Nate Broome

In Formula 1, the fastest car doesn't always win. Smart drivers know how to tuck into the slipstream (tailwinds) of a competitor - reduce drag, conserve energy then slingshot ahead at exactly the right moment. Its not luck - its aerodynamics + timing. So how do we do this in B2B land? I've signed up for Craig Rosenberg's session 👇 "Engineering Tailwinds. The GTM Playbook for Winning in Hard Markets". Do hard things (or get other people to do them for you), more easily. Hit repeat. (...that's what i'm hoping to learn 😉). Join us!

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ARR per FTE. That’s the metric that kept coming up over and over at the Accord Revenue Summit in Tahoe this week. 🏔️ ~20 revenue leaders, zero fluff, and some of the most candid conversations I’ve had about where GTM is actually heading. Big thanks to Ross Rich and the Accord team for putting it together. A few things that stuck with me: On value selling: The best framing came from Russell Scherwin: top companies separate what you hire for (curiosity, adaptability, character) from what you train for (skills, frameworks, process)🎯 Getting CEO and CRO locked in on the behavioral bar (and actually holding it) is where most transformations win or die. And a reminder that landed hard: culture defaults to the lowest standard you tolerate. Set the bar high from day one. On AI-driven GTM transformation: The companies furthest ahead aren’t just deploying tools. They’re rebuilding RevOps as a product team with engineers and designers, treating sellers as internal customers with a real roadmap. 🤖 Chris Thompson is killing it here and ahead of the pack. The north star metric crystallizing across the room: ARR per FTE. Time-saved metrics are out (one panelist called them “performative” and nobody disagreed). Revenue impact, win rates, and time-to-revenue are in. Kyle Norton is crushing the metrics and automation game. The insight I keep thinking about: The biggest bottleneck isn’t engineering. It’s product. Knowing what workflows to build matters more than knowing how to build them. 💡 The orgs pulling ahead are solving the design problem first. Thanks again Ross — already looking forward to the next one. 🤝

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The best candidates do one thing really well in interviews - connect their story to revenue. Whether you’re in sales or CS, every answer needs to show measurable impact. We just dropped a paid post for RolePulse subscribers with: → Real GTM interview questions from 2025 hiring managers → Proven answer structures → Common mistakes to avoid If you’re actively interviewing (or about to be), this is your cheat code. 🔒 Read it here: https://lnkd.in/etBAHDru

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Stevie Case (Chief Revenue Officer at Vanta), has helped scale the company from under $20 million to north of $100 million under her revenue leadership, shares one of the most overlooked mistakes founders and execs make in sales conversations: “Sales Leaders often listen with happy ears — they hear what they want to hear, not what the customer is actually saying.” It’s a deceptively simple idea, but one that can kill deals, mask real objections, and prevent learning between the first and second meeting. If you’re selling — especially your first product — this insight will change how you listen. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Ep #181 here: https://lnkd.in/gGJ7wucD From November 2024. Please enjoy exploring your curiosity. Vidit Stevie Christina Eric David Scott Jeremy Emlyn Jess Linda Jack Michael Maggie Renu James Satya Andrew Varun Heather

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Over the past decade, we’ve run one of the leading talent marketplaces, helping the world’s top companies access independent talent to power their most critical work. Along the way, we’ve learned what modern staffing firms need to succeed: speed, automation, digital candidate experiences, and fewer manual, repetitive tasks.  We’ve been quietly building our own proprietary technology to solve these workflow challenges and improve our own productivity as a company. Today, we’re bringing that technology to the broader industry with the launch of GraphiteOS, an AI-powered recruiting operating system that we believe will fundamentally transform how staffing firms operate in the years to come. This isn’t just a product. It’s the technology infrastructure staffing firms need to operate faster and more effectively in an AI-driven, “agent-first” world.  We believe this technology will enable levels of recruiter productivity and client satisfaction that have never been seen before. Recruiters shouldn’t be stuck juggling disconnected tools and performing repetitive tasks. With GraphiteOS, we’ve built an all-in-one platform that connects the dots - sourcing, matching, screening, onboarding and billing - so teams can focus on what matters most: the high-value work that drives placements. I’m incredibly proud of what our team has built and, more importantly, what it will enable for our early customers where the platform is being deployed as we speak! Learn more at www.graphiteos.ai #GraphiteOS #StaffingTech #FutureOfWork #AIRecruiting #StaffingInnovation

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There are so many use cases for location data from Placer.ai. This case study shows how an agency used Placer to more than double the ROAS for a national retail client, which then went on to double its spend with the agency.

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Pipeline-building remains a top driver of SaaS revenue growth - yet most companies struggle to get it right. A recent Blue Ridge Partners analysis reveals how high-growth SaaS companies achieved 35% growth, in part through four key differentiators: ◾ Pipeline-to-bookings ratio matters – High-growth SaaS companies target a 3-4X ratio, balancing pipeline volume with quality. ◾ Investing in lead generation drives results – High performers invest more in sales and marketing, with a higher portion of spend targeted to lead-gen efforts. ◾ Early-stage pipeline quality matters most – Stronger early-stage leads improve conversion rates and accelerate revenue growth. ◾ Technology and AI give an edge – Top performing companies are using AI and automation more effectively to strengthen lead development. For SaaS companies aiming to hit ambitious growth targets in 2025, building a reliable, high-quality pipeline is essential. Interested in learning more? You can reach out to author John Drosos or contact us at info@blueridgepartners.com.

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RevOps is a far cry from the sales ops role from years ago. Today, it’s a strategic partner to the CFO. At our CFO Summit, M.G. Thibaut (EIR at Scale Venture Partners) and Ben L. (Model N) broke down how finance and RevOps leaders can drive real business value when they work in lockstep. It’s not about alignment for alignment’s sake. It’s about building durable growth. Here are three takeaways: - RevOps is the connective tissue: From systems and capacity planning to deal desks and customer metrics, RevOps bridges Finance and GTM. When done right, it acts as the CFO’s CRO/CMO whisperer. Neutral, data-driven, and essential. - Structure matters: The recommendation? RevOps should report to the CFO, unless a true COO is in place. Why? It keeps the function objective, focused on resource allocation, and plugged into long-term planning. - You get what you hire for: Early hires may focus on CRM and pipeline hygiene—but scaling companies need RevOps leaders who can guide comp plans, validate bookings, and model growth with the same rigor as finance. The takeaway: If your RevOps team can’t sit at the 3–5 year planning table, it’s not yet strategic. But it can be.

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Anrok generated $300K in pipeline in 3 months by unifying marketing and sales outbound in Unify. Here's the playbook growth marketing lead Kathleen Kong, and founding SDR Rydian Searles used to make it happen:   Anrok was growing fast. But before Unify, their outbound was fragmented. Kathleen was running marketing campaigns in HubSpot, but every new campaign took forever to build, and segmentation was painfully slow. Rydian's SDR team was worse off, switching between 3 different tools to execute every sequence.   "We had the growth and the signals," Rydian said. "What we needed was a system that helped us act on them."   There was only one answer.... Unify. Kathleen started by building automated plays targeting new hires, website visitors, and accounts showing sales tax exposure via AI signals. Once marketing proved the model worked, they expanded Unify to the SDR team.   Suddenly, both teams were operating on the same page. Campaigns could be built 20% faster, SDRs could work 4X faster, and cold calls converted better with out-of-the-box AI insights.   This made it easy for Kathleen & Rydian to support Anrok's growth and expansion into new markets; easily spinning up new sequences without rebuilding a single workflow.   Kathleen summed up their experience best: "Unify gave us the flexibility to run everything in one ecosystem. We could move fast, measure impact, and stay aligned."   Ready to follow Anrok's lead and unify your teams? Use the link below to learn more.

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"How can CS be a revenue-driver when I can fire half my team and NRR stays the same?" Until Customer Success can find quantifiable evidence that they have a higher ROI than another AE hire, they'll always be a cost center. That's what happens when you solve for churn. You start playing not to lose. You meet with every account regardless of tier. You fret over each escalation, not by the amount of ARR at stake, but by how angry the account seems. Fear of conflict drives your decision-making. You have every customer insight at your fingertips. You have 360-degree customer intelligence. You reach out proactively at the first sign of trouble. But it doesn't make a difference. And it won't. Because the people who make CS tools are ALSO solving for churn. And CS can't be accretive with tools made for support and risk reduction. Just listen to the man himself: "Customer Success has gotten worse over the years. Much worse…We're seeing a fundamental shift where CSMs are expected to be revenue generators, but they're using systems designed for customer support." - Jason M. Lemkin If I'm honest, I'm kinda over Customer Intelligence. And I'm not even 100% sure what Commercial Intelligence is. We need Expansion Intelligence. #customerexpansion #nrr #customersuccess

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AEs are not short on activity. They are short on precision. In the last few months, I have seen this pattern repeat across multiple CRO searches in PE-backed SaaS. Reps are running full schedules, logging calls, moving deals. But the pipeline does not reflect it. Stages are inflated, next steps are vague, and qualification is optimistic at best. The issue is not effort. It is inspection. Three things that separate the teams getting this right:  • Clear exit criteria at every stage, enforced by the manager, not just the rep  • Next-step ownership confirmed before the call ends, not after  • ICP discipline that kills bad-fit deals early instead of carrying them for two quarters The CROs who are winning in this market are not running more campaigns. They are tightening what counts as a real opportunity. Inspection beats motivation speeches. What is the one inspection metric you trust most right now?

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The territory allocation debate in SaaS sales is the worst debate of 2025. And the only reason it keeps resurfacing is because people still treat SaaS like a field-sales operation. There are industries where territory planning absolutely matters. If you sell into manufacturing, field services, or any environment where reps physically visit sites, geography plays a real role. Travel time, proximity and face-to-face access matters - I’m not arguing that. But SaaS is a different world. Most selling happens online. Buyers evaluate software from wherever they sit and geography tells you NOTHING about how a buyer communicates, what they value, or how they make decisions. Yet companies continue to assign accounts based on maps as if state lines guarantee fairness. They don’t. Some regions will always be richer. Some will always be slower. New York will never resemble Arkansas. Drawing neat borders has never solved performance gaps in SaaS. The real driver of performance is something leaders rarely sit with long enough: how well each rep’s communication style, natural tendencies, and persona align with the buyer environments they’re selling into. If you have ten reps, this is the part you cannot skip. You must understand, with intention: — Which reps are analytical and naturally align with analytical buyers. — Which reps are outgoing and relational, and build trust faster in conversational environments. — Which reps are more reserved and thrive with buyers who prefer structure and detail. — Which reps are fast-paced and comfortable in quick decision cycles. — Which reps need deeper, steadier conversations to build long-term trust. — Which reps handle multiple stakeholders with ease versus those who perform best with focused one-on-one relationships. — Which reps align with rigid, formal communication norms versus more fluid, exploratory ones. This is not optional work. If you skip this, no territory model will ever feel fair or perform well, because you’re matching accounts to locations instead of matching accounts to the actual capabilities of your reps. When you allocate accounts based on communication fit and persona alignment, everything changes. The conversations feel smoother. Trust builds faster. Reps operate with more confidence because they’re selling into environments that make sense for how they naturally work. You get more predictable performance without changing your headcount or your product. This is why the territory debate in SaaS needs to end. SaaS doesn’t have a geography problem. It has a fit problem and once you solve for fit, the map stops mattering.

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Gartner recently released a survey on CSOs top priorities to improve sales results. #1 was pipeline generation, which I found confusing. Most complex b2b products have at least a 6 month sales cycle. It’s currently June 18. If you’re on a calendar fiscal, whatever pipeline you are creating now will more likely close next year than this year. Want better results this year? Focus on better execution for what you have in pipe.

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Most SaaS conferences are a big distraction. They sell the dream of growth and velocity...Back it up with fear stats like “only 0.4% get to $10M ARR”… And then offer the same recycled speaker lineups you could learn from on YouTube or LinkedIn with a quick search. These events do work but just not for the attendees. They work for the event organizer, the venue, and the speakers promoting their own products and services. But for most founders it’s a 3-day vacation dressed up as business development. You don’t get velocity from panel talks. You get velocity from better strategy, clearer messaging, stronger targeting, and relentless market validation. Until then, no amount of “connecting with peers” will help you escape the valley of death. #b2bsales #saleseffectiveness #marketingeffectiveness #salesandmarketing #founders #cofounder #salesdevelopment #salesgrowth #newbusiness #startups #b2b #CEO

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Kyle James makes a great observation about how GTM teams are approaching platforms like Gainsight today. What looks like hesitation is often discipline. Teams are taking time to pressure test workflows, data, and ownership before committing to a platform. That behavior does not diminish the value of Gainsight. In many cases, it increases it. When teams arrive with clearer intent and operational readiness, adoption improves and outcomes compound faster. The signal here is not about building instead of buying. It is about earning the right to scale with the platform once the foundation is actually in place. https://lnkd.in/emF9ZvCQ

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A CMO’s weekly/monthly insights cadence part 2. Next up: Pipeline Progression Call: Weekly. This is a Sales X Marketing X Ops call. Each pipeline generating team: marketing, partner, outbound SDR, outbound BDR, fills out a memo style overview of pipeline week on week progress as well as highlighting any challenges. Initially it felt like a weekly call to track pipeline may not yield much because it would be a little too frequent to uncover impact from initiatives the week prior, but actually this intense discipline and focus on weekly pipeline generation by team has been a big unlock. Cross functional issues get surfaced much earlier and get unblocked much faster. Ownership and accountability has improved tenfold. It got everyone focused on discussing the same data vs relying on different views on separate dashboards that made threading the needle of the problem more difficult to diagnose. Importantly this is not a call for marketing to defend their pipeline position and lay blame on coverage gaps with other teams. I see this call as the time to work out how Sales, Marketing & Operations can pick the next best set of actions that will improve our chances of hitting that weeks budget pipeline target & close any gaps that may have built up. Pipeline Monthly Review: Monthly. The set-up for this call is similar to the weekly cadence, but the focus is on looking and uncovering monthly trends that require correction in order to remain on track for that quarters budget number. Are we generating in month pipeline at the same rate as we previously were? Is there a pipeline generation team that has built up a gap? If so what’s the gap, what are the 1-2 biggest causes of that gap and importantly what is our plan for correcting it? For issues identified in the previous monthly pipeline review are we seeing corrective trends in the data as a result of the actions we prioritised in month? Budget Committee: Monthly. This is a marketing leadership call where we build our monthly budget deployment plan. We'll reconcile the previous months spend and performance and use this alongside trending historical data and required deeper investigations to provide the detailed rationale for how we allocate spend for the month ahead. I like these calls to be lively debated. I want my leaders to bring forward strong business cases for how the $ are best allocated in order to hit our goals and how the data shows this is the best approach. It should take us a few iterations before we land on a plan that everyone is aligned on and happy to proceed with. If there is no discussion or debate then I question if my leaders are challenging the data and the approach enough. LinkedIn limits mean I can't fit a review of our final meeting cadence, which is: Quarterly full business review. This call is a deep dive into all of our create and capture demand activities by region and segment. More on that another time. #demandgeneration #b2bmarketing 

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CPO Playbook: Building Strategic Product Partnerships with Your CFO and Board In today’s market, capital efficiency is the new growth. Boards and CFOs are asking harder questions about ROI, and the Chief Product Officer can no longer afford to answer with features and timelines alone. To have true influence at the strategic level, great CPOs must evolve - from roadmap owners to financial storytellers. This playbook breaks down the 5 levers every CPO can use to connect product initiatives to business outcomes like ACV growth, CAC efficiency, and net retention - becoming indispensable to both the CEO, CFO, and the board. --- 1. Translating Product Strategy into Strategic Narrative Key Business Levers: ACV, NRR, NDR Your product strategy *is* your strategic narrative. Yet many boards hear about features and timelines, not outcomes. The best CPOs shift from talking about *what* they’re building to *why* it matters—anchoring product bets in financial upside. For example: - Launching premium features? That’s ACV expansion. - Driving adoption across new teams? That’s NRR lift. - Reducing churn through onboarding improvements? That’s NDR gain. The best test? Can your CRO, CFO, and CEO all articulate your product strategy - and how it drives financial performance? When product leaders speak the language of unit economics, they become strategic amplifiers—not cost centers. --- ✅ In the full version: - Turn your roadmap into a forecast of future cash flow - Build Product Ops as a unit economic cockpit - Drive retention, upsell, and valuation through PLG and PLS - Help your board understand how product powers margin and growth 👉 Subscribe to access the full playbook → Link in the comments

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Seismic CFO Evan Goldstein and CRO Hayden E. Stafford discuss how collaboration, accountability and shared metrics are driving Seismic’s next phase. “Sales wants to close deals quickly and more resources in the field," said Goldstein. "Finance wants predictability, visibility and control. The truth is, you need both.” https://lnkd.in/eAyMNvab

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Rob Moyer built the Gong Collective into 250+ partners and one of the most effective revenue engines in B2B SaaS. Most partnership leaders think scale means more. More partners. More programs. More headcount. Rob Moyer tried that at Gong. Partner count up. Complexity up. Headcount up. Revenue? Not up. So he flipped the script entirely. In this episode of Partnerships Unlocked, Rob breaks down the "less is more" philosophy that turned Gong's ecosystem into one of the most effective revenue engines in B2B SaaS. Four frameworks he shares that are worth the listen alone: - The $100M Blueprint - from ad-hoc referrals to a measurable revenue engine. - The Attribution Fix - clean partner data, real forecasts, actual ROI. - Internal Alignment - stopping the sales vs. partnerships collision before it kills your program. - The Less-Is-More Rule - why depth with a few partners beats chasing volume every time. If you're running partnerships like a support function and wondering why revenue isn't moving... This one's for you. Watch it here: https://lnkd.in/gixYbs8T Or listen on your favorite podcast platform.

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