Every quarter, a different theory

Q1 it's capacity, Q2 it's messaging, Q3 it's the leads. The reason the theory keeps changing is the leak underneath the other four, and it is not a lead problem.

Q1 it's capacity. Q2 it's messaging. Q3 it's the leads, and by Q4 somebody is quietly blaming the reps.

Sit in enough pipeline reviews and the pattern stops being about the theories. Any one of them could be right. The problem is that nobody in the room can point to the stage actually costing the most, so there is no way to choose between them. Every intervention becomes a theory, and the budget goes wherever the loudest theory lives.

The leak underneath the other four

Four leaks get named in most GTM reviews: targeting, qualification, handoff, conversion. The fifth is the one that decides whether you can see the other four at all. Visibility.

When the funnel can't show where conversion breaks, stage by stage, you aren't managing it. You're explaining it after the fact. Explanation is expensive, because explanation gets funded.

Why the dashboard is the wrong first purchase

Companies that get out of this loop do not start by buying better reporting. They agree on what a stage means, who owns the handoff out of it, and what evidence says a deal has left it. The reporting follows that decision and cannot lead it. A report built on three definitions of the same stage produces a confident number nobody can act on, which is worse than no number, because it ends the argument without resolving it.

The three questions

Before the next planning cycle, ask these in the room. One sentence each, no laptops open.

1. Which stage has the largest conversion drop?
2. Which stage has the longest time without movement?
3. Who owns the repair when a handoff fails?

If the room can answer all three, the constraint is somewhere else and it is worth going to find it. If it can't, there is no lead problem yet. There is a seeing problem, and more demand makes it more expensive rather than more obvious.

Fixing it doesn't start with spend. It starts with the number.

Find which of the five leaks is yours

The GTM SCALER assessment is free. Twenty-seven questions, about ten minutes, and it names the operating constraint behind your biggest leak rather than the symptom sitting on top of it.

Take the GTM SCALER assessment

More letters: Two definitions of qualified.

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