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Practical Go-to-Market guidance specifically for B2B software and service companies between $5MM-$50MM in revenue.
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#41: Stop Losing Customers to 'No Decision'
Is your B2B tech company struggling to make sense of today's chaotic market landscape? Discover the secrets to economic uncertainty in our latest GTM Pro Podcast episode. We promise you'll gain actionable insights on getting through the saturated software market, understanding buyer cynicism, and leveraging capital efficiency. We'll also dissect the reasons behind the decline of predictable revenue models and explore why traditional marketing strategies like paid ads and SEO are losing their edge. Uncover the complexities of modern marketing as we discuss the escalating costs and diminishing returns of digital advertising.
Don't miss out on this comprehensive guide to planning for 2025 and beyond.
Welcome to the GTM Pro Podcast, your essential audio resource for mastering go-to-market discussions in the boardroom. Here we share insights for revenue leaders at B2B software and services companies, especially those with less than $50 million in revenue. Why? Because the challenges faced by companies of this size are unique. They are too big to be small and too small to be big. This dynamic pushes revenue leaders into executive leadership without a lot of help or support. We are here to provide that support. Your journey to boardroom excellence starts now now.
Gary:Okay, let's get started. We regrettably didn't hit record about 90 minutes ago, because we've been riffing on this topic for a while, so it's going to be a busy day as we try to cram in a lot, but the catalyst for today's discussion was holy cow. We are nearing the end of the third quarter, amazingly, as we sit here in the middle of September and already turning our sights on Q4, which naturally leads to oh, time for 2025 planning. And as we started thinking about that, we really are trying to take a step back and think more about well, you can't really do a plan for the year until you take a step back and try to understand the conditions under which we think we will be operating, and so we're going to take a few minutes just to lay out those conditions as we would see them. We'd love to hear comments back, actually and there will be some here that are industry specific or market specific, or if you serve an international audience versus domestic, what have you?
Gary:But, generally speaking, we believe these to be true. One is that, from a macroeconomic perspective, we are by no means economists, but I think we can all confidently say that it's highly unlikely that we're going to return to free money and rapid growth. Right, we might have reduced interest rates, we might have better or worse economic conditions we don't actually know but I think we can all confidently say we are in a different era that is going to require some capital efficiency. Things are going to be harder than they have been in the past and that's just an economic reality. And part of what contributes to that is a couple of things, and a lot of it is around the overall environment, particularly in B2B tech. So one of those conditions is overwhelming options. In almost every category, even new categories, there are overwhelming options because while there may not be direct competitor or a number of direct competitors in a particular market, there certainly are a lot of options to solve the problem outside of those specific competitors. But for most organizations in the lower middle market there are a lot of competitors in your space 10, 20, 50, 100. And so that, from a buyer's perspective, is completely overwhelming.
Gary:Finding processes to automate we keep finding new ways to create new workflows or doing things better, faster, cheaper that almost everyone has had experience buying software. But they've also been burned by buying software and therefore the level of cynicism has gone way up. So you combine options with cynicism, and that's a tough place to be in terms of actually getting to some degree of value. The second is that we are drowning in information. If you combine the fact that there are a lot of options out there and that people are running very similar playbooks and therefore there is an overwhelming sea of information, not just in B2B, but just in the world generally speaking, if you think about the number of new videos created and uploaded across the globe every day, the number of social media posts, of blog posts, of any piece of content, news, yeah, news, any piece of content. We're just absolutely yeah, news. We're completely inundated with information and it's harder than ever in a buying context for buyers to filter the signal for the noise.
Tiana:Because everybody says they're the best practice, right.
Gary:Yeah, exactly, and we believe it. But you go back to that cynicism and everybody's saying and it all sounds the same because they're all talking about the same value that they deliver Efficiency, yeah, yeah. And I think the other side of it too is that when you combine the macroeconomic conditions and overwhelming options, our knee-jerk reaction is well, more, we need more. We need more stuff out in the world, we need more content, we need more places, we have to keep up, we have to make sure that people see our stuff, which just exacerbates the problem. And then also in terms of the information, is well, actually we'll get to this in a minute because we talk about some of the playbooks that people have run.
Gary:The third component it's making it very difficult for buyers to actually make a decision. Me making a decision that does not go well is more transparent than me avoiding a decision and the opportunity it costs with not doing something. And so, in this environment where there have been previous failed projects, budgets are super tight, so everything has to go right. There's both business and personal risk at stake. That's higher than ever, and so getting it right is more important than ever.
Gary:The other thing and you pointed this out earlier as well. Sorry, tiana, that, because you know, was it 15 years ago, maybe not quite that long ago where Mark maybe 2011, 2010. It's almost 15 years ago. Mark Andreessen coined software is eating the world, and he was right. Like software was indeed eating the world, I would say it's ate the world, right, if we think about all of the processes that are left unautomated, or all the workflows that are left unchanged. And then you throw AI into this and how that might change.
Gary:But the reality is that for every new tool that is put in place, the value that is provided relative to not being automated at all. There's less and less value at the margin. So I think you described it as big swings, Andy, right. You think about the transformation of a company when they go from literally customer information in a mainframe, someplace that's not shareable, to an actual CRM or what have you. It's game changing, right?
Gary:Well, now that we continue to automate and look at those pieces, it's like at the margin, it's certainly adding some velocity and some efficiency, but nothing like when we first did it in the first place. So that's a really good call out in the first place. So that's a really good call out. So all of that leads to the biggest issue that we have in go-to-market in 2025 and likely for many, many years to come, is that we will have a bunch of deals and in no decision, because it is just too darn complex for an organization and too risky for an organization to make a decision and we are not helping in any regard. And I'm just going to jump then to the predictable revenue model if we think about the top end of that.
Tiana:But before I do that, you guys, if you want to jump in, before I get on a roll, yeah, I feel like it's just way harder to point a finger into a no decision than into a decision like. In a way of like, if I make this decision and it has a negative impact on my company, then it's just way easier to identify that I made this decision. And if I don't do anything about it because I'm too scared of the impact that it will have, then it's just harder to pinpoint it. That I just didn't do this, then, therefore, this didn't happen.
Tiana:Yep, I feel like people like it's fair. People fear for their jobs too. I feel like that's a valid point that we should address when actually thinking about, like how to stop the no decision being a competitor to our companies.
Gary:Yeah, the risk appetite is definitely less. So with that again, we're back to conditions in 2025. The other side of it. So this is all when people come into our orbit. But how do we get people into our orbit in the first place? Well, you don't have to spend very long on LinkedIn to understand that.
Gary:The winds of sentiment are that the predictable revenue era is dead, and I think there's some tangible evidence for that. So let's think about the components of that. One is let's talk about paid ads. What they're.
Gary:You know, 15 years ago, even 10 years ago, five years ago there were areas where we could get increasingly better at the skill sets required to do paid digital very well.
Gary:Right, better data, better targeting, better creative, better landing experiences. But two things have happened in that time is one that, because it worked and made economic sense, everybody did it, and so what we're going to see in all these cases is the law of shitty click-throughs has won through and the buyer has become wise to what's happening and they become less and less and less effective. The other thing is that, in our desire to get better and better at targeting and understanding the efficient frontier in terms of cost to Cactail TV, we provided the platforms a lot of data, which they have in turn, used against us, so they now know what our margin are, what our efficient Frontier is, and so it is getting exceedingly expensive to do this, where they pulled all of the economic value out of that equation to their favor. So this is not a you know this is. It is not a place that you can go into and just pour money into and expect some inefficiency and still have it returned.
Andy:Well, you're not going to grow a business this way too. So, especially based on the platforms, figuring out the efficient frontier and especially the fact that it is a high intent place to advertise, people are coming in looking for something and you can get in front of that, but so can 50 of your competitors, so your brand is yours. Sort of Google doesn't even kind of give you that for even a reasonable price anymore, but at least it's yours. Most competition of people trying to get new eyeballs and people trying to get in front of a consideration set for a buying process for someone who's coming in looking for a particular solution, and it's just, it's hyper competitive.
Gary:And again.
Andy:You're not going to grow a business that way.
Gary:Yes, and so related to that.
Gary:Then the next is the inbound playbook, seo.
Gary:That too has succumbed to the law because, again, everybody did it and, andy, you pointed this out earlier Not only did we do it for big broad pools or big broad terms, but we got more and more and more niched as we have more and more competitors niching down, niching down, niching down.
Gary:We got more and more specific on the keywords that we were after, on the search terms that we were looking for, looking for both low funnel as well as top of funnel, to get people in that and in that process back to more is better, the buyer experience, or the searcher experience in this case, diminished. We all have had the experience where you go to search for something. Why don't we even have these AI summaries as it is? Because we just give me the answer. Because when I have to wade through page one, that is basically three versions of 10 ways to do X, the definitive guide to Y, and then I actually click through those things and realize that it's surface level clickbait, that I just don't trust it anymore and so it's diminishing returns in terms of bringing traffic to your site.
Andy:It should be a good thing and on the surface it is a good thing when I search for something really specific and I get results that seem really specific, and then I click in and it's top 10, top seven, whatever it is, and AI is a big part of that. Ai is creating an engine for companies to be able to generate that type of content that gets down to that level, but it doesn't really deliver on the depth that people are looking for. But I'm seeing a lot more AI-generated content that's ranking for compacted search terms.
Gary:Yep, absolutely. Then you have Outbound, which has been bantered about quite a bit here recently on LinkedIn, but I don't think it takes anybody who's spent any time there to realize that that too succumbed to the law, that channel, if you will, which is directly reaching out to buyers to try to get their interest, either by email or by social touches or by phone calls, and that too has gotten to a point where the returns on it are so low that it's almost a fool's errand to do it in the traditional sense, and people are now exploring with more creative ways to do it. But you would argue that every new experimentation, when you turn it on and it begins to work, that you are by definition opening yourself back up to the law because marketers and salespeople will lean into a tactic and destroy it. It is literally a law.
Andy:We've seen some great creativity. We've had examples where we've shared with each other. We're like this is really great, but what it is is it's using a lot of times AI to personalize, which is just a fancy Mad Lib. You're like filling in, like this intense signal over here comes in, you know, let me let me use that in this first line and suddenly it's personalized and suddenly it will grab attention more than not doing that. But everybody's just ratcheting. It's an arms race and and it's it's becoming noise as well.
Gary:So that doesn't mean that you shouldn't explore that and pursue that, but consider that it has a half-life.
Tiana:Yeah, in a traditional sense at least.
Gary:Yes, and then you throw in all of these other things like community-led growth, which was an outcome of well, we can't get people unpaid, we can't get people on SEO, we can't get people through outbound, so let's go where they hang out and we'll go there. It's, it's, it is a tactic, and you know there's definitely some successful stories there. But to lean in that as your only growth engine, again, um has has, uh, you know, some exposure to the law. And then, uh, you know, now the latest craze is the founder brand, the founder-led strategy. Well, that, too, right is. As people get better and better at doing this and we clone it and as it works, we're going to see more and more people doing it and its efficacy will continue to decline.
Tiana:And you're also relying on algorithms and things that you have zero control over. So it's just, it's the 5% in my opinion.
Gary:Yes, very good point, tiana, very good point. So, yikes, that's what we're dealing with in 2025. Those are the conditions, and they are beyond our control and they're only getting worse. So what does that mean for us? I think four points.
Gary:One is we're in an attention deficit era, so in order to get attention, you need to be, we need to be very, very specific about to whom we are speaking and what we are saying from their perspective, perspective, the problems that they're having and actually deliver genuine, value-added information and content. And there's a variety, there's a strategy in what we say, and then there's a strategy in how we distribute it. All those channels we just talked about doesn't mean that they're up. They're just not available to you anymore. That's not what we're saying. But we're saying that the level of the saying that the level of quality that is required to actually drive outcomes in those channels of the content that you deliver, or what you're asking of them delivering to them for value, is higher than it's ever been. So that's number one. And it's so expensive now to get somebody's attention and get them to your site that once they're there, you can't afford to lose them, which means that we have to get you to decision confidence, and there's a bunch of ways that we'll get into that here in a minute. How do we actually deliver that decision confidence? But that is our goal. We cannot afford to not deliver on that and have you go off and try to figure it out on your own. Not deliver on that and have you go off and try to figure it out on your own. We need to be your, basically your advocate, your guide, your travel guide on how you think about these things, Even if it's at the expense of our own product, which is very difficult for us.
Gary:Thirdly, we've gotten you to the site. We've gotten you to decision confidence. We've got to get you to a moment of value, which, by the way, gets a lot easier when you get them to decision confidence, because part of decision confidence is understanding how they get to a moment of value, and so they are self-fulfilling prophecies here. It is a flywheel effect. And then, lastly, once we have done that, in terms of really driving growth, it is then the ability to deliver increased, expanded impact that allows us to share in the economic benefit that they get, which is coming into pricing and packaging. Now we have an engine that will grow where it's less reliant on more and more and more new and more reliant on the expansion of value that is created and delivered once you have that customer. Just that easy, andy.
Andy:Totally.
Tiana:So, okay, number one like how do we achieve this? Well, we talked a lot about specificity, right, because we have to be very specific to to who we're talking to and what language we're using to get to those people. So, like, where do we convey this and how do we start? Like what's step number one here?
Andy:yeah, well, so start by actually describing them, right to them.
Gary:Yeah, first, yeah, first step is we. We need to be crystal clear on our ideal customer profile, and there are multiple steps to do that. Um, there's, so, we would say, in terms of the company. Right, there is what we would call observable metrics, which are things like firmographic company size, number of employees, industry type, what have you? Technographic what is the stack, the technical stack into which it needs to be present for you to have some success, if that's relevant Often it is. And then, thirdly, is what we would call attributes or signals, and these are things like they have a particular number of locations, they are in a hiring mode, they have launched a new product, things that we can see out in the world that indicate that they could be a good fit for us, based on what our solution provides. Those are all things that we can go out in the world and observe and pull them from a variety of data sources.
Gary:The next level down, though, is the harder to get, but there are proxies that help us observe this, but there are proxies that help us observe this, and we need to understand, in the situations where we have an ideal customer profile, to whom do they sell and how do they make money, because that is what creates the conditions inside of their business that actually lead to the very conditions necessary for us to have success. As an example, how is the business organized? Is it international, domestic? Is it decentralized, is it centralized? Does it run in divisions? Does it run as a central P&L? I mean all of those things can have huge impacts on how the business thinks and organizes itself. And then, lastly, and often overlooked, is, from our product's perspective, what are the minimum capabilities required of either the department or the organization that have to be in place for us to have success? You sometimes see this with in the data space, where the set of tools are responsible, or even in almost any automation. There has to be somebody who has a requisite amount of skills or they own a certain aspect of the problem. It has to be in place a certain amount of skill sets for the company to get value out of this thing at all, and if that doesn't exist, then the solution itself can't backfill that hole, and so that's an important consideration as well. So those are all around the ideal customer profile.
Gary:Then it's understanding the buyer and the buyer group underneath that, and we can look at that from a roles perspective, looking at champion, end users and something we call shadow buyers, which are those people inside the organization, directly or indirectly, that have an impact on the decision. In classic case in a procurement situation, is some form of information security or technical compliance legal, what have you? But other shadow buyers can include tangential departments that are somehow impacted by that, or internal customers that are somehow impacted by that, or internal customers stakeholders that aren't directly involved in a decision but can certainly kill the decision, or in many ways also, it may not actually have an impact directly on the decision associated with this piece of software or tech, but actually that they have a competing priority, that's, competing for budget, and so, while they're not going after your particular program, their program is prioritized over ours, and so we need to understand that. Where is that in the organization?
Gary:Then we can get into the dynamics of the buyer and the department itself. What are they trying to accomplish relative to what the company goals are? How are they getting this done today, which isn't necessarily that they have one of your competitors, and what is it about the status quo that makes it tolerable? If I did nothing today, which we're basically saying? How pervasive and apparent is the pain that is created by the status quo solution today, whatever that may be, and how tolerable is it? Because we need to understand that. So there's your first step knowing to whom you sell.
Gary:Very specifically, that is all right, then we get into. How does this buyer, at this ideal customer, actually define the problem? And a problem is actually a component of multiple things. One is they have a desired outcome. There's something that they are trying to accomplish that relates to a business objective. Classic example is we want to automate work. That is not a desired outcome. That is a tactic to get to the desired outcome.
Tiana:Yeah, why do they want to automate that? Why do you want?
Gary:to automate Exactly.
Tiana:What are you automating For what?
Gary:purpose. What does it give you? When you automate this thing right, there's some desired outcome around that, but before you can get to the problem, we actually need to understand the conditions in which this desired outcome is trying to be reached or executed, and those can include what are the macro conditions on the environment, on the company, what are the company dynamics, internal company dynamics, what are the department dynamics? And then a little bit around the current solution, all of these come together to actually influence what the ultimate problem is zones, then the company itself is decentralized. We used to have two or three offices and now we have seven and we're expanding internationally and we have more and more remote employees.
Gary:Department dynamics are we haven't grown at all, despite the growth in the number of business units, and so now we're supporting so many different units, and then the current solution has its shortcomings that create these problems. So all of those things come together to form the problem statement, and it's important that we understand we so often only focus on the problems with the current solution when we don't realize that it's the other aspects of the conditions in which this group operates that actually create the problems with the current solution in the first place. Right. It's because of those reasons that the current solution is insufficient, whatever that is, and then we get to a really solid problem statement to understand what the buyer is trying to do.
Andy:I don't think you can ever understand that too much, yeah, I don't think you can ever understand that too much, yeah, and try and pattern match against that right.
Gary:So the goal, I think, is to understand the buyer in the context of that, because they're really one in the same, and to find the situations where there's multiple instances of a similar thing. Yeah, the pattern matching is, you know, and that's why it takes to your point about you're never done Like, because patterns continue to reveal themselves, conditions continue to change and I think that's the biggest challenge is we do a project, we go away and we look at ideal customer profile and buyer group and problem statements and then we go away for six, nine months. Meanwhile all of those conditions are changing almost daily, that are changing the problem in this state and how we get there. So that was really important as we get to this next piece.
Andy:I found it fascinating this is a little bit of a tangent, but a situation where a company did this enough and talked to enough customers, where they found a customer was using their product in a way they hadn't even really anticipated and it became something that they could not only riff on from a selling perspective and say so-and-so is doing this. It became a way to sell the product also becomes a part of the product roadmap and so on. But, like, if you do it enough, you may find something that's revealing in that way as well.
Gary:Yeah, okay. So we have the ideal customer company, the buyer group and understanding them, and then how the buyer defines the problem, desired outcome and the problem. Now our goal is to get this buyer to a high form of confidence in making a decision, that we are the right solution for them. And the way that we do this is we have buyers are asking themselves typically three primary questions. Number one is how do I know I'm making the right choice? Well, one of the most important ways that we can help them get to confidence there is make sure that they understand the problem, and by that we mean a lot of times they have symptoms of the problem and they will seek to solve the symptoms and they will come to us with actually prescribed solutions. I need this feature, I need this thing, I need that. And we jump oh, we have that feature. And so we jump straight to that before we stop and unpack and say, well, why do you have that symptom? What's going on? It goes back to those dynamics that we talked about earlier. I need to understand that so I can say okay, the reason you're having these problems is because of this, this and this, which, by the way, are outside of your control. They're creating these symptoms in these things and therefore, in order to alleviate these symptoms, this is what you need to be able to accomplish. These are the capabilities you need to be able to have, and then you can go into and here's how our product delivers those capabilities. Also, what's really important is prioritizing those capabilities, because in a world of abundance, there are going to be a lot of things, and if you look at any product in the category, there's the old 80-20 rule, right, every one of them does the same 80%, and then there's a little bit of 10% to 20% on the outside edges where somebody does it a little bit differently, or they've added this bell or whistle or what have you. And if you're not careful and they're looking at multiple solutions, next thing you'll know you'll end up with a feature list that's a hundred features long, but they will never really have categorized or prioritized.
Gary:What do I really need to accomplish to get to my value? What is it I'm trying to accomplish? What is this desired outcome and what are the capabilities that I need? What are the have-to-haves and the nice-to-haves? And that's part of our job is helping them filter through that.
Gary:Second question have I done enough research. What am I missing With so many options out there? And I'm scared to death of making this choice, bringing this in and being wrong. Right, there was that I, that that can very clearly be pinned back on me or my department, or even my company. So how do we do that?
Gary:Well, first of all, we need to help you understand well, what, what is the solution landscape that is relevant for you, given your company size, what you're trying to accomplish, the structure of your organization, and helping you understand what that looks like and at least understanding the buckets of options that you may have. And we are in a fantastic spot to do that because we have this purview, but we can only do that credibly and well if we actually understand our ideal customer profile. We can't be for everybody. Secondly is relevant comparability, which means, then, that for a company that looks like you and the problems that you're having and your goals here are other people that have the same, other organizations that have the same dynamics or have the same dynamics or trying to accomplish the same thing and had success with our platform. We would call that use cases Far superior than testimonials or case studies.
Gary:Right, because now that gives me relevant comparability. I now understand. Okay, I in the sea of things that I need to consider. I now have narrowed that down to a much smaller choice of groups to help me understand what that looks like. Now I know. Okay, it limits, then, the amount of research that I need to do, because you've just helped me figure that out.
Andy:that's really key right, just as a side note is don't you know, don't leave it totally up to them, because they will do a lot of research and it may continue forever, right? So you got to limit it and that way, if you use relevant comparability, it allows you to control that narrative, but it's rarely going to be effective if it's all your own content, if you can add third party credible resources that help shape that. Again, you're leading that. Your goal there is to give them to some extent, a path to an answer, as opposed to just a whole bunch of information. You're controlling that around that.
Gary:Yes, absolutely. Third question how can I be confident that I'm going to get to this promised outcome? That's a biggie. And back to our.
Gary:The degree of cynicism and skepticism in today's buyer is higher than it's ever been, because we've all been through this where we say, oh yeah, sure, no problem, we can do that. Look at all these other companies that have had this success and tell us about the ROI they got and all of these wonderful things. Here's the challenge, though None of those actually match what we would call the experience level. So for an organization to have confidence that they'll get to the promised outcome, what is required for an organization to do that? If they've never had any experience with this? They've never implemented this. It's a brand new tool, brand new solution, and they've got nobody in the organization who's ever done this before. Brand new solution, and they've got nobody in the organization who's ever done this before.
Gary:The unknown unknowns are greater, much greater than those who have people maybe they're replacing an existing tool, or they have people in the organization who have been through this multiple times, not just using it, but picking a solution and implementing a solution and they couldn't be at two farther ends of the spectrum. So we need to understand that so that we can get them to confidence. That here's how I know you can get there, which actually means we probably are going to need to provide more information beyond just our product and how it works to get you to this moment of value. How do I make sure to get you to this moment of value? How do I make sure I get stakeholders to adopt this? How do I build out a business case to take this to the team? All of those things that, frankly, you could insert any solution into the equation and they would still be relevant.
Gary:That becomes part of the product when this is part of getting to decision. Confidence. And then, lastly, andy, this highlights the point you just made, which is trust reinforcement. Every company everywhere tells me they're awesome and that I'm going to get to this promised outcome, but I've done this before and that doesn't always happen, so how do I know it's going to happen this time? Part of that trust reinforcement is showing others that very specifically look like them and that they got the promise, and not just that they got it, but how they got it. What were the steps? How did they implement it? How did they do their? Not just they went through your onboarding, but here's how they communicated with their stakeholders. Here's how they got the integrations to get up and running. Here's how they got their data team to prioritize it so they could get the integration in place in the first place. So we have to think about this is us getting them to a moment of value and giving them confidence that they can get there?
Andy:Yeah, I think about that a lot around. Can I like, in a least common denominator fashion, the scenario that everyone who's ever had success with my product has gone through, and then can I convey that to this entity? And how far up the decision process can I convey that? Can I share that on a website like a project plan that conveys that information? That's what I'm always striving for is, how early can we initiate that communication too, so that people can say, wow, they really know what they're doing. They speak to me in this, know what they're doing. They speak to me in this. The way I talk, especially this, isn't text speak or something like that.
Gary:I can totally see how this works. And back to the point we made earlier if we do that, if, in our pursuit of getting an organization to decision confidence, we're now actually showing them and providing templates, frameworks, guidance on how they can do it, imagine the state we've put them in from a retention perspective. They're actually getting to this moment of value that they wanted in the first place, or their hypothesis around that. And then if we start thinking about, hey, if we actually have a pricing and packaging model that provides for the adoption of additional tools as they get more comfortable with it, now we've really created economically efficient growth engine, and that's part of product strategy, that's part of go-to-market strategy that's a topic for another podcast, but that's part of closing the loop and really generating the flywheel energy.
Andy:As opposed to just to show the other side of the equation. Trying to maximize that sale right around fear of missing out on all these great features we have, and so trying to create that bigger sale up front, that bigger package, whatever that may be, because that's attractive to a salesperson early on, but it does actually potentially the opposite in terms of the net impact on retention and so on. They're not using the features. They're like I'm paying way too much for this. I have some disillusion.
Gary:That's actually a really good point. We, the way that we have structured our revenue team, that actually could be a detriment to decision confidence. So classic case is the way that we incentivize our sales team right If we want to be able to provide, if we have a variety of ways that somebody can get started with us, one of which is a much smaller, maybe even month-to-month approach, where they can get the confidence necessary to then continue to expand and grow, and that is the path of least resistance. But our sales team has compensated a target and there's a 10x delta between theoretically where they should be if they were fully up and operational versus where they start. The salesperson's going to be driven to sell them the moon and get them and try to convince them that they need to be at that level. And here's all the ways that you can do that.
Gary:When you're not reading the tea leaves Like there's a huge amount of friction there. And so what happens? You lose the deal to no decision because you've overcomplicated it, or you lose the deal period and then go someplace else where they could get that.
Andy:There is a whole podcast on the number of instances that a sales rep's compensation will get in the way of decision confidence. I mean, there's probably a laundry list to go through there.
Gary:Yes, absolutely.
Tiana:The solution for that is just change your metrics right. Just the metric on retention should be higher than the compensation on selling more features. So the sellers are going to start thinking long-term instead of thinking, okay, how can I earn more, like in this sales call, and instead of that they're going to start thinking okay, over time this is going to compound and it's going to become just so much greater than this one time that I sold a bunch of features and then they just turned right yeah, and that's going to become just so much greater than this one time that I sold a bunch of features and then they just turned yeah, and that's the sales team, isn't?
Andy:they aren't oriented that way. A simple example would be if you're giving and this came right from the jolt effect, gary right, you're giving somebody a 30 day out clause and a way that could get impacted by sales rep compensation is that they don't get compensated until that actually does close, and it's in the period where they can opt out. A lot of times companies naturally will structure it so that the sales rep doesn't get their commission until that period is passed. So therefore there's incentive to not even offer that Just because it's look, I'm near-term maximizing my commission. That's a natural thing a salesperson is going to do, and by putting that program in place they might be pushing out their commission by 30 days. They might not even offer it, even if it would reduce the friction, even if it would do all those downstream things that you just talked about, tiana and increase the potential for upsells, and so on.
Gary:It really is not that easy, though I mean, the reality is that it is completely changing a dynamic that everybody's used to, which is you get paid when you close a sale and then you throw it over the wall and there's a group that onboards it and is responsible for retaining the customer and even expanding the customer. And I would encourage listeners to actually go back to Kyle Norton's podcast of a few weeks ago, because he actually describes what he went through at Ownercom, which was actually changing that very thing, realizing that, look, it's one thing to close a sale, it's another to close the right sale to the right company that gets to the right milestone. And if I can align I, kyle, can align my commission structure to my reps, to the success metrics of the right customer with the right onboarding and getting to their moment of value, then now we're in a good spot because both seller and buyer are completely aligned on what they're trying to do. Easy to say, really, really hard to do. It actually creates a lot of fundamental changes in the organization. But I think that's where we are right now.
Gary:Honestly, is that everything we just described about the conditions at the beginning? Closing the loop? Here you think about where you are and you start thinking about 2025. These conditions are here, they're immutable, they're beyond our control and they are not getting any better. And so how we deal with that forces us to re-examine traditional go-to-market structures and be thinking broadly about how can we align what we do to what our buyer needs to buy, to have confidence, to buy, to get to moments of value and then to expand on that. And the reality is, if you take it to its extreme, you're going to be revisiting pricing, you're going to be revisiting product structure, you're going to be revisiting product and how product relates to go to market. But it doesn't mean you have to rip everything down to the studs and start over right. This can be an evolution and this is why we want to delay this foundation, because you know, in a subsequent podcast we'll take this, consider this part one, and we'll talk about how you can practically apply it to your revenue engine in right now. Right now, in 30 days, to start to get results from it and then really set the stage for how you can think about planning in 2025.
Gary:Oh, anything we missed. That was a lot. That was dense Hope. It was helpful everybody. But we'll definitely put some topic. We'll send this out. If you haven't subscribed to GTM Pro, visit gtmproco. We've got a newsletter there. Subscribe there and we'll be outlining all of these things in more detail, as this is a big theme for us as we move forward. Andy Tiana, anything to add?
Andy:It's definitely helpful, probably for people to know this has gotten really hard.
Gary:Yeah, and these are some of the reasons Because we love company Indeed.
Tiana:Yeah, I know and these are some of the ways that we're thinking about it to change what's hard for us right now. So, just like, take some of those things and see if they apply exactly to what you're doing. Take some of those things and see if they apply exactly to what you're doing or if you can relate to anything that we've said at the beginning where things are really hard and what's not working.
Gary:Indeed All right. Thanks for listening. Until next week, bye.
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