Nick Bontkowski

You can predict 90% of a rep’s future performance from one interview question. Not experience. Not resume polish. One question that exposes how they handle pressure, ownership, and effort. It’s wild how consistent the pattern is across SMB sales teams. Ask a rep, “Are you competitive?” They’ll say yes. Ask, “Do you work hard?” Yes again. These questions measure nothing. Instead, ask: Think of a few times where you had to push harder than anyone around you. What were those situations, and what did you do? You’re looking for: - How fast they retrieve examples - Whether the stakes felt real - Whether they take ownership - Whether they learned anything from it We broke down the exact interview framework for finding the best SMB sellers in the ultimate guide for vertical SaaS sales leaders. Comment “rep” below and I’ll share the full guide 👇 Always satisfying when chaos turns into something predictable.

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In the SDR army era, more dials = more deals. But volume doesn’t equal velocity. Turnover kills your momentum. And every new hire is trial-and-error. That’s where the GTM Engineer comes in. They’re able to scale results with automation and tools. But GTM engineers are expensive hires that need to understand: Orchestration, automation, data enrichment, sequence logic, deliverability, lead scoring, attribution modeling, webhook management, API rate limits, troubleshooting 15+ tool integrations, and all the complexity involved. You shouldn’t need a PhD just to grow your business. A GTM lead equipped with GTM-1 Omni solves this complexity. AI handles all the orchestration, automation, tools, etc. And the human focuses on: - Nurturing relationships - Talking to prospects - Building trust That’s how I see the next era of GTM. A world where relationships and trust come first. Powered by machines that handle the repetitive work.

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Most GTM Ops leaders fail in their first 90-180 days Because they tried to fix everything at once They're fighting a battle on too many fronts Spreading their scare resources too thin Unable to make impact anywhere 𝐈 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲: - New CRO and/or VP of GTM Ops steps in - Pipeline management is broken - Outbound isn't converting - Inbound leads aren't getting follow-up - CS isn't tracking health So they tackle all of it at once - Six months later, nothing's actually fixed - They've built dashboards nobody uses - Documented processes nobody follows - Launched initiatives that died after the kickoff. And now they're on track for termination - 1/3rd of the way through an 18-month tenure - With no real improvement to the GTM function 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬: Pick one thing - Not five initiatives - One specific area in GTM Maybe it's outbound prospecting Maybe it's pipeline qualification Maybe it's sales handoff to CS Then focus on the fundamentals - Define the process clearly - Build it into the tools - Track the right metrics - Train the team - Drive consistent execution This last piece is key! The job isn't done until the entire team is consistently executing the process and you can see it in tangible reports. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐢𝐭. You're not optimizing yet. You're not automating yet You're not building attribution models You're just getting from broken to good enough 𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: In 90 days, you can build a process and drive execution Or you can build 10 processes that sit in a Google Doc The organizations that actually move revenue pick one thing They get it working Then they move to the next thing More on this in yesterday's 📰𝙂𝙏𝙈 𝙎𝙘𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝘽𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙛 📰 See comment below for the link ✌️

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Value based pricing sounds awesome in theory. There is a TON of buzz around it today as it relates to AI software. In the 1990's there was a supply chain software company that would do a value study and then offer their customer's the option to either buy their software or do a gainshare on the value realized through the deployment. Exactly 0 customers took them up on it. Why? Either, they believed the value study and didn't want to share in the upside OR They didn't want to put the time and energy into tracking the value realized. I suspect that a similar phenomenon will occur to AI products. Who knows, maybe I will be wrong? Value based pricing would be awesome if broadly adopted.

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RevOps was supposed to be the connective tissue. The function that would finally get Sales, Marketing, and CS aligned around shared data. Shared definitions. Shared accountability for the full revenue cycle. What happened instead: RevOps became a third silo. Now you have Marketing Ops. Sales Ops. CS Ops. And a "RevOps leader" who spends most of their time answering data requests from each of the other three while trying to reconcile pipeline numbers that were never meant to match. The connective tissue never formed. We added more tissue and called it alignment. I've seen this in organizations where RevOps reports to the CRO. To the CEO. To Marketing. The org chart position isn't the variable. The real issue: RevOps inherited a broken architecture and was asked to optimize it. Nobody went back to fix the foundation first. Sales, Marketing, and CS have to agree on the buyer before RevOps builds anything around them. RevOps can't align what leadership hasn't agreed on. That's not a tools problem. That's a clarity problem. And it has to get solved upstream. #RevOps #RevenueOperations #GTM #SaaS #B2BSaaS

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