In this episode of the Full Throttle Leaders podcast, host Michael Falato interviews Sam Palazzolo, founder of Tip of the Spear Ventures. Palazzolo outlines his background as a former Fortune‑500 executive and consultant who has led two tech‑focused companies to private‑equity exits and now works with mid‑market firms ($5M‑$100M revenue) to scale them. He positions himself as an industry‑agnostic operator who typically steps into a fractional Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role to address stalled revenue operations. Palazzolo introduces two core offerings: a "Price Pressure Playbook" that maps 20 buyer negotiation tactics to margin‑protecting counter‑moves, and a modular engagement model consisting of 30‑day quick‑win sprints (priced at $10K) that transition into 90‑day scale sprints ($45K) and longer 120‑day value‑creation programs. He contrasts his hands‑on, KPI‑driven approach with large consulting firms that charge premium rates but delegate execution to junior analysts, often supplemented by AI. Palazzolo also discusses the growing relevance of AI in sales strategy, his use of a 5‑pillar assessment methodology, and how his fractional model offers senior‑level expertise at a fraction of the cost of full‑time hires. The conversation ends with practical resources for listeners, including a scaling readiness assessment and access to the Price Pressure Playbook.
Chapters
Good morning, good evening, and good day to everybody. This is Michael Filato. We're doing Full Throttle Leaders podcast today, and obviously it's brought to you by Full Throttle Filato Leads, my leads company. But I have a good paisano friend, that means Italian, Um, Sam Palazzolo, how you pronounce it, right?
Palazzolo.
Yeah, I should know that being Italian, but yeah, either one. Been a while.
Yeah, great seeing you. Thank you so much for having me on, Michael.
So Sam, um, I know that you have an agency and a consultancy approach for what you do. Can you explain, um, what you do and why you do it? Sure.
Yeah, I'll give you a little background. So I led 2 organizations, tech, SaaS, software-oriented to private equity exit. That was almost 14 years ago. Formed the family office called Tip of the Spear Ventures. And for the last 10+ years, I've worked with 15 organizations implementing programs to help them grow and scale. We've scaled organizations from $5 million to $500 million. And in that decade plus, 2 of the organizations also crossed over the billion-dollar threshold. So, that's how I spend the majority of my time is working with those types of organizations. And I'm an operator. I'm a Fortune 500 exec. I come out of the consulting ranks from Aon as well as Deloitte and that 2-time exitor. But I'm an operator. I'm not one of those guys who shows up with a 200-page slide deck. Spouting theory that's never been put in practice. I'm a roll-up-your-sleeves type of a leader. I work side by side with my clients to help them scale and grow. So that's what I do.
Is there any particular industry or role that you think that's better suited for you and for that company?
Yeah, from an industry perspective, I'll answer that first and then I'll come back to what role. But from an industry perspective, I'm an industry agnostic. I was taught a long time ago that by one of my senior partners, I want you to be an industry generalist because whatever it is that I receive with comfort, I want to be able to flip it over the wall to you and let you run with it. And so as a result, my career path, I have worked in a variety of industries from automotive to utilities to metals and mining to where I ultimately landed technology, both SaaS software as well as hardware. To healthcare, and I'm in Manhattan. This is finance central, right? So I have worked with a variety of different industries throughout my career and have equal comfortability heading into each of them. The roles that I fulfill right now, about 83% of the folks approach SAM, approach me, and they have an issue with their stalled organization. Is the result of primarily bad rev ops type of details not being put in place. So I generally will sit in a fractional chief revenue officer seat to get them from that stalled position moving and advancing aggressively forward.
If you had to say what you've learned in the last year, either tech, technology, or strategy, that really helped or really hurt that you learned from? What would be that lesson learned from a good or bad situation?
Yeah, and this is a great 2026 moment. I don't know what is in the water or the air out there, but I have had more folks reach out to me. You know, at Deloitte, I was a pricing and compensation expert, but pricing seems to be the trigger point today. That most organizational leaders are struggling with. And it's not that they don't think that they have a good pricing policy. They're just getting outplayed. And here's what I mean by it. It's the, the buyer in the selling, the negotiation phase simply has a better playbook. And they have a playbook that maybe it comes from just muscle memory. Maybe they're leveraging AI to get the leg up. But they simply have better negotiation skills. So, I put together what I call a price— let me make sure I have this down right— a price pressure playbook. Price pressure playbook. I know, a guy with a last name Palazzolo coming out with 3 Ps in a playbook. But what it's primarily meant to do, Michael, is to provide— I kind of split it up. There's 20 price pressure plays that the buyer will put out there. And for each one of those plays, the sales leader and their organization needs to identify what is our offset, what is our margin protection move that we're going to make. Sometimes those price pressure plays map perfectly over to a single margin protection move. Sometimes a single price pressure play maps over to 5 different things that you can do to protect margin. But pricing is the thing that I'm seeing right now. I wonder, are you seeing it in some of the work you do as well?
Yeah, I think there's a lot of movement in, in like the tariffs and just overall what the market's going to do. And so people are scared to make a decision right now. And it's not necessarily price, it's just the indecision of Where's this government going and where is business going? Personally, I think, not to get political, we need to make it make us first, you know. So if we have to do tariffs, it's great, but we just did it so fast that it kind of screwed up a lot of people's business for the last year. And this is, uh, just so you know, this is March 11th, um, but this year is increasingly getting better. So I think people are understanding that we're, we're trying to make everything better and be self-sufficient on our own country. Yeah, but it's been different. It's, it's the pricing situation is you got to be the challenger sales approach a little bit. Like, you have a $200,000 problem that I could solve for $5,000 a week. I'm sorry, $5,000 a month. And be someone that's been doing this lead generation, which is what SDRs do, for 30 years. And these guys are 22 years old. So what's— which one would you rather go to? Would you rather use Sam, who has all this experience, some of it in the Big Five? Would you rather hire someone out of college that still has to lose and learn? I don't understand the methodology of why people always need to make it— make a hire. Make, hire, whether it's fractional, full-time, part-time, based on what you need and who could get it done faster, better, cheaper.
No, you're spot on. And I think that's where I'm seeing more energy around this fractional type of an offering for a former senior leader like myself. For a fraction of the cost of getting a full-time equivalent, you can plug me into the organization. You set the number of hours per month. And we architect strategy. Like I mentioned, I'm an operator. So we roll up our sleeves and we implement and execute together and we hold ourselves accountable towards the execution moment, right? Through KPIs, metrics, OKRs, et cetera. It's an interesting space today from an economy where it is that we're going, not only domestically, but on a global landscape, but the fractional model works. And I think And this is the thing that I love about— I love AI, right? I have 3 clients that are in the AI space, Michael. And the one thing that I've learned from them is that AI is great about spitting out different strategies, different ways I don't know if it was on your end or my end, but one of the— I think you and I, you know my background. One of the organizations I led was a virtual meeting room. It was this. So, anything that has gone wrong in meetings, I've tested and experienced firsthand.
Yeah, I'm not for sure where he left, but I'll have to edit this video. Yeah, but, um, what's, um, what's, what, what does the next 6 months look for you as far as business? I mean, how many clients do you normally have, and how many clients can you normally, um, basically handle when it becomes too much? And did you outsource to partners that do what you do so you can keep on growing, or do you want to say, hey, I need to be on the ground level with all these. I'm just going to kind of focus in on what I could control and help.
Yeah, I think, you know, here's what I'm doing as we headed into 2026, and we beta tested this last year in 2025 towards the tail end. We started doing 30-day quick win sprints for clients. In 30 days, we'll take you through a battery of assessment through what I would— I call my 5-pillar methodology. It's how we analyze and assess baseline operations today, compare contrast with goals or where you want to be tomorrow. And the beauty of a 30-day quick win sprint is we identify 3 to 5 specific targets that we want to go and we want to execute on. And we do exactly that. We architect strategy, we execute, and we get held accountable towards metrics and KPIs on a month On a monthly basis, I try to do 2 to 3 of those. 2 to 3 of those 30-day engagements generally bleed into— we'll get a quantity of those that'll transition to a full 90-day engagement. It's the same thing that we experienced in a 30-day micro environment applied to a macro. So a full 120 days of working together. Think full value creation playbook, board pitch deck, preparation and readiness, all of those good things that come, but most importantly, results, right?
So, how do you charge for that 30-day sprint?
Yeah, we do it twofold. We will offer it for a fixed fee. If they want a reduction in fixed fee, we'll see if we can have some type of a performance accelerator applied. And again, the market that I'm approaching they're generally in that $5 million to $100 million range. So, they're on the smaller side of the SMB category, but these aren't startups. I mean, I might have led several all the way through to exit, but I know this much about startups and I'm always willing to hear or to see if I can assist with my network of 10,000+ folks for a startup. But that's not my primary market because I find startups, while the mission is great and the excitement levels are off the chart for me, They just don't have the, they don't have the, the revenue stream. And I'm an accountant by training and I'm not going to cause a cash flow choke, if that makes sense.
Well, what is the range, not to pin you down, for a 30-day period with Sam?
Yeah, $10,000 is where we launch out at. The 45-day, if 30 days is a $10,000 quick win sprint, The 90-day after is what I call a scale sprint. That's $45,000. So relatively simple, easy terms, especially at that $5 to $100 million range of an organization.
Well, if you compare that to maybe one of the 3 or 4 large companies that do this, that do it for 6 months, I don't know if it's Bain or whatever the companies are, McKinsey, where it's $1, $2 million and they don't even look at you because you're too small. Right, right.
The project that I— I'll give you a great example of one of the last projects that I worked on at one of the Big Four firms that I previously mentioned. You know, a partner rate today, $1,500 an hour isn't out of the question.
Lawyers are cheap now compared to that.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's the disappointment with it from a client perspective. Those senior partners at that price point, they still get billed throughout the project and they're the ones who will initially sell it. But the actual execution falls to a real freshman-oriented analyst. And today it probably gets outsourced to AI.
Yeah.
So the person who sold you the initiative, they're not even there to help you implement and execute. That's where I said, you know what? And I recognize it. It's not a very scalable program if I have to be intimately engaged with each one of the clients that we onboard. But I'm good with that because I want to work with them. And you mentioned, is it possible for us to kind of grow into a different model? We get capped, and purposely so, because let's face it, I want results. My tagline for years has been real strategies, real results. I want results, and I find it awfully difficult to achieve the results that I want, which are totally unrealistic. But I find it awfully difficult to achieve those results if I'm constantly getting engagements and then kind of downshifting to a freshman analyst to really implement and execute. That's not the way it should work, right?
Then that's, and that's why the SDR model doesn't work a lot. You put SDR on a title, someone reaching out to Sam or Michael, they were like, I don't want to talk to this kid because they're just getting their feet wet. They're just going to pass it along.
Right.
But yeah, thanks so much for making time. It's great seeing you again. I hope to work with you soon. How do people reach you?
Yeah, the easiest way you can find me at tipofthespeerventures.com. We'll put the link in the show notes. I'm also pretty vocal on LinkedIn. Again, Sam Palazzolo, Tip of the Spear Ventures. And I'll also provide you for your audience here, a link to that scaling readiness assessment. It's an assessment, Michael. It's 20 questions, shouldn't take longer than 5 minutes, but from it and the report out, we'll actually jump into a 20-minute meeting. I'll call out what 3 to 5 specific focus areas that you and your team should be targeting today. Uh, we'll also put a link into the notes, show notes, on how it is you can get that Price Pressure Playbook so that way you got those 20 offense defense moves.
You're gonna have to think of 3 different Ps so you don't have to think about how to say it.
We're gonna call it the P3.
I would call it the 4-ply approach. Why?
Why?
Because of you. Yeah, 4-ply approach, then people will remember that because that'd be cute. I like it. We'd say New York, forget about it, you know what I'm talking about.
