Full Throttle Leaders- Ron Gupta

Okay. All right. Hello everybody, Michael Falato here again. We got Ram Gupta from the— the founder of Zen GTM. Um, he is someone that I've been talking to over the last years but finally got to meet him face-to-face on Zoom. And I just wanted to introduce Ron and have him talk to him— talk to all you about his, his, uh, story, where he— how he got here today, and, and what kind of grabbed his attention to even want to do a podcast today. So go ahead, Ron, introduce yourself.

Hey, Michael, thanks for having me on. Um, well, first of all, in, in this virtual day and age, getting on Zoom together is about as close people get to making a personal connection these days, feels like. So Ron Gupta, founder of ZenGTM. I have been a longtime operator in the SaaS B2B space, had a couple of amazing outcomes with a few companies, run scales everywhere from tiny founder-led $2-3 million companies to multi-hundred million dollar divisions and organizations. What I've started off late is try to democratize experience and knowledge. work with, in an advisory capacity, with a bunch of early-stage companies that are typically founder-led. Some of them have investors in place, some of them are bootstrapped, but the idea is these are really smart people, great technologists with some great technology, who don't necessarily have the skill set or the experience in taking an entire go-to-market out to the business world. And figuring out a way to work with them and add value to their journey. That's kind of my mission in life these days.

And what's the— what's kind of the biggest lesson you learned in the last 6 months? Like, hey, I did this for myself or for my company or for my clients, and it was amazing, or that was not a good idea, but I want to kind of make that a teachable lesson for the— for my viewers.

Yeah, so I think Lessons are something that is, that's the evolutionary part of people's lives, right? Because I feel like whenever people say like, hey, you're a great CRO or you know some really cool stuff, it's like there is no magic formula. It's basically pattern recognition. It's things that I've done before that seem to work well. Conversely, also things that I did in the past that just didn't go as well as I thought it would. So that pattern recognition is kind of what evolves into skillset, right? So lessons that I've learned is find product needs to be something that adds tangible value in today's world. People are not making investments that are either focused on too far in the future outcomes or things that are more abstract and esoteric in terms of, in terms of the promise that they make. So taking to market products that don't have some intrinsic value for the organizations that you're selling into, to your client base, your customer base, Isn't a recipe for success these days. And that fortunately was a positive lesson because the last company I was at that had an amazing outcome, they had the largest insurtech exit of 2024, 2025, sold a very unique product into a very niche market, very narrow vertical, very narrow ICP, but very, very closely tailored to their needs.

And What do you like to be involved in more? Do you like being involved in financial tech, insurance tech, SaaS, AI, or what's your kind of low-hanging fruit for you?

Yeah, look, my graduate degree's in computer science, so I know enough about technology to be dangerous. I'm not an expert, right? So the hardest thing was when I went from building technology to sales was to step away from being too technical. So from my perspective, I have a foundational understanding of pretty much all of the technology out there today. I don't lean heavily one way or the other. Like, you know, there's the world skewing AI these days, right? So everyone seems to have an agentic AI story or an LLM story that's attached to their product vision. For me, what's really important is like the value that your product has for the marketplace that they're selling into. As long as that product-market fit exists, I'm not too hung up on the specific technology that it precludes or includes. Um, but the 2 things that are really important is one, the product-market fit, and second, the founding or operational team, right? If you don't have the right people at the helm, uh, it doesn't matter how cool the product is, it doesn't tend to do as well as it should.

Are you in particular more with a Series A seed round, uh, angel round? What, what type of revenue are they at?

Yeah, um, so some of the advisory companies that I'm working with are, um, pre-revenue or early revenue and pre-investment. But before that, in my operator roles, I've never worked for a pre-revenue or a seed company. I've typically come in post-Series B because the skill set that I'm typically brought into— so I've come in post-Series B and I've taken it all the way through some kind of an exit, right? So I've done the entire gamut. And the reason for that is not because I prefer one stage over the other. I don't mind like building from scratch. I love that. I enjoy doing that. But the challenge is, I think I'm a pretty decent sales leader and I don't, as a good sales leader, want to be too far ahead of the product, right? So, if you outsell the product, it just sets up problems for the future.

Yeah.

So, for me, the important thing is to make sure the product has a product-market fit. And 9 times out of 10, you know, unless you've got to Series B or thereabouts, you're not quite there as yet. It's still, you know, Still tweaking the dials to make sure it's actually receptive in the market.

What's your favorite methodology, or is it a mixture of a bunch of them?

Yeah, so look, good question, Michael. I am— the one that I seem to have the most success with is MEDIC or MEDPIC or some flavor of that. But to me, methodology is kind of like a diet. You could do the Atkins, you can do Weight Watchers, you can do whatever the heck it is, as long as you're consistent with it up and down the food chain. Everybody needs to speak the same language, right? So when you say you're implementing a methodology, it should tie into your CRM. Your CRM should go by— the sales stages should be driven by whatever methodology you're using. Your company, your organization should speak that language. If you're saying metric, you know, when you say metric, everybody from your CTO to your CEO and your sales guy should know what that means, right? So adoption to me is more important than the actual methodology. When I come in, nobody normally brings in a CRO because things are going well, right? It's generally there's amazing things that are required.

Yeah, true.

So when I come in, the first thing I do is, hey, if there's a methodology and it's working and that's not where the problem lies, let's not just change it because I wanna implement my favorite methodology, right? Maybe they're a Challenger shop and it's working for them, but their issue is about lead capture. Let's focus on lead capture and not just get a new methodology in place, right? On the other hand, like if it's, If it's greenfield and you're setting up something from scratch, what I've typically done is post-MQL. I usually use MedPic as a qualifying methodology. Pre-MQL, pre-SQL, so it's stuff in the top of the funnel. I think MedPic or Medic becomes a little too obtuse for some people. BDRs, SDRs, they're typically 2 years out of college. I don't want them to understand all the unique nuances of that methodology. So I just ask them to figure out, hey, does this qualify in BAT? Is there budget, authority, need, and time? And then if that's there, then at some point it gets punted over to sales and then the rest of the funnel works on MedPic.

Okay. What type of companies do you want to work with in the next 6 to 12 months that maybe Anybody viewing this could, uh, go, you know what, I should reach out to Ron and team up with them.

Yeah, first of all, capacity is a big issue, right? Because I'm a one-person shop right now. I'm building out a team, but right now, like, everybody wants to work with me, uh, which makes it a little bit complicated because I only have, like, you know, 40, 50 hours in my work week. Um, so, but again, what's really important for me are, are those 2 factors: the technology. So make sure it's a technology that has the promise of a pretty significant outcome, right? So if I can't add to that value chain, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me or the founders that are bringing me in. So the market, the technology is super important, and then the people, people to me. So I'm fortunate enough to be in a situation where I don't have to work for a living. I work for, you know, I have a mission of making a difference in the world. So if I don't have the right people to join in that mission, it becomes a chore, and I don't want to do chores, right? So finding the right people, the right teams, and then the technology that underlies that is kind of what's most important to me.

Well, Ron, I appreciate you making time today. Um, we'll definitely keep in touch and hopefully get to work together. But Ron's information is up on the little lower third behind his, uh, below his face there. So please reach out to him. But thanks everybody for watching. As a reminder, I'm Michael Falato. I run Full Throttle Leaders, which is our podcast here, and I also have this great sponsor behind me that's my company that does lead generation and roundtables and masterminds and podcasts and thought leadership. So Ron and I would love to work with you. Reach out to either of us. Um, my, uh, my email is michael@fullthrottlefalatoleads.com, and Ron is— how do you pronounce it?

It's guptaron@icloud.com.

All right, God bless everybody.

Thank you.