What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It

Episode 65 - What Have We Learned About Why GTM Breaks? Welcome to What’s Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. Marking100th editions of Louis’ newsletter, in this episode of the podcast we step back from individual topic arcs to ask what all those editions have taught us about why GTM breaks, how the thinking has evolved along the way, and where it goes next. Here’s the TL;DL: We began by examining individual disciplines, because that’s how most organisations experience GTM problems. Across 100 instalments of the newsletter, that argument has changed. The individual frameworks still matter, but none can be understood or implemented in isolation. Their effectiveness depends on the connections between the data model, customer journey, behaviours, incentives and management cadence. It all has to work together, and the missing piece has always been the wiring between them. Read more on this topic in the corresponding edition of Louis’ What’s Broken in GTM and How to Fix It newsletter. Other mentions in this episode: Episode 21 with Andy Champion on leadership and pattern recognition Episode 52 with JD Miller on the new CRO playbook Episode 58 with Gerry Hill on why GTM teams should stop suppressing their TAM Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Concept, from Good to Great Simon Sinek’s TED Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider.

Episode 64 - Quick Fire Series: Closed Won Is Where Value Creation BeginsWelcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues.In this final episode of our five-part Quick Fire series running through Louis's What B2B Forgot newsletter arc, we start at the moment most companies think the job is done, when the deal closes, and ask why closed won is where value creation begins. Along the way we draw the series together through revenue architecture, growth architecture and revenue operating governance. Here's the TL;DL: Closed won records a transaction. It does not prove value. In a recurring revenue business, the commercial job runs from awareness through onboarding, impact, retention, and expansion. Recurring impact creates recurring revenue, so retention is a verdict on the whole system, and that system needs visible architecture, connected economics, and operating governance.Read more on this topic in the corresponding edition of Louis' What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It newsletter: “Closed Won” Is Not the Finish Line.And a quick look ahead at what's coming up on the podcast, as next week we're back with a full-length episode marking 100 editions of Louis's newsletter. Then, returning to our biweekly cadence, we reprise the Christmas Cognoscenti series with an all-female lineup, as we speak to three leading women in the GTM space, taking us to the end of the year! Keep listening…Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider.

Episode 63 - Quick Fire Series: The Customer Does Not Experience Your Org Chart Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. In this penultimate episode of our five-part Quick Fire series running through Louis's What B2B Forgot newsletter arc, we turn inward to ask how the organization itself can quietly break the customer experience, from the airline that sends you from desk to desk to the customer who ends up acting as the API between your internal functions. Here's the TL;DL: Companies organize vertically into functions, but customers experience them horizontally as one journey. Every team can hit its local target while context, promises, and accountability disappear at the joins. While specialization is necessary, making the customer integrate the specialists is the design failure. Read more on this topic in the corresponding edition of Louis' What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It newsletter: The Customer Does Not Experience Your Org Chart. Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider.

Episode 62 - Quick Fire Series: The Market Does Not Begin with Your Sales Motion Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. Louis reports back from the Winning by Design London Impact Roadshow, which saw the launch of their new 3X Seller paper on using AI to make sellers three times more effective rather than take people out of the equation. The paper is due out shortly, so get in touch with Louis directly if you'd like a copy. We're three episodes into our Quick Fire series running through Louis's What B2B Forgot newsletter arc. So far we've argued that revenue is a system and that ICP without segmentation is a trap; today we widen the lens again to route to market and the crucial role brand plays. Here's the TL;DL: A go-to-market strategy describes how a chosen market becomes aware, develops interest and trust, can be reached, buys, adopts and becomes profitable to serve, whereas a route to sales merely describes how work moves through the seller. One is customer-centric, the other isn't. Read more on this topic in the corresponding editions of Louis' What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It newsletter: B2B Has Built a Route to Sales Not a Route to Market and Brand Is Not a Marketing Veneer. Other mentions in this episode: Episode 19 with Joel Harrison on trust from last year’s Summer Cognoscenti Series Episode 58 with Gerry Hill on Stop Suppressing Your TAM from this year’s Summer Cognoscenti Series Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider. 

Episode 61 - Quick Fire Series: ICP Is Not Segmentation Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. We're two episodes into our Quick Fire series running through Louis's What B2B Forgot newsletter arc — and keen to hear what listeners think of the shorter, weekly format, so do let us know. Last time we set up the thesis that revenue is a system, not a sales number; today we get concrete, starting with one of the most misused terms in GTM: ICP. Here's the TL;DL: An ICP helps a seller find accounts that look plausible. Segmentation explains why groups of customers buy, what they value, how they need to be served, and whether the economics work. If that distinction is missed, the damage appears later as generic messaging, variable sales cycles, massive discounting, expensive onboarding and churn. Read more on this topic in the corresponding edition of Louis' What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It newsletter: ICP Is Not Segmentation. Other mentions in this episode: Louis' cryptic trademark LinkedIn post Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider.

Episode 60 - Quick Fire Series: Revenue Is a System Not a Sales Number Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. Louis previews a busy week ahead: he's speaking at the NEXO Conference on Friday, giving a fireside chat on scaling businesses across Europe, before co-hosting the Winning by Design London Impact Roadshowthe following week alongside Jacco van der Kooij and Mike Boogaard. We launch a brand new run on the podcast this time — a five-part Quick Fire series adapting Louis's What B2B Forgot newsletter arc, starting with the case that revenue is the output of a commercial system, not simply a sales number. Here's the TL;DL: B2B often treats revenue as the output of Sales, when it's actually the result of connected choices about market, proposition, price, channel, customer experience and value delivery. A modern CRO's job should therefore be to make the whole system coherent and to optimise the quality of revenue, not simply its volume. Read more on this topic in the corresponding editions of Louis' What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It newsletter: What B2B Forgot and Your CRO Should Think More Like an FMCG Brand Director. Other mentions in this episode: NEXO Conference Winning by Design London Impact Roadshow The Revenue Operating Governance paper, co-authored by Louis with Kevin Brown and Travis Brown Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider. 

Episode 59 - Summer Cognoscenti Wrap-up with Ian Truscott Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. Louis marks a milestone before getting into the main topic — next week’s newsletter edition will be his 100th, two years since he started writing it. He also shares news that he’ll be co-hosting the Winning by Design London Impact Roadshow with Jacco van der Kooij and Mike Bugard on 7th October, an invite-only session for senior SaaS revenue, GTM ops and executive leaders. In a special wrap-up episode, Louis and Simon revisit this year’s Summer Cognoscenti Series to draw out the common threads running through it, joined by returning guest Ian Truscott, managing partner at B2B tech fractional leadership and advisory consultancy VelocityB. Here’s the TL;DL: SaaS doesn’t primarily have an execution problem — it has a governance and operating model problem that manifests itself through execution. The connective tissue running through this summer’s Cognoscenti series has been governance: organisations can optimise individual functions, metrics and tactics while still degrading the performance of the whole system. Under pressure, local optimisation becomes easier to justify, competitive imitation erodes tactical advantage, and faster execution can compound poor choices just as effectively as good ones. Huge thanks to our fabulous guests: Mark Walker, JD Miller, Kevin Brown, David Keene, Travis Brown and Gerry Hill. Listen back to all the episodes in the Summer Cognoscenti Series - Mark Walker on the RevvedUp shutdown JD Miller on the new CRO playbook Kevin Brown on governance before scale David Keene on technology architecture Travis Brown on governance at scale Gerry Hill on suppressing your own TAM Other mentions in this episode:  Ian’s Rockstar CMO podcast and his 5 F’in’ Marketing Fundamentals The Revenue Operating Governance paper, co-authored by Louis with Kevin Brown and Travis Brown Simon’s LinkedIn article: How a Throwaway Line About Money Supply Explains the GTM Measurement Trap Excerpts from the Accenture Song Client Buying Index 2026 Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider.

Episode 58 - Summer Cognoscenti Series - Gerry Hill: Stop Suppressing Your TAM Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. We close out our Summer Cognoscenti Series with Gerry Hill, VP Customer Strategy at TitanX, who returns to the show to make the case that most GTM teams are suppressing their own TAM. Here's the TL;DL: While AI has made outbound activity almost free, buyer attention has never been more expensive. The response has been to shrink the market to the accounts displaying visible intent, then hammer the same small pool of buyers everyone else is chasing too. Gerry's challenge is that we are suppressing our own TAM. We need an architecture in which brand creates memory, intent informs sequence, conversations create evidence, and expensive sellers are deployed where they can generate the greatest economic return. Other mentions in this episode: Gerry previously joined us on Episode 23 to discuss cold calling. Louis and Simon first unpacked TAM, SAM and SOM back on Episode 2. Louis references Simon’s Goodhart's Law article discussed in the previous episode. Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider.

Episode 57 - Goodhart, Governance and the GTM Machine Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. Louis kicks things off with news of his move from London to Porto. With the move itself out of the way, Louis is turning his attention to what's next — he's looking for a new senior GTM leadership role helping scale a SaaS business through that $20 to $60 million revenue range, ideally in a European remit spanning sales, revenue, or go-to-market management. Read more, and get in touch! This week Louis and Simon dig into why go-to-market teams keep making the same mistake: noticing a measure that correlates with success, turning it into a target, attaching incentives, then acting surprised when people optimise the measure instead of the outcome. Here's the TL;DL: Targets change behaviour. Revenue Operating Governance asks the harder question: if that's inevitable, how do we design the system so the behaviour we induce is driving the outcomes we actually need? Other mentions in this episode: Simon's LinkedIn article: How a Throwaway Line About Money Supply Explains the GTM Measurement Trap Mark Walker's LinkedIn post on aligning everyone around the real goal of revenue The conversation with Mark Stouse on correlation, causality and data attribution The conversation with Travis Brown on Revenue Operating Governance and the Revenue Operating North Star The conversation with Kevin Brown on the discipline of walking away from bad-fit deals Simon Sinek's TED Talk, "How Great Leaders Inspire Action" Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider. 

Episode 56 - Cognoscenti Archive: Andy Champion & Wayne Starritt Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues. This episode heads back into the Cognoscenti Archive to revisit the original conversation with Wayne Starritt, Founder & Managing Director of Bullingstone Associates, and Andy Champion, Global Head of Enterprise Sales Atlassian and a returning friend of the show, recorded following Bullingstone's CROs Who Succeed research into why so many Chief Revenue Officers fail within 18 months. Louis explains why the conversation is worth hearing again rather than leaving it in the archive: when it was first recorded, the discussion was framed principally as a people question — hiring for adaptability over pedigree, diagnosing before prescribing, holding strong ideas lightly. Having since spent much more time on revenue architecture, growth architecture, and revenue operating governance, Louis now hears the same conversation differently — not just as a question about the individual CRO, but about the system they're placed into. Fragmented objectives, incentives that reward local optimisation, and a reliance on one heroic leader holding everything together can undermine even a very capable CRO. Here's the TL;DL: Great revenue leadership matters, but sustainable performance comes when great leadership is supported by great architecture and great governance. Other mentions in this episode: CROs Who Succeed The Bullingstone Associates white paper behind the original conversation. Follow us, get in touch, share your thoughts on anything discussed, or suggest ideas for what we should cover in future episodes via our LinkedIn page. We also appreciate comments and ratings on your podcast provider.