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AI has changed GTM.. has the way you hire GTM leaders changed with it?

You hired a new revenue leader.. the numbers dipped. And if your board doesn't have a steady hand, you could be signing up for more pain. Early on in their tenure, the numbers won't tell you whether or not you've got the right CRO or CMO. Spoke to an Operating Partner who's got 30+ years in sales leadership. He told me replacing one of these executives is going to be a J-curve every time.. But, you have to have a steady hand. Sometimes you've made the right hire and you're about to accelerate, other times you've got a dud. So..How do you know? The answer might not be what you think: https://lnkd.in/g_7zWzwf 🔗

You buy European software companies.. +95% of those companies are going to need to expand into the US. "Bonjour, and who ordered the transatlantic valuation arbitrage?" For the record: there is a right and wrong way to do this. If I could get one message across to management teams before that first US hire, it would be this: *A US hire is only as good as the setup they inherit.* Drop a world-class Revenue Leader in market with the wrong structure.. and they will struggle. Lay the foundation before you build the house. Here's some examples: 1. Pipeline before the search You don't need a full pipeline before you hire… you need enough signal to know what kind of pipeline is possible. Get into the market first. Do some outbound, put a bit of marketing spend into the US, get your existing team on calls with US buyers to see where your story lands and where it needs work. That early signal shapes everything: the profile you hire, their mandate, what you measure in the first 90 days, AND what you should expect in the first yr. (*pro-tip: your ICP will almost always look slightly different here) 2. Decision rights in writing Who can approve a redline? A discount? What has to go back to HQ? as examples.. Most of the post-mortems I see trace back to remit and scope that was never spelled out. Have that conversation before the offer goes out: pricing authority, deal limits, escalation paths, all of it agreed by everyone with a say. (*pro-tip: 3 weeks on a redline will kill your US biz on arrival) 3. Stop running the US like home Example: Annual bonuses for reps instead of monthly/quarterly payouts. Works back home, won't work in the US. Build the plan around how US buyers and sellers operate. (*pro-tip: US GTM culture is different in some specific ways. Unit economics may shift for you here.. but the deals are bigger, and so is the market) There's more.. but you'll have to read it here: https://lnkd.in/gc-fXFsN

The ART/SCIENCE of Marketing..

Listen to this.. spoke to a Partner at a European fund a few weeks back.. he told me his research showed him that the companies that performed best through to IPO had higher executive turnover than the under-performers. Counterintuitive to say the least.. But if you think about it, it starts to make sense. Basically what this research is saying is that the companies that struggle are the ones that tend to keep bad-fit leaders in the seat longer (sort of hoping that the numbers would eventually agree with a decision that they started to feel shaky about). Which means... Speed of correction matters more than stability. So the next question is: how do you know early? I interviewed 6 Operating Partners on this topic. My hope was to make their instincts portable. Here are some of the things we learned: - have they figured out where the business wins and why? - is the CEO/founder, getting their time back? - is anything moving on the big goals you set for the role? - be an observer in one of their team meetings. Is there structure, does the team lean in? And there are certain red flags to watch for: - are they trying to install a prior playbook before understanding the context? - are top performers disengaging? - made structural changes before finishing an assessment? - trust with the CEO visibly eroding? This matters even more when the stakes are high: - average CRO tenure is ~23 months - the median software buyout hold is 5.4 years now - the seat turns over ~3 times before exit on avg - the wrong growth-stage CMO/CRO hire can cost you ~$5M or more But above all, its the lost momentum that makes the wrong executive hire detrimental. The signals are there early. I write here about how to find them: https://lnkd.in/eXUnn-k6

Every #PE report in 2026 says the same thing: returns will come from execution.