CEO @GTM Partners | WSJ best selling Author of MOVE | Co-founder @Terminus @Peak Community

10 years ago, found my true passion: Teaching.

1️⃣ Teaching business – How to build and scale companies to win in business.
2️⃣ Teaching leadership – How to align teams for success to win at work.
3️⃣ Teaching life – How to bring work "skills" home to lead in life.

That’s why I combine them all to teach the business of Go-To-Market, leadership, and life.

Built and exited two well known companies (Pardot → Salesforce $2.7B, Terminus → acquired twice).
Written 3 books, including WSJ bestseller MOVE: The 4-Question Go-To-Market Framework.
Created the GTM Operating System, now used by thousands.
Hosted 1,000+ podcast episodes on GTM Made Simple.
Taught 70,000+ students through my LinkedIn courses.

I write daily on LinkedIn around the five core truths about Go-To-Market:

🚀 Trust in NRR.
🚀 CEO owns GTM.
🚀 Systems > Goals.
🚀 GTM is a transformation process.
🚀 Business transformation happens in teams.

175K+ people read my weekly research note on GTM: https://gtmonday.substack.com/
11K+ people follow my personal insights: https://becomingintentional.substack.com/
10k+ people apply principles of going from full-time to fractional to make $250k to a $1M a year: https://fractionalfreedomfriday.substack.com/

To Book me for speaking, keynotes: https://sangramhere.com/ or just DM me.

I’m on a mission to make Go-To-Market simple—for CEOs, founders, and teams. If you want to bring clarity, alignment, and trust to grow your business, let's talk.

Join my MOVE book companion course for CEOs, founders and GTM leaders 
and GTM Operating System Course (Used in two $100M+ exits, rated 4.5/5 stars)

DM me. Let’s build something great—intentionally. Join the MOVEment!

Sangram Vajre

my 15-year-old just closed a $300 deal + $50/month retainer.

here's how it happened.

i told him early on: we'll pay for tennis shoes, rackets, training. but food with friends? you gotta earn that.

when he was younger, we paid him for reading books. never for chores. chores are just part of being in a family.

now at 15, time to level up.

so he went to his tennis coach and asked a simple question: "what do you need help with?"

turns out they run Facebook ads and get about 15 leads a day. but no one has time to call them back quickly.

he said: "i'll call every lead as soon as they click."

now he's learning FB ads. learning CRM. learning follow-up.

$300 to set it up. $50/month to keep it running.

honestly... i'm starting to wonder if college is even the move. or if he should just keep building this.

but here's what i know for sure:

the right kind of pressure makes kids think outside the box.

not pressure to be perfect. pressure to figure it out.

my wife gave me that same gift in 2014 when she said "you have 1 year make your business work or you need to get a real job."

that led me to build Terminus (by DemandScience) to incredible heights and now i am doing the same with GTM Partners.

it's time to pass on the "healthy" pressure and see what happens next.

how are you teaching your kids about money and work?

love,
sangram

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Terminus (by DemandScience)

GTM Partners

Built two $100M+ companies | WSJ Best Selling Author of MOVE on go-to-market | GTMonday Editor with 175K+ subscribers teaching the GTM Operating System

in 2014, i asked my wife if i could quit Salesforce and start a company.

we had debt, no savings, and a second kid on the way.

she didn't say no.

but she didn't say yes either.

after a week of back and forth, she said 3 things that changed my life:

1. "i don't want you to have any regrets—or me stopping you."

2. "i'll get a job so we can pay the mortgage and keep going."

3. "you have 1 year. make the business work or find a real job."

she handed me permission and pressure at the same time.

that lit a fire i didn't know i had.

in the next 12 months:

→ we built Terminus (by DemandScience) from $0 to $1M ARR in 9 months
→ created the ABM category
→ launched 4 FlipMyFunnel events
→ started a daily FlipMyFunnel podcast
→ wrote ABM for Dummies

all because she believed in me enough to bet on me—and loved me enough to give me a deadline.

today, as a 2x entrepreneur, here's what i know:

the people who change your life aren't always the ones who say "you can do it."

sometimes they're the ones who say "you have 1 year. prove it."

who believed in you before you believed in yourself?

love,
sangram
p.s. if you've been in GTM at a corporate for 10+ years, it's 10x easier today than it was for me in 2014 to launch your own thing. do it.

Salesforce

i asked 1,500 people at a conference:

"how many of you are using AI?"

every hand went up.

"how many are using AI to be more productive?"

every hand stayed up.

"how many of you are actually more productive?"

the whole room laughed.

that's the irony of 2026.

we have more tools than ever.
more automations than ever.
more AI than ever.

and somehow... we're busier than ever.

here's what i think is happening:

AI is making us faster at the wrong things.

→ faster at creating content no one reads
→ faster at sending emails no one opens
→ faster at building reports no one acts on

speed without strategy is just organized chaos.

the companies winning right now aren't the ones with the most AI tools.

they're the ones who got clear on what actually matters—then used AI to do only that.

productivity isn't about doing more.

it's about doing less of the wrong things.

what's one thing AI helped you stop doing?

love,
sangram
p.s. i love doing keynotes and saying things no one will say it out loud :)

just finished my 7th CEO roundtable and had a light bulb moment.

every single CEO is talking about AI.

but almost all of them are focused on the same thing:

→ cut headcount
→ automate tasks
→ reduce spend

and then they wonder why nothing feels different.

i wonder if we're looking at AI all wrong.

AI isn't meant to reduce cost.

it's meant to increase value.

cost reduction is a one-time win. you cut once, you're done.

value creation compounds. new products. new markets. new ways to serve customers.

the companies winning with AI aren't asking "how do we do the same thing cheaper?"

they're seem to be asking "what can we do now that we couldn't do before?"

that's a completely different question.

and it requires a different mindset.

not "replace the human."

"elevate the human creativity and capacity."

one CEO paused and said: "i've been solving the wrong problem."

immediately energy came back into the conversation and we went 30 mins over talking about all the positives that comes with adding AI without trying to cut costs as the primary driver.

my big take away: 

i am going to start thinking and advising CEOs on how to use AI to increase value and not reduce cost as a starting point moving forward.

begs the question - which one are you doing — reducing cost or increasing value?

love,
sangram
p.s. DM me if you are a CEO and need GTM advisory related to this topic.

i spent 20+ years exploiting the B2B playbook.

built two $100M+ companies. three best-selling books. thousands of GTM strategies deployed.

and now i'm ready to say it out loud:

i helped write the OLD playbook. now i'm burning it.

more headcount doesn't mean more revenue.
more tools doesn't mean more pipeline.
more activity doesn't mean more growth.

we've been optimizing a system that's running out of gas.

the next era of B2B doesn't belong to the exploiters.

it belongs to the explorers.

that's exactly what i'm unpacking in my opening keynote at Agentic GTM: Realizing Revenue on March 26-27.

the talk: Growth Without the Bloat

here are the 5 BIG ideas i'll break down:

→ revenue per employee and NRR become the only metrics that matter
→ services as a software takes over SaaS
→ generalists will be more valuable than specialists
→ the rise of experienced solopreneurs fueling a new SMB category
→ AI to increase business value — not reduce cost

this isn't theory. it's what i'm seeing work right now.

if you're a CEO, CRO, or CMO trying to figure out what's next — this one's for you.

which of the top 5 BIG ideas are you excited about? 

📅 March 26 | 11:00 AM ET
🎟️ Attend The Metadata.io Agentic GTM: Realizing Revenue Virtual Event
Register now link here:  https://lnkd.in/eZJen_RD

love,
sangram

took me 4 years to figure this out. now i see it everywhere.

CEOs don't pay premium for strategy decks. they pay for clarity.

after $7M+ in GTM advisory,  here are the ONLY 8 things CEOs actually write BIG checks for:

𝗙𝗢𝗖𝗨𝗦 (𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗼𝘀)

1. define your ICP & prioritize segments — stop chasing the wrong customers.

2. build a roadmap around your highest-value products — focus on what drives real revenue.

3. develop a differentiated point of view — stand out instead of competing on price.

𝗘𝗫𝗘𝗖𝗨𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 (𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲)

4. implement a GTM motions playbook — repeatable plays that actually work.

5. accelerate ROI & time-to-value — turn customers into advocates, fast.

6. focus on data-driven customer and product insights — fuel NRR growth.

𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 (𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗲)

7. create an executive GTM dashboard — full visibility, no surprises.

8. align teams with clarity & trust — move faster, execute better.

notice what's NOT on this list?

more leads. more content. more tools.

CEOs at $10M–$100M don't need more. they need less — with more precision.

which of these 8 is your company struggling with most right now?

love,
sangram

p.s. our 100+ GTM OS Certified partners solve these 8 problems daily for CEOs from startups to billion dollar companies. if you need help, check out GTMarketplace or just dm me.

a CEO of an $11M company asked me last week:

"we're growing 30% a year. why does it feel like we're running in place?"

i asked one question: "what's your NRR?"

she paused. "i think it's around 90%."

that's the problem.

here's the math most CEOs don't run:

→ 90% NRR: you lose 10% of your revenue every year. you need 40% new business just to grow 30%. you're filling a leaky bucket.

→ 110% NRR: your existing customers grow 10% on their own. now you only need 20% new business to hit the same 30% growth.

→ 120% NRR: your customers are doing the heavy lifting. new logos become gravy, not survival.

same growth target. completely different effort.

most CEOs at this stage are obsessed with new logos. i get it. new logos feel like progress.

but the companies that scale aren't the ones with the best sales teams.

they're the ones where customers stay, expand, and refer.

NRR isn't a CS metric. it's a GTM metric.

if your marketing and sales teams aren't thinking about retention and expansion, you're leaving the easiest revenue on the table.

her response: "i've been solving the wrong problem."

do you know your NRR?

love,
sangram
p.s. building a GTMarketplace with 100+ certified GTM partners who are solving these problems daily for CEOs.

when you work for a company, every competitor becomes your enemy.

when you go fractional, every other fractional becomes your homie.

meet Matt Anthony and Stacy Sutton.

both are successful GTM leaders. both are GTM OS Certified Partners building profitable businesses. both are in ATL.

so what do they do? they meet up. they build together.

this is what happens when you shift from W2 to 1099.

something changes in your mindset.

you stop seeing other people in your space as threats. you start seeing them as allies.

but here's the thing no one talks about:

going fractional can get lonely. really lonely.

you leave the meetings, the Slack channels, the water cooler. you're on your own.

and then you find others doing the same thing.

now with 100+ GTM OS partners across the globe, i see this happening all the time.

people meeting up. sharing deals. building businesses together.

people ask me: "what's the ROI of building this community?"

my answer: a big smile on my face.

that's the ROI.

did i go overboard with the word "homie" here?

love,
sangram
p.s. follow Matt Anthony and Stacy Sutton for each of them are building an incredible practice to help CEOs fix and scale their GTM, fast.

last week, our GTM OS fractionals closed over $1M.

not in a quarter. in one week.

how? they follow the same system: brand, demand, delivery.

→ brand: they don't look like every other fractional. they use GTM OS certified research and process to stand out from the sea of consultants who aren't really building a business.

→ demand: they show CEOs exactly what they'll get. no fluff. outcome-based frameworks that make the value obvious before the first call.

→ delivery: with 100+ certified partners and data from 1000+ companies running on GTM OS, everything they do is already battle-tested. no guessing. no improvising. A+ delivery from day one.

most fractionals are winging it alone.

building their own decks. creating their own frameworks. hoping it works.

our partners don't have to.

they walk into every engagement with a system that's been pressure-tested across industries, stages, and company sizes.

this is why i love this community.

you don't have to figure it out by yourself.

you don't have to compete on price.

you don't have to feel like "just another consultant."

you get to build a real business — with a real system — alongside people who are doing the same thing.

this is the best time to go all in on building a fractional business... if you have 10+ years of GTM experience.

love,
sangram
p.s. throwback picture from GTM Made Simple roadshow

in 2024, we had 3 GTM OS Certified Partners.

today? almost 100. across 3 continents.

but the numbers aren't what got me this week.

it's this photo.

Shelli Ryan, APR, Fellow PRSA and Melanie J. Lennert-Anliker on stage in Dubai sharing our new research and building a profitable GTM business.

at the same time—same week—

GTM OS sessions running in the UK - Abbas Shivji Navin Jaitly - leading the way!

another in Sydney, Australia - Sue Foley, i see you!

 in Canada - Murtaza Kumail Abbas, you are killing it brother!

in San Francisco - Lydia Flocchini and Tim Hillison doing joint roundtables

Bryan Brown and i just looked at each other like... is this real?

we didn't build a course.

we get to build a MOVEment.

→ 3 partners → 100 partners
→ 1 county → 3 continents
→ 0 businesses on GTM OS → over 1,000 today

and now GTMarketplace has the leading marketing and sales execs ready to take control of their careers.

here's what i've learned:

you don't scale a framework by selling it.

you scale it by giving people something worth teaching.

the partners aren't just certified. they're invested. they're on stages. they're in rooms we'll never be in. they're reaching companies we'll never meet.

that's not a business model.

that's a belief system.

to every GTM OS partner out there—thank you.

you made this real.

who's someone in your world building something bigger than themselves right now?

love,
sangram

CEO @ Ad Hoc | Veteran Cross-border Go-to-Liquidity™ & Go-to-Market Operator, specialty in improved EBITDA quality and non-rep dependent revenue programs that create results in 90 days

CEO & Co-Founder CRO2go | Fractional CRO & Board Director | Scaling B2B SaaS & FinTech Revenue Across Europe | INSEAD Board Programme | Pioneering fractional leadership model | Speaker

Helping £1M–£10M Life Sciences, HealthTech & SaaS founders turn messy traction into predictable revenue | Fractional CRO | GTM Partner & Advisor

GTM Certified Advisor and Sales Specialist / Fixing Stalled Growth, in B2B Growth Focused Companies/ Best - Selling Author and International Speaker

Entrepreneur | CMO | Strategist | GTM Advisor & GTM OS Certified Partner

All Things GTM | Fractional Revenue Leader | Dad x 3

Legal Tech Category Designer & Leader | Fractional GTM Operator & Advisor | Creator of Legal Tech Revenue Science™ + Motion to Scale™ | 5× GTM Growth & Exits | Multi-GTM Awards| ILTA Influential Woman in Legal Tech

Turning Lumpy Revenue into Predictable Growth | Global GTM Operator + Engineer | FlexScale & FullStack GTM for Engineering-Led Scaleups | $1B+ Impact | Ex-Visa, Microsoft, PayPal | #gotimmarket

Transform your GTM & align your teams with our GTM O.S. framework & certification

***Hot take *** every company is about to land in one of three places.

and your GTM strategy depends on which one you're in.

𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝟭: 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 (Competition zone)

you compete on efficiency or necessity. your product gets cheaper every day. AI and automation are compressing your margins.

GTM here = speed to market, volume, low-touch sales. you win on distribution, not differentiation.

𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝟮: 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 (Winning Zone)

you compete on transformation. your customers don't just use your product — they become something different because of it. you get overvalued every day.

GTM here = outcomes, stories, premium pricing. you win on depth, not reach.

𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝟯: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝘂𝗱𝗱𝘆 𝗺𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲 (Instability Zone)

you're not the cheapest. you're not the most transformational. you're just... there.

GTM here = competing on everything, winning on nothing. no clear positioning. no pricing power. no moat.

this is where most companies go to die.

the hard truth?

most GTM teams are building playbooks for lane 2 while their company is stuck in lane 3.

or worse — they're in lane 1 and pretending they're in lane 2.

the first job of any GTM leader is to get honest about which lane you're actually in.

then build the strategy that fits.

which lane is your company in right now?

love,
sangram

time for a reintroduction.

most of you know me as the Terminus guy. the ABM guy. the author of a few books.

but here's what i get to do now — and honestly, it's something i could only dream of.

i get to help people turn 10+ years of GTM experience into a real business.

not a side hustle. not "consulting between jobs." a real, sustainable business.

i've been doing this on and off for 5 years. but in the last year, Bryan Brown  and i have done it 100 times.

100 GTM leaders. building $250K–$500K+ practices. working with startups and PE firms who actually value their expertise.

just last week, was our first $1M week with a few certified partners (fractionals) sharing their wins in the community. 

this is the new reality.

so here's what i've learned:

the skills you built climbing someone else's ladder? they're worth more than you think.

but it only works if you're serious about it.

this isn't for people looking for a backup plan.

it's for people ready to bet on themselves.

so if you've gone fractional /solo — or you're thinking about it — i want to help.

and if you know someone who fits that description, tag them or send them my way.

this is the work i am meant to do right now.

thank you for supporting the GTMovement!

if you want to share the word, pls repost it.

love,
sangram

"We've been running on EOS for 10 years. When I saw GTM OS, it immediately clicked—it's the missing operating system for go-to-market." that's what Eric Baum, CEO of Bluleadz told me last week. 

Eric runs a very successful agency on HubSpot and EOS Worldwide.

he's seen what works and what doesn't. and his take got me thinking about why so many EOS companies still struggle with revenue.

EOS gives you operational discipline. 

→ rocks 
→ scorecards 
→ accountability 
→ meeting rhythms 

but EOS doesn't tell you how to go to market. 

it doesn't answer: 

→ who's your real ICP? 
→ what's your positioning? 
→ how do marketing, sales, and CS actually align? 
→ where's the pipeline breaking down? 

that's the gap GTM OS fills. 

EOS runs the company. 
GTM OS runs the revenue engine.

most companies have one or the other. 

few have both working together. 

but when they do? that's when things start compounding. 

Eric's seeing it with his clients — the ones running both systems are moving faster and with more clarity than the ones trying to figure out GTM on their own. 

if you're already on EOS and feel like go-to-market is the missing piece — this might be worth exploring. 

are you running both or just one? 

love, 
sangram 
p.s. shoutout to Eric Baum for the insight — always learn from people doing it in the field.

in 20 mins… i am doing a keynote called “Growth without bloat” 

why i am excited:

1. brand new research from 1000+ companies and over 100 CEO conversations since beginning of this year

2. new model showing the gap in B2B worldview and real worldview when it comes to go-to-market

3. 8 ideas that will cost $0 to create more revenue and will make your CEO scratch their heads.

so wish me best and see you soon!

it’s hosted by Lisa Sharapata and Gil Allouche at Metadata 

let’s go!

love,
sangram 
p.s. if you want slides just comment “growth” and my EA will dm you… i think that’s how you go viral 🫣

No alternative text description for this image

i spent 35 years believing the biggest risk was becoming an entrepreneur. i had it completely backwards.

before that? i thought the only way to build something meaningful was living paycheck to paycheck. climbing someone else's ladder. hoping for the next promotion.

today, i think that's the greatest myth — especially if you have 10+ years of experience.

here's what nobody tells you:

you already know what it takes to build a business.

you've built pipelines. you've closed deals. you've led teams. you've driven revenue.

you just did it for someone else.

and no — you don't need to raise money. you don't need a $100M company to call yourself an entrepreneur or soloprenuer. you don't even need a software idea.

what you need is to make a meaningful living on your terms.

when i see CMOs and CROs working 60-70 hours a week, grinding for 1-2 years, and then back on the job hunt... it breaks my heart.

why not have 2-4 clients instead of one employer?

why not diversify your income so you're never at the mercy of one company's next layoff?

why not leverage 20 years of experience AND have fun doing it?

the risk isn't going out on your own.

the risk is waiting too long to start.

am i wrong?

love,
sangram
p.s. "the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." — William Mather Lewis

looking for 3-5 AI-powered GTM tools to introduce to our 100+ GTM OS Certified partners and agencies.

here's why this matters:

there are 10,000+ GTM AI tools out there. buyers have no idea what's actually good.

too much noise. too many demos. too little trust.

so how do people actually decide what to buy?

they ask someone they trust.

our 100+ partners are building $250K-$500K+ fractional businesses all over the world. each one works with 3-5 clients at a time.

that's 300-500 companies in this ecosystem right now.

here's the deal:

→ give our partners access to your tech
→ they recommend it to clients when it fits
→ they earn a commission on referrals
→ they post about it on LinkedIn (real usage, not paid ads)

this isn't influencer marketing.

it's micro-advisor distribution.

trusted people recommending tools they actually use to clients who actually need them.

no cold outreach. no ad fatigue. no "request a demo" forms.

just warm introductions from people who've already earned trust.

i think this is how B2B buying is going to work moving forward.

not more ads. more trusted advisors.

if you're building AI-powered GTM tech and this sounds interesting — DM me "PARTNER" and let's talk.

love,
sangram

p.s. we have a rigorous process so if you can't handle an influx of deals yet, hold off for now.

just wrapped a LIVE workshop with 25 GTM leaders who want to go fractional.

4 hours. no fluff. just the real stuff.

here's what we covered:

𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁
→ why you and why now?
→ 3 ways to build a fractional business
→ 8 outcomes CEOs actually pay for
→ 15 limiting beliefs holding you back

𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
→ build your LinkedIn and define your ICP
→ set up your tech stack and funnel
→ create a content strategy for consistency
→ sell through frameworks — outcomes, not hours

𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀
→ how to land 1-3 clients in 90 days
→ the 10-week challenge to make it real

this is the system our 100+ GTM OS partners use to build $250K–$500K+ practices.

not theory. not motivation. a real playbook.

if you're thinking about going fractional — or already started and feeling stuck — i want to help.

comment "GTM" and my EA send you the entire deck starting Friday.

plus i am included a recording in which i will show how we built a $7M advisory using this process. no silver bullet - just consistently doing what only 1% would do. 

who is this NOT for: in between jobs or not serious about building a $250k+ business or having less than 10+ years of marketing/sales/CMO/CRO experience. 

comment "GTM"... let's go!

love,
sangram
p.s. thank you Aby Varma for having me + Stacy Sutton and Matt Anthony for being there as GTM OS Certified Partners doing this for real!

how do you make $500K consistently as a fractional CMO/CRO leader?

not once. not in a lucky year. but predictably.

it's a math problem, not a motivation problem.

here are the 3 models i see working:

→ model 1: 4 retainers at $10K/month = $480K

→ model 2: 3 retainers + 2 strategic projects at $50K each = $460K–$500K

→ model 3: 2 PE-backed clients at $20K/month = $480K

$500K is not about 12 clients. it's about 2–4 serious ones.

but here's what separates $250K fractionals from $500K fractionals:

$250K fractionals sell execution — content, ads, HubSpot management.

$500K fractionals sell architecture — revenue design, GTM resets, alignment across marketing + sales + product.

execution scales down. architecture scales up.

the other difference? specificity.

generic fractionals cap at $250K.

the ones crossing $500K have a wedge:

→ post-Series A pipeline resets
→ PE-backed revenue acceleration
→ ABM for $100M+ portfolios

and the hard truth?

$500K requires selling. confidently. at that level.

many people can do the work. few are willing to price it.

if you don't sell, they can't buy.

which model are you running right now?

love,
sangram
p.s. we now have 100 GTM OS Certified Partners doing this and just celebrated several folks crossing this milestone on our Monday Mastermind. if you want to join the MOVEment, just  dm me.

a partner at a $10B PE firm asked me last week:

"what's the hourly rate for a fractional CMO?"

my answer: "don't be a hammer looking for nails."

she's trying to help her portfolio companies scale with "just in time" hiring instead of full-time execs. smart move. but she was thinking about it wrong.

here's what i told her:

we're shifting from "knowledge workers" to "wisdom workers."

knowledge workers get paid for what they know.
wisdom workers get paid for the outcomes they create.

the best fractional GTM leaders i know don't charge by the hour. they charge by the transformation.

and this shift is happening fast.

→ fractional CFOs normalized it first. companies realized they didn't need a full-time finance exec—they needed outcomes.

→ Fiverr normalized it at the entry level. millions of people building income without a boss.

→ now it's happening in GTM.

for the first time, marketing and sales leaders with 10+ years of experience are building $300K–$500K practices.

not consulting gigs.

not "between jobs" work.

real businesses.

when Bryan Brown and i started the GTM advisory business in 2021, we were figuring this out as we went. today? it's a proven path.

the old model: charge by the hour, compete on rate, get commoditized.

the new model: charge by the outcome, compete on wisdom, build a real business.

this isn't a trend.

it's a reset.

if you've been thinking about making the leap, check out GTMarketplace — 100+ GTM leaders already building $300K+ practices. link in comments.

love,
sangram
p.s. dm me if you want to be on this GTMarketplace only if you have 10+ years of marketing/sales/GTM experirence.

Fiverr

the US lost 92,000 jobs in February. badly missing estimates of 55,000 payroll additions. unemployment rose to 4.4%.

at the same time, fractionals in our GTM OS community had a record week (not just a month) — generating over $1M in just one week.

same economy. different outcomes.

one group is waiting for permission.

the other group built their own.

i'm not saying fractional is for everyone. it's not.

but if you've spent 10+ years in GTM, built pipeline, led teams, and delivered results for others... 

then it begs the obvious question...

why are you still waiting for someone else to decide your future?

the economy doesn't care about your resume.

but your skills? your network? your ability to deliver outcomes?

those are yours. no one can lay those off.

the shift from W2 to 1099 isn't just a tax change.

it's a mindset change.

from "i need a job" to "i am the job."

what do you think is going to happen in 2026 to your job?

love,
sangram

International Expansion at Disney+Hotstar | Digital Strategy & Consulting

I’ve spent the better part of the last 2 decades taking an unusual but rewarding path - one that’s taught me how to adapt, build, and keep moving forward. Looking back, the pattern is clear - I’m a builder. I thrive on curiosity, push boundaries through experimentation, and choose impact over convention every time.

From Idea to Flipkart to moving cities, my early career was full of transitions. Somewhere between the moves and milestones, I discovered my love for marketing. What started as side gigs soon evolved into running my own agency, and that’s when the bigger picture began to take shape.

I later returned to corporate, working with TVF, MX Player, and Disney+ Hotstar. Each role sharpened my skills and gave me incredible mentors. Today, I’m tight-knit into B2B SaaS, where I get to combine everything I’ve learned into something that truly excites me.

Outside of work, I love teaching. I’ve delivered lectures at MDI, IIMs, and other management colleges - sharing what I’ve learned and, in return, learning even more from bright young minds.

Swati Paliwal

90% marketing leaders say that AI search is here to stay. Grateful to Business Standard & ThePrint for covering ReSO AI’s State of search report to further spread the word. 

LLMs are reshaping the way brands are discovered online. It means users no longer want to open 10 tabs, scan multiple articles, compare perspectives, and manually build conclusions. 

Instead, they want to set context, remove friction, and instantly get the answer they need. 

And ReSO AI's State of Search Report exploring how discovery of brands has been shifting just went live.

Now that you're part of this shift, you can access the report & the coverage in the comments below.

Founder - ReSO | Ex Disney+ | AI-powered GTM & revenue growth | GEO (Generative engine optimisation)

Most brands still treat Reddit like just another distribution channel.

It’s not.

Reddit in 2026 is shaping culture differently. And the brands winning there understand that subtle creative shifts matter more than big-budget noise.

I've noticed a few trends that are taking over & crucial this year:
↳ Nostalgia-driven storytelling.
↳ UGC as real social proof.
↳ Niche-inspired campaigns.
↳ Campaigns that unfold like stories.

On Reddit, brands trigger conversations. Jokes evolve. Screenshots travel. Threads resurface months later. If your brand becomes a “character,” the community keeps the narrative alive.

This isn’t gaming the algorithm. Rather, understanding culture mechanics.

Reddit rewards brands that:
 ↳ Respect context
 ↳ Embrace transparency
 ↳ Think long-term narrative, not one-off impressions

Is your Reddit strategy aligned with how the platform actually works in 2026?

Or are you still repurposing LinkedIn posts and calling it community marketing?

Reddit Trends for 2026

Did you ever wonder why some YouTube videos explode while others disappear in the feed?

An analysis of 323,000+ outlier videos across 50,000 channels (62.6B views) reveals a few patterns behind what actually drives performance.

First, emotion beats information. Top triggers in high-performing videos:
↳ Humor
↳ Anger
↳ Controversy

Titles with negative sentiment generated ~20% higher median views. “Why this fails” often outperforms “How this works.” Second, numbers don’t always help. About 35% of videos used numbers in titles, yet they received 11% fewer views on average. Structure doesn’t drive clicks. Emotion does.

Third, shorter titles win. Titles around 30 characters delivered ~60% more median views than those above 70 characters.

Packaging matters too:
↳ Text-heavy thumbnails saw 19% fewer views
↳ Bright colors stand out in YouTube’s neutral UI
↳ In business/finance content, faces increased performance by 36%

And interestingly, longer videos often perform better. The 15–25 minute range tends to trigger stronger recommendations.

The pattern is simple:
↳ Emotion drives clicks
↳ Clarity drives packaging
↳ Watch time drives recommendations

Most performance differences come from packaging, not production.

Are you doing anything differently in how you package your YouTube content?

YouTube Virality Decoded With Analysis Of 62.2 Bn Views

Cloudflare just made a structural change for AI agents:

When an agent requests a page with the Accept: text/markdown header, Cloudflare can now convert the HTML to Markdown at the edge and serve that instead.

This drastically reduces the token weight on the AI agents.

A simple Markdown heading like: "## About Us" may use ~3 tokens.

The HTML equivalent with classes, IDs, and surrounding layout markup can consume 12–15 tokens before content even begins. On a full page, the gap compounds. ~16,000 tokens in HTML can be reduced to ~3,000 in Markdown (roughly an 80% reduction).

Most AI systems already convert HTML to Markdown internally to strip layout and isolate structure. Doing this at the network layer removes an extra processing step and reduces ambiguity about what the core content is.

Cloudflare also returns metadata like estimated Markdown token count and content usage signals in headers. That allows agents to manage context windows and understand permitted use without additional parsing.

To enable Markdown for Agents for your zone, log into the Cloudflare dashboard, select your account, select the zone, look for Quick Actions and toggle the Markdown for Agents button to enable. 

This feature is available today in Beta at no cost for Pro, Business and Enterprise plans, as well as SSL for SaaS customers.

Have you tried it? Share your experience with me below.

Many brands say they’re “building a new category.”

But most are just rebranding.

Rebranding is cosmetic:
→ New colors
→ New messaging
→ Same business

Category design is different. It changes how the market measures value.

A simple example is Uber. People were already taking taxis. The real frustration was uncertainty. Uber solved that by showing exactly when your ride would arrive.

That small shift changed how people measured convenience. That’s the test.

If the market measures value the same way, it’s rebranding.

If it starts measuring something new, you might be designing a category.

I had a wonderful conversation with Karthiga Ratnam on this and so much more a few weeks back. If you missed it and are looking to learn more, I'll drop the link to it below.

Most founders think sales problems are hiring problems.

They’re usually not. If you want structure, focus on three things:

1. Data: 
↳ Know your numbers; where do deals stall? What actually converts? If you can’t measure it, you can’t scale it.

2. Buyer journey:
↳ Your sales process has to match how your buyer makes decisions. Not how you wish they did.

3. Systems over hero reps:
↳ Many founders think they need a superstar AE or VP of Sales.
But if revenue dips the moment that person leaves, you don’t have a system. You have a dependency.

A strong system lets average reps perform well. It protects revenue. It compounds over time.

Superstars can accelerate growth. Systems sustain it. Build accordingly.

I had an amazing conversation with Monika Owczarek on this and much more on our live session a few weeks ago. If you want to learn about unlocking 10X revenue in 2026 and Fractional VP secrets to scale tech startups find the entire episode link below.

How does ChatGPT approach SEO? Very deliberately.

While many companies treat SEO as an afterthought, the data suggests OpenAI treats it as infrastructure.

Here’s what the numbers show:

1. Serious investment in SEO talent:
 ↳ OpenAI reportedly invested $600K+ into SEO roles, including a content strategist and a growth role focused on SEO, CRO, and web strategy.

2. Massive organic reach:
 ↳ ChatGPT drives roughly 76.5M monthly organic visits, generating an estimated $92M in annual revenue from SEO traffic.

4. Strong search dominance:
 Compared with competitors like Perplexity AI and Claude:
↳ ChatGPT domain authority: 99
↳ Keyword rankings: ~287K

5. Technical SEO done right:
 ↳ Detailed robots.txt and multiple sitemaps
 ↳ Clean, keyword-rich URL structures
 ↳ Indexability built into the site architecture

6. Content designed for conversion:
 ↳ Use cases and industry-focused pages
 ↳ Scalable user-generated content
 ↳ Separate funnels for free users and paid conversions


The takeaway is simple.
If one of the most valuable AI companies in the world still prioritizes SEO, it tells you something about how durable organic discovery still is.

The question is are you treating SEO as a growth lever or just a marketing task?

Hoe ChatGPT Does Its Own SEO?

Previous estimates of AI usage were undercounting by 4 to 5 times. 

Most measurement was web-only. Once mobile app data is included, the numbers look very different.

AI now receives 45 billion monthly sessions worldwide, 56% the size of global search. 83% of that usage happens in mobile apps.

The displacement narrative doesn't hold up against the data. Search hasn't declined. What's happened is that total query behavior has expanded. Combined sessions across search engines and AI grew 26% worldwide comparing 2024 to 2025. People are doing more searching, across more surfaces.

One number worth noting: worldwide AI usage is 7 times that of the US. Global sessions have plateaued since July 2025 while US usage continues climbing, up 300% in December 2025 versus a year earlier.

For anyone building distribution strategy, the mobile composition matters more than most current planning reflects:
↳ A behavior that's 83% mobile isn't a desktop research tool with a mobile version. 

It's a different surface, and the gap between how teams are measuring AI's role and where usage is actually happening is likely larger than it appears

AI Query Volume Is Much bigger Than You Think

Most brand advice eventually leads to the same place: tell your story. 

Origin, struggle, turning point, lesson. It's a clean structure and it works, but it has a ceiling built into it. Stories end. Once you've told yours, you're either repeating it or looking for a new one.

Lore operates differently. 

It's an accumulation of positions, decisions, and patterns that build up over time until people start doing the work for you. Communities excavate it, reference it, argue over it. The brand stops being the sole narrator.

Patagonia and Liquid Death are obvious consumer examples, but they point to the same thing. Neither built their cultural weight through storytelling. They built it through repeated, legible behavior over time. 
↳ Patagonia sued the government over public land and chose various climate change fights to pick. 
↳ Liquid Death accumulated enough inside references, absurdist bits, and anti-marketing marketing that people feel like participants in something, not targets of a campaign. 

The marketing documented it. It didn't create it.

Stripe is a more instructive case for B2B. They barely advertised for years. The lore built through what they shipped, who they hired, and what they published. By the time most people in fintech formed a strong opinion about Stripe, it came from accumulated exposure across many touchpoints, not a brand narrative.

This is also why manufactured lore fails visibly. You can tell when a brand is performing depth rather than demonstrating it. The full history of a company's behavior is searchable now, and people are reasonably good at detecting the gap.

A few things worth sitting with: 
↳ What has your company done recently that someone outside the industry would find worth repeating? 
↳ What positions have you taken that cost something? 
↳ What would people say you stand for if they couldn't reference your website?

Those answers are closer to lore than anything a content calendar produces.

What about you? Do you share your brand's lores? Or are you stuck in the loop of storytelling?

Can the digital infrastructure bear the burden of such massive surge in digital use? 

Clearly not. 

Right now, hyperscalers are aggressively diverting funds from traditional x86 and ARM architecture to build massive, GPU-heavy AI data centers. Older infrastructure is being neglected.

If you are building B2B SaaS or relying heavily on third-party integrations, the reliability has fundamentally shifted. Here is what the latest 2025–2026 data shows:

1. The big outages are coming: 
↳ Forrester predicts at least two major, multi-day cloud outages in 2026 driven strictly by this architectural shift and the neglect of legacy systems.

2. Downtime is surging: 
↳ General cloud outage frequency jumped 15% year-over-year, with the average incident duration now stretching to 2.5 hours.

3. APIs are breaking faster: 
↳ API downtime increased by a staggering 60% year-over-year. 
↳ API errors are now the leading cause of monitoring failures across distributed systems, outpacing standard HTTP and timeout errors.

4. The dependency trap: 
75% of IT leaders report that third-party dependencies are the primary trigger for their own system downtime.

5. Physical grid limits: 
↳ Power and UPS failures still account for 45% of all impactful data center outages as heavy AI workloads drain existing grid and cooling capacities.

At $8,600 per minute in average downtime costs, we can no longer assume that "the cloud" simply means "always online." Modern SaaS platforms are highly interdependent, meaning a single third-party API outage can easily cascade and break your own SLA.

We need to rethink redundancy. Relying on a single cloud provider or treating external APIs as infallible is a massive operational risk this year.

How are you stress-testing your third-party dependencies and API fallbacks for 2026?

Did you ever put an exclamation point in your email, then delete it then put it back again?

Here's some data driven insights into the use of the energetic exclamation mark:

In professional emails, an exclamation mark often softens tone. “Thanks!” feels warmer than “Thanks.” It reduces the risk of sounding abrupt, especially in short replies. That matters in fast-moving work where most messages are five lines or less.

Many people use exclamation marks to simulate assertiveness. Don't do that. “Please review this by EOD!” “We need this live today!” The punctuation adds volume, not clarity. It can read less like leadership and more like urgency without authority.

There’s also a gender dynamic. Many women use more exclamation marks to avoid being perceived as blunt. That tells you something about how tone gets judged in professional settings.

So use your exclamation points judiciously!

Your job (in an AI native company) now is to automate your job. The primary job, regardless of function, is onboarding and managing agents well.

The title isn't metaphorical. At Linear, you can mention an agent to create and assign a task the same way you'd loop in a colleague. 

At Factory, a 55-person software company valued at $300M, there are no separate PM and engineering roles. They hire product engineers whose day looks like:
↳ Reviewing agent decision traces
↳ Writing governance updates rather than code
↳ Handling only the PRs that agents flag as genuinely high-risk.

Agents handle the default leaving humans to handle the exceptions.

Institutional knowledge has become infrastructure. You can encode product management, frontend UI, and data analysis into reusable skills that any employee can invoke. The specialist who knows a domain deeply is more valuable now if they can translate what they know into something repeatable that agents can run.

This is a different organizational logic from treating AI as a productivity layer on top of existing structures. The gap between companies who are adapting to these AI native methodologies is larger than it appears.

And will definitely become more visible over the next couple of years.

What’s one part of your role you could realistically hand off to an agent today?

Brands saw up to 19% worse perception scores when their ads ran next to content people found objectionable. 

Not because the brand did anything wrong. Just proximity.

Brands like Jaguar and Sandals have pulled their entire digital spend in the past, after finding their ads sitting next to negative societal elements. The ads got there through programmatic buying, which optimizes for reach and cost, not context. When two things appear together, people start associating them. The environment moves fast but the association still forms, even briefly. 

And the effect travels. People who only heard about a placement, without actually seeing it, still rated the affected brand 17.7% worse. 

Secondhand exposure carries almost the same weight as direct.

Response timing also matters more than most brands account for. An immediate public response recovered around 18% of lost trust. Waiting a week brought that number down to 7%.

One thing that stood out for me was that the effect largely disappears when the content fits the brand's established tone. An edgy brand appearing next to edgy content doesn't trigger the same reaction. 

The gap between what a brand projects and what surrounds its ad seems to be what drives the damage.

For anyone running programmatic at scale, whitelisting approved channels and targeting by content keyword rather than audience alone aren't particularly conservative choices. 

They're just how you account for context in a system that doesn't do it automatically.

What do you think about this? Have you experienced anything similar? Would love to know it below.

The irony of AI in sales? The more we use it to scale our messages, the easier it becomes for buyers to spot when we didn’t actually do the work.

The organisations that will win in this new age won’t be the ones using AI the fastest, they’ll be the ones using it the smartest, by blending automation with genuine understanding.

That’s exactly why I am excited to host Samantha McKenna, Founder of #samsales Consulting and creator of the SMYKM® (Show Me You Know Me) methodology, for a conversation on how to sell authentically in a tech-driven world.

Samantha is one of the most respected voices in modern sales. After leading sales at LinkedIn and building her own award‑winning consultancy, she’s helped thousands of sellers and leaders win by leading with empathy, research, and personal touch. Her SMYKM® approach has become the gold standard for showing buyers you’ve done your homework, and that you care enough to prove it.

If you’re a sales leader, founder, or GTM professional who wants to stand out for the right reasons, save your spot because this session is for you.

Swati Paliwal, Mohit Gupta and 8 other attendees

AI, Authenticity, and the Future of Sales

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