As a former founder and CEO of early- and late-stage venture-funded companies, the single biggest challenge I faced (and the biggest mistakes I made) was hiring and onboarding Go-To-Market (GTM) leaders.

Over the last 15 years, I have used countless search firms. The results have been underwhelming; however, in many cases, the problems were, as they say in horror parlance, “coming from inside the house.” 

What follows is a dissection of the origins of those missteps, how to guard against them, and the help I’ve found.

No matter how well-funded a company is, or how great its product is, hiring outstanding GTM leaders to migrate users through the customer lifecycle efficiently will make or break the company. In my experience, GTM leaders are the hardest to interview and hire and have notoriously short tenures compared to other functions. 

Backstory

While teaching at the University of Colorado Business School after my last CEO role and researching this conundrum, I reached out to the founders of RevelOne, Gary Calega and Dan Weiner, whom I had tremendous respect for as people and fellow operators. They were the one search firm I had used that exceeded my expectations. They functioned as a de facto consulting firm as much as a traditional search firm, staffing each search with an ex-GTM leader as well as a seasoned recruiter. In addition, they had a cadre of pre-vetted Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to solve specific issues pre or post-new hire. I wanted to get their insights and compare notes on the ideal process for hiring and integrating GTM leaders. During these discussions, we began to codify an ideal framework and process based on lessons learned from both the recruiting and the hiring side.  As we began the exercise, I realized how much fun I was having to explore this complex problem, and I decided to join forces with RevelOne to build on their current model. Working with them fit my two key criteria if I ever took on a full-time role again: 1) work with smart, ambitious, good people, 2) solve a tough problem.  I joined RevelOne in late 2024 and have been helping to innovate the RevelOne operational philosophy. 

Here are some of our early learnings and insights as well as the challenges and pitfalls of hiring and onboarding GTM talent. Hiring great GTM leaders fall into six primary steps:

Role Description

A hastily thrown-together, overly general, or cliched job description can doom a search from the start. In addition, if there is even a slight internal misalignment regarding what defines success for the role, the new hire’s chances can be severely limited. The example I often use regarding alignment on role description is as follows: If two lines are one inch apart, traveling at 5 mph, and their trajectory differs by just one degree, in 18 months, the lines will be 1,148 miles apart. In other words, if the CEO, the COO, or the investors are misaligned by one degree on the job description and what defines success, someone will be disappointed in the outcome 18 months later. 

Analyzing the current organizational structure, team composition, company stage, and reason for the change (“Why did the last person leave or fail?”) is vital during the explanation of the role. This includes job title and reporting structure. Too often, and it has happened to me, the board or CEO of an early-stage company thinks the company needs a CMO, a VP of Brand, and/or a VP of Performance Marketing when what they need is a very strong VP of Performance Marketing and a 6-week customer segmentation and brand study. The difference in cost between these two options can be millions of dollars over 18-24 months, which is critical for any company, particularly an early-stage enterprise. Furthermore, giving someone an inflated CMO title and then having to “level” them when the business inevitably changes, with an external (and more senior) hire in 24 months, is never fun or easy.

Too often, I see companies trumpet a lot of the “soft benefits” of the job in the role description to attract potential applicants: “Flexible and remote hours,” “Unlimited vacation,” “Fun culture,” “Powder days” (a repeated fluff feature in the CO job market), “Subsidized pet care,” etc. Perhaps these are all great accouterments for many candidates. They are not the ones I want. The job, the opportunity and potential, the mission, and the company itself are primary. In GTM roles, I want benevolent assassins. People who are obsessively driven toward results and winning. I seek those who are incredibly ambitious AND who are good people. Employees who want to be part of something special, work incredibly hard, constantly learn and evolve, and work close to other drivers and winners. NFL scouts often talk about players who have a “high motor.” They gauge this by watching game tape of what a player does when the play goes the opposite direction of where they are, or when their team is down and the game already decided. Do they coast and go through the motions, or are they relentless?

Lastly, searching for a unicorn marketer (“Extraordinary performance, content, brand marketing, CRM and full-funnel SAAS expertise a must”) is usually a recipe for disaster. You’re not going to find a doctor to replace your hip, perform cataract surgery, and insert a heart valve, so why should we expect a marketer to be a superhero?

Solution – Spend an inordinate amount of time upfront making sure the job description is detailed, success factors are clearly defined, the opportunity is exciting, and experience and requirements are spelled out. Be honest internally about what stage the company is at for the next 18-24 months. Sharpen the role description (via AI and human pattern recognition). And examine leveling choices and reporting structures so you can jumpstart the search correctly. 

Candidate Profile

Almost 8 years ago, my former boss and investor, Jeff Jordan, wrote an insightful blog post, Hiring a CMO, that still stands the test of time regarding qualities to look for in a CMO. In the piece, Jeff astutely delineates the difference between “Artist CMOs” and “Scientist CMOs,” and alludes to the fact that rarely do the twain meet.  To quote Jeff directly:

Artist CMOs” are experts in the many qualitative tasks in marketing, such as positioning the brand, developing marketing materials and storytelling consistent with that positioning, and executing media campaigns. These CMOs often thrive in companies that spend lots of dollars on media, especially offline media.

“Scientist CMOs” are experts in many of the quantitative tasks in marketing, in particular at user acquisition strategies, economics, and other optimizations often associated with growth hacking (which some people observe is marketing by another name, but has a unique connotation in the context of network effects businesses). Many scientist CMOs evolved out of the engineering discipline, or out of the direct marketing world — where the Holy Grail has always been performance marketing and advertising to customers based on precise data.

He asserts that you should hire the one that fits your dominant need first and let them fill in the gaps around them.  I would add that they also need to be self-aware and humble enough to know where certain elements of GTM strategy or execution begin to reach the outer limits of their wheelhouse and know how to fill in the gaps. The principles outlined in Jeff’s article are applicable whether hiring a CMO or a "Head/VP of Marketing." As discussed above in the job description section, the candidate profile must be carefully examined based on business needs. For early-stage companies, at the outer bound, I would say hire for the next 24 months. You want someone who can grow with the business, but the business will undoubtedly change. I've made the mistake of hiring an artist when I should have hired a scientist, and vice versa. 

Lastly, and I have fallen prey to this mistake, do not get “logo goggles.” Just because someone worked at Apple or Google does not mean they’re the right hire for your company right now. Often, if you hire someone from one of these “marquee” companies to run your GTM team, they may instinctively reconstitute a version of the playbook they ran at their former company at an annual budget of $300M, and try and execute it for $12M, and the recipe does not often work. (“We should do billboards and TV!”).

Solution – There is an “art” to designing a creative candidate profile that may significantly increase the candidate pool. Be specific on the qualities you need, and creative about the potential pools these candidates may be found in. Often, there are analogous, yet counterintuitive experiential profiles that can make a major impact. Someone who designed and executed city-specific GTM plans for Lyft may be a great candidate for a PE-backed home-services firm that is expanding geographically, even though they don’t have a home service background per se.

Candidate Pool

To get the best person for the role, the “fishing pond” needs to be well-defined. We used to look for marketing hires who had graduated with analytically focused undergrad majors, or gone through top banking, finance, or consulting training programs early in their careers before transitioning into marketing. This seemed to denote a quantitative baseline that was a precursor for success. Too often, I have worked with GTM talent that understood marketing metrics (ROAS, etc.), but struggled with how those metrics translated and flowed through the income statement, and were guardrailed by the balance sheet. 

Solution – Once the pool is defined, leveraging every vector to ensure active and passive candidates within that target pool are exposed to the opportunity is critical. This means employees, in-house recruiting teams, and external search firms leverage all means to make sure the job isn’t just buried on a “We’re Hiring” page on the website. Great search firms like RevelOne have ongoing relationships with passive candidates and can “pull” people into the search who may not have even been consciously looking for a new role.

Interview Process

There is a lot of great literature on the interviewing process and how to standardize effectively across your internal team. It’s worth investing in. I like Dr. Geoff Smart’s “Who” as a guide, and I believe it dramatically raises the chances of a successful hire. RevelOne has been using their approach to interviews for years.

A systematic and effective interview process is essential. If applicable, it starts with a search firm, as they should be able to weed out a majority of potential candidates right away. Internally, the candidate needs to speak with the right people, and they all need to be aligned on what the role is, what the questions they should ask are, where to push further, and how the decision will be made. I was guilty early on as a CEO, and this is common in start-ups, of “selling” the company and the role to “win” the candidate, versus asking tough questions and determining whether they could ultimately succeed in the role, or fit with the team. There’s a time to screen and a time to sell. :) Another trap I have fallen into was hiring for “lack of weaknesses” vs. hiring for a superpower, a mistake that can be exacerbated by a disorganized or consensus-based interview process. 

At one of my former companies, we began giving all serious candidates, regardless of level, a “test” or a case study. The complexity of the test escalated with the level of the role. Some people feel this is too harsh and might make candidates feel uneasy or intimidated. The purpose of the exercise is quite the opposite. There is often no “right” answer, but rather it’s designed to see how people think, whether they ask insightful questions, and how they deploy the skills or analytical frameworks that they list on their resumes. In many cases, potential hires rose to the top of the pile with thoughtful responses, or quickly sabotaged themselves in a morass of clichés, scattered thoughts, and assertions that “the agency handled all that.”

In addition to all the hard and soft skills that should be unearthed and explored during the interview process, an often under-appreciated quality is grit. Did someone put themselves through a “second tier” college or public university (and graduate with honors) as a first-generation college attendee, and then spend 3 meaningful stints at successful companies where they had (and gained) real responsibility, or were they a Nepo-graduate of an allegedly prestigious school and then job hopped through 7 companies in the next 11 years? It’s sometimes tough to discern, but figuring out how driven and intrinsically motivated someone is can and should be triangulated. 

Solution – Great search firms should not only “pre-screen” before the company has to go through the time-consuming interview process, but also provide an interview template, training, and a process outline for the company to use. That time savings is part of what clients pay for. When not using a search firm, a great process design internally needs to be in place and practiced religiously. The company interview process should be an extension of the methodology and direction that is used by the search firm, something RevelOne has helped clients with since our inception. 

Vetting and Closing

Vetting

I’m consistently stunned at the lack of referencing and vetting people do for critical positions. I’ve fired people for gross incompetence or toxic work culture issues, and then later heard they were hired by a CEO I know, only to have the CEO call me 8 months afterward and say, “Wow, I should have called you about X, they were a disaster.” 

Yes, you probably should have called.

I’m not sure if hiring teams simply get “search fatigue” and subconsciously dread having to go back to the drawing board, or are simply smitten with a candidate and feel sheepish about asking structured and hard questions of provided references, or “digging” on them a little. Or perhaps they are just not quite sure how to efficiently triangulate and engage less accessible references not provided by the potential hire. I used to like this analogy: You are about to marry someone without a prenup after meeting them 3 times. You want to look more into their background before taking the plunge. They give you three friends to vouch for them. Is there any way that would be sufficiently valid? Doubtful.

Even in the unlikely case that three “friendlies” were completely thoughtful and honest about both the pros and cons of the person, it would still be an incomplete picture. You need more perspective. That said, in some cases, even the friendlies will sometimes tell you things subtly that later become apparent. 

I once had an exhaustive search for a key senior GTM position. The position “required” a unique mix of quantitative skills and creative thinking. As a side note,  I was violating Jeff Jordan’s “Artist” and “Scientist” models described above, but hey, “live and learn.” After 3 months and countless interviews, we thought we had found the perfect candidate. The references all said the candidate was whip-smart, intensely focused, and delivered outsized results. (Yes!) 

However, at the end of the call, one of those references mentioned, “They can get a little frustrated and agitated when people don’t see their perspective."

Mmmm, I thought, “Don’t we all!” 

Turns out, they were telling me something I didn’t want to hear and didn’t explore further. If I had probed a little further, I might have discovered that they were prone to laptop and door slamming, yelling at colleagues and subordinates, and storming out of meetings when they did not get their way. They were a great performer, but within a year there was a broad mutiny among fellow employees. When I met with their manager to talk about it, I expressed that I thought we had to let them go. He said, “Are you sure? They’re 150% more productive than anyone at their level,” I retorted. “I agree, but there are now 20 other people that are now 20% less effective because of them; thus, we are net down by 350%, not to mention 5 people are about to quit.” After a failed counseling session, we let the person go the next day. The team immediately responded with a productivity bump once the toxicity had been removed from the team dynamic.

Solution – Have a structured and rigorous playbook for interviewing provided references, and strongly consider contacting and engaging with additional references. Concerning the latter, it must be said that this process needs to be extremely well thought out and is not a silver bullet. It is a part of a process and can be an element of the decision, but one bad deep reference should not necessarily sink a great candidate, but rather provide fodder for follow-up or discussion.  Caveat: There are often potential confidentiality issues, and sometimes non-provided references can be biased, anecdotal, or lack accurate context or information. 

Closing

The interviews were great, the references were all checked, and you’ve got your person! Now it’s time to make an offer. The offer is made, and the candidate says, “No thanks.”

There is nothing worse than getting to this stage and then being left at the altar. Time wasted, progress forestalled, and a whole new process looms. How do you avoid this unfortunate occurrence?

Solution – Avoid surprises and maintain full transparency throughout the process. I’ve seen situations where there was a massive delta in expected compensation and plans for relocation, in-office requirements were not specified/vague, or the reporting structure was unclear. 

These are easily avoidable by making sure these conversations happen during the process in advance of an offer. Some of these factors can be negotiated or altered to try and save the hire, but it’s best to have matters such as these clear before proceeding to the offer stage. 

Lastly, you need to remove doubt about the potential for the opportunity. Be honest about the problems facing the business but simultaneously generate excitement for the role. At my last company, we began doing group Zoom calls to make the offer. The entire hiring team would come on the call and congratulate the person on the offer. Finalists felt excited and welcomed and we had a 100% acceptance rate.

Onboarding

Data regarding GTM leaders estimates that the average tenure is somewhere around 18 months. This is appalling, incredibly expensive, and often fatal for companies. It’s by far the lowest tenure of any C-suite role and the hardest to hire and integrate well.  Such a frightening phenomenon cannot be fully explained by bad interview processes or bad candidates. Often, when a body rejects an organ, the organ is fine, and something is wrong with the body. Organ transplants are incredibly complex. There needs to be a rapid symbiosis between the external body and the transplant host across many parameters. A lot can go wrong. A lot of good organs get rejected by bodies, even when the medical professionals involved thought it would be a perfect fit.

The first 120 days represent 22% of the average tenure of a GTM lead. These first 120 days are of outsized importance, literally setting the trajectory for the new hire and, in many cases, providing the difference between success and failure. Given this fact, wouldn't companies and new GTM leads have a tried-and-true onboarding plan that quickly sets the person up for success? 

Unfortunately, the answer is typically no. Once the slog of interviewing multiple candidates, negotiating an offer, and waiting for a start date to occur, often there's letting up on the gas from the company perspective. The new leader starts, has a few kick-off meetings, begins executing, reads some cursory documents and dashboards, and then is expected to start delivering results. Once, 6 months into a new GTM lead’s tenure, I realized that while they knew pockets of our business well, they still lacked a broader understanding of overall industry dynamics, were not accessing key BI dashboards, and had not spent adequate time with certain key cross-functional leaders that their success ultimately depended upon. They had become so overwhelmed executing in the first 120 days that they had lost sight of the big picture of the company.

New hires often don’t acquire an adequate understanding of the industry, the company, the unit economics, historical successes and failures from a channel and campaign perspective, and most importantly, a sense of internal company dynamics and the human side of the equation. People internally may have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of this vaunted savior, and when they inevitably stumble out of the gate, it may doom their tenure.

Solution – I saw GTM leaders struggle several times, often of no fault of their own, and began working on an onboarding program for GTM leaders that would rival a diligence packet given to potential investors or acquirers. (RevelOne already had a version of this in place.) It takes some work to prepare for the new hire, but it pays off exponentially as the information is waiting for them on day one. I told new CMOs, “I don’t expect any major achievements in the first 90 days. However, I need you to quickly gain a visceral and unimpeachable understanding of:

Often, when compiling this “QuickStart Pack” for the new GTM leader, clear holes are identified (“Wait, we don’t have a customer segmentation?”), and provides a head start to get this ready before the new leader starts or once they arrive (note: RevelOne provides a framework and roadmap for the onboarding plan, as well as marketing experts as contractors and agency recommendations to speed execution on many of these elements before or immediately after a new hire’s Day 1). 

Above all else, having this packet ready and thoroughly prepared on Day 1 accelerates progress and compresses time to impact. There is a saying among college and professional sports scouts that “speed kills.” You see it on youth sports fields all the time too. Fifty parents sitting around hoping their kid is D1 or professional material, and in 2 minutes, you can spot the one kid, if any, who has a chance. They are simply faster than everyone else on the field/court. The same principle applies to onboarding GTM hires.

Summary

Back to why I reached out to and subsequently joined RevelOne. . . Their intellectually rigorous philosophy and process, combined with a singular functional focus (GTM), and “Growth Through People” mindset, deliver superlative results. Their hypothesis that growth and talent strategy are deeply intertwined resonated deeply with me. Staffing every search with an ex-operator and a seasoned recruiter, and limiting the number of projects allocated to a given internal team, ensures a bespoke and focused deliverable every time. They put forth multiple potential solutions to GTM problems, rather than taking a job description “as is” and lobbing over a slew of candidates. They often recommend a lesser title, combined with some fractional help (of which they have a roster of 250 vetted professionals). Too often, traditional search firms fall into the real estate agent paradox: If you are asking $1.1M for your house, and the selling agent receives an offer for $1M, the expected value equation for the selling agent favors quickly accepting the $1M offer ($30K guaranteed commission, vs. the incremental $3K in commission they would make from a protracted, and potentially failed, negotiation to get the offer up to $1.1M). However, the net $94K+ from grinding to a $1.1M selling price can be personally very meaningful for the seller. RevelOne moved rapidly but exhaustively to ensure I found the right candidate and always had my best interests in mind. In addition, they provided multiple additional references for each role, which was extremely beneficial when choosing the final hires.

Some of the solutions they provided were orthogonal to what a traditional search firm would have recommended, e.g., lower fees for them and better solutions for my company.

RevelOne believes in this six-stage framework and has incorporated it into our working relationships. “Relationship” is the operative word. For too long, search firms have been overly transactional. We believe that our laser focus on GTM roles and strategy and our maniacal focus on delivering results forge long-term partnerships across our four integrated service areas: 

Founded over 10 years ago by former operators, and with 85% of our business coming from referrals and repeat business, RevelOne has served over 750 clients, ranging from startups to VCs/PE firms, to unicorns.  We help sharpen your growth plans, bring in the right full-time and interim leaders, and support them post-hire in driving impact. 

Contact:

Have a GTM question, a new hire, or a problem you’d like to solve? Reach out to RevelOne today to discuss: jlevisay@revel-one.com