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To wrap up 2024, we’ve got a spicy episode! Each week, host Scott Barker asks guests two key questions, and this week, we’re diving into their responses to: What is one widely held belief that revenue leaders have that you think is bull$** or no longer serving us?
Featuring hot takes from leaders at HubSpot, Brex, GitHub, and more, this compilation challenges the status quo and might just change how you think about volume vs. value, outbound sales, and hiring in 2025.
Discussed in this Episode:
- The problem with putting too much weight on volume over value
- Is outbound actually dead
- Should you hire for specialized skills or domain expertise
Highlights:
(3:47) The first theme: value matters more than volume.
(4:10) Jon Dick on the importance of prioritizing value, not volume.
(6:29) The second theme: the future of outbound.
(7:12) Sam Blond on why sellers need to generate demand.
(10:38) The third theme: hiring based on past experience.
(10:58) Elizabeth Pemmerl on what to do when no one has past experience.
(11:46) Neal Patel on why you shouldn’t hire a sales leader for their playbook.
(15:44) Dennis Lyandres on what experience to look for when hiring.
Guest Episodes Mentioned:
GTM 99: https://gtmnow.com/gtm-99-mastering-customer-success-in-ai-new-age-jon-dick/
GTM 105: https://gtmnow.com/scaling-to-100m-arr-with-creative-demand-gen-sam-blond/
GTM 98: https://gtmnow.com/gtm-98-from-ic-to-cro-at-git-hub-building-high-performing-revenue-growth-engine-elizabeth-pemmerl/
GTM 121: https://gtmnow.com/gtm-121-listening-to-customers-without-obeying-crunchbase-neal-patel/
GTM 110: https://gtmnow.com/gtm-110-vertical-saas-secrets-unlocking-growth-prices-law-dennis-lyandres/
Host Speaker Links (Scott Barker):
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: https://gtmnow.com/tag/newsletter/
Product GTMfund is Using:
“Most people know that I am almost always on, regardless of holidays, but I certainly am not checking email as much as I normally would. And this year I came back to work and had so many emails in my inbox… the number was scary. But since I started using Superhuman last quarter, I was able to get back to inbox zero within minutes. It helps me and the team be so much more productive.
I don’t know how I didn’t start on Superhuman sooner. It was the most seamless onboarding experience – everything in my inbox synced within minutes. Superhuman works with your existing Gmail or Outlook accounts. New year, time to take back control – 2025 is the year of inbox zero. If anyone also wants to take back control of their inboxes and empower their teams to do so, check out Superhuman at superhuman.com” – Scott Barker
The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Scott Barker, GTMfund Partner, featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
[00:01:00]
Scott Barker: Hello, and welcome to the GTN podcast. As always, you’ve got Scott Barker here. I wanted to thank everyone for rocking with us all year long. Uh, it’s been super fun to get to interview incredibly smart and talented people each and every week. And it’s been awesome to hear the feedback from all of our listeners.
And, uh, you guys are just an awesome bunch. So appreciate you always taking the time to level up with me and our guests. Uh, this week we’re going to do a bit of a special episode. Not only is it the last one of the year, but it’s also a bit of a different structure than usual. Uh, instead of a guest, uh, we are going to revisit some of the conversations that we had this year. Uh, if you are a fan of the pod, you know that at the end of every conversation I ask the same two questions, and one of those questions is.
What is one widely held belief that revenue leaders or founders hold to be true today that you think is bullshit [00:02:00] or no longer serving us? And I thought it’d be fun to take a look back at every answer to this question from 2024. And I figured I would share some of the themes and the ones that We’re just really interesting.
And I think stood out to me.
I think it really gives some insight into what top revenue leaders and founders think are outdated, old strategies, tactics, ways of thinking that, uh, we need to let go of. And, uh, I will warn you, there’s some, some hot takes, some spicy takes, which always makes it fun.
Scott Barker: Before we dive into today’s episode, I want to welcome everyone back from the holidays. Most people know that I am almost always on, uh, regardless of holidays, but I certainly am not checking emails as much as I normally would. I do do my best to be present around friends and family. And this year I came back to work and had so many emails in my inbox.
The number was pretty terrifying. But since I started using superhuman last quarter, I was actually [00:03:00] able to get back to inbox zero within like 20 minutes. Uh, it helps me and the team be so much more productive. Honestly, don’t know how I didn’t start on superhuman sooner. I used to be an inbox zero kind of guy, but as my personal media presence, the fund and our community grew, It became harder and harder to actually make that happen. But I started on superhuman. It was the most seamless onboarding experience. Everything in my inbox synced within minutes. Superhuman works with your existing Gmail or Outlook accounts, New Year, time to take back control of my inbox. And 2025 is the year of inbox zero for me.
If anyone else wants to take back control of their inbox and empower their teams to do so as well, Check out superhuman at superhuman. com.
Scott Barker: Alright,
The problem with putting too much weight on volume over value
Scott Barker: the first common theme that I heard just again and again was this idea of too much weight on volume over value. And this was echoed [00:04:00] from a lot of leaders, but I love this click from John Dick, the global SVP of customer success at HubSpot. It comes from episode 99.
Jon Dick: Okay. This is, this is, uh, your peak, peak marketer right here. I love it. I hate when, I hate when sales leaders like obsess about QL volume or lead volume instead of lead value. Uh, and I think that, it just creates these negative, destructive spirals to obsess about volume because Here’s the truth.
Like as a marketer, like I can get you lots of volume. Actually, you’re just going to hate it. It’s just not going to be good volume. And we’re just going to like, you know, shoot ourselves in the foot. And it’s like, give me a number, give me a revenue number that I have to hit each month and I can decide how to get there between volume and value, uh, in order to, to pull that off and like, um, so I think that’s kind of An outdated notion, uh, is just kind of like obsessing, like how many leads did, did marketing pass and instead like obsess about like, what is the value of the, the lead [00:05:00] cohort that marketing passed?
Scott Barker: Yeah. I like it. I think we are seeing that shift. I will say when the going gets tough, all like, you know, altruistic notions of lead value tend to get thrown out the window and it’s like back to, back to volume.
Scott Barker: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s such bad behavior. Cause you’re just, If the, if it’s not translating to revenue, what’s interesting I find is like a lot of people won’t focus on value. They, they go back to volume because they’re like, I need to show that I’m like doing stuff. And it’s not converting for whatever reason, but I’ll show that I had 10, 000 leads, so I’m doing my job. Instead of, you know, doubling down on value. It’s interesting. But that’s like totally, that’s, that’s like peak marketer. That’s like, that’s about as marketer as it gets, you know?
Scott Barker: think John was spot on there. Uh, I know, you know, from the VC perspective, I see. Decks all day long and people will go through, Hey, we have X amount of leads. We’ve got X amount of pipeline and that’s all fantastic. But at the end of the day, if those aren’t translating into [00:06:00] true ARR, uh, nobody really cares.
And I think for a long time, marketing kind of held themselves to KPIs that were around lead volume versus lead quality. And, you know, in this day and age that is just outdated. And, you know, if you’re not tying yourself as a marketer to true ARR, I think that it can be very difficult to find success and alignment in this world.
Is outbound actually dead
Scott Barker: That brings us to our second theme. One that came. Up again and again and again. And if you flip on LinkedIn, you probably see it as well. Uh, but that is the idea that outbound is dead.
Now I knew that this one would probably come up time and time again, and sure enough, it did,
but what we did here is the perspective that despite what you may read or hear, outbound is not dead. The old way of doing outbound maybe, uh, but outbound will always serve a very [00:07:00] vital role in pipeline creation. And we heard this echoed across so many leaders, uh, CRO at Brex, highly recommend giving his, uh, Uh, whole episode to listen, but let’s hear from Sam.
Sam Blond: there’s this like new meme that I think, um, Is part of like a bigger, uh, point that, that I think I hear a lot from revenue leaders that in specifically sales leaders that I think is bullshit.
So the meme is like outbound is dying or outbound is dead or whatever. Um, I could, we’d spend a whole show on like why that’s not true, but like, I, I, I, um, uh, wholeheartedly disagree. Um, and you know, I can sort of like back that up with data, uh, in a bunch of companies that I work with. And then I think there’s this like bigger point that like sales is not responsible for demand.
Um, [00:08:00] and, uh, I, I think like so much of a sales leader’s success and the success of growing revenue within startups is predicated on the ability to generate demand and in a perfect world, create a demand rich environment. And that is not, if you have a marketing leader, that is not just the marketing leader’s responsibility.
You want to control your own destiny and, uh, take ownership of your success here. Um, and so, so much of my focus at, at all times, you know, talking about spending much time on recruiting. I think the thing that I spend the second most amount of time on is demand as a sales leader. Um, and so, uh, That, that’s another sort of like either like something that’s lazy [00:09:00] or just, uh, a, a belief that I wholeheartedly disagree with.
Scott Barker: Thank you, Sam. And not only did this get shared around this question of outdated beliefs, but it also got shared as the answer to my other question around what is working. So Outbound was actually working for a lot of the guests that we had on this year. Now, that is to say the old way of let’s buy a bunch of leads from a data provider, throw them in some sort of cadence or sequence tool, like an outreach or sales loft, and then start spraying and praying.
Now that is fundamentally Um, and you know, part of our whole philosophy around investing in operator and incubating operator, which you may have heard me talk about, uh, on this podcast was this idea that we can now use artificial intelligence to, you know, go beyond just first level intent data. And make sure that we’re targeting the folks [00:10:00] that have the highest likelihood to be in the market for our product.
And they may not even know it yet, but based on all the historical data that we have of our customers on the market, this is where we should be spending our time.
And I think in a world where we’re going to see more and more. Ai co-pilots, more SDR co-pilots, uh, the rise of the AI SDR. I think folks that are able to bring a human element to their outbound, uh, are going to be the beneficiaries of these changes and able to drive serious, meaningful pipeline for the organizations.
They are a part of.
Should you hire for specialized skills or domain expertise
Scott Barker: The third theme I want to highlight was this idea of hiring for specialized skills. And this came up again and again, and I was super interested by this. Leaders think that a widely held belief that is bullshit is around hiring for specialized skills or domain expertise.
I think Elizabeth Pemmerl, CRO of GitHub, had a great perspective.
Elizabeth Pemmerl: That there is [00:11:00] a rep or a sales leader who’s going to change the trajectory of your revenue growth because they have domain or vertical experience. That is so special, it can’t be replicated. And I think this ties back to the theme we’ve been discussing all along, um, there is no one I could hire today that has five years of sales leadership with AI powered development tools.
That person doesn’t exist. And so we’ve got to make that person. And to make that person, I need a team of folks who are deeply committed to being curious, Going on the journey with customers, listening and learning.
Scott Barker: other leaders like Neal Patel, CRO of Crunchbait, echoed this notion.
Neal Patel: You talk about playbooks, right? Uh, every CRO has a playbook, right? Or a series of playbooks, right? Um, and I’m going to, I’m going to pretend I’m CrunchBase and make a prediction.
Like, I think there’s, there’s [00:12:00] always a place for playbooks, but playbooks aren’t going to be the top level thing. That a really great sales leader of CRO is going to have. Um, like I I’m going to be surprised if a year or two years from now founders and CEOs. are hiring CROs and saying, I want the person who’s got the playbook for doing this.
Cause I just need that playbook and acted in my company. Uh, because while they do, it does matter and you do need one eventually, but I think context is changing so fast today. Now, uh, in, in, in, in all facets, like we talked about AI, that’s just one, but like, like the, the era of spray and pray is also is dead.
And that’s, that’s not new people. I’m not the person. I’m not even a millionth person to say that. Uh, the. The, you know, email inboxes are pretty much all spam now. Uh, so is my LinkedIn emails, like my phone, even I don’t answer the phone or answer texts anymore from [00:13:00] people that like, right. So, uh, so a lot of the ways of doing things like activity.
Sales activity may matter a lot less like quantity of activity. There used to be an old formula where you could be like, you just want to up your number. There’s a formula, you know, you can do and just up your activity in various parts of this formula, wherever you can efficiently. And your, your ARR will go up.
I think that shit’s all going to go away. Um, I think those kinds of playbooks are going to be gone. You have to, you have to, you have to get back to foundation and fundamentals when you’re in it, when you’re, Like when you’re in a, in a, in a new situation, uh, in an existing company or at, or at a new company that you’re about to go join to be their CRM.
Um, and I think it starts with really simple things like what is like, really understand the product, really understand the problem set that, that, that you are trying to solve as a company. Um, try to understand like whether that aperture for that problem set can be broadened. Right. Is there a value out there that people don’t even know?[00:14:00]
Could be captured in another way of saying that is, can you tell, can you teach someone they have a problem? They didn’t even know about, right. Uh, those kinds of figuring that stuff out and really digging into their becoming, like I talked about those three, like legs of the, like you have to, like, you absolutely need to be like, uh, have a good relationship.
Yes. You need to be transactional. Sometimes that like, it’s not like you, you’re, you got a job to do. They got a job to do. You have to get shit done. They want something. Sometimes you just give them an answer really quickly. You don’t have to ask 17 questions to get to the crux of the root cause. But every once in a while, you know, once you know when to pull that card out and be like, wait a minute, we’re going to, we’re going to scratch this one for a little bit, um, you get to that third prong.
That third leg is like transactional relationship, but now I’m your thought partner, but I’m on your side. Like I’m on your side. Yeah. Um, and I think CROs that and sell any kind of sales leader, not just CROs, any sales leaders who, who, who start and build from that foundation and try to develop that sort of principles based approach [00:15:00] to understanding your context and then go look at like the market, like go then do things like market sizing and like Tam and Sam and so on, and then go figure out what motion is it?
Is it a PLG motion? Is it a, Is it an enterprise sales motion? Is it a combo? Is it something else? Like, you know, is it, is it some other, some other modernization motion that we need to do? Is it a comp, like what is it? Um, and then build your playbook for that. And it may even be different in different markets, geographic markets, like SMB, mid market, enterprise.
Um, I think a lot of that’s going to change. It’s going to be really exciting.
Scott Barker: Now, that’s not to say that specific experience isn’t always helpful. Dennis Lyandres, former CRO of Procore, expressed a good framework for how to think about this.
Dennis Lyandres: I think, um, how you hire, and in particular the over rotation, I would say, towards domain expertise or towards someone having been at a specific company, I think is misguided. Um, and so I think a lot of times you get someone [00:16:00] saying, hey, I sell data warehousing technology so I’m going to go hire out of like Teradata or Snowflake.
Right? And, you know, Snowflake has such a halo on it for so many great reasons that, like, I just need to get someone out of Snowflake. And I think in practice what I’m seeing is that, like, if you hire instead, um, for someone who has reported into a decision maker, who was one of those Price is Loft folks, even if they weren’t at Snowflake, You’ll be far more successful.
And, you know, I think like I’ve, I’ve kind of had this hypothesis for a while. It’s bore out for me in a couple of companies I’m advising where they’re like, Hey, like we, we really wanted to hire this domain expertise and we wanted this thing and it didn’t work out. And now they’re hiring just someone who’s a gifted leader, who’s got a growth mindset, who’s able to, to lead at scale.
Um, and truthfully, I think iconic analytics has actually put out like really rad thought leadership on this these days. They call it their. Um, scale to ARR ratio, uh, or multiple. And the concept there is like hire [00:17:00] someone who’s been, uh, a part of Massive Scale and has owned a large part of the business.
And let’s just say it’s a 10x scale to ARR ratio. So if you’re running, you know, a hundred million dollar business, you know, hire someone who’s managed a billion dollar book. Um, and I have found that to be a far better way to hire than, you know, this widely held belief of like, I need to hire someone who like, understands my domain, my customer, you know, build on even more, like, I just don’t believe you find the people very often where they’re like, I have a Rolodex and I’m going to just make you rich by bringing all the people I know.
Cause I’ve sold all these people. So said simply, like, I think hiring for someone who’s reported to a decision maker and has seen that scale to ARR. Multiple is a better belief system for hiring than hiring domain experience, um, and hiring from, you know, that hot company.
Scott Barker: Think broadly speaking, as the pace of innovation continues to accelerate across all industries, Uh, relying [00:18:00] just on someone’s Earned and learned experience in a given category can be tough because the playing field is changing so rapidly. So optimizing for things like grit and things like a growth mindset and people that will constantly learn and evolve with an industry are as much more effective than just hiring that Rolodex that may give you a quick win.
Won’t last and continue to provide value long term.
Well, I hope that was a fun episode. We do have another roundup episode coming up where I will talk through the infamous silver bullet question. I will ask what is actually working for people’s organization. And we got some great, great answers from the past year. And I’ve asked leaders these questions every single week for multiple years now.
And I do it because, you know, it’s easy to get stuck in our echo chambers, but this question opens up the conversation to perspectives beyond that. And I found that almost all the time, the [00:19:00] tactics truly driving growth are outside of that chamber. So hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. Uh, appreciate you spending the time to level up as always with me.
I hope you have a very happy new year ahead and we will see you in 2025.`
