Julie Garst

This is the biggest mistake in RevOps. How to fix it before your team checks out: Calling sales reps “lazy” is a sign you’re building the wrong system. Reps aren’t lazy. They’re the closest to the market. They feel buyer reactions before dashboards do. They sense message-market fit faster than leadership. They know when data feels wrong. If RevOps wants adoption and alignment, it begins with one thing: Respect. Not more fields. Not more dashboards. Not more processes. Respect → Collaboration → Better workflows → Higher adoption. You can’t build a great system for a team you don’t understand.

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ZoomInfo's best feature isn't their data. It's their cancellation process. Try leaving mid-contract. You'll get connected to a "retention specialist" whose entire job is making you feel guilty about wanting out. They'll throw discounts at you, remind you how much time's left on your term, and make the whole thing feel like breaking a lease on an apartment. Because that's exactly what it is. You signed a 12 to 24 month deal and now you're stuck paying even if the data stopped delivering months ago. UpLead lets you cancel with one click. Monthly plan? You're done whenever you want. There's no retention call, no guilt trip, and nobody asking to "transfer you to a manager." I don't want customers who stick around because leaving was too painful. I want people who look at their results, see real pipeline getting built, and choose to stay because it's actually working. $30M+ in sales built entirely on a product people keep paying for by choice. That's the only retention strategy I'll ever believe in.

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Most founders ask the wrong question about RevOps. They ask: "What ARR do I need to be at before I hire for this?" The better question is: "When does revenue complexity start costing me real money?" Because by the time you're asking the first question, it usually already is. Here's what RevOps actually is, because it gets described badly all the time. RevOps is the connective tissue between your GTM teams. It sits across marketing, sales, and customer success to make sure the revenue engine runs as one machine instead of three or four departments doing their own thing with their own data. When it works, you get cleaner handoffs, better forecasting, less margin leakage, and a leadership team that actually trusts the numbers in front of them. When it's missing, you get conflicting data in board meetings, leads falling through the cracks, reps spending half their time fighting broken process, and founders making big calls off fragmented information. The data on what happens when companies get this right is pretty clear. Forrester found that companies operating with RevOps principles see 19% faster growth and 15% higher profitability than those running a more traditional siloed model. Public companies with RevOps functions have also shown 71% higher stock performance than those without. BCG reports B2B companies investing in RevOps have seen 10-20% increases in sales productivity. So when should you actually invest in it? My take after placing RevOps and GTM talent across growth-stage and PE-backed companies: Start building the RevOps mindset from day one. Hire a real RevOps leader once complexity shows up. SaaStr's Jason Lemkin puts the trigger as early as 4-5 sales reps. James Darragh, Head of RevOps at dbt Labs, says start thinking about it once you have a sales leader and a rep or two. The point is not to wait for a clean ARR milestone to tell you it's time. The signals that it's time usually look like this: Multiple GTM teams touching the same customer journey with no clear handoffs. Conflicting numbers depending on who pulled the data. Marketing and sales blaming each other. Pipeline reviews that feel more like guesswork than forecasting. A growing tech stack that nobody owns properly. Most practitioners agree: don't wait until $10M ARR to make your first RevOps hire. By then, the cleanup is expensive and growth is already being slowed by the mess. The companies that scale cleanly are not the ones that hired RevOps reactively. They are the ones that treated it like infrastructure, not reporting support. A strong RevOps leader is not just building dashboards. They are giving your executive team visibility across the whole business, surfacing where margin is leaking, and solving problems before they become revenue problems. That is when RevOps stops being a nice-to-have and becomes the backbone of the operation. If you're ready DM me?

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The Top 50 Highest-Performing Sales Organizations of 2025. 5,000+ data points. 300 GTM hires indexed. One clear pattern. The teams that outperform aren’t stacked with the biggest logos or the highest OTEs. They’re built on *trust density*. Tight communication. Consistent behavior. Predictable execution. When teams trust how work gets done — not just who is doing it — performance compounds. This is becoming one of the most overlooked competitive advantages in modern GTM org design. Full report in the comments 👇🏻

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You don’t need more reps. You need a real system. Most outbound teams aren’t underperforming because they lack talent. They’re stuck because the system they operate in doesn’t work. ❌ SDRs guessing who to contact ❌ CRMs bloated with data but no prioritization ❌ Emails based on hope, not signal At Midfield, we build sales systems that: ✅ Guide SDRs based on timing ✅ Filter for real buying signals ✅ Scale conversations, not confusion Because if your reps don’t know what to say, when to say it, or who to say it to — you don’t have a sales engine. You have a calendar. What’s the biggest friction point in your team’s current sales process❓ #BroadcastSales #MediaTech #GoToMarketStrategy

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Rep, “I’m forecasting $250k for Q1.” Manager of that Rep, “I’m forecasting $200k of your $250k to our VP.” VP of that Manager, “I’m forecasting $150k or your $200k to our CRO.” CRO of that VP, “I’m forecasting $125k of your $200k to the board.” What Is Going On Here??!! I call this FHS - Forecasting Haircut Syndrome. It afflicts most GTM orgs bc that’s all they know. Rather than have hard conversations that create alignment, each level decides what it believes about the lower levels’ forecasted number. Here’s what should happen. Rep, “I’m forecasting $250k for Q1.” Manager, “Not sure I agree. $200k is what I have you at. Let’s talk about this $50k deal that has a ton of risk on it that you think you are gonna win. Show me the path so we can be on the same page.” One of two things happens: 1️⃣ Rep realizes in that convo that there is too much risk and removes the deal from their forecast. Then, the rep and mgr come up with some ideas to attack the risk that was exposed through this convo. 2️⃣ Manager realizes in that convo that there is not too much risk and leaves the deal in their forecast. Then, the rep and mgr let the VP know so everyone is aligned for the CRO and board. We FAIL our reps when we do haircuts. We let them continue to report numbers that aren’t right. Bad thinking continues. When we know someone isn’t doing things right, we think more aren’t doing it right. Then, we create workarounds to protect ourselves from this risk. Like forecasting haircuts. When all we needed to do, was just talk. Talk about why the deal either has too much risk to be forecasted or MUST be forecasted bc it has no risk great enough to prevent that. Forecasting is meant to give the business an idea of what’s coming so it can plan. Forecasting is meant to show shortfalls with enough time to make them up. There need to be tough conversations to make that happen. When those conversations are avoided then you get FHS…haircuts of haircuts. We feel safe by insulating ourselves against downside risk by sandbagging. When you could have created real safety but just having the “I don’t think this deal should be in your forecast. Show me why it should be.” conversation. That’s the most valuable conversation in sales. It’s when you align. It’s when you coach reps. It’s when you team up to figure out what to do. It’s where you make risk OK, as long as it’s not hidden. It’s where great rep/manager relationships are created. When you data is right, this is easy (Glyphic helps with auto-data entry and agents that help you ask about the risk in deals to align with your reps on). When your data is a mess, this is much harder. Don’t make forecasting about CYA - Cover Your Ass Make it about CTA - Cover Their Ass Cover, or protect, your reps from the things they don’t see by telling them when you aren’t in agreement with their thinking/forecasting. Barbers do haircuts. I can't figure out why sales leaders think they are the barbers of forecasting?

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Most CSMs are judged on a metric they can’t control.   Measuring the “Immeasurable” Value of a Success Manager... Everyone loves a clean dashboard. Usage up? Good. Usage down? Bad. But here’s the reality no one says out loud: Usage is often the metric a Success Manager has the least control over. Seasonality, staffing changes, budget cycles, internal priorities — all of these drive usage far more than any cadence call ever will. So if usage isn’t the true indicator of a CSM’s impact, what is? Here’s what actually measures the value of a great Success Manager — the things that do sit within their influence: 1.    Customer Voice & Sentiment (the real leading indicator) When customers consistently say things like: ·      “Our Success Manager is the reason we’re successful.” ·      “They understand our business better than some of our internal teams.” ·      “We trust them.” That’s value. And it’s measurable through: ·      Structured interviews ·      Post‑meeting surveys ·      Renewal debriefs ·      Stakeholder sentiment scoring This is the CSM’s version of product‑market fit: relationship‑market fit. 2.    Executive Recognition & Named Praise When a C‑level leader voluntarily mentions a Success Manager by name, that’s not luck — that’s impact. Track it. Celebrate it. It’s one of the strongest predictors of renewal and expansion. 3.    Predictability & Risk Reduction A great CSM prevents surprises. You can measure: ·      Accuracy of health predictions ·      Early risk identification ·      Time-to-escalation ·      Renewal forecast accuracy This is the invisible work that protects revenue — and it’s often the most valuable. 4.    Strategic Alignment & Business Outcomes Usage is a tactic. Outcomes are the strategy. Measure: ·      Clarity of success plans ·      Alignment to business goals ·      Progress toward defined outcomes ·      Executive engagement consistency A CSM who keeps the customer aligned to outcomes is delivering value far beyond logins. 5.    Customer Advocacy & Expansion Influence Advocacy doesn’t happen by accident. Track: ·      Customer references ·      Case study participation ·      Expansion opportunities sourced ·      Cross‑functional collaboration impact These are direct signals of trust and partnership. The Bottom Line A Success Manager’s value isn’t measured by how often a customer clicks a button. It’s measured by: Trust Alignment Predictability Advocacy Strategic influence And the customer’s willingness to say, “Our Success Manager makes us better.” That’s the real ROI — and it’s absolutely measurable.

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99% of sales teams run on tribal knowledge and it's slowly killing them. Scripts live in a Google Doc nobody's updated since last year. Objection handling lives in the head of your best closer. Case studies are in a marketing folder that three people have access to. Pricing is on a spreadsheet that might be current. Onboarding is "shadow Jake for a week." When a rep needs info mid-call, they can't find it fast enough. When a new rep joins, they spend weeks just figuring out where things are. When someone leaves, the knowledge walks out the door with them. We centralized everything into a single AI-powered knowledge base. Every script, case study, pricing doc, competitive battle card, objection response, and SOP... uploaded to one place. Now a rep can ask "which case study is most relevant for a 50-person SaaS company struggling with churn" and get the answer in 2 seconds. A new hire can onboard themselves by asking questions at 11pm on a Sunday. And the answers are consistent every single time. No more different reps quoting different pricing. It took about a week to build. Mostly just gathering documents we already had and uploading them. The technology wasn't the hard part. The hard part was admitting that our "system" was just hoping everyone remembered everything.

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Some SaaS firms are still struggling to hire. When I see their budgets it’s obvious why. $140K for an Enterprise AE $110K for a Senior CSM $150K for an experienced SE If you think that gets you good people you’re dreaming. Hiring comes down to 3 choices: 1 - Pay what you need and get the best 2 - Pay less and get a junior stepping up 3 - Pay less and hire someone average It really is that simple. #techsales #gotomarket #saasrecruitment

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