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There’s a ton of talk about what isn’t working today in go-to-market. However, companies are still finding ways to grow which means there a some things that are working. In this special episode, Scott Barker is looking at some of the big themes he’s seen in how the top go-to-market leaders are driving growth today. You’ll hear from founders, sales leaders, and marketing leaders from G2, CrunchBase, GitHub, TestBox, Atrium, Intellimize and Kahua. You’ll walk away from this episode with some great ideas from top operators on how to increase revenue, align your teams, and make a huge impact for your company in 2025.
Discussed in this Episode:
- How to build the habits and fundamentals for sustainably generating pipeline.
- The importance of in-person interactions for the development of your team.
- Taking a customer-centric approach in your go-to-market strategy.
- Changing how you talk about your company to resonate better with the C-suite.
- Why intentionally aligning your teams is worth the effort.
- How to capitalize on the returns that building strong relationships provide.
Highlights:
(3:22) The first theme: Getting back to the go-to-market basics.
(6:56) The second theme: The importance of in-person interactions.
(10:38) The third theme: Taking a customer-centric approach in your go-to-market strategy.
(16:04) The fourth theme: Elevating the conversation to the C-level.
(19:29) The fifth theme: Intentional alignment of your teams.
(21:17) The sixth theme: Playing the long game.
Host Speaker Links (Scott Barker):
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: https://gtmnow.com/tag/newsletter/
Product GTMfund is Using: Superhuman
“Most people know that I am almost always on, regardless of holidays, but I certainly am not checking email as much as I normally would. And this year I came back to work and had so many emails in my inbox… the number was scary. But since I started using Superhuman last quarter, I was able to get back to inbox zero within minutes. It helps me and the team be so much more productive.
I don’t know how I didn’t start on Superhuman sooner. It was the most seamless onboarding experience – everything in my inbox synced within minutes. Superhuman works with your existing Gmail or Outlook accounts. New year, time to take back control – 2025 is the year of inbox zero. If anyone also wants to take back control of their inboxes and empower their teams to do so, check out Superhuman at superhuman.com/gtmnow” – Scott Barker
The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Scott Barker, GTMfund Partner, featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
GTM 129 Episode Transcript
[00:00:00]
Scott Barker: Hello, and welcome back to the GTM podcast. Thank you for rocking with me. We are officially into January. We are in 2025. That is wild. Uh, this is a special episode. So we are actually going to look back at 2024 and just pick out some themes. If, uh, you are a fan of this podcast, if you listen each and every week, thank you.
Uh, but you [00:01:00] do know that I ask the same two questions. And the final question I usually ask is what is one tactic or strategy that’s working for you at the company that you’re currently serving? And myself and Sophie decided to look back at every single answer to that question from 2024, uh, to try and provide some inspiration as we kick off 2025.
but first, before we dive in, I have to share a quick recent experience.
Most people know that I am almost always on, uh, regardless of holidays, but I certainly am not checking emails as much as I normally would. I do do my best to be present around friends and family. And this year I came back to work and had so many emails in my inbox.
The number was pretty terrifying. But since I started using superhuman last quarter, I was actually able to get back to inbox zero within like 20 minutes. Uh, it helps me and the team be so much more productive. Honestly, [00:02:00] don’t know how I didn’t start on superhuman sooner. I used to be an inbox zero kind of guy, but as my personal media presence, the fund and our community grew, It became harder and harder to actually make that happen. But I started on superhuman. It was the most seamless onboarding experience. Everything in my inbox synced within minutes. Superhuman works with your existing Gmail or Outlook accounts, new Year, time to take back control of my inbox. And 2025 is the year of inbox zero for me.
If anyone else wants to take back control of their inbox and empower their teams to do so as well, Check out superhuman at superhuman. com.
all right, before we get into it, I do want to preface this entire episode with the most important part, I think I say this every week, but I think anyone who has been part of growing and scaling companies know that there are no silver bullets, uh, just universally. There is so much rich context to each company’s go to market [00:03:00] strategy that blanket transferability is usually never as easy as it might seem.
Now that being said, there is a ton of learnings and inspiration that comes from hearing what is actually working to move the needle. We try and make sure people aren’t just pontificating best practices. That’s why we frame it as what is actually working for your business right now.
One thing we heard again and again is this idea of getting back to basics. And there may be no silver bullets, but there are what feels like endless options for tools, channels, and tactics to choose from. And in a sea of options, what leaders are finding to work is actually going back to the basics. And I think Pete Kazanjy, co founder of Atrium said it well.
Peter Kazanjy: I think in general, like back to basics is a big thing that can help folks. And it’s like, anytime I see, uh, someone posting on LinkedIn, like it’s [00:04:00] 2024, things have changed. It’s kind of like, no, I don’t think so. And so a good example of that, um, probably like one of the most tried and true examples of this would be.
A day for pipeline generation, I think is super powerful. Um, so PG, like we do PG Tuesday here at Atrium. Um, I think a bunch of other, like a bunch of our customers do that as well. And, and Tuesday can be, Tuesday’s like particularly good for it. Cause like Monday, most like on the prospect side, like everyone’s in like internal operating rhythm meetings.
And then also like your organization is probably in operating rhythm meetings as well. And so like Tuesday is good because like you put a bunch of activity out there, right? You’d like, and then it starts coming back that day, Wednesday, Thursday, you’re setting meetings for the next week, et cetera, et cetera.
So that’s why Tuesday can be very helpful, but it could be Wednesday, probably not Thursday, right? [00:05:00] Um, but I think the important thing is setting a time and a date to do, because pipeline generation is like, it’s another example of a thing that we ought to do that everyone would agree that we ought to do that ends up being effortful and like less pleasant than like having disco meetings or, you know, jumping on a down funnel call or whatever.
And so having the, the discipline to say, Hey, actually I’m going to block Tuesday for PG. And I’m actually not going to schedule meetings during it. I’m going to schedule meetings on, uh, on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. Um, that can be a very, like, that can be tough to do from a discipline standpoint.
But when organizations do that, and then it bakes into their operating rhythm, they have their, like, you know, PG Tuesday stand up. What are you going to be doing? What’s your, what’s your PG program today? And then you report back at the end of the day. And then like, you’re actually, So, um, I think if you can hold accountable to that from a leading indicator, like, you know, an activity metric standpoint, and then also a self source pipe or self source opportunity standpoint, [00:06:00] it can be very powerful.
Um, so yeah, PG Tuesday. And I didn’t come up with that. It’s a, it’s like a MongoDB kind of PTC, sort of like just a PG mindset, but a cadencing it, right? Like we have a saying at Atrium that calendar is destiny. And so if it’s not on the calendar and it’s not baked into the operating rhythm, it’s probably not going to happen.
And so PG Tuesday is a great example of it. It like happens every Tuesday, like clockwork. We do our pipeline generation.
Scott Barker: Love that episode by Pete. And yeah, I think as leaders, when we go back to the basics and we simplify things for our reps and our teams, what we’re really doing is giving them back focus and I think focus for me in my sales career, VC career has always been a super weapon. And kind of a superpower that we can give our, our teams.
So I think in 2025, as technology gets more and more complex, we’re going to look at our processes and our systems and do our best to simplify them as much as we can.
Now, the next big bucket, again, we heard this from so many [00:07:00] of our guests was focusing on in person interactions. And they seem to really be working right now in the, you know, Post COVID era, uh, people are still really excited about getting back in person. Uh, many people are remote. They might not have a place where they can go be with like minded peers.
And I figured this would be a big theme, but I didn’t know how many times it was going to come up. And you know, one of the common threads, uh, was really just the value of getting people in the same room again. And I think Guy Yalif said it really well.
Guy Yalif: One thing that we are,
finding helpful is small group events, dinners with senior people where we’re not pitching. where we are creating community for them to connect. Uh, and often afterwards they’d be like, I expected you to pitch me.
Can I learn a little bit more about? Um, that we have found a good use of time and I don’t know of any silver bullets. If you know of one, please [00:08:00] share.
Scott Barker: And this has always been a big part of our playbook, uh, back when I was at outreach, uh, now we do it at the fund. Uh, but you know, executive dinners and in person interactions, I’ve seen it get operationalized really, really well. And, you know, I think of a company called Memo who hosts 10 to 15 prospective buyers at each dinner event.
And roughly 80 percent of those in attendance take a sales meeting with them after the event, with over 50 percent becoming sales opportunities. Uh, so that kind of data speaks for itself and I think should be a part of anyone’s go to market strategy in 2025.
The fourth main pillar was this idea of being customer centric. And we had so many people just say, fall in love with your customers, get in front of them as much as you can, turn them into raving fans. And While this might not seem new, in an environment where it is tougher and tougher to get net new [00:09:00] contracts and customers in the door, it is great to see folks finally give the customer the support and attention that they deserve.
And I think it will be critical for growth in 2025 and beyond. Uh, I thought Neil Patel in one of our recent episodes. Broke it down in a really great way.
Neal Patel: we’re institutionalizing this customer tour thing, uh, that we did and trying to make it part of our, like, our, our DNA versus a initiative, right?
It started out was an initiative with being our chief product officer. We were going to do a customer tour and like even the label tour, uh, you know, uh, you know, implies that it is a beginning and an end, right? Um, and, and we’ve, we’ve since realized like, and that there is no end. Um, it’s not a tour. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s part of our, it’s part of our practice now.[00:10:00]
And it’s something that everybody should be doing. Uh, so we’re encouraging all of our folks, and I’m also the entire GTM, not just sales, but also CS, um, not just sales and CS, but also partnerships, BD, Corp Dev, get out there. Get out there and meet people. Um, meet them, meet them where they are, have them come to us, go to conferences, wherever you can, but be intentional about meeting them and, and, and, and, and, and try, like, Try to approach it from the perspective that we just talked about, right?
Which is like, listen, don’t obey. Um, you know, understand the three prongs, like you’ve got to do those three things. Like, right. Uh, you, you, there is real life practicality where you have to be transactional sometimes. Yes, of course. We all know about relationship development, but if you can get to a place where like you’re on their side and they think of you as like, you’re actually on my team as my thought partner on this.
Um, You’re trying to find a way for both of us to win. [00:11:00] Um, that’s a, that’s a great place to be. And you can get lots of great nuggets that like, obviously will help you make money and grow your, grow your revenue. Um, but we’ll inform your product roadmap much more intelligently, I think. Um, because it’s all driven on, like, it’s not saying what the market wants.
It’s saying it’s understanding. a little bit ahead of what the market might need, um, because you did that work, right? Um, I think that’s a, like, that, that, that was a, that was something that we, we picked up that we are now institutionalizing on the GTM team and, and we’re bringing PMs and marketers and other folks from the organization and even engineers into those conversations now.
Um, and in some, like, in some cases we’re even like experimenting with like forward deploying some of our team into some of our largest customers and partners and having them like build stuff together. Uh, Which is super, super exciting.
Scott Barker: And then let’s [00:12:00] hear from Elizabeth, the CRO of GitHub.
Elizabeth Pemmerl: We spent a bunch of time in the most recent, probably 12 months, doubling down on our customer feedback loop and investing a lot in the tools and processes that support that at GitHub.
And, um, yeah, Specifically now we have all of our, um, aggregated support requests, our security related incident information, and all of our customer feedback from the field funneled into one place for review and prioritization. And in fact, any seller or solutions engineer, anyone in the company can use the slash command in Slack, customer feedback, provide the information, and it links automatically to a repository on GitHub where we keep all of this information.
And so customers obviously get the benefit of this because now we can look at this prioritized list. And last quarter we worked on 30 percent of those requests and were able to deliver them. This quarter we’ve gotten it up to 40. [00:13:00] In really close partnership with product and engineering, we’re able to go back and talk to our customers about what’s coming.
or what’s not so they can make the appropriate plans. But it’s super empowering for our teams too because they know now their feedback is going to a very specific place. It’s getting reviewed. It’s getting a status. It’s visible to them. And they can go back and give the customer the information they want, which just really helps with the trust and the feeling the rep or SE has that that they can be a true advisor to their customer.
It’s working great for us. And I’m just so glad we decided to, to make these additional investments in the last year.
Scott Barker: Yeah, I love that. I just wrote recently of how, you know, we need to find ways to get closer to our customer. Like I think in SaaS, we all lied to ourselves for the last decade that we like.
Truly, you know, cared and listened to them. Uh, I think we did enough, uh, to keep them, but not, not for them to like fall in love with our [00:14:00] solution. And, and I think reckoning has come for, for many. Um, and so finding that ways to make them feel heard. Uh, I want to just double click on that. Cause I do think like customer success is having a big moment right now in, in software and it, I think the role is evolving.
It is changing, uh, becoming more and more important. How do you think about like the capture component of, of that feedback loop? Are you, do you still do like, you know, your traditional QBRs? Um, you know, I know there’s, can you get feedback directly from the platform? It seems to be where things are going.
So like they can just submit things digitally or I feel like people want their voice heard in time. Oh, I just had X problem. Like, how do you capture that feedback when they’re like in that, that moment, if that makes sense?
Elizabeth Pemmerl: Yes to everything you said. We, we have, um, visibility from a platform perspective, that’s usually abstracted, obviously, and anonymized, so we can, [00:15:00] we can understand trends.
In terms of direct customer engagements, we have, sure, the QPRs, we have the Customer Advisory Board. We have shared teams and shared Slack channels with a lot of our customers, so they can get in touch with us immediately. Most of them, many of them have been customers for years, so they’re also just going to text us and say, Hey, let’s get this thing sorted out.
Um, so I feel like the ability to capture that information has never been our problem. You know, when you think about the relationship between a rep and an account who have been together for eight years, there’s no shortage of communication back and forth. For us, the bigger challenge was the prioritization, the visibility, the ability to surface to engineering and product, really concrete asks that were backed by data, I feel like that’s the part we’re starting to nail and took us a while to figure out.
Scott Barker: Those two were great episodes. If you haven’t listened to those full ones from Neil and Elizabeth, I would highly recommend it, but it’s [00:16:00] all about putting the customer at the core of every single thing you do.
Another theme that we kept hearing all year long was. Elevating conversations to the C suite. This is something that we heard from guests all year long. And it is how do we get higher in our accounts? Uh, something again, I was focused on a lot when I built up the strategic engagement team at Outreach and, you know, You want to get multi threaded.
You want to get multi threaded in the C suite, have exec level buyers. And I think Eric Gilpin, the CEO of G2, uh, was an episode that stood out all around this. So let’s quickly hear from Eric.
Eric Gilpin: Yeah, I w I would tell you that it, it kind of goes back to the, uh, Um, The methodology thing, I think executives, and I don’t mean, um, like VP level, I’m thinking like, like C level engagement is an opportunity right now.
Um, uh, now we can’t do that in the way that we’ve been doing it the last four to five years. Um, you’ve got to be able to cut through the noise, [00:17:00] um, because every company’s challenge would churn and everyone’s not growing as fast as they would like, which means that every competitor is trying to out compete you, you know, on everything.
Um, Um, but I think that a lot of folks are still running the old plays, um, and you know, slowing down to do a little bit of research, um, to being able to connect the dots. And I’m not talking about personalization. Um, you know, being a student of your prospect or customer can actually go like a really long way.
Um, and so we’ve, uh, you know, we sell into the marketing persona, um, at G2 and, and a lot of our customers are a director of demand gen or a director of cub customer advocacy and, and, uh, we’ve been up leveling, you know, everything that we do, um, to the, you know, CMO, CRO conversation. Um, and we found it’s impactful for two things.
Um, one, they’re all riddled with the same challenges we are. Everyone’s trying to grow faster. Everyone’s trying to be more efficient. Everyone’s trying to reduce churn. You know, at the same time, and if we can link our solution to those higher order problems, no one cares about the product or feature. I just, like, as I mentioned before, they want that outcome.[00:18:00]
And, uh, and I’ve even seen it on my end. Um, the amount of thoughtful research, um, and I remember you and I, um, on a session, um, when I talked about this in Chicago, where I kind of went like over a nuts on just like how inefficient it’s only gotten worse, but the amount of, uh, Outreach that I get, um, to engage with me as a, uh, you know, multi million dollar budget holder, especially within our tech stack, is like zero.
Um, everything is on the run. Papil, set it and forget it. Just like run me through a cadence. Um, but, uh, like if you just took, you know, two minutes. Um, and look to my LinkedIn feed. You know exactly like what we’re talking about at G2 and what we’re passionate about. Um, and, and we need help. Like we need our partners and vendors to help us out, but it’s, it’s almost like we’ve like given up on trying to be relevant.
Um, and I just don’t think it’ll work. And something we’ve been leaning into, um, a lot the last quarter and it’s, it’s really having outsized results because no one’s doing it. Um, you can actually, if you want to [00:19:00] stand out, take the time to stand out.
Scott Barker: Love Eric’s point of view. And, you know, for me, I don’t think. That a deal should ever be committed. If you do not have conversation going with the C suite executive, particularly if it is a deal, you know, let’s say North of 50K. Uh, if you do not have a champion that is in the C suite. I think that deal is likely not real.
Number six, inspired by my guy, Ralph Barsi. Uh, if you know Ralph, he always brings the goods and this is all around intentional alignment, uh, through sales, marketing, customer success, operations enablement, and he gives some really tactical advice. So let’s go to Ralph.
Ralph Barsi: So, uh, , I mentioned Tony Robbins earlier. Another great quote from him is there’s power in proximity. So get close.
Uh, and get to know each other. Uh, we have a weekly Friday meeting, [00:20:00] uh, every morning, 7 a. m. Pacific to 8 a. m. Pacific, uh, again, my company’s based in Atlanta, but it is for the entire revenue organization, which includes marketing and customer success and sales. And we follow formulas and recipes every Friday on that weekly revenue call.
It’s a mandatory call. Everybody attends and everybody has their finger on the pulse of what our pipeline looks like, what our late stage pipeline looks like, what new deals have come in and what the win reports are of those deals, uh, marketing campaigns that are being executed in the field, et cetera, et cetera, it goes on and on.
Uh, but if we weren’t meeting frequently and meeting together to hear what’s going on around the organization, we’d all think we know where North is, uh, and we’d all have our own version of North, but we’d all be kind of in every direction. Uh, but. At our company, uh, I’m partial of course, but we all know which way north is and we are collectively headed there together.
Scott Barker: Again, give that episode a full listen. Well worth the [00:21:00] 45 minutes with my guy, Ralph. But you hear a lot about alignment, you know, sales and marketing alignment. I know when I hear that many times I roll my eyes cause it can be fluffy advice. But these kinds of tactical examples are super, super helpful that you can, you can steal from our guests.
Last but not least was this idea of playing the long game. Uh, one of my favorite moments was from James Kaikis, Chief Revenue and Experience Officer at Testbox.
James Kaikis: Yeah, I thought about this question. I think there’s a lot of ways to take this, but if I look back at my career, I had a lot of people who. gave me great guidance. They always reached out, you know, when I needed something or always were there when I reached out and just being able to give back to folks. I found that, you know, maybe it was cause my business, a pre sales collective, like that’s what I did.
And that’s core to my DNA. Now that I’m in this go to market motion, it, at Testbox, it is repaying me in droves, [00:22:00] right? It is repaying me in droves. And so I, I think that, you know, the theme that does apply to, right. As people are saying, cooled out, bounds dead, you know, what, whatever, right. Is the, is the new headline right now.
But the idea of going to your network where you’ve already got relationships and you’ve got warm relationships and understanding it, you know, your software is a fit for someone is really, really important. I think also playing the long game on that. As well as like might not be a fit now. It doesn’t mean you just need to disregard someone and talk to him.
You don’t not talk to them for six to 12 months. Like keep those touch points, check in with people because you want to be top of mind for them. And so I think it requires a lot of extra effort. It, it, it, it, it obviously requires a lot of intention as well, but I think that the rewards,
Scott Barker: If you know me personally, you know I’m a huge proponent of playing the long game. One of my personal favorite tweets and quotes comes from Naval. And he says, play long term games with long term people and play iterated [00:23:00] games. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
Love that one.
I hope it was fun to look back at some of the conversations we had this year. It was certainly fun going through them. And again, I think if there’s one thing that rings true from all these conversations is the fact that there is no silver bullets, but we can learn from people that have gone through the lived experience, done the hard things, and we can tease out things that may help us in our own organizations, put in the work, be ready to adapt.
And again, thank you all for rocking with us in 2024. And we are excited to continue elevating these conversations into 2025. Our guest lineup is pretty insane. So we will see you next week.
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