Innovate at the edge, scale at the core: My approach for driving revenue predictability

Leading revenue strategy and operations over the years means I’ve had the chance to oversee a lot of different functions. Among them are corporate strategy, revenue operations, revenue enablement, professional services, IT, and others. 

Because of this broad scope, people often ask me about my approach to leadership and how I handle pressure. These are fair questions, and here’s the truth: Despite the increasing pressure on us as sales leaders, I’ve never been more excited to work in the revenue arena. These feelings stem from the unprecedented power of technology at this unique moment in time. 

AI is driving astounding levels of productivity and performance, giving us actionable insights in seconds. The advancements integrate well with my go-to-market (GTM) strategy and leadership philosophy: “Innovate at the edge, scale at the core.” It’s more than a mantra, it’s my mental model and a guiding principle through the complexities of revenue predictability and growth. 

Let’s explore why innovating at the edge is so important.

Copying the competition is a trap but innovating is the lifeblood of progress. Innovation fuels differentiation and expansion within a competitive landscape. That’s why GTM leaders and teams need time to surface and solve “white space problems.” They’re the unaddressed and underexplored opportunities and challenges within our markets and organizations. We can’t let day-to-day pressures and grind make us lose sight of them. 

I encourage teams to carve out and intentionally cultivate the wide, agile spaces where ideas can come forward and possibilities seem limitless. That’s where your innovations will take shape. Periodically, I’ll take a small group offsite, with no devices. Equipped with relevant data and insights, we’ll say, “Here’s a big meaty topic and problem we want to sink our teeth into and solve, we’ve got a day,” and we get to work and have some fun in the process. In those moments, we unleash creativity to develop new products, services, or strategies that address unmet needs or untapped opportunities. 

The focus on innovating at the edge has driven the teams I’ve led to fully embrace AI for sales optimization — empowering reps, boosting productivity, and ultimately driving revenue. While AI is all the buzz today, building real time guidance to our sales teams on the most impactful customer conversations they can have, guided by AI, is worth it’s weight in gold.

AI has been essential for improving internal education too. For example, new products or features launches usually come with big enablement campaigns designed to train teams on how to talk about them with customers. Before, it was hard to gauge the effectiveness of campaigns like this but now, Gong’s Revenue Intelligence platform can show us who’s having the desired conversations and what the results are.

And you know what? Sometimes messaging doesn’t land like we hoped, but having the right insights helps us take actionable steps to improve. Once you’re fast at refining your GTM strategy and messaging to achieve the desired outcomes, you can push it even further. This is what scaling at the core truly means. 

Another way to scale at the core? Change how we approach enablement — every aspect of enablement must support revenue enablement. 

That’s because enablement is about more than onboarding. We want to take top-of-funnel activity all the way through to tangible revenue with visibility at every stage. So when teams develop product launches, campaigns, or competitive offers, it’s essential that content marketing, product marketing, and sales are seamlessly working together.

For example, propensity-to-buy models can help lock in target customers and set pipeline and revenue targets. Content marketers develop the right collateral to attract those customers, and product marketing provides the necessary insights and case studies to guide potential buyers through their decision-making. Finally, enablement comes in – deploying effective demos and industry references to seal the deals. Technology like Gong can help us see exactly what and when to tweak messaging and tactics, so we can continuously improve our approach.

I also think that when we, as revenue leaders, are busy scaling, we can’t underestimate the importance of providing a compelling, holistic experience for our teams. If sellers have to work across 20+ lackluster tools, it hampers their productivity and potentially even their happiness. My experience: consolidate and centralize the best revenue technology in your tech stack. Where possible, push data to your CRM as the single source of truth that powers success across the entire revenue cycle. 

Scalability and predictability go hand in hand. But when we consider revenue predictability, we’ve got to remember that it’s closely tied to the culture we create within our sales teams, so setting the right tone is critical. We have to prioritize honesty and accuracy, encouraging our teams to admit potential challenges. Celebrating predictability over last-minute heroics should be the norm, and AI is going to be our “hockey stick on impact.” Its abilities are already taking us to incredible heights but we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.

AI’s effectiveness depends on the data we give it and, as you know, we’re only in the early stages of that. As more and more data feeds into the models, I don’t think we can even imagine what we’ll be able to do in a couple years time. 

My decisions as a revenue leader are anchored in a human-centric approach. Sales, as we know, is both an art and a science. I always remind teams that technology is an enabler, empowering us to understand our business’s intricacies like no other. 

We’re supported by AI but it’s how we interpret and use the information it offers, coupled with a culture of accountability, that sets us apart. By pushing the boundaries and scaling wisely, we can stay ahead in competitive markets and ensure sustainable growth for the long term.