Good day PROs!

There are two GTM roles that are critical to success in today's market. But most of us don't have them.

The Realities of Today's Market

Before we jump into these two critical roles, let's level set on the state of the playing field in which we compete (for self/PE-fund companies in the lower middle market).

• Tons of competition and, increasingly, alternatives (not direct competitors)

• A category leader with 100x the resources

• Overwhelming content "pollution" (from the Buyer's perspective)

• Access to audiences via social platforms decreasing (algos favoring the platform)

• Ad costs nearing the "efficient frontier" (in favor of the ad platforms)

• Email inboxes like Fort Knox

• Phones with AI force fields (especially with move to mobile vs desk phones)

• Heightened risk aversion for companies in consideration

So how do we respond to this environment? We have found there are two critical adjustments that need to be made to the "typical" B2B GTM structure:

1. Get deeper customer insights, faster and all the time.

2. Prioritize monitoring GTM inputs at the system level, vs. individual functions

Most CEOs or Revenue Leaders will tell you they are already these two key functions today, but when we look under the hood, it is evident that this work is at best sporadic, if it's done at all.

The Investigative Journalist

The specificity with which we need to message to our Ideal Customer has never been more intense.

There are over 10 petabytes of information created on the Internet Every. Single. Day. The noise has just gotten too extreme for our buyers to bear.

They just want answers. Relevant, specific answers from sources they can trust.

The challenge is that the depth of knowledge our company has about the market dilutes significantly over time, caused by natural employee attrition and rapidly evolving market.

So how do we create a common, consistent, deep understanding of the Buyer that permeates every level of the organization? The "Investigative Journalist."

Just like a real investigative journalist, this person does not necessarily have to be an expert in the industry (but that will happen, at first slowly and then suddenly).

They do, however, need to persistently pursue a broad and deep understanding of the Ideal Customer to be able to synthesize answers to questions like:

• What are the typical organizational structures and how does those structures amplify the problems solved by our product/service?

• Who are the common stakeholders involved and what other priorities do they typically have to balance?

• What are the non-product related obstacles that often take implementation off the rails?

• Where do various members of the Buyer Group go to learn and seek guidance?

The additional benefits of this continuous cycle of probing and listening is that we can consistently revalidate ICP and identify shifts in buyer and competitor sentiment.

Rev Ops: For Real This Time

The term "RevOps" is often misunderstood and misused: RevOps is a strategic approach that aligns all the revenue-generating functions (like sales, marketing, and customer success) within a company. The goal is to create a seamless process that maximizes revenue and efficiency.

True RevOps involves strategic thinking and integrating data and technology to streamline operations across marketing, sales, customer success and product.

There are 3 core capabilities we seek from this team:

• Creatively procuring data on our market and customer

• Designing and maintaining systems that activate this data

• "System's Thinking" monitoring of performance (via GTM inputs and cohorts)

The fundamental issue with most Rev Ops teams today (at lower middle market companies) is that it is nothing more than the name of the department into which Sales Ops (Salesforce Admin), Marketing Ops (Hubspot admin) and Customer Ops (Gainsight admin) all report.

The "Real" Rev Ops requires strategic leadership. A person with both business acumen and technical knowledge to bring the two together into a system. They have a holistic view of the company’s revenue engine and work closely with different departments to optimize performance.

Now What

The Investigative Journalist role is most often the responsibility of Content Marketing, Product Marketing or both. But that's the problem.

Most companies are lucky to have ONE of each role, at best. That means there is ZERO white space to consistently probe and explore the market and then synthesize those insights to make them actionable for the organization.

This is why CEOs get paid the big bucks. This is a capital allocation decision.

How can we get the insights we need, while still creating high quality content?

Get the insights and the content creates itself. Less is more.

Rev Ops > Sales

Provocative? For lower middle market companies with ACVs <$50K, we would strongly recommend CEOs consider reallocating budget from Sales to Rev Ops.

Instead of a seasoned VP of Sales, consider instead a Director, and shift the budget to a veteran Rev Ops leader.

When value creation is a function of capital-efficient revenue growth, we are much more likely to get there with a leader examining the entire GTM system vs "just" sales.

Besides, the most efficent and effective path to growth may not be new logo sales at all, but product-led or expansion or several motions working together.

Note: The higher the ACV, the more important sales becomes.

What do you think? Do have these roles within your company / portfolio? How else are your teams solving the challenges of this market?

Reply and let us know!

Thanks and see you next week!