Why Strategy Fails Without Execution (And How RevOps Holds It Together) | Nicole Brownell

Most organizations struggling with growth actually suffer from fragmented systems and poor cross-functional alignment. In this episode, Nicole Brownell emphasizes that the true gap in business lies between grand strategies and the gritty reality of execution. To bridge this gap, RevOps must serve as the central nervous system connecting sales, marketing, CX, product, and critically, finance. Turning around a stalled go-to-market motion requires hard truths and data-driven audits. Founders often mistake early 'rockstar' growth for scalable enterprise value, leading to broken S-curves and unrealistic expectations. Niching down your market focus to your Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), rather than chasing massive Total Addressable Markets (TAM), is essential to accelerating execution, especially in high-pressure, PE-backed environments. The era of fractional consultants delivering mere slide decks is dead. Modern GTM leadership requires outcome-based execution where strategy is deeply embedded into daily operations. Whether you are making your first GTM hires or fixing a leaky revenue bucket, deploying clear value narratives via Product Marketing and rigorous operational systems via RevOps are the ultimate keys to sustainable scaling.

Discussed in this episode

• Companies rarely have a growth problem; they usually suffer from fragmented systems and misaligned departmental expectations.
• Revenue ownership must be shared across departments using OKRs rather than isolating KPIs to just the sales team.
• A major cause of rapid customer churn is sales teams selling product capabilities that do not actually exist yet.
• RevOps is a complete, measurable system that must deeply integrate finance alongside sales and marketing.
• RevOps should report to the COO or CEO rather than a functional head to avoid becoming a glorified SalesOps function.
• Successful turnarounds begin with accurately assessing the financial runway to know which strategic levers you have time to pull.
• Companies must be willing to narrow their market focus and niche down to speed up execution.
• The consultancy model is rapidly shifting from deliverable-based slide decks to outcome-based, embedded execution.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — The gap between strategy and execution
2. 2:30 — Why fragmented systems mimic growth problems
3. 4:15 — Shared KPIs and marketing's revenue role
4. 6:00 — Selling the wrong product causes rapid churn
5. 7:45 — RevOps is a complete system, not a process
6. 9:30 — Who should RevOps actually report to?
7. 12:00 — The 30-day turnaround playbook
8. 15:30 — Why you must niche down to speed up
9. 18:45 — Using data to neutralize executive perception
10. 21:00 — The death of slide-deck fractional leaders
11. 25:30 — Surviving PE-backed operating environments
12. 29:00 — First hire: Product marketing vs RevOps

Key takeaways

• Growth problems are usually just fragmented systems in disguise.
• RevOps must bridge sales, marketing, CX, and finance.
• Never put RevOps under sales; it becomes glorified SalesOps.
• Niche down your addressable market to speed up execution.
• Data neutralizes executive perception when diagnosing GTM failures.

Transcript

Most companies, they actually don't have a growth problem. They have a fragmented systems problem or an alignment issue, uh which is more clearly surface. This episode's going to be about the gap between strategy, which everyone seems to want to tell people about and execution, which no one seems to want to really do. I often see sales teams selling products that are actually not the product, right?

Now you're going to have yourself a retention problem 30 days after contract sign. Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Reimagine. Today's guest is Nicole Broll, who is the managing director of growth and value creation at Novo Advisors. She's a season GTM and transformation leader who's helped scale, restructure and reinvigorate companies through some of their most pivotal chapters.

She's been a COO, CPO, CXO, and she's known for cutting through complexity to get systems, teams and strategy pointing in the same direction. This episode's going to be about the gap between strategy, which everyone seems to want to tell people about, and execution, which no one seems to want to really do and what it actually takes to build a high performing go-to market motion that lasts. Nicole, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Adam, and I'm going to steal that bio.

I'll tell you what. I see? I told you, the only reason Dale let's me stay. We'll add some walk-on music behind it when you go up on stage at some big SKO.

Uh I I'm sorry. I'm in marketing land this morning. SKO, SKO, S something O. I'll be your intro person.

I don't even charge royalties. I am going to bring you. We'll see about the royalties. All right, I love it.

I'm in. Awesome. Nicole, thanks for joining us. It's been a bit of time.

We've been trying to get you on the show for a while. I know you're busy, so let's uh let's jump into it. The first thing I wanted to talk to is when GTM looks aligned but it really isn't. So, you've worked at a few complex organizations with good intentions, but misaligned expectations.

Where does it usually break first in that organization? Yeah, I mean, that's a great question, right? And what I see overall is that most companies, they actually don't have a growth problem. They have a fragmented systems problem, right?

Or an alignment issue, uh, which is more clearly surfaced. And so when we're thinking about right, go-to-market, I think about go-to-market as married to the overall commercial strategy, which becomes, right, uh, where are we playing and how are we going to win? And then, right, the sub-component where the fixing can actually happen is where RevOps occurs, and RevOps is going to be your playbook on how you're going to win those games. Uh, so those are the areas that I see most often overlooked, and it's connected, right?

Often that's going to happen at a leadership level. How are we communicating through the line, uh, what is our narrative, what are our shared values, what are our shared metrics, and how do we translate that forward? Yeah, that's very interesting. What what do most teams confuse with alignment?

Like, what else is that like, we're aligned, but then like we come in and we have conversations with people and we're like, well, your definition of alignment and my definition of alignment is totally different. So, where did where does that confusion come in? Uh, so I see it in a couple areas, right? I think I'll start initially, let's separate from product, right?

And let's start with shared goals and alignment, uh, ownership of KPIs, I think that's one of the largest breakdowns I see. Who owns the revenue? Right? We always say, okay, sales is going to own the revenue, but then what's marketing's role in that?

And as the marketing landscape has changed so much, they need to have an ownership in the revenue as well, right? Their goal is obviously to be bringing those qualified leads in. Today requires new tactics. So they're not speaking the same language, and we're only putting revenue on sales, and then we're looking at marketing, looking for brand and inspirational, you're just not gonna Oh, don't forget don't forget MQLs.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right? So that's where having a shared scorecard where each department is laddering up to their contributor in those goals.

That's where I also love like OKRs over KPIs. So then we have that universal roll up. So it's the first area that I see, and then that other area of misalignment is going to be, right, what does our product do, what is the value that it delivers, and then how are we translating that to the front? Um, that is a massive miss, and you know, that really sits a lot of times in product marketing, as well as what I think would be the customer success or CX feedback loop, right?

So translating that through line all the way so that we have that value really well defined. Uh, product marketers to me are like unicorns, you know, very very rare birds that are able to understand what the customer value is, and then how is that received in the product, make iterations on the fly, and get those key differentiators. But I I often see sales teams selling products that are actually not the product delivery. And then, right?

Now you're going to have yourself a retention problem 30 days after contract signed. Yeah, it's that that's a we can have a whole show on that. Um, everyone wants to blame CS, then CS wants to blame sales, then sales wants to blame marketing, and I think, listen, everyone has their part, and I don't like the blame game, but it starts with who are we targeting, what's the ICP, what are we selling, how are we selling, how are we retaining? I think what a lot of people get wrong is, you know, oh, we we've sold them, we've won.

We've sold them. That's great. Now the hard part just started. We have to get them on board, we have to show time to value and we have to retain them.

That's right. Um, when you look at operations, right? You mentioned RevOps when we started. What role does ops, or RevOps more specifically, play in like stitching all of this together and how do they become that glue?

And then I have a follow-up question that I want to ask to that before Dale gets to anything else he might have. Okay. All right. So for me, like I said, RevOps, it always is going to start with that commercial strategy.

So again, right, where where are we doing, why, or how are we going to win? And now we need to break this down to RevOps. RevOps is not just some operational name. It is a complete system.

Right? So it's it's not one process, it's not one automation, it is a system, right, that works consistently and measurably. So when I look at RevOps, right, I'm going to be in in great detail, I'm going to be looking at lifestyle or life cycle stages, qualifications, my routing, my marketing, my enablement. But really what I want to be doing is connecting my sales to my marketing, my CX, my product, and then most importantly, finance.

Right? So a lot of folks operationally, they'll get the other components going, but they don't have finance looped in. Yeah. There is your next problem, right?

So that's how I like to drill into uh RevOps. And then from there it becomes, right, system setup, uh shared systems, shared automations, and those shared definitions. I love it. So, my my question, and I'm going to perhaps get a little controversial here.

I love it. Who does RevOps report to? I like that. So, right, I I have seen See, Dale, she likes my questions.

I know. I like this question. Someone's got to. Right?

No kidding. I like this question. So, I've seen it report all over the org. A lot of times they're going to roll it up in sales, but I think if you roll it into sales, again, you're going to create a disconnect, because then people are going to point at sales and be like, this is a sales problem, this is a sales problem.

Your sales team and sales ops. is yeah, they're their job is not to set up your pipeline automations. Their job is to follow the process, right? So you you can't put that on them.

Um, in my uh former organization, we rolled it into operations. So, office of COO. And that allowed us to have consistency across all departments without folks feeling like marketing was coming over the top or sales was coming over the top or CX was dictating, but rather, this is the universal ownership structure. I also love it when you have operations and then you have like an office of PMO.

So, that's a nice area to run it through, but it has to be hooked in to each department. So I like to have one key leader within each department that rolls into RevOps. I love it. I think RevOps supports sales ops, supports mar ops, supports CS ops, has to touch finance.

Yes. Um, I think that if it reports into sales, you have a glorified sales ops. If it reports into marketing, you have a glorified mar ops. And there's a big difference between Yes.

sales ops, to your point, setting up Hubspot, Salesforce, automations, what I would call more BizOps, um, than a true RevOps function. Uh, I'm a big believer of it reporting into the CEO. Uh, if there is a COO, I think that certainly can can make sense. What it can't report into in my opinion is like a functional head, like sales, marketing, and CS, because then they're monopolizing all the time.

Um, let's shift gears a little bit. So, let's talk about kind of that turnaround playbook, right? You've done a turnaround or two or 10. Um, we've done a few as well.

Um, and the mandate that we typically see, and I'm sure you do as well is like, transformation, right? You have to come in and you got to fix stuff, Nicole. It's broken. Yes.

Where do you start? What's that first 30 days look like? Yeah, I mean, again, great question, right? So turnaround definitions are going to be critical.

So I would say in the first 30 days, let's figure out where we are. Are we in a situation where we've got a 90-day runway, a 120-day runway, six-month runway, right? That's going to be the first place I'm going to start. Uh, because that's going to tell me what lever I can pull.

So if we're in like a massive distress issue, we're going to start with that office of CFO and try to get our overhead to a place that's controllable to give as much runway as possible. And then what I like to have, right, is an evaluation done across the board. I think you have to start right back at ground zero, right? What's my product, who's my ICP, right, what problem is So like like like an like an audit.

Yes. Exactly. I would say an audit, I would say beyond an audit, right? We you want to uh make sure that your strategy is bulletproof.

I've seen a lot of circumstances, we just had a, you know, phone call last week where, um, you know, due diligence wasn't do done diligently. And That never happens. Never happens. And so, right, maybe the TAM was overestimated, or there was a shift in market that caused a massive disruption, one that shouldn't have caused that much disruption had that diligence be diligently done.

Um, so we want to run those tracks all at the same time. That's how I look at it. Should we be looking at TAM or should we be looking at sellable addressable market and serviceable addressable market? Like, I I understand in the investor world, we're trying to find like the next like, I don't know, now I guess it's a trillion dollar business because like we're like a billion's not enough.

Um, but like this idea of like a total addressable market is like in my estimation a fantasy. Yeah. So like, is that a failure in the investment world? Is that a failure in the in the you know, the founder world?

Where where should we be focusing our our execution strategy on that? I mean, I think again, great question, right? Is anybody going to base their entire model off of TAM? No, but if without your TAM, you're not going to get your SAM and you're not going to get your SOM.

So, I mean, it's a process of metric deduction, right? I think that we're going to use TAM when we're looking for investors, um, but most folks know, obviously, you're going to capture 0.0000001% of what that potentially looks like. Um, but I always like a moonshot strategy to start with, you know, where do we want to be in 10 years, right?

Okay, we want to be in the moon. Now, where can we be now? Eh, maybe $10 million, you know, so breaking it back that way. How do you like to manage that?

I mean, I'd like your answer to that given the work that you all do. Yeah, um, it's interesting. When we go into places, we hear a lot about TAM, and like I always shake my head because it's like these I think founders or startups or CEOs are afraid to narrow their niche like narrow their markets in because they want to try to capture everything. And in many cases, we want to narrow down to speed up.

Right? So it's like, how do we shrink it together? Because a lot of these organizations, especially when we go in, um, as you're going through that turnaround process, you don't have unlimited you know, budgets, you don't have unlimited resources. So it's like, yes, you it's nice to have a big TAM.

However, if we get into SAM, you know, if we get down to SOM, we can niche down, we can do really good execution on SOM messaging, value proposition, ICPs, and then once we get really good there, then we can start moving up the ladder. Um, I think it's just scary for a lot of people or a lot of organizations because it's anti-intuitive to like niche down to speed up. People buy from people. That's why companies who invest in meaningful connections win.

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Yep. Um, so very similar, right? But again, in my mind, I always start big for my key number, and then I work backwards and then build back up again. So we just do it two different ways.

Um, but that being said, if you're in a turnaround situation, you know, your your TAM value in that moment is not where we are, right? We're typically going to be in a place of what what's your current market share and what have you lost, uh, most recently, how are you going to be able to earn that back and let's just do small pills at a time so that we can get everything refined and up and moving and then have your breakout strategy. Love that. So when you come in, you know, Excuse me.

You have to be careful not to call the founder or the CEO's baby ugly, right? You know, there there's a very delicate balance of like, what you're doing is broken. Um, It's ugly. But you're you're amazing.

Um, how do you build trust with these kind of functional leaders, these executive leaders, while at the same time driving the urgency of like, you got shit you need to change, or we're going to have a problem. Yeah, I mean, so I've called some babies ugly. You know. Maybe some digital babies, you know, I don't know, maybe some real babies, but I've I've definitely done it.

Um, but I think the trust piece is key, and you know, your reputation, number one, speaks volumes. So if somebody's come to the table to work with me, if they're coming to the table to work with Revenue Imagine, they know your reputation, right? So that's going to be your starting block to be able to build uh trust. Right?

I think having IQ that's married to EQ is also going to be critical. Um, again, depending on what level of turnaround or distress we're in, you got to read the room. If if if they're in a situation where they see an opportunity to accelerate, you know, typically you've got to creep in a little slow, but you represent light, you represent breath of fresh air. So it's going to give you a little bit more runway.

If they're in a situation where they're facing bankruptcy, they don't want you there. You are not wanted, right? You are a a flashlight on the problem, and so now what you've got to be able to do is work with them and uh show them, look, I I'm here to work with you. We're going to solve this regardless.

We're going to get you out of this regardless. Outcomes might not necessarily be what you want, but let's, you know, the more information you give me, the more I can get you out of this struggle, and we all know how real that is. Love it. Yeah, that's that's interesting.

Um, as we transition into another part of this conversation, and we were just having this this conversation at Growth Elevated uh over the the last week. As an organization, we kind of start 2026 in this mode. Um, and there's this concept of like strategy and execution. And so we've talked a little bit about this.

We as an organization have decided to get rid of the word fractional, um, just because it's like there's been some connotations around it and a bunch of other things, but we're now, you know, managing partners, which is more aligned to our ICPs, what we're doing, etc. And goes into more of like, we want to do execution. So we use the strategy, then we execute and we get very um, very entrenched. So you've been in a lot of boardrooms and a lot of trenches.

What's the real gap between strategic planning and actual execution? Hmm. Yeah, I I love this topic, and Adam, you know, I really enjoyed your post. You uh live streamed on LinkedIn and I I heard the fractional.

First video in a very long time. Thank you. Glad someone saw it. I have an N of one.

Yeah. I love it. Right? This is a really huge debate.

I've engaged in a number of conversations recently on this. Um, right? McKinsey put out research a few months ago, um, and they put out their data from last year, and what they identified was that they uh grew 25% of revenue that came in came in from outcomes-based consultants. Right?

So I think that outcomes piece is going to be key, beyond just fractional work. It's changing the entire landscape of consultancy, um, and in my opinion, I think that AI and, you know, generative and the and then also, right, automation is what's going to change that as well. I'm one of those believers, and I'm part of an advisory consultancy, right, where outcomes focused. I I believe if you're not, um, you know, you're you're going to have to reinvent yourself.

So that's where we're headed. Um, what has changed is, you know, just just calling a spade a spade, I probably pissed a couple of people off with this, right, is we used to pay consultancy or fractional for, maybe you should do a little bit of this in some sort of strategy deck. So you're paying this hourly fee, and what do you get out of it? You get a deck.

That's it. Nobody's going to monitor what's going to happen, nobody's going to embed themselves with the team, they're not going to take ownership, they're not going to take accountability. So new model, um, I see a value in advisors, consultancy, call it fractional, it's all about what your budget is. You know, some folks don't have a budget for full-time uh CMO.

Sometimes I don't think you need one, you know, quite frankly, but if they're not embedding and they don't have accountability and they don't have outcomes, it's going to be unsuccessful. I think it's interesting, you know, whether it's outcomes or whether it's deliverables. I think outcomes are hard depending on the type of, I'll use the word operating partner you are, right? Um, a lot of what we get in initial discovery calls is, so Dale, this all sounds amazing.

We're going to hire you. You're going to be here 30, 60, 90 days. How much revenue are you going to bring in at the end of that time? I don't effing know.

Like, are you going to listen to everything I say? We haven't done the audit yet. Like, how deeply are we going to partner together? Are you going to be the CEO that's going to cancel our weekly meeting every week because you're skiing?

That that actually happens. Like this drives a lot of that conversation. Is your sales team going to do what we say? Are we going to need to replace people?

So, how do you balance outcomes versus deliverables? Now, before you answer, the way we have kind of tweaked it is, we do everything on what's called GTM sprints, right? So we have desired outcomes that we're going to target for, but we have very clear deliverables every sprint of, and it's not a strategy deck, right? We're going to build this, deliver that, train on this, and then do the follow-up.

That should result in an outcome, but I I I can tell you what the outcome would be if I was your seller, you know, because I'm betting on myself. I can't tell you the outcome if, you know, Dale's your seller. How do you how do you balance that? So, I love how you're doing it, right?

Because if you're working in sprints, you're working within the organization, and you're working on their exact cadence or you're setting the pace card to get them process and accountability. So right there to me, that is actually what I would consider an outcome, is getting them on process and an accountability timeline. Um, I would I define up front what we're looking at, again, what you said. Right?

The audit is going to dictate. Um, I often look at my outcomes as my KPIs, right? I'm looking at them as my conversion, as my viewability. So, you know, we want to break those down.

We should be able to move the needle. Um, so, right, but I do agree, right, deliverables are going to be critical. Um, and the organization that you're partnering with, whether you're you're a full-time employee or you're coming in as you're coming in, right, there has to be accountability beyond one's self. Otherwise, it's a one-man's band.

So defining what you need from them up front is mission critical, and then holding them to it, not with soft hands. Um, that's where I'm very clear. If you miss this deadline, we will not get here. This has now been pushed back, right?

And and and communicating that up front so you have the right partner. Love it. Critically important. Um, it's it's hard, right?

Because I think what you said is accurate and I also think what people used to expect was that slide deck. It's like people were very comfortable not even like we've never done hourly. We we've never done slide decks, but I know lots of fractional leaders, um, where the expectation is, okay, you're going to pay me X tens of thousands of dollars for a month, and what you're going to get is a deliverable of, you know, here's your strategy. Um, I think to what I said in my post that you alluded to, that was okay in 24.

Um, that's started becoming not okay in 25. And in 26, I think that everyone who, um, suddenly became fractional, uh, when they got laid off and decided to deliver slide decks is going to find themselves unfortunately unemployed, because that's not an acceptable outcome anymore. Um, you have to be able to do strategy, but you have to be able to execute and embed. You're you're hitting on something, right?

I was reading an article over the weekend, my gosh, I'll send it to you afterwards. I forget who wrote it up. And it was focused on executives and the percentage of them that are strategic and the percentage of them that can execute and it was like something, you know, nuts. Like, you know, only 1% can actually do both.

Um, and I and I believe that, right? Um, you've got to know how to execute, and you've got to know how to deploy. If you can't do it yourself, you need to understand the team members within that organization that are going to be your on the ground tactical. Um, I write quite often about I think how the landscape is just changing in general, and I think that's what, uh, you know, the the roles start to merge, and I think that's part of that fractional conversation.

Right? The CMO, your CRO, your your chief growth officer, your commercial officer, right? They're all kind of merging, um, with those shared goals. And uh, to be successful today, you know, 2025 go, you know, 2026, we're here, you have to not only be able to work, right, vertically, you have to be able to work horizontally.

Figure it out. Right? And so if I'm going to look for a partner or a fractional partner, they better be able to see and connect the dots down the line. Love it.

Love it. All right, let's let let let's shift gears. So, operational leadership. As we go into 26 and beyond.

So, you are operating in the PE space now. Um, very interesting space. Um, my my wife works for a PE back company, and seeing the difference in that versus like VC backed versus like blows my mind the differences. Totally.

What's changing about ops and go-to-market and how they're expected to show up in a PE backed environment versus anything else? Yeah, I mean, again, great question. There's there's huge differences. Again, we're all getting to the same, right, runway.

Um, but I think language matters. Um, right, uh, how how your books look matters. Uh, right? It's critical.

So a lot of times, right, in those P environments, you're going to see, you know, cut head count or slash this or slash that. Things look good on paper, but then there's the humanity of it all. Um, so being able to Wait, PE has humanity? Sorry.

Is that just kidding? You know, as the leader of an organization, somebody that's coming in and making a recommendation, you've got to be able to speak at two different elevations. So, right, it's going to come down to the numbers, it's going to come down to the books, and their profitability, but equally, you have to have a full view of the landscape of the company because you can't just be pulling levers and pressing buttons, right? There's going to be uh every, you know, there's going to be a reaction and consequence.

So being able to look through that line. Um, I think a lot of focus is shifting this year to retention. Um, so we're going to see a lot more focus around instead of coming in with, oh, we're going to grow 40% or, you know, we've got some sort of unicorn into how are we retaining our current base, how are we showing value, right? What does our NRR look like?

Uh, so we've got to really drill down into retention strategies. Uh, we're going to have to look at efficiencies. You know, P is going to be looking at that, our banks are going to be looking at that, our VCs are, but I think it's very well translated into PE. If you're bringing in new technology to streamline the work you're doing, and then taking those employees that are maybe doing some more automated level work and leveling them up.

Um, so how much can we do without increasing head count, right? So opportunities I see sitting there. What are you what are you seeing on your end? So, I think I don't want to use this word, but it's the only word I know how, and I'll use it because you you said slash, so I I I'll I'll use another term.

Um, I find that PE back companies, um, the expectations are more ruthless. Um, it is very bottom line driven. There is a lack of humanity in some, not all. Um, I have worked with some PE folks that, listen, while we have to be ruthless, we do still recognize like, these are people's lives we're talking about.

Um, and we're going to try to give as much notice as we can and at least treat them as human beings while we still very much have the bottom line to tie to. Um, I think PE has less tolerance than VC for mistakes. Um, I think that whether you are coming in as an operating partner or a full-time employee or whether you're leadership or not, um, I think they I I I find the expectations to be much higher, um, in PE back companies, and the the the fuse and tolerance to be much shorter. Yeah.

I I I would agree with you. Um, and I agree that there should be more scrutiny around the leadership that you're bringing into PE backed, right? They have to again, be able to translate with that level of ruthlessness to the uh the the the shareholders, but equally have the empathy, the decorum, and uh what they need within inside the organization to uh make the right decisions, explain them, and keep the team energized. They also have to have the ability to self-reflect and postmortem.

Yeah. You know, how did we get here? I mean, we're looking at so many companies riffing uh their staff. Well, how did you get there to begin with?

Right? Like what what what's wrong with the old playbook that it was let's take the funding and then scale as quickly as we can, which actually means hiring people, right? Is is that what scaling means now? I I'm not sure about that, you know, I mean, I've been uh had the opportunity to work with you guys for a little while now and what I'm seeing is you're looking to scale your technology and uh your workflows, right?

So it's not about how do we add more humans, it's about how do we use this technology for acceleration. So in those PE backed environments, those those CEOs have to look through that lens and and self-reflect. That's why there's such high turnover with CEOs. They have very short tenures in PE.

Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Really quick as a follow-up to this, as as we were thinking about it, what advice would you give a founder who thinks they've built an efficient GTM team but can't seem to scale?

Like never happens. I mean, they all think that they're, you know, I've got, you know, rock stars, like I've got, right? I I've heard all the language, right? So it's funny you say this.

I hate that word related to GTM, by the way. I despise when anyone's like, we need a rock star. Yeah. Who is that?

But it's it's funny as you said that, Nicole, because when we talk to a lot of our clients that we work with, they feel that way in the beginning. Yeah. And then as we get into like the audit, then it becomes very like obvious that the the facade is a little bit different than what the real like, that reality is a little bit different. And once you get under the covers, they're willing to like pull their guard down a little bit.

But like, how do you get to that place as well? I think right, okay, so I'm always I'm a data junkie. So I'm always going to go back to the data, right? Data has this amazing power to neutralize perception.

So I think it goes back to, right, ugly babies. Um, if that's what the data is saying, right, this is no longer my opinion. This is what I'm bringing to the table and now let's strategize through it. Um, right, founders, uh, you know, early founders, early leadership, largest pain point, and it's natural.

Is um, it's expected. It's with good intent. It is typically they put a new product out. They they bring in their those those rock stars, right?

Those those folks that they know, they're go-tos, and they're going to have really fast early growth. And that really fast early growth gets mistaken for long-term enterprise value, and it's not. And so then they start, right, doubling up and and uh making unreasonable forecasts and starting to think they're going to get to big numbers, and that's where going back to your question, Dale, we receive the problems. Is now, again, right, what I kind of started with.

Most companies don't have a growth problem. They've got a process and alignment issue. And that goes Right back to go-to-market. So, you're going to see it when they start to stall out, right?

And that S curve is it is also normal throughout every business. You know, there there's no such thing as up up up and up. It just it's not going to happen, you know, that hockey stick nonsense. It's just nonsense.

It's an S curve. You're going to just, you know, there's ebbs and flows and you got to be able to move through it. 100%. Yep.

And go-to-market is going to help you move through it, and it's going to RevOps, right, should be giving you indicators before you hit the curves. Yep. And that is the perfect segue into our wrap-up and rapid fire and the first question I I I I have down that I want to ask you. What's the better first hire, Nicole, RevOps or product marketing?

Oh my gosh, that is such a tough question, right? Better first hire. Oh. I'm actually going to go with product marketing.

Um, I'm I'm going to do it because but I want that RevOps person right behind. Um, let's identify what that value is up front and that shared narrative. So we can start to at least enable our teams, uh, with what they need to be successful. And then we've got to get RevOps in.

We got to get them in. Get the foundation right so you don't have to fix it later. Harder job, COO or CRO? Ooh, that's a tough one, too.

Um, right, CRO. I mean, I feel for our our revenue officers. They are definitely carrying the ball, uh, but your COO is taking the beating for it. So, COO, they are the ones that are not just accountable for the revenue that is coming in.

They're accountable for the revenue that is being spent on R&D, the technology, the team, the failures, the breakdowns, the playbooks, everything. COO. Interesting take. I like it.

Mm-hmm. Nicole, what's the most overrated dashboard metric? Oh my gosh. I mean, overrated, I have a laundry list of these, right?

Vanity metrics. I was going to talk to you guys about some of these today, actually. Um, clicks, right? Any sort of click-throughs.

I think are uh BS. Um, impressions. I don't want to look at impressions. They mean nothing to me.

Uh, so I I I'm going to look at those. Um, and I'm all you know, if you don't have the right RevOps system, you're going to have issues with future forecast. So I would say that when I go into organizations or worked with organizations that don't have that sales process nailed down, that actually becomes the most unreliable number that we have. Love it.

I love that. Last one as we wrap up. Dream vacation destination. Oh, I need this.

It's like, you know me. I'm a travel freak. Um, but I'm going to just take an easy win. So for me, it's always Italy.

Um, I love the food. I love the people. You and me both. The wine and I like the food and I like the food.

So, works out well. I love it. Nicole Broll, thank you so much for joining the show for sharing your insights, and congrats on the new gig. Excited to see everything that uh you're going to accomplish in the role.

Thank you. Thank you both for having me today. Thank you for coming.