Enterprise Revenue Scales on Systems, Not Charisma

Machine-generated transcript from the episode video. Speaker labels are not included and some names and product terms may be transcribed phonetically.

[0:00] Most enterprise GTM teams don't lose deals because of product. They lose because the system collapses under complexity. Partners don't fail because they're lazy. They fail because the GTM architecture was never built for them. Enterprise revenue doesn't scale by adding headcount. Rick has spent three decades building and rebuilding enterprise gotomarket systems across IBM, NCR, Honeywell, Cobra Supply Chain Software, and now Gray Orange. You've got to focus consistency and repeatability. How do you drive qualified pipeline? How do you make sure that you're fitting into the right ICP? When you do land customers, how can I get them to that value point as quick as possible? A lot of companies in our space like to focus more around activity rather than outcomes and then increasing the volume of activity that's occurring because normally in enterprise technology rarely do you get 100% customer landscape you get a portion of it. So time to value usually within that first 3 to 4 months is critically important.

[1:07] Enterprise revenue does not scale on charisma. It scales on systems that survive pressure. The winners aren't louder, they're clear. Clear coverage, clear incentives, clear accountability. Rick, thanks for showing us what actually scales when the stakes are real. If this episode sharpened how you think about enterprise GTM, share with one operator. Welcome to GTM Vault, trusted by over 25,000 founders and operators building the future of revenue. Today's guest is Rick Shrader, chief revenue officer at Grey Orange. Rick has spent three decades building and rebuilding enterprise gotom market systems across IBM, NCR, Honeywell, Cobra supply chain software, and now gay orange. He's led SAS transitions, partner ecosystems, global enterprise sales teams, revenue transformations where mistakes were expensive and visible. The core question today, what actually scales enterprise revenue when theory stops working and reality shows up? You've operated across multiple generations of enterprise go to market.

[2:15] Looking across the arc, Rick, what execution patterns have actually stayed constant? Well, I I think one is is that you've got to focus consistency and repeatability based upon a couple of components. meaning that how do you drive qualified pipeline? How do you make sure that you're fitting into the right ICP? And when you do land customers, how can I get them to that value point as quick as possible? Because normally in enterprise technology, rarely do you get 100% of the customer landscape. You get a portion of it. So time to value usually within that first three to four months is critically important. I think uh also is that when you start taking a look at what's the best way for me to make sure that I'm creating repeatable value in a couple of different circumstances. So when we think about when I go to customer A and I get value there and I get referenceability, how do I pick that up, move it over, and now I've got an

[3:25] ICP that is repeatable in the organization and I can keep on driving behavior patterns that are consistent both in terms of selling motions, in terms of product motions and also with implementation teams that may come in afterwards and uh create customer success motions. So I I think execution is critically important to making sure that we're moving away from theory and we're attaching to reality. You've seen this at IBM, NCR, Honeywell, Corber, and now gray orange. What practices still hold up regardless of era or category? I think the things that we're seeing over and over again and what I like to instill in the teams is that let's not get overly complicated with let's say internal dashboards and creating things that look good on the uh on the charts or the graphs but aren't being followed through in the background with team members. So when we think about what some of those database decision making those database decision

[4:38] makers are, we need to make sure that we're attaching those not only to sales but other crossf functional processes in the organization. As an example, sales cannot cannot succeed unless there's also some additional components and reward mechanisms that are based in marketing in terms of building top of funnel and creating that strong rigor around qualification. Can't get if I don't have alignment with my CFO in terms of what do good deal margins look like? How do we get through deal reviews efficiently? I fail. I might say that, hey, it was a great deal, but then two, three, four years later, we find out it's not creating the right success factors. And I've got to hand off efficiently to to services organizations that are going to go there in a customerf facing way, install our enterprise components around the software, get the value out of that

[5:46] technology and making sure that the promises that we made up front were delivered efficiently on the back end and they bring to reality all of those promises that were made during the initial sales cycle. On the flip side, what used to work well in enterprise GTM but now actively breaks at scale. I think a lot of times companies in our space like to focus sometimes more around activity rather than outcomes. So many times we, you know, as the new person coming in, you know, you're looking to put your stamp on the organization from that standpoint of of culture and then increasing the volume of activity that's occurring and it could be things that are around, shall we say, leads, right? If I have coverage when I walk in in terms of revenue target versus pipeline, am I doing something that moves us from maybe 3x to 4x orx and the volume looks good on the pipeline, but in reality under the cover, we're finding out that we're building volume that may not be

[6:58] consistent to what our ICP is or not being referenceable to other customers in terms of that land and expand motion that I just mentioned. I think so many times we have to maybe take a step back, listen a little bit more, understand where is the organization at today from a discipline standpoint and then put into different motions things that are going to drive success in the organization. Looking back operationally, which transition was the hardest to navigate and why? Would you say onrem to SAS hardware plus software bundles automation and robotics? I think early on it was probably license to SAS Rick. And the the reason I say that is that you're changing the culture of the organization and you're also changing the internal motions crossfunctionally across the business.

[7:55] You could always add on complimentary hardware to software in terms of creating more value. I don't think that that's quite as difficult. But I do think that when you move from a license model into a subscription model, you have to change the way you look at services and customer success. Uh because the motions are different. that technology provider is more attached to the customer in terms of delivering value because you want to drive long-term value, long-term revenue with that customer, right? You want to remain sticky. So customer success becomes really big. I think secondarily how you manage financials in the organization. So the CFO and the finance team has to think about what's the what are my new metrics in terms of churn um ACV or ARR sales is concerned about client acquisition costs I think we worry about churn I I think there's a lot of things that from a metric standpoint you think about subscription software on the finance side different than the way you do under a maybe a license capex model

[9:10] and then ongoing support and how you build that support motion. And then I also think that the engagement model with topto across customer versus technology provider that also slightly changes because you want to have more touches with the customer. You want to make sure that you're always validating that executive alignment from a strategy standpoint versus what your execution model is producing. I and then finally I I would have to say that on the sales side with the individual contributors is that they're selling differently in terms of what that value looks like to the customer, right? It's more than just a demonstration model and how you're you're talking about ROI matched up to the associated subscription and then the deprecation of maybe some internal software that's in the customer's environment today. So that ROI selling that value selling that's occurring within your selling organization also changes quite a bit. And so I I think early on in earlier on in my career that

[10:22] was probably the biggest shift in terms of doing it because most organizations only go through that once in their lifetime. And so getting it right the first time is critically important to ongoing success and then also valuation of the organization. When you stepped into the CRO role at Great Orange, what were the first signals you looked at to assess real revenue health? Couple things here as we uh as we started continuing with the pivot of Grey Orange's goto market strategy. I think one is let's take a look at pipeline health. Where are we at with those conversion metrics and do we have a definition of ICP within the organization and then do I have a customer set that fits in with that? Do I have a pipeline that also matches it?

[11:14] So it's an investigation around that and data analysis. Secondly, it's also about making sure that that GTM across the organization do we do we have crossf functional alignment meaning that in this hybrid strategy that we have between a salesdriven company versus a product driven company do I have crossf functional alignment where the product organization is built building new products or adding on to existing products s in our portfolio that align to what we're seeing out in the marketplace today and is providing a level a level of differentiation. And then then the flip side is is that is the sales organization selling to the targets of what the product team is delivering. So it's a kind of a combination or shift of both.

[12:09] Additionally, uh I'm looking at what's the best way for us to quantify lifetime value for a uh for an existing customer. So when you're talking to customers, is there alignment with customers around where they're going, where they see the value, what we're producing and delivering, and are we walking down the same path together? Sometimes that's driven in terms of what the ROI looks like. How are we contributing to that value while the customer pays for the services and the products that they get from us. So those are some of the harder numbers. Some of the softer numbers are executive alignment and strategy alignment with our customers around where they're going. How do they see expanding in the marketplace? How do they grow market share? Am I contributing to that so that I'm a strategic partner? I'm not just delivering tactically on a particular project because a lot of times enterprise SAS technology is yes I need to deliver on a project but the relationship that you develop with customers isn't based on just one

[13:20] project. It's based on many projects over a longer period of time and that delivery mechanism is really important for us overall. What would you say was the the the data that mattered the most immediately and what did you intentionally ignore early on? I think what you ignore early on are some of the things that don't get you to achieve the u the right outcome. And and I think a lot of times sometimes we focus on on numbers that um maybe under the covers may not look right but you have to understand the details. I think churn sometimes is one of them. Are you churning customers based upon the right reasons or the wrong reasons? immediately when you take a look at things churn can be a if if it's too high can represent the wrong type of benchmark that you want in the organization. Other times if the number is low like it is at gray orange but you still have churn. What were the reasons around that? Did we produce something that wasn't aligned with customer

[14:28] expectation? Did the customer change their strategy and go into a different market and now the value proposition for our technology is in the wrong spot? Or to be quite humble about it, did we not do the right job from an organization standpoint on deliverables? Both parties had to disengage with each other and not go down the right path together. I want to dig a little deeper into your operational style in your first 90 days. What did you deliberately not change? Hey, it's a it's a good question. I think what you don't do in your first 90 days is be chaotic in terms of making change just for change sake, right? It's easy to be a a leader walking the door on sales and say, "I'm going to disrupt a lot of things because I know the way it should be." That's not the right motion to take. The right motion to take in my in my humble opinion is take a step back, listen, understand the culture of the organization. Where do

[15:36] they currently sit from a m maturity standpoint intimately understand what the numbers look like and put a plan together and get alignment between the different facets of the organization. Sales has never succeeded being a silo unto itself. I need strong customer success people, need strong finance people, legal services, pre-sales, as well as my sellers. And if you don't have alignment across the organization in terms of where you're headed and what you're doing prior to making changes, then whenever you make changes, your ability to succeed, the probability to succeed goes down. You have to make sure that you've got strong alignment. So, uh I'm a person that likes to come in, understand the lay of the land a little bit more than prior to being uh living in the organization, making sure you have alignment around the plan, whether it may be how you change the forecasting rigor, whether it may be your selling

[16:44] methodology, whether it might be uh agreement structures, pre-sales motions. I think the idea of understanding where you currently sit today in order to you can make the motions to succeed going forward is really important and then you phase things out. Don't try and disrupt too many things too soon in the organization that makes it appear chaotic and not aligned with the strategy of the organization. Because at the end of the day, there's no revenue leader that wants to come in and upset the engine, the monetary engine in the wrong manner. So you're much better in terms of you know analyzing the processes making sure that you're strong around the cultural attributes of the organization make the tweaks that are necessary in terms of giving you success and making sure that you get the respect of the organization that whatever you're doing along the way that that buying and alignment and the adherence to whatever might be new is really going to uh take hold and uh be well embedded in the

[17:57] organization and rewarded from the standpoint of being supported even though I may not be in the room at the at that selling robotics and automation changes category reality. How does that affect buyer risk deal cycles proof requirements? I think there's uh a couple things. Um you know, when robotics, especially in distribution or supply chain, hit the market here several years ago, there was a lot of different thoughts on what that value statement look like. In today's world, things are settling in a little bit more in that the hardware component of the robot. They're uh they're starting to settle out and you'll see very similar models that do the same thing across different co companies. So, OEMs become much more genericized around what uh what their bot can do in the marketplace overall. What's changed quite a bit and has matured greatly is the software component that helps orchestrate those bots in a very complex high volume environment. Those components are critical to the success of an organization. Not that I have a piece of hardware, but how I orchestrate that

[19:11] piece of hardware with maybe three, four, five, six different forms of automation in the environment. And that's where I've seen, you know, strength not only from our company, but also from what I see that the buyers want in terms of how are they going to manage their environment. What would you say breaks if you try to run this like a classic SAS GTM motion? I don't know if there's anything that that that breaks, Rick, if uh you run it as a classic uh SAS GTM motion. I think there's there's things that you have to look out for, right? I think the recognition that you can drive activity without measuring outcomes can be a disruptor. I've seen it before in other SAS organizations early on where where maybe the outcome wasn't front and center, right? It's important for for me to make sure that you take that customer first attitude. Anytime you have a motion where you're describing value to the customer and trying to meet them where they are or clearly understand

[20:24] what's the physicality of the problem, what's the um the challenge that you have in terms of serving your customers whether the customer might be a retail store, another distributor or a consumer. I I think understanding that component. So I I think the key word here is classic, right? If you don't understand your value statement in the marketplace and the outcome that you're striving for and you kind of bypass it and you make the product the focus, I think you're missing the mission of the organization more times than not. The product we sell is important, but what's far more important is what's the best way to serve the customer and focus on the challenge, not the product. Right?

[21:13] Whether I call my my my my product, you know, orange or purple or yellow doesn't matter, right? What matters most is how do I take my technology embedded into a customer's environment and making sure that I can work through the challenges that might be in that environment today and unlock those for my end user right that is you know referenceability that's longtime value that's strategic so I I think the alignment and then how do I differentiate so how do I do some things for my customer that no one else can do, right? How can I be unique, meet the solution that they're looking for or we adapt together? Because I think so many times with the market itself, there's a lot of changes in the marketplace works today from a technology standpoint won't be the same thing that works 3 years from now. There'll be flexibility and adaptability that's attached to that.

[22:18] the problems change, the supply chains will be slightly different. So, I need to be nimble and flexible in the marketplace saying that I'm not just a silo and here's my technology, take it or leave it. It's here's my technology. Let's collaborate on what that final solution looks like for you because they're more times than not, Rick, their goto market strategy is a little bit different than their competition also. So they want to differentiate. So just because I may have done something for customer one and it has some similarities attached to it, I might have to turn it 15 or 20 degrees to make sure that it fits exactly into solving the problem that they want, the go to market strategy that they have and be able to unlock some uh let's just say some secrets that maybe others couldn't do but I was capable of doing for them.

[23:13] And what would you say firsttime CRO's most commonly get wrong in their first 90 days? I think I think it's that that one statement that I made around with um move too fast. Think you know it all. You think disruption is uh early success, right? Don't listen to your teammates. I do think that you know the the log one of the logical early steps is you always want to assess talent. Do I have the right people in the right spot? And then always ask the next question in your own mind of saying, do I have the right people in the right spot at this stage of the company? Because sometimes they may be a good person. They may be the right talent, but at this stage of the company, they may not be the right person for you.

[24:02] They may be fit in a different organization better. They may be a fit in different a different spot in our current organization, but I I think as the new CRO coming in, the worst thing you can do is not listen, not assess and diagnose and not get it that crossf functional alignment with your other executive team members who may have been there a little bit longer. Not that you always want to get the history lesson, but you want the perspective of how did you get to this one spot today and now how do you get how can I help performance move up another higher level? Sometimes it's not always that history lesson of, hey, we we need to do it the way we used to do it, but I think it's just understanding context and perspective as you diagnose in order to make sure it's factored into either the approach that you're going to take or the talk track around acknowledging that I understand this is where we've come from and now how do we move that forward and ask for that alignment? A lot of

[25:12] times I say don't move too fast. Make sure that when you do assess and you put some changes in place. There are going to be some changes that maybe happen a little bit quicker rather than later in order to get the shift to occur. But don't do too many. Be selective on how you want to do that. Phase it out. And I would say get alignment from the rest of your team members in terms of making sure that they understand where you're going so that they can be supporters in the background. even though it may not be their their personal goal or initiative on their side. You've rebuilt enterprise coverage models multiple times. Looking back, what's the most common mistake companies make when designing enterprise coverage? I think one of them is one of the things I just me mentioned keeping either keeping people in the wrong spots on a new strategy not fitting them into the right role right away so you have to do things twice and then not thinking about what's the go to market strategy the north star of the organization and building something that maybe doesn't

[26:20] align with that north star so I would say on the people's side It's really important to get, you know, round peg and round hole early and making sure that if you do need to bring in talent from the outside, make sure that you um you bring the right person in for a critical role and do it making sure that you only have to do it once and then getting some opinions from others in the organization to make sure they see it the same way. But sometimes changing selling or revenue organizations means that you're going to have to reconstruct what that organization looks like. Sometimes it means that sellers that used to both go after new logos as well as managing customer accounts, maybe they need to be unique, meaning that they either go after expansion deals or they're going after adoption deals. It may mean that if you accommodate a couple different tiers of of the market, maybe it means that I've got tier one versus tier 2 sellers. There might be

[27:29] other parts of the organization that are more horizontal like enablement. How do I make enablement a horizontal function rather than a vertical function within certain selling pods? So there's a lot of different design ways to take an enterprise SAS organization that is both salesled as well as productled in a hybrid type environment. But I I think if you look at your northstar, understand where you need to take the business and construct a a selling motion as well as an organizational chart that is in alignment with that, you're going to get a lot of traction earlier rather than later and not have to redo things several times in order to feel like you got the right motions moving forward. Where do teams tend to overengineer too early as they move up market? I think it's that top of funnel, Rick. I would say that's one area where when you say I'm going to align on a go to market strategy, I'm going to be strict around what our ICP looks like and my numbers may not look right today. I think

[28:41] sometimes you overengineer it and you say, you know what, let's uh let's hire a bunch of business development people in order to get to a higher level of coverage, a coverage model that maybe drives you to six or 7x. And you find out that sometimes if you don't do your qualification correctly on the front end, that maybe that go to market motion is a mistake. You don't get what you deserve there. And the data in one aspect might say you're doing a doing a great job. The numbers look great, you know, and there's a lot of right and you found find out that hey, I didn't do the right thing up front. And we looked at it as more volume rather than quality. I think there there needs to be a balance between am I getting the volume at the right quality? and I'm being strict and I'm I'm having cadence and rigor rather than just looking to build activity that may not translate into uh and when it comes to ownership where do teams usually get it wrong in the early stages you know I I I think there's a lot to be said around you know when you look at

[29:54] building a sales organization you say I've got I've got marketing on the inbound outbound side I've got several different digital channel channels also that are fairly active. I've got that business development activity that's working and then we talk about the handoff to the selling organization and then we're talking about the selling organization then handing off to a service or customer success organization after they they go live. I don't think that in every situation are we doing an endtoend view of what that customer journey looks like and how were things tied together in terms of ownership. Right? A lot of times we look at it and say did business development get their job done the seller get their job done customer success do it and then the patient died and then during that journey can I get good endtoend execution there I think when you map out your customer journey you have to define who's the person that owns or the

[31:02] organization that owns that customer journey how do we make sure that the handoffs are solid ID they're well defined entry and exit criteria and what's the best way for me to manage that internally and give visibility to that. I think sometimes we we c we can easily celebrate the success of the vertical pillars in that operational model but in reality the horizontal model is the most important in terms of making sure that end to end execution happens and uh we don't end up with the unfortunate incident of operation was a success but the patient died. I think you have to take a look at it from the standpoint of making sure that your handoffs are solid, your entry and exit criteria are solid, and you have metrics that um that keep that put together in the right fashion.

[31:55] How do you decide whether to start with direct sales or bring partners in? I think it depends on, you know, where you want to go as an organization. In each and every case, specifically for me, it's been more along the ways of I want both. I want the best of both. There's uh go to market models that might say, "Hey, I just want to be an indirect seller." Others say, "Hey, I want to be a direct seller." I think they, you know, to be fair, the um the go to market engines that I've been a part of, it's been a more of a question of how do I get the best of both? defining a revenue organization that one has a direct sales team and I have strategic customer relationships that we intimately manage in the organization and we have strategy alignment with our customers for the lifetime of that relationship and a lot of times that's long-term by long term I mean 15 20 years and more on the flip side of that from a reach perspective if you're friendly in your ecosystem on the business side. I always think that it's

[33:05] an advantage to have a partner ecosystem that's healthy and vibrant aligned with uh the culture of your organization and has a similar model from a goto market standpoint whether it might be complimentary to them or supplementary to them is almost irrelevant. But I I think having that alignment with the partner ecosystem is really important because it can help you achieve certain goals geographically from an efficiency standpoint. I may not have the reach to say maybe the dock area of AMIA, but if there's some solid partners there that are aligned with the technology that we have and I'm able to give them another revenue stream and vice versa for them to us, then I'd be foolish to not have an indirect model in that uh geography.

[33:58] It's the same way with uh maybe tiers of the market. Maybe there's a tier of the market that you're going after today or a specific market vertical. And if I'm in the consumer goods market today, but I want to be in the farmer market tomorrow, there might be specialists that have great industry knowledge that know the application of my technology in that market vertical and we can get early traction and rapid rapidly grow a revenue stream in that market vertical. So, I think it's highly dependent around what your northstar from a GTM standpoint looks like, but I'm a big fan of making sure that you can get the best of both worlds and take it to the next level. Allow partners to be uh a part of the organization and create the organization where partnerships are a natural extension of your direct cell.

[34:49] How do you know when it's time to split enterprise from mid-market versus keeping one motion longer than feels comfortable? Yeah, that's a that's a really it's a good question. I think one is you have to look at your technology and say is it a fit for the other market that you're not in. So a as an example, if you're in the enterprise market today and you want to be a core player in the midmarket, do you have things with your technology that kind of honor the characteristics of that big market? As an example, can I get a time to value that is indicative to that being a short period of time? Do I produce technology that has the right margins and efficiency embedded in it that that new pricing model for that market or is going to be efficient for the buyers in that market and fit their budgets? Am I fixing the challenges of that market with my technology that might be at a smaller scale but stretch out wider to different operational areas that I don't do in the enterprise market. So I I think you have to take a

[36:02] look at the characteristics of that market. Can I get some traction there? And then to your point, Rick, you know, is it better for me to go direct and hire a direct sales team that might be very well positioned for that mid-market or should I test that first and maybe go into a couple partnerships that can utilize the relationships that maybe they've built that correspond to my target account and I can support them with experts on the product, maybe even uh some additional marketing efforts to get them going, But again, I can move quickly in terms of deciding is that something that is going to work or was it just overly ambitious? I want to dig deeper on this issue of specializations. Do you think teams tend to succeed more by starting regional first or going vertical early and why?

[36:57] So regional versus vertical, I think it's it gets back to that north star on where you want to go. I would say it's typically a combination of both. I think when you take a look and say initially if I'm building out, especially from a startup standpoint, am I being really tight and can I deliver to a target that is based upon a certain tier of the market and a certain market vertical and making sure that you hit it hard and you're successful early on whatever that time to value is. and can I get reference referenceable clients there quickly? I think it's really important to be successful in terms of whatever you pick and usually smaller is a little bit better than bigger. If you try to get too big too fast in terms of satisfying many different personas and many different facets of the market, typically a tier of the market might be overwhelming rather than trying to be in succinct around a market vertical or subvertical in a certain tier. be good at that and then there'll be more than enough time to expand and easily

[38:13] evangelize because you're building on a solid foundation. Being able to solidify around something that's foundationally correct for the business is really important and then making sure that you're taking those success factors elsewhere. Trying to be too accommodating to too many positions in the market is usually not uh a recipe for success. I know some people have done it but the uh percentage of risk is very high. At Corber partners drove roughly 30% of total pipeline. What made that partner channel productive instead of performative? I think what uh I think one is first you've got to create the right motions internally on what you're going to do with partners, right? at uh at Kerber we were successful around partners that were implementers, partners that were sellers, partners that were a combination of both. And then there was other partners that were industry experts and they were more consultants rather than either of the two former uh types that I mentioned. So I I I think one is you have to be natural in your

[39:22] emotions internally and making sure that your behavior patterns, your relationship building and the natural motion of interacting with partners isn't something that is a surprise to the organization. Nor is it overly competitive. There may be situations where customers could be compet partners could be competition in one area but they could be collaborators and great business partners in another opportunity. So I I I think you just need to feel sometimes comfortable with that uncomfortable motion but it lends itself to value more times than not that both parts of the organization. So I I would say one is let it be natural. design your system internally between what your rigor, your cadence and your market behavior looks like in both sales and marketing as well as uh services and support. And I think for the most part you'll have success in terms of building that out and then have a cadence that is regular with your uh with your partners meaning that whether it's pipeline sharing doing early discoveries in accounts understanding what deal structures look like being supportive

[40:36] when times get tough because not every project goes well. So, uh, when projects do hit a a pothole along their journey, that you're doing a good strong you're a good strong supporter of what their motions are so that they can work through their challenges efficiently and uh, you're being viewed as you're treating your partner the same way you would an end customer. You know, where would you say partners should never sit in the funnel? Well, I think I think first of all you have to think of partner opportunities the same way you think of direct opportunities. So when you think about how do I put together a total pipeline, how do I manage that? The selling methodology and the uh the grading of where you're at in a sales stage and what that exit and entry criteria is for each and every stage. You have alignment with your partner. where they shouldn't sit is in a different methodology spectrum in a different cadence. I think once you start getting further and further away from what you feel is the right rigor and cadence with your direct team and the partner team isn't a part of that then I start I think you start losing some of your accuracy and benefits

[41:50] around those deals and you find that if you have to use two systems you're probably not going to be uh effective in terms of managing what the outcome should be responsibly where does GTM architecture quietly kill growth post before anyone notices. I think it goes back to my statement before, Rick, on where you're um where you're focused on activity and not outcomes. It's easy to look at dashboards that indicate activity, but if you're not getting the right outcomes, there's a problem somewhere along the line. Activity is important, but it's not the winner. At the end of the day, we're looking at growing revenue. And when you look at the structure of what's being put together in that engine and how you manage the rigor and the cadence around that, it's really important to make sure that you're not overly focused on hey this is the volume but and the activity but rather what's the quality of that and do we have transparency around that through the different facets of the organization. I'm a big proponent of making sure that transparency with the services organization, the financial

[43:03] organization, customer support occurs all the way through pipeline analysis. And sometimes that's not a metric, but rather a behavior pattern that is as part of the cadence that I think is really important. Most CRO complain about forecast accuracy. What usually break first? Would you say it's data, incentives, or behavior? I I I think a lot of times sometimes it breaks down because you don't have the right incentives in place. I'll give you an example. When you're incenting business development people to schedule meetings, but the meeting isn't adhering to ICP and then how it translates into my conversion rate to sales accepted leads, we've lost, right? because they're getting paid for making meetings and the meetings may not be the most qualified nor the most productive for the rest of the organization. The outcome that we're focused on is obvious close deals. But if we're taking top of funnel and that isn't in alignment to what the outcome is, then we're not we're not architecting the system in the right way. So you have to have the right behavior system supports in order to get

[44:17] the right outcome. Enterprise revenue does not scale on charisma. It scales on systems that survive pressure. The winners aren't louder, they're clear. Clear coverage, clear incentives, clear accountability. Rick, thanks for showing us what actually scales when the stakes are real. If this episode sharpened how you think about enterprise GTM, share with one operator. Tech founders and VCs careers lessons GTM