GTM Science - A show for GTM and RevOps leaders

Union Square Consulting
  • 5.0 (9)
  • Business
  • Updated Weekly

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. 21h ago

    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

  2. 4d ago

    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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. Sep 22

    What Your Top Performer Says About Your Sales Org

    Every sales org has one. The rep who ignores the playbook, barely touches the CRM until a deal closes, runs the lowest activity on the team, and still outsells everyone else combined. Most leaders explain it as raw talent. Eddie thinks that explanation is costing them far more than they realize. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds and Rachael Bueckert break down what that top performer is actually telling you about the business underneath them. The conversation covers why leaning on A players is a growth strategy with a ceiling, how to reverse engineer what your best rep is doing so your B players can replicate it, the territory problem that makes top performers look more elite than they are, and why the goal isn't to clone your all-star. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: GTM Efficiency Pyramid Framework GTM Ops Frameworks 01:10 - What that rep is really telling you 04:53 - The playbook they built that's better than yours 06:41 - What Salesforce's best reps were best at 09:08 - How to reverse engineer it into the org 09:46 - The territory problem hiding performance 10:45 - Account stages, account scores, and the neglected tier one 18:13 - Build for the average rep on an average day 21:29 - ICP, personas, and the process that makes B players succeed 24:51 - Reading metrics from right to left: close rate, ASP, sales cycle 31:19 - How common are shadow systems? 33:52 - C players hiding behind broken data 37:22 - What percentage of quota should come from A players? 40:15 - When star-led growth stops working 42:31 - The culture cost of giving A players a pass 47:58 - Where to start if you're recognizing your org in this _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  6. Sep 18

    Inside Vercel: How a $9.3B Company Uses AI Agents to Run GTM with David Totten

    Vercel is a $9.3 billion company powering much of the modern web (OpenAI, Nike, Netflix, Walmart) and 30% of the applications being deployed on their platform are now agent-built. David Totten is the VP of Field Engineering, which means he owns every technical touchpoint a Vercel customer has from the first pre-sales conversation through to post-sale optimization and support. In this episode, Rachael Bueckert sits down with David for a rare inside look at how a $9.3 billion company actually runs AI across its GTM org. The conversation covers Eve, the sentiment analysis agent that eliminated CRM data entry for an entire engineering team, how consumption telemetry across millions of deployments surfaces churn signals before they become churn, and the philosophy that changed everything: treating GTM like a product. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: GTM Ops Frameworks 00:22 - What is a VP of Field Engineering? 02:37 - Where field engineering sits in the revenue org 05:04 - What David changed when he joined Vercel 11:55 - Eve: the agent framework that lets anyone build agents 16:52 - Treating GTM like a product 31:34 - The sentiment analysis agent that eliminated CRM data entry 34:03 - Closing the gap between what reps do and what leaders see 39:43 - Automated call coaching and enablement 40:18 - Post-sale at a consumption-based company 42:31 - AI gateway: helping customers pick the right LLM 46:16 - Churn prevention via usage telemetry 49:21 - Visibility without accessing customer IP 57:22 - From 80% reactive to fully proactive: the 12-month roadmap _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  7. Sep 15

    How to Hire a VP of RevOps

    Most VP of RevOps searches go wrong before anyone looks at a resume. The CRO decides they need one person who can manage every tool in the stack, architect the entire go-to-market engine, analyze the data, build AI solutions, and somehow drive revenue while responding to every Slack request that comes in. That person doesn't exist. And the searches that start with a hundred-item wish list almost always end in a hire that spends their time updating Salesforce fields that don't move the needle on anything. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds and Rachael Bueckert break down how to actually approach this hire. The conversation covers the three distinct roles hiding inside the VP of RevOps job description, what a CRO needs to figure out before writing a single line of a job posting, the interview question Eddie uses to separate the tools people from the architects, how to keep a new hire focused on what matters instead of drowning in ad hoc requests, and why hiring fractional ops alongside a full-time VP often produces better results than either alone. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: GTM Ops Frameworks 01:30 - Why most VP of RevOps searches fail 02:13 - Three roles hiding in one job description 06:55 - The analytics role nobody has time for 08:33 - The AI unicorn problem 14:24 - What to figure out before writing the job posting 15:39 - The one question every CRO should answer first 16:25 - The interview question that separates architects from tool updaters 18:37 - Using benchmarks to find the biggest revenue opportunity 21:18 - Where AI fits in the hiring decision 23:49 - Keeping a new hire focused with a RevOps roadmap 26:45 - How random Slack requests derail strategic work 28:32 - The deal desk and commissions trap 38:01 - Qualifying by motion expertise, not tool expertise 48:57 - When fractional RevOps alongside a full-time VP makes sense 52:25 - How to staff the three RevOps roles _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  8. Sep 11

    How Abridge Built an AI-Powered Enterprise Sales Engine with Jeremy Von Halle

    Jeremy Von Halle joined Abridge when they had two sellers and less than $5 million in ARR. Now the company has over $200 million in revenue, a $5.3 billion valuation, and a 200-person commercial organization selling into a total market of just 300 large health systems. With only 300 potential enterprise accounts, every customer interaction has to be the best version of itself. So Jeremy built an AI-powered rev ops engine that preps sellers before every call, captures and routes insights from every conversation, completes RFPs in under an hour, monitors all 300 accounts for news every morning, and surfaces deal risks that managers would otherwise miss. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds sits down with Jeremy Von Halle, VP of Revenue Operations and Chief of Staff to the Chief Commercial Officer at Abridge, for a deep dive into the specific AI tools, agents, and architecture behind their enterprise sales engine. The conversation covers the foundational data layer that makes any of it possible, their internal AI agent "Archie" that lives in Salesforce and Slack, how they use Attention and Tray to capture golden and rotten deal signals, why centralized AI builds beat reps vibe coding their own solutions, and the save time, save money, make money framework for proving ROI when your sales cycle is 18 months. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: GTM Ops Frameworks 00:23 - Intro to Jeremy Von Halle and Abridge 02:48 - Why AI in enterprise sales is about depth, not breadth 06:36 - 200-person commercial org selling into only 300 accounts 09:33 - Save time, save money, make money: the ROI arc 11:26 - When and how do you prove ROI with an 18-month sales cycle? 15:39 - The QA layer: flagging calls that don't meet the rubric 16:33 - Centralized AI build vs. reps vibe coding their own solutions 25:08 - How many iterations before you get it right? 28:19 - The foundational data layer that makes all of it work 30:59 - Capturing call transcripts and updating Salesforce with Attention 32:10 - Golden events and rotten events: sentiment signals from every interaction 36:55 - "Archie": the AI agent embedded in Salesforce and Slack 40:28 - Daily news monitoring across all 300 accounts 40:58 - RFP completion from days to under an hour 43:23 - AI-powered forecast prep for frontline managers 44:48 - Deal risk scoring from conversational and stage progression data _______________________________________________________________ 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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