TL;DR
A founder closes 87% of deals while his team closes 12%. The problem is not a lack of talent or tools; it is the absence of a robust GTM system. Many companies between $2M and $20M hit a ceiling because they depend on the founder or keep focusing only on the product. The answer is to treat GTM like a second product with structure, process, and clarity so the business can grow beyond one person.
Last Tuesday, I sat across from a founder who’d just closed a $2.3M deal. Personal win rate? 87%. His sales team’s win rate? 12%.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I hired experienced reps. We have all the AI tools – Apollo, Gong, Clay. They have better data than I ever had. But they can’t close anything without me.”
I asked him one question: “What happens to your pipeline when you take a vacation?”
He laughed. “What vacation?”
Here’s what this founder – and maybe you, haven’t realized: You haven’t built a business. You’ve built an expensive consulting practice that happens to have employees.
And all those AI tools you’re implementing? You’re using them to scale a broken system faster.
The Two Types of No-GTM Companies
After working with dozens of founders, I’ve discovered that companies stalling between $2M-$20M aren’t failing because their product sucks. They’re failing because they’re No-GTM Companies.
They come in two flavors, both broken, both unsustainable:
The Clutch Player: You’re closing 60-80% of deals personally. Your team watches you work magic they can’t replicate. Pipeline lives and dies by your energy. You tell yourself, “nobody understands our value like I do,” but really, you’ve just never built a system that transfers your intuition to your team.
The Product Monk: You hide from GTM entirely, believing “if we build it better, revenue will follow.” You delegate sales to underpowered hires or, worse, no one. You’re losing to inferior competitors while telling yourself you just need “a few more features.”
Which one are you?
The VP Sales Hiring Trap Nobody Talks About
Here’s the statistic that should terrify you: 90% of VP Sales hires fail when there’s no GTM system in place.
You think you’re being smart. “I’ll hire a VP Sales to figure this out so I can focus on product.” Six months later, they’re gone, and you’re back to closing deals yourself.
They didn’t fail because they’re incompetent. They failed because you asked them to systematize something that was never systematic to begin with. You asked them to reverse-engineer your founder magic while also delivering quarterly results.
MIT’s research shows 95% of enterprise AI pilots are failing. But here’s the real kicker – companies that BUY tools succeed more than those trying to BUILD them. The same is true for GTM. Stop trying to figure it out yourself. Stop asking a VP Sales to build it from scratch.
Your Real Competition Isn’t Who You Think
While you’re perfecting features, your competitor with the inferior product is building a revenue engine. They’re turning GTM into their second product – systematic, repeatable, scalable.
In 2025, your product will be copied within months. The ONLY sustainable competitive advantages are:
-Client acquisition (GTM)
-Product manufacturing
-Distribution
-Capital
Guess which one you control completely?
The Shift: GTM as Your Second Product
The most successful founders I work with have made one critical mental shift: They treat GTM like they treat product development.
You wouldn’t ship code without version control, QA, and documentation. So why are you running revenue on founder intuition and hope?
Your GTM needs four pillars – just like any product:
-Messaging Architecture (The Interface): Clear value proposition that buyers instantly understand, not your personal charisma
-Lead Generation Engine (The Acquisition System): Predictable pipeline that doesn’t depend on your LinkedIn connections
-Sales Process (The Conversion Engine): Repeatable methodology any team member can execute, not just you
-Technology Integration (The Operating System): CRM and tools that scale execution without adding headcount
Build these, and you have a business. Skip them, and you have an expensive job.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Your Options
You have three paths forward:
Option 1: Stay the Clutch Player. Keep closing every deal yourself. Cap your growth at your personal capacity. Burn out in 18 months.
Option 2: Stay the Product Monk. Keep building features. Watch inferior products win. Wonder why “if you build it, they will come” never comes.
Option 3: Build GTM as a Product. Create systems that work without you. Scale beyond your personal capacity. Build an actual business.
The choice is yours. But understand this: Every day you delay, competitors with worse products but better GTM are winning your deals.
The Real Question
Princeton Mortgage increased its revenue from $1M to $30M by building GTM as its second product. TempleIT had been delivering the same great IT services for 20 years, but had experienced a two-year drought of new clients. They added six major new clients in 120 days simply by changing the way they described what they’d always done.
They both started as No-GTM Companies, stuck in the mud despite decades of proven success. Neither needed a better product – they needed to build GTM as their second product. Simple shifts in messaging and sales process unlocked growth they thought was impossible.
The only difference between companies that scale and companies that stall? The ones that scale treat GTM like a product to be built, not a necessary evil to be tolerated.
Are you going to keep being the hero of every deal? Or are you ready to build the system that makes heroes unnecessary?
Question for you:
Be honest – what percentage of your deals would close if you personally weren’t involved? Reply and tell me the number. I bet it’s painful.
