E11: Mastering Strategic Planning with Eric Gilpin, CRO of G2

And I'm very excited to introduce today's guest, Eric Gilpin, who is the CRO at G2. Eric has been in senior revenue leadership positions for going on 15 years. He's been a CRO for six to eight of the last years, including a really exciting run at upwork, seven years there as Chief Sales officer, and he's now spent over a year at G2 as the CRO. So Eric, appreciate you joining me.

Yeah, no, Kyle, thank you for having me. Excited to be with you there.

Hello and welcome to the Revenue Leadership Podcast by Topline. I'm your host Kyle Norton, CRO@owner.com and every Wednesday we dive deep into the strategies and tactics being used to drive success by the best revenue leaders in the world. So join me as I sit down with revenue operators to discuss actionable frameworks that you can implement in your business today with no fluff, no sales pitches and no platitudes. But first, a word from our sponsors.

This episode of the Revenue Leadership Podcast is brought to you by Superhuman. Superhuman for Sales is an email app designed specifically to better manage email to respond, collaborate and close faster. With Superhuman for Sales, reps can filter out distractions, bubble up priority emails and unblock deals with collaborative workflows. You can learn more@superhuman.com Cool.

So we are going to talk about driving alignment strategy and planning. We are in the throes of planning season and also teasing out the difference between a sales leader, a sales executive versus somebody who is a true revenue executive, somebody who has a seat at the most scene senior table and is driving company vision and company enterprise value. And so we'll tease a bunch of these topics out but let me know, let the audience know what I missed in your background. Give, give them your 60 second intro.

Yeah, no, happy to. You know, so I got started in the, I would say like the tech world as like my first professional job and starting in sales at a desk. This is long before the assembly line of roles that you see in the sales motions today. I was as what you would call maybe a full stack go to market expert. But I got started in the, in the rise of the Internet in 2001 and you know, was fortunate to be part of an organization that scaled globally and, and kind of grew within that organization winning as a result of kind of that revenue machine. As you mentioned, I was able to join Elkwork a little over eight and a half years ago. A tangential space to what I was doing, you know, kind of prior but still in the kind of B2B marketplace. Kind of arena and, and had a huge mission, big problem statement. We were fortunate enough to take that company public in 2018 and awesome. Almost seven and a half years there. And then I just wrapped one year here at G2. And so it's, it's been exciting. Kind of squiggles of success, but excited to be here.

Awesome. Awesome. And when, how big was upwork when you started? What was the sort of range over those years?

Yeah, so we measured the business in what we call GSV or maybe gmv and so total market kind of sales volume. And so when I joined this was right after the marriage of Elance and Odesk that came together. So number one and two and we were doing about a billion dollars in gross sales as a company when I left, you know, probably closer to 4 and a half or 5 billion this year as a company. But the, the problem statement that I was working around was our enterprise segment. And so how do we make the, the magic of the work marketplace relevant to large companies? And starting there is. It was, I would say it was more of like an entrepreneurship. You know, we had a scaled business but not necessarily that customer Persona or use case and we scaled that business frankly from zero to almost $650 million in seven years.

Wow, that's awesome. So lots of interesting alignment conversations that we'll have there to tease out to sort of cue this whole thing up. I'm curious to hear your opinion on, you know, what's the difference between a sales leader? So there's lots of VPs of sales or CROs who just have that mandate versus like a real revenue executive. And this isn't about the title necessarily. I'm really talking about what is the differentiation between the person who is more siloed in their sales oriented thinking versus like a real revenue executive that can drive enterprise value. How, how do you like to architect those two things?

Great question. I think it's, I think it's a relevant topic regardless of your function, but it really shows up in go to market organizations. And so as I think about my first sales leadership role, managing a team of representatives and at that phase of my career I was just kind of in execution mode. I was running a play that was kind of tops down in the organization. While there might have been some kind of creativity and flexibility of how we navigated that, but I was definitely in execution mode. I think as you move up into second line leadership VP levels, potentially maybe running a function within a sales organization, the hat that you wear is more around strategy but specifically what is done and helping identify like what are the tactics and strategies that you're going to pull through. I think as you move up into svp, definitely CRO roles, the job to be done is more around who does what and you become less attached to the how. In some ways I've struggled a lot, you know, with that you're focused more on like the why we're doing certain things and like who's on first to pull these things through for the organization and for your customers. And you're less married to the the what and how. And I think that's a real challenge as people move up of understanding that their job to be done.

Hmm, interesting. And so just say more about figuring out who does what. Like, like how. How do you learn that skill set? What are the things that you need to do differently at that level? Ve when you're more strategy and tactics oriented.

Yeah, I mean I think the who does what is relevant in any leadership role, but I think it's, it's magnified the higher you get in an organization. But I think there's two different sides of that story. You know, one is this idea of Patrick Lencioni calls it like your team one and understanding that my team is not my direct reports. You know, my team are the fellow executives that are operating the organization. And so our cmo, our chief product officer, our gp people officer, cfo, CEO and that is my team number one. And I'll park that one because I think that'll, that'll come back in a conversation in planning and just. But if you think about the who does what for my direct reports, it's, it's really around this framework of in my opinion, like how you hire and this idea that you're searching for in addition to excellence and competence and being able to be both a while wide, but a mile deep in the function or part of the, let's call it a customer journey that you need them to obviously perform and own. But also this idea of you're constantly hiring for the team, not just the role. And so I think a lot about range and I think a lot about inventory of this team that I get. You know, obviously the, the honor to lead. And as you know, team members come and go. Am I constantly thinking about the inventory of the team? And so that could be creativity, that could be business acumen, that could be strong cross functional collaboration, that could be strong analytic backgrounds. And so regardless if they're the best CS leader or if they're the best new business acquisition leader or the best rev ops leader, what are those attributes of the team that would raise the bar for everyone more so than just the function that they're leading? And that was also, I would say a learning journey as you know, building a number of different teams. And so I think about the function for the team more so than just the role.

Interesting. It's a similar analogy that I share often is when I'm building teams, I'm trying to build a basketball team. You can't have five centers, you can't have five point guards. You need a variety of skills that can flex into different places to have the right winning formula. And, and it's hard. Especially I think earlier in my career I really just wanted to replicate myself like well, I'm awesome, so I'll just go hire a bunch of people like me and then everything's going to be great. And then you quickly realize that that is not at all the formula.

I think that's a real challenge as people move up of understanding that their job to be done.

Interesting. And so just say more about figuring out who does what. Like, like how, how do you learn that skill set? What are the things that you need to do differently at that level versus when you're more strategy and tactics oriented.

Yeah, I mean I think the who does what is relevant in any leadership role, but I think it's, it's magnified that I was working around was our enterprise segment and so how do we make the, the magic of the work marketplace relevant to large companies? And starting there, I would say it was more of like an entrepreneurship. We had a scaled business but not necessarily that customer Persona or use case and we scaled that business frankly from zero to almost $650 million in seven years.

Wow, that's awesome. So lots of interesting alignment conversations that we'll have there to tease out to sort of cue this whole thing up. I'm curious to hear your opinion on, you know, what's the difference between a sales leader? So there's lots of VPs of sales or CROs who just have that mandate versus like a real revenue executive. And this isn't about the title necessarily. I'm really talking about what is the differentiation between the person who is more siloed in their sales oriented thinking versus like a real revenue executive that can drive enterprise value. How do you like to architect those two things?

Great question. I think it's, I think it's a relevant topic regardless of your function, but it really shows up in go to market organizations. And so as I think about my first sales leadership role, managing a Team of representatives. And at that phase of my career I was just kind of in execution mode. I was running a play that was kind of tops down in the organization. While there might have been some kind of creativity and flexibility of like how we navigated that, but I was definitely an execution mode. I think as you move up into second line leadership VP levels, potentially maybe running a function within a sales organization, the hat that you wear is more around strategy, but specifically like what is done and helping identify like what are the tactics and strategies that you're. The higher you get in an organization. But I think there's two different sides of that story. You know, one is decided to pull through. I think as you move up into svp, definitely CRO roles, the job to be done is more around who does what and you become less attached to the how. In some ways I've struggled a lot. Patrick Lencioni calls it like your team one and understanding that my team is not my direct reports. You know, my team are the fellow executives that are operating the organization. And so our cmo, our chief product officer, our chief people officer, cfo, CEO. And you know, with that you're focused more on like the why we're doing certain things and like who's on first. That is my team number one. And I'll park that one because I think that'll that'll come back to pull these things through for the organization and for your customers. And you, you're less married to the what and how. And I think that's a real challenge as people move up of understanding that their job to be done.

Hmm, interesting. And so just say more about in.

A conversation and planning and but if you think about the who does what for my direct reports, it's. It's really around this framework of in my opinion like how you hire and this idea that you're searching for in addition to excellence and competence and being able to be both a while wide but a mile deep in the function or part of the.

Let's call it figuring out who does what. Like, like how. How do you learn that skill set? What are the things that you need to do differently at that level versus when you're more strategy and tactics oriented.

Yeah, I mean I think the who does what is relevant in any leadership role, but I think it's, it's magnified the higher you get in an organization. But I think there's two different sides of that story. You know, one is decide a customer journey that you need them to, to obviously perform and own. But also this idea of you're constantly hiring for the team not just the role. And so I think a lot about range and I think a lot about inventory of this team that I get you know obviously the the honor to lead and as you know team members coming you have Patrick Lencioni calls it like your team one and understanding that my team go am I constantly thinking about the inventory of the team and so that could be create is not my direct reports. You know my team are the fellow executives that are operating the organization. And so our cmo, our chief product officer, our chief people officer, cfo, CEO and that is my team number one. And I'll park that one because I think that'll that'll come back. That could be business acumen, that could be be strong cross functional collaboration that could be strong analytic backgrounds. And so regardless if they're the best CS leader or if they're the best you know new business acquisition leader or the best rev ops leader what are those attributes of the team that would raise in a conversation in planning and but if you think about the who does what for my direct report is the bar for everyone more so than just the function that they're leading. And that was also it's. It's really around this framework of in my opinion like how you hire and this idea that you're searching for in addition to excellence and competence and being able to be both a while wide but a mile deep in the function or part of the let's call I would say a learning journey as you know building a number of different teams. And so I think about the the function for the team more so than just the role.

Interesting. And it's a similar analogy that I share often is when I'm building teams I'm trying to build a customer journey.

That you need them to obviously perform and own. But also this idea of you're constantly basketball team.

You can't have five centers, you can't have five point guards. You need a variety of skills that.

Can hiring for the team not just the role. And so I think a lot about range and I think a lot about inventory of this team that I get. You know obviously the the honor to lead. And as you know team members come and go. Am I constantly thinking about the inventory of the team and so that could.

Be create flex into different places to have the right winning formula. And and it's hard especially I think earlier in my career I really just wanted to replicate myself like well I'm awesome so I'll just go hire a bunch of people like me. And then everything's going to be great. And then you quickly realize that that is not at all the formula activity.

That could be business acumen, that could be strong cross functional collaboration for success.

So I think this, this idea of.

Team that could be strong analytic backgrounds. And so regardless if they're the best CS leader or if they're the best, you know, new business acquisition leader or the best rev ops leader, what are those attributes of the team that would raise the bar for everyone more so than just the function that they're leading? And that was also.

Inventory is a really interesting one.

Totally.

And so we'll come back to team one and how to drive alignment across team one. But I want to, I want to pick at one more thing here so it's less about the how and so how do you.

I would say a learning journey as you know, building a number of different teams. And so I think about the guide.

People to the right how. This is the thing I think me.

Personally I the function for the team more so than just the role.

Interesting. And it's a similar analogy that I share often is when I'm building teams, I'm trying to build a basketball team. You can't have five centers, you can't have five point guards. You need a variety of skills that can also struggle with. I want to have an opinion on, on how to make sure those decisions are great. So how do you. How have you tried to let go of the how and ensure that the how is still done at a world class level by your team?

Yeah, great question. And it's as you can imagine, flex.

Into different places to have the right winning formula. And it's hard, especially something that comes.

Up in planning cycles in a really big way. As you think about, we run the B2 mom here at G. I think.

Earlier in my career I really just wanted to replicate myself like well I'm awesome. So I'll just go hire a bunch of people like me and then everything's going to be great. And then you quickly realize that that is not at all the formula for success. So I think this idea of team inventory is a really interesting one.

Totally.

And so we'll come back to team one and how to drive alignment across team one. But I want to pick at one more thing here so it's less about the how. And so how do you guide people to the right how? This is the thing I think me.

Personally, I do and, and like we debate a lot the metrics and I'm always curious, I'm like Is that really like where we should be debating? But, but I'll give you a, I'll give you an example. And so I think goal alignment and, and I would say the measures and metrics are really important and if you.

Can align, also struggle with, I want to have an opinion on, on how to make sure those decisions are great.

So on like whatever needle you're trying to move, whatever conversion rate you're trying to improve, whatever outcome that you're trying to drive, how do you, how have.

You tried to let go of the how and ensure that the how is still done at a world class level by your, by your team?

Yeah, great question. And it's as you can imagine, something that comes up in planning cycles in a really big way. As you think about, we run the B2 mom here at G Dive, you should be less married to how the team gets there. I mean there's frameworks around, you know, ideas of like discipline, freedom or freedom and responsibility or you know, how much like surface area is, you know, available for, I would say like creativity and things. And I think those things should be.

Embraced also struggle with, I want to have an opinion on, on how to make sure those decisions are great. So how do you, how have you tried to let go of the how and ensure that the how is still done at a world class level by your, by your team?

Yeah, great question. And it's as you can imagine, something that comes up in planning CYC in a really big way. As you think about, we run the B2 mom here at G, I think where teams, especially revenue teams, if it's all paint by numbers and they're not necessarily two and, and like we debate a lot the metrics and, and I'm always curious, I'm like, is that really like where we should be debating? But, but I'll give you a, I'll give you an example. And so I think goal alignment and, and I would say the measures and metrics are really important. And if you can align on like whatever needle you're trying to move, whatever conversion rate you're trying to improve, whatever outcome that you're trying to drive, part of the how or solutioning that it comes through is less sticky and there's less ownership mentality of how we're trying to win on behalf of our customers. And so I think it starts with like what are we actually trying to do and why you should be less married to how the team gets there. I mean there's frameworks around, you know, ideas of like discipline, freedom or freedom and Responsibility or you know, how much like surface area is, you know, available for, I would say like creativity and things. And I think those things should be embraced. I think where teams, especially revenue teams, if it's all paint by numbers and they're not necessarily two and like we debate a lot the metrics and I'm always curious, I'm like, is that really like where we should be debating? But I'll give you an example. And so I think goal alignment and I would say the measures and metrics are really important and if you can align, are we doing that? And if we can have really strong alignment on the siloed, who cares what happens when we get there? I think it's a lot easier to kind of remove yourself from the actual strategies or tactics they need to be deployed as on like whatever needle you're trying to move, whatever conversion rate you're trying to improve, whatever outcome that you're trying to drive. As long as they're aligned with your core values and you know, they're aligned to, you know, kind of customer value, I think it's really hard to do. But I feel like where I've seen high performing teams, there's no question on the why part of the how or solutioning that it comes through is less sticky and there's less ownership mentality of how we're trying to win on behalf of our customers. And so I think it starts with like what are we actually trying to do and why are we doing that and if we can have really strong alignment on the silo, who cares what happens when we get there? I think it's a lot easier to kind of remove yourself to from the actual strategies or tactics that need to be deployed or the what and, and the, and the how is less debated I would say.

Okay, so it's the what and the why. And, and so you mentioned a couple things that are, that are above the how and it's alignment on values, alignment around the customer. What else, what else do you need to architect for your senior leaders?

Long as they're aligned with your core values and you know, they're aligned to, you know, kind of customer value. I think it's really hard to do, but I feel like where I've seen high performing teams, there's no question on the why or the what and, and the, and the how is less debated I would say.

Okay, so it's the what and the why and, and so you mentioned a couple things that are leaders to allow them to get to the right how.

Yeah, I think it does Start with a why. And, and I'll give you an example with upwork because I've been fortunate to be a part of a lot of mission driven organizations. But this one was we, we did a really good job of like threading it all the way through all the communities we serve. And so if you thought about our vision as an organization, you should be less married to how the team gets there. I mean there's frameworks around ideas of discipline, freedom or freedom and responsibility or how much surface area is available for I would say creativity and things. And I think those things should be embraced. I think where teams, especially revenue teams, if it's all paint by numbers and.

They'Re not necessarily that are above the how and it's alignment on values, alignment around the customer. What else, what else do you need to architect for your senior leader?

It was to build the world's largest work marketplace. And immediately you'd ask yourself all right.

Well so what leaders to allow them to get to the right how?

Yeah, I think it does start with a yeah. And, and I'll give you an example with upward, who cares? But if you think about the why or the mission or why we exist, I was this idea of we want to create economic opportunity so people have better lives and the motions that we run Both for, we're two sided marketplace similar to G2 should be rooted in that. And if you think part of the how or solutioning that it comes through is less sticky and there's less ownership mentality of how we're trying to win on beh of our customers. And so I think it starts with like what are we actually trying to do and why are we doing that and if we can have really strong alignment on the silo, who cares what happens when we get there? Because I've been fortunate to be a part of a lot of mission driven organizations. But this one was we, we did a really good job of like threading it all the way through all the communities we serve. And so if you thought about our vision as an organization about upwork, I mean we were distributing jobs around the world, creating economic, economic opportunity, but also helping companies scale agility and product innovation by having access to, you know, talent real time. And, and if you can, if you can have a raw, real strong culture and DNA around why you exist, I think the what is like a little easier. And so the what becomes like okay, exactly how do we show up for that? If you think about G2 today, like I think it's a lot easier to kind of remove yourself to from the actual strategies or tactics that need to be deployed is why we exist is to empower, you know, business professionals to reach their peak potential. You know, we do that by building the world's largest software marketplace rooted in trust and transparency, connecting buyers and sellers faster than ever before. And you have to spend a lot of time and it's painful, you know, getting alignment there. And then if you think about the depending on your go to market, the customers you want to serve, why do you want to exist? I think the how of like the tactics associated with how you're going to grow the business and grow your teams, I think you get a lot more, I would say involvement and participation, you know, from folks and they feel like they're more of a part of it. It's happening through them versus to them in those scenarios. But I think a lot of companies don't spend enough time on the why they exist.

That makes sense.

Like where we should be debating. But, but I'll give you a, I'll give you an example. And so as long as they're aligned with your core values and you know, they're aligned to, you know, kind of customer value, I think it's really hard to do. But I feel like where I've seen high performing teams, there's no question on the why or the what and, and the, and the how is less debated, I would say.

Okay, so it's the what and the why and, and so you mentioned a.

Couple things that are I think goal alignment and, and I would say the measures and metrics are really important. And if you can align on like whatever needle you're trying to move, whatever conversion rate you're trying to improve, whatever outcome that you're trying to drive, you should be less married to how the team gets there. I mean there's frameworks around sense.

So we'll come back to.

My guess is owner.com has a strong mission orientation that are above the how.

And it's alignment on values based on.

The community that you want to serve.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For us it's about arming restaurant owners to take on their Goliaths and it's this idea of empowering SMBs to be able to battle with the dominoes and Chipotle's of the world and the Ubers and doordash alignment around the customer. What else, what else do you need to architect for your senior leaders of the world? Like they're under siege and we're trying to give them the tools to succeed and we are absolutely leaders to allow them to get to the right how all. Yeah, deeply rooted in, in a very mission driven approach. And then for me it's all about trying to figure out how those how I can architect principles that can guide like more specific decision making. Because like how does that. The question for me oftentimes is how does that.

I think it does start with a why. And, and I'll give you an example with upwork because I've been fortunate to be a part of a lot of mission driven organizations. But this one was we, we did.

A really good mission tie to a sales manager deciding on how do we.

Good job of like threading it all the way through all the communities we serve. And so if you thought about our vision as an organization, protect our deal.

Qualification criteria or how does it, how do we decide on you know, the salesforce project to prioritize? And so there's the level of I think abstraction there that I'm trying to fill in. Yeah, go ahead.

I was gonna say why it was to build the world's largest work marketplace. And immediately you'd ask yourself all right, well so what? Who cares? But if you think about the why or the mission or why we exist, I was this idea of we want to create economic opportunity so people have better lives and the motions that we run Both for we're two sided marketplace similar to G2 should be rooted in that. And if you think about upwork, I mean we were distributing jobs around the world creating economic, economic opportunity but also helping companies. And I think there's like there's another layer in between that. So if you feel like you have like your mission and vision, gale agility and product innovation by having access to you know, talent real time and, and if you can alignment as an organization and I think specifically around go to market organizations, the next idea is this, is this framework of like who are we? And I remember right When I joined G2, I asked this question to six people my first day. And immediately if you can have a real strong culture and DNA around why you exist. I think the what is like a little easier. And so the what becomes like okay, exactly how do we show up for that? If you think about G2 today, like we go to these like competitors and they'll remain nameless at this time. And, and I was just kind of fascinated because in my mind you don't chase your competition, you chase your customers. Customers and like who, what are the customers that we want to serve that are in support of that broader mission and vision? And I feel where a lot of organizations End up like shipping their org charts a little bit and potentially not meeting their potential is because marketing has a point. Why we exist is to empower, you know, business professionals to reach their peak potential. You know, we do that by building the world's largest software marketplace rooted in trust and transparency, connecting buyers and sellers faster than ever before. Point of view on that product has a point of view on that. Your sales organization has a point of view on that. And if there's a ton of daylight between those beliefs, even when you get into thinking about like how do you operationalize the qualification criteria that you need? That is a downstream decision that if you have upstream misalignment, it kind of doesn't matter because it might be very different. And so I feel like even after vision and you have to spend a lot of time and it's painful, you know, getting alignment there. And then if you think about the depending on your go to market, the customers you want to serve, why do you want to exist in admission? This idea of who are you chasing or who do you want to serve and why is a lot of the work that Team 1 or the C level team should be working on because then it reduces lack of clarity down the organization because everything is in service of that strategy. I think the how of like the tactics associated with how you're going to grow the business and grow your teams. And.

And when you first started at G2, I heard you talk about you. You narrowed your ICP.

So I think you get a lot more, I would say involvement and participation, you know, from folks end up like shipping their org charts a little bit and potentially not meeting their potentials. Because marketing has a point of view on that. Product has a point of view on that. Your sales organization has a point of view on that. And if there's a ton of daylight between those beliefs, even when you get into thinking about like how do you operationalize the qualification criteria that you need? That is a downstream decision that if you have upstream maybe just share a.

Little bit more about how you reframed the who we are chasing for G2 totally.

And we have this very interesting pickle, if you will. And so we have a really interesting freemium model where any organization, regardless of size can list their company on G2, start driving reviews and kind of building that customer voice. And as a result we've got 100 and they feel like they're more of a part of it. It's happening through them versus to them in those scenarios. But I think a lot of companies don't spend Enough time on the why they exist.

That makes a bunch of sense. So we'll come back to.

My guess is owner.com has a strong mission orientation based on the community that you want to serve.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For us it's about arming restaurants.

60,000 products that are listed on G2. You know, our go to market organization, not tiny, but not huge. We've got, you know, a little over 200 sellers around the world. So we can't chase all of them. That and, and we're in this, you know, kind of marketplace business where all categories aren't created equal. And so if you think about the 90 million buyers that look at G2, they're not all going to all 2100 categories equally. So you've got, you know, categories alignment, it kind of doesn't matter because it might be very different. And so I feel like even after vision and mission, this idea of who are you chasing or who do you want to serve and why is a lot of the work that Team 1 or the C level team should be working on because then it reduces lack of clarity down the organization because everything is in service of that strategy. It's like your CRM or sales and marketing down to back office software for veterinary hospitals. And so all revenue, as you know, is not equal. And so we did a ton of propensity modeling around the categories, around product signals, things that were really important to us, important to the customer, things that we could defend and prove. And that list started getting smaller. And as you continue to owners to.

Take on their Goliaths and it's this idea of empowering SMBs to be able to battle with the dominoes and Chipotle's of the world and the Ubers and doordashes of the world like they're under siege. And we're trying to give them the tools to succeed. And we are absolutely deeply rooted in a very mission driven approach. And then for me it's all about.

You know, we're a big ecosystem player. We integrate with 53 other, you know, technology companies. And so that's a cut. You look at the category signals, that's a cut. Product adoption, that's a cut. You run your kind of grr and NRR regression against your current customers. That's a cut. And then quickly you get to like a 19,000 number and then you start to, you know, look at where clusters are.

And, and when you first started G2, I heard you talk about you, you narrowed your ICP so maybe just share a little bit more about how you Reframed the who we are chasing for G2 totally.

And we have this very interesting pickle if you will. And so we have a really interesting freemium model where any organization, regardless of size can list their company on G2.

Start trying to figure out how those how I can architect principles that can guide like more specific decision making. Because like how does that. The question for me oftentimes is how.

Does that are like where we have competitors that are strong lookalikes and then you know through that period of time we got down to 3,000. Well, 3,000 customers is a manageable list, you know, to, to focus on in year. And that's where we built our kind of account based orchestration of like all right, product. What are you doing on those 3,000 marketing, what are you doing on this 3,000? You know, the revenue team mission tie.

To a sales manager deciding on how.

Do we arc and then like what role do you play in that buyer journey? The hardest part was getting to the 3,000.

Protect our deal qualification criteria or how does it. How do we decide on you know.

The salesforce presence, the execution while challenging and we make mistakes daily. I would say that the hardest work was way upstream before we got to execution.

Yeah, the answers become a lot more clear when you've defined that group. Jordan Crawford, who's one of the smartest GTM AI thinkers, had a quote that has stuck with me having reviews and.

Kind of building that customer voice. And as a result we've got 160,000 products that are listed on G2. You know, our, our go to market organization, not tiny, but not huge. We've got you know, a little over 200 sellers around the world. So we can't chase all of them. And, and we're in this, you know, kind of marketplace business where all categories aren't created equal. And so if you think about the 90 million buyers that look at project.

To prioritize and so there's like a level of I think abstraction there that I'm trying to fill in. Yeah, go ahead.

I was gonna say why. And I think there's like there's another layer in between that. So if you feel like you have like your mission and vision alignment as an organization and I think specifically around.

Go to market organizations, like the list is the message. You know, when talking about building messaging, it's like everything is downstream of the little micro list that you've built for this campaign and so relevant to this. Like once you get to 3,000, what they need is pretty obvious for like they've Told product the sales reps know what those people want. So that's fascinating.

Well and I think a lot of organizations especially G2 are also investing in I would say more product led and like E com motions. And so we can have a more capture motion on some of the long tail things that we might not chase with humans but then really trying to focus our our human motions on higher order problems that are going to have the best unit economics both for the customer and for us.

Yeah.

So I'm thinking about the next idea is this is this framework of like who are we chasing? And I remember right when I joined G2 I asked this question to you know, six people my first day. And you immediately go to these like competitors and they'll remain nameless at this time. And and I was just kind of fascinated because G2 they're not all going to all 2100 categories equally. So you've got you know, categories like your CRM or sales and marketing down to back office software for veterinary hospitals. And so all revenue as you know is not equal. And so we did a ton of propensity models. In my mind you don't chase your competition, you chase your customer. Customers and like who, what are the customers that we want to serving around the categories around product signals things that were really important to us, important to the customer.

These layers like I. I've been writing this document which is basically like it's a go to market engine all the way from mission to Playbooks. And so I've. I'm like sketching out these layers and it sounds, it sounds like you've got a good mental model here. So you've got mission of vision and vision alignment up at the very top. Who are we chasing? Seems like one of those foundational things like what else is in there before tactics that you really focus on that first team alignment around.

Yeah. And so if you have alignment around who you're chasing, the next question in my mind jumps out to like well how do we align our teams specific to the buyer journey? I think this is another example where revenue teams ship the org chart that are in support of that broader mission and vision. And I feel where a lot of organizations like our model versus their model all the time. And I think as buyer behavior continues to evolve like you should be end up like shipping the org charts a little bit and potentially not meeting their potentials because marketing has a point of view on that, product has a point of view on that. Your sales organization has a point of view on that. And if there's a ton of daylight between those beliefs. Even when you get into thinking about like how do you operationalize the quality things that we could defend and prove. And that list started getting smaller. And as you continue to, you know, we're a big ecosystem player, we integrate with 53 other, you know, technology companies. And so that's a cut. You look at the category signals, that's a cut. Product adoption, that's a cut. You run your kind of GRR and NRR regression against your current customers, that's a cut. And then quickly you challenging your own status quo of whatever your assembly line looks like all the time. You know. And for us it was like okay, what is the role of marketing and partnerships and where does that show up in those touch points? Full funnel. We run a, I call it Hunter Hunter. It's not just land and expand but you know, we're constantly, you know, growing our customers. What is the role of implementation and professional services? Where does product success come in? Qualification criteria that you need. That is a downstream decision that if you have upstream misalignment it kind of doesn't matter because it might be very different. And so I feel like even after vision and so as you can imagine you, you have this, let's call it target account strategy across the top map, whatever you're doing in mission, this idea of who are you chasing or who do you want to serve and why is a lot of buyer journey is to you. And this is like design thinking workshops with everybody including the customer combining like of the work that Team 1 or the C level team should be working on because then it reduces terms of where all those funnels exist. And it might not look just like an amazing winning by design bow tie. That's a great starting point depending on your model and you start figuring out what it is for you and then say okay great, well how do I align our resources? It's like a 19,000 number. And then you start to look at where clusters are like where we have competitors that are strong lookalikes. And then you know through that period of time we got down to 3,000. Well 3,000 customers is a manageable list you know to, to focus on in year and, and that's where we built our you know, kind of account based orchestration of like all right, product, what are you doing on those 3,000? Marketing, what are you doing on those 3,000? You know, the revenue. I I have a lot of passion around this topic of or Hannah was actually at an event in Boston and the and one day I heard well it's product led growth. Well then it was marketing led growth. Well then it was sales led growth. And then it was like event led growth. And then e, I was like team.

Like community led growth.

Now I'm like, I mean like our ego is getting in the way of, of winning for our customers. The only one that teams. And then like what role do you play in that buyer journey? The hardest part was getting to the 3,000. The execution while challenging and we've made mistakes daily. Lack of clarity down the organization because everything is in service of that strategy. Credit should be the customer. And so it's about working in orchestration in the most efficient way to help your customers win. And so if you can have like, you know, that surface area documented and alignment across private market.

And, and when you first started at G2, I heard you talk about, you, you narrowed your ICP. So maybe just share a little bit more about how you reframed the who we are chasing 4G2 totally.

And we have this very interesting pickle, if you will. And so we have a replicating revenue of what that funnel looks like. Then you start understanding not the role, but the jobs to be done in each piece and you know, mapping like, what are we going to do to help our customers get through that part of the journey? Some of it could be humans, some of it could be products, some of it could be AI, some of it could be marketing, nurturing. But really understanding that journey is incredibly important. And as you, as you think about the jobs to be done, once you have alignment there, then for me it's just, all right, well, what are the input metrics? You know, revenue happens. Like, what are the mile markers that we need to understand so that we can, you know, see around corners? You know, for example, you know, an average G2, like a new deal cycle is less than 90 days. We need to be able to, you know, have certainty good or bad 90 days in the future, because everything we do today pays us later. And so like, what are those input metrics that we're going to measure, you know, day over day, week over week, month over month, quarter over quarter to make sure that we don't necessarily get over, get ahead of our skis or go too slow on certain things. And doesn't mean that you wouldn't have outcome based metrics, but if you get really good at managing the inputs, the outputs tend to take care of themselves. Okay, and do you have really interesting freemium model where any organization, regardless of size, can list their company on G2, start driving reviews and kind of building that, that customer voice. And as a result, we've got 160,000 products that are listed on G2. You know, our, our go to market organization, not tiny, but not huge. We've got, you know, a little over 200 sellers around the world. So we can't chase all of them.

And have a team vision document also written because there's always, you know, we're.

In this, you know, kind of marketplace business where all categories aren't created equal. And so if you think about the 90 million buyers that look at company.

Mission values, company plan and then oftentimes we dive down into like and here's our strategy and the tactics for 2025. But do you have a layer in between that is about clearly stating the team vision that you want your senior people building towards is, is that G2.

They'Re not all going to all 2100 categories equally. So you've got, you know, category is.

Something that you've roadmapped or, or are people figuring out that stuff on their own?

Yeah, I would say that the hardest work was way upstream before we got to execution.

Yeah, the answers become a lot more clear when you've defined that group. Jordan Crawford, who's one of the smartest GTM AI thinkers, had a quote that has stuck with me. He's like the list is the message. When talking about building messaging. He's like everything is downstream of the little micro list that you've built for campaign and, and so relevant to this. Like once you get to 3,000, what they need is pretty obvious for like they've, they've told product the sales reps know what those people want so. Well, that's fascinating.

Well, and I think a lot of organizations, especially G2 are also investing in, I would say more product led and like E comm motions and so we can have a more capture motion. So there's one that we do and then one that I haven't done that I'm really unfortunately haven't been able to prioritize but want to strive to do this year in planning. You know, I think we run the V2 mom here at G2 and there's a company version of the V2 mom and there's maybe five, you know, methods that we're prioritizing like your CRM or sales and marketing down to back office software for veterinary hospitals. And so all revenue, as you know, is not equal. And so we did a ton of propensity modeling around the categories around product signals, things that were really important to us, important to the customer. Every function takes that a level down and says okay great. What are the measures that you're going to do in support of the V2 model? Because there might be certain things that parts of the organization might not touch directly or feel like things that we could defend and prove. And that list started getting smaller and as you continued to strong connection to like an overall method for the organization and so they need to like bring it down, personalize it to exactly what they can do and what they can control. And so you'll see sub V2 moms by function on some of the long tail things that we, we might not chase with humans but then really trying to focus our our human motions on higher order problems that are going to have the best unit economics both for the customer and for us.

Yeah, so I'm thinking about the. Okay, so their, their document is in the v2 mon format and it's. And it's a child.

You know we're a big ecosystem player. We integrate with 53 other you know, technology companies. And so that's a.

Of that company V2 1 parent.

Okay, totally. And we link them all together. You know we use confluence to have transparency measurements and kind of report back as an organization on it. You know I think the one that, that I want to do in the revenue organization that I haven't been able to cut. You look at the category signals, that's a cut. Product adoption, that's a cut. You run your these layers.

Like I, I've been writing this document which is basically like.

Kind of GRR and NRR regression against your current customers. That's a cut. And then quickly you get to like a 19,000 number and then you start to you know, look at where clusters are due. And I've been a recipient of this at another company and I just, I need to find a way to prioritize it is I think organizations that have really strong clarity around roles and responsibilities and decision making frameworks are incredibly important.

It's a go to market engine all the way from mission to Playbooks. And so I'm like Scott, like so.

Many things get stuck because we actually don't know who the approver is or who the informed captain is. And I feel like even in revenue if a strong sketching out these layers.

And it sounds, it sounds like you've got a good mental model here. So you've got mission vision and vision alignment up up at the very top. Who are we chasing? Seems like one of those foundational things like what else, what else?

Daisy or Racy model with like clear roles and responsibilities of who's on first or who's single are like where we have competitors that are strong lookalikes. And then, you know, through that period of time we got down to 3,000. Well, 3,000 customers is a manageable list, you know, to, to focus on in year and, and that's where we built our, you know, kind of accounted in these decisions. Because you see it so many times when you do a V2 mom review or a QBR internally, you just run into friction and you're like, why did friction exist? It was usually because of, you know, kind of this like circular based orchestration of like, all right, product, what are you doing on those 3,000? Marketing, what are you doing on this 3,000? You know, the revenue conversation. Because no one, no one had the ability of understanding who's on first to actually advance it. And then like, what role do you play in that buyer journey? The hardest part was getting to the 3,000.

This is in there before tactics that you really focus on that first team alignment around.

Yeah. And so if you didn't have clear escalation paths for like when things got stuck, but I feel like that is like the next unlock, at least for the if you have alignment around who you're chasing. The next question in my mind jumps out to like, well, how do we align our teams specific to the buyer journey? I think this is another example where revenue teams ship the org chart and you know, ideas of like discipline, freedom or freedom and responsibility or, you know, how much like surface area is, you know, available for. I would say like, like creativity and things. And I think those things should be embraced. I think where teams, especially revenue teams, if it's all paint by numbers and they're not necessarily a part of the how or solutioning that it comes through, it's less sticky and there's less ownership mentality. Revenue team here at G2 is like, okay, let's take Vision Mission V2 mom. Customers input metrics and then say, okay, great, well, how are we going to play the game every day here? This idea of like, let's all ensue positive intent, let's keep short toes meaning we're going to step on each other. But like, let's have clarity and speed in which we can like accelerate the operating model. And I think that if you gunk that up and that's not super clear, it's like, it's just slow.

Okay. And so those are your team principles, the short toes thing. And so I'm going to double Click on the principles thing. I just want to make sure. So the way I architect this in the way I've written this in my document, there's company mission, company values, company vision, team vision. We have a three year company vision which we've documented now there's a three and there's a component of go to market there. Then there are the strategies, like what is our strategy for the next 20 years, 24 months to get there and then I've got these principles but I don't principles in org design. But I don't have that model for like who. How do we define the dri? Who gets to make calls on what I. We used to at Shopify talk a lot about is this like a level one or two decision? If it's one, just go make it. If it's two, like here's the escalation path. But that's a really interesting one that I, that I need to tuck into my system.

Well, especially in the technology space, everything is cross functional like, like you can't do really anything in service to the customer without touching all those surface areas. And if you don't have like an operating model or decision making kind of framework, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It just. And it's not like lack of good intent by any means. It's just the execution while challenging and we make mistakes daily. I would say that the hardest work was way upstream before we got to execution.

Yeah, the answers become a lot more clear when you've defined that group. Jordan Crawford, who's one of the smartest GTM AI thinkers, had a quote that has stuck with me. He's like the list is the message. When talking about building messaging, he's like everything is downstream of the little micro list that you've built for this campaign and so relevant to this. Like once you get to 3,000, what they need is pretty obvious. They've told product the sales reps know what those people want. So that's fascinating.

Well and I think a lot of organizations, especially G2 are also investing in, I would say more product led and like E Comm motions and so we can have a more capture. You just created your own kind of friction points and you don't see them like, like our model versus their model all the time. And I think as buyer behavior continues to evolve, like you should be challenging your own status quo of whatever your assembly line looks like all the time, you know, and for us it was like okay, what is the role of marketing and partnerships and where does that show up in those touch points, full funnel, we run a, I call it Hunter Hunter. It's not just land and expand, but you know, we're constantly, you know, growing our customers. What is the role of implementation and professional services? Where does product success come in? And so as you can imagine, you, you have this, let's call it target account strategy across the top map whatever your buyer journey is to you. And this is like design thinking workshops with everybody including the customer combining like terms of where all those funnels exist. And it might not look just like an amazing winning by design bow tie. That's a great sky. Like if I, if I ran a little bit more on this idea. If you assume positive intent and you have short toes, like, like that is a good thing. And I would say that like as accountability is increased in an organization, like your job as a leader is to push accountability down. Like, like you're no longer responsible. Starting point depending on your model and you start figuring out what it is for you and then say okay, great. Well how do I align our resources? Well, you're responsive to the needs of the business. And so as accountability is pushed down, that should create pressure and pressure should create friction. And I would argue friction is where the magic is. And like we have to, I, I have a lot of passion around this topic of or Hannah was actually Adam find ways to get there as fast as possible because that's where we're like missing customer like value points.

I so deeply agree with this. This like friction is where the magic happens thing. It we changed our comp plan recently to make the sales river in Boston.

And the and one day I heard, well it's product. Well then it was marketing led growth. Well then it was sales led growth.

A hundred percent only paid when the customer goes live. We're SMB highly transactional month to month growth.

And then it was like event led growth and then eco led growth. And I was like team like community.

Led growth now tracks. So, so that cycle time is very short and so the manager's like, oh hey, like you know, we're getting some butting heads and there's some friction around this. And, and I was having this conversation with one of my long term managers.

I'm like, I'm like, I mean like our ego is getting in of winning for our customers. The only one that you.

Yeah, good. This is exactly what we want. You know, the friction. The friction shows you what part of your system has weaknesses and then you can address it. And then oh, good point. We didn't think about that. Let's buff it out, get credit, should be the customer.

And so it's about working in orchestration in the most efficient way in that.

I'm going to steal this quote. Your job is to push responsibility down and pressure creating friction. I think that's like a really elegant way to think about it.

I stole it from someone I'm sure. I don't really have any original on some of the long tail things that we, we might not chase with humans but then really trying to focus our, our human motions on higher order problems that are going to have the best unit economics both for the customer and for us.

Yeah.

So.

I'm thinking about these layers. Like I, I've been writing this document which is basically like it's a go to market engine all the way from mission to playbooks. And so I'm like sketching out these layers and it sounds like you've got a good mental model here. So you've got mission vision and vision alignment up at the very top. Who are we chasing? Seems like one of those foundational things like what else is in there before tactics that you really focus on that first team alignment around.

Yeah. And so if you have alignment around who you're chasing, the next question in my mind jumps out to like, well how do we align our team to help your customers win? And so if you can have like, you know that surface area documented and alignment across private market ideas. Kyle, I just tend to steal and try to apply them, you know where I can.

But I noticed from your bookshelf.

Yeah, yeah, we have a lot of the same ones getting revenue of what that funnel looks like, then you start understanding not the role but the jobs to be done in each piece. Yeah, well, I mean there's a lot of good inventory out there. I mean if you can feed your mind, you know, good stuff every day. Yeah, you get 1% better. I mean who knows what happens.

So yeah, yeah, I noticed you had working backwards. I think I saw and you know.

Mapping like what are we going to do to help our customers get through that part of the journey? Some of it could be humans, so it could be products, some of it could be AI, some of it could be marketing nurturing. But really understanding that journey is incredibly important. And as you, as you think about the jobs to be done once you have alignment there, then for me it's just all right, well what are the input metrics? Revenue happens. What are the mile markers that we need to understand so that we can see around corners? For example, an average G2A new deal cycle is less than 90 days. We need to be able to have certainty, good or bad 90 days in the future because everything we do today pays us later. And so like, what are those input metrics that we're going to measure, you know, day over day, week over week, month over month, quarter over quarter, to make sure that we don't necessarily get over, get ahead of our skis or go too slow on certain things. And doesn't mean that you wouldn't have outcome based metrics, but if you get really good at managing the inputs, the outputs tend to take care of themselves.

Okay, and do you have a team vision document also written? Because there's always, you know, company mission values, company plan. And then oftentimes we dive down into like, and here's our strategy and the tactics for 2025. But do you have a layer in between that is about clearly stating the team vision that you want your senior people building towards? Is that something that you've roadmapped or, or are people like figuring it out that stuff on their own?

Yeah, I, I, so there's one that we do and then one that I haven't done that I'm really your background.

In one of the pods that you did. And this they, I think Amazon does a good job at that. You know, identify the dri, the directly responsible individual, single thread them with ownership. Like really.

Unfortunately, I've been able to prioritize, but I want to strive to do this year and plan it. You know, I think we run the V2 mom here at G2 and there's a company version of the V2 mom and there's MP5, you know, methods that we're prioritizing. Every function takes that a level down and says, okay, great, what are the measures that you're going to do in support of the V2 mom? Because there might be certain things that parts of the organization might not touch directly or feel like, strong connection to, like an overall method for the organization. And so they need to like bring it down, personalize it to exactly what they can do and what they can control. And so you'll see sub veto 2 moms by function teams specific to the buyer journey. I think this is another example where revenue teams ship the org chart like our model versus their model all the time. And I think as buyer behavior continues to evolve, like you should be challenging your own status quo of whatever your assembly line looks like all the time, you know, and for us it was like, okay, what is the role of marketing and partnerships and where does that show up in those touch points full funnel we run. Okay.

So their, their document is in the v2mon format and it's and it's a child of that company. V2 mon parent.

Okay totally. And we link them all together. You know we use confluence to have transparency measurements and kind of report back as an organization on it. You know I think they'll really keep.

It keep things tight. This is definitely something I'm going to.

Do well and I would tell you I got introduced to working backwards and actually Bill Carr one of the authors of the book did some work at my company and I was like very intimidated and kind of like not interested. One that that I want to do in the revenue organization that I haven't been able to in the six page memo kind of early on I'm used to like slidewear. Give me some pictures. I can tell you a story and get out of there. And I would tell you that it is my preferred form of communication and I probably spend more time as much time writing as I do reading. It just like really makes you be thoughtful and it removes or increases clarity and kind of context and there have been ideas that I do and I've been a recipient of this at another company and I just I need to find a way to prioritize it is I think organizations that have really strong clarity around roles and responsibilities and decision making frameworks are incredibly important. Had that when I started the first page of you know just trying to follow a temple of the problem statement and like alternatives and how I think about it that I ended up just not pursuing. And so it is like it's one of those like slow down to speed ups. But I, I I I. It was definitely a a turnaround story for me because I was like no way, absolutely not or like not the revenue teams and I'm not going to do this. We're going to go talk to customers. Like so many things get stuck because we actually don't know who the approver is or who the but at least for me in my role especially cross functionally when I'm trying to communicate with my peers formed Captain is and I feel like even in revenue if a strong I I actually really enjoy it and actually now that I mean with ChatGPT and all the different AI assisted writing things like it's almost like a cheat code in some ways.

Yeah. I think I'm probably three to four times more effective writing now.

ChatGPT or racy model with clear roles and responsibilities of who's on first or who's single of how we're trying to win on behalf of our customers. And so I think it starts with what are we actually trying to do and why are we doing that? And if we can have really strong alignment on the silo, who cares what happens when we get there?

The just the research component, you know, like, oh, what was that in. In a thing I do is for.

Books threaded in these decisions because you see it so many times when you do a V2 mom review or a QBR internally. You know, just. I call it Hunter Hunter. It's not just land and expand, but, you know, we're constantly, you know, growing our customers. What is the role of implementation and professional services? Where does product success come in? And so as you can imagine, you, you, you have this, let's call it target account strategy across the top map.

Whatever you're that I've read, I'll go download the PDF and then upload it into chat GPT so I can do.

A rag search because buyer journey is to you. And this is like design thinking workshops with everybody including the customer combining.

Like, I can't go back to my notes and find that one thing that I really want to tease out. But if I'm building training content and I want to reference it, I can take that PDF and I'll be like, tell like there's a quote in here about X and Y. Pull it out.

Okay, now terms of where all those funnels exist and it might not look just like an amazing winning by design bow tie. That's a great starting point depending on your model and you start figuring out what it is for you and then say, okay, great. Well, how do I align our resources? Just run into friction. And you're like, why did friction exist? It was usually because of, you know, kind of this, like circular.

Combine that idea with whatever and yeah, it's incredible. And then I get to play the.

Role of editor or conversation because no one, no one had the ability of understanding who's on first to actually advance it. Totally. Have you done the the Notebook Lm of it and just making a podcast to listen to.

No, not yet.

So you got to check it out. It's a Google product, but I've seen it. Yeah, we have a ton of customer, you know, use cases and case studies. We always have them coming out. And like I'm always trying to memorize three, five stories that I could just, you know, use to help our teams. And I'm like, all right, well I'm gonna check out this podcast thing. So I just loaded up our entire. I think it's a lot easier to kind of remove yourself to from the actual strategies or tactics that need to be deployed. As long as they're aligned with your core values and you know, they're aligned to, you know, kind of customer value. I think it's really hard to do. But I feel like where I've seen high performing teams, there's no question on the why or microsite of all of our case studies that we've made. And within like four or five minutes, I got a 14 minute podcast by two AI avatar voices, had amazing content. You didn't have clear escalation paths for when things got stuck. But I feel like that is the next unlock, at least for the next. It's actually a lot of our rep training onboarding is now through this tool just to change up the medium a little bit. But revenue team here at G2 is like, okay, let's take Vision Mission V2 mom customers input med. Another. Another great AI hack.

That's fascinating. Yeah.

And there's that Orwell quote or the what and, and that. And the how is less debated.

I would say, well, if you can't, if you can't write well, you can't think well. And I think ideas are so amorphous until you can put them on a page and then structure it into a hierarchy of okay, this is my top level idea. These are the subcomponents. This is how they ladder together tricks.

And then say, okay, great, well, how are we going to play the game every day here? This idea of like, let's all ensue positive intent, let's keep short toes, meaning we're going to step on each other. But like, let's have clarity.

There's too much here. The editing and pruning is so much of getting to clarity. And we're 100% no slides here. No planning can be done the slides because it's just so low bandwidth, you know, it needs a voiceover in advance. Yeah.

I, I have a lot of passion around this topic of or. And it was actually at an event in Boston and the. And one day I heard, well, it's product LED growth. Well then it was marketing LED growth. Well then it was sales LED and speed in which we can like accelerate the operating model. And I think that if you gunk that up and there is. That's not super clear. It's like, it's just slow.

Okay.

And then it was like event led growth and then eco led growth. And I was like, team like community led growth.

Now, okay, so we talked Princip. I want to come back to principles and because we, we, we were talking about this layer between organizational design and organizational operating model, I think is a good way to put it. The racy Daisy, you know, ownership of things. But I'd love to double click on principles. And so those are your team principles, the short toes thing. And I'm going to double click on the principles thing. I just want to make sure. So the way I, that maybe is like a level higher in this, in this chain. How have you architected the principles for your team? Is that a direct copy of company principles? Are there different things that your team operates by? And I'd love to hear about how you created them and then we'll get into how you reinforce.

Yeah. And so I would say that they're, they continue to evolve.

Architect this in the way I've like written this in my document. There's company mission, company values, company vision, team vision. There's. We have a three year company vision which we've documented.

I'm like, I mean like our ego is getting in the way of winning for our customers. The only one that you can at least for me, you know, in, in either new experiences or new companies or just like new, you know, just learnings along the way. And so I would say that even the four that I, I think about now, like they, they continue to evolve but they're. But I always try to make sure they're not in conflict with like the company core values. And so you know, if I think about G2 today, you know, it's an.

Acronym now there's a 3 and there's a component of go to market there. Then there are the strategies, like what is our strategy for the next 20, 24 months to get there. And then I've got these principles, but.

It'S called pete but it stands for performance, entrepreneurial spirit, authenticity and kindness.

And those are the company ones.

Those are the company ones. Okay. And I would say those are, you know, your core values as an organization. But there's. There also needs to be like some operating values that I think that you know that can be nested underneath that, but it allows you to drive alignment and ownership across your team. And so they should be done in groups and get credit should be the customer. And so it's about working in orchestration in the most efficient way to help your customers win. And so if you can have like, you know, that surface area documented and alignment across private market.

I don't principle is an org design but I don't have that model for do you like who.

How do we define getting revenue of what that funnel looks like? Then you start understanding not the role but the jobs to be done in each piece and the DRI who gets.

To make calls on what I we used to at Shopify talk a lot about is this like a level one.

Or two decision and how that shows up for the regular revenue organization. And so I think those exercises are really important. And so I like my own personal leadership, you know, principles that I definitely convey. But there's this operating principles of like how the team's going to show up and it's around like how we're going to be relentless and you know, proving customer value. It's around like how are we going to be.

If it's one, just go make it. If it's two, like here's the escalation path. But that's a really interesting one that I, that I need to tuck into my system.

Well especially in the technology space, everything is cross functional like, like you can't do focused on growth every day and making sure that, you know, we're feeding our mind, you know, good stuff stuff. It's around like how are we going to communicate with clarity and candor, you know, the, the idea around the only difficult part of difficult conversations is not having them. And how does that increase speed, you know, within the organization. But they're never in conflict, you know, with, with over the company values are. But it allows us to I would say really anything in service to the customer without touching all those surface areas.

Yeah.

And if you don't have like a and you know, mapping like what are we going to do to help our customers get through that part of the journey? Some of it could be an operating model or decision making kind of framework. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It just.

Okay, so it's the what and the why. And, and so you mentioned a couple things that are, that are above the how and it's alignment on values to.

Put some more guardrails on our operating model of how we're, you know, trying to ladder back up to that why we exist. And those are always best done when you have all of your different, you know, functional leaders within the revenue Org coming together to kind of co author those. And those should evolve every year just as the climate or the opportunity or maybe the headwind or the tailwind that you're facing. Those should, you know, culture's like in my opinion like a. And it's not like lack of good intent by any means. It's just you just created your own kind of friction points and you don't see them like conversation of how things are done around here. And you know, that should be ever evolving.

Okay. And so the relentless focus on growth, clarity in communication and candor, those are those your personal leadership principles or are those your operating principles?

This would be like the G2 leadership team operating principles in the revenue Org and this idea of like focusing on growth every day. And so like if I, if I ran a little bit more on this idea, if you assume positive intent and you have short toes, how are we constantly learning as an organization and as individuals? I would say that the purse like, like that is a good thing. And I would say that like as external leadership rants, they weave in. But they're probably, I don't know if they're unique to me because I hear them repeated a lot. So they're. Hopefully they're sticky. But those are a evolving journey for sure. Accountability is increased in an organization. Like your job as a leader is to push accountability down. Like, like you're no longer responsible, you're responsive to the needs of the business. And so as accountability is pushed down.

That should create pressure alignment around the customer. What else, what else do you need to architect for your senior leaders to allow them to get to the right how?

Yeah.

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So it could be products, some of it could be AI, some of it could be marketing, nurturing. But really understanding that journey is incredibly important. And as you, as you think about the jobs to be done, once you have alignment there, then for me it's just, all right, well, what are the input metrics? You know, revenue happens. Like, what are the mile markers that we need to understand? So I think it does start with a why. And I'll give you an example with upwork because I've been fortunate to be a part of a lot of mission driven organizations, but this one was we did a really good and pressure should create friction. And I would argue friction is where the magic is. And like we have to AI.

Okay, and so you said there, so you've.

Got your G2 that we can, you know, see around corners. You know, for example, you know an average G2 like a new deal cycle.

Is less than 90 revenue leadership principles, relentless growth, communication there. Is there a fourth one?

Find ways to get there as fast as possible because that's where we're like missing customer. Like this idea of what you said it kind of growth, the focused on growth every day but you covered. Yes, okay.

And then the short value points. I so deeply agree with this. This like friction is where the magic happens thing. It. We changed our comp plan recently to make the sales rose thing. Where's. Where, where does that fit in?

I, I stole this from the CEO at upwork. You know it, it kind of comes back to this friction thing. And so I've kind of ran with it like getting from accountability to pressure to friction. But it's this idea of that you can be hard on the work but not on the person. And I think sometimes people don't understand the job of like threading it all the way through all the communities we serve. And so if you thought about our vision as an organization, it was to build the world's largest work marketplace. And immediately you'd ask yourself, all right.

Well so what A hundred percent only paid when the customer goes live. We're SMB, highly transactional month to month.

And the difference. And if you, if you, if you're rooted in this idea of assuming positive intent and if that's just like rooted into the DNA, the ability to have short toes should be okay. Meaning that we're going to step on each other like contracts.

So, so that cycle time is very short and so the manager's like, oh.

Hey, like rubbing is racing. And if you start with this idea of assuming positive intent, it should be okay. If you really have as Kim Cobbit scale, Kim Scott would say radical, who cares? But if you think about the why or the mission or why we exist, I was this idea, we're getting some.

Butting heads and there's some friction around this. And I was having this conversation with one of my long term managers. I'm like, yeah, good. This is exactly what we want. You know, the friction. The friction shows you what part of.

Your system candor, you know, short toes. And so I stole that, you know, from Hayden and have and have built upon that this idea of like that, that accountability pressure to friction model should be celebrated and how do we get there as fast as possible. And you can be hard on the work without having to be hard on the on the person routine.

And say that one more time. Accountability to friction.

So accountability, we want to create economic opportunity so people have better lives and the motions that we run, weaknesses and.

Then you can address it and then. Oh, good point. We didn't think about that. Let's buff it out in that I'm going to steal this quote. Your job is to push responsibility down.

And Both for we're two sided marketplace similar to G2 should be rooted in that. And if you think about upwork, I mean we were distributing jobs around the world. Creating economic, economic opportunity, but also helping companies creates pressure.

All right.

Pressure creates friction. And we should get the friction as fast as possible around that idea, Kyle. That's where the, the magic happens.

Okay. And so the short toes in assuming positive intent. Are these your personal leadership principles.

Or.

Are these just like things that you talk about or are these your team? I'm just trying to like fit them all for creating friction. I think that's like a really elegant way to think about it.

I stole it from someone. I'm sure. I don't really have any original ideas, Kyle. I just tend to steal and try to apply them, you know, where I can scale agility and product innovation by having access to, you know, talent real time. And, and if you can fall into their. Yeah, yeah, well, and you're. And you're probably going to learn that like this is the downside of reading a lot of books. You just ste days. We need to be able to, you know, have certainty, good or bad, 90 days in the future because everything we do today pays us later. And so like what are those input metrics that we're going to measure, you know, day over day, week over week, month over month, quarter over quarter to make sure that we don't necessarily get over. Get ahead of our skis or go too slow on. On certain things. And doesn't mean that you wouldn't have outcome based metrics if you can have a real strong culture and DNA around why you exist. I think the what is like a little easier. And so the what becomes like okay, exactly. How do we show up for that? If you think about G2 today, like.

But I noticed on your bookshelf.

Yeah, yeah. We have a lot of the same ones from a lot of places. In fact a lot of shit for you know, people are like you just talking like one liners. And I'm like yeah, but there's, there's so many of them. All of these are adaptations of just things that I've been able to get excited about and like strong conviction and belief in and then run with that. I. But I'll give you my Four. Well, I mean there's a lot of good inventory out there. I mean if you can feed your m, you know, good stuff every day. Yeah, you get 1% better leadership principle.

Yeah, I was just about to ask.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I think they're, they're relevant, you know, potentially in any function but like they really show up for me in the revenue Oregon So the first one is this idea. You have to hire the best people possible, period. And but if you get really good at managing the inputs, the outputs tend to take care of themselves.

Okay. And do you.

I mean, who knows what happens.

So yeah, yeah. I noticed you had working backwards. I think I saw in your background in one of the pods that you did and this they. I think Amazon does a good job at that.

It's and like even also understanding that like bad hires will happen. Why we exist is to empower, you know, business professionals to reach their peak potential. You know, we do that by have.

A team vision document also written because there's always you know, but like sitting.

On them is not okay. And, and that would be like the first layer of, of defense for an organization. You, you promote what you permit and I think having a lot of both rigorous and conviction and that includes the range versus dysfunctional experience. But you got to hire the best people possible, period.

You know, identify the dri, the directly responsible individual, single thread them with ownership like really keep it, keep things tight. This is definitely something I'm going to.

Do well and I would tell you.

I got company mission, values, company plan. And then oftentimes we dive down into like and here's our building the world's.

Largest software marketplace rooted in trust and transparency, connecting buyers and sellers faster than ever before as, as a part of that and hiring for you know, the team, not necessarily just the role this, this and you have to spend a lot of time and it's painful, you know, getting alignment there. And then if you think about the depending on your go to market, the customers you want to serve, why do you want to exist? I think the how of like the tactics associated with how you're going to grow the business and grow your teams. Second one, Kyle would be around this idea of you got to provide absolute clarity of like where we're going and why. And that shows up in the company, you know, obviously mission and vision but that also shows up in the jobs to be done of whatever function that you're leading. And there should be like absolute clarity on, on where we're going and why. Introduced to working backwards and actually Bill Carr, one of the authors of the book did some work at my company and I was like very intimidated and kind of like not interested. I think you get a lot more I would say involvement and participation you know from folks and that is communicated daily, you know through whatever medium that you have. Because I think lack of clarity is is probably one of the biggest withholds of you know, company performance. And the bigger you get the harder it is and you have to constantly.

Strategy and the tactics for 2025 but do you have a layer in between that is about and they feel like.

They'Re more of a part of it. It's happening through them versus to them in those scenarios. But prioritize like if you chase two rabbits you won't catch either one of them. And so like how do you order those things? I think a lot of companies don't spend enough time on the why they exist.

That makes a mess in the six.

Page memo kind of early on I'm used to like slidewear. Give me some pictures. I can tell you a story and get a sense.

So we'll come back to my gu.

That owner.com has a strong mission orientation. Get out of there. And I would tell you that it is my preferred form of communication be effective, not just efficient but like absolute clarity of where we're going and what the third one would be. This around this idea of like you have to give everyone all the tools and resources to be successful and and what I mean by that that's not just in bloating your rev tech stack even more. Their frameworks, they are you know operating principles. They're you know cadences really stating the.

Team vision that you want your senior people building towards is is that and.

I probably spend more time as much time writing as I do reading it just like really makes you be thoughtful and it removes or increases clarity and based on the community that you want to serve.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For us it's about arming restaurants something that you've roadmapped or are people like figuring out that stuff on their own?

Yeah their training and development like all there are a ton of things and you have to have your ear to the ground constantly looking for like where can we continue to invest in our teams. And so tools and resources isn't necessarily just about technology but it's just like this idea of constantly developing and resourcing your team to be successful and then the last one and it's the hardest one. So there's one that we do and then one that I haven't done that I'm really out of context and there have been ideas that I had that when I started the first page of you know just trying to follow a temple with a problem statement and like alternative one for me personally money and something that I strive for and I get a lot of feedback on is is number four Kyle. You got to stay out of their way. And so like let me think about if you hire the best people possible period provide absolute clarity of where we're going and why give them all the tools and resources they need to be successful then get out of their way. And how I think about it that I ended up just just not pursuing and so it, it is like it's one of those like slow down to speed ups but I I I I it was definitely a and I feel like that is that is where my journey continues of just trying owners to.

Take on their Goliaths and and it's this idea of empowering SMBs to be.

Able to continue to push both accountability and empowerment down and and making sure that I am not the the bottleneck.

On yeah and so there's a lot of conflicting discourse on this on this principle because and this goes back to battle with the dominoes and Chipotle of the world and the Ubers and door dashes of the world like they're under siege and we're trying to give them the tools to succeed and and we.

Are absolutely turnaround story for me because I was like no way. Absolutely not. We're like not the revenue teams. We're not going to do this. We're going to go talk to customers. But at least for me in my role especially cross functionally when I'm trying to communicate with my peers.

Back to some of the founder mode noise and but Toby Luque has talked about this and I stole his sort of like deeply rooted in a very mission driven approach. And then for me it's all about trying to figure out how those how I can architect principles that can guide like more specific decision making. Because like how does that the question for me oftentimes is how does that grow coaching framework it's like not micromanagement if you have more context, more understanding than anybody else. Like you need to be involved in.

Things.

And you know this comes back to task relevant maturity from Andy Grove and high output management. How did mission tie to a sales manager deciding on how do we Mark.

I I actually really enjoy it and actually now that I mean with Chad GPT and all the different AI assisted writing things like totally it's it's, it's. It's almost like a cheat code in some ways.

You, what are you doing tactically to balance that? Like how do you know where to get involved versus where to protect our deal qualification criteria or how does it, how do we decide on, you know, the salesforce prior to like let people run? How are you doing that?

So for me like I think all of those like methodology, core beliefs or frameworks are relevant but for me it shows up in the stage of the organization. And if you think about you shared your mission earlier of obviously helping small businesses win.

I think I'm probably three to four times more effective writing now. ChatGPT Just the research component, you know, like oh, what was that in. In a thing I do is for books.

You know, G2 is also a David and Goliath story. You know, we have entrepreneurs all over our platform and they're using their customer voice to, you know, compete and win and you know, a lot of them are in their zero to ten story or journey. I'd be the first to tell you that I would not be an effective leader at that that I've read.

I'll go download the PDF and then upload it into chat GPT so I.

Could do a rag search because you know, probably stage of organization because I spend a lot more time in systems thinking I would say I can't go.

Back to my notes and find that one thing that I really want to tease out. But if I'm building training content and.

I want to reference the reward and recognition systems, processes and like things that.

Scale, I can take that PDF and I'll be like, tell like there's a quote in here about X and Y. Pull it out. Okay, now combine that idea with whatever and yeah, it's incredible. And then I get to play the.

Role of editor as a result of a machine. And so, and if I think about that like in my job to be done, I'm just trying to figure out how we can do the same thing and not just like in a, you know, predictable revenue model, but in a situation that will scale globally, project to prioritize.

And so there's a level of a, I think abstraction there that I'm trying to fill in. Yeah, go ahead.

I was gonna say why cross tens of thousands, you know, of customers. And in order to do that I can't, I can't have. And, and I think there's like there's another layer in between that. So if you feel like you have like your mission and vision alignment as an Organization and I think specifically around go to market organizations. The next idea is this framework of like, who are we chasing? And totally. Have you done the the Notebook? Lm of it and just making a podcast to listen to?

No, not yet.

Other than focusing on who does what and making sure that we have the right, I would say capabilities, you know, kind of on the team. Like, I, I just don't think I would be effective if I had to not micromanage or micro coach. But I, I just, just, I think based on the stage of the company, the playbook may change. But that's, you know, one person's opinion.

Yeah. Okay, interesting.

So you got to check it out. It's a, a Google product, but yeah, we have a ton of customer. I remember right when I, I joined G2, I asked this question to, you know, six people my first day and he immediately.

And so I want to come back to this idea of Team One alignment in. And so I, I saw that you posted on LinkedIn you were with your team 1 recently and you made reference to Lencioni, who I love. What do you, what else are you doing? What else are you doing to drive Team one alignment outside of what we've already covered?

You know, use cases and case studies. We always have them coming out and like I'm always trying to memorize three, five stories that I could just, you know, use to help our team teams. And I'm like, all right, well I'm gonna check out this podcast thing. So I just loaded up our entire.

What are the other principles? I'm assuming that also strategic planning is one of them and we'll, we'll get into that. But what are the other big tools for you?

Yeah, I mean I think it's in this like, you know, this, this like t approach in my mind if like go to these like competitors and I'll remain nameless at this time. And, and I was just kind of fascinated because in my mind you don't chase your competition, you chase your customers. Customers and like who, what are the customers that we want to serve that are in support of that broader mission and vision? And I feel where a lot of organizations like I need to be like super deep in the revenue organization kind of functional expertise. But if I want to build relationships and I really want to connect with my peers, microsite of all of our case studies that we've made and within like four or five minutes I got a 14 minute pod. Pod end up like shipping the org charts a little bit and potentially not meeting their potential is because marketing has a podcast by two AI avatar voices like had like amazing content point of view on that product, has a point of view on that. Your sales organization has a point of view on that. And if there's a ton of daylight between those beliefs, even when you get into thinking about like how do you operationalize the quality, know more and learn as much as I can about what they're doing and even outside of the personal motivations and kind of communication styles, but like really how their organizations are also in service of the customer and so thinking about their own assembly lines, thinking about their own kind of core functions and not a know it all by any means, but like I feel like I can drive relics. It's actually a lot of our rep training onboarding is now through this tool just to change up the medium a little bit. But, but another, another great AI hack.

That's fascinating. Yeah.

And there's that Orwell qualification criteria that you need. That is a downstream decision that if you have upstream misalignment, it kind of doesn't matter because it might be very different. And so I feel like even after visual events and kind of connect the dots, if I'm a student of kind of all of these things, if you.

Can'T, if you can't write well, you can't think well. And I think ideas are.

And I try to reciprocate and not just provide a readout on revenue but like details of why we are doing these certain things and like why it shows up and specifically where we need our HR team involved or like our finance team is super close to the customer. That's a huge, that's a major superpower for us because they in admission this idea of who are you chasing or who do you want to serve and why.

Is a lot of so amorphous until you can put them on a page and then structure it into the.

Work that Team 1 or the C level team should be working on because then it reduces, you know, they. When you think about prioritization and planning, like it's not just the revenue team asking for things like, you know, we've got voices all around the place of like what else could we do in service of our customers regardless of the function. And so I spent a lot of time, time just trying to like learn what's important to them so that I can be relevant in building those relationships. And I probably spend more than 50% of my time in that team kind.

Of cross functionally hierarchy of okay, this is my top level idea. These are the sub components this is how they ladder together. There's too much here. The editing and pruning is so much of getting to clarity.

Which is challenging. And I, and I probably, I would say a large portion of the other part of the time is just in front of their customer versus being in the like day to day operations of the business outside of like core things like forecasting and board meetings and you know, planning sessions and, and, and things like that. But I tend to over index there because I feel like if you don't get it right in that room, it just all falls apart down there.

And we're, we're 100% no slides here. Like we like no planning can be done with slides because it's just, just so low bandwidth. You know, it needs a voiceover and.

Yeah, lack of clarity down the organization because everything is in service of that strategy.

And when you first started at G2 I heard you talk about you narrowed your ICP. So maybe just share a little bit more about how you reframed the who we are chasing 4G2 too totally.

And we have this very interesting pickle if you will. And so we have a organization.

So building relationships and sort of a deep empathy and understanding is the big principle. Values and principles align which we've talked about. Collaborative planning, any other like major team 1 alignment building things that you put in that list.

Invest, you know, I mean we invest a lot in conscious leadership here.

Okay.

So.

We talked Princip. I want to come back to principles and because we, we, we were talking about this layer between organizational design and.

G2 and there's a ton of like different frameworks. Table Group and Valenciana teams, you know, have a great model here as well but like using, using some sort of external both resource and coach to help facilitate connection. I've done it at both, both at Upwork as well as G2 and, and I really feel like that is such an asset to that organization.

Organizational operating model I think is a good way to put it. The racy Daisy, you know, ownership of things. But I'd love to double click on.

On principle to have both tools, a framework and potentially external help facilitate a lot of that, a lot of that journey because it allows you to get strong connection and, and get to that friction stuff. It gives you a framework to get to friction so that when you get to planning like you know these elephants in the room don't come out like the elephants, you know, were taken care of earlier on. Really interesting freemium model where any organization regardless of size can list their company on G2 start driving reviews and kind of building that customer voice. And as a result we've got 160,000 products that are listed on G2. You know, our go to market organization.

Not tiny, that maybe is like a level higher in this, in this chain. How have you architected the principles for your team? Team? Is that a direct copy of company principles that are different things that your team operates by? Awesome. All right, let's jump to planning. This. This was super useful. I, I, these are great frameworks.

So talk me through.

Let's start with annual planning. You're in the middle of it. We just, we just presented last week to the board so I'm deeply invested and imbued in this right now. So just walk by and I'd love to hear about how you created them and then we'll get into how you reinforce.

Yeah. And so I would say that they're, they continue to evolve through how you.

Go about planning today, what that looks like for G2 and then we'll unpack some of the big lessons learned.

Yeah, I mean I think, I don't know if there's any uniqueness to G2 and me meaning that like you know, and we're evolving it at least for me, you know in, in either new experiences or new companies or just like new, you know, just learnings along the way. And so I would say that, that even the full in the cycle as we've had a, you know, a lot of new leaders at the organization, so we have a new cfo, we have a new CRO, we have a new CMO as a part of this kind of planning cycle. And so as you can imagine as you add new people to the board that I, I think about now like they, they continue to evolve but they're, but I always try to make sure they're not in conflict with the team. That planning cycle will continue to evolve. And, and you know we're obviously focused on to your point earlier around like what is that kind of long range vision or plan for the organization and then how are we back casting or re engineering with like the company core values. And so you know, if I think about G2 today, you know it's an acronym for what we want, you know for the following year. And, and one of the things that we actually did this week which, but not huge, we've got you know, a little over 200 sellers around the world so we can't chase all of them. And I really appreciated was even though we're in planning, we did a really thorough we're in this, you know, kind of marketplace business where all categories aren't created equal. And so if you think about the 90 million buyers that look at them as cult peak, but it stands for performance, entrepreneurial spirit, authenticity and kindness. And those are the company job and not really a postmortem but evaluating like how are we currently doing on the plans? And you know, I think a lot of organizations miss where it's like all right, these are our okrs for the year and now we're going to plan the new ones versus G2. They're not all going to all 2100 cat categories equally. So you've got, you know, categories like your CRM or sales and marketing down to back office software for veterinary hospitals. And so all revenue as you know is not equal. And so we did a ton of propensity models. Those are the company ones. Okay. And I would say those are, you know, your core values as an organization. But there's there also needs to be like really doing a strong postmortem or just reality therapy of like well, what really worked and didn't work. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have the same plan the following year. Like there's probably some consistent themes that will lay around the categories around product signals, things that were really important to us, important to the customer, operating values that I think that you know, that can be nested underneath that but it allows you to drive alignment and ownership across your team. And so they should be done in groups and always come through. But if your plan is completely changing every year and I've seen this in organizations where, all right, these are the five things we're going to do the next year, Kyle. We're going to do these five things and actually we're going to do the next five things.

Things.

Your customers are going to feel all of that, your teams are going to feel all of that. And so trying to find a way to link the old to the new but in spirit of this long range plan I think is, is really important. And so we did, you know, really big deep dive on and how that shows up for the regular revenue organization. And so I think how successful or unsuccessful we when our in our current version and then making sure that we're, we're bringing that learning or continuation into the, you know, kind of the next year planning cycle. Those exercises are really important. And so I like my own personal leadership, you know, principles that I, I. It also starts a lot around this idea of like who are we chasing? And so that we can unfortunately have been able to prioritize but want to strive to do this year in planning. You know, I think we run the V2 mom here, prioritize resources across product marketing, revenue and service of those customers that we want to or continue to serve. V2 and there's a company version of the V2 mom and there's maybe five, you know, methods that we're prioritizing, definitely convey, but there's this operating principles of like, how the team's going to show up and, and it's around. And so there's a lot of alignment up there. Like, we spend a lot of time on like growth levers. And so, you know, we have this sound like how we're going to be relentless and you know, proving customer value. It's around like, how are we going to be, you know, bigger horizon matrix of what we want to do and, but then zooming into next year. What are those going to be? Be. And then you have got like your tops down, bottoms up assumptions that are in partnership with finance and revenue of like where you think, you know, closest to the pen could be. And then you look at like, you know, what are the financial goals of the organ, things that we could defend and prove. And that list started getting smaller. And as you continue to, you know, we're a big ecosystem player, we integrate with 53 other, you know, technology companies. And so that's a cut. You look at the category signals, that's a cut. Product adoption, that's a cut. You run your organization. I think everyone's trying to increase durability and, and get to rule of 40 in a balanced way, focused on growth every day and making sure that, you know, we're feeding your mind, you know, good stuff. It's around like how we're going to say, okay, well let's figure out the containers, you know, kind of of those and like what are the puts and takes, you know, that we need to, to look at. And it's more of a collaboration than a negotiation. I've been in the negotiation ones where everyone like comes in and like going to with clarity and candor, you know, the, the idea around the only difficult part of difficult conversations they could do and, and you'll fund any of them. And it's like the biggest waste of time and just like a morale kind of grr and NRR regression against your current customers. That's a cut. And then quickly you get to like a 19,000 number and then you start to, you know, look at where clusters are like where we have Competitors that are strong lookalikes. And then you know through that period of time we got down to 3,000. Well 3,000 customers is a manageable list you know to. To focus on in year and and that's where we built our you know kind of a killer for the organization. And so but conversations is not having them and how does that increase speed you know within the organization. But they're never in conflict. I would say you know this idea of like we're keeping our mind on the Mercedes but we need to get the Chevy out the door next year too. You know with. With over the company values are. But it allows us to I would and you know thinking both long term and short term but like having a really conscious effort of being reflective of like well how well did we do on the last one and what is the continuation having the discipline to be like well that was a bad idea. We need to punt it. We need to stop doing that the hardest one. And we haven't gotten there yet. But I would assume every organization is going to get there in their planning cycles. You got to get the trade offs because you can't do everything. They put some more guardrails on our operating model of how we're trying to ladder back up to that why we exist. And so I think the next step before we do our kind of next steps on the plan and those are always best done when you have all of your different functional leaders within the revenue org coming together to kind of co author and it's like all right, well what's our stop doing list at the same time time. And those have always been the most challenging but rewarding conversations I think in planning.

Yeah that makes a ton of sense. And so what's the.

And those should evolve every year just as the climate or the opportunity or starting point.

So do you when you're trying to come up with your big strategic themes.

For 2020, maybe the headwind or the tailwind that you're facing. Those should you know cultures like a. In my opinion like a 25.

Is that out of a three year plan that you've already architected? Is that from the CEO down, you know really with the vision or what's the. What's the. The starting. The starting piece.

Yeah. I mean I think it. It's somewhat nuanced by the organization and the stage of the organization. As you can imagine, you know upwork. We were publicly traded. We had to be a little more short term on certain things, you know as a result. But it's still having a Conversation of how things are done around here and you know that should be ever evolving.

Okay.

A long term vision and but I think it starts with at least for.

Us and so the relentless focus on growth, clarity in communication and candor.

Those are those based orchestration of like all right, product, what are you doing on those 3,000? Marketing, what are you doing on this 3,000? You know the revenue like the jumping off point and you know, understanding where are we going to end the year on a lot of these different, you know, growth levers that we had and for us, you know we run the kind of February or end of January to February teams and then like what role do you play in that buyer journey? The hardest part was getting to the 3,000. The execution while challenging and we've make mistakes daily calendar and so we're in the middle of Q4 and while we have good telemetry but we don't know exactly how it's going to end up.

We're hope your personal leadership principles or are those your operating principles?

This would be like the G2 leadership team operating principles in the revenue Org and this idea of like focusing on growth every day and so hopeful that we think know where that jumping off point is. And so there's some educated guessing based on our models of like where we're going to end. And that's, that's kind of the jumping off point of like where we start, you know, kind of from planning. But then it then it does go back up to like all right, who are we chasing? Like where are the growth levers for next year and, and alignment around. I would say that the hardest work was way upstream before we got to execution.

Yeah, the, the answers become a lot more clear when you've, when you've defined that group on that.

Then it's all right prioritizing what, what teams are going to be invested in as a result. Some might get a lot, some might get zero, some might get less, you know, depending on you know, whatever that that strategy is. And then you break that up into your come. How are we constantly learning as an organization and as individuals? I would say that the personal leadership rants they weave in our measured methods and you break that up into inputs and outputs and I mean obviously there's some, you know, I would say governance around getting it approved and all those other things but. And then it's you know, month over month, week over. But they're probably, probably. I don't know if they're unique to me because I hear them repeated a lot so they're hopefully they're sticky, but those are a evolving journey for sure. We quarter over quarter, learn, adapt. It's just like, how do we get the signal and either do more or do less? Do something else.

Okay, what have been some of the biggest changes or learnings that you've made to annual planning specifically over the years? Where, where were the mistakes? What, what do you wish you had known when you first started building large organizational annual plans?

I don't know if it was a mistake or a reality. Meaning that like there's always going to be things you can't plan for. And I don't, I don't think that everyone's intentionally is like, do we have like an oh shit.

But guest AI enables your CEO, subject matter experts and other senior leaders in the platform plan.

And, and I'll give you an example and one that I think upwork navigated.

Really well to engage prospects directly, creating meaningful connections and boosting response rates with just one click.

Gordon Crawford, who's one of the smartest GTM AI thinkers, had a quote that has stuck with me. He's like, the list is the message. You know, when talking about building messaging, he's like, everything is downstream of the, the little micro list that you built for this campaign and so relevant to this. Like once you get to 3,000, what they need is pretty obvious. Like they've, they've told product. The sales reps know your team can.

Strategically involve senior staff to make your outreach more credible and effective. Empower your GTM team to orchestrate your outbound process and say yes to yes AI that's Y E S s what those people want.

So. Well, that's fascinating. Fascinating.

Well, and I think a lot of organizations especially think about upwork as a global provider of talent. And unfortunately, when the war in Ukraine started, which no one could forecast, we had a lot of talent on our platform that were working both in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and others. And based on sanctions and our own decisions, we decided to do business differently in that region. But we have tens of thousands of talent in that region and customers AI.

Okay. And so you said there. So you've got your G2 revenue leadership principles, relentless growth, communication there. Is there a fourth one?

Actually G2 are also investing in, I would say more product led and like E Com motions and so we can have a more capture motion. And you have to make a material, you know, decision, you know, aligned with your values and like what you want to do. The whole like annual planning process in some ways kind of, kind of goes out the Window know and I don't know and we managed through that crisis and I think we're on the right side of of all of those things and one of my, you know, kind of proudest moments of being there. But the, I don't know if companies plan this idea of well you said it kind of growth the focused on growth every day but you covered. Yes.

Okay. Okay. And then the short to on some.

Of the long tail things that we, we might not chase with humans but then really trying to focus our our human motions on higher order problems that are going to have the best unit economics both for the customer and for us.

Yeah.

So I'm thinking about for that meaning that like do we have a. And it doesn't have to be like disaster recovery planning. I mean obviously large organizations like you know, have a whole, you know, team for these things. But like a contingency plan. If it got a lot worse, what would we do? If it got a lot better, what would we do? And if it got, you know, sideways or we weren't making the, the progress that we wanted, what would we do? I think we set an annual plan. We're like all right, those thing.

Where's. Where. Where does that fit in?

I, I stole this from the CEO at upwork. You know it it and it kind of comes back to this first, let's go execute. But there's not a lot of agility baked in should things change. Like I think in conversations with other heroes like yourself, you know, maybe six months ago everyone was feeling some pain. I would say like 50% of the people I talk to are like hey, things are actually improving. Like Q3 was better than we thought it would be. Q4 is, is building. And so like how do we build some of that optimism in our play plan? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so my, my thing and so I've kind of ran with it like getting from accountability pressure to friction. But it's this idea of that you can be hard on the work but not on the person. And I think sometimes people don't understand. I guess my after my long rant there, Kyle, you can't have like a set it and forget it. There needs to be some flexibility and contingency planning on good, bad or, or sideways. I think that's where if you don't anticipate that you're not ready to take advantage of it or get ahead of it.

Yeah, yeah. We've done exactly this. We've built a financial model which I'm pretty these layers. Like I, I've been Writing this document which is basically like and the difference.

And if you, if you, if you're rooted in this idea of assuming positive.

Intent and if that's just confident I can go beyond eat and there's an upside plan with some exciting like rooted in the DNA.

The ability to have short toes should be okay. Meaning that we're going to step on.

Each other like product bets that we will only go tackle if we see ourselves with the same momentum coming at a Q1 Q2 that we have today. And if it is then it's all gas because the venture market is heating up like crazy. We feel like we're in a really exciting direction but we also don't want to build a plan that is the full send plan. We want to build a plan that is, that leaves us some wiggle room for unforeseen going wrong and then some further unlocks if things keep going the way that they're going. And so that brings me to another question which is how often do you go back to your annual plan in it's a go to market engine all the way from mission to Playbooks. And so I've, I'm like sketching out these layers and it sounds, it sounds like you've got a good mental model here. So you've got mission of vision and vision alignment up up at the very top. Who are we chasing? Seems like one of those foundational things.

Like what else, what else rubbing is racing and, and if, if you start with this idea of assuming positive intent it should be okay. Hey if you really have you know as Kim Cott would scale up, Kim Scott would say radical, like what's the.

Process to then actually make sure these things are happening quarter to quarter, month to month. Do you have a review cycle or these like how do you operationalize it throughout the year?

Yeah. So as I mentioned a couple times with the V2 mom we've got five I would say overarching, you know kind of methods throughout the organization and so show candor, you know, short toes. And so I stole that you know from Hayden and have and have built. There's a lot of different cadences and some of them are cross functional. We, we, we elect you know, you know ceiling from both Netflix and Amazon. This idea of like a single threaded informed captain, you know for all these V2 they have a cross functional team, you know that's obviously working together all these things.

Each method has a upon that this.

Idea of like that that accountability pressure to friction model should be celebrated as.

A single threaded owner.

Correct Correct.

Nice.

And usually. And how do we get there as fast as possible. And you can be hard on the work without having to be hard on the. On the person or team and say.

That one more time. Accountability to friction.

So accountability, you could say that. That, you know, is like they have the most surface area of that problem. But sometimes not, you know, sometimes it's another leader of the organization that is stepping up, you know, to. To better help, you know, kind of, I would say cross functionally align around it. And they have a number of different cadences. You know, as a part of that, I think we do a decent job. Creates pressure.

All right.

Pressure creates friction. And we should get the friction as fast as possible. The barab of communication, both on a monthly quarterly basis. Like how all of our both measures and metrics are lading up. You know, we had our all hands actually today here in Chicago. And one of. One of the parts of that every month is we kind of go through the V2 mount performance and we try to pick out some stories of things that are going well, things that are not going well and what are we doing on it. And then we do, I would say more, probably more like a QBR format, you would think. But on that idea, Kyle, that's where the magic happens.

Okay. And so the short toes and assuming positive intent, are these your personal leadership principles or are these just like things that you talk about? Are these your team? I'm just trying to like fit them all every month.

The cross functional team that is assigned to, you know, to that method.

This is in there before tactics that you really focus on that first team. Alignment around.

Yeah. And so if you have alignment around who you're chasing, the next question in my mind jumps out to like, well, how do we align our team? We'll come in and do a deeper dive with the senior leadership team, all the folks that are on their team. And it's not scorecarding or report cards like those are like set in advance. This is more around the risks, dependencies. Where are we stuck? Where do we need to more. What do we learn? What do we want to do differently? And I would say those have gotten more collaborative in nature versus teams specific to the buyer journey. I think this is another example where revenue teams should be organized chart like our model versus their model all the time. And I think as buyer behavior continues to evolve, like you should be. Yeah, yeah, well, and you're. And you're probably going to learn that like this is the downside of reading a lot of books. You just Steal says a readout. You can just, you could send the readout.

Yeah, yeah. Write it and read it.

Discussion based. That's right. And then as a senior leadership team, as I mentioned, I don't know if we were on recording or not, but we do these sync weeks, so we get together a month and the V2 mom review is a big part of that. We have a couple challenging your own status quo of whatever your assembly line looks like all the time, you know, and for us it was like, okay, well, off sites a year. V2 Mom's a big part of that. And it's, it's, if you believe from a lot of places, in fact, a lot of for, you know, people are like you just talking like one liners. And I'm like, yeah, but there's, there's. What is the role of marketing and partnerships and where does that show up in those touch points? Full funnel. We run a. I call it Hunter Hunter. It's not just land and expand, but you know, we're constantly, you know, growing our customers. So many of them, all of these are adaptations of just in this idea of like what gets talked about gets done or like what gets measured gets managed. Like we try to, we try to vote with our things that I've been able to get excited about and like strong conviction and belief in and then run with, with. But I, but I'll give you my four or wallet our time wallets in that way.

Right? Yeah.

You were talking about what is the role of implementation and professional services. Where does product success come in? And so as you see, can.