GTM Science - A show for GTM and RevOps leaders

Union Square Consulting

To us, GTM is both an art and a science. We don't claim to be experts in the "art"—the marketing campaigns, sales messaging, and branding. We ARE experts in the "science"—GTM strategy, process design, growth planning, and RevOps. On GTM Science, we share what we've learned by solving these problems at scale for B2B recurring revenue businesses. We also bring you unfiltered conversations with CROs, private equity investors, and revenue leaders who’ve done it themselves. No silver bullets. Just real talk about what works. Learn more at unionsquareconsulting.com

  1. 5d ago

    What It Takes to Make Revenue Predictable with Sam Jacobs

    Sam Jacobs teaches that product market fit isn't a vibe and it's not a feeling. It's a function of your unit economics, and it isn't permanent either. You can fall out of it when your acquisition costs climb or your retention slips, and that is the signal to pull back on growth spending rather than push harder. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds sits down with Sam Jacobs, founder and CEO of Pavilion, to discuss what it takes to make revenue predictable and why predictability is what a buyer is actually paying for. Sam walks through the LTV to CAC range he wants a company sitting in and how fast he expects acquisition costs to be paid back, why one private equity backed business sold at roughly half the multiple its owners had expected, and the trade a founder has to accept to build a machine that runs without them. They also get into where AI genuinely helps a sales org and where Sam thinks it shouldn't be, and he closes on why your ownership structure is the most consequential long term decision you will make. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Sundays with Sam #21: Predictable Revenue Pavilion University (Intro to P&L Fluency, CRO School, AI in Go to Market School) USC Frameworks 02:28 - The rule of 60 company that wasn't 03:18 - How bankers stage a business like a house 06:25 - Why pre-AI SaaS is reverting to 4 to 6 times revenue 08:37 - Why investors actually pay for predictability 11:49 - AI native reps closing $10M deals 14:30 - Product market fit is not a vibe 18:27 - How you fall out of product market fit 19:48 - The LTV to CAC and payback numbers he wants 25:36 - Treating your business like a code base 27:03 - The close rate a founder has to give up 29:59 - When the person with clout breaks the rules 32:30 - Strategy is deciding what money to turn away 38:10 - Where AI belongs: enrichment and list building 40:30 - Where AI does not belong 49:28 - Your cap table is your corporate strategy _________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  2. Oct 16

    The GTM Motions and Channels Working Right Now with Richard Perez

    Richard Perez leads the sales and go to market practice at Apax Partners, a private equity firm, where he works with their portfolio companies on how they sell. We asked which motions he'd back at the enterprise end, which at the SMB end, and what he wouldn't spend his own money on. Almost every answer came back with conditions attached. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds sits down with Richard to discuss the GTM motions and channels working right now. You'll hear where he thinks ABM stops working, the three things that decide whether a conference booth pays off, why he's skeptical of most intent platforms, and the number that tells him a sales organization hasn't been engineered properly. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: USC Frameworks 01:14 - Motions vs channels, and why the label matters less 06:46 - Why LLMs are now a channel you have to plan for 08:51 - $10K in seven days vs $500K in 19 months 10:28 - What's working at the enterprise end 12:08 - Buyers who know your competitive position better than you 14:19 - The events he likes best 15:25 - Three things that decide whether a booth pays off 17:46 - Why execution beats channel choice 25:25 - What has to be true before you deploy AI 26:41 - What's working at the SMB end 30:22 - Where ABM stops working 32:30 - Why warm and cold leads need different reps 37:57 - Why he's skeptical of intent platforms 40:36 - The cost of a dollar of new logo revenue ___________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  3. Oct 13

    Building an AI-Native Outbound Engine

    SaaStr surveyed companies that had implemented AI SDRs and found only 3% had any revenue to show for it. Eddie's read is that this is the same pattern as Outreach and Salesloft a few years ago, and Gmail and Salesforce before that. So we mapped the system that has to be built around an ai-powered outbound motion before it will actually work. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds and Gerry Marletta, SVP of Revenue Operations Systems at USC, walk through how to build an AI-native outbound engine, agent by agent. You'll hear how they got around the catch-22 of deciding which accounts to enrich before you've enriched them, when to hand a step to an LLM and when to use an orchestration tool instead, what the agent that grades every rep email actually checks for, and the updates Gerry says a machine should never be allowed to make. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Building an AI-Native Outbound Engine (Full Written Article) The AI-Driven Continuously Self-Improving ICP Free Outbound Pipeline Inspection USC Frameworks 04:18 - Only 3% of AI SDR buyers saw any revenue 08:18 - Why reps get 2,000 accounts and work 200 10:44 - The targeting agent and the data source waterfall 16:17 - Triggers and signals, and why one alone isn't enough 20:19 - The tool stack and why Salesforce stays the source of truth 23:33 - Why separate agents beat one big one 26:00 - When to use an LLM and when to use n8n 30:15 - The catch-22 of what to enrich first 39:50 - Scoring: start with a hypothesis and iterate 47:55 - What a good sales email actually looks like 56:57 - Who gets a fully personalized message and who doesn't 01:03:59 - The updates a machine should never make 01:04:36 - The first question for your AI analyst: did we execute 01:12:35 - The GTM council meeting that forces the loop _________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  4. Oct 9

    Finding New Growth Without New Logos with Robert Clarkson

    New logos get most of the attention in a revenue org. Robert Clarkson calls that the most obvious of three growth levers, and it's the one he spends the least time on. He has run revenue at PayPal, Stripe, Payoneer and now Fiserv, which moves $4.6 trillion in payment volume a year. At one company he joined that had grown 16% to 19% a year for three straight years, he stopped measuring the sales team on what it sold and started measuring it on what customers actually got out of it. It grew 26% the next year and never had a year under 30% after that. In this episode, Rachael Bueckert sits down with Robert, Chief Revenue Officer for SMB and Clover at Fiserv, to walk through the model he has carried from company to company. They cover how he writes a customer success measure into the sales compensation plan, how he splits his team into hunters and growers, and why he will accept almost any CAC as long as the long term value holds up. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: USC Frameworks 01:15 - The three growth levers every CRO has 04:53 - Inheriting a quilt when you need a mosaic 13:21 - Giving SMBs the analytics only enterprises had 23:27 - The model he runs at every company 27:36 - Putting customer success in the sales comp plan 32:23 - Why net dollar retention has to clear 100% 40:19 - Hunters and growers 41:59 - Six features sold, five in use 46:38 - From 19% to 26% to never under 30% 49:28 - Uber didn't build a better taxi _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  5. Oct 6

    What's Working in Outbound in 2026

    We get asked what's actually working in outbound constantly, and specifically what works for companies that don't have a great brand. So we read the industry reports, more than 100 million emails worth of data, and traced every stat we could back to its original source. The surprising finding was how unreliable the data is. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds and Rachael Bueckert go tactic by tactic through all six most common outbound strategies: targeted, warm signals, trigger based, third party intent, autonomous AI SDRs and spray and pray. You'll hear which one doubled reply rates, the templated LinkedIn message Eddie used to source millions in business, and the one signal he says he would spend his money on last. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: What's Working in Outbound in 2026 (Full Written Report) Free Outbound Pipeline Inspection 01:36 - 100 million emails and a fake return address 03:45 - Why we went digging for real data 08:53 - Targeted outbound: double the reply rate 10:02 - It's not six tactics, it's three 13:19 - Why Eddie won't use Outreach for this 15:56 - The segmentation step everyone skips 20:56 - Vendors claim 20%, we saw 2 to 5% 27:16 - The bar every hot list has to clear 31:37 - The LinkedIn message that sourced millions 36:49 - Who paid for the intent data studies 43:40 - 3% of AI SDR teams saw any revenue 51:09 - Does bad outbound burn your reputation? 54:17 - Spray and pray works, and that's the problem ___________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  6. Oct 2

    Get Off Your SaaS and Use AI to Replace Gong and Clari with Adam Coffey

    Adam Coffey priced out the sales tooling he was looking at and the quotes came back at several hundred thousand dollars each. His team built their own instead, and rolled it out globally to all sales reps and managers at Ivanti. It does the meeting prep, flags risks from call transcripts, emails and Salesforce fields, and gives a first pass at the MEDDPICC field updates that the rep can adjust. In this episode, Rachael Bueckert sits down with Adam, Director of Analytics and Reporting at Ivanti, to discuss what it takes to build your own GTM tools. They get into the real cost behind building your own sales tooling, why he has not seen AI work on a dirty CRM yet, and why he still calls dashboards mission critical with AI apps running on top of them. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Sales Command Center Demo USC Frameworks Adam Coffey on LinkedIn 03:04 - What finance and rev ops get wrong in silos 09:52 - The sales command center he built 11:59 - The stack: Copilot, VS Code, Power Apps 15:43 - Build vs buy: the actual numbers 19:57 - Is SaaS in trouble? 24:33 - The security review a build has to pass 35:20 - You can't slap AI on a dirty CRM 39:53 - Data goes to IT to die 43:17 - One data model instead of hundreds 46:14 - Why dashboards still matter _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  7. Sep 29

    How to Turn Your GTM Dashboard Into Actual Decisions

    Most companies have a dashboard. Some of them even have accurate data. What wayy fewer of them have is someone who can look at that data on a Thursday morning and walk into a meeting and say: here's what I think is wrong, here's why, and here's what we should do about it. The gap between "workable data" and "actual decisions" is the problem we're talking about today. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds and Rachael Bueckert break down how to close the gap between having a dashboard and actually using it to move revenue. They cover why perfect data is the wrong goal and what to optimize for instead, how to structure a GTM Council meeting so it creates real accountability, and what the dashboard they built with Claude actually does (and how you can build your own). Resources Mentioned in This Episode: How to Build Your Own AI-Powered GTM Dashboard (Free PDF Guide) USC Demo Dashboard (Fictional $100M Company) GTM Ops Decision Tree GTM Ops Diagnostic Framework 01:40 - The gap between good data and actual decisions 06:12 - Why "perfect data" is the wrong goal 08:37 - Who should own dashboard insights (CRO vs. Rev Ops) 14:20 - What a GTM Council meeting actually looks like 17:33 - Why USC built their own AI-powered dashboard 22:09 - Ingesting data via MCP instead of building integrations 31:16 - Pipeline metrics: close rate, ASP, and sales cycle by segment 35:28 - Reading rep performance right to left 40:05 - AI email scoring that fixed a new rep's outbound in two weeks 43:52 - Where to start on Monday (the decision tree) 49:51 - $100M company with no lead definitions (and what happened next) _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  8. Sep 25

    How to Turn Around Stalled Growth with Lou Shipley

    Lou Shipley has sat in almost every seat that touches revenue. He's been the rep, the VP of sales, a three-time CEO, a board member, an investor, and now a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School where he teaches the most popular class on campus. When he walks into a company today and something feels off in go-to-market, he knows exactly where to look. In this episode, Rachael Bueckert sits down with Lou Shipley, author of Unlikely Entrepreneurs and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, for a conversation on what actually breaks when growth stalls and how to fix it. The conversation covers how Lou rebuilt Black Duck's entire sales motion and took it from $20M to $90M in 4 years, the founder trap that catches most CEOs as complexity increases, and the Plane model that let him develop talent from within instead of chasing the free agent market. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Unlikely Entrepreneurs (Lou Shipley) GTM Ops Frameworks 00:23 - Intro to Lou Shipley 01:11 - The youth hockey team test for your sales org 01:29 - What Lou looks for first when go-to-market feels off 03:28 - Product market fit vs. sales execution problem 05:07 - The founder trap: when your role changes and you don't 07:19 - What the board sees when numbers are being missed 08:28 - The role of an independent board member 12:32 - The sales math: velocity deals, ASP, cycle time, and forecasting a month ahead 15:00 - The single version of truth 18:34 - SQL definition, zombie pipeline, and why changing it kills your data 24:26 - Access to power and why it determines close rate 28:42 - The Black Duck turnaround: three things that changed 30:23 - The Jamie Dimon signal that triggered the product pivot 36:40 - Rebuilding the team: developing talent vs. chasing free agents 39:19 - The Plane model: gunner, navigator, copilot, pilot 42:30 - From $20M to $90M in four years 45:43 - The thinking machine: distributed leadership at scale 46:06 - Unlikely Entrepreneurs and the problem with the problem 54:31 - Where to start when growth has stalled _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

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About

To us, GTM is both an art and a science. We don't claim to be experts in the "art"—the marketing campaigns, sales messaging, and branding. We ARE experts in the "science"—GTM strategy, process design, growth planning, and RevOps. On GTM Science, we share what we've learned by solving these problems at scale for B2B recurring revenue businesses. We also bring you unfiltered conversations with CROs, private equity investors, and revenue leaders who’ve done it themselves. No silver bullets. Just real talk about what works. Learn more at unionsquareconsulting.com

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