The GTMnow Podcast

Ross Rich is the co-founder and CEO of Accord and spent five years leading go-to-market and partnerships at Stripe. He talks to hundreds of CROs and serves thousands of reps, so he has an unusually clear view of what the top performers actually do differently.

His starting point: roughly the top 20%, often closer to 10%, of any sales team drives most of the revenue. Every leader says they want to move the middle 60%, and Ross doesn't think AI is doing it. Tools like Claude and Codex make the people who already have the taste and judgment far more efficient, and the gap widens from there. What closes it is unglamorous and human: a leader with a point of view, a shared language simple enough to stick, a field-friendly process, and only then the technology to reinforce it.

Ross gets specific on what "best" means for a seller (trust and EQ first, then frameworks learned so cold they run subconsciously), the disconnect between what CROs think they're buying and what reps actually receive, the "no-ask note" for multithreading into a CRO, why he sells through his own executives instead of around them, and the biggest lesson of his founder journey: market beats product.

What you'll learn:
- What separates the top 10% of reps from everyone else, and why AI is widening that gap instead of closing it
- The two ingredients of a great seller: the "give a shit factor" you can't fake, then plays run so subconsciously you can get creative
- The waiter analogy that explains great salesmanship in one sentence
- Why the people, process, technology order is the one most teams get backwards in the AI rush
- The disconnect between a CRO's multimillion-dollar investment in the field and what reps actually receive: a 76-page laminate, more Salesforce fields, none of it touching the customer
- Why the best methodology is simply the one that gets used, and why debating how many Ps are in MEDDPICC is optimizing the fringes
- "Unavoidable excellence": how to take what your top performers do organically and make it standard across the team
- The "no-ask note" for multithreading into a CRO by showing respect instead of asking for time
- Why CROs own revenue and not tools, and how to sell through their rev-ops and enablement leaders
- "Show, don't tell": leading with peer references at stage two when everyone can sound the same and ship a surface-level solution
- The founder-led sales handoff mistake Ross has made twice, and the curse of knowledge behind it
- Why market beats product, via April Dunford's positioning and the surfer, surfboard, wave framing

Connect with Ross Rich:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossrich/ 

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

About the guest: Ross Rich is the founder and CEO of Accord, a platform that operationalizes value selling (quantified business cases, mutual action plans, stakeholder mapping, account planning) in a field-friendly way. Before founding Accord, he spent over five years at Stripe leading go-to-market and partnerships. Accord's customers include Freshworks and Samsara.

About GTMnow: GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing how the best in tech build, scale and invest.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Is Salesforce the dominant player in the AI platform shift, or the incumbent about to be disrupted? Kris Billmaier, EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales and Growth Products, sat down with Sophie Buonassisi at Salesforce Tower to answer that directly.

Kris runs the business behind Sales Cloud's 26-year run and its rebrand into Agentforce Sales. He makes the case that CRM is becoming "agentic revenue orchestration," that the category needs a new name, and that the future is headless. For Salesforce, that means surfaced inside Slack, ChatGPT, Gemini, and wherever sellers actually work. He also shares the internal numbers, including an engagement agent that worked the leads Salesforce had always ignored and generated over $100M in pipeline in eight months.

What you'll learn:
- Why 60% of a seller's time goes to non-selling work, and which agents remove it
- The case for renaming the category from CRM to agentic revenue orchestration
- What "headless CRM" means, and why Salesforce integrated with ChatGPT and Gemini
- How one leader manages 100 reps plus the equivalent of 400 agents
- Why the Momentum acquisition matters: "memory fragments" that cut an 8,000-word meeting to the 800 words that count
- Why Salesforce is hiring more sellers, not fewer
- How hiring shifted from "what did you do" to "how do you build" (and why a PowerPoint is now a red flag)
- Pricing in the agent era: seats, flex credits, and a coming leads-worked outcome metric
- Why Kris says we're not in a SaaSpocalypse, and how a 70,000-person company still ships weekly

Thank you to our sponsor:
Primer unlocks B2C ad channels for B2B marketers with precision targeting and next-gen measurement. GTMnow Network exclusive offer: Extended 45 day trial and 15% off with code GTM15 - just apply the code when you go to upgrade from the free trial. See who’s really in your funnel: sayprimer.com

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:12 Welcome, and the Salesforce platform-shift question
02:25 How Salesforce adapted across cloud, mobile, social, and AI
03:32 Why Sales Cloud became Agentforce Sales
05:17 Renaming the category: from CRM to agentic revenue orchestration
06:56 Will anyone log into a CRM again?
08:09 Agentforce in one line, and the seller's Monday morning
09:08 Build vs. buy, vibe coding, and the context moat
11:01 The Momentum acquisition and memory fragments
13:04 Sellers managing teams of agents, and the $100M pipeline story
15:03 The agent stack: prospecting, engagement, pipeline, quoting
16:27 Efficiency, accuracy, and auto-generated forecasts
18:03 Why Salesforce is hiring more sellers
19:16 What the modern sales role looks like
20:08 Sponsor: Primer
21:34 How AI changed hiring: from "what" to "how"
23:48 The window: shipping weekly, not on three annual releases
25:13 What product-market fit means now
26:05 Software vs. services, and the $10T question
28:10 The complexity problem: easy by default, advanced by choice
30:07 Go-to-market evolution and consolidating the stack
32:07 Leading as a player-coach
33:16 Being "chief repetition officer" and educating the field
35:00 How a 70,000-person company stays agile
36:48 The biggest lesson from Marc Benioff
37:57 Pricing: seats, flex credits, and outcome-based metrics
40:53 Are we in a SaaSpocalypse? The full answer
42:08 Where Kris gets his learnings
43:07 World Cup picks

Kris Billmaier (EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales, Salesforce)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisbillmaier/
Salesforce Agentforce: https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce

Sophie Buonassisi (Host, SVP at GTMnow/GTMfund)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

About Kris Billmaier:
Kris Billmaier is EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales and Growth Products at Salesforce, where he leads the business formerly known as Sales Cloud. He oversees the company's agentic sales portfolio, including its prospecting, engagement, pipeline, and quoting agents, and the Momentum acquisition that powers its conversational data layer.

About GTMnow: 
GTMnow shares how the best in tech build, scale and invest. The media brand is owned and operated by venture firm, GTMfund.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Chris Lee joined Deel at $1M in revenue. Now, it just hit $1.5B. He joined GTMnow to walk through the pivotal decisions behind that run, including the ones he's never discussed publicly.

Chris (Head of Sales, Americas at Deel) breaks down the "five-star sales experience" framework he built by studying luxury hotels, why speed itself became a reason customers bought, how he's had zero regrettable director-level attrition in 5.5 years, and why they hire people with the job title "Ghostbuster" to keep a 7,000-person company moving like a 30-person startup. 

What you'll learn:
- The five-star sales experience framework, and how to map your own process from three-star to five
- Why every new sales leader at Deel spends their first 30 days taking inbound and selling
- How speed became the reason Coinbase chose Deel over a legacy vendor with no references to show
- The hire-slow, fire-fast principle behind zero regrettable director attrition in 5.5 years
- Why "tell me about a time" interview questions optimize for the best liar, and the scenario-based alternative
- What a "Ghostbuster" is, and how the role fights operational decay as you scale
- Leading a sales team through public crisis: cry, quit, or fight
- The trillion-dollar thesis: why 95% of the world's workers sit outside the US market
- Why Chris went back to first-principles systems thinking instead of fiddling with AI tools

Thank you to our sponsor:
Primer unlocks B2C ad channels for B2B marketers with precision targeting and next-gen measurement. GTMnow Network exclusive offer: Extended 45 day trial and 15% off with code GTM15 - just apply the code when you go to upgrade from the free trial. See who’s really in your funnel: sayprimer.com

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:58 Welcome to GTMnow
01:33 From Granular (agtech, employee #11) to a DuPont acquisition
05:30 The failed recruiting startup he launched in January 2020
07:17 How he found Deel, and applying to the wrong role on purpose
09:48 The first-30-days lesson from CEO Alex Bouazizi: go sell
11:44 What Deel actually does today
13:14 Scaling a distributed sales org remotely
15:41 Building rapport on a global remote team
17:35 From transactional SMB to multi-product enterprise
20:16 Sales-led, not product-led, and why consolidation wins
22:45 "Deel speed," and why speed is a reason people buy
25:31 Sponsor: Primer
26:57 Frank Slootman, Amp It Up, and outpacing competitors
29:12 How he got Slootman to open the sales kickoff
30:28 Zero director attrition in 5.5 years, and hire slow, fire fast
33:54 Why "tell me about a time" fails, and the scenario-based alternative
37:46 The five-star sales experience framework
41:54 Bringing enterprise-grade experience to SMB with AI
45:49 The trillion-dollar thesis: 95% of workers are outside the US
47:22 Building 60+ payroll engines: the Amazon Prime parallel
53:02 First-principles systems thinking for sales
59:38 The problem-framing framework he gives his team
01:01:09 The "Ghostbuster" role and fighting operational decay
01:05:25 Where to find Chris

Chris Lee (Head of Sales, Americas at Deel):
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/techcontrarian/
X: https://x.com/TechContrarian

Sophie Buonassisi (Host, SVP at GTMnow/GTMfund):
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

About Chris Lee:
Chris Lee is Head of Sales, Americas at Deel, which he joined as one of its first sales hires at $1M in revenue and helped scale to $1.5B. Previously he was employee number 11 at Granular, an agricultural tech company acquired by DuPont for $300M.

About GTMnow: 
GTMnow shares how the best in tech build, scale and invest. The media brand is owned and operated by venture firm, GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

The Co-Founder & CEO of Merge joins GTMnow to break down how she built a company that now powers integrations for OpenAI, Perplexity, Netflix, Uber, Mistral, and enterprise logos like Mastercard, JP Morgan, and Amex, backed by $75M from Accel and NEA.

Shensi gets tactical on the GTM decisions behind that growth: why she went enterprise-first into greenfield, why she's now layering a self-serve motion back on top (20,000+ self-serve orgs, 400+ enterprise customers), how forward-deployed engineers turned a 1% edge case into 5 to 10x usage growth, and why she rebuilt marketing to run like an engineering team. She also gets candid on founder-led sales, the mercenaries-versus-missionaries hiring trap, the open-source model shift and the China question, and why every founder who started pre-AI should build one product 0-to-1 themselves.

What you'll learn:
- Why she reversed the standard GTM playbook (enterprise first, then PLG) and how to run both motions at once
- How forward-deployed engineers close the 1% edge case that unlocks 5 to 10x enterprise usage
- Why marketing now runs like an engineering function at Merge, and how it took her from 1 to 2 dinners a quarter to 3 to 5 a month
- Why product got fast and go-to-market became the new bottleneck
- How to know when to hire your first salesperson (hint: you should be "dying" first)
- The mercenaries-vs-missionaries test, and the "anti-sell" she uses in hiring
- The 2026 shift away from "token-maxing," and how model routing cuts AI spend
- The truth about open-source (often Chinese) models: where they're built vs. where your data actually lives
- Why founders who started pre-AI should build one product 0-to-1 to understand what's now possible

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:14 What Merge does: products, workforce, and three core offerings
02:05 Agent Handler, Gateway, and the new Embedded Routing Stack
04:52 The 2026 shift away from "token-maxing"
07:29 Open-source models, the China question, and where data really lives
10:14 How Merge works with open-source model providers
12:00 What she's learned as a first-time founder: get over your ego
13:22 Reversing the GTM playbook: enterprise-first, then PLG
15:50 Running both motions: 20,000+ self-serve, 400+ enterprise
17:31 Why buyer behavior moved to Twitter and brand
19:06 Founder-led sales, and what a real sales process taught her
22:27 When to hire your first salesperson
23:49 Forward-deployed engineers and 5 to 10x usage growth
27:00 Keeping go-to-market up to speed with product
28:33 Rebuilding marketing as an engineering function
30:45 The dinner agent: 1 to 2 a quarter to 3 to 5 a month
31:24 How AI buying reshaped the marketing org
33:54 Maintaining agents: prompts over legacy builders
35:02 Mercenaries vs. missionaries, and the "anti-sell"
40:25 The market view: from hostility to collaboration
42:06 Is a valuation reckoning coming?
43:07 Why she stayed hands-on building Agent Handler and Gateway
45:18 What's next: training your own models off open-source
46:52 Where to find Shensi and Merge

Connect with Shensi Ding:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shensiding/
X: https://x.com/shensi
Merge: https://merge.dev

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

About the guest: Shensi Ding is the co-founder and CEO of Merge, a unified API platform that now spans product integrations, agent tooling, and LLM routing/governance. Merge powers companies including OpenAI, Perplexity, Netflix, Uber, and Mistral, and enterprise customers like Mastercard, JP Morgan, and Amex. The company has raised $75M from Accel and NEA.
Thank you to our sponsor:
Primer unlocks B2C ad channels for B2B marketers with precision targeting and next-gen measurement. GTMnow Network exclusive offer: Extended 45 day trial and 15% off with code GTM15 - just apply the code when you go to upgrade from the free trial.
See who’s really in your funnel: sayprimer.com

About GTMnow: GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Are your sales compensation plans driving the right behaviors or causing your best reps to quit? In this episode of GTMnow, Brian Le (Global Sales Compensation Partner at Notion) breaks down how to build a scalable sales comp operating system.

Brian shares his firsthand experience scaling Notion's sales comp from 80 to over 400 employees and explains why trust is the ultimate currency in revenue operations. If you are a founder, revenue leader, or sales professional, this breakdown covers everything from structuring pay mix to identifying the earliest signs of comp plan degradation. You will even hear what it takes for top AEs to pull in upwards of $1 million in a single quarter.

In this episode, we cover:
00:00 Intro
01:15 Brian Le's journey through Salesforce, Carta, and Notion
04:33 Why sales comp is the operating system for go-to-market
07:07 Phase 1: Building a scalable comp foundation at Notion
13:50 Transitioning from seat-based to usage-based pricing models
18:15 The 3 core pillars of a successful sales commission plan
22:09 Early warning signs your quota and comp structures are breaking
31:41 The real cost of losing sales reps over bad commission payouts
39:35 How to structure compensation for your first early-stage sales hires
42:39 Will AI agents replace SDRs and sales compensation?

Connect with Brian Le, :
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhoangle/

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.