Stefan van EerdeFounder, Shadow Leaders · Founder | Fractional CGO for B2B SaaS scale-ups | GTM systems, CRM, AI automation, and NED/advisory support | Helping founders bridge €2M to €20M ARR. Open for fractional and advisory roles.

GTM inefficiencies overrelying on superstars horizontal

10 Apr 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker illustrates a common go‑to‑market (GTM) inefficiency: a company’s heavy reliance on a single, high‑performing salesperson. The example describes a “sales lady” who consistently drives a large portion of revenue through her ability to explain product benefits, while two other salespeople underperform. The speaker warns that if the superstar leaves for a competitor, the firm could lose a substantial share of its revenue because the sales process is not repeatable or scalable without her. The core message is that dependence on a single star rep creates vulnerability and hampers the ability to scale GTM activities.

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You have, for instance, this amazing sales lady in your team. She's really good in explaining the benefits of the service or the products that you're offering. And because of her, you make a lot of revenue, right? So she is very, very successful. But next to her, there are also two other salespersons, and they're absolutely not successful, or not to the extent of your superstar salesperson. And that could be an example of go-to-market inefficiency, because what happens if she moves on, if she gets an offer from from a bigger company because they notice like, wow, she's really good in selling this stuff. And that could be a particular problem in your go-to-market because then all of a sudden you will lose maybe half of your revenue, for instance. So that is an example of inefficient go-to-market because you cannot really repeat it and you cannot really scale the activities of that particular superstar.