It starts with good intentions.

We hire smart people, launch new programs, rebuild dashboards, and try to mature our GTM engine. From the outside, it looks like progress. The team is growing. There’s more structure, more reporting. Maybe revenue is even up.

But internally, things are still breaking. Ops is stuck playing whac-a-mole. One minute it’s fixing Salesforce, the next it’s onboarding, attribution, or another dashboard request. Everyone’s working, but nothing’s changing.

The real problem isn’t resourcing. It’s focus.

That’s why Eddie and I sat down to record a podcast on the GTM Ops Decision Tree; a framework to help teams prioritize, align, and commit to the one thing that will drive real impact this quarter.

Here’s a summary of what we discussed.

Prefer to listen instead? Check out the podcast episode we did on this topic on Spotify here or Apple podcasts here.

The GTM Ops Decision Tree: How We Find Focus

The Decision Tree isn’t a roadmap. It’s a filter. A way to cut through noise and choose the highest-leverage GTM improvement we can make over the next 1 to 3 months.

It’s built on the same foundation as the GTM Efficiency Pyramid, but where the pyramid helps us assess maturity, the Decision Tree forces us to act. It asks the hard questions, shows us where to look, and helps us say no to the wrong work.

“I think the prioritization… is really a derivation of that go-to-market efficiency pyramid,” Eddie says, “trying to answer the question of how do we identify our top priorities and focus all of our resources on the right place.”

The process is simple. But it takes discipline. We’ll walk through it step by step.

Step 1: New Business or Net Revenue Retention?

First, let’s ask a simple question:

If we could improve one thing, and only one thing, in the next 90 days, would we improve our ability to drive New Business or Net Revenue Retention? What would drive more short-term or long-term impact in our business?

There’s no perfect answer. Over the long term, net revenue retention creates more durable growth. But in the short term, that might not be where the biggest opportunity is, or what we need to hit our number, keep our jobs, or stay in business.

This is where too many teams default to new business without thinking it through. Boards want logos. Reps want leads. So we go hunting for more pipeline, even if the real problem is customer churn.

Let’s say we’re at $100 million in ARR. If we’re sitting at 70% Net Revenue Retention and believe we can realistically get to 90%, that’s a $20 million improvement. Now compare that to new business. If we’re already generating $20 million a year from new deals, we’d need to find a way to double that number just to match the upside of improving retention.

Eddie explains it this way: “If we really focus on our net revenue retention, getting it from 70% to 90%, that’s $20 million right there. That’s clearly the winner on a short-term basis, right?”

This part of the Decision Tree isn’t about precision. It’s about clarity. We don’t need perfect data. We need to choose a direction and commit to it. We never stop optimizing the GTM Engine, so we can always tackle the other option next quarter.

Step 2: What’s Broken Inside That Branch?

Once we’ve chosen New Business or NRR, we drill deeper.

On the new business side, we’re deciding between pipeline generation and pipeline management. On the NRR side, we’re choosing between retention and expansion.

This step is about identifying the constraint. The bottleneck. The part of the engine that, if we fix it, creates the fastest path to impact.

Unfortunately, the most common answer is pipeline generation and that’s often the last thing that should be fixed.

“Wouldn’t it be both a long-term and a short-term impact… if we just go and shore that up and close more of the deals that we already have in our pipeline?” Eddie asks.

He’s right. If our close rates are poor, our forecasting is off, or our process is broken, then throwing more leads into the funnel just accelerates the waste. The same goes for expansion. If our customers are unhealthy, upsell campaigns won’t help. We need to fix the foundation first.

Step 3: Get Specific

This is where we stop speaking in generalities. We’ve picked our branch and our sub-priority. Now we name the exact problem we’re going to solve.

If we’re working on pipeline generation, we pick a channel. Is it outbound? Inbound? PLG? Partnerships?

If we’re working on retention, we decide whether the real issue is handoff, onboarding, health tracking, or how our CSMs handle at-risk accounts.

We don’t fix everything. We fix one thing. And it doesn’t need to be perfect. We just need to take it from “broken” to “good enough.” If we’re churning customers because our onboarding process is “broken” then getting it to “good enough” where most customers are onboard and happy with our product is a monumental shift.

We just need to be crystal clear on what we want to improve so we can focus resources on that one thing.

As Eddie says, “We are either going to work on improving our implementation process or we’re going to work on improving how we do outbound cold calling. And that’s how we end up with a Revenue Operations Roadmap.”

Once we name the work, we can actually assign resources, track progress, and report outcomes. And RevOps can stop playing whack-a-mole and focus on the most impactful work.

Step 4: Build the Roadmap and Lock It In

Once we’ve identified the initiative, we turn it into a plan. We write a one-page RevOps Roadmap. We define OKRs. We map the initiatives. We assign owners.

And then we get signoff.

We don’t stop until the CRO, the CEO, the CMO, and everyone else with a stake agrees this is the work. This is what matters most.

Because otherwise, we’ll get derailed by the next fire drill.

“What’s so much harder is to get everybody aligned to say, this is our priority, we’re gonna do this, this is the most important thing,” Eddie says.

Once we have that alignment, everything else becomes easier. We can say no to distractions, track progress in the pipeline council, and keep every team rowing in the same direction.

What To Do Next

This quarter, we pick one priority. We don’t try to fix every gap in the funnel. Instead, we use the Decision Tree to identify the work that matters most, and put all our energy behind it.

Here’s how:

1. Start at the top: New Business or NRR?
2. Drill down to the constraint: pipeline generation vs pipeline management, or retention vs expansion.
3. Get specific about what’s broken and what we’ll fix.
4. Build the roadmap and assign owners.
5. Align every stakeholder and say no to anything that doesn’t serve the plan.

And then we do it again next quarter.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s focus. Because even if we pick the wrong project, we’ll still move faster by giving it our full attention than by bouncing between fifteen different things.

“Whether we pick the right horse or not,” Eddie says, “what’s more important is just to focus our energies on it.”

That’s how we stop playing Whac-a-Mole and start building a GTM engine that actually works.

 

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