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. 13h ago

    How Revenue Leaders Earn and Keep a Board’s Trust with Jason Baumgarten

    Revenue leaders have to earn a board's trust before there are any results to show, then keep it when the results slip. Jason Baumgarten has sat in on a huge number of CEO and board transitions at Spencer Stuart. He walks through what wins that trust and what loses it, from the interview pitch that indicts the board to treating a revenue dip as a try harder problem. In this episode, Rachael Bueckert sits down with Jason, partner at Spencer Stuart, to discuss how revenue leaders earn and keep a board's trust. You'll hear what to ask before you take the job, what counts as progress before you have results to show, how a board decides whether a slump is a leadership problem, and what separates the revenue leaders who make it to CEO. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Fit Happens Podcast What's Working in Outbound in 2026 USC Frameworks Jason Baumgarten on LinkedIn 01:52 - What boards look for beyond the resume 03:30 - The interview pitch that indicts the board 10:18 - Ask about the third rails before you take the job 12:48 - Misaligned on mandate, not mission 16:29 - What counts as progress before results 18:45 - How a board reads bringing in outside help 23:14 - It's rarely a try harder problem 26:49 - Why boards bet on the incumbent 30:40 - Missionary over mercenary 31:05 - The sales leader who went back to IC 37:07 - When you're not the right leader anymore 47:02 - Blind spots moving into the CEO seat 54:02 - Not innovating with AI will be a fireable offense 1:01:12 - One thing to start doing this week _________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  2. 4d ago

    Where AI Actually Pays Off in Sales with Gabe Larsen

    Boards spent the last year telling revenue leaders to show ROI on AI, and in relational B2B sales it mostly hasn't shown up. Gabe Larsen sells AI employees for a living, and he's blunt about why: the returns come from volume and transactional work, and he has at least a dozen scars from trying it on relational outbound. In this episode, Rachael Bueckert sits down with Gabe, CRO at Atonom, to discuss where AI actually pays off in sales. You'll hear which kinds of leads AI handles well and which it doesn't, what AI can do for teams selling five and six figure deals, what happened when one company let AI take its after-hours leads, and how to pilot AI without locking into a contract you'll regret. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: What's Working in Outbound in 2026 USC Frameworks Atonom Gabe Larsen on LinkedIn 02:09 - Hot, warm and cold: where AI wins and fails 05:31 - AI agents vs AI employees vs AI features 11:42 - Don't put AI in front of the king 12:57 - The neglected jobs AI can take first 15:41 - Why SaaS isn't seeing ROI on AI 22:32 - A dozen scars from relational outbound 23:50 - The after-hours test that changed the math 27:06 - AI books 28% of MQLs, humans book 22% 31:14 - Cold email with an AI employee on the replies 35:19 - Never sign a long-term AI contract 39:28 - The signal that lifted pipeline 27% in 60 days 42:16 - What your process needs before AI goes in 45:34 - Managing AI employees like human hires 51:51 - Where a revenue leader should start _________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  3. Nov 3

    Where AI Efficiency in GTM Actually Comes From with Jason Eubanks

    Every tool in your go to market stack carries its own database, and now every one of those vendors wants to sell you agents to run on top of it. Jason Eubanks' argument is that agents running against fragmented data sources will only ever produce unproductive, low quality automation. He ran into the problem himself as a CRO, with 22 products in his stack and sellers who were only in front of customers 28% of the time. In this episode, Rachael sits down with Jason, CEO and co-founder of Aurasell, to discuss where AI efficiency in go to market actually comes from. You'll hear what he means by core versus chore, why he thinks hackathon days produce token thrash instead of results, what he would probe in a demo to tell AI native from marketing, and how he thinks productivity per head should be measured now. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: USC Frameworks Aurasell Jason Eubanks on LinkedIn 04:10 - 22 products and 11 people stitching them together 05:08 - Sellers in front of customers 28% of the time 09:23 - Which SaaS players are actually in trouble 12:31 - Why seat based pricing stops making sense 13:58 - Lab work versus production 15:46 - Core versus chore 16:19 - What a hackathon day actually produces 21:09 - You're missing 70% of sales interactions 24:47 - The architecture cutoff for AI native 33:27 - What consolidation does to the software bill 46:37 - What to probe in a demo 49:31 - From 24 hours of forecast prep to two 52:01 - You don't have one CRM, you have three 55:24 - Measuring revenue per human plus token spend ___________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  4. Oct 30

    Using AI to Be More Human with Dustin Deno

    Fello grew 25% in about nine weeks, and Dustin Deno handled all of it without adding a single rep. His team built AI tools that took over the work around the meetings so his reps could spend their time in them. Now he's hiring again: more SDRs, reps out in territory taking customers to lunch, and a fully remote team getting together more often. In this episode, Rachael sits down with Dustin, CRO at Fello, to discuss using AI to buy his team more time with customers. You'll hear how he separates a real use case from a shiny one, what his team built that nobody used and why, why he's adding SDRs rather than cutting them, and which SaaS companies he thinks are actually at risk. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: USC Frameworks Fello Dustin Deno on LinkedIn 00:52 - 25% growth in nine weeks 02:45 - What Felix actually does 05:13 - Splitting customer success into three jobs 07:02 - The hours lost before a meeting even happens 09:11 - Why high quota attainment is a signal to hire 13:34 - There's no finish line on data 18:02 - Why they won't sell to a frustrated customer 24:09 - The blog that didn't exist ten minutes ago 28:36 - Go sit where the work is being done 30:40 - Pilot it with one rep and let them break it 34:23 - The tool they built that nobody used 35:56 - Why he's adding SDRs 39:35 - Who to hire for the build team 48:12 - Who's exposed in SaaS and who isn't 55:03 - Take your customers to lunch ___________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  5. Oct 27

    How to Build an Ai-Powered Dashboard

    USC's revenue and marketing dashboard used to run on a hand assembled Google Sheet of about 50 metrics, revised by hand roughly twice a month for two years, with comments on cells, notes off to the side, and conflicting numbers the team had to stop and trace in meetings. Gerry Marletta rebuilt it as a dashboard using Claude Code, and the surprising part is that 98% of it is programmatic, with no model involved anywhere in the math. In this episode, Rachael sits down with Gerry, SVP of GTM Architecture at USC, to discuss how to build an AI powered GTM dashboard the way he did it. You'll hear what had to be settled before a single line of code got written, who decides when two teams disagree on what a number means, which decisions they forced a human to approve mid build, why the chatbot is gated so it can never do the math, and what people are most likely to get wrong on their first attempt. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Build Your Own AI-Powered GTM Dashboard (Guide) USC Frameworks Gerry Marletta on LinkedIn 02:17 - What Monday mornings used to look like 04:25 - Why not just buy a BI tool 05:50 - What had to be settled before any code 13:05 - What a good metric definition has in it 16:32 - The no code version they built first 20:29 - Claude Code as a junior dev you hold the hand of 23:05 - The decisions a human had to approve 24:24 - How you end up with vibe coded slop 29:14 - One source per number, no exceptions 32:27 - Why the AI never does the math 38:17 - Pacing targets and half finished months 45:00 - Why the assistant refuses some questions 48:30 - Who gets to see the numbers 1:01:27 - Where to start and what people get wrong ___________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  6. Oct 23

    How Clay Uses AI in Their Own GTM with Everett Berry

    Everett Berry's view is that an agent is only as good as the context you hand it, and that managing that context matters more than the task you give it or how you prompt it. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds sits down with Everett, Head of Go to Market Engineering at Clay, who has also led their sales team, to discuss how Clay uses AI in their own GTM. Everett gets into why wiring an agent to all your systems over MCP doesn't work the way people expect, how Clay recut territories around account momentum rather than headcount, where he draws the line on vibe coding inside go to market, and which role he expects to be automated before the SDR. Resources Mentioned in This Episode: The AI-Driven Continuously Self-Improving ICP USC Frameworks Everett Berry on LinkedIn 01:42 - What an account agent actually is 04:55 - An agent is only as good as its context 06:03 - An hour of Gong eats 50,000 tokens 10:35 - Software engineers are a year ahead of GTM 12:42 - Why territories are a thorny problem right now 13:29 - Catching Cursor at 30 people 14:58 - The progress you can't see in the data 17:34 - Momentum over headcount 20:35 - Letting the marketing engine find new personas 30:36 - Build the loop with you in the middle 32:32 - Where vibe coding belongs and where it doesn't 40:43 - Why the sales engineer falls before the SDR 46:35 - The list is the message 50:15 - Why Clay avoids cold outbound __________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY & AI ENGINEERING FOR B2B TECH ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

  7. Oct 20

    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

  8. 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

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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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