Doing the work

How do I judge a startup's GTM before I join it, so I am not walking into an unhittable number?

The short answer

Interview them harder than they interview you, and ask for numbers rather than stories. The four that matter most: what percentage of the team hit quota last year (under half is a warning, sixty to seventy is healthy, over eighty usually means the number goes up next year), why the person in this seat left, what share of closed revenue came from inbound versus self sourced, and how long a new rep takes to ramp. Then look at whether the motion exists at all: is there a demand generation function, does anyone have a written playbook, is there sales engineering support, is the buyer consistent across recent wins. Also check the boring financial facts, runway and the next raise, because a great territory in a company that runs out of money is not a great territory. If they will not share attainment data, that is your answer.

Go deeper, your way

3 hand-picked resources, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

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Why we picked it This is the diligence checklist itself, grouped into territory health, product market fit, financial health, leadership and marketing support, with the exact questions to say out loud. The territory questions (why did the last rep leave, what were attainment and net new numbers) are the ones candidates are most afraid to ask and most need to.

How to evaluate a sales job before you accept an offer

From The Virtual CRO by Casey Murray 12 min read

Open thevirtualcro.com →

The same ground, at another level

How gtm roles and career paths reads from a different seat.

SDR, AE, AM, growth, PMM, RevOps: what do these people actually do all day? An SDR finds and opens conversations, mostly by email, calls and LinkedIn, and hands over meetings, while an AE runs those conversations to a signa... Breaking into GTM 5 resources → How do I decide which GTM roles to hire, and in what order? Hire against the bottleneck you can prove, not the org chart you eventually want. If you have more conversations than you can run, hire a closer; i... Leading a GTM team 5 resources → What separates a great VP of Sales from a merely good one? A great one recruits. If they have not personally hired and carried two or three quota-carrying reps before, they are a manager of a system somebod... How the best do it 4 resources →

Terms in this answer

Demand Generation Go-to-Market Runway

People also ask

SDR, AE, AM, growth, PMM, RevOps: what do these people actually do all day? An SDR finds and opens conversations, mostly by email, calls and LinkedIn, and hands over meetings, while an AE runs those conversations to a signa... Breaking into GTM 5 resources → I want to start a GTM career in India but I have zero sales experience. What is the realistic first job? An SDR or BDR seat at a B2B software company is the standard front door, and it is genuinely open to people with no sales background because compan... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → I have been an SDR for about 18 months. How do I actually make the jump to AE? The promotion is not a reward for hitting meeting targets, it is a bet that you can close. So show closing behaviour before you have the title: sit... Doing the work 4 resources → I am the first GTM hire at a startup. What is my job really, and how do I not get fired in 12 months? Your job is not to relieve the founder of selling, it is to prove the founder's selling can be done by someone else. So spend the first month ridin... Doing the work 4 resources → How do I decide which GTM roles to hire, and in what order? Hire against the bottleneck you can prove, not the org chart you eventually want. If you have more conversations than you can run, hire a closer; i... Leading a GTM team 5 resources → How do I set quota, comp and ramp for my first sales team in India without copying a US template that does not fit? Anchor on your own deal data, not on a benchmark deck. A workable starting point is a quota of roughly four to five times on-target earnings, a bas... Leading a GTM team 4 resources →
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