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 foundation
• The hidden cost of stitching together spreadsheets, slide decks, and conflicting reports
• How legacy GTM data models quietly destroy credibility at the executive level
• The 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 way
• What it takes to shift from lagging, backward-looking metrics to forward-looking visibility

This 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 Intensive

Book a free 1:1 Revenue Visibility Assessment

Follow 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.

In this episode, Carolyn and Amber pull back the curtain on a $500M cybersecurity company that came to Passetto stuck in last-touch reporting, declining win rates, an overreliance on product trials, and zero visibility into what SDRs were actually working.

In just 14 days, their Growth Sprint surfaced what months of internal analysis couldn’t: the true drivers of revenue, why trials convert at only 5%, why hand-raisers deliver 2X the deal size and win rate, and how 40% of opportunities are created with no traceable sales trigger at all.

We walk through the exact before-and-after: their revenue architecture score, the missing SDR prospecting layer, the downstream impact of “low-signal” opportunities, and the data that finally gives the team conviction to modernize their demand engine.

Even with strong tools and a mature sales motion, they’re operating with only 55% revenue visibility, record-low win rates, and a demand strategy built almost entirely on trials—until the Sprint changes the trajectory.

We break down the insights their team uncovers:

• Why 55% of SDR workload comes from trials that win at only 5%
• How high-intent hand raisers deliver 2X the ACV and more than 2X the win rate
• Why only 35% of opportunities show early-stage signals
• How more than 40% of opportunities have no traceable prospecting trigger at all
• And how a two-week sprint becomes the “forcing function” they need to move from uncertainty to a clear set of strategic priorities

A powerful example of what happens when companies finally get the full-funnel visibility they’ve been missing.

🔗 CTAs & LINKS:

• Register for Passetto’s upcoming virtual events
• Book a free 1:1 Data Visibility Assessment
• Follow 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.

Book a 14-Day Growth Sprint and get 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 working
• The "Pipeline Black Box"—the critical Prospecting stage between marketing touch and opportunity creation that 100% of companies fail to track
• The exact GTM factory data model: every field, object, and signal type you need to build full-funnel visibility in your own systems
• What to actually measure at each stage: prospecting analytics, signal analytics, and engagement diagnostics

This 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 events

Book a free 1:1 Revenue Visibility Assessment

Follow Carolyn on LinkedIn

Follow 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.

In this HANDS-ON episode of GTM Live, we're ditching theory and building a real go-to-market strategy live—using AI, public data, and a completely different approach to finding and messaging prospects.

Join host Amber Williams and special guest Jordan Crawford, the "OG GTM Engineer" and early advisor to Clay, for a masterclass in pain-qualified segmentation.

Watch as Jordan demonstrates how to use ChatGPT to identify prospects who actually need your solution and craft messages that deliver independent value before you ever ask for a meeting.

What You'll Learn:

• Why traditional ICP scoring is "mental masturbation for executives" and what to do instead
• How to work backwards from customer pain using public data and AI
• The game-changing concept of "the list is the message"
• How to identify demonstrable value props that competitors can't replicate
• Why vertical SaaS has a hidden advantage (and what horizontal SaaS can learn)
• PLUS: Real-time walkthrough: Finding pain-qualified prospects for a clean energy platform using only ChatGPT and public data

AI has transformed tools from "access" to "power tools" overnight. Leaders can no longer delegate strategy to RevOps and hope for the best. You need to get your hands dirty with the data to understand what's actually possible.

🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES:

Watch the entire ⁠live GTM build on YouTube⁠

Follow Jordan on LinkedIn

Subscribe to Cannonball GTM on Substack

Follow 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 wrong
• How to recognize if you're trapped in The Panic Response
• The uncomfortable truth about why transformation only happens outside your comfort zone
• What it actually takes to move from reactive scrambling to strategic confidence
• Why adding more tactics to a broken foundation only creates more noise in an already chaotic system
• The real reason you can't measure the impact of your investments, and what that means for your ability to drive growth
• What fundamental questions you're NOT asking because you don't have the data model to answer them
• The moment of decision that separates leaders who transform from leaders who stay stuck
• How to stop copying what other companies are doing and start building what actually works for YOUR revenue factory
• If 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

On this episode of GTM Live, Carolyn and Amber sit down with Steve Armenti, CEO & Founder of Twelfth Agency and former demand gen leader at Google.

Steve shares his journey from corporate marketing to building a thriving agency, and dive into why most revenue teams miss the real story in their data, how to flip the script on pipeline analysis by studying rejection instead of just conversion, and the critical role of sales + marketing alignment in fixing the “pipeline black box.”

You’ll hear practical examples from Steve’s experiences as an in-house demand gen leader and now running his ABX agency, insights into what’s working for growth-stage SaaS companies right now, and a fresh perspective on building GTM systems that actually deliver results.

If you’re a CMO, CRO, or RevOps leader looking for new ways to diagnose what’s holding back your pipeline, this episode is a must-listen.

Key Topics Covered:

• Lessons from demand gen on identifying what works vs. what doesn’t
• ABM → ABX: creating account-based experiences that align sales + marketing
• The “messy middle” handoff between sales and marketing, and why it breaks most funnels
• Flipping the script: studying disqualification rates instead of obsessing over MQL → SQL conversion
• Practical examples of diagnosing rejection data and what it revealed
• The underestimated importance of data hygiene, UTMs, and ops roles
• Why improving what you already have often beats chasing new volume

🔗 LINKS:

• Follow GTM Live on ⁠Spotify⁠
• Subscribe to the GTM Live ⁠YouTube Channel⁠

• Follow Steve on LinkedIn
• Check out Twelfth Agency
• Follow Carolyn on LinkedIn
• Follow Amber 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.

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.

🔗 LINKS

Register for our Oct 8 Pipeline KPI Workshop

Follow GTM Live on Spotify

Subscribe to the GTM Live YouTube Channel

Connect with Carolyn on LinkedIn

Connect 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.

If your board asks “Why is pipeline down?” and your opportunity dashboards only say marketing-sourced vs. SDR-sourced (AKA the four-funnel model), you’re stuck with surface-level data and left guessing at fixes instead of diagnosing the problem.

The real story lives between engagement and opportunity, the unmeasured factory floor where prospecting happens (or dies). In this episode, Carolyn and Amber show how to rip the lid off that black box, swap vanity volume for "causal" metrics, and find the repeatable patterns that actually manufacture pipeline.

Expect blunt takes, practical questions to bring to RevOps tomorrow, and real outcomes from teams who’ve made the shift (e.g., win rates jumping from ~13% to ~24% and easier budget approvals once the black box is illuminated).

What You’ll Learn:

• [02:20] Why “source” reporting hides the truth (and fuels misalignment)
• [08:00] The Pipeline Black Box: measuring the in-between (triggers → first meeting → opp)
• [15:00] Pattern-spotting: sequences that create pipeline vs. waste
• [17:30] Visual walkthrough: opening the black box
• [20:55] Prospecting as its own lifecycle: timing, activity load, DQs, velocity
• [26:10] From more leads to more lift (conversion, speed, win rate 13%→24%)
• [36:00] Turning visibility into stronger board stories & budget wins
• [38:25] 3 questions to expose your black box this week

Who This Episode For

CROs, CMOs, Demand leaders, and RevOps owners ready to graduate from MQLs/last-touch to a factory-style measurement system.

🔗 LINKS

• Register for our Oct 8 Pipeline KPI Workshop https://www.passetto.com/events/pipeline-visibility-workshop
• Follow GTM Live on Spotify
• Subscribe to the GTM Live YouTube Channel
• Connect with Carolyn on LinkedIn
• Connect with Amber on LinkedIn

—

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.

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.

99% of GTM teams still can’t see what really happens before an opportunity is created.

This is the "grey area" where SDRs or BDRs are working prospects — sending emails, making calls, chasing signals, running sequences — all in an effort to connect, book a meeting, and turn it into pipeline.

The problem? None of it is tracked in a clear way. Leaders see pipeline “sources” (marketing, sales, SDR) but miss the bigger picture.

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 sequences reliably produce opportunities, while many don’t. The problem is, most leaders have no visibility into that chain, and that’s why pipeline creation still feels like guesswork.

In this episode, Carolyn explains why department-source reporting and last-touch attribution keep teams stuck, and how to instrument the pre-opportunity “factory floor” with simple, causal metrics.

They also tackle the cross-functional blame game (e.g. marketing vs. sales over MQLs and lead quality) and show how a unified, trigger-based view turns guesswork into an operating system for predictable pipeline.

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.