context as well as the words. Headquarters can provide technology and resources; the local team still has to recognize what matters in the room.

In October 2025, he outlined plans to visit India and Madrid for town halls and customer gatherings. He also announced that Anteriad would move its headquarters from Westchester to New York City on November 1. His itinerary put the two scales of the job alongside each other: strengthen the home base, then go and hear what colleagues elsewhere have to say.

“You don’t need to have all the answers.”

Rob Sanchez, reflecting on building his senior team

Give people something to own

Sanchez sometimes reaches outside the office to explain his management instincts. Discussing his daughter’s career choices, he described wanting her to make the decision herself. The parallel with his teams was straightforward: people care more about outcomes when they have a real hand in shaping them. He connected that idea to his own experience helping assemble the original business.

His reflections on growing the leadership team make a related concession. A CEO needs colleagues who know things he does not, and needs to ask for their views. He encourages people to challenge his thinking. For someone who has spent so long building the same company, that is a practical demand to keep making of himself: experience can help a decision without having exclusive rights to it.

He explored values and organizational alignment alongside chief people officer Heather Buxton on the Growth Think Tank podcast. Their joint appearance is a useful pairing. A company’s plans for growth and its plans for people eventually meet in the same hiring decisions, working relationships and expectations. Keeping those conversations together becomes more consequential as the business expands.

Asked for a book recommendation in 2024, Sanchez chose Extreme Ownership, which he described in terms of a shared mission and the ability to adapt as circumstances change. His advice to other leaders was similarly grounded: get the fundamentals right and choose innovations carefully. He wanted new technology to improve customer results, with the underlying quality already in place.

Baseball, handshakes and a Silver Apple

There is a more sociable side to this account of systems and decisions. Sanchez enjoys golf, sports and time with his family. He also does charitable work through his family’s charitable fund. Baseball appears in his education history at Concordia College-New York, and it continues to find a place in his professional calendar.

In May 2026, he described bringing customers to a Yankees game as part of Anteriad After Hours. It combined two pleasures: baseball and getting to know clients. He called himself a natural connector. The same reflection moved through local events in Denver, industry conferences and conversations with partners. The pleasure he took in these occasions was plainly part of the appeal.

For all the attention paid to digital tools, he still talks about learning through contact with people. A customer event gives him a chance to hear what buyers and marketers are discussing; traveling with the wider Anteriad team lets colleagues take part in those conversations too. The ballpark provides an agreeable setting for the old sales habit of paying attention.

Recognition arrived from the Marketing Club of New York in 2023, when Sanchez received a Silver Apple for a career in data-driven marketing. He was also among America On Tech’s Innovators and Disruptors honorees that year. At Anteriad’s 25th anniversary in 2025, another detail offered a quieter measure of continuity: nine current employees, including Sanchez, had been with the business since its founding.

The next team is the buying group

His current agenda brings a familiar interest in groups into the product itself. In June 2026, Sanchez described Anteriad’s AI-driven Buying Group Profiles, designed to identify the roles and functions involved in a purchase. Rather than assuming one contact represents a whole decision, the workflow builds an audience around the people who influence it.

He also outlined work on agentic AI for audience building, campaign forecasting, spending decisions and measurement. The ambition remains connected to his longstanding emphasis on foundations: useful automation depends on useful data. His writing about the 2026 Marketing Edge research puts particular weight on connecting marketing activity to closed revenue and adjusting spending when performance warrants it.

The company’s expansion continues to give that philosophy new settings. Jeff Wolf joined as CFO in April 2026. In August, Anteriad announced a dedicated presence in Japan with Lavin Bolwani leading sales there. More markets and more capabilities also mean more relationships to maintain across the business.

Sanchez has already spent a quarter-century discovering how much of that work survives the next change in technology. A customer still needs the people across the table to understand one another. The company name can change. The quality of that conversation remains conspicuously audible.