Why Your GTM Strategy Is Actually Just Expensive Hope

Hey ,

This week reminded me why we do the work we do.

Not because of a big win, or a shiny new client (although there was one of those). More so because of a hard conversation with a founder who finally said what most won’t:

“We have a strategy… but it’s not working.”

The slides looked great, and the “strategy” made sense. But nothing was moving. Little to no traction, and upon digging in, even less momentum. Just hope in a sexy wrapper.

It hit me because I’ve seen this play out too many times. Good people. Smart teams. Stalled growth. This was about to become another awesome product that would become shelfware because no one could figure out how to unf$&k the GTM. The root cause is almost always the same: they’re executing against an idea of GTM, not the reality of their buyers.

This week’s edition is about that brutal disconnect. Why most strategies aren’t strategies at all, they’re just expensive hope. And what you can do right now to fix it before Q4 turns into another postmortem.

Estimated reading time: 4.5 minutes.

On Deck:

• The Strategy Problem No One Wants to Admit

• Marketing Tip of the Week - Powered by Decoded Strategies

• Episode #102 - $300K ARR. 3 Founders. Zero SDRs. WTF?! - Amos Bar-Joseph

The Strategy Problem No One Wants to Admit

Most Go-to-Market plans start life looking pristine.

A glossy deck. An ICP persona with a clever name. Messaging pillars are color-coded by funnel stage. A revenue model that would make your CFO weep with joy.

And then the real world shows up.

Deals slip and budgets vanish. Reps interpret “next step” six different ways. Suddenly, that airtight plan is nothing more than an expensive monument to hope. Pretty to look at, useless when the runway is on fire. 

Sound familiar? It should. We’ve watched hundreds of teams walk this path. In every case, the failure wasn’t the idea. It was the assumption that the idea would survive first contact with a buyer.

Slide Decks Don’t Close Deals

Let’s be real y’all. No prospect has EVER said, “Man that was the best slide deck I’ve ever seen. Please send me a contract.

• Strategy decks are written for perfect conditions:

• Every buyer reads the email on Day 1.

• Discovery is a straight line.

• Nobody ghosts after the demo.

Here’s what actually happens:

• Buyers share the email internally before you’re ready, so your “secret sauce” leaks on Slack.

• A budget freeze lands mid-cycle, and your champion goes silent.

• Legal drags procurement into the deal four weeks later than planned.

The plan built for blue-sky scenarios snaps. Revenue misses compound. Leadership starts tweaking slide titles instead of the motion itself.

Where Good Strategies Break Down

1. Static ICPs
   Last year’s hero segment isn’t necessarily this quarter’s buyer. Markets move. Problems evolve. If you haven’t refreshed your ICP since Q1, congratulations, you’re selling to ghosts.

2. Message-Lab Testing
   Copy that crushed in a brainstorm rarely survives a live call. Buyers don’t care about your clever taglines; they care about the words that make their headaches stop.

3. Hero Rep Dependency
   If two top performers carry 70% of the number, you don’t have a strategy. You have a hope budget… and as we say over and over again, “hope is not a strategy.”

4. Assumed Hand-Offs
   Slides may say MQL → SQL → Demo → Close, but in reality, Marketing tosses half-baked leads over the fence and Sales complains the leads are trash. Nobody owns the gap.

What Good Actually Looks Like

• Real-Time ICPs
  Pull your last ten closed-won deals every month. Note company size, trigger events, and decision criteria. That’s your ICP today, not last quarter.

• Buyer-Language Messaging
  Use tools like Attention to scour your call recordings. Lift exact phrases prospects use to describe their pain. Build your value prop around their vocabulary, not yours.

• Process Over Heroes
  If a deal requires superhuman effort, treat that as a red flag, not a victory lap. Build systems that let average reps succeed and great reps soar.

• Elastic Playbooks
  Document the core motion, but leave room for field feedback every 30 days. Your playbook should be a living organism, not a stone tablet.

The 5-Minute Gut-Check

Before another quarter slips away, run this with your team:

1. Who have we closed in the last 21 days?
   Name them. Role, company, reason they bought. If you hesitate, your ICP is stale.

2. If you had 30 seconds with one of those buyers, could you say something that makes them look up from their phone?
   No fluff. No buzzwords. Just relevance.

3. Could we replicate our last three wins without discounts, heroic follow-ups, or VP-level escalations?

   If not, your system, not your reps, is broken.

Answer all three cleanly? You’re ahead of most.

Struggle? Your strategy is already bleeding cash.

How to Pressure-Test—Today

• Audit the Last Ten Wins
  Map the actual steps buyers took. Compare to the funnel in your deck. The gaps are where revenue leaks.

• Replay Calls as a Team Sport
  Once a week, pick one discovery call. Dissect it. Ask, “Where did we create real value? Where did we drift?” Adjust scripts accordingly.

• 90-Day Micro-Roadmaps
  Break the grand plan into 90-day sprints. Ship. Measure. Iterate. Long-range visions are great, but revenue is earned in quarters.

• Lead-Flow Fire Drills
  Drop a mystery lead into your funnel every month. Time how long it takes for Sales to respond, how Marketing nurtures, and how Success follows up. The lag time is your silent killer.

The Uncomfortable Questions CEOs Need to Ask

• Am I rewarding slide polish over field feedback?

• When was the last time we killed a tactic that once worked, but no longer does?

• Do we have the discipline to rewrite the plan mid-quarter if the data demands it?

If the honest answer is “I don’t know” or “Probably not,” you’re running on hope, and hope is a very expensive fuel.

The Takeaway

Pretty slides don’t drive ARR. Flexible, data-driven systems do. Strategy is a hypothesis; it earns the right to live another day only if it survives the messy, unpredictable reality of your buyers.

Pressure-test now, iterate fast, and remember: the market doesn’t read your deck, it reads your results.

Ready to swap expensive hope for a strategy that bleeds traction? Then let’s get to work.

Thanks, ZoomInfo, for Keeping This Newsletter Free!

ZoomInfo is the Go-To-Market intelligence platform that empowers businesses to grow faster with AI-ready insights, trusted data, and advanced automation. Our solutions provide a complete view of your customers, making every seller your best seller.

Marketing Tip of the Week - Powered by Decoded Strategies

Good marketing starts by knowing who not to talk to.

This week:

• List out the attributes of a bad-fit lead. Be brutal.

• Review your site and cut any messages that could apply to “everyone.”

• Audit recent campaigns and kill anything chasing likes, not leads.

• Show up only where your best buyers already are. If your buyer isn’t on TikTok, why are you?

Sharpen the edge. You’ll cut through faster.

Episode #102: $300K ARR. 3 Founders. Zero SDRs. WTF?! - Amos Bar-Joseph

This week on Bridge the Gap™, Adam and Dale chat with Amos Bar-Joseph, CEO of Swan AI, who landed $300K in ARR in 30 days with no SDRs, no ads, no tricks.

We cover:

• How Swan used AI agents to swarm, qualify, and close

• Why most AI SDR tools flop, and what to use instead

• How to avoid getting banned while scaling outreach

• Why a founder’s story will still out-convert your product spec sheet

🎧 [listen now] or you’ll end up buying another AI tool you’ll never implement

Agree? Disagree? Have Questions?

If your strategy sounds smart in the boardroom but can’t survice a Tuesday morning with a skeptical buyer, let’s fix that.

See where you are on the GTM Gap Maturity Curve here.

Book a free strategy call, and we’ll look at what’s really happening inside your pipeline and show you how to tighten your GTM execution fast.

You’ll leave with clarity. Not a to-do list, and definitely not another strategy deck.

Adam, Dale, & Jake
Helping companies bridge the GTM Gap™.