--- title: "I Don't Want Your Product. I Want Your Expertise." episode: 102 podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast" publisher: "LeanScale" guest: "Noah Marks" guest_title: "SVP of Customer Success & Operations" date_published: 2026-08-24 date_modified: 2026-09-03 duration: 00:59:39 word_count: 11096 topics: ["revenue-operations", "gtm-strategy", "ai-in-gtm", "sales-leadership"] canonical_url: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/noah-marks-gtm-council-buy-expertise-not-products/ source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge" license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast." --- # I Don't Want Your Product. I Want Your Expertise. _GTM Council co-founder Noah Marks on why software is becoming a services industry, and how to become the pipeline czar at your company_ **Episode 102 · The LeanScale Podcast** Noah Marks, SVP of Customer Success & Operations (ECI Software Solutions) · Hosted by Anthony Enrico Published August 24, 2026 · Updated September 3, 2026 · 00:59:39 Canonical: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/noah-marks-gtm-council-buy-expertise-not-products/ **Topics:** Revenue Operations · GTM Strategy · AI in GTM · Sales Leadership ## Executive summary Noah Marks has spent a decade building go-to-market engines at Salesforce, Okta, WalkMe, Udemy and Diligent, and is doing it again as SVP of Customer Success & Operations at ECI Software Solutions. He co-founded GTM Council ten years ago as a dozen ops leaders comparing notes because nobody would tell them the truth about the tools they were being forced to implement; it is now around 150 senior operators. He has reached a conclusion that should unsettle vendors: he does not want to buy products any more, he wants to buy expertise. The breaking point was compensation. Five or six people, an expensive tool, roughly a million dollars a year, an excellent team — and once the attainment charts were done, deciding next year's plan still came back to him. His diagnosis of why so many GTM vendors stalled is that their CEOs were good CEOs who had never sat in the operator's seat, and some were pushed by investors to broaden TAM in ways that removed the depth their customers needed. That leads to build versus buy, the topic GTM Council returns to every time. The barrier has collapsed — he can now build what he used to threaten to build. The formulation the community keeps landing on is buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence: spend effort on what makes you unique. His warning is that most people reaching for advanced AI capability do not have the right data, are not looking at the right data, and have the calculations wrong. Anthony's version: your AI strategy is a data model problem, because the LLMs have plenty of horsepower. On whether services revenue is still SaaS, Noah's position is that recurring services revenue is services-as-a-software-as-a-service — he does not care whether the answer comes from software, AI or a human. Anthony adds the margin argument: software falling from 90% toward 60–70% as LLM costs bite against services already there. Noah adds near-zero churn risk for an embedded vendor, and the older Tableau lesson that it was never about the best product but the favourite one. What he wants is full accountability: buy the outcome, not the tool. Two blunt sections close it. If a CRO can vibe code your product, you may not have a product — the sales layer is most exposed because much of it is administrative capacity, and Noah is openly fatigued by the LinkedIn discourse since the demos are rarely original. And he offers a bet: audit any sales team and the three weaknesses will be reps unprepared for the conversation, inability to ask discovery questions and listen, and sheepishness on pricing. Finally the career advice — become the pipeline czar. Own the model, understand the levers, predict quarters forward, and you are the source of truth. In a fundraise or exit that is worth tens of millions, because the story becomes a math problem. ## Key takeaways 1. **Buy the outcome, not the tool** — Noah's central position: he does not want another vendor, he wants their expertise, and full accountability should sit with the vendor. He is trying to drive revenue growth and customer success — the tools exist only to deliver that, and they have multiplied. _Why it matters:_ A vendor that will not take accountability for the outcome is competing on features against a dozen near-identical products, with more arriving weekly. _For:_ Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders, Founders 2. **The compensation story is the whole argument in miniature** — Five or six people and an expensive tool, roughly $1M a year, an excellent team — and once the attainment charts and distribution were done, deciding next year's plan still landed on Noah's desk. His reaction was: why am I doing this? More broadly, Noah reckons a customer taps only 50–60% of a product's capability, then needs one team to learn it, another holding the expertise about what to do with it, and a leader deciding where it sits in strategy. _Why it matters:_ Test any vendor relationship by asking who holds the judgement at the end. If the analysis arrives and the decision is still yours, you bought a tool, not a partner. The true cost of a tool includes the internal capability required to extract value from it — overhead an expertise-led vendor could absorb. _For:_ Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders 3. **GTM vendors stalled because their CEOs never sat in the seat** — Noah's diagnosis of the past decade: many were genuinely good CEOs but not operators. He has repeatedly threatened to build his own tool because the one he needed did not exist — what is missing is someone who has lived the operator's life. A second failure mode: investor pressure to broaden TAM repeatedly removed the exact depth Noah needed from companies he had rated highly. _Why it matters:_ Evaluate founders on whether they have done the job, not only on whether they run a good company. Depth of lived experience is what produces a product that anticipates rather than follows. Ask a prospective vendor where they intend to go next — a more profitable business can be directly detrimental to the customers who bought depth. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders 4. **Buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence** — The formulation GTM Council keeps returning to. You can build almost anything now, but the question is whether you should, and whether you can keep evolving it. Focus building effort on what makes you unique. _Why it matters:_ Anthony's corollary: do not vibe code a data warehouse or a CRM. Build the context layer and semantic model that any AI or agent layer depends on. _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Founders, Revenue Executives 5. **Most people reaching for advanced AI do not have the data right** — Noah's observation is that people are attempting advanced-degree AI capability without the right data, without looking at the right data, and with the calculations to produce it wrong. _Why it matters:_ Anthony's framing from a talk he is preparing: your AI strategy is a data model problem. The LLMs have plenty of horsepower; the foundational layers are the constraint. _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders 6. **Recurring services revenue is still SaaS** — Noah's position is that as long as it recurs, services revenue is services-as-a-software-as-a-service. He does not care whether an answer comes from software, AI or a human — he wants the answer. Anthony extends it on margin: software is falling from ~90% toward 60–70% as LLM costs bite, while good services businesses already run at 60–70%, so at comparable margin and recurrence the multiples should not diverge. _Why it matters:_ The delivery mechanism is the vendor's optimisation problem, not the buyer's evaluation criterion. Packaging expertise as recurring revenue is a legitimate model rather than a margin compromise. The historic multiple premium rested on a margin gap that is narrowing, which changes what a services-heavy model is worth. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives 7. **An embedded vendor has near-zero churn risk** — Noah's retention argument: if someone is embedded in your team and you lose them, you lose that capability. A vendor driving real value in that position faces essentially no churn risk, and retention metrics go through the roof. _Why it matters:_ Embedding is a retention strategy as much as a delivery model. It also raises the switching cost in a way feature parity cannot. _For:_ Founders, Customer Success, Revenue Executives 8. **The favourite product beats the best product** — A lesson Noah traces back to Tableau in his banking days. No product does everything you want, but expertise about your customers earns passes that features never will. _Why it matters:_ Relationship depth converts product gaps into tolerable ones. Without it, every missing feature is just technology falling short. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, Customer Success 9. **Package your best practices or buyers assume you don't have any** — Noah's challenge to vendors: there are baseline best practices that apply to seventy per cent of the universe. Ship them as defaults out of the box. And stop making customers ask the AI what is going on — tell them. _Why it matters:_ "If you don't package it, I'm going to assume you don't know it." Default configuration is a credibility signal, not a convenience feature. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives 10. **If a CRO can vibe code your product, you may not have a product** — Noah thinks the sales portion of the stack is most exposed, because much of the value is administrative capacity — capturing CRM data, knowing what to ask, removing admin that consumes two thirds of a rep's time. Marketing and post-sales are more nuanced and harder to replicate. _Why it matters:_ Vendors whose value is bandwidth recovery are the most replaceable. He is also candid about being fatigued by the LinkedIn vibe-coding discourse — the demos are rarely original and the real question is what it is getting you in the workflow. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders 11. **Have a point of view or lose mind share** — Whether operator or vendor, a weak position loses attention. Noah notes vendors taking strong stances are being rewarded for it even where the stance may not be right, because people want rationale and logic behind a direction. _Why it matters:_ If you have no perspective, you are not digging in enough. Vibe coding's real value is that it permits rethinking from ground zero rather than iterating on what you already did. _For:_ Founders, RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives 12. **The three weaknesses on every sales team** — Noah offers to buy coffee for anyone who disagrees. One: reps are not prepared for the conversation. Two: they cannot ask good discovery questions and do not listen enough to follow up — he thinks a decade of Zoom calls has eroded this. Three: they are sheepish on pricing. _Why it matters:_ The top three problems are never product understanding. They are fundamentals — know who you are talking to, be inquisitive, and state the price with confidence and then be silent. _For:_ Sales Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders 13. **A CRO is an architect, not a VP of Sales with a new title** — Noah's view is that the title became fashionable but the job is connecting the pieces — infrastructure, resources, how to drive it. Many sales leaders dislike that work and want to be in deals, which is why ops leaders are increasingly becoming CROs. _Why it matters:_ The role belongs at the table architecting where the business goes. COO is equally plausible for a go-to-market-leaning operator. _For:_ Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders, Founders 14. **Become the pipeline czar** — Pipeline is the one thing everyone in the company can affect. Own the model, the coverage needed, the pipe-gen needed, who builds it and what happens to it — and most importantly predict it multiple quarters out, which is the only way to forecast future quarters. Noah's finance lesson underneath it: data is objective but interpretation is not — the same dataset can support two opposed conclusions depending on measurement, timing or filtering, and in banking people would start with the answer and build the model to fit. _Why it matters:_ Do that for a CEO and you are the golden child. In a fundraise or exit it is worth tens of millions, because the story becomes a math problem with real multi-year data behind it. Owning the model means owning the source of truth, so understanding the levers matters more than producing the chart. Anthony's version, from his CRO Tom Miller: torture the data long enough and it will tell you anything you want. _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders 15. **A good ops person makes the whole company better, not just their boss** — Noah's caution is that reporting into a CRO focused on one world makes you successful for that leader without thinking about everything else — which is why he believes the role should sit alongside rather than beneath. _Why it matters:_ Ops has visibility across product, marketing, sales, post-sales and support, and sits on the gaps between them. "Good ops person, you should help the entire company do well, and therefore the valuation goes up, and everybody wins." _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Founders, Revenue Executives ## Frameworks ### Buy Expertise, Not Products (04:14) **Definition:** Selecting partners on thought leadership first and technology second, and paying a premium for a forward-deployed style engagement that becomes part of the operating rhythm rather than a tool handed over. Noah's conclusion after realising that the expensive comp tool and excellent team still returned the decision to him. The technology moat is gone, so expertise the customer can learn from is what remains. ### Buy the Infrastructure, Build the Intelligence (33:40) **Definition:** Purchase the commodity layers — warehouse, CRM, the plumbing someone else should think about — and build only the intelligence and context that is genuinely unique to your business. The answer GTM Council keeps converging on. The test is not whether you can build it but whether building it is where your time creates differentiation, and whether you can keep evolving it. ### Services as a Software as a Service (16:10) **Definition:** Recurring services revenue treated as SaaS, on the reasoning that the buyer wants an answer and does not care whether it came from software, AI or a person. Combined with the margin convergence — software falling toward 60–70% as LLM costs bite, good services already there — and near-zero churn risk from embedding, the multiple gap becomes hard to justify. ### Favourite Product, Not Best Product (20:44) **Definition:** Customer preference is earned through expertise and presence rather than feature completeness; no product does everything, and the favourite one gets passes the best one does not. Noah traces this to Tableau in his banking days, and points at ECI's decades of vertical-market expertise as the modern version — the technology plus really understanding the market. ### The Three Weaknesses on Every Sales Team (35:55) **Definition:** Reps unprepared for the conversation; inability to ask and follow up on good discovery questions; sheepishness on pricing. Offered as a standing bet — Noah will buy coffee for anyone who audits their team and finds otherwise. The point is that the top three are never product understanding but fundamentals. ### The Pipeline Czar (47:37) **Definition:** Owning the pipeline model end to end — coverage, pipe-gen, who builds it, what happens to it, the levers that move it — and being able to predict it several quarters forward. Pipeline is the one thing every function can affect, which makes it the source of truth. Noah's claim is that this is how an operator becomes indispensable, and in an exit it converts a narrative into a defensible model. ## Quotes _Speakers inferred from an undiarized transcript — verify before attributing._ > "If you want to seem like a god, become the pipeline czar at your company." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (00:00) > "I don't want to buy another tool. I want to buy that expertise." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (04:46) > "That's the moat that's going to separate the new class of AI companies out there from all the rest." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (05:12) > "Anyone who's been in RevOps longer than a week knows that the tool is like 10% of the battle." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (05:35) > "I'm frustrated that it still has to come to me to push a vendor. I want the vendor to come and blow my mind." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (07:22) > "Somebody that's coming in with a slice of my mind share, you should be better than me." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (07:38) > "I think there was too many vendors over the past decade where the CEOs were really good CEOs, but they weren't operators and that was a big challenge." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (09:01) > "So by trying to make a more profitable business that was detrimental to my world." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (10:08) > "I'm looking at thought leaders first and then the technology and capability second." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (10:41) > "The biggest topic in the GTM council for anything we go to always comes back to build versus buy." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (11:45) > "You can build just about anything and you can build it to what you think you need to have it today. But should you be doing it?" > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (11:58) > "I think services revenue, as long as it's reoccurring, is still SaaS." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (16:10) > "I don't care what software. I don't care what's AI built. I don't care what's a human. I'm just trying to get to the answer." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (16:27) > "Your mode of technology is gone." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (17:44) > "It wasn't about being the best product, it's about being the favorite product." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (20:49) > "I think full accountability needs to rely with that vendor." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (22:21) > "I don't need more tools. Nobody needs tools." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (22:53) > "I want somebody who's vested in my success, hands down." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (24:15) > "If you don't package it, I'm going to assume you don't know it." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (25:53) > "The problem is if you don't, we're just going to go build it." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (26:08) > "I think that if you have a product that can get vibe coded by a CRO, you do not have a product." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (26:48) > "I'm tired of hearing it because everything that somebody has done is, is not unique." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (29:31) > "I think if you're an operator or a vendor and you do not have a strong point of view, you're going to get lost." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (31:33) > "If you don't have a perspective, you're not digging in enough." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (32:03) > "Let's buy the infrastructure and let's build our intelligence." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (33:40) > "Most people are trying to do like advanced degree AI capabilities and they don't even have the right data." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (34:14) > "Your AI strategy is a data model problem. These LLMs have plenty of horsepower for you to do whatever you want." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (34:41) > "If you investigated your sales org and you looked at the three biggest weaknesses of any sales team or an individual, I will guarantee you there are three things." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (35:55) > "It's not product understanding, whatever else. It's basic fundamentals around knowing who you're talking to, being inquisitive." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (37:09) > "It's not dialing in your N8N flows and building another agent that's going to move the needle. It's doing the fundamentals extraordinarily well." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (38:08) > "Fundamentally a CRO is an architect." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (42:19) > "If you're frustrated by the decisions that your executive team is making, you might not be at the right company." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (44:20) > "The pipeline is something that everybody in the company can touch." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (47:20) > "You own the source of truth. And that is the way to look at the business." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (50:01) > "Data is fact, but the, it's a very objective data is objective, but what you take from that data is very subjective." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (50:13) > "Good ops person, you should help the entire company do well. And therefore the valuation goes up and everybody wins." > > — Noah Marks, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (51:46) > "My CRO, Tom Miller, he used to say, if you torture the data long enough, it'll tell you anything you want it to." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 102 (52:00) ## Practical advice by role ### RevOps Leaders - Test vendors by asking who holds the judgement at the end — if the analysis arrives and the decision is still yours, you bought a tool. - Apply buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence: do not rebuild a warehouse or CRM, do build the context and semantic layer your agents depend on. - Fix the foundational data before reaching for advanced AI capability — wrong data and wrong calculations are the common failure. - Become the pipeline czar: own coverage, pipe-gen, the levers, and the ability to predict several quarters forward. - Understand the levers behind the trend, because the same dataset can support two opposed conclusions depending on filtering and timing. ### Revenue Executives - Buy the outcome and insist on full accountability rather than accepting a tool plus your own implementation burden. - Count the internal capability a tool requires — the team to learn it, the team holding the expertise, the leader placing it in strategy. - Ask a prospective vendor where they are going next; TAM-broadening under investor pressure can remove the depth you bought. - Treat the CRO role as architecture — connecting infrastructure, resources and direction — rather than sales leadership retitled. - Position ops alongside rather than beneath a single function, so it improves the whole company rather than one leader's numbers. ### Founders - Package your baseline best practices as out-of-the-box defaults; not shipping them reads as not having them. - Sit beside customers post-sale — the BDR analogy is that you learn far more in the bottom half of the funnel than at qualification. - Take a strong, reasoned position. Vendors with a clear point of view are being rewarded even when the position is arguable. - If a CRO could vibe code your product over a weekend, the value you are selling is bandwidth rather than differentiation. - Consider embedding as a retention strategy: a vendor genuinely embedded faces close to zero churn risk. ### Sales Leaders - Audit for the three weaknesses: preparation, discovery and listening, and confidence on price. They will be there. - Coach reps to state the price and then stay silent — the prospect may say no several times before saying yes. - Strip administrative work; no survey Noah has read puts it below two thirds of a rep's time. - Treat discovery as a listening skill rather than a script, particularly given what a decade of video calls has done to it. ## AI takeaways **Thesis:** Noah's position is that AI removed the technology moat rather than creating one. Anyone can build almost anything, so the differentiator moves to expertise a customer can learn from — which is why he wants to buy outcomes rather than products. The practical corollary is that most AI ambition is blocked upstream: people reach for advanced capability without the right data, looking at the wrong data, with the calculations wrong. - **** — - **** — - **** — - **** — - **** — - **** — **Agent & automation ideas** - A deal desk agent — Noah notes several people have built one and considers it an obvious, easy win. - An agent removing the administrative work that consumes two thirds of a rep's time, converting it into call capacity. - A compensation design partner that recommends next year's plan rather than only producing attainment distributions. - A pipeline prediction model projecting multiple quarters forward by channel, with capacity assumptions exposed. - A best-practice packaging layer shipping default configuration for the ~70% case instead of starting blank. ## Operations takeaways ### Revenue operations - **.** - **.** - **.** - **.** - **.** ### Pipeline & marketing ops - **.** - **.** - **.** - **.** ### Customer operations - **.** - **.** - **.** ## Metrics mentioned | Value | Metric | Context | | --- | --- | --- | | ~$1M | Annual cost of running compensation | Five or six people plus an expensive tool at a prior company — and the decision about next year's plan still came back to Noah. | | 50–60% | Product capability actually used | Noah's estimate of how much of a vendor's product a customer typically taps, with the remaining value dependent on internal teams. | | ~150 operators | GTM Council membership | Grown from about a dozen ten years ago, via 40–50 during the period when the tech stack had gone stale, expanding again with AI. | | ~90% falling to 60–70% | Software gross margin under AI cost | Anthony's argument for why software and services multiples should converge, since strong services businesses already run at 60–70%. | | Two thirds or more | Rep time spent on administration | Noah has not read a survey putting it lower — the reason he considers administrative capacity work the most vibe-codeable part of the stack. | | Tens of millions | Value of a predictive pipeline model at exit | Anthony's estimate of what multi-year pipeline data broken down by channel with a capacity plan is worth in a fundraise or exit. | ## Entities mentioned - **GTM Council** (company) — Co-founded by Noah with Andy Mowat ten years ago as about a dozen ops leaders comparing notes, now roughly 150 senior operators. Hosts two vendor founders a month for the investment pitch rather than the sales pitch, produces the Stacked GTM podcast, and exists partly to close the gap between what the C-suite thinks AI means and what operators actually experience. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/gtm-council/ - **ECI Software Solutions** (company) — Where Noah is SVP of Customer Success & Operations. He cites its decades of accumulated vertical-market expertise helping SMB and mid-market companies survive as the concrete example of the moat he argues software companies now need. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/eci-software-solutions/ - **Okta** (company) — Where Noah worked when GTM Council began — he and Andy Mowat, then at Box, were connected by their CMOs. Also where he ran Andreessen portfolio roadshows, the format GTM Council later inverted into founder learning sessions. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/okta/ - **Box** (company) — Where Andy Mowat was working when he and Noah were introduced by their respective CMOs, the meeting that led to GTM Council. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/box/ - **WalkMe** (company) — One of the companies where Noah built the go-to-market engine over the past decade. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/walkme/ - **Udemy** (company) — Part of Noah's decade of go-to-market operations roles across recognisable B2B software companies. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/udemy/ - **Diligent** (company) — Another of the companies where Noah built go-to-market operations before ECI. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/diligent/ - **Tableau** (company) — Where Noah first encountered the lesson that it is not about the best product but the favourite product, during his banking days. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/tableau/ - **Shopify** (company) — Noah half-jokingly blames Shopify's Toby for the inbox pressure — tweets about AI expectations retweeted by VCs to their portfolios, asking why companies were not doing the same. That gap between C-suite expectation and operator reality is part of why GTM Council produces thought leadership. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/shopify/ - **LeanScale** (company) — Anthony's firm. He notes it has been running five years with teams embedded in client companies and still struggles to keep up with the rate of new GTM tools, and credits Noah's article for LeanScale adopting go-to-market ops rather than RevOps as the term. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/leanscale/ - **Noah Marks** (person, guest) — · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/noah-marks/ - **Anthony Enrico** (person, host) — Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/anthony-enrico/ - **Andy Mowat** (person, mentioned) — Founder & CEO of Whispered and former GTM/RevOps leader at Upwork, Culture Amp, Carta, and Fox. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/andy-mowat/ - **Tom Miller** (person, mentioned) — Author of 'Call Your Shots' and a veteran go-to-market operator (multiple IPOs, buy- and sell-side M&A); Anthony Enrico's former CRO at Emailage. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/tom-miller/ - **Fullcast** (tool, GTM Planning) — Named by Noah as one of the vendors already moving toward embedding expertise alongside the product. He discloses it as a GTM Council sponsor and notes he has known the team since they were both at Salesforce. - **Gong** (tool, Revenue Intelligence) — Mentioned as another vendor Noah understands to be moving toward the expertise-plus-product model. - **Gumloop** (tool, Workflow Automation) — Named among the companies Noah has seen taking the packaged-expertise direction. - **Vasco** (tool, Semantic Layer) — Named by Noah, unprompted, as another offering that has come up in conversation as moving toward providing expertise alongside the technology. ## FAQ **Q: Why would a buyer prefer expertise over software?** A: Because the software alone leaves most of the work with the customer. Noah Marks estimates a customer typically taps only 50 to 60 per cent of a product's capability, then needs one team to learn the product, another holding the expertise about what to do with it, and a leader deciding where it fits in the strategy. His breaking point was compensation: five or six people, an expensive tool, roughly a million dollars a year, an excellent team — and once the attainment analysis was complete, deciding next year's plan still landed on his desk. If a vendor genuinely understands the space, he argues, they should be telling him what to do, and he will pay a premium for that. **Q: Why did so many go-to-market vendors stall over the past decade?** A: Noah's diagnosis is that many had genuinely good CEOs who had never sat in the operator's seat. What was missing was someone who had lived the job and could say the problem should be solved completely differently. A second failure mode was investor pressure to broaden the total addressable market, which repeatedly took away the depth of capability the customers who needed it most were relying on — making the business more profitable in a way that was directly detrimental to those customers. **Q: What is the build-versus-buy answer for a GTM stack?** A: Buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence. This is the formulation GTM Council keeps converging on. You can now build almost anything, but the questions are whether you should, and whether you can keep evolving it as requirements change. Building effort belongs on what makes your business genuinely unique. There is no reason to vibe code a data warehouse or a CRM; the differentiating work is the context and semantic layer that any AI or agent capability then runs on. **Q: Is recurring services revenue really SaaS?** A: Noah's position is yes — as long as it recurs, it is services as a software as a service, and buyers do not care whether the answer came from software, AI or a human. The margin argument supports it: software gross margins are falling from around 90 per cent toward 60 to 70 as AI costs are absorbed, while strong services businesses already operate at 60 to 70. At comparable margin and recurrence, and given that embedded vendors extend customer lifetime and carry near-zero churn risk, the multiples should not diverge as sharply as they historically have. **Q: What does "if a CRO can vibe code your product, you don't have a product" mean?** A: That the sales portion of the go-to-market stack is the most exposed, because much of its value is administrative capacity rather than genuine differentiation — capturing data in the CRM, knowing what to ask, and removing the admin that consumes two thirds of a rep's time. Those are relatively simple to replicate now. Marketing and post-sales are more nuanced and harder to reproduce. Noah is also candid that he finds the vibe-coding discourse tiring: the demonstrations are rarely original, and the unanswered question is what it actually gets you inside the workflow. **Q: What are the three weaknesses on every sales team?** A: Noah offers to buy coffee for anyone who audits their team and finds otherwise. First, reps are not prepared for the conversations they walk into — they have not done the groundwork. Second, they cannot ask the right discovery questions and do not listen well enough to follow up, working from their own script instead; he suspects a decade of video calls has eroded this. Third, they are sheepish about pricing. His point is that the top three problems are never product understanding — they are fundamentals. **Q: How do you become the pipeline czar?** A: Own the pipeline model completely: the coverage you need, the pipe generation required, who builds it, what happens to it, and the levers that actually move it. Most importantly, be able to predict it several quarters forward, since that is the only way future quarters can be forecast. Pipeline is the one thing everyone in the company can influence, so owning the model means owning the source of truth. Do that for a CEO and you become indispensable — and in a fundraise or exit, multi-year pipeline data broken down by channel with a capacity plan is worth tens of millions because it turns the story into a math problem. **Q: Is a CRO just a VP of Sales with a different title?** A: Noah argues it should not be. Fundamentally a CRO is an architect — connecting the pieces, deciding what the infrastructure looks like, what resources are needed and how to drive it. Many sales leaders actively dislike that work and would rather be in deals, which is part of why operations leaders are increasingly becoming CROs or presidents of go-to-market. He notes COO is equally plausible for a go-to-market-leaning operator, though he considers it historically the most disenfranchised title in the C-suite. **Q: How should vendors package what they know?** A: Ship it as defaults. Noah's view is that there are baseline best practices applying to roughly 70 per cent of customers, and vendors should package those out of the box rather than starting every implementation from blank. His warning is direct: if you do not package it, buyers will assume you do not know it. He extends the same logic to AI features — rather than requiring the customer to ask what is going on, the product should tell them. ## Timeline - **00:00** — Cold open + intro - **03:04** — "I don't ever want to buy a vendor again" - **06:07** — The $1M comp team that still handed the problem back - **08:57** — Why GTM vendors stalled: CEOs who never sat in the seat - **11:37** — Build vs. buy inside GTM Council - **16:10** — Is services revenue still SaaS? - **19:02** — The margin math: 90% software meets the AI bill - **20:44** — Favorite product beats best product - **22:21** — Full accountability: buy the outcome, not the tool - **26:18** — "If a CRO can vibe code it, you don't have a product" - **31:33** — Have a point of view or lose mind share - **33:34** — Buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence - **35:44** — The three weaknesses on every sales team - **40:16** — A CRO is an architect, not a VP of Sales with a new title - **45:28** — How to become the pipeline czar - **52:12** — The origin of GTM Council ## Related episodes - **Ep. 104: The State of the GTM Stack: What 50+ B2B Companies Actually Run** (Anthony Enrico (solo)) — The panel data behind Noah's build-versus-buy argument, including which layers companies actually run and which go unbuilt. - **Ep. 98: AI-Native GTM: 3 Agent Plays and the Layer That Makes Them True** (Jake Toepel (LeanScale)) — The context graph is the concrete form of build the intelligence, and the four missing things are why advanced AI fails on data. - **Ep. 85: Why AI + GTM Engineers Can't Replace RevOps** (Tessa Whittaker) — The counterpart argument about what survives when anyone can build — and why the operating function does. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/tessa-whittaker-ai-gtm-engineers-revops/ - **Ep. 82: How an Ops Guy Became CRO of a $3B Company** (Joshua Trott) — The career path Noah describes as increasingly common: ops leaders becoming CROs because the role is architecture. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/joshua-trott-ops-guy-cro/ - **Ep. 86: Why the Best CROs Don't Come From Sales** (Jerry Brooner) — Directly on Noah's claim that a CRO is an architect rather than a VP of Sales with a new title. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/jerry-brooner-best-cros-dont-come-from-sales/ - **Ep. 6: Why Your Forecast Is Broken** (Anthony Enrico (solo)) — The forecasting discipline underneath the pipeline czar argument, and why process precedes tooling. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/why-your-forecast-is-broken/ ## Full transcript _Machine-transcribed and not diarized; speaker attribution is inferred._ _Transcript only, as a separate file: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/noah-marks-gtm-council-buy-expertise-not-products/transcript.md_ ### 00:00 — Cold open + intro **[0:00]** "If you want to seem like a god, become the pipeline czar at your company." **[0:04]** "Really understand the dynamics of how it works, the coverage you need, the pipe gen you need, **[0:11]** who's really building it." **[0:12]** Noah Marks has spent the last decade building the go-to-market engine inside some of the most **[0:18]** recognizable names in B2B software. Salesforce, Okta, Walkme, Udemy, and Diligent. **[0:24]** He is also the co-founder of GTM Council, which started 10 years ago as a dozen **[0:29]** ops leaders comparing notes because nobody else would tell them the truth about the tools they **[0:35]** were being forced to implement. Let's do the things that you need to do at this stage. **[0:38]** "You're playing house, and guess what? Everyone else is doing the same, and I'll buy a coffee **[0:44]** to anybody who will come and tell me differently on these two things. If you investigated your **[0:50]** sales org and you looked at the three biggest weaknesses of any sales team or an individual, **[0:58]** I will guarantee you there are three things. One, I'll tell you this, I think that if you have a **[1:04]** product that can get vibe-coded by a CRO, you do not have a product. You may have a product, **[1:12]** you don't have a product. Like, let's let's let's." **[1:14]** "Where do you think the gap is from taking that and turning it into something that can **[1:17]** actually help you?" **[1:18]** "They should be, and I think that was the challenge. I think there was too many vendors **[1:22]** over the past decade where the CEOs were really good CEOs, but they weren't operators, and that **[1:29]** was a big challenge. Good ops person, you should help the entire company do well, **[1:34]** and therefore the evaluation goes up, and everybody wins." **[1:39]** "One hundred percent. My CRO, Tom Miller, he used to say, 'If you torture the data long enough, **[1:44]** it'll tell you anything you want to do.' And I think I've definitely seen that play out a few times." **[1:52]** (Music) **[2:00]** Noah Marks has spent the last decade building the go-to-market engine inside some of the most **[2:05]** recognizable names in B2B software, Salesforce, Okta, Wacme, Udemy, and Diligent, and he is doing **[2:12]** it again at ECI Solution Software. He is also the co-founder of GTM Council, which started **[2:19]** 10 years ago as a dozen ops leaders comparing notes because nobody else would tell them the **[2:24]** truth about the tools they were being forced to implement, and has since grown into one of the **[2:29]** most sharpest rooms in go-to-market, along with its podcast, Stacked GTM. What makes Noah unique is **[2:36]** that he sits on both sides of the table, the operator who is always a step ahead of what **[2:41]** the software could actually do, and the executive who signs the checks, and he has landed on a **[2:47]** conclusion that should make every vendor nervous. He does not want to buy products anymore. He wants **[2:52]** to buy expertise. In this episode, we get into why the software industry is quickly becoming a **[2:58]** services industry, how to tell what is real from what is noise, and where an operator should actually ### 03:04 — "I don't ever want to buy a vendor again" **[3:04]** be spending money over the next 12 months. Noah, you said something during our prep call. I have **[3:11]** not been able to stop thinking about, "I don't ever want to buy a vendor again. I want to buy **[3:18]** their expertise." What broke for you that got you there? It's interesting. I think maybe others **[3:27]** might have gotten to the same realization faster than me, so I don't want to brag about how long **[3:33]** it took me to get there, but I think the challenge was most vendors, when you implement their product **[3:39]** or most when you are the customer of a vendor and you're implementing their product, you're at most **[3:45]** probably tapping into 50, 60 percent of the capability, and then it's upon you to continue **[3:52]** to learn about that product. Go to their customer conferences, learn about their features and **[3:56]** functionality, so you have to have a team just to know how to use that product. Then you have to **[4:02]** have another team that understands the expertise around what you do with that product, and then you **[4:08]** have to have a leader that's designing the strategy about where does that product sit in. To me, if **[4:14]** somebody's providing me a product for my go-to market, they hopefully, if I've partnered with **[4:20]** them, have the expertise around that space much more than me and are able to then take what's **[4:27]** happening in the market and tell me what I should be doing. Tell me how I should leverage compensation **[4:35]** attainment towards changing my territory design. I don't want to have to be the one always on the **[4:40]** hook creating what's out there, but if you truly are a vendor that understands your space, understands **[4:46]** your ICP, and has real thought leadership, I should be learning from you, and so I don't want to buy **[4:51]** another tool. I want to buy that expertise, and as far as that expertise, I'm willing to spend more **[4:58]** if you become that Palantir forward engineer service offering that helps me get up to speed, **[5:05]** but then also becomes part of my operating rhythm, and so that's the new era. That's the moat that's **[5:12]** going to separate the new class of AI companies out there from all the rest. It's that expertise **[5:18]** and the thought leadership that individuals like myself can learn from, as opposed to always being **[5:24]** on point, being the thought leader ourselves. Yeah, I think RevOps operators sitting in the **[5:30]** role, we have real problems that we have to solve, and so many times the vendor promises that it can **[5:35]** be solved by the tool, but anyone who's been in RevOps longer than a week knows that the tool is **[5:41]** like 10% of the battle. It's how are you going to set it up? How are you going to lay out the process? **[5:46]** How are you going to enable the team? How are you going to handle change management? There's so much **[5:50]** more that comes after it. Was there anything in particular where you took a step back and you're **[5:56]** like, "There's no reason this should be this hard, and there's no reason I should be coming up with **[6:02]** this stuff from scratch. I should be able to lean on my partner for this." Yeah, and it was that ### 06:07 — The $1M comp team that still handed the problem back **[6:07]** compensation discussion where in a prior company I had, I think, five or six folks and an expensive **[6:13]** tool, and it was probably a million dollars of investment every year just to run compensation, **[6:20]** and while the team was phenomenal, like I would hire the team again in an instant, **[6:24]** the challenge there was when we got done with the attainment charts and looking at the distribution **[6:33]** and the design, it ultimately came back to me to figure out then what do I do with this information **[6:39]** or how do I take the attainment curve of a part of our business and relate that to other parts **[6:46]** that should be driving similar outcomes, and how do we learn from this? And I realized I was like, **[6:51]** "Why am I doing this?" And then there was a bunch of conversations that I was having with some of **[6:56]** some of our peers, which was, "Who are the vendors out there that are the thought leaders that are **[7:02]** actually folks that I want to listen to and learn from?" Because I realized over the past **[7:07]** 10, 15 years, a lot of the operators, we've spent so much time as formal and informal advisors to a **[7:13]** lot of the companies and vendors we've worked with because we're trying to push them in the **[7:17]** direction that leads to where we need them to be. And I think after a while, I was like, **[7:22]** "I'm frustrated that it still has to come to me to push a vendor." I want the vendor to come **[7:26]** and blow my mind. And as folks that, like us operators, we're thinking about this stuff 24/7, **[7:33]** but we're thinking about everything 24/7. So somebody that's coming in with a slice **[7:38]** of my mind share, you should be better than me. You should be thinking and blowing my mind in **[7:45]** a way that hasn't before to give me that understanding of what to do. And it really **[7:50]** was around compensation. And I was like, "I got the distribution and the great metrics and here's **[7:54]** what's going on." And now it's up to me to think through what is next year's comp plan look like. **[8:00]** And I'm like, "There's got to be a better way, right? You just do this time and time again." **[8:05]** And I'm like, "I don't know. Tell me what my comp plan should be. Tell me what's really working." **[8:10]** Because I've stolen all my great ideas from everybody else I've ever worked with, **[8:19]** but I know there's things that I'm probably not thinking of. And so my blind spot or my black swan **[8:24]** out there, tell me the things that I'm not thinking about, that I don't know and I'm not aware of, **[8:30]** that could transform the capabilities and the performance of myself and my team specifically. **[8:37]** What do you think the gap is? Because you're right. They're sitting there solving the same **[8:40]** problem or at least attempting to having a solution for it for hundreds, sometimes thousands **[8:45]** of different companies. They should be tapped into exactly how teams are doing their compensation **[8:52]** plan and forming an opinion by having that bird's eye view. Where do you think the gap is from ### 08:57 — Why GTM vendors stalled: CEOs who never sat in the seat **[8:57]** taking that and turning it into something that can actually help you? They should be. And I think **[9:01]** that was the challenge. I think there was too many vendors over the past decade where the CEOs were **[9:07]** really good CEOs, but they weren't operators and that was a big challenge. They didn't sit in us. **[9:13]** And I think I've threatened many times with some of you all as to, "Let's go out and just build our **[9:18]** own tool because it doesn't exist." And that's the challenge is you need somebody who's lived **[9:24]** our life, who's gone through it, who's like, "You know what? I got an idea. We can do this **[9:27]** completely differently. We can do this so much better." And I think that's the challenge. You **[9:33]** have good CEOs who are good at running a company, but you really want somebody who's a deep thought **[9:38]** leader. And in the times where there's maybe not a pure co-founder that's on the technical side, **[9:46]** who has been in that spot, I think you might lose some of those dynamics. And then what I've seen, **[9:51]** unfortunately, is I've seen some of these companies who I thought were the greatest things **[9:56]** since sliced bread get distracted because their investors wanted them to pivot to do more or **[10:03]** broaden their TAM. And that just took away from the capabilities that I was really needing from **[10:08]** them. So by trying to make a more profitable business that was detrimental to my world. **[10:15]** And I think that's what I'm looking for in that next generation of CEO, of founder, of folks that **[10:22]** understand the things I'm going through, the things I will go through. And just like ops, **[10:27]** our role is to think about stuff that should be happening in the next year so that when we get **[10:31]** there, we've already solved it. We've thought about that and we've addressed it and we're well **[10:35]** beyond that. I need to find a partner that's very similar. And so my approach and my current company **[10:41]** has been drastically different of how I'm going and talking to customers. I'm looking at thought **[10:45]** leaders first and then the technology and capability second, knowing full well that **[10:50]** some of the stuff we're going to be building and some of the stuff we're going to be buying. **[10:54]** And over the next one to two years, it's going to be a very dynamic environment for that. But **[11:00]** that's what I'm fundamentally looking at first. I want to learn something from the partner that **[11:04]** I'm selecting to help me in this journey. It is really interesting with the barrier entry of **[11:11]** building tech really, really decreasing. I mean, before you had to go raise money, **[11:15]** get a 10 person engineering team to build something that could even begin to solve a problem. **[11:20]** And now you can really get there something production grade relatively quickly. And a lot **[11:27]** of the people that are developing those are the people who are building it for themselves, **[11:31]** their operators. They feel like they have the real problem. What do you think this dynamic means ### 11:37 — Build vs. buy inside GTM Council **[11:37]** for the software industry in general? Any big trends you think we're going to see? **[11:45]** That's a good question. I think, I mean, the biggest topic in the GTM council for anything we **[11:51]** go to always comes back to build versus buy. And that's the reality because you can build just **[11:58]** about anything and you can build it to what you think you need to have it today. But should you **[12:05]** be doing it and do you have the ability to continue evolving it to what it needs to be in the future? **[12:11]** And if I can't find a business partner that is going to take me there, then I'm just going to **[12:16]** do it. I now have the capability as I threatened to do in the past, I don't need to go create a new **[12:20]** company. I can just build it myself. And I think that's, I'm in the position that so many of us **[12:26]** are in. And there's a lot of folks that are far more forward than me where they are going to build **[12:31]** their entire tech stack exactly how they want it. I'm trying to balance that because I do think **[12:37]** there are infrastructure pieces that I want somebody else thinking about for me. And I'm **[12:42]** willing to pay that premium as opposed to paying an individual on my team to do it. But I think **[12:47]** it's that evolution of what becomes something that you continue to buy and what becomes something **[12:52]** that you inherently build yourself. That's the biggest dynamic. But I do think for a good portion **[13:00]** of the next couple of years, AI is not necessarily a standalone thing. It is just one more capability **[13:09]** in your go-to-market tech stack. So SalesOps maybe was in charge of your GTM stack historically, **[13:14]** buying various vendors. Building is just another capability. And how we get there is less important **[13:21]** about than what the outcome ultimately is. And if it's going to drive us to better outcomes to build, **[13:26]** then let's do it. I think to come back to your core question was what's changing. We now have **[13:33]** the power to get past where technology was preventing us to get historically, which is **[13:40]** maybe that last 30% of personalization that really speaks to our world. We're now able to do that. **[13:47]** And whether or not we do it the full 100% or we just take existing infrastructure and we personalize **[13:51]** it, it's up to us. And over the next couple of years, what evolves, I have no idea, but it's going **[13:59]** to be really exciting. And I think if you're not staying on the forefront, you're probably going **[14:03]** to fall behind. Yeah. Well, I think we'll all have a fun time guessing and seeing what's going on. **[14:10]** Are there any companies in the GTM tech space today that you see doing a really good job **[14:17]** of building good tech, but also layering in that service and being a thought leader **[14:23]** and being a thought partner in solving the problem that they built their company around? **[14:28]** It's interesting. So over the last, I would say year, year and a half, I've been actively talking **[14:35]** to all the companies that I interact with telling them about this concept. And I think Jake Saper **[14:41]** from Emergence wrote a really good article a few months back. I wrote something similar before that, **[14:48]** but his was much better in every way talking about this concept. And so I went to all the **[14:54]** companies I talked to or advise and was pushing them like, this is what I want. Are you guys going **[15:00]** this direction? And it was really amazing that a lot of them had already been thinking about it, **[15:04]** but maybe more so in a, we're just going to do the administration, not so much in providing **[15:10]** you back the expertise. And that was the push that I've been having, but lately, I mean, I just, **[15:15]** in the last two weeks, not to like just call out specific companies when there haven't been any, **[15:21]** but I know that conversations I've had with companies, full cast, which is by the way, **[15:28]** a sponsor of go to market council. They've been listening for a while. I've known that team since **[15:32]** we were both at Salesforce together. So there's a long history there. I know Gong is coming out **[15:37]** with that sort of situation. What are some other organizations that I know Vasco is offering that **[15:47]** in a conversation. And there was a few more that folks have been kind of talking through. **[15:52]** I think Gumloop was one in there. It's just, it's interesting. Everyone I now talk to, **[15:57]** whether they've come in, and a lot of these companies have come and talked to the GTM council, **[16:01]** which is how I've had the conversations. But all of them have come back to say, yeah, **[16:05]** this is something that we now understand is a real value. And I think what's interesting, ### 16:10 — Is services revenue still SaaS? **[16:10]** I love your thought, but I think services revenue, as long as it's reoccurring, is still SaaS. **[16:18]** It's services as a software, as a service. And as long as it's something that's reoccurring, **[16:24]** I think the ability for companies to kind of package that together. Because honestly, **[16:27]** from my perspective, I don't care what software. I don't care what's AI built. I don't care what's **[16:31]** a human. I'm just trying to get to the answer. And I think it's probably upon the vendor maybe to **[16:38]** figure out how to optimize their backend so that they can innovate quicker and they can do things **[16:44]** faster. But I think by them embedding with their customer, they're going to be so much better **[16:50]** because they're going to actually know what's happening and have real world insight. It's like **[16:57]** this is kind of a weird analogy, but I've been thinking about it lately, which is the challenge **[17:01]** of a BDR, like the outbound prospecting junior salesperson in your organization, **[17:07]** the challenge with them is they only get to the qualification stage of an opportunity. And then **[17:12]** they go back and they try to find somebody new. And the value of them staying in that opportunity **[17:17]** through close, they learn so much more in the bottom half of that funnel that helps them become **[17:23]** so much better. I think it's the same way. When you're selling your product to your customer, **[17:27]** if you're able to then join them and sit side by side and really understand how they're using it **[17:33]** and understand the pains and the value and what they're thinking about, you're going to make so **[17:38]** much better of a product at the end of the day. So I think it's, I would say, I think it's a comment **[17:44]** upon all vendors. If you want to stay relevant and because anybody, your mode of technology is gone. **[17:51]** So unless you have a distribution network or something of scale that kind of keeps competitors **[17:56]** at bay, your expertise is that's the final, that's the final note, I think. **[18:03]** I have a lot of thoughts on everything you just said. First, I'll talk about the virtuous cycle **[18:09]** of going in and owning the problem, just the way you framed it. And if you spend all day drinking **[18:17]** your own champagne, so yes, you have the software, you have the solution, you have the tech, but **[18:22]** you're also going a step deeper and taking it upon yourself to solve the actual problem that that's **[18:28]** trying to solve for and own it to the end. You are going to get inspired with every new thing because **[18:35]** you're going to feel viscerally the pain of what it takes to actually solve the problem that you're **[18:41]** trying to build a company around. So I think to your point, going in and leaning in and building **[18:48]** that into the fabric of your company is only going to make your product better and product being the **[18:54]** overarching service plus the software, whatever it takes to solve it. Now, in terms of service revenue ### 19:02 — The margin math: 90% software meets the AI bill **[19:02]** versus software revenue, there's some assumptions that are made, but first principles, people don't **[19:08]** care if the revenue is high margin and recurring and what's happening in the software revenue side, **[19:16]** margins are getting lower because you're needing to integrate some level of AI capabilities that's **[19:21]** likely being run by one of the LLMs. So now your margin is going from that 90% range down to **[19:26]** potentially that 70, 60% range. There are a lot of really good high performing services companies **[19:32]** that can do services at that 60 to 70% gross margin range. If it's recurring as well, there's **[19:39]** no reason the multiples should be that different, especially because it doesn't take as much **[19:43]** investment in the building of the IP on the software side like it used to. That's the only **[19:47]** other argument where maybe this is worth more. So apples to apples, if you have same gross margin, **[19:55]** same level of recurability, and it's solving a real problem that will actually likely extend **[20:02]** the LTV of your customer, then it should be even more valuable for a company to invest in this harm. **[20:11]** And think about even the churn risk, right? If I have somebody embedded on my team, **[20:16]** and I lose that person, I lose that capability. So if you're a vendor in here driving real value, **[20:24]** there is zero churn risk in your future. So I think the GDR, NDR, GR, NR, whatever your term is **[20:33]** that you use for retention, basically go through the roof because you're going to make better, **[20:38]** happier customers. And I think there's an element where no product ever does all the ### 20:44 — Favorite product beats best product **[20:44]** things you want it to do. But I think the reality is, and I remember learning this when I first **[20:49]** started getting introduced back in my banking days with Tableau, is it wasn't about being the best **[20:55]** product, it's about being the favorite product. And if you really know and you're really like, **[20:59]** you have the expertise of your customers, then you really get to understand and you get some **[21:05]** passes. If you don't do this today, it's just technology. But if you're there for me and you're **[21:10]** helping support me, get to where I need to get to. I mean, the company I work for now, ECI, **[21:15]** it's been around for decades and it's just they built this expertise around all these vertical **[21:19]** markets that helps these SMB and mid-market companies survive. And that's the secret sauce. **[21:25]** It's the technology, but it's like really understanding it. I think some of this gets **[21:30]** missed when it's like we can just build technology and then throw it over the wall and go on and **[21:35]** build more technology. You got to think about the outcomes. And I think that gets overplayed a little **[21:41]** bit in phrasing, but the reality is if you don't know the ultimate end goal of the impact of what **[21:48]** you're doing, whether you're a vendor or anybody, then I think you're just missing out of what you **[21:54]** should be. Yeah, I completely agree. Maybe we could take it a step deeper. I'd like for anyone who's in **[22:03]** the go-to-market tech space right now, if you're representing your go-to-market solution, if you're **[22:08]** the founder CEO of a go-to-market solution, I'd really like you to listen to what Noah says next. **[22:13]** What exactly do you think they need to do and at what depth do they need to own the problem on the ### 22:21 — Full accountability: buy the outcome, not the tool **[22:21]** customer side? I think full accountability needs to rely with that vendor. Fundamentally, **[22:28]** to your starting question, I don't want to buy a vendor. The concept that you're just giving me **[22:36]** a tool is not enough. I want to buy the outcome and I'm willing to pay for the outcome. And that's **[22:41]** ultimately what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to drive revenue growth. I'm trying to drive customer **[22:47]** success. I'm trying to drive top line metrics and the tools at my disposal have just multiplied. **[22:53]** Now, I now have a lot more capabilities at my fingertips. I don't need more tools. Nobody needs **[23:00]** tools. The tools are there just to try to deliver whatever it is that we can gain. I need somebody **[23:06]** to come in and say, "I am going to help you drive the best compensation plans in the industry." **[23:14]** And guess what? That compensation plan is going to help you design better territories. And those **[23:18]** better territories and comp plan are going to get better distribution for your sales reps. They're **[23:22]** going to make more money. They're going to have more people in the middle to the top range. So, **[23:27]** you're going to have less churn and turnover in your team. It's just going to keep perpetuating **[23:32]** and building and building and building. And it all starts with like, "Oh, it's just a comp tool." **[23:37]** No, no, you got to rethink. Everything that we're delivering has a greater purpose and a greater **[23:44]** impact. And typically, it's up to the ops leaders to absorb all of those data sets and try to **[23:50]** translate that into what's next. So, that's what I want. I want the full accountability to come in **[23:56]** there. And if you're willing... I remember, man, it was in the Doc Bus era when the first generation **[24:04]** of companies were like, "We'll tie the price of our product to your success." And I'm like, **[24:10]** "I love the idea." And I was on the sales side at that time. No CFO bought it because like, "Well, **[24:15]** we don't know what that's going to cost us." But that's what I inherently want. I want somebody **[24:19]** who's vested in my success, hands down. If you're not, and if you're not really caring what I'm **[24:24]** caring about, then there's too many other products that do similar to what you do. And they'll be **[24:30]** similar. There'll be more, maybe a dozen more next week. The rate of new tools in the GTM space is **[24:38]** astronomical. It's literally all we do all day long. I've been running LeanScale for five years. **[24:43]** We have a team embedded in these companies, and it's hard for us to keep up with all the new tools. **[24:49]** And we run into new ones every single day. But I think you're right. I think it's, yes, build, **[24:54]** tech that makes processes efficient and can run fast and run at high quality, but also have the **[25:01]** people on the team that can come in, lean in and help, and then have an opinion about how to solve **[25:07]** the problem on the operation side. And I think the companies that do that really well, I think **[25:12]** they're going to thrive in the next couple of years. Yeah, I agree. And I think there's another **[25:15]** element there, which is you don't have to know all the problem, but if you have customers that **[25:19]** you're working with, you can package a first level of best practice, like some default capabilities **[25:25]** out of the box, which is like even the concept of having to ask a question of AI to tell me what's **[25:34]** going on. You tell me what's going on. Like why am I doing this? There's a weird, it's probably **[25:46]** more of a getting them a new show, but it's, there are things that are just baseline best practices **[25:53]** that apply to 70% of the universe. Package those up, package what you know. If you don't package **[25:59]** it, I'm going to assume you don't know it, but start off the bat and then allow us to kind of **[26:04]** tweak that as we go. But in order to do that, you're going to have to do some more legwork. **[26:08]** You're going to have to sit in our shoes. You're going to have to really understand our pain points. **[26:12]** But the problem is if you don't, we're just going to go build it. Let's talk about the building ### 26:18 — "If a CRO can vibe code it, you don't have a product" **[26:18]** part because I have spoken to, I've spoken to a few CROs and I'm assuming they must have some **[26:25]** decent technical background, but they've completely vibe coded their entire tech stack. Now I think **[26:29]** there's a ceiling to that. I don't think you can do that, especially if you're in industries that **[26:33]** have a compliance regulation, you need to talk to, but how do you do the build versus buy equation **[26:41]** in your head? And what is everyone in GTM council saying when it comes to build versus buy? How do **[26:48]** you navigate that decision? I will tell you this. I think that if you have a product that can get vibe **[26:58]** coded by a CRO, you do not have a product or you may have a product. Let's be honest. Right now, **[27:09]** that's the challenge. I think in the sales part of the funnel, which is it's not rocket science. **[27:17]** There's not that many things that really boost, get you the 80% of your productivity and your **[27:25]** performance. You need to capture data into your CRM. You need to be able to know what questions **[27:37]** to ask your prospects and ask your customers. You need to eliminate all the administration. **[27:43]** I mean, I don't know any survey I've ever read that's less than like two thirds of a sales reps **[27:48]** time is spent doing administrative work. Clean that off the table. But those are sort of easy **[27:54]** cloud tasks, like just to administrate some of those things. I don't know how many people have **[28:00]** come in and say, I built a deal desk agent. I'm like, yeah, exactly. That makes total sense. **[28:06]** Those pieces I think are easy. I think those are the easiest areas to play. So if you are in the **[28:12]** sales portion of technology, I think that's probably the biggest thing at risk is that **[28:19]** a lot of things can be vibe coded because it's a bandwidth. It's a capacity time. **[28:24]** If your rep is able to be on twice as many calls, or you're able to serve them twice as many good **[28:30]** calls, or they're able to find twice as many good candidates by not having to do all the other stuff, **[28:35]** which is zero value, which is stuff we've had to do. Then I think you've unlocked a lot of potential **[28:41]** without any headcount. I think that's a real easy one for people to understand. It's the pain is **[28:45]** simple. The pain is real, but it's a simple, relatively simple solve. I think when you start **[28:50]** getting to like, like marketing capabilities, which there isn't a lot of agentic capabilities **[28:56]** to the marketing world yet. And then also on the customer success side, support is certainly a **[29:02]** self-service mentality. Yes, we're just going to default to self-service, but a lot of people try **[29:07]** that over a couple of years and realize, well, actually our content sucks. And that's actually **[29:11]** a disaster. So that actually doesn't work. And so I think there's a lot more nuanced in the **[29:18]** up funnel and the post sales environment, which is a little bit more complex to how you kind of **[29:25]** address it. But yeah, I mean, I think everyone can vibe code. My take on vibe coding is like, **[29:31]** transparently, I'm tired of hearing it because everything that somebody has done is, is not **[29:37]** unique. It's not, there's been no original idea. I love the fact that everyone's doing it and it's **[29:41]** exposing everyone to the capabilities of what AI is. I just, I'm getting fatigued on, on LinkedIn, **[29:47]** as far as all the stuff that people are commenting on, because yes, we get it. Everyone can do it, **[29:52]** but like, what are you really trying to solve and what are you getting to? And, and yes, you should **[29:56]** have those things. Absolutely. But I think that's not what we should be focusing on. I think we're **[30:02]** narrowly focusing on these little shiny objects, but like, what's it really getting us? How do we **[30:06]** incorporate that in the workflow? That's the stuff that's really important, but it's important that **[30:11]** people realize that if you can dream it, you can kind of do it today. I'm totally with you. I'm **[30:18]** exhausted with LinkedIn and I may be participating in a lot of that as well, but that's okay. **[30:25]** All contributors to the downfall. Yeah, it's part of the show. But I do think, **[30:32]** I do think there are people who are, yes, getting obsessed with their little MVPs and getting **[30:37]** obsessed with a unique way of solving the same problem, but at the end of the day, **[30:43]** it's the strategy. It's the process. It's the change management. It's the management of **[30:47]** that process and then relentlessly delivering against whatever promises you're making **[30:52]** externally internally. I mean, I worked at a company that was doing multi-billions in sales **[31:01]** a year and their entire forecast ran on EA's emailing spreadsheets to each other. **[31:08]** And they forecasted within half a percentage point. So it worked. You don't have to have **[31:14]** a cool looking tool in order to do it, but I do think you have to have an opinion about **[31:20]** the process and the strategy. And then yes, build the relevant tools that make it easier. **[31:24]** Maybe they could have saved a few of those EA's a few hours of their week. **[31:30]** I'll reiterate that point that you just mentioned is you have to have a point of view. ### 31:33 — Have a point of view or lose mind share **[31:33]** I think if you're an operator or a vendor and you do not have a strong point of view, **[31:37]** you're going to get lost because what's going to happen straight away is you're going to lose **[31:42]** mindshare. And there's some really interesting vendors out there. We've had some conversations **[31:47]** with some folks that are really taking a strong position. It may not be the right one. I don't **[31:52]** know, but it's strong and people are rewarding that perspective because they want somebody who **[31:59]** has some rationale and some logic behind that rationale for what they're going to do. **[32:03]** If you don't have a perspective, you're not digging in enough. And I think if you, you know, **[32:08]** the value of the vibe coding piece is it does, it does allow you to rethink. This isn't just **[32:13]** iterating on what we've done in the past. This is, oh, we can actually do things completely **[32:17]** differently. If we could start from scratch, what would we do today that we've always thought about **[32:24]** and we've always had to do in the past? And that's a real break from tradition and from how we've **[32:29]** kind of built up, you know, most of the senior folks in the space have kind of built up their **[32:33]** backgrounds on, which is the things that I knew. I just kept repeating them. And that's, it's super **[32:38]** dangerous right now, because if you're not rethinking stuff from ground zero, you're also **[32:44]** maybe missing out on something that could transform your organization. And at the end of the day, **[32:49]** all of us want to, like five years from now, we want to look back and have built the coolest **[32:54]** organization that had the best outcomes. And if we don't, it's going to be super frustrating and **[32:59]** disappointing. And we're going to be full of regret for the rest of our lives because we **[33:02]** missed the opportunity. But like, there's so much opportunity right now. There's so much noise. So **[33:08]** for all the vendors out there, you've got to break through. If you're interested in coming to the Go **[33:13]** to Market Council, I'll do the plug there. Like we're meeting with two vendors a month. And right **[33:18]** now we're getting a backlog, but we will love to come and understand and we'll provide that feedback. **[33:23]** There's just too much noise out there. And for the operators, figure out what the strong perspective **[33:28]** is, what's unique, and just continue to try and iterate because there's no one right answer to any ### 33:34 — Buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence **[33:34]** of this. Like you asked about the build versus buy in the GTEM Council. There is a just promotion **[33:40]** amount of folks that are building out of this, but then there's certain aspects of let's buy **[33:46]** the infrastructure and let's build our intelligence. That's something that's kind of being repeated **[33:51]** quite a bit. But I think the idea there is focus on the things that make you unique. If it's not **[33:58]** unique, even though you can build it, is that where you want to spend your time? Focus on the **[34:02]** things that are really going to transform your business, transform your ability to do something **[34:07]** nuanced. But to kind of do that, as we all know, you've probably seen with a lot of your clients, **[34:14]** most people are trying to do like advanced degree AI capabilities and they don't even have the right **[34:20]** data and they're not looking at the right data and the calculations to get the data actually wrong. **[34:24]** So it's kind of those foundational layers of like, do you even have the right data that you're looking **[34:29]** at? Do you have the right systems connected? And then what does that tell you who should do and **[34:33]** continue to get it right? I'm doing a presentation for UpData partners in a couple of weeks. **[34:41]** And the title of it is, your AI strategy is a data model problem. These LLMs have plenty of horsepower **[34:48]** for you to do whatever you want. But I actually really like the way you phrase it. I haven't heard **[34:53]** it put that way. Buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence layer, set another way to build **[34:59]** that context layer that can help give the infrastructure what it needs to really perform **[35:05]** at a high level. And I think that's a good way to do it. Like why vibe code a data warehouse or a CRM? **[35:11]** I think those things are, they're already built. And to your point, there's an opportunity cost to **[35:16]** doing that and especially taking it the last mile and doing it well. That's a whole other thing. **[35:21]** But then yeah, get your intelligence in order, build the context graph, get the semantic layer **[35:26]** in motion and make sure that any AI layer that you have or any agents that you have **[35:31]** are building on that. It's exactly like we used to say, hey, do everything at stage fit. Otherwise, **[35:39]** you're just playing business. So let's not play house or play business right now. Let's do the ### 35:44 — The three weaknesses on every sales team **[35:44]** things that you need to do at this stage. You're playing house and guess what? Everyone else is **[35:47]** doing the same. And I'll buy a coffee to anybody who will come and tell me differently on these **[35:55]** three things. If you investigated your sales org and you looked at the three biggest weaknesses **[36:03]** of any sales team or an individual, I will guarantee you there are three things. One, **[36:09]** reps aren't prepared to have the conversations when they jump on a call with a prospect or a **[36:14]** customer. They haven't done the lay work. Two, they don't know how to ask the discovery questions, **[36:19]** the right discovery questions, and they don't listen enough to be able to continue to ask **[36:23]** those questions once the customer or a process has responded. They have their own little script. **[36:29]** I think the last 10 years, the evolution of the Zoom call, I think it could destroy that **[36:35]** capability that inherently so many people and the best reps still do have, which is just ask **[36:40]** questions, be inquisitive, understand what's going on. And the last one is pricing. Every rep is, **[36:47]** for the most part, very sheepish when it comes to putting out a price and be confident. Understand **[36:54]** what the value is that you're delivering out to the customer. Stand by the price points that you **[36:59]** have because it's a high cost point, because it's a high value. I will guarantee if you listen to **[37:05]** all your calls, you digest the challenges, the top three challenges, it's not product understanding, **[37:09]** whatever else. It's basic fundamentals around knowing who you're talking to, being inquisitive, **[37:14]** and really getting to the root pain of what the customer is thinking about. And then when you're **[37:19]** talking about pricing, just be confident. I've been on... I've listened on so many calls with **[37:23]** great sales leaders and salespeople who would... The record would skip because they would be like, **[37:29]** "No, no, this is this high." And they'd just be silent and wait. And the customer prospect might **[37:33]** say no a couple of times, and then eventually they're going to say yes. And it's just the confidence. **[37:37]** Like this is what you're delivering, and this is when it comes back to like have an opinion. **[37:41]** Have a stake in the ground. Really understand what you're delivering and the value. **[37:44]** And if you can do that, then you can charge premiums and whatever else it is. But anyways, **[37:49]** that was a little bit of a diatribe on that front. But when you talk about everyone's kind **[37:53]** of doing the same thing, a lot of character traits are the same across the company, **[37:58]** same across the industry. Figure out where the nuances is and how you make all those things **[38:03]** better. No, I think it's fully related. If you're looking at all the problems you could go solve, **[38:08]** each one has a certain level of leverage of improvement. And I guarantee it's not dialing **[38:14]** in your N8N flows and building another agent that's going to move the needle. It's doing the **[38:19]** fundamentals extraordinarily well, time and time again, being disciplined, letting it compound, **[38:25]** letting it stack. And then that's where you're likely to find the most success. **[38:30]** I have to ask, since I have, I consider you the godfather of RevOps. I don't know if **[38:34]** anybody else calls you that, but it's a title of you in my head. You have an extraordinary **[38:43]** track record and I've listened to you and read your articles. And I feel like you're one of the **[38:47]** few people who really, really gets what RevOps is at a deep level. Even quoting your article, **[38:54]** it shouldn't be called RevOps. It's go to market ops, which we have stolen here at Lean Scale. **[38:58]** So I hope you know that inspired that. But what do you think is foundational? That's always going **[39:05]** to be there in this RevOps function. And then what do you think we need to add? And maybe speak to **[39:13]** somebody who's sitting in a director of RevOps, a VP of RevOps role. **[39:17]** What's sage wisdom? And then what are they going to need to learn next? **[39:23]** I think it's interesting. I think the source of the answer to that question comes in, **[39:27]** how all of us ended up getting in, getting here. We took a left turn instead of a right at some **[39:31]** point in our career. Wait, you didn't major in this in college. I thought you did. **[39:37]** Yeah, I did the full loop. I was escaping investment banking at the time. So I think **[39:47]** the piece that I've always strove to understand is what is that role of ops? Because when I was **[39:53]** getting into it, it was kind of emerging and developing. And it was Salesforce who was sales **[39:58]** strategy. And I've said this before, but I spent so much of my time with HR and DemandGen and all **[40:04]** these other roles outside of the sales team that then it was like, well, it's not just sales **[40:08]** strategy. It's go to market and you build out. I think the challenge that I see, and this question ### 40:16 — A CRO is an architect, not a VP of Sales with a new title **[40:16]** has come in different forms, which is where does the role of ops sit? And I think that's the one **[40:23]** that kind of plays back to my mind. For myself, I remember when I was first seven years of my **[40:28]** career, I was in sales and while being in your twenties and making a lot of money is awesome. **[40:34]** I would go by the conference room and there'd be folks in their planning on what we're going **[40:37]** to do next year and how to develop it. And my desire was to be in that room and be a part of **[40:43]** that and what it makes. And so even my first boss at the time was like, you're not a salesperson, **[40:47]** like go figure out how to get into that room and what your role is. And so as I kind of evolved **[40:53]** into that piece, I think ops in a lot of eyes is the folks that are just doing things. And I've **[41:00]** come into a lot of organizations where that was the default. It was taking instructions from **[41:04]** somebody and going and doing it. But if we have all the capabilities and by capabilities, I mean, **[41:11]** we have the access to what's happening across the business from product to marketing and sales and **[41:21]** post sales and support and professional services. We have all that context and we're thinking **[41:26]** through the little gaps that sit in between and we're kind of thinking about the whole life cycle. **[41:30]** What is ultimately the benefit is that is what should we then do with the business? How do we **[41:34]** transform that into where we're really good next year and where we invest more or maybe where we **[41:40]** pull back? And oftentimes where I feel the role is limited is, you know, if you're in a, you're **[41:46]** reporting to a CRO who's focused on that world, you're making the CRO successful, but you're not **[41:52]** necessarily thinking about everything else. And so I think it's important for this role to sit **[41:57]** aside from that. And in fact, we're going to do a briefing on the role of the evolution of the **[42:04]** career of ops because more and more we're seeing ops leaders become CROs. And what's interesting **[42:10]** to that is I think there are CROs that are really just VPs of sales, right? It's the title just **[42:16]** changed. Like it was, it was hip to be a head of sales. Now it's hip to be a CRO, **[42:19]** but fundamentally a CRO is an architect. And that's what you're building out. You're trying **[42:24]** to connect all the pieces. What does the infrastructure look like and the resources **[42:28]** I need and how to drive that? A lot of the sales leaders I know hate that stuff. That's not what **[42:33]** they wanted. They want to be in the deals. They want to be sales leaders. And so what does that **[42:37]** role really become? So it's actually interesting. There's a lot of GTM council members that have **[42:41]** evolved into president of GTM or CRO. And I think that's a real possibility, but I do think it's **[42:48]** that C title that sits at the table, that's helping architect where the business is going. **[42:54]** It could also certainly be COO. That role has been the weirdest title I've ever known. It's **[43:01]** been the most disenfranchised title. It seems to be the founder who didn't get the CEO title **[43:07]** becomes the COO. But functionally, if you're go-to-market leaning, that is very plausible to how **[43:14]** to think through the infrastructure of what you build out from the company and how you deliver **[43:19]** that. So I think, again, winding back to your question of what does this role need? I think **[43:27]** you need to be able to perspective of like, why does this matter? Why do I care about what's going **[43:32]** on and what does this ultimately mean? And so trying to connect those dots of algorithmic **[43:37]** problem solving to what does this mean for next year and the year beyond? And what can we do as **[43:42]** a business? I know what we want to do. I know what the Excel spreadsheet says our three-year plan is, **[43:46]** but what can we really do and how can we affect it? That's the engine of a business. And so if you **[43:52]** don't think that you're important in this role, not to grandize this role, it's not rocket science. **[43:58]** It's just people that are super passionate about building. Like we love building companies **[44:02]** and we love digging into the details of what it takes. And it's exciting to us and we love the **[44:07]** frustration for some reason, but it's really exciting when we see those successes. And that's **[44:14]** what I would hold back to say. Are you in the organization that's leaning in? If you're **[44:20]** frustrated by the decisions that your executive team is making, you might not be at the right **[44:24]** company. I've learned that over my career and it's what it is. It's fine. But like oftentimes, **[44:30]** ops people are brought in because not because things are shiny and rosy. Ops people are often **[44:35]** brought in because there's some compelling event that said, you know what? We need to invest in **[44:40]** this role more. We need a more senior person to come in. And so that's the challenge of like, **[44:44]** how do you then take that and elevate it? So that's my take there. I think it's a really fun role. **[44:51]** There's no one route to it. There's no one path in it. There's no one perspective of how you **[44:57]** drive it. But I do think you need to have back to, you need to have an opinion. You need to have a **[45:02]** perspective. It needs to be logic based. And you want to make a difference. Get up there and stand **[45:08]** up on your soapbox and fight for what you believe in to be the right answer or the right direction **[45:15]** to fight for that. Fight for the right answer. And so super fulfilling when it happens, **[45:21]** super frustrating when it doesn't. I have been through a lot of those ups and downs. ### 45:28 — How to become the pipeline czar **[45:28]** One venue I feel like gives a RevOps professional a stage to really show off that opinionated **[45:37]** approach and show some leadership and show some guidance in a given direction is when it comes **[45:43]** to GTM planning. I feel like of all the projects, all the initiatives, all the things that you could **[45:49]** go wrap your hands around the one that really gets you the visibility and then gets you in that room **[45:55]** at that table like you're mentioning and can potentially tee up that next stage. I feel like **[46:00]** has to happen in planning. Have you found a similar situation in your career watching and others? **[46:07]** Yes. And in fact, in doing so, I've often I've joined companies mid-year and it's really weird **[46:14]** because I'm living in somebody else's plan. And so at times you're like, I don't know **[46:20]** the decision we made to get here, but I'm trying to figure it out. So absolutely. The planning is **[46:25]** where you need to be able to put all those insights together. And I think that's a great **[46:30]** area. And I think the other part of planning is the capacity side. There's two sides. There's like, **[46:37]** where do we want to try to get to? And then how do we build that up on the capacity front? And **[46:41]** there's the marketing, there's a marketing, I would say pipeline capacity, sales capacity, **[46:47]** and product capacity. If you triangulate those three together and that the product side too, **[46:52]** is I think an untapped area as an opportunity for operations. Why does product not get an operator **[47:00]** that's part of the go to market to think about their world? It's the same world. They just need **[47:04]** to think about it more on product slices. Salesforce had this back in the day and it's one of the things **[47:09]** I was like, that was such a brilliant call because you do need that ability to layer. So if you can **[47:16]** take the product and the pipeline and the sales, I think what's really important is the pipeline **[47:20]** model at the end of the day for the planning. The pipeline is something that everybody in the **[47:26]** company can touch. Everybody can impact pipeline, not necessarily for this quarter, but for future **[47:31]** quarters, whether it's marketing sales, post-sales product. If we know where we're weak or where we're **[47:37]** strong, we can adjust and make those decisions. If you want to seem like a god, become the pipeline **[47:42]** czar at your company. Really understand the dynamics of how it works, the coverage you need, **[47:48]** the pipe gen you need, who's really building it, how does it get built, what happens to it, **[47:54]** what are the levers that actually impact it, and most importantly, being able to start predicting **[47:58]** it for quarters and multiple quarters to come because that's literally the only way you can **[48:03]** forecast future quarters. And if you can start doing that for a CEO, you are effectively the **[48:09]** golden child. So the planning is where it materializes. If you mess up on that and for **[48:15]** all those with calendar years ending in December, you should be in deep on that at this point right **[48:21]** now to put the best foot forward. What are the data you need to get there? What are the considerations **[48:26]** you need to make? What are the assumptions across the company? And then trying to put that into **[48:31]** something really actionable. It's super tough, but I will sit right by your comment. It is about the **[48:39]** planning. I think if you've been in a company where it's done well, you can feel it. And if you've **[48:45]** let it, it definitely unlocked a million doors for me. And if you've been in a company that hasn't **[48:52]** done it well, you can really feel the pain of that. And hopefully you only have to go through **[48:57]** that once or twice. But yeah, I agree with you. I think that just unlocks a lot of career potential, **[49:05]** unlocks potential for the business as well. And if you can get that pipeline part dialed in **[49:10]** and can start forecasting, not just, yes, you'll be in good graces with the CEO, CRO, whatever **[49:17]** you're reporting into, but it also could mean tens of millions to your evaluation. **[49:22]** Yes. So if you're fundraising, if you're going through an exit process and you can bring, **[49:28]** turn this into a math problem with real data that you've been running for multiple years, **[49:32]** and then actually be able to project it, break it down by channel, show the capacity plan, **[49:37]** show exactly in detail where you're going to target and where you're going to expand and grow. **[49:42]** That is priceless when you're going through one of those scenarios. **[49:45]** Yep. You are the source of truth. And I have, I don't know if there's in the, you know, I would **[49:52]** say 90% of the meetings I've ever shown up like around pipeline health, for example, **[49:56]** where somebody else didn't come up with a different version of the data that I have. And so by being **[50:01]** part of the, that pipeline czar concept, you own the source of truth. And that is the way to look **[50:06]** at the business. And there is no other truth beyond that. And I'll go back to a lesson I learned **[50:13]** in, in, in finance, which is data is fact, but the, the, it's a very objective data is objective, **[50:22]** but what you take from that data is very subjective. And the problem with that is you **[50:27]** could take the same data set and probably create two diametrically opposed outputs based on just **[50:35]** how you measure it or the timing or whatever it might be, the way you filter it. And so the **[50:41]** important thing is, is that as an operator, you really understand the levers that control **[50:47]** the trends that you're seeing and the fundamentals because data can lie and people will, you know, **[50:53]** the banking scenario is people would start with the answer and build the model to support the **[50:57]** answer. So if you understand that, then you'll never look at data the same way again and making **[51:02]** sure that you're, you're leveraging the right assumptions. There's nothing worse than being **[51:07]** like, oh, we thought this was going to happen this year. And it didn't, and you didn't, you **[51:11]** didn't address it. And you're like, well, we're four months in, what do we do? We totally messed **[51:15]** up on our plan. That's, you never want to be in that position. You want to be able to fully vet, **[51:20]** vet whatever the inputs that are going to go into your planning well in advanced. And it just **[51:26]** really helps to get everyone on the same page. Everyone's moving really fast, particularly now **[51:31]** it's, it's not companies being, you know, departmental leads being, being malicious or **[51:35]** anything. It's just everyone's moving fast and things, things fall apart between the connection **[51:40]** points of every department. And so you can be that individual that not only provides the glue, **[51:46]** but provides the insights that helps everybody better. So good ops person, you should help **[51:50]** the entire company do well. And therefore the valuation goes up and everybody, everybody wins. **[51:55]** Like we have no other motivation than, than enterprise value at the end of the day. **[52:00]** One hundred percent. My CRO, Tom Miller, he used to say, if you torture the data long enough, **[52:06]** it'll tell you anything you want it to. So, and I think I've definitely seen that play out a few ### 52:12 — The origin of GTM Council **[52:12]** times. I'd love for you to share the history of GTM council. I feel like it's such a unique **[52:21]** group of operators. It has such a long history in standing. I would love to just hear how that **[52:28]** got started, what you all are doing today and what the future of that looks like as well. **[52:32]** Yeah, it was super fun. I mean, it was, it was 10 years ago, I was at Okta, **[52:37]** Andy Moet was at box and we got connected through our CMOs. Probably each of us was telling, **[52:43]** go learn from the other person and be better. And so we got together and we were talking and then **[52:50]** we started realizing that I think we were implementing, I might've been playing at the **[52:54]** time or something. It was an early iteration. It was just a really brutal product to deal with. **[52:59]** And so I was just going out there talking to other ops people, like who are the other leaders out **[53:03]** there that are actually making an impact in this space and that have some like just, I need to **[53:09]** learn from somebody else because I'm kind of making this stuff as, as we go. And so I, we, **[53:14]** you know, I started meeting some really cool individuals who are part of the original, **[53:19]** the OG crew of, of the, of the go to market council. So that's how we started. It was about **[53:24]** a dozen of us and we would meet regularly and just kind of share ideas and best practices. **[53:30]** And then we realized the more senior we got in these roles that we weren't able to be as involved **[53:36]** in like, what are some of the vendors doing out there? And do they have a perspective on this **[53:40]** market that we should be leaning into an understanding that might change the way we **[53:45]** build our organization or, or build our emotions out. And the challenge was for us to do that, **[53:50]** you got to go everything that we built in our market. You got to go talk to an SDR and then **[53:54]** you got to go take to any, like we were getting the sales pitches and that was frustrating when **[53:57]** you have the bandwidth. It's like, what if we just took the founders of these companies, **[54:00]** invited them to come speak with us and wear their ICP. So we're happy to come back and we're all **[54:05]** had senior titles at the time. So you would have value back to you to understand what we're **[54:11]** thinking about and what we care about. And it would give us an hour just to really dig deep **[54:15]** on what's going on. And I, we had this epiphany because like we'd, we'd kind of been doing this **[54:20]** when I was at Okta with Andreessen would have our team go and do, you know, show up in 30 minutes **[54:26]** since and showcase for all the, all the, you know, any company that wanted to come in and **[54:30]** talk to their portfolios, you do these little like road shows and like, that would be really **[54:34]** interesting, but, but with a different context, like we really want to learn and not the sales **[54:38]** pitch. We want the investment pitch. We want the, why did you create this company? How are you **[54:43]** thinking about this? What is it really impacting and changing and how are you doing it differently **[54:47]** than somebody else? And so we would learn a bunch. The companies would learn a bunch. I think a bunch **[54:53]** of advisory roles popped out from that. I think a lot of investments actually came from some of **[54:57]** that. And so we were kind of growing for a while and then we probably had 40 or 50 people. And at **[55:03]** some point, you know, the tech stack kind of got stale. And so while we were meeting frequently and **[55:08]** just chatting, there wasn't a lot of new innovation going on. It was kind of that circa 2009 to 2012 **[55:15]** cohort of companies that had kind of emerged that was the last great bastion. But then with AI, **[55:19]** everything started blossoming again, and there was some really interesting trends and everyone got **[55:24]** excited. And so we went from 40, 50 people to now we're about 150. And as you mentioned, we, we **[55:30]** launched the podcast this year, we do the two founders per month, which I think maybe are our **[55:35]** limit. You know, writing some thought leadership pieces, doing some webinars and briefings. And **[55:41]** the thing that I think we're really come, we gravitate towards is one, it's just a really strong **[55:45]** community of folks that are leaning in and want to be thought leaders. But the other thing that's **[55:50]** been really valuable is, and I'm going to fault Toby at Shopify for this, I'm going to go out **[55:54]** and just call them out. All these tweets over the last couple of years, just blew up our inboxes, **[56:01]** because your tweet would be retweeted and sent around by every VC in the Valley to all their **[56:06]** portfolio companies and saying, why aren't you doing this? And the challenge that we ultimately **[56:10]** had was, we felt that there was a gap between what AI means to an organization, what the C-suite **[56:17]** thought they meant, or the CEO thought it meant, versus the opera, the folks that are actually **[56:21]** doing it. What did it really mean? How's it really happening? And we felt that there was a divide **[56:26]** there that was causing friction, causing a lot of just commotion and busy activity that wasn't **[56:33]** leading anywhere. And so we can use this forum to provide some thought leadership about what **[56:40]** are the ways we can use AI? How are people using it? What are the best practices? What are the **[56:44]** challenges that are coming across in most of these new tech stack companies that are all embedded, **[56:49]** embedding AI within them, or just built on AI? And so that became really interesting. We're like, **[56:53]** let's create that thought leadership buffer that allows the C-suite to really get a glimpse of **[56:59]** what's happening, but then also can showcase the talent of this community, allow us to learn a **[57:05]** bunch, and help us be better individuals within our own companies. And so it's been so much fun. **[57:13]** The podcast we released won a week at this point. And the huddles we're bringing the founders is **[57:21]** super fun. But even our internal Slack channels, there is some spicy conversations happening. And **[57:29]** even though we have a lot of, some of the tech vendors have representatives in this council, **[57:34]** we're not about the vendor, we're about the individual, and everyone says their piece. And **[57:40]** it's super supportive and collaborative. And it's crazy. It's not crazy. It's just, it's super **[57:48]** rewarding to see like everybody thriving on this. And it was just this little idea that happened **[57:54]** upon when we was like, we just need other people to talk to that have similar challenges and problems. **[57:58]** We need to learn more. So yeah, it's right about 150 folks right now. And it's absolutely been a **[58:06]** blast. And we're happy so many people are enjoying it. Well, I'm really fired up about what you all **[58:11]** are doing with GTM council. I think it's, it's what the real operators are doing. It's not the **[58:16]** hype on LinkedIn, the hype on X, and it's just, Hey, this is actually what's happening in the field. **[58:22]** And I think it's refreshingly authentic and real. And I'm excited to see the content that you all **[58:30]** produce. I'm excited to see how you develop and grow over time. And no, this has just been **[58:37]** absolutely lights out. And I appreciate everything that you brought to this podcast. I think there's **[58:44]** very few people who really have their feet on the ground and the foundations of what operations and **[58:52]** strategy is and go to market and have a real keen sense of likely where this stuff is going and what **[58:58]** you need to do to stay sharp for the future. So I appreciate everything you shared, everything from, **[59:02]** Hey, I'm not buying vendors anymore. I need you to have expertise. I need you to have everything **[59:08]** that you need to have the full capability to solve the problems that I have on my side, **[59:14]** the build versus buy discussion that we have, when should you build once you buy? I really like how **[59:18]** you framed it with buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence in the context, and then everything **[59:23]** you're doing with GTM council is just so exciting. So Noah, thank you for being on the podcast. Really **[59:28]** appreciate it. And can't wait to see what you do next. Thanks, Anthony. Really appreciate it. Thanks **[59:33]** for inviting me on here and thanks for being a part of the community. --- _LeanScale Knowledge Hub. Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast (https://www.leanscale.team)._