GTM Science - A show for GTM and RevOps leaders

Union Square Consulting
  • 5.0 (8)
  • 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. 1D AGO

    FP&A Today Guest Episode: Building back Trust Between CFOs and CROs

    This episode is a guest appearance by Eddie Reynolds, CEO of Union Square Consulting, on the FP&A Today podcast. Follow the FP&A Today Podcast on Spotify here and Apple Podcasts here. Eddie opens up about the often-fraught relationship between CFOs and CROs, drawing on his journey from banking and private equity to account executive at Salesforce, where the company forecast within 5% accuracy despite 30%+ growth. The conversation tackles why CFOs struggle to trust CRM pipelines, what breaks when companies hit $50-100M in revenue, how FP&A and CROs should work together on go-to-market strategy, the problems with LTV to CAC ratio in SaaS, and how bottoms-up annual planning should actually work between finance and revenue teams. Resources mentioned in this episode: GTM Efficiency Pyramid Framework Outbound Efficiency Framework

    53 min

  2. 5D AGO

    What to Do When Your SDR Team Isn't Working

    Before you fire your SDR leader, swap out your data provider, or change your cadence software, have you actually looked at what's underneath? Most of the time when an SDR team isn't hitting targets, the problem isn't the people. It's that the operational foundation was never built in the first place. No defined ICP, no capacity-based territories, no step-by-step process that reps can actually execute consistently. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds and Rachael Bueckert break down exactly how to diagnose what's broken in your SDR motion before making expensive changes. The conversation covers why only 23% of B2B SaaS pipeline is actually ICP fit and what that costs you, how to calculate exactly how many accounts your reps can work without skipping steps, why the top Salesforce reps made five calls a day while the bottom reps made 40, and what should actually be on your SDR dashboard tomorrow morning. Resources mentioned in this episode: GTM Efficiency Pyramid Framework Outbound Efficiency Framework 01:23 - What "my SDR team isn't working" actually means 04:46 - Process vs. execution: isolating where it's breaking 09:50 - Why the SDR manager is set up to fail 23:01 - ICP discipline and the 8x efficiency gap 33:53 - How to calculate your real account capacity 41:56 - Segmentation: why bouncing across 15 industries kills performance 45:55 - What belongs on the SDR dashboard 49:09 - Five calls to power vs. 40 calls to nobody _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY, GROWTH PLANNING, & REVOPS SERVICES ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

    55 min

  3. APR 28

    CRO Stories: Competing, Scaling, and Making Enterprise Bets with Stevie Case

    Before Stevie Case was a CRO, she was the first female professional gamer—dropping out of college to compete in Quake and eventually building games in the early days of the shooter universe. That competitive drive never left. It's the same thing that made her the number one enterprise seller globally at Twilio, and it's what's driven her nearly four-year run as CRO at Vanta, where she's led the company's push from a startup-focused compliance tool into a full enterprise trust platform. In this episode of CRO Stories, Rachael Bueckert sits down with Stevie Case, CRO of Vanta, for a conversation on what it took to move Twilio from inbound-only to outbound, the enterprise hackathon play that blew deals wide open, why she resisted moving into leadership and what changed when she did, how Vanta used sales as the tip of the spear to validate an entirely new market, the counterintuitive bet on human SDRs in the age of AI, and how rebuilding post-sales raised net retention by 18 points. [00:45] Intro to Stevie Case [02:00] Competitiveness and stubbornness as career fuel [03:58] "Why not me?" and overcoming imposter syndrome [07:02] From Quake champion to college dropout to tech sales [09:39] Saying yes to discomfort [11:52] Best seller vs. leading sellers [14:17] Trusting delayed results as a leader [14:29] Moving Twilio from inbound-only to outbound [16:50] The playbook is a hypothesis [18:43] Why forcing your style on reps backfires [22:17] Where uniformity matters vs. individual style [24:03] Q4 2019: 279% of target [25:47] Managing to the maximum possible outcome [28:29] The foundational change behind the blowout quarter [29:22] The Twilio Sandwich: bottoms-up meets top-down [30:16] Enterprise hackathons and the U-Haul story [33:50] In-person selling post-pandemic [35:02] 5x outbound pipeline with human SDRs [36:00] Building outbound from zero at a 100% inbound org [38:21] One-call closes and the original Vanta motion [41:18] Spotting the enterprise signal inside the customer base [47:33] Sales as the tip of the spear into a new market [48:16] Bifurcating the business: downmarket vs. upmarket [49:32] What broke first: quotas, feedback loops, and org design [50:34] GTM under a product GM for a year [52:12] Building enterprise post-sales from scratch [53:19] The Implementation Health Score [55:10] Scaling into enterprise SDRs, SE, and market education [58:14] Raising net retention by 18 points [59:25] The counterintuitive bet on customer success _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY, GROWTH PLANNING, & REVOPS SERVICES ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

    1h 2m
  4. The State of GTM in 2026

    APR 23

    The State of GTM in 2026

    Seven major industry reports. Over 3,100 go-to-market leaders surveyed. $91 billion in pipeline analyzed. The picture across B2B SaaS right now is sobering: 87% of enterprises missed revenue targets by more than 5%, 70% of sellers missed quota, and even after quotas were reduced, 77% still missed. Meanwhile, SaaS stocks are down across the board and the "death of SaaS" narrative is everywhere on LinkedIn. So what's actually going on, and what should revenue leaders do about it? In this episode, Eddie Reynolds and Rachael Bueckert break down the findings from seven 2025 state of go-to-market reports and what they mean for revenue leaders heading into 2026. The conversation covers why most companies are stuck in phase one AI implementation while the winners pull away, what the data says about ICP discipline and why 63% of CROs still don't trust their own ICP definition, the quota attainment crisis and the unrealistic targets behind it, why outbound isn't dead but most outbound motions are broken, and Eddie's framework for where to start fixing it all without trying to boil the ocean. Resources mentioned in this episode: GTM Ops Diagnostic Framework GTM Efficiency Pyramid Framework 00:58 - What seven reports tell us about GTM right now 04:26 - Why most AI investment isn't moving revenue 08:33 - Phase one vs. phase two AI and the 3-5x gap 14:01 - The foundation you need before AI can work 23:25 - How Kyle Norton's team took win rates from 38% to 53% 28:07 - ICP discipline and the 8x efficiency gap 37:18 - The quota attainment crisis: unrealistic targets meet broken fundamentals 55:30 - Handoffs, alignment, and why 54% of teams still lack them 58:53 - Where to start: pick one thing and go deep _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY, GROWTH PLANNING, & REVOPS SERVICES ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

    1h 7m

  5. APR 17

    CRO Stories: Scaling Through Channel Sales with Anthony D'Angelo

    Anthony D'Angelo spent 20 years building channel sales organizations before most companies even took the function seriously. He watched it go from "the stepchild of the org" to the engine behind a $610 million exit to Cisco, a unicorn run at Cato Networks, and a win rate that doubled from 25% to over 50% at Unifi. The common thread across all of it wasn't relationships or programs. It was treating channel like a revenue function and running it with the same rigor as direct sales. In this episode of CRO Stories, Rachael Bueckert sits down with Anthony D'Angelo, founder of Channel 360 and former CRO at Unifi, for a deep dive into how channel sales actually works when it's done right, what breaks when it's not, and why most companies either over-complicate the program or under-commit to the investment. 01:39 - How Anthony fell into channel sales and never left 05:17 - Running channel like a CRO before he had the title 11:48 - How fundamentals took Unifi from 25% to 50%+ win rates 22:35 - When to layer channel on top of direct sales28:04 - Treating partners as your sales team (because they are)37:11 - The comp plan problem that kills every channel program 46:34 - Building Channel 360 and why most companies hire too early 54:47 - How Viptela used channel to outsize Cisco and land a $610M exit_______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY, GROWTH PLANNING, & REVOPS SERVICES ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

    1h 9m

  6. APR 10

    CRO Stories: Capital Allocation Tactics with CMO-Turned-CRO Andrea Kayal

    Andrea Kayal kept finding herself doing the CRO's job from the CMO seat. She was already building the revenue strategy, negotiating budgets across departments, and trying to make sense of how marketing, sales, and customer success should work together. So she made the jump. Now at Help Scout, she runs the entire commercial organization with a capital allocator's mindset, treating every dollar like a board-level investment decision. In this episode of CRO Stories, Rachael Bueckert sits down with Andrea Kayal, CRO of Help Scout, for a conversation on how she builds and defends marketing budgets using the financial facts of the business, the framework she uses with the board to define what enterprise value actually means by the numbers, why win rate is the most important number marketing should care about, and how five product features moved win rate four points after she made the revenue case impossible to ignore. [01:31] Intro to Andrea Kayal and Help Scout [01:55] Help Scout's 50/50 PLG and sales-led motion [03:03] CMO to CRO: why she made the jump [04:01] Two strategies, one CEO: the case for a single revenue leader [06:15] The best CXOs hire people better than them at the job [06:30] The through line across every role: planning gaps [06:57] The Iconic Enterprise Five framework [09:12] Using 3-5 metrics to define enterprise value with the board [10:34] When the numbers say one thing but execution says another [11:42] Being realistic with shareholders about growth [12:09] Negotiating capital allocation with the CPO [13:19] "Allocate capital like a hedge fund manager" [14:07] How to tell the budget story with data and dollars [15:23] The 80/20 split: performance vs. brand [17:08] Getting good at forecasting marketing like sales forecasts pipeline [17:41] Attribution: the big scary word [18:43] Stop chasing perfect attribution, watch the bottom right [20:07] Pulling multiple levers at once [21:15] 30-day vs. 90-day sales cycles and signal speed [23:12] The three-tab marketing budget spreadsheet [26:14] Win rate is marketing's problem too [27:50] The SLA meeting between sales and marketing [28:54] Clear accountability kills finger-pointing [30:43] Building the handoff at Team Pay vs. Help Scout [31:46] Drawing the line: sales not allowed to touch 1-to-10s [33:08] Pricing AI features in a commoditized market [34:31] The consumption-based pricing experiment that didn't land [36:12] How customer conversations forced the pivot back [37:08] Customer feedback vs. product vision: faster horses [38:42] The monthly go-to-market alignment meeting [40:18] Five product features that moved win rate four points [41:17] Using lost-deal revenue data to drive product prioritization [42:25] 80/20 for product too: features vs. innovation [43:15] Every point of win rate is material [44:49] Go-to-market alignment and Pipeline Council [46:06] The CRO as the person with no favorite child [48:42] Why customer success can't be an afterthought [49:27] The bow tie model and the compounding right side [50:30] Current challenges: ACV, moving upmarket, brand vs. distribution [52:35] The mayo analogy for brand investment [55:00] Where to find Andrea _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY, GROWTH PLANNING, & REVOPS SERVICES ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

    56 min

  7. APR 3

    How ZoomInfo Re-Engineered GTM to Shift Upmarket with James Roth

    ZoomInfo had 80% of the Fortune 500 on their platform, but most of those accounts were spending a fraction of what they should have been. Meanwhile, the micro-SMB segment that fueled the growth years was getting harder to retain as free money dried up and startups started closing their doors. Something had to shift. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds sits down with James Roth, CRO of ZoomInfo, to unpack how the company re-engineered its go-to-market from a 50/50 SMB-upmarket split to 70/30 upmarket, rebuilt its outbound motion from the ground up, and used AI to make the whole machine faster without adding headcount. Expect a conversation on the financial logic behind the shift, how to think about capacity planning across segments, what signal-based prioritization actually looks like in practice, and the outbound strategies that moved conversion rates up 25 points. [02:42] Intro and what this episode covers [03:47] The before and after of ZoomInfo's GTM shift [04:18] Why micro-SMB stopped working post-2021 [05:47] Under-penetrated enterprise accounts [06:54] Lowering account loads and resourcing the upmarket [08:31] Budget-neutral resource reallocation [08:58] Why inbound degraded: LLM search and the end of SEO as we knew it [10:12] The case for rebuilding outbound [11:43] Hot vs. warm inbound and how ZoomInfo delineates [14:21] Low-intent MQLs are really just outbound in disguise [15:24] The perennial sales vs. marketing friction [16:28] Deconstructing the MQL battleground [18:07] Tie everything to revenue, not MQL counts [19:03] Signal-based prioritization over lead source labels [20:17] Stack-ranking signals with data, not anecdotes [21:58] "No SDR should ever ask what should I do today" [23:09] The cultivated list: who to call, what to say, why [25:22] Capacity planning for inbound vs. outbound [27:10] Land-and-expand vs. seat-based capacity models [29:13] Bottoms-up capacity planning [31:02] Modeling enterprise after Salesforce and ServiceNow [31:46] How AI changed SDR capacity overnight [33:10] Studying top reps to reverse-engineer time allocation [35:13] Increasing talk time, decreasing everything else [37:28] Territories, segments, and first principles [39:08] From zip codes to in-market scoring [41:12] TAM to in-market: the 100-to-25 filter [42:49] Product-market fit drives territory design [44:23] Reporting and driving adoption for outbound [45:42] Activity is still the baseline, but refined activity [46:31] Signal action rates and unactioned signals [48:23] Reading from right to left: start with quota attainment [49:44] Reverse-engineering what top reps actually do [50:19] Activity per segment: SMB vs. enterprise volume [51:34] Same volume, different activity upmarket [52:13] The big deal wrap: every major deal looks the same [54:04] GTMO: go-to-market orchestration at ZoomInfo [54:39] "See ball, hit ball" and eliminating SDR autonomy [56:14] AI talk tracks, signal density, and the 25-point conversion lift [57:47] Hiring for potential instead of experience [58:32] Where to find James Roth _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY, GROWTH PLANNING, & REVOPS SERVICES ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

    59 min

  8. MAR 27

    The GTM Diagnostic Framework

    Most go-to-market teams know something is broken. The problem is figuring out exactly what, and in what order to fix it. Eddie talks to CROs every day who are overwhelmed, playing whack-a-mole across outbound, pipeline, inbound, and customer success, throwing resources at whatever squeaks loudest. Twelve months later, the same problems are still there. In this episode, Eddie Reynolds and Rachael Bueckert walk through the new GTM Ops Diagnostic Framework: a simplified version of the 150+ question diagnostic USC runs with clients, distilled into 28 questions you can answer in 20 minutes. Note: At the time this podcast was recorded, the GTM Diagnostic only covered 4 areas of GTM. We've since updated it to cover 7 areas, mirroring our updated GTM Efficiency Pyramid. Expect a walkthrough of the four maturity stages and why the order matters, how to use the GTM Ops Decision Tree to narrow focus before you start, the red-yellow-green scoring system and how to build a heat map of your go-to-market, common patterns that jump out when teams see their results, how to turn the diagnostic into a 90-day roadmap with 3–5 initiatives, and why behavioral change—not documentation—is the make-or-break for all of it. Resources mentioned in this episode: • The GTM Ops Diagnostic Framework (Published 03/28/2026) • GTM Ops Diagnostic Worksheet • The GTM Efficiency Pyramid Framework v3.0 • Newsletter: The GTM Ops Decision Tree • The GTM Ops Roadmap Framework • Free GTM Efficiency Workshop [00:47] Intro and where to find the framework [02:07] What the diagnostic is and why we built it [04:40] Turning noise into signal for go-to-market teams [06:38] Why the end result is an action plan, not a PowerPoint [08:30] Why enterprise companies need this even more than SMBs [10:50] What breaks when leaders fix go-to-market reactively [12:28] The four maturity stages: fundamentals, adoption, optimization, acceleration [15:19] How to mentally approach the diagnostic without getting overwhelmed [16:58] The honesty required—good enough vs. fundamentally broken [19:04] Step one: understanding the maturity stages in depth [22:06] Why AI on top of broken process just amplifies what's broken [25:18] Step two: narrowing focus with the GTM Ops Decision Tree [28:40] Step three: the diagnostic questions and red-yellow-green scoring [32:02] The danger of being too generous with green [36:28] Evidence to pull and handling internal disagreement on scores [39:29] Step four: plotting the heat map [40:54] Patterns that jump out—what's working despite being broken [41:52] The inbound-to-outbound pivot story [44:20] Customer success: the most commonly neglected area [47:34] Step five: interpretation and prioritization [49:30] Step six: building the GTM Ops Roadmap with OKRs [51:49] Why 3–5 initiatives is the max for 90 days [53:17] Defining initiatives so they don't become big projects [55:17] Step seven: integrating planning and metrics [56:20] The chicken-and-egg of annual planning without trusted data [59:07] What's intentionally missing from the public version [01:01:07] When to go deeper and when good enough is good enough _______________________________________________________________ GTM STRATEGY, GROWTH PLANNING, & REVOPS SERVICES ● Website ● LinkedIn ● TikTok

    1h 6m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

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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