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Foreign. You're listening to GTM Live, a podcast by Passetto. Hey everybody, it's Carolyn here, back with another episode. And I want to start by asking you something. Be honest with yourself here. When was the last time you felt genuinely confident that you were going to hit your pipeline and revenue targets? I'm not talking just hopeful or excited or optimistic because you just launched three new campaigns, but like actually legitimately confident with that confidence rooted in actual data that drove those decisions. If you're like most revenue leaders I talk to, the answer is probably never. Are you really ever confident? Here's what I see happening right now. A lot targets are going up. Typically we see pipeline starting to slip and immediately everybody jumps into action mode. This is particularly true going into 2026 right now when most companies have pretty ambitious targets going into the next year, maybe, or maybe they didn't hit this year's targets, but they're thinking about, okay, my targets are bigger next year. What the heck am I going to do to hit those? Most people are thinking about a new AI tool, maybe another marketing experiment, another tactic to add to the playbook. Because we have been taught that the solution to a pipeline problem is to do more. I see such an emphasis right now, especially on experiments. In fact, Ashley Lewin, the head of marketing at Align, just posted this poll on LinkedIn saying, like, what do people really want to see content about right now? Like, and some of the options were, you know, leadership, marketing, leadership, data and foundations. I forgot what one of them was, but the key one was marketing experiments and that got the majority of the votes because I think we, with AI disruption happening, you know, being so profound right now, I think people are just grasping at straws to like, understand what experiments are going to work for them. But that's not just wrong, it's actually making the problem worse. And I'm going to talk to you about that a little bit more. But most of you who have been listening to the show know me, know that five years ago I was a VP of marketing at a B2B SaaS startup staring down the exact same problem that many of you are probably facing right now. We had aggressive growth targets, especially being a VC backed company with consistent fundraises. So we had a board breathing down our neck and we had a pipeline that didn't look anything like what we needed it to be. And I did what everybody does. I looked for the next tactic, the next channel, the next experiment that would save us. I had a moment that changed everything. I have a little bit of a story around that, but I'm going to, I'm just going to hold that for a sec. I realized we weren't asking the wrong questions because we weren't smart enough. We were asking the wrong questions because we were looking at the wrong data or simply like not enough data. We were using an archaic data model that literally everybody's still using and it couldn't give us the answers that we needed to make smart decisions, strategic decisions at the time. And once I understood that, everything changed, not just for our pipeline performance, but for literally my entire career as a revenue leader. But before we dive in, I wanna share something with you. And this really hits home for me. I've received so much feedback from revenue leaders who reach out on LinkedIn or, you know, who schedule a call and tell me that these stories that I'm telling resonate with them so deeply and that it feels like it's hitting their soul. And to be honest, this just gives me so much energy to want to continue serving this community in any way I can. It is single handedly the reason why I do what I do because I want to help ignite and spark change in this community of revenue leaders. And I'm also just so humbled and inspired when people tell me I'm a big part of that for them and part of that journey for them. So if you're listening to this and thinking, wow, sounds like me, this is me, please know you're not alone. There are hundreds of you and know that this transformation, it's absolutely possible for you. I have seen successful stories multiple times. So since starting this work, I've worked with hundreds of B2B revenue leaders now. And I've noticed something really fascinating. There is a predictable path that the best GTM leaders take. It's a journey from being reactive, to strategic, from doing more to actually doing what matters. And for many, that actually means doing less. To be honest, at Passetto, we call this the five stages of Revenue transformation. And I decided, wow, it'd be really cool to actually do this as a series and use each episode to walk you through each one. Not with theory, but with the real uncomfortable transformational moments that separate leaders who hit their targets from leaders who scramble every quarter wondering why nothing's working or why nothing is consistently working on a consistent, predictable basis. I think that's a really important piece of this because here's the truth. Transformation doesn't happen in your comfort zone. It doesn't happen in the status quo. It happens when you're willing to challenge everything you thought you knew about how revenue growth actually works. So my promise to you, if you're tired of the panic, if you're exhausted by the endless experiments that never quite move the needle, and if you know deep down that there has to be a better, more strategic way to do this job, this series is for you. But also, maybe you're not there yet, maybe you are still confidently or semi confidently using the like traditional 4 funnel data model or demand waterfall. Maybe you feel good about your investments. But I still want you to hear this. I want to get a little bit uncomfortable. I want to challenge the status quo and help you turn into the kind of revenue leader who doesn't just hope to hit their targets, but they know exactly how they're going to do it. Like literally with a scientific level of rigor. So today we're going to start with stage one. Stage one is what we call the panic response. This is the place where most revenue leaders are right now. It's the critical moment where transformation begins. So let's dive into this. So let's talk about what stage one, the panic response actually looks like. Most people think that in order to grow their pipeline or accelerate their GTM strategy, they need to do more. Right. I've explained I see it all the time, especially right now, where people are obsessed with marketing experiments. But mostly the question that I get from people in this stage is them asking, what are successful experiments other GTM leaders are running that I can adopt in my own organization to help me achieve my growth targets? Usually these lean heavily on AI tooling and machine learning. The latest shiny object, the newest platform that promises to change everything. For example, somebody launches an AI SDR tool, gets great results. So you think we need that. I'm seeing that a lot right now with Geo, a competitor starts a new content series and it's working. You add that to your list, another company pivots their ICP and suddenly you're questioning yours. It's this constant cycle of looking outward, trying to find the magic bullet that's going to solve your problem. And here's what I think you need to hear. This is simply the wrong question to be asking. Because here's the thing, these tactics might work for other companies. They might work for some and not for others. They might even be genuinely good ideas. So not even to disparage any of these things, because for some organizations, they can be incredibly powerful. But like everybody in their own DNA, every company's DNA is different. Every new logo revenue acquisition engine is different. So especially true if you're Implementing these tactics on top of a broken foundation, on top of a data model that, you know can't tell you why things are working and why some things are not working. You're adding more noise to an already chaotic system. So you might be wondering, how do I know if I'm in stage one? How do I know if this is me? So let me paint you a picture of what the panic response can look like in real life. Here are some symptoms. First, growth targets are up. This is true for a lot of people right now. Planning for 2026, maybe significantly up. And you know you need to hit them. The board wants to see growth. Your CEO is counting on you. They're probably asking, what's our strategy for next year? What's the plan? And you're scrambling to find a plan for how and where you should focus your team and your investments. You're probably in meeting after meeting. On Monday, you're reviewing the marketing dashboard, which probably doesn't give you the whole story that's further down the line. Tuesday, you're in a pipeline review where everybody's trying to explain why the numbers look the way they do. Wednesday, you're presenting three new initiatives you want to test. Thursday, you're defending your budget with the CFO and CEO, who, ooh, that's a big one. Friday, you're wondering why none of the things you launched last month are showing the results yet. Second, you're constantly looking at dashboards that don't tell you what you need to know. You can see how many MQLs you generated, right? That's the gold standard for a lot of organizations. You can see your conversion rates. You can see your cost per lead. But can you see which marketing activities are actually contributing to pipeline and close one revenue? Can you connect the dots between the two things? Can you see which accounts are most likely to convert based on their engagement patterns? Can you see where your pipeline is actually healthy versus where it's just inflated with junk? Probably not, because the data model you're using and that 90% or greater are using wasn't built to answer those questions. Okay, that model is over a decade old. But that's a totally different topic that we're not here to talk about today. And third, your testing tactics, hoping something's going to break through. You're probably doing more, working harder and trying everything. And here's the kicker is deep down, you're trying these things. But are you confident it's going to work? Most companies say no. That's why they even, you know, pick up the phone and call us because they want directional, third party objective guidance to help them because they're like, gosh, I don't know what I'm going to do. You're hoping, you're being optimistic. You're telling your team, woof, this is going to be sick. Let's see what happens. We're excited, but you don't have conviction, you don't have clarity. That's rooted in data. And that means you don't have 100% confidence in your plan. In my opinion, no revenue leader should have to operate from that place. This is the panic, this is the response. And it's completely understandable, but it's not going to get you where you need to go in your journey as a revenue leader. And so let me tell you why this happens. Why smart, talented and even very experienced revenue leaders end up in the panic response stage. It's not because they're not good at their job. It's not because they're not working hard enough. It's not even because you're choosing the wrong tactics. It's because the entire infrastructure of how we think about revenue is fundamentally broken. Most companies are still using that data model that was built for a totally different era. An era where marketing's job was to generate leads and hand them to sales and sales and goes and closes them. An era where we measured success by activity instead of revenue impact. An era where attribution meant tagging, the last touch before, you know, somebody filled out a form and converted into a hand raiser. But in 2025 and beyond, that model doesn't work anymore. It hasn't worked for many years. And the buyer journey is just more complex, more nuanced. The buying committee is so much larger, the sales cycle is longer and the questions you need to answer as a revenue leader are completely different than they were 10 years ago. Like nevermind, five years ago. So you're asking 2025 questions with a decade old data model and it's making you panic. Because when you can't answer the strategic questions, when you can't confidently say, here's where we should invest, here's what we know is actually working, all you can do is react, test more things, try new tactics, hope something sticks. Please do not let that be your 2026 strategy. So I want to tell you a little bit of a story about what this looked like for me about five or so years ago. My company at the time, as a VP of marketing, my company at the time was actively fundraising for our Series B. We were going upwards of 100 million in venture capital. So like, big stakes, big moment for the company. I was actually on the, on maternity leave at this time. I just had a baby and my CEO, I remember he called me and he asked, would you be willing to come in and like give the marketing pitch in some of our investor meetings, tell them about our big plans to drive growth, our vision for what we're going to do with this capital. And of course I was so pumped. This was a huge opportunity. Of course I wanted to say yes. And so yeah, I was all into this. But here's the thing. At this point, I actually hadn't even reached stage one yet. Okay? I was still living in like oblivious land. I didn't even know there was a problem. I was totally problem unaware. I was creating strategies not rooted in a modern data model at all. I was thinking about Legion, top of funnel activity, all of the different areas where I could spend my new budget to generate more demand and convert it fast. Okay, like clinical, like VP of marketing at the time. And I still see people here unfortunately, but it's classic playbook stuff. The things that every marketing VP or CMO thinks about. I remember going to that meeting. I trekked down to the office with my breast pump, breast pump and toe. I gave the pitch. I was super excited about the future and being part of that and what we were going to build. And I wasn't thinking at all at the time about data model at all. Like, why would I? That's not about what investors wanted to hear about. They wanted to hear about the growth, the exciting, you know, shiny strategy about the vision. So fast forward to the months ahead when I actually returned to work full time. We hadn't gotten that funding from that investor, huge investor by the way, but we did get an investment from different investors and our pipeline targets were now much higher. As projected. The pressure was on, the expectations had grown. I was coming back from maternity leave in a very high pressure environment, not unlike, you know, many marketing leaders are. And that's when I started to make more bets. New campaigns, new channels. We launched a new, you know, paid social channel with a partner, new initiatives. And that's when I also started to realize that how I was tracking new logo acquisition and my impact on it was really flawed. This is when I reached stage one. I started at the time religiously listening to Chris Walker's podcast. I was poking all kinds of holes in our architecture, asking questions I hadn't asked before, like totally nerding out on how to revenue data actually worked. And I realized that data model that we had was not going to give me what I needed. I just knew at that time, like, damn, this is not going to fly. I had a huge moment of awakening, but it was worse than that. I was also totally under reporting my team's influence. And I knew it, but I was like, oh, what's the alternative? I didn't have a better way to show the impact of marketing on the buyer journey. We were only showing last touch attribution, like many companies. And 90% of the time, that was being overwritten by our AES to say, AE sourced, right? So it was like totally screwing me and my team. I hated it. I hate even having, you know, the credit battle. It made me sick to my stomach. So in the system, the reports that went to leadership, it looked like marketing was having minimal impact. Like sales was driving everything. Like all my investments were nice to haves but not need to haves. Does that sound familiar? And I knew that wasn't true. I could feel it. I knew it because I was close to, like, all of the, you know, data and all of our different tools and things like that. But I didn't have a way to prove it. I didn't have a way to connect, you know, what I was doing in marketing, what my team was doing to actual business impact. So I had to admit some really uncomfortable truths. First, I could not successfully measure the impact of my investments full stop. The thing I was hired to do, drive growth. I couldn't actually prove, like, with simplicity, that I was doing it. Secondly, if I wanted to drive change, I was going to need to be the one to spearhead it, to educate my colleagues and my leadership about why this mattered, to socialize a completely different way of thinking about revenue data. And third, I needed to quarterback the work, right? I was the change maker in the organization. The technical efforts to actually make those changes happen. It wasn't something I could just delegate to, like ops. We didn't even have OPS at the time. I needed to own it, brought in a strategic partner at the time, that's a different story. But let me tell you, it was hard. You are fighting inertia. If you are in this seat, you are fighting the 90% of the industry who thinks the status quo is the right way, even though you know it's wrong. Okay. It was uncomfortable having conversations with colleagues telling them they were wrong about how we were measuring things. It was hard figuring out how to build a new data model when I had never done anything like that before. It was exhausting constantly educating people on why it mattered. But here's what happened when we started capturing the right data. And now I know I'm fast forwarding the story here because there's a lot of nuance in what I had just said, but I instantly saw transformation. Let me tell you about the two biggest things. First, the impact my team had on revenue was way higher than what I ever thought. We were influencing more than 90% of closed 1 revenue. 90%. And now I had a way to show that and to show what was driving that influence with complete confidence. Not me just saying it anecdotally, like, here's stats, quarter over quarter that show that influence. Okay, boom, that was killer. Second, sales and marketing started working collaboratively almost overnight because suddenly we were speaking the same language, looking at the same metrics and align on what actually mattered. It was no longer a competition of who sourced the deal. It was like marketing and sales. What are they doing collaboratively to hit the target? And third, probably the most important thing is I actually developed a new muscle, a new strength that actually set me apart from all of the other, you know, marketing and revenue leaders. A new way of thinking about revenue strategy that was fundamentally different from how I'd operated before. That muscle is eventually what led me to become a co founder of Passetto, to help hundreds of other revenue leaders do the exact same thing. And that's one thing I'm like most proud of in my career is that was a. Oh man. A lot happened in like five years to get me where I am today. But it was absolutely profound and life changing. So what is that moment where people decide they're going to do something differently? When do people actually move beyond the panic response? It's typically in times of discomfort and it's usually in one of two scenarios. And I say this speaking from my own experience, but also speaking from the dozens of calls with people who are in the same scenario. So scenario one, they're not where they want to be right now. Usually that means they haven't hit their targets. They're probably anxious over that. Or they have even more ambitious targets coming and they don't know how they're going to hit them. They're tired of going into forecast meetings and not having good answers and they're exhausted from working this hard and not seeing the results they need. That's usually scenario one. Scenario two is also what I see a lot of is that they are absolutely exhausted by the status quo and they know it's doing them a disservice. They can Feel the pain, but they can't quite articulate why or what to do. Maybe they've been hitting their numbers, but it feels like they're succeeding, sort of like in spite of their systems, not because of them. They know that they're leaving money on the table. They know that they're probably doing things that aren't great for the business, but they don't have a way to justify not doing those things. They know they could be more strategic. Ultimately, they know there's a better way. They just don't know what it is yet. And in order to get to the crux of the matter, they need to be okay with getting uncomfortable. That is the biggest takeaway from this. The best revenue leaders in the world are not afraid to be uncomfortable or challenge the status quo because they know that this level of discomfort is better than staying in a place that leaves them feeling stuck. They're not afraid of asking the difficult questions, having some difficult conversations with their leadership in order to make that transformation. So listen, Oftentimes a few minutes of discomfort can change the next 10 years of not only the company success, but also your success as a marketing or revenue leader. Think about that. We're talking about a decade. Your career, your company's trajectory, all of it can pivot to based on your willingness to sit down in discomfort for a few critical moments or conversations. In the short term, let's talk about where transformation lives. So here's what I want you all to understand is everything you want to achieve right now in your role, if you're listening to the show, this is probably you is likely outside of your comfort zone. It's unchartered territory staying in the panic response, that's comfortable, it's familiar. Okay, everyone else is doing it. You can blend in. You're not going to disrupt the piece, you're not going to jeopardize your job. And you know you're not going to take on the hard work. You can point to all of the things that you're trying. You can show activity. But transformation, that requires you to stop, to question, to challenge, to say, I think we're solving the Rob problem here, and that's uncomfortable. Since I made that shift five years ago, I've had so many marketing leaders, not just like my earlier self, reach out and tell me, thank you for helping me on my path, for giving me permission to challenge the status quo, for showing them that there's a different way. And the reason why this work is so important is because it's something that will genuinely transform your life as a leader, but also the success and trajectory of your company, which is why you were hired in the first place. You weren't hired to run experiments. You weren't hired to be busy. You were hired to drive revenue and to hit targets and to grow the business. And you cannot do that from inside. The panic response. So if this is you and you want to transcend the panic response in your journey, here's what you need to do. You must genuinely and wholeheartedly believe that there is a better, more strategic way to do this job. Not just like intellectually believe it, not just hope for it, but truly, deeply believe that the way you're operating right now is not the only way. There's a path forward that doesn't require to you to work harder or to test more things. That's one. And then you need to be willing to be uncomfortable as you navigate this process, because transformation will not happen. In continuing to do what you're doing, hoping that one of your tactics in your playbooks will hit. There's a big sort of thing here around alignment, right? I believe that energetically, everybody, you know, when you're taking on new things, you need to feel aligned to it, right? And so I can't force that upon anybody. People need to be ready and they need to feel it to be here. And not everybody will be there. And that's okay. And that's why this process happens in these stages. And people move through those stages at their own journey when it works for them. This is the other thing. There's no lack of information out there. There's no shortage of tactics or tools or best practices. The thing that's lacking is a lack of action or a lack of willingness to fundamentally change how we actually approach this. And that's why pushing yourself to a place where you aren't comfortable is the place where transformation is born. The comfortable path is to keep trying new things, to keep testing, to keep experimenting, to keep doing what you're doing. The uncomfortable path is to stop and say, what if the problem isn't my tactics? What if the problem is actually like the foundation upon which we're doing all of these things? So as we prepare to close out this episode, I want to pose a challenge to you as we end this conversation around this first stage. Stop asking, what tactic should I try next? Stop asking, what are other companies doing that I should copy or test in my own company? Stop asking, what AI tool is going to help me save my pipeline? I want you to start asking these questions. What fundamental question am I not asking because I don't have the data to answer it? Next, what would I need to know to make truly great strategic decisions about where to invest? And finally, what's keeping me in the panic response? And what would it take me to move beyond it? Those uncomfortable questions, that's your at least your like stepping stone at a stage one. I would love for you to reflect on those. Drop me a DM on LinkedIn. Tell me what you think. I'm happy to give you some of my advice on those. And as we close out in our next episode, we're going to be talking about stage two, where you start to see that there might be a different way forward, where you begin to understand what questions you should be asking, but you're not sure quite how to get there yet. You're starting to wake up a little bit, but you're still figuring out what that means. Until then, let me know what you think about this challenge, the status quo. And remember, the transformation you're looking for is on the other side of the questions you might be afraid to ask. So thanks for listening and I will see you on the next episode. Sam.