Q7Leader

Founder

Q7 leader is an HR Tech consultancy company specialized in boosting company performance through collaborative leadership augmented with  people analytics and insights. It owns the exclusive distribution rights on "thehrframework.com", a platform designed for the optimization of Return on Human Capital Investment (ROHCI) through the simplification, the integration and the standardization of six key HRM practices every line manager should master: (1) Organisation Design, (2) Competence, (3) Performance, (4)Talent, (5) Reward management and (6) Resource Planning. 

This solution includes a series of on-line apps which greatly simplify the measuring and monitoring of companies' HR indicators, analytics and insights. 

It is is designed to support companies during 6 stages of their lifecycle: start-up, due-diligence/ acquisition, merger, restructuring ...and moving away from overengineered HR. 

It now runs in over 20 countries on 5 continents. It is compatible with most major provider of HRIS and Reward & Benefits providers.

Pulse Foundation, Beyond Program supporting scale-ups

Coach in HR strategy and management

Solvay Brussels school of Economics & Management

Maître de Conférence lecturing in 
- Master in Management at Solvay School of Economics and Management
- 2d year Master in Human Resources Management
 Includes: mastering HR for non HR, Leadership, Designing organisations, Performance, Competence and Talent management in Learning Organisations. Reward & Benefits strategies.
Publication: "the 6 fundamentals for CEO & CFO to get their HR basics right"

Maître de conférence  Solvay Brussels school of Economics & Management

Promethean Plc

$300 Millions Revenue; up to 1000 employees.
Led the Group HR functional area through Promethean's transformation (including IPO) into becoming a global player with key focus on designing and developing transformational interactive hardware and sofware solutions that support education, business and governments in teaching and learning best practices,new skills or launching new methods and processes within organisations.

Chief Human Capital Officer

€4 Billion revenue, up to 12,000 employees.
- End to end HR accountability for EMEA & Latin America regions.
- Worldwide HR accountability over Sales and Marketing functional areas. 
- Design and implementation of a “GloCal” HR service organisation across 30 countries (including Peoplesoft deployment). 
- Global Program leader for BT Group on matrix operating model implementation
- Variety of M&A, integrations and transformations of 20+ companies (Benelux, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, LATAM, Dubai and USA)

Vice-President HR BT international

Mobistar

Director Human Resources & Hotelling Services

Xerox Corporation

Company Secretary & HR director Belgium Luxembourg

Allen & Overy (Loeff Claeys Verbeke)

Lawyer, Avocat at the Bar of Brussels, Belgium

Procter & Gamble

Legal counsel detached by law firm to assist line managers in FMCG marketing campaigns.

Legal advisor

20 years of International HR, 17 years of Faculty at Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management, 8 years of Entrepreneurship in HRtech. 

Reggy-Charles Degen

Most leaders say people are the main asset. I say that’s simply not true.

You hear it everywhere.

“Our people are our biggest asset.”

It sounds good. It feels good. But look at what happens when a company announces a big layoff.

The stock price goes up.

Not down.

If people were the main asset, losing them should hurt the company. But the market rewards the move.

This tells me something important.

It’s not the people alone who drive value. It’s what they can do. The skills. The knowledge. The experience.

A company is not a family. It’s a system built on useful competencies.

When those competencies go out the door, the company only cares if they are hard to replace.

If you keep people who do not bring needed skills, the value does not go up. It goes down.

The lesson here:

• Companies do not reward headcount. They reward impact.
• The market does not care about slogans. It cares about results.
• Leaders need to focus on building, keeping, and growing the right competencies.

I am not saying people do not matter. I am saying that the value is in what people know and what they can do.

And, most importantly, I'm saying we can't lie to people anymore. Or when big layoffs happen (which can happen to any company), our big words won't have any meaning anymore.

Curious to hear your views on this topic.

P.S. If you want to be seen as an asset, keep learning. Keep building skills that truly matter.

Founder of Q7Leader | Author of the People Model Canvas | Human Resources Professor at Solvay Business School

No alternative text description for this image

I can profile any employee in just 10 minutes. Here's how.

After 20 years in international HR, I stopped wasting time on endless meetings and vague discussions.

I built the People Model Canvas.

With this process, CEOs, CPOs, and HR business partners get:

→ A common language for team decisions
→ Data-driven clarity on every employee
→ Actionable plans for growth, not just opinions

I’ve seen it work across Europe, Asia, and the US. Over 90% accuracy in role assessments, faster team alignment, and much better development planning.

What changed? Managers stopped guessing. Teams stopped drifting. Everyone knows what is expected and how to grow.

The People Model Canvas makes this possible. It moves us from subjective debates to objective action.

If you want to save hours and boost your team’s clarity, try the 10-minute session. You’ll never go back to the old way.

What alternative approaches are you using for talent management?

Unpopular opinion: The 9-box grid is the biggest obstacle to talent development.

(from someone who used it for decades)

It felt safe. It gave structure. It looked “objective.”

But here’s what I learned:

- The grid is a shortcut for bias.
- It hides real performance.
- It gives managers a reason to keep old habits.

You know the drill:

• Fill boxes.
• Defend ratings.
• Hope the system finds your next leader.

But most grids do not show you the full picture.

You get numbers, not people.
You get labels, not growth.
You get the same results, year after year.

I wanted better.

I replaced (or should I say complemented) the grid with the People Model Canvas.

Here’s why:

→ It aligns performance, values, and competencies.
→ It builds clear expectation profiles (not just job descriptions).
→ It gives data-driven insights for every person.

What changed?

- Decisions became transparent.
- Growth became possible.
- Talent management became fair.

If you keep using the 9-box grid, expect mediocre results.

If you want real talent development, scrap the grid.

Elevate your process.
Make it multidimensional.
Make it (really) human.

What alternative approaches are you using for talent management?

1 in 3 employees will need to be retrained by 2030.

According to a 2025 McKinsey report, AI could automate up to 30% of our work in the next few years.

For HR, this changes everything.

Most HR teams still try to track hundreds of technical skills per role.

By the time the list is complete, it is already out of date.

Technical skills appear, grow, and disappear faster every year, pushed by AI and digital change.

I do not believe HR can win that race.

In my work with companies, I focus on one simple shift.

Stop tracking specific skills.
↳ Start tracking general competencies.

When I say general competencies, I mean skills that travel across almost every role in your company:

• Adaptability
• Team work
• Teaching and knowledge sharing
• Analysis and critical thinking
• Project management

These are not linked to one tool or one job.

They follow people when they move from finance to product, from operations to HR, from one company to another.

They are also the skills you need when AI changes 30% of the work.

You can learn a new platform if you already have strong learning and teaching skills.

You can move to a new process if you are strong in project management and team work.

HR should build one clear, shared language for these general competencies.

Map them.
Develop them.
Use them in recruitment, performance, and internal mobility.

Tools like the People Model Canvas help managers and HR speak the same language when they do this.

I stopped using the 9-box grid.

Here’s what changed when we moved to 7 dimensions:

The 9-box grid is simple.
Two axes: performance and potential.

That works if you want to talk about who steps into the CEO chair next. But for real talent management across the business? It falls flat.

You do not run Finance on two numbers.

Why would you run people decisions that way?

When I looked at what our teams needed, two dimensions were not enough. They gave us opinions, not real data. They gave us snapshots, not systems.

That’s why I built the People Model Canvas.

Seven dimensions instead of two. Because people are not numbers on a grid. They are:

1. General Expectation Profile (role clarity)
2. Operating Mode (how they work each day)
3. Competence
4. Performance
5. Potential
6. Vision & Values
7. Career & Reward

Each one tells you something different.
Together, they give you a full picture.

But here’s the real shift: We connect these dimensions with a common language. No more contradictions between “competence” and “performance.” No more guessing what “potential” means in one team versus another.

Now, managers and HR use the same words, the same framework. The process is fairer, the data is stronger, and leaders trust the results.

We moved from opinions to evidence. From fragmented HR to one system everyone can use.

That’s the difference seven dimensions make.

I recorded a deep dive video on why the 9-box grid is not enough and how the People Model Canvas changes the game.

Want the full video?

1. Like this post
2. Comment “9-BOX” below
3. Connect with me (so I can send it) ← important

Tres interessante session menée par notre collègue de Q7leader France sur l’équité et l’égalité salariale hommes-femmes - la nouvelle directive européenne

HRTech Entrepreneur & Coach | Podcast Host Beautiful People I GM France Q7Leader I UN Women France Board Member

Est-ce que votre organisation est prête pour la directive européenne sur la transparence salariale ? Juin 2026 va arriver plus vite qu'on ne le pense. Rejoignez-nous le 20 novembre pour en discuter !

Valerie Coddens, Emmanuelle Goulas and 6 other connections attending

De l’écart salarial à l’équité : la révolution de la transparence

Who wants to start the new year with stress? Not me 😄

Don’t wait for 2026 to learn about pay transparency ↓

Our CEO, Thomas, is still hosting 2 live sessions before the Christmas break to teach you all about the EU directive.

He'll share our simple 5-step methodology to be compliant (without stress).

In 45 minutes, you'll get a clear action plan for 2026.

Then you can go enjoy your loved ones for a well-deserved break, with this topic out of your mind 😉🎄

See you there?

Book your spot now: https://lnkd.in/esnk-UFD

Many HR leaders are waiting for the law to be clarified. And that's precisely what will put them behind in 2026. Why? Because in reality, we already know the essentials of what will be required ↓

The European directive is very clear about what will be mandated:

• reliable compensation data
• defined and comparable roles
• the ability to justify every salary decision
• gaps calculated uniformly, bonuses included
• accessible and explicit compensation criteria

This is not a surprise.
And it won't be simplified in national law.
Member states can only specify details, not lighten requirements.

So yes, there are still details to be confirmed at the national level.
But the foundations are already written in black and white.

And it's precisely these foundations that require months of work.

Aligning role levels.
Structuring the data.
Documenting evaluation criteria.
Ensuring hiring practices are consistent.
Being able to prove fairness, not just claim it.

This isn't something you handle "when the law drops."

It's an organizational undertaking that requires time, clarity, and methodology.

To help you assess where you stand, we've created a quick 3-minute test. Answer 15 simple questions to identify your risks and preparation priorities.

👉 Take the test now: https://lnkd.in/eJcckw5t

Si vous avez des questions par rapport à la directive européenne sur la transparence des salaires et ce que ça va changer en Belgique, ceci est pour vous ! 🇧🇪

📆 Mercredi 3 décembre à 12h

Thomas Goubau & Sarah Cluydts discuteront de :

- ce que la directive implique pour les sociétés belges
- comment vous préparer au mieux, sans stress
- les fausses croyances (et il y en a beaucoup)

On se voit là-bas ? 😉

Always great to hear enthusiastic feedback for customers. Thanks Thomas D'Hoe 🎯

🔥 Passionate Operations & People Ops Innovator at Premium Plus | Elevating CX & EX to New Heights with Zendesk 🚀

I believe in strong teams.

↳ I believe in clear models for people and work.
↳ I believe in sharing what works, not just what’s easy.

A few weeks ago, Premium Plus - Zendesk's EMEA Partner of the Year hosted the Q7Leader and their People Model Canvas Community.

Our office was full of HR leaders. The energy was real.

We opened up our playbook.

↳ We showed how we use Zendesk to serve employees.
↳ We shared how AI and self-service change the game.
↳ We explained how automation cuts out failure and low-value work.

The best part: seeing the new Q7Leader feature in action.

The updated conversations template is simple, but powerful.

It helps teams talk better. It helps leaders see what matters.

At Premium Plus, we don’t just talk about competencies. We build them.

We use the People Model Canvas to shape our teams and our future.

It’s not just a tool. It’s a way to make work better for everyone.

Here’s what we have learned:

- The right model brings clarity to chaos.
- AI and automation are not about replacing people. They are about removing friction.
- When you focus on high-value work, teams grow faster.
- The best HR leaders share, adapt, and build together.

The future of employee service is here.

It’s built on strong models, smart tools, and people who care.

That’s how you create real impact.

I'm building a middle management layer.

It's hard. It's risky.

But it's the only way to scale.

☑ Most scale-ups fail here
☑ They skip the bridge between leaders and teams
☑ They forget: managers drive team engagement

Gallup found that 70% of the difference in team engagement comes down to the manager.

That means the manager is the lever. If the manager is strong, the team is strong. If the manager fails, the team falls apart.

A people manager only wins if their team wins.

So, what do we expect from our people managers?

→ Set clear expectations
→ Give feedback, early and often
→ Support the team and clear roadblocks
→ Recognize and celebrate team members

These are not one-off tasks. They are habits. They are the job.

But habits need support. Here’s what we’re doing to make sure our people managers succeed:

• We wrote down exactly what we expect from every people manager. No guessing. No confusion.
• We built a monthly people manager community, with help from Open Org. Managers learn from each other. They share what works and what doesn’t.
• We’re writing a people manager handbook. It’s a playbook for the hard stuff: tough talks, feedback, recognition, and more.
• We’re building a people manager scan. Managers get feedback from their teams, not just from above. This keeps them honest and helps them grow.

This is how we avoid the middle management trap.

This is how we build a real bridge between leadership and the team.

This is how we turn managers into ambassadors.

It’s hard, but it’s the only way to win at scale.

Maybe the toughest HR question I received this year:

« How do I fairly include an autistic colleague in our framework? »

We were in a workshop, doing a simple team scan.

At some point, someone raised their hand and said, almost apologetically:

“This colleague is autistic. Our framework gives them a negative label. But it does not feel fair... What do we do?”

In the People Model Canvas, we have a Vision & Values matrix, with profiles like “role model”, “nice person”, or “prima donna”.

The “Prima donna” is what we call someone who models business excellence but may not model corporate values and culture.

On paper, that is probably where this colleague would land.
If you only look at visible behaviour, you simply apply that rule.

But autism is not a “bad attitude”.

It is a recognised condition, with its own way of communicating, processing information and reacting to stress.

So the real question is not only “which box do we tick”, it is:

↳ How do we keep our system honest and transparent for everyone while recognising that some behaviours are linked to a medical condition?

This is where the real value of a model like the People Model Canvas appears.

If you spend your time reinventing your HR basics every time a difficult case shows up, you never reach this level of discussion. All the energy is lost in defining roles, expectations, behaviours, labels.

When those basics are already clear and shared, HR and managers can use their time where no model can fully help: on the exceptional, very human cases like autism at work.

Then you can make an explicit choice that fits your culture on a case-by-case basis.

Now I am very curious about your take:

How would you handle this type of case? Finding a fair way to help this person develop while not overprotecting.

And if some people already have experience in managing this type of situation, I would love to hear more about it!

Holistic Go-To-Market & AI for B2B / 12 domains / €2M up to €1B+ / 14 int. known experts.

As a Chief Revenue Officer, I operated 20+ B2B AI, SaaS and traditional companies in more than 15 industries. I've felt firsthand how building modern, leading revenue systems became a very complex given. A bit like building a house. 

🤯 Everything became too complex. Every domain became a universe on its own, with all its subdomains and now even more so with AI.

🚣🏻 You don't have everything in-house. You just do what you can with what you have.

🏃🏾‍♀️ All while you're constantly trying to improve your go-to-market maturity in all these domains, relative to your current and next growth phase.

👎🏼 Agencies and freelancers have a core offering and 101 side-offerings, which are average at best.

🧩 Getting external help is also always very fragmented and very transactional in nature.

💲Everything is so solution-first, never that problem-first approach.

Based on these experiences and findings, I created The GTM Syndicate. Where I developed my vision around holistic GTM and AI - and the 3 houses narrative 🏡.

Then I brought together an international team of 20, best-in-class domain experts and their companies, across 21 domains of expertise. And created our complete mirroring offerings and holistic way of working, around GTM and AI.

Via our problem-first approach we’d love to see how we can help you as a long-term, anti-transactional, strategic knowledge and implementation partner. Whether that’s starting holistically, multi domain, or single domain - we can help you to build in-house.

Stephane Maes

Sales. You probably think it looks something like this.

- A simple org chart.
- A funnel.
- Some targets.
- A few dashboards.

But when you zoom out, you realise something. Sales isn’t a function, it’s a system. A system made of strategy, operations, infrastructure, enablement, execution, cross-functional interplay.

All influencing each other, all compounding behind the scenes. That’s why most teams feel like they’re “doing the right things” but still missing something.

They’re optimizing pieces, not the whole. This carousel breaks down what a modern sales system actually includes and why the obvious view is rarely the real one.

When you look at your own sales org… do you see a team, or a system?

These are the elements we focus on with your team, when we onboard ourselves to create the context we need - by screening your sales engine.

Closing your GTM capability gaps with real operators, real context, and end-to-end orchestration / Go-To-Market & AI Partner for B2B / 20 experts / 21 domains

Sales

The biggest issue in SaaS right now isn’t pipeline, product, or pricing. It’s competence at the top of the go-to-market engine.

Was an absolute pleasure meeting Douglas van Oijen yesterday for a first time. 

We had a high-energy, lovely exchange between 2 people passionate about GTM, about the state of the industry, when it comes to operating SaaS & AI businesses. 

I wanted to share these insights with you, because I think they're just golden & summarize everything that's wrong right now.

After years of easy growth, the market has shifted - and it’s exposing something uncomfortable…

A lot of GTM leaders were promoted during “good weather,” not because they had the operating depth to lead in a storm.

We’re seeing it everywhere:

- inflated titles with thin execution skills

- leaders fluent in playbooks but unable to fix a broken system

- teams that reforecast instead of rebuild

- companies loyal to “nice” but under-qualified managers

- budgets locked not because money isn’t there, but because CxOs, VPs & Heads of were burned before

And while the market keeps tightening, the knowledge gap keeps widening. Modern GTM now spans so many domains, subdomains and now, also AI and no single leader covers it all.

This creates a strange paradox: SaaS companies aren’t short on headcount. They’re short on people who can actually operate (knowledge).

People who’ve lived the hard years and know how to navigate complexity. Who can translate strategy into execution and can rebuild when the system underneath is failing.

2026 won’t be won by the loudest brand or the biggest team. 

It’ll be won by the companies with the fewest blind spots. The ones honest enough to admit where the gaps are and mature enough to fix them.

What do you think?

State of The SaaS & AI Industry & Operating The Business

Now most of you are wrapping up GTM planning: most SaaS teams talk about ACV, quotas, and sales compensation but very few actually understand the economics behind them.

That’s a problem. Because you can’t hire, scale, or forecast correctly if your GTM motion and ACV don’t match the compensation model behind it.

So I broke it all down across:

- Every sales motion (Inbound → Strategic)
- Every ACV tier (<$10K → $1M+)
- Every ARR stage
- And US vs EU realities (yes, they’re very different)

No vanity benchmarks. No pay your reps 2–3x quota clichés. Just the actual mechanics of SaaS sales, shown clearly.

- What ACVs each role should really own
- What OTE makes sense per motion
- Why your cost of sale is probably off
- And where Europe ≠ US (and never will)

Of course, this isn’t one-size-fits-all. It varies per industry, vertical, buyer maturity, ACV mix, monetization model, team structure, sales cycle length, and even the commercial culture of the region you're selling into.

But the structural economics don’t change and that’s the part most teams miss.

If you run a SaaS company, lead GTM, or work as an AE, this framework will save you months of guessing.

Here’s the full breakdown.

P.S. Thanks to Yuriy Zaremba from AiSDR to inspire me with his recent post on the subject to do some research there over the weekend and to create this carousel and post to visualize my findings. As promised, here you go, I hope you enjoy it.

Revenue system-wide alignment built with your team, beyond what internal hires or specialists can provide / GTM & AI partner for B2B 10M - 1B+ / 21 (sub)domains / 20 experts

ACV, quotas, and sales compensation.

Most GTM content jumps from tactic to tactic. Sales tips. Marketing hacks. AI tools. That’s not how revenue actually breaks or scales.

These are the five problem spaces I keep coming back to, across companies from 10M to 1B+.

1. Revenue System Architecture

- How revenue is produced as a system, not as teams or tools.

2. System Stress and Failure Modes

- Where GTM quietly starts breaking under scale, speed, and complexity.

3. Scale Patterns and Inflection Points 

- What predictably changes as companies grow, whether they expect it or not.

4. Executive Trade-offs and Decisions

- The choices that look local, but shape outcomes at system level.

5. Orchestrated Execution

- Why coordination and ownership matter more than advice or isolated fixes.

I use these as lenses, not as a framework to sell. They help me and us as a team to recognize patterns faster, ask better questions, and avoid fixing the wrong thing first.

We usually enter through one function. Sales, Marketing, RevOps, CS, Partnerships, Finance, you name it...

But what breaks is never local for long. Most challenges in GTM today cover multiple domains. It's just that simple.

If you’re honest which of these shows up first in your company today?

The problem spaces I operate in.

Over the past six, seven months, I’ve been working on something that didn’t exist yet. It was just a passionate pitch to the domain experts on a new operating model for how revenue expertise should work in SaaS.

A model where domain experts & their companies don’t only operate in isolation but rather next to their business, also stand together as one unified brand.

One narrative, one long-term strategic partner for companies that need deep, cross-domain expertise & not another surface-level fix.

It took months of experimenting, dozens of prospect conversations, feedback loops, and iteration to shape it into what it is today.

And then a conversation with a top ICP stakeholder (CRO) recently only reinforced something I deeply believe - and what our pipeline and most conversations with prospects' stakeholders are also indicating: the time is right for this and the market is asking for it.

Most GTM problems today are strategic, interconnected, multi-domain and trust-based which means the deal cycles are longer. The work is simply so much deeper and the impact is so much bigger. You can’t rush that.

Very soon, companies will recognise these challenges for what they are. And they’ll start looking for real strategic partners who can fix them.

But here’s what has become clear, if we build this together, we can create an engine none of us could ever build alone.

Not through one hero (or ego), one company or through one network.

But through:

- the combined brand-equity of proven experts & their companies
- our combined network
- a shared long-term vision
- product-led content & education
- consistent thought leadership
- and a reputation for being the partner who actually does what they say.

It’s still early, painfully early.

We’re still in the “trust-building” phase with companies and we’re still laying the foundation for a motion that compounds over time.

But the fundamentals are there. The conversations with prospects are alive. The opportunities in our pipeline are maturing. The need in the market has never been clearer (yesterday's post).

This however only works if we pull together with:

- Promotion.
- Content (new podcast will soon launch).
- Our Syndicate's dealflow, next to their own deal flow.
- Shared upside
- A rising tide that lifts all of us

Because no single expert (& their company) - no matter how strong - can solve the GTM problems companies face today.

But together... 

Together we can create a category-defining engine that benefits all of us far more than what any of us could build alone.

That's why we're now working on the GTM Syndicate 2.0, where we take that to the next level. Because if we execute this properly, it's the most powerful growth engine we could ever dream of.

That’s the vision and what I'm building. This is just the beginning.

I see a lot of companies struggling right now. Not with effort. Not with talent. But with a GTM system that no longer fits today’s reality. And honestly - it’s itching to get back into an operator seat too.

For the past 8 months, I’ve been building the GTM Syndicate.

- 3 months assembling the original core team
- Scaled from 10 to 20 experts for real domain coverage
- Iterated a lot on the brand, value proposition & framing
- 2 months pressure-testing a complex value prop at scale
- Mostly in BE / NL, refining messaging in real conversations.

Only now it’s fully clear. Our real ICP is 50M+ companies, and 10-50M who are already feeling system pains (or a lack of systems). That took time. But it starting to click. With prospects but also with us, internally - and with me.

My role in the GTM Syndicate is simple to describe. I operate as a holistic GTM architect & also our Sales domain expert.

- Design the end-to-end revenue system
- Connect motions across Marketing, Sales, CS, RevOps, Partnerships
- Translate strategy into executable sequencing
- Orchestrate the right domain experts at the right moment

So companies don’t scale chaos. That’s also why the market signal is obvious. Companies are tool-heavy. System-light. Adapting to a GTM reality that changed faster than their orgs. That’s where I do my best work. 

I’m opening now opening one fractional CRO operator seat again. The model I ran for 8+ years. 

One morning in one company. One afternoon in the other. Next day: switch. Meaning I’m there every single day. Half a day. All week. Real ownership. I’ll spend half my week there.

The other half stays with the GTM Syndicate where I act as the holistic GTM & sales lead, owning architecture, sequencing, and expert orchestration. Building good things takes time.

In parallel, I’m also opening a small GTM advisory experiment.

Just a few hours per week. Direct, continuous access to me. Focused on strategy, sequencing, and implementation decisions. Possibly even a closed group of companies solving the same GTM problems together.

This isn’t a pivot. It’s intentional allocation of leverage.

Which of these do you actually need right now? How can I have the most impact on your business today?

- help re-architecting the GTM system (The GTM Syndicate)
- A CRO inside the business (Fractional CRO)
- Continuous access to a GTM advisor (& micro community?)

DM me which one and why. Would love to help you take your company to the next GTM maturity level.

Now my following on LinkedIn grew a whopping 43.8% this past year, it felt like a good moment to share things you might not know about me. I didn't start out in tech, I dropped out of school at 16.

At 17, I finished four years of secondary education in six months via exam jury. Not because I had a plan. Because standing still wasn’t an option.

At 18, I moved across the country to attend hotel school. That’s where I learned discipline, repetition, and ownership. If service fails, you don’t hide behind excuses. You fix what’s broken.

After that I moved to Ghent at age 19 and then came college. Twice. Neither stuck. Psychology first. Realized I didn't want to become a psychologist.

Next I did "company management" but since I'm a bookkeeper in terms of high school background, that was way to repetitive.

After dropping out, I worked whatever jobs paid the bills. Factory shifts. Night work. Cleaning offices, factories, dressing rooms, industrial sites.

Those jobs taught me something no business book ever did. Respect for people doing unglamorous work well. And zero tolerance for systems that quietly grind people down.

At 19, I lived and worked in Egypt. I was hired under wrong assumptions, rejected the role, and ended up redesigning operations instead.

Six restaurants. Seven bars. Roughly 250 people. I had end responsibility. Was fun. That experience left a mark. Not because of scale (also because of scale). Because responsibility was real.

At 22, I joined Just Eat. Not HQ. Belgium. The smallest market of twenty. I was there when the company IPO’d. I had no role in the IPO. No claim. No upside from that event.

On the B2B side, I had market exclusivity for 3.5 years. With the local team, we took the business from –500k to 7M in revenue. That Belgian unit was later sold for 22.5M to Takeaway, pre-merger. 

Also did my Vlerick Executive MBA near the end of it.

After that, the same pattern kept showing up across companies. SaaS. AI. Industrial. Data. Mobility. Energy. Traditional businesses too.

Different stages. Different teams. Growth slowed. Costs crept up. People worked harder. Results stopped compounding. Because ownership of how the whole GTM system behaved was unclear, fragmented, or missing.

So I started building my own companies. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some collapsed under market shifts. Others under governance gaps, misaligned ownership, or timing.

I’ve been on both sides. Operator and founder. Inside fast growth and inside collapse. With a lot of money. Without it (with is better).

That’s why today I don’t sell tactics. And I don’t sell advice detached from execution. 

I work on GTM systems where ownership, incentives, and execution are aligned end to end. Sometimes entering through a function. Always fixing the system and what led me to start The GTM Syndicate according to a strong vision.

Looking back, the through-line is simple, even if living it wasn’t. I guess I'm like the Marlboro man, I keep coming back.

How to reactivate a deal with 3 stakeholder changes in a just a few months, by consistent follow-up and a cold call.

How much of your pipeline fell apart because a champion left for a new company? With us, this happened for about half of our pipeline deals.

This GTM planning season, so many companies are either replacing key roles. Or key people just leave for a new company.

We have this customer from heaven but a deal flow from hell.

The deal flow:

- Introduced by the founder to the CMO & interim CEO
- Want to start ("sold")
- CMO leaves, warm intro to the interim CMO (resell)
- Deal stuck with interim CMO
- Interim CMO apologized for the delays (very respectable)
- New CEO & CRO hired
- New CMO joined too
- Start from "scratch" (resell x2)

Had been chasing the new CEO and CRO for a while now - but LinkedIn messages, outbound emails - it's what it is these days. Hard to get through.

So I picked up the phone and I called the CRO a couple of times. No luck.

Yesterday I got through and I must say, a good cold call is still better than a 1000 emails, dms or whatever touch points. 

A kind of magic happened there you just can't replicate in any possible way. It's the next best thing to meeting F2F. You have direct feedback & you can have a real interactive conversation, as human beings. 

Enabling you to also briefly, really & truly connect with someone. Was it a cold/cold-call? No, there is of course the history here & context.

Yet I had to start from scratch with explaining what we do, the deal flow so far and why we're different than all others. Since as a new CRO he gets 100 messages a day now with folks asking if he needs help with GTM.

We agreed to reconnect in dec/jan when their strategy and gtm planning was finished so we could start from there.

Best of all there's another window of opportunity, where the interim CEO wasn't interested in our holistic approach and the company wanted to focus on marketing as a starting point.

Now, because of all these changes, it's like starting from a white page - with also a new opportunity to potentially support them beyond just marketing and a domain - but apply our multi-domain or holistic approach there.

The power of consistent follow-up combined with a cold call. A good outbound call is worth it's weight in gold. Yet most of you stop after a couple of tries - and never pick up the phone.

It just works. 

Do you do a lot of cold calls or calls in general to reach out to prospects?

The real challenge in GTM right now isn’t AI. It’s the speed at which the entire revenue world shifted and how unevenly teams adapted to it. Across 10M, 50M, even 300M+ companies, I see two very different groups emerging.

Group 1, leaders running on the old GTM operating system. Smart, capable, experienced, but never trained for a world where:

- Buying behavior is non-linear
- Data is the foundation
- AI runs through every domain
- GTM is a system, not a set of functions

These leaders weren’t set up for this shift. Their environment changed faster than their toolkit. So you see them trying to absorb everything at once, reacting, not steering.

It’s not incompetence. It’s misalignment between the world they mastered and the world they’re leading in now.

But then there’s Group 2, the leaders who kept pace. The ones who already think in systems. Who understand architecture, data flows, and how AI maps to GTM motions. 

Who see GTM not as Marketing/Sales/CS/RevOps, but as one connected machine or at at the very least are aware that that is where they need to get to.

- They’re not necessarily younger or more technical.
- They simply updated their mental models.
- They invested in system literacy.
- They built revenue engines aligned with how companies actually buy in 2025.

And the difference in outcomes is widening:

- Group 1 feels the shift as friction, reacts to change, searches for playbooks.

- Group 2 feels it as leverage, designs for it and builds architecture & real systems.

Most companies today are about 50/50. Half the leadership is ready for the new world, half is still anchored in the old one. 

That tension is exactly why revenue systems start leaking. Not because people are bad but because the operating model isn’t unified.

Here’s the opportunity, you don’t need to replace leaders (in some cases you do, let's be honest) but overall, you need to align them under a modern revenue architecture, one that connects all 21 domains & subdomains of a modern revenue system and the AI layer they now depend on.

Revenue system-wide alignment, built with your team. Beyond what internal hires or specialists (agencies/freelancers) can provide.

That's what we do, we can help.

Most teams think the jump from $10M to $50M is the hard part. It isn’t. The real shock hits at $50M+, when the game changes without telling you.

What got you here stops working. What used to be good enough becomes the bottleneck. And the cost of every inefficiency doubles.

At $50M, three things happen simultaneously:

1. Your GTM system becomes visible.

Not the slides. The actual architecture, data, workflows, domain interlocks, tech debt, AI layer. Everything that was fine for now suddenly cracks under scale.

2. Your org outgrows its operators.

Talented people who carried the business from $5M to $30M now hit the ceiling. Not because they’re bad, because the system is bigger than any individual role. Competence gaps appear across GTM, AI, data, finance, enablement.

3. You enter the skyscraper phase.

- Global complexity.
- Multiple motions.
- Multiple segments.
- Multiple teams touching the same customer journey.
- All needing orchestration instead of effort.

This is the moment where companies either build a connected revenue system OR start leaking millions through fragmentation.

Our work doesn’t start at $50M, but it changes there. At €2M–€10M and €10M–€50M, we’re building and integrating the house.

Past $50M, we’re re-architecting it for scale, connecting GTM, AI, data, enablement, workflows, and leadership into one operating model.

Because above $50M, growth is no longer about brute force. It’s about system literacy. And most teams hit that stage before they’re ready.

Where does your revenue system start cracking as you scale towards or past $50M? Architecture, operators or orchestration?

The €50 Million Shift.

We’re burning down the House.

Here’s the thing nobody says out loud. Teams under €20M don’t need system-wide alignment. Teams between €20M and 1B+ absolutely do.

Below €20M, everything still works because people work. Heroics. Hustle. Momentum. Freelancers and agencies everywhere. 

A 100:1 ratio some founders told me. And honestly? It’s fine. You can brute force your way through almost anything at that stage.

One founder at €50M+ said it best: “We only know what we know.” And under €20M, that’s enough.

But the moment companies cross into €20–50M, that comfort evaporates.

Systems start to show themselves. Cracks widen. Motions collide. Teams grow, but competencies don’t always follow.

You suddenly see VPs and Heads of who, when they’re honest, admit they’re not fully equipped for the next stage.

I’ve seen €100M businesses effectively run by the CEO and CRO because the layer beneath them can’t carry the weight.

Not because they’re bad but because the system grew faster than they did.

And that’s the part everyone misses, GTM debt compounds quietly, just like tech debt. You only notice it when scale exposes it.

That’s why we’re burning down the House (2–10M) offering. Not emotionally - strategically. It’s the one phase where our 21-domain architecture and 20-domain-expert collective isn’t needed yet.

Teams don’t feel the system then. They feel motion, but from €20M to 1B+, the game switches without telling you.

The Mansion (10–50M)

Where functions multiply. Where ICP, pricing, CRM, CS, partnerships, RevOps, AI, and data all start interfering with each other. Where fragmentation becomes the bottleneck. Where every local fix creates global issues later.

The Skyscraper (50M–1B+)

Where architecture becomes visible. Where inefficiency becomes expensive. Where orchestration matters more than effort. Where operators hit ceilings because the system now outscales the individual.

This is also why Steve Declercq’s post resonated. He’s right: early-stage teams are overengineering GTM like they’re a 1B+ company.

But the opposite is also true, mid-stage and late-stage companies under-engineer the very moment complexity becomes real.

So yes - we’re burning the House down.

Because the real problems start later. Because the real value starts later Because the companies that truly need us are not trying to build a House - they’re trying to stabilize a Mansion or scale a Skyscraper.

If you’re heading toward €20–50M or already past €50M, where is your system already bending - the operators, the motions, or the architecture?

Burning down the House (2M-10M)

A top founder recently told me how they weren’t executing a fully architected GTM system. They were moving fast, solving problems, doing what the business needed in the moment.

That approach works incredibly well, until the company reaches the stage where speed alone can’t compensate for missing alignment.

Most companies on their way from €10M to €100M, around the time they are halfway there, think they’re scaling teams. They’re actually scaling system debt.

Because once you cross that chasm from €10M to €50M - and you arrive there - the business no longer rewards clever moves in isolation. It rewards system-wide alignment, across data, ICP, pricing, CRM, sales motions, CS, partnerships, outbound… the whole revenue system.

But most teams still operate like the early days:

- Local fixes.
- Heroic wins.
- Micro-optimizations without a macro-architecture.

So they scale people, tools and headcount but the underlying GTM system never matures with them.

That’s why €50M companies still fight €5M problems and why €50M to €1B+ isn’t a bigger journey, it’s a different one. At that stage, improvisation doesn’t just stop working, it starts compounding risk!

Misaligned systems, duplicated motions, incoherent data models, automation running ahead of strategy. Scale doesn’t hide the cracks, it amplifies them.

Founders call it losing efficiency, operators call it misalignment but it’s the same root cause. A revenue system that was never truly designed.

You don’t need more leads. You need outbound systems. Most teams still think outbound is “SDRs + tools + messaging.” It’s not...

Outbound touches 13 different GTM domains, whether you like it or not.

- Finance → cost structure
- RevOps → revenue math
- ICP & Messaging → who & why
- Product → usage signals
- ABM → account selection
- GTM Architecture → motion design
- Marketing → channels
- Sales → conversion paths
- CRM → data integrity
- AI → automation layer
- N8N & Clay → workflow engine
- People → skills & capacity

… and everything in between.

Outbound isn’t a tactic, it’s a system with inputs, throughput, and outputs.

And for every GTM motion, the system changes:

PLG → low-touch, cheap acquisition, automated sequencing

Mid-market SDR/AE → hybrid workflows, semi-personalized, layered follow-up

Enterprise → multi-threaded, deep research, exec-level orchestration

Completely different:

- costs
- workflows
- economics

So the question isn’t:

“How do we get more leads?” It’s: “Which outbound system matches the economics of our GTM motion?”

If you know the answer, scaling is easy. If you don’t, outbound feels random, expensive, and slow.

We help you design, build, or rebuild any of these systems - in-house or DFY - so they actually produce pipeline, not noise.

Which outbound motion are you running today and does it (still) your system match it?

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