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- [00:01]
A
Hey, everyone. I'm joined by Amber this week and we are going to do a little bit more of an informal listener Q and A. We've got a lot of really good questions recently from our listeners. Why first touch and last touch keeps coming back up. How to defend better measurement models when people just want, you know, or defer back to the familiar stuff. How to track what actually influences pipeline beyond that last conversion point. Literally all of the stuff that we love nerding out about. So we're just going to talk through it like we always do, share some real examples, and then hopefully give you all something that you can take away and learn from. So let's jump in and see what questions you sent us.
- [00:42]
B
You're listening to GTM Live, a podcast by Passetto.
- [00:50]
A
What's been going on in your world this week, Amber?
- [00:54]
B
In my world, so much fun stuff working with customers. And I've been working with more CROs as of Q4, which I always love. I feel like CROs helped shape my career and my best roles in house were always when I reported directly to a CRO. So just feels like a really sweet spot, comfortable place to be, and it's been really fun. We kicked off some major sort of re architects for some of our customers this month, so that's exciting. It's always great to be able to say, hey, going into the new year, we're starting this, which is a great scenario. You don't always have it. Sometimes you kind of start in the middle of the year or what have you. But that's super fun. And so there's been a ton of great energy around that. As you can imagine, when we do the kickoffs and the trainings enablement, stuff like that for the Go to Market team. So I live for that. As an extrovert, I love it. So what about you?
- [01:56]
A
That's cool. I love that energy. I've been feeling just a lot of gratitude for all of the super cool people that we get to work with. So two things. Sometimes I feel like entrepreneurship and not being like an employee at a company can just feel like super lonely sometimes. Like, even though your calendar is filled with meetings throughout the week, even though when you put like content out and people are engaging with it, at the end of the day, it still feels like this, like really lonely journey. You know what I mean? And I had a conversation with a VP of RevOps this week who reached out and, you know, just had some questions for us and she was like, listen, I'm going to show you something. I shared One of your podcast episodes with our cmo, and then the CMO shared it around to, like, the entire marketing organization and was like, oh, it's as if these, you know, like, Amber and Carolyn are like a fly on the wall at our meetings. And even though that's just, like, a small gesture to me, I'm like, oh, like, okay. People are listening and they're resonating, and it's like, even though you see people are listening to the show and you can see the numbers and you can see the impressions and all of that stuff, you still wonder, like, is what I'm doing really important? Right.
- [03:12]
B
Especially when so often, you know, if something resonates, people don't always talk about it or engage. Right. Which is the wild thing about what they call dark social. But, yeah, it's so easy to get. It's just so in your head. It's so easy to be so in your head as a founder. And even though partially crying over here because you're saying that talking to me every day is not.
- [03:37]
A
But no, no, for real.
- [03:40]
B
For real. Yeah. It's very. It's because it's like constantly questioning, am I making the right decision? And you're the CEO now, taking the helm from Chris. Huge props, huge role to fill, and you're doing amazing at it. And I can imagine every day, you know, you're up against, hey, these are the decisions I have to make. What is the right decision? Are even. Are these even the right things to be thinking about? And so I totally understand what you're saying. It can be really intense. Even though on the flip side of it, the camaraderie and, you know, just being able to chart a path as an entrepreneur is, for me, that is like, nothing compares to it. If. If it fits your personality. Like, nothing compares. Nothing.
- [04:20]
A
But it is really.
- [04:21]
B
It could be really, really hard sometimes, mentally.
- [04:24]
A
Yeah, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Another reflection, too, that I've had is I'm just realizing the thing that we keep talking about is still not, like, commonly or widely accepted in this space. Right. Like, the de facto way that GTM teams, like, look at how they're doing things. It is and, like, outdated. Obviously, that's our opinion, and that's our stance rooted in data, but it doesn't mean that it's still not, like, the status quo for a lot of companies. And so at the end of the day, I've just. I am realizing now more than ever that, like, any time, like, change sweeps in industry, the change agents make up, you know, like 3% of that or 5% of that. And we ran a workshop this week and like much of that was like how to be one of among the top 5% elite GTM leaders. But what that also reminds me of is like a little founder story here is last year we parted ways with like two clients and at the time I was so disappointed to part ways with them. I was like, you know, this sucks. You know, did we fail here? Like what happened? And at the time I knew, I was like, listen, there just is this missing alignment. Like these folks just don't get it and this is not a priority for them. Right? And so instead of trying to convince at the time, I was like, you know, it is what it is. We're not aligned. And that's okay. Like that's fine. No shade on them, no shade on what we have done is just this is not a priority for them. They want to keep measuring things the way that they measure. They don't get the new ecosystem and that's okay. And so it took a lot of for me to realize that that's not a failure, it just is what it is. And then two just being okay with that. You know, like a huge part of me wants to always control the outcome and like make it work. Like no, guys, listen, like it could be so much better. But the good news is, and this is just like a little lesson around like mindset is that when you are okay with letting go of the shit that's just not working out, it creates space for stuff that's so much better. And I'm so happy that we've been like, our clients now are dream clients and like there is no convincing or no heavy level of education. Like they get it, they trust us, we love them and the dynamic is just so much better. So that sucked. In the moment there is going to always be churn. Obviously you're not going to win the market 100% of the time. And so just knowing now, like the folks that we do call in are just so wonderful. I'm so grateful to the people that we have gotten to meet and like the powerhouse cmos, which a lot of them are kick ass women.
- [07:13]
B
So hell yeah, amazing. I know you've been evangelizing more recently too around what it takes to be in that top percent and the level of grit and the level of sticking your neck out there and the level of saying like, hey, this is, is what's going on and you're taking a risk. Right? And for us we're like a startup so we make a decision, it's not, not that, you know, impactful to anyone else. Right. Like, but for 100, $500 million company like you have, you're sticking your neck out there as an executive when it comes to like making some of these decisions that are bold, they go against the status quo, you know, they're risky. And just the being upfront about like that is what it takes. And I think that that is super important as well. And yeah, I'm excited to be on this journey with you.
- [08:04]
A
Woo. Same. So this week we hosted a two day GTM intensive. We had, you know, 60 or so folks register for that. It was two back to back days. Just because when we're talking about like whenever we do like a workshop or whatever, it's like an hour and it's never long enough and we never really get into the tactics because we're talking so much about frameworks and things like that. So we had said, okay, listen, let's just do two days back to back for the people who are like really serious, want to come learn, want to have some homework or like, you know, takeaways that they can, you know, work on. And so day one we had talked about, I had mentioned this before, like how to be among the like 3 to 5% of elite GTM leaders. Like what does that mean? You know, like why is what everybody else is doing not going to work for them this year? How to, you know, establish a vision for what you want to accomplish. There was a little bit of an assessment that those folks took home. They all did like their own self assessment of their current GTM data and like tools basically and what they can track versus what they can't. So that was super cool because everybody walked away with like a score. And then in day two, we had walked through creating a business case with like some practical exercises about how you can like take that data assessment and then layer in, do basically do your own sort of like cohorted analysis on your own or you know, have us help you. But basically we walk through like how to actually build a business case. So like this work that you want to champion, it's not going to fall flat. It's the exact business case that we take our customers through. So that was cool. But in all of that we got so many questions in the chat. Amber got a bunch of questions in on LinkedIn, I got a bunch of questions in an email. And so we thought we would do a listener Q and A today. There's no live listeners, but we documented those questions and we want to go through them.
- [09:51]
B
Yeah, it's great to see what's top of mind. So we really appreciate it when you message us. And, you know, these workshops every month have been golden. I know it's. It's like, been an experience for us to figure out what is the best thing for us to, you know, drive these live events at Passetto. But, yeah, I think it's really been great and we've been getting a lot of great feedback, so.
- [10:16]
A
So, yeah, make sure to check it out. Love when people come. It's just so great. I love being able to. I love that people just, like, trust in us to provide them with thought leadership and education. And so, yeah, we're going to do a monthly. You can always go to pasetto.com events. That's where you can register and see what's coming up for the next month. Okay, so let's go through the listener Q and A. So question number one. What are the early warning signs that your current metrics that you track in an organization are eroding? Trust, even if the numbers still look fine? So an example of that might be like, oh, well, you know, like, our pipeline's still going up, so it's not really, like an issue yet. All of these other metrics that we report on, like, clearly aren't helping us have a seat at the table. What do you. Yeah, why don't we just like, go back and forth. You answer, and then I'll. I'll layer in my answer to that.
- [11:12]
B
The number one thing that comes up for me with this is the repeatability. So when you're looking back at what happened over the quarter, over the year, and for example, you hit your target, you hit your pipeline number, maybe you didn't hit your revenue number, whatever, but you're not able to understand how to repeat that. That is where the credibility is lost. And that is the first key signal for you that you don't know what's going on. Does that make sense?
- [11:43]
A
Yeah, because I've been there where, like, I can't measure the same thing repetitively. It's like you stitch a bunch of numbers together and it's like, oh, I don't know. Really know how I got these. But, like, okay, until next quarter, I'll figure it out.
- [11:57]
B
Yeah, you can't explain what's going on or which often. I mean, I don't want to shit on QBRs. Everyone goes through this, right? But. But there's the Olympics that happen leading up to a QBR where you're trying to think in your mind around the story and then you go searching for data to support the story versus having that foundation of this is what we're looking at, this is what it's telling us and really being feeling confident in that. If you. Yeah, that's what that brings up for me.
- [12:31]
A
Definitely. I can, I can relate to the cherry picking, I think. I think a lot of leaders use these exercises to like try and look good. But the one thing that I want to like mention here is that trust erosion with your data often like precedes declines and like other really important metrics. Right. And so those would normally show up before revenue starts to decline or before pipeline starts to decline. Right. And so I think the early warning signs to look for is that you might start to get like more questions in these leadership meetings than rather like decisions or like landing on anything meaningful. And like how productive is that for the business to like debate the data versus really focused on focusing in on the thing that you really want to focus in on, which is like, what the heck are we going to do? Right. And so I've definitely been there where people start to like poke holes into like, where did you get this? What does this mean? Like, sales is telling us something different where there is no real like cohesive story with the data. They're just like these arbitrary numbers. So. Right.
- [13:40]
B
And also I think that can show up as two extremes depending on the politics of the organization. So for example, they might, you know, your peers might ask a lot of questions and poke holes or they might not ask any questions, which is equally as bad because then it's clear for the most part, I'd say 99% of the time, if there's no questions, no debate, that is a flag that there's not a shared understanding of what this means, what the impact is to the business and why it matters. And then another thing that this brings up for me is that you can tell if your current KPIs are eroding trust because you have a certain way of communicating success. And your KPIs that you are referring to, but your CEO doesn't reference those throughout the quarter or your CEO comes to you asking for different metrics altogether, which is a clear indication that the CEO doesn't trust what you're saying or doesn't understand it or both.
- [14:43]
A
Yeah, good point. Yeah. I've seen sort of like the best of both worlds, right? Where like you see what a QBR discussion looks like when the data is starting to erode trust. And then I've also seen the inverse of that, which is like, what do these meetings look like when everybody trusts the data and trusts your metrics and like it's just so night and day obviously. And I think that's not a surprise to anybody. But I can go with the latter, that when everybody brings trustworthy data to the table, it's just like, okay, we look at the data, the story is right in front of us in plain sight. And now, now we talk around like immediately like short circuit to like the what are we going to do about it? Or what does this mean for the business? And it's just, it's a lot more productive than getting stuck in that like trust erosion stage where you're not even talking about what you're going to do about it. You're just stuck in like the debate.
- [15:42]
B
Around the data, which is like such an understanding. There's a cross functional understanding of how this impacts me. Cross functionally as a cross functional leader. Not all questions are created equal. So the type of questions you want to be having in these conversations are, hey, let's make sure I'm clear on what this is saying so that I can go action in, right? Not where did that come from, that doesn't match my numbers, et cetera.
- [16:06]
A
Yeah, cool. Okay, so let's move along to question two. This is a two part question, okay. And so this is a big huge one that we get a lot of which is how do you convince your ELT or you know, your C suite to shift away from the typical volume metrics that the business is accustomed to measuring MQLs, SQL, that sort of thing. And what, in light of the fact that they're typically demanding results now how would you respond to that, Amber?
- [16:39]
B
Well, I think the straightforward answer is that you, you want to be in an environment where there is an understanding that demand isn't created overnight. A ship doesn't turn on a dime. Right? So I think there's just a level of like, let's just be frank, like that it's not realistic in many cases to just demand results, results, results like that's not how the world works. That's not how business works. You need to have an understanding of what the levers are in the business. And if you lack that understanding, then that is your highest leverage place to go. Focus your effort is to understand what the highest leverage points are in your business. And if you don't understand that then, or there's a misunderstanding, that's really what's going on at the bottom of this demanding results.
- [17:32]
A
Now question yeah, okay, good point. I strongly agree with that. And I also really strongly agree with some of the smartest tactics are not an overnight success. I do think a lot of leaders though, hide, hide behind that, which I also don't like. But let's not talk about that right now. But here's sort of like the why I think that comes up with leadership a lot is because it's in my opinion, from my point of view, I really don't think it even comes down to the volume that they care about. I think what they care about, and you mentioned this before, is like one having something predictable to even measure and also having like some ability to control that, you know what I mean? It's like the one lever that everybody knows, like we can go measure volume of MQLs. And so it's as much as it is predictable as it is like a comfortability thing. Because if you don't measure that, then what the hell are you measuring? And so I also feel like if you're championing something different at the end of the day, like does your CEO or whomever care about the philosophy behind it? Like, no, they don't give a shit. Like that nuance is important for you to hold and understand as a CMO or a VP or whatever your role is the thing that they care about. And if you're wanting to champion this kind of thing, it's like leading with the business risk or like the revenue upside or something that like a CEO cares about. Like otherwise I feel like it's just one of those things that's going to go over their head, right? And so I really think that those are two absolutely vital things to think about when you're like, oh, you know, I've got to bring, you know, like my C suite or my ELT on board with like looking at things differently.
- [19:20]
B
Cost of growth. When you start talking about cost of growth and ebitda, these are the conversations that are being had at the board level. And I think this is one thing that Passetto has and Refined Labs even has always for years we've been on the horn about finance. Data needs to be accessible to the go to market leaders because if it's not, then you don't really have the data that you need to go make a case and present. This is our current cost of growth, right? This is our CAC payback period. If you don't have the data to do that, number one, you need to get your hands on it because it's strategically imperative. But then it's also just like well, that conversation, you're not in that conversation. Or maybe the conversation isn't even being had, but absolutely, that's where you want to start.
- [20:09]
A
Yeah, definitely. And now this is sort of diverging from the question a little bit. But the volume metrics don't give you like, causality. They don't let you see the cause and effect or between activities to outcomes.
- [20:26]
B
Right.
- [20:26]
A
Like, there's sort of like an arbitrary number that you can, you know, measure against, but it doesn't give you all of the nuance to understand like why things aren't working or why things are working. You know what I'm saying? And so the reality is that if businesses want to get better and more cost effective at growing pipeline and revenue, then they need to get the causality metrics, which shortens that time to decision. You know what I mean? Like, if leaders want answers now. Right. That's what we're talking about. This approach of like layering in new metrics gives them answers earlier. Right. And so I think at the end of the day, that is, it all comes back to achieving revenue results faster. It's just sort of like a different path to getting there or a new path, another path of getting there. Right. Okay, so the two part, the second part of that question is, what do you do when leadership insists on activity metrics that, you know, are broken or that aren't working? And so the thing that I'm reminded of is somebody came in the workshop with, you know, like some comments around, like, my leadership keeps insisting, like, I do these things because on paper with our measurement model, they like look to be working. And like, I know they're not, but they're insisting. And so, like, I don't know what to do right. At the end of the day, end of the day they're stuck in between a rock and a hard place. And I would say, like, it's really, at the end of the day, not about the metric. It's about, like not attacking the metric. It's about attacking the job of what that metric is doing. What decision are we trying to make with like MQL volume? You know what I'm saying? Right. What's the point?
- [22:12]
B
MQL volume? The only reason that we care about that is because we're trying to drive revenue. And we know that MQLs convert to pipeline at a certain percent and pipeline converts to revenue at a certain percent. So if you sort of come in stealth mode, split the funnel to be able to show how not every MQL right. Is created equal to Start to be able to show where the huge gaps, like we see incredible disparate outcomes in terms of pipeline drivers. You uncover that you're well on your way to gaining buy in.
- [22:45]
A
Yeah. And I really come back to these metrics that like companies are so anchored to. They survive, I don't think because they're useful. Right? Like to some extent. I think if they were useful, these debates that, you know, leaders have in QBRs and things like that would not exist. I think they survive because they are familiar and now commonly understood. And so I don't think your goal, if you're like trying to champion this type of change in an organization, I don't think it's about like winning the debate of like, we should stop measuring MQLs because it's not giving us good data. It's like layer in incremental better metrics and then eventually outgrow that one.
- [23:31]
B
Yes.
- [23:31]
A
If your leadership is so glued to that, cool, keep using it like if that's what they want to see, you know what I'm saying? But eventually they will learn, like why are we even tracking this clearly? It's no, you know, not productive.
- [23:44]
B
My head is like nodding off of my shoulders right now. That is the reality. I mean, come on, that's just a reality check. Is that yes, you do need to simultaneously uphold current expectations in a lot of situations while also building a case for another set of expectations for the business. So yeah, absolutely. And also if we're talking about activity metrics, yes, they can be a great indicator and of course times have changed. We have robo dialers. Right. We're not just measuring cold email volume. We can send infinite numbers of cold emails. Now you have depending on what you want to pay. So yes, the environment has shifted in which we perform these activities to generate pipeline significantly, making them significantly less efficient. But of course dials are important. I mean it makes me think of one of my favorite CMOS, Kyle Coleman ClickUp. Right. So he also, he owns the SDR function at ClickUp as he's done at many other companies in the past. Used to work at Clary, has an amazing track record. If you don't follow Kyle Coleman, go check him out. But, but he's a huge advocate for person level SDRing, not just AI, even though they do have an AI SDR layer they've built on top, which is really cool to see what he's building there. But just to get back to the activity metric point there, if you were to go to someone like Kyle and look at his organization and how they measure activity, of course it's important, but what they're measuring is activity for accounts that are in their icp, that are in market, that have this proven velocity, that have they know the path that their buyer takes on the course to becoming a ClickUp customer. That's very different than dialing. Just everyone you know that's has a certain job title or something like that, right. And so that's really at the end of the day we're trying to get to is like let's have smart activity because just volume, you're not going to win 2026.
- [25:48]
A
I think about that from so great. I love that you bring the sales or like SDR lens to that immediately. When I'm talk thinking about activity metrics, I'm thinking about campaigns executed or like emails sent or like content published or events attended. Right. Because the metric for marketing in many situations is literally go get the names like we want the MQLs to pastor to sales and then we can wash our hands clean and like it's over to them to turn that into pipeline. I think once you incrementally add new stuff to augment those activity metrics, like they eventually get demoted or become of less importance when you can see all of the other dynamics. And like that's why I always say more and like just better data makes the role of a CMO just so much easier because you realize really, really quickly like we don't need to do all of these things. Maybe it's just like one or two things that we need to do really, really well. And therefore now we can stop being so defensive of all of the activities we need to go do. And then finance is, you know, putting pressure on us for like the cost of those things. Like it's just a vicious cycle. It's a really hard place to be in. Well, okay, number three. Oh, this is like, gosh, like I'm, I'm these questions when I read them, they just, I don't know, they induce like this, this emotion in me. How do you explain marketing's value to executives who really only trust sales output? Firstly, the one thing I want to call out is that I think the reason that sales output is trusted so highly is because think about it, with sales, you're measuring literally did the deal close? What was the value of it and are we hitting our target right? And so like it's very easy I think at that point to trust the data because it's so black and white and historically it is tracked so well in a CRM Right. And so I think marketing does not have such a clean way of communicating impact in the same way.
- [27:59]
B
Right.
- [27:59]
A
Like marketing's not out there with like the responsibility of like closing the deal and getting the contract signed. You know what I mean?
- [28:06]
B
Yes. I'm having like so many pings of insight from leaders that I respect here. So I'll summon a Jordan Crawford quote which is bear with me for a second. We shape our tools, meaning technology and therefore our tools shape us. AKA if you look at the sales function, a sales rep is incentivized. They will not get paid if they don't log their close one deal. So everything around CRM is built on that. However, marketing historically, for better or worse, just the nature of the environment does not get compensated on pipeline created or influenced to pipeline, you just either get hired or you get fired. And it's a very black box. Right. So we don't have that native ncrm. So that's why we bolt on all these other tools that supposedly are going to help us answer that question and attribution, et cetera, et cetera. And that is the crux of what we are really dealing with here. In a lot of cases it's like your system, we shape the system to value sales, then the system, AKA your CRM, your waterfall metrics, they shaped us in terms of the decisions that we make.
- [29:23]
A
That's a really, really good point. And then I'm also just thinking of while they trust the sales output for the conditions that you had just explained and the data therefore exists. And so I think this really comes back to the way that marketing has historically been measured. One MQL volume to SQL, you know, conversion rate, things like that. Or was this deal sourced by marketing? Does marketing get the attribution? And then again it's like coming back to the one dimensional data model. So at the end of the day to explain marketing's value to executives who only trust sales output, the takeaway here is that you clearly do not have the data in the format that you need it in to clearly and in a, in in the same sort of like black and white way communicate your impact. And that is the problem that obviously we're helping people solve because we don't want to see you in that situation because it undermines your credibility, it undermines or under reports your team's true performance, AKA you need better data. And it's not just about making. So this is the trap that I think a lot of people fall into is that like okay, let's just make marketing's influence louder, right? It's like, let's shut it from the rooftop rooftops and just like start defending and, you know, having to do all of these gymnastics to explain the way, like, marketing did this, marketing did that. I don't think that's the answer. That is unfortunately the answer that a lot of leaders get stuck into doing. But it's about, okay, understanding the role of marketing, understanding the flaws of the data model and coming at it from a totally different angle. And it's not about, oh, let's just enhance marketing's value with last touch attribution and, you know, do more of that because that's what's showing up on the report. It's about like reshaping the conditions for the entire GTM and communicating that clearly.
- [31:21]
B
This is my favorite topic heading into 2026 that I'm really excited to develop more with you at Pesetto this year. Carolyn, can we talk about a cadence really quick before we move on? So on the topic of credibility at the board, at the executive level, for marketing, there's a credibility problem. However, when you look at the sales side, like we've said, you know, it's black and white. Did you hit the number? Did you not hit the number? And then there's, of course there's nuance there. If you didn't hit your number, well, how are you going to go hit it next time? Right? But the sales leadership has this. You have this established array of playbooks, of methodologies, of cadences so that you know every single quarter. Here's what I'm looking at at the beginning of the month, pipeline created. Do I have enough pipeline coverage? Here's what I'm looking at the end of the month, how many deals have slipped? What's my conversion rate, how am I tracking for my quarterly goals? And then every single week within that, you know, as the sales leader, what you're focused on, what your sales managers are focused on in their one on ones. And you have this predictable cadence that you run. If you're a sophisticated sales leader, marketing doesn't have that. So we don't have that method to be able to say, hey, this is what we're focused on. This is what we're running. Here's our leading indicators, here's our lagging indicators, here's what we're focused on every month in the quarter to make sure that we're on track and that we're asking the right questions. And I think if they, if marketing did have that, instead of having to, I mean, it's amazing what marketers and CMOs do. Like, they bring their experience, their expertise, their insight, their intuition, and they, they make it as their own. But if you had something that you could point to to say, this is the methodology that we're following and this is why, and this is what we're doing throughout the quarter, I mean, that would go a long way.
- [33:23]
A
Well, the other thing too is that like, I feel like after like lead creation in most organizations, marketing is sort of like cut off at the knees. It's like, okay, thanks, marketing, we got it from here, right? And so oftentimes what you don't see is marketing also having a seat at the table in like pipeline review meetings and things like that, which is total BS because they should have a seat there. It's a systematic factory between like sales and marketing that creates new logo revenue. Right? And so that's the other thing is that like, I feel like marketing is at a disadvantage because they don't have a seat around the table. And then two, it's like they don't even have a structured cadence. Like maybe marketing has like a weekly standup or something like that, but it's almost like it's detached from the business and like operating in its own silo. That's definitely feedback that I've had in an organization. It's just like, well, what the heck is marketing doing? You know, we don't see you at these meetings and things like that. And it's, it's a tough spot to be in, right? Because when pipeline's down, what does everybody do? They're like, what the hell, marketing? Why is pipeline down? And so like, it's, it sucks. But in terms of like having a regular cadence, I'm just thinking about a real life example of like what you might look at, right? And so first of all, the reason I think we don't have a cadence is because we're lacking that data between activity to outcome, right? We say, okay, MQLs have been created and then they either become pipeline or they don't. Right? We don't have the ability in most organizations to track that messy middle of like what happens in between. Right? But that's where the finger pointing happens, which is sales saying, oh, these leads aren't good quality, or marketing saying, sales isn't working. My leads, right? And so unless we can actually track that, right? This is where like full funnel measurement comes into play. Then you have nothing to look at. But if you have that, you can say in real time, okay, just for argument's sake, we Got a hundred, like, demo requests this week. Right. And we can actually say, okay, how many of them were actually, like, what percentage of those were moved to, like, a working stage where we know STR has picked them up and started calling them? Was that. So, like, then we can immediately say, oh, you know, only 27, 20% of them were picked up. Okay, sales, why aren't you picking them up? Is this an US problem in terms of, like, we're not executing against our, like, sals or things like that or sla? Sorry. Or is it that, like, it's a quality problem? Right. And so, like, having the data, though, at that stage, to, like, look at that, you know, week over week or month over month or whatever allows you to actually see the progression of, like, what marketing is doing to actual outcomes. It's connecting the dots in between. So love that. Love that thing that you dropped in there, Amber, about the cadence.
- [36:13]
B
I'm obsessed. So as an operations leader, it makes perfect sense because I know where to go. Look on the sales closing, how effectively did we close revenue? But typically, you don't really know where to look as a GTM Ops or RevOps leader to answer the question around, how do we create that pipeline?
- [36:33]
A
So, okay, next question. So say you're like a VP or a CMO or CRO, whatever, and you're like, great. I love this framework. I love the idea of measuring, like, you know, the full life cycle, buyer life cycle, from lead to cash. Right. How do I introduce this inside of a company where, like, I am a beneficiary. Beneficiary of the data. I don't control it. Right. Might sit with it. It might just sit with operations. Like, how would you suggest doing so? Amber, this is rough.
- [37:08]
B
I know we've had some conversations with CMOs in 2025 where they were in this position of maybe they're new to the organization. And, yeah, that's the examples that I'm thinking of a handful here where they said, hey, I'm trying to get a hold of some of this baseline data to even understand where we're at. And it's wild, but it is so true that if you're a leader in that position and you're like, I actually don't have my hands on hardly any of this to even understand, are we tracking this? What do we have? What do we not have? I'm not a CRM. You know, I'm not in the weeds, like, creating reports and manipulating objects in the CRM. I think that it is a tough place to be in if you don't have a buddy who is like a ninja with this stuff like RevOps. If you don't have a RevOps buddy, then this is going to be really hard. It could be. It could be really hard.
- [38:10]
A
It is. Yeah. And I can definitely see that because like in just like reflecting on our own sales cycle, right? Because we have folks that come to Passetto who have this problem and if I look at like the cohort of those people who go on to be successful versus the cohort of people where this ends up just being a flop and they can't pick it up off the ground, it is literally the cohort of people that have the buddy with them. And so they're not going it along, going it alone. And it's usually like, yeah, somebody in rev ops with a more technical level of ownership over the problem. Like any like CMO who comes at this, even just like in discovery alone, it's just like, it's difficult, man. Like I don't, I don't really know what to say other than you gotta approach this before having all of the answers with just being curious and asking questions. And so like if this is still early days at your organization and you don't have a buddy, well, like the best way to get a buddy is to like just sit down and be curious and ask some questions around like all of this stuff.
- [39:16]
B
There's always someone, right? There's always someone that you could make your buddy. Yeah, totally. And I love the idea of like, hey, you don't need to know the solution or present a solution, but you need to understand and start to understand for yourself so that you can socialize what your gaps are.
- [39:38]
A
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And so that's another reason why when we work with anybody, we always only start with like a two week sprint, right? Because we're not trying to like boil the ocean or bite off more than we can chew. It's just like, let's just use this sprint to figure out where we are now, serve up some quick insights, but more importantly, just like have something that quantifies the problem that now, okay, you can use this as leverage and you know, bring more people into the, into the process. But the moment you go out of the gates hot and you're like, I'm going to fix this thing. This is going to be the way that we're going to do it. Like, man, that now becomes to be like, this feeds into the next question which is like, oh, is this now like that once a decade it project that we're going to tackle. Right. Like it becomes a much larger beast, I think, than it needs to be. And it's just like, okay, just start small, figure out what the gaps are, ask the questions and then focus on like where you're going to go next. You don't need everything to be perfect. It's just literally about how can we like diagnose what's not working or like what's broken in our current data. Yeah.
- [40:49]
B
And I think just to wrap that up, you know, because I do have the perspective of an independent contributor and a revenue operations leader, but not the perspective of a CMO or a C suite executive. So I can say if you are an executive or a marketing leader, you have more leverage to get this conversation started than your operations person or whomever is owning the data. Right. You have more leverage. So for you to start that conversation is ideal rather than for the. If it were the other way around. Where we also see operations leaders coming to us saying, hey, I know this is, this is critical, but I don't understand how to get buy in. At that point you're kind of swimming upstream versus if you're an executive leader or a marketing leader, go find that person who has access to the data in like the current state of your lead to cash process. Because chances are they'd be really happy to work with you. This is a really high impact career sort of initiative for them. So if they're smart, they'll recognize that and they will want to champion this for you. However, it's hard to do it the reverse sometimes.
- [42:05]
A
Yeah, totally. Okay, great. Let's move on to the next question. We've got two more. So shifting gears a little bit because we've talked about, you know, like change management and just like socializing, you know, your vision and things like that. Okay, so in our workshop this week, we spent day one talking a lot about the causality gap. And that is that messy middle between lead generated or prospect identified and outcomes. So like pipeline generated revenue. And so we talked about this causality gap is all of the stuff that most companies don't track that understands all of the different like dynamics or things that happen in that process. Right. It's that ability to track the connection between cause and effect. But I want this question came up in our workshop. How is this concept though, of causality any different from attribution in practice and not just in theory? Yeah, let's go deep into this one because I think this is like obvious. Attribution is such a perpetually debated thing in this market.
- [43:11]
B
Great. So I'm, I have the perspective of not being a marketer. So I think when you and I talk about attribution, it's, it's quite entertaining because my understanding of attribution, what it means, what the word even means, is totally different than yours. And as an operations person, clearly, like, this is not my area of expertise in terms of what does attribution mean at the board level. But my thought is like the word. Okay, I'm a scientist, right? So I have an evolutionary biology degree in undergrad. Totally awesome. Love that. Use it every day. Just kidding. But when I think about the word attribution, I just think, hey, cause and effect, like do we do this? And then this happened. Like, that's not how attribution is. That's not the practice in practice definition of attribution. Attribution is weaponized, in my view, to assign credit, as you said, to a department or to an initiative, a dollar amount. And that is not how B2B buying works. It's not how buying cycles work. And I think, as you mentioned, if you say there's a place for it, there's a place for it. But I think what we're trying to get at is that to use an attribution model to answer a question of how do you grow, where are your highest leverage opportunities, how do you increase velocity? These sort of questions, it's not going to answer that question for you. So you're asking a question of the wrong tool. Yes, that makes sense.
- [44:46]
A
Oh, 100%. Okay, so that's exactly what I was going to say is that I think a lot of times, so here's what happens in an organization and why I think attribution typically gets used, right? Because I think a lot of times marketing leaders want to be smarter about their investments whilst also needing to defend and prove ROI on investments, whilst also needing to figure out how do I go get more out of my function, AKA more pipeline. Right. And so I think this goes to what you were saying is that we're looking to attribution to do that, to like back into like what gets the credit. Right? Well, it's just the wrong question to ask of the tool because I think our stance here is that attribution becomes the enemy when you're looking to it to ask a question that is not meant to answer. Right. And so like we're talking now about the data foundation, right? The things that you need to track end to end is what's going to give you the answer that I think people are looking to attribution for you know what I'm saying? Like I know that's a little bit of like complex answer, but it's like data foundation comes first and attribution is part of the measurement ecosystem. We're not saying like don't go get attribution, it has a place in the ecosystem. But I think people typically think that attribution alone is going to answer these questions.
- [46:17]
B
Correct me if I'm wrong, Carolyn. Is it fair to say the attribution model, if you're looking at an attribution model, quote, unquote. Yeah, that is not going to answer the critical questions that we surface here at Passetto, but. Right, exactly. I'm sorry, I'm just catching up to my thought here that I wanted to say even multi touch attribution, because we get that question a lot. How is this different than multi touch attribution? So a multi touch attribution model will never show you the influences across marketing, sales, all of these nuances because it's not meant to do that. No multi touch attribution model was meant to say this program or this department gets credit either it was marketing got credit. Multi touch attribution model says these five things get a split of the credit. But it was marketing. But that's not what happens. That's not real.
- [47:16]
A
Well yeah, I mean like totally could go down a rabbit hole. I definitely think the, the other problem with attribution too is that there's like a whole bunch of different models that could be applied. Right? If you apply for example a U shaped model, you're going to get a totally. The attribution amounts are going to be totally different than if you were to use a linear multi touch model. It's just like, man, like I think it's just the wrong argument to be having at this point. I think those things can be insightful. But understanding the dynamics of what people did and you know, comparing the different models and comparing all of the dynamics of things that happen. But I think that that belongs in a marketing function as sort of like ancillary to the bigger thing around the data foundation, which is like we need to look at how pipeline and revenue gets created within the GTM factory, which is both sales and marketing. And so when you're looking at sort of like all of this marketing stuff over here and trying to have that have a seat at like the board table. It's complicated, it's highly nuanced, it doesn't really explain systematically how revenue and pipeline is being created. It's just only giving you like A snapshot of some of the things that are over here happening in marketing. And so the best anecdote I can give is most elite organizations do have attribution, right? They should. But when we're going through like the process of QBRs, for example, right? And we're looking at performance for the year or for the quarter, and we're wanting to look back and understand what happened, where do you know, where do we fall short? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like we're not looking to attribution to give us that answer. We're looking at the core fundamental KPIs integrated in the data foundation first. And then later on we might have a separate deep dive that goes into, okay, let's look now, you know, at how marketing is influencing the journey and like, you know, what are people doing and where and how can we optimize that? But it's not like the answer to the question of like, pipeline is up, pipeline is down, revenue is up, revenue is down. What happened? Why is our win rate down? How is this impacting like velocity and things like that, Right?
- [49:25]
B
Yeah. And just to do a tangential topic here, the four funnel model is also not going to answer that question for you. Did marketing source this? Did sales source this? Did partners source this? That. What was the fourth one?
- [49:40]
A
Marketing, sales, SDRs, partners. You know, maybe you've got your channel partners and things like that. Yeah, it's difficult organization, right? Yeah.
- [49:48]
B
Doesn't answer the question. And these are the two main things that we see companies use to try to answer those questions correct.
- [49:57]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, we could go on about this all day. This will. Well, this feeds into like. Well then what is the data model? And you know what, all the things that we should be tracking. Well, we have done a million episodes on that and we also do a number of workshops on that. So like this episode, we're not going to go deeper on that, but we wanted to answer that question specifically. Okay. And so that leads into our last question here, which is how this is so relatable. How do you avoid falling back into first touch, last touch debates in, you know, in your QBRs and in your discussions around KPIs. I actually just saw this recently with an organization who has recently shifted to like they were like a four funnel model organization. Right. And slowly we have moved them away. As we collect more and more data across the full buyer life cycle. We have moved them away from first touch, last touch. But first touch and last touch always like rears its ugly head at some Point. And it might come up more than once because again, it's the thing that people are familiar with and. Right. So much of what they have done historically was built around that. Right. And so it will come up again. It always does. But the thing here, when you're trying to avoid falling back into that trap is that first touch, last touch, either one are like singular things that happened. Right? And so when we're using that model, we're isolating a opportunity that was created and nurtured and closed and like, you know, maybe it was a span of like a year, right. And we're trying to say, oh, you know, this one department or this one thing mattered the most. And that's just like so far away from reality. It's not productive, it's not strategic, and it always comes back to a battle for credit. And like, again, that's just like, is 2026, man. Like, that's not smart anymore. It's not responsible. It's not what effective leaders are doing anymore. Right. But again, GTM and Creating Revenue is a systematic, factory like effort. It is highly nuanced. There are a lot of things that influence that. And so like, okay, if we revert back to first touch, Last Touch, like, we are basically regressing as an organization.
- [52:32]
B
I'm so visual. And so when I think about first touch, last Touch, I think about, well, if I was in that position wanting to evolve or just I would zoom out. So I would say, okay, here's the last touch.
- [52:48]
A
Great.
- [52:49]
B
And then let's look at all the other influences that happened. So beyond last Touch, opportunity creation, what was the prospecting trigger? Why did we even talk to them anyways? Like, that's more of like an analog thing to track. Right? Like, what was the prospecting trigger? And then how long was the prospecting journey? How long was the engagement journey? What did they do in engagement before they ever came to us as a prospect? And what did they do as an opportunity? What was the velocity? What's the ACV there? So that that opens up a whole other lens besides first touch, Last touch. Because you could have a lot of first touch opportunities that convert really poorly or, you know, take way longer to nurture. And this is the nuance that you miss.
- [53:41]
A
It's like, well, yeah, like, cool, cool. That deal. The last touch tells us it, it came from a webinar, but it's like, how much effort and like dollars did it even require to like create that opportunity? Right. And so, like, I just think there's so much hidden. Yeah. Beneath the Surface. And I'm always reminded too of one organization that we worked with where like the whole organization was built around this idea of marketing is there to get us product trials, like the free trials. Right. And so that's, you know, they're measured on like Last Touch is product trial. And how many deals from product trials did marketing contribute to revenue and pipeline? And then when you really like scrutinize that and look beyond just Last Touch attribution and start to look at all of these other important indicators, you just so quickly see like how costly and ineffective and inefficient that is for the organization. Just knowing like, well, how many, like how many of those did they have to go pay to get in the first place? And knowing that like that cohort of opportunities created from like Last Touch being product trial, you know, like the deal average deal size on that cohort is like 4x smaller than this other cohort and we win those at like a fraction of the win rate that we win these other deals. And yeah, there's just so much like to. We're just scratching the surface here, but yeah, yeah. So much that gets revealed when you look beyond that and you look at the other dynamics.
- [55:18]
B
It's so cool to see with the Passetto analytics specifically, for example, product trials don't convert to revenue, but the 2% that does. Look, they actually had shown up, for example, to an in person event that we sponsored six months prior. So yeah, let's leverage that, like, great product. It's not the product trials, it's like what's happening across to influence this to happen.
- [55:48]
A
Yeah, definitely, man. So much to cover and obviously a lot of questions too that we didn't even get to in this today. But we'll keep going. Yeah.
- [55:58]
B
And keep sending them. Yeah, keep, keep sending them.
- [56:02]
A
Idea of. Yeah. Of doing like more listener Q and A. I think it's super helpful. And it also just has, lets us have like a finger on the pulse of what people are experiencing in the day to day.
- [56:14]
B
Yeah, especially if you have a hot take on something that we've said, throw it over the line because we want to hear it.
- [56:20]
A
Yeah, definitely. All right, well, that's the end of this one. And super pumped to come back on the mic with you soon, Amber, and keep this rolling.
- [56:31]
B
Thanks, Carolyn. You're the best and thank you to everyone listening. We appreciate you and we'll see you soon.
- [56:38]
A
See you soon, Sam.