GTM Live

In this episode, recorded out in the New Mexico desert at ChiliPalooza, Jordan Crawford makes a blunt case to B2B SaaS: the methodologies you built your career on are about to age out, and the only way through is to get your hands on Claude Code.Jordan's spent his whole job lately doing one thing: teaching clients to work with AI. And what he's found cuts against almost everything sales and marketing teams currently do.What this episode covers:Why the constraint on building things isn't budget or headcount anymore, it's imaginationThe SDR question every revenue leader is asking today: we went all-in, we see the volume, and we don't know what's working...so now what?How Jordan rebuilds prospecting strategies from what customers actually did, not what a rep thinks they wantWhy being wrong fast and cheap beats being right slowly: "you can beat any grandmaster if you get two moves to their one"The truth about a sloppier world, and why polish is no longer the pointWhy the gap between people who are great at this and people who are bad at it comes down to how you think, not skillWhy the "graybeards" built on ten-year-old playbooks are going away, and what replaces themThe people who get in the tool will build things the graybeards can't imagine. The ones who don't will spend the next few years explaining a methodology nobody's buying.-----------------------------------------------------🔗 MORE FROM JORDAN⁠Follow Jordan Crawford on LinkedIn⁠⁠On the Edge by Blueprint⁠ (Jordan’s Substack)⁠Blueprint⁠ – AKA the OG GTM Engineer-----------------------------------------------------Marketing has evolved. Measurement hasn't. You're still running on a 20-year-old methodology that can't see most of the value you create.Passetto’s 14-day Sprint fixes that — showing you where you're creating real value, where you're wasting effort, and which levers will actually drive your next stage of growth.Your best work shouldn't die in data darkness.[Get your full pipeline & revenue breakdown in 2 weeks]

📹 NEW on YouTube: MQLs are Dead. Here’s What B2B Marketers Should Track InsteadYou can't be a great marketer if your best work doesn't show up in your data.If you're a marketing leader, you've spent years being measured by "Marketing Sourced" pipeline and revenue. And you've spent just as long watching your other work — your influence, your perception-shaping, your role inside active deals — get written off as fluffy or unmeasurable. A marketing function that can only point to sourced pipeline is telling leadership one thing: we're only good at the last mile: demand capture. But there's a proven way to turn marketing influence into a hard, defensible number — one that proves real business impact and real revenue results to your CFO and board.What this episode covers:The industry shift toward perception marketing and creating the conditions for buyers to choose you, and why traditional KPIs can't see itWhy the engagement and awareness stage is far longer than most marketing teams realizeHow to measure marketing's role inside active sales cycles, not just at the top of the funnelThe cohort analysis every marketing leader should be running: opportunities with marketing engagement vs. those without, and what win rate, sales cycle length, and deal size reveal about your real contributionHow TOFU work compounds into pipeline velocity across the full lifecycleHow to show up as a value creation partner to the rest of the business, not just a lead-gen functionIf you're a marketing leader tired of watching your best work disappear into someone else's pipeline number, this one's for you.-----------------------------------------------------Want answers now?🔎 The fastest way to understand how marketing is driving pipeline and revenue → All your data, connected, so you can see what’s working, your real business impact, and where to double down.[Get your full pipeline & revenue breakdown in 2 weeks]-----------------------------------------------------Not ready for that yet?🎯 Understand why it’s been so hard to see what’s working → We’ll show you why your current KPIs can’t answer these questions.[Apply for a 1-hour working session]-----------------------------------------------------This episode is powered by ⁠Passetto⁠. If your marketing dashboards aren't giving you straight answers, you're in good company. Most Marketing teams simply don't have the KPIs to understand how they are driving pipeline and revenue across the full buyer journey, and where budget is being wasted.Passetto changes that, giving marketing leaders the KPIs they need to act with confidence in today's B2B buying era.

In this episode, Carolyn and Amber break down a real-world case study of a $25M ARR enterprise SaaS company in a highly regulated industry that came to Passetto with strong teams, active demand, and declining win rates...but no reliable way to explain the genetic makeup of their deals or prove how marketing influenced revenue.We break down what surfaced during a 14-day analysis: why most opportunities had no clear lineage, how underperforming channels like paid search were absorbing spend without driving meaningful conversion, and how marketing influence effectively disappeared once deals entered the sales cycle.Most importantly, we share how rebuilding visibility across the funnel can turn win rate into a controllable lever, and why we estimate this shift alone could unlock ~$1M in incremental revenue, without increasing pipeline volume, budget, or headcount.We break down the insights their team uncovered:Why 80% of opportunities ($3.5M) had no explainable lineage, making pipeline creation effectively invisibleWhy paid search underperformed by driving low-intent traffic instead of pipeline-ready buyersHow marketing influence dropped to near zero in late-stage deals, leaving active opportunities unsupportedWhy win rate, not pipeline volume, was the primary revenue constraintHow improving visibility alone created a clear, estimated ~$1M revenue upside using the existing pipeline and budgetThis episode shows how a clear view into what actually drives revenue became a forcing function for action, giving this team’s leadership the confidence to move fast, fix foundational gaps, and use the findings as a business case for planning the first two quarters of 2026.🔗 CTAs & LINKS:Get the visibility and strategic priorities your GTM team needs to move decisively. Book your 14-Day Sprint.Register for Passetto’s upcoming virtual events Book a free 1:1 Revenue Visibility AssessmentFollow Carolyn on LinkedIn Follow Amber on LinkedIn–This episode is powered by Passetto. If your pipeline dashboards aren’t giving you straight answers, you’re in good company. Most GTM teams simply don’t have the visibility to understand what’s truly driving pipeline and revenue, what’s slowing them down, or where to focus next.Passetto changes that. In just 14 days, our Sprint gives you full-funnel visibility, clear answers about what’s working and what isn’t, and a focused set of strategic priorities to accelerate pipeline creation and align your teams immediately.

You launched the experiments. You spent the budget. And now leadership wants answers. And suddenly every QBR feels like a fire drill.This is Stage 2 of the revenue leader’s transformation—the moment when activity is high, effort is real, but impact is frustratingly hard to prove. You’re working harder than ever, yet you can’t confidently tie what your team is doing to pipeline, revenue, or real ROI.This episode is part two of a five-part series exploring the journey B2B revenue leaders go through as they move from reactive execution to full revenue visibility and executive-level confidence. Each stage represents a breaking point, where leaders either confront the real problem or stay stuck explaining away the same issues quarter after quarter.In this episode, we unpack Stage 2: The QBR Fire Drill—the phase where credibility, confidence, and career momentum are quietly put at risk.You’re likely in Stage 2 if you’ve ever said, “Board decks take days to build and still don’t tell a clean story.”What We Cover in This Episode:Why QBRs become fire drills and what that reveals about your data foundationThe hidden cost of stitching together spreadsheets, slide decks, and conflicting reportsHow legacy GTM data models quietly destroy credibility at the executive levelThe most common data architecture flaw preventing revenue visibility (and why it’s so easy to miss)The moment leaders realize they can’t survive another quarter operating this wayWhat it takes to shift from lagging, backward-looking metrics to forward-looking visibilityThis stage forces a hard reckoning.Not just with your systems, but with your willingness to challenge the status quo, speak uncomfortable truths, and admit that the current way of measuring GTM is no longer good enough.🔗 CTAs & LINKS:Get the visibility and strategic priorities your GTM team needs to move decisively. Book your 14-Day Sprint here.Register for Passetto’s upcoming 2-Day GTM IntensiveBook a free 1:1 Revenue Visibility AssessmentFollow Carolyn on LinkedIn–This episode is powered by Passetto. If your pipeline dashboards aren’t giving you straight answers, you’re in good company. Most GTM teams simply don’t have the visibility to understand what’s truly driving pipeline and revenue, what’s slowing them down, or where to focus next.Passetto changes that. In just 14 days, our Sprint gives you full-funnel visibility, clear answers about what’s working and what isn’t, and a focused set of strategic priorities to accelerate pipeline creation and align your teams immediately.

🔓 LEAKED: 45 minutes from our invite-only workshop for B2B GTM leaders.We recently held a live workshop for 100+ marketing leaders, CROs, and RevOps pros from companies spanning Spain to Sweden to North America. The session was intense. The chat was on fire. And now we're doing something we don't usually do: we're releasing a 45-minute cut of the core framework training.This is the educational backbone of the workshop where we exposed what's broken in traditional GTM measurement and walked through the exact framework high-performing teams are using instead.Real Problems From Workshop Attendees:"New ARR growth has been flat for multiple quarters""We need to stop the obsession with MQL metrics""Our company doesn't even know what actually generates ARR"What's We Cover:Why MQLs, 4-funnel attribution, and traditional QBR dashboards are "just fluff" that hide what's really workingThe "Pipeline Black Box"—the critical Prospecting stage between marketing touch and opportunity creation that 100% of companies fail to trackThe exact GTM factory data model: every field, object, and signal type you need to build full-funnel visibility in your own systemsWhat to actually measure at each stage: prospecting analytics, signal analytics, and engagement diagnosticsThis workshop will completely change how you think about pipeline measurement and give you a clear understanding of what to track in today's GTM ecosystem. This is the framework elite teams have already transitioned to, and now it's your turn.🔗 CTAs & LINKS:Register for Passetto’s upcoming virtual eventsBook a free 1:1 Revenue Visibility AssessmentFollow Carolyn on LinkedInFollow Amber on LinkedIn–This episode is powered by Passetto. If you're tired of staring at dashboards that don't tell you what you need to know, you're not alone. Most revenue leaders are flying blind because of the Pipeline Black Box™, a critical data gap that keeps you from understanding what's actually driving results. Passetto transforms how you run your revenue engine, so you can finally see what's working, fix what's not, and scale with precision.Tired of guessing what's generating pipeline and what's draining your resources? Book a free strategy call.

When pipeline starts slipping and targets go up, most revenue leaders do the same thing: they panic. They launch new experiments, adopt the latest AI tools, and try to do more, faster, harder. But what if that's exactly what's keeping you stuck?This episode is part of a 5-part series exploring the journey B2B revenue leaders take from reactive chaos to understanding and measuring their full revenue factory, and transforming their careers in the process. Each stage represents a critical transformation moment that separates leaders who consistently hit their targets and drive real results from those who scramble every quarter wondering why nothing's working.This episode explores Stage 1: The Panic Response, and it represents the first stage in revenue transformation. You’re likely in Stage 1 if you’re asking questions like, "What experiments should I try next?", "What are other companies doing that I should copy?", or "What AI tool is going to save my pipeline?".What We Cover in This Episode:Why the question "What experiments should I try next?" is fundamentally wrongHow to recognize if you're trapped in The Panic ResponseThe uncomfortable truth about why transformation only happens outside your comfort zoneWhat it actually takes to move from reactive scrambling to strategic confidenceWhy adding more tactics to a broken foundation only creates more noise in an already chaotic systemThe real reason you can't measure the impact of your investments, and what that means for your ability to drive growthWhat fundamental questions you're NOT asking because you don't have the data model to answer themThe moment of decision that separates leaders who transform from leaders who stay stuckHow to stop copying what other companies are doing and start building what actually works for YOUR revenue factoryIf you've ever felt like you're working harder than ever but can't prove you're moving the needle, this episode is for you.—This episode is powered by Passetto. If you're tired of staring at dashboards that don't tell you what you need to know, you're not alone. Most revenue leaders are flying blind because of the Pipeline Black Box™, a critical data gap that keeps you from understanding what's actually driving results. Passetto transforms how you run your revenue engine, so you can finally see what's working, fix what's not, and scale with precision.Tired of guessing what's generating pipeline and what's draining your resources? Book a free strategy call: https://www.passetto.com/book-a-call

Ashley Lewin has audited 30+ companies in her career and seen the same pattern: marketing teams stuck chasing MQLs while revenue stalls. In this episode, Carolyn and Trevor dig into Ashley’s perspective on why MQLs keep organizations trapped in short-term thinking, and how she’s applying those lessons now as Head of Marketing at Aligned.We talk through what it takes to stand up a marketing function from scratch at a hybrid PLG + sales-assisted company, why implementing HubSpot’s Lead object was a foundational bet, and how “fail fast” disqualification changed the way BDRs and sales managers manage their pipeline. Ashley also shares her playbook for winning executive buy-in: showing CEOs a predictable growth equation that replaces lead volume with qualified pipeline and product activation.What You’ll Learn:Why 30+ audits taught Ashley that MQLs create waste, not growth.How to split the funnel: PLG activations vs. sales-assisted pipeline.The power of clean infrastructure: standing up a true lead object in HubSpot.Why “fail fast” leads to better conversion, stronger feedback loops, and less waste.How to navigate culture change so sales isn’t afraid to close lost.Why exec scorecards (not dashboards) determine whether change sticks.If your growth plan still relies on lead math, you’re running on outdated assumptions. Ashley shows how to build a system that actually scales revenue, not just reporting.🔗 LINKSRegister for our Oct 8 Pipeline KPI Workshop Follow GTM Live on Spotify Subscribe to the GTM Live YouTube Channel Connect with Carolyn on LinkedInConnect with Ashley on LinkedIn —This episode is powered by ⁠Passetto⁠, a technology-enabled GTM advisory with a solution that eliminates the Pipeline Black Box™, the critical data hidden inside every GTM engine where leaders are flying blind when it matters most.

In this episode of GTM Live, Carolyn joins the Growth Activated Podcast as a guest to unpack one of the biggest blind spots in GTM today: what actually happens before an opportunity is created.99% of GTM teams still can’t see this stage clearly. It’s the “grey area” where SDRs and BDRs are grinding—sending emails, making calls, chasing signals, running sequences—all in the hope of booking a meeting that turns into pipeline.The problem? None of this activity is tracked in a clear, causal way. Leaders only see pipeline “sources” (marketing, sales, SDR), which hides the bigger story. Pipeline isn’t a source—it’s a chain reaction. A trigger sparks sales work, a series of events unfolds, and only some of those reliably convert to opportunities. Most of it? Invisible. That’s why pipeline creation still feels like guesswork.Carolyn explains why source-based reporting and last-touch attribution keep teams stuck, and how to instrument the pre-opportunity “factory floor” with simple metrics that expose what’s really working. Key Topics in this Episode:[00:10] Carolyn’s journey: 4x Head of Marketing → CEO of Passetto[07:30] The Pipeline Black Box: why pre-opp activity is invisible[09:20] Using triggers to understand what really starts sales work[14:00] Inside the factory: connect rate, time-to-meeting, qual rate, DQs[22:40] Client insight: MQLs drain resources[27:50] KPIs to rethink: drop department-source, own pipeline as a system[30:45] For marketing leaders: accountability over defense[41:55] Annual planning: fight inertia, build visibility first[44:50] Where to find Carolyn & learn more about Passetto—This episode is powered by ⁠Passetto⁠, a GTM advisory and instrumentation software company with a solution that eliminates the Pipeline Black Box™, the critical data hidden inside every GTM engine where leaders are flying blind when it matters most.