Last year, a startling 78% of sellers missed their quota. This is more than just a “sales problem.” It’s a critical symptom of a broken Go-to-Market (GTM) engine. In response, many leaders buy more tools, only to find the friction from lead disputes, dirty data, and territory gaps getting worse.
The solution isn’t another piece of technology, but a fundamental shift in approach.
In this webinar, we outline a scientific RevOps methodology, featuring insights from Helena Aryafar, SVP of Revenue Operations at interos.ai, and Dr. Amy Osmond Cook, Co-Founder & CMO at Fullcast.
This framework moves beyond reactive fixes to pinpoint and solve the core issues in your go-to-market strategy. By adopting a scientific mindset, RevOps leaders can stop applying temporary fixes and start engineering a resilient, predictable revenue engine.
Diagnosing Problems Like a Scientist
A resilient RevOps methodology starts with one simple rule: diagnose before you prescribe a solution.
According to Helena Aryafar, this means moving beyond reacting to the loudest complaints and adopting a scientific mindset to identify the true source of friction. Effective RevOps leaders diagnose GTM problems with the same rigor as a scientist, focusing on patterns and root causes instead of isolated symptoms.
From Anecdotes to Patterns: The First Step
A non-traditional RevOps background in the sciences taught Aryafar to treat the Go-to-Market motion as a living system. “I bring the scientific method, as silly as that sounds, into go-to-market,” Helena explains. “It’s as easy as just going from the basics of observation, hypothesis, tests, you measure results.”
This perspective forces a shift in focus.
Instead of getting derailed by one-off anecdotes or outliers from the sales floor, effective RevOps leaders look for repeatable patterns of failure.
- Is there a consistent lead drop-off at a specific stage?
- Are deals from a certain segment repeatedly stalling?
These patterns, not isolated incidents, are the signals that point to a systemic problem worth solving.
Why Your Data Tells Different Stories
One of the most common patterns of dysfunction is the persistent friction between marketing and sales, where each team operates from its own version of the truth. This creates a constant battle over lead quality and ownership.
“The issue is everyone feels like they fight over ownership, but really the thing they’re fighting over are definitions,” Helena states. The conflict isn’t just about who gets credit; it’s about a fundamental misalignment on what constitutes a “quality lead,” what is considered “garbage,” or what qualifies as legitimate “pipeline.”
Only by aligning on these core definitions before analyzing data can teams begin the process of building trust/alignment and work from the same set of data. When everyone agrees on the language, the conversation can shift from assigning blame to finding a solution together.
Finding the True Source of Revenue Leaks
Even with shared definitions, data can be misleading if its underlying assumptions aren’t made explicit. Dr. Amy Osmond Cook recalls a client whose marketing team was exceeding its lead generation targets, yet the sales team insisted the leads were terrible. Deep analysis revealed the hidden root cause: competitor bots were filling out paid lead forms to exhaust their ad spend, flooding the system with fake prospects.
Surface-level assumptions masked the real problem, prompting Helena’s warning: “Subjectivity without providing what the caveats and assumptions are is bad.”
Without this transparency, leaders make bold, inaccurate claims based on incomplete information. A leadership team might celebrate a surge in pipeline coverage without inspecting its quality, only to see conversion rates collapse three quarters later.
(For a deeper look at GTM data trends, see our 2025 Benchmarks Report).
How Internal Dysfunction Harms the Customer Journey
Internal friction extends beyond operational headache and has a direct, tangible impact on revenue. Internal GTM chaos creates a poor customer experience that directly leads to churn.
When your GTM engine is chaotic internally, your customers feel it, and they don’t hesitate to walk away.
Helena shared a powerful personal story of parting ways with a vendor after a chaotic renewal process. “It was a flat renewal that we were going through, and there were five people on the call,” she recalls. “Every time I talked to them, there was a new person added on.”
This internal disorganization manifested externally as repetitive conversations, clumsy handoffs, and an unprofessional experience that ultimately led to churn. As a customer, the feeling was clear: “I got 99 problems, and this shouldn’t be one of them.”
Your customers don’t care about your internal drama; they only care about their own customer experience, and when it’s poor, they leave.
Building a GTM Culture of Trust and Integration
The antidote to this chaos is a highly integrated GTM team.
Amy describes this as a culture where marketing, sales, and customer success leaders are “in each other’s business all the time.” This breaks down the traditional funnel model, where departments operate in sequence, and replaces it with a flywheel, where the entire customer lifecycle is a shared responsibility.
Renewals and expansion are just as critical as new business, and that requires a seamless journey from the first touchpoint through to advocacy.
True alignment isn’t a checkbox exercise. It’s a culture of shared ownership over the entire revenue process, which is the core purpose of what RevOps is.
Taming the Frankenstack
Many organizations try to solve operational friction by adding more technology, which often makes the problem worse. Instead of adding more tools to solve symptoms, a strategic RevOps methodology requires a disciplined framework for evaluating and consolidating technology.
A strategic RevOps methodology requires a disciplined approach to building and managing the tech stack.
Helena uses a “cable TV analogy” to describe the evolution of the RevOps tech stack. It began with limited bundles, then exploded into thousands of unbundled, single-purpose tools, creating the danger of the “Frankenstack.” This happens when teams solve symptoms with individual tools instead of addressing the root cause.
This approach leads to tool bloat, where new AI features are just superficial additions on a refrigerator that doesn’t keep anything cold. Instead of adding another disconnected tool, companies find more success by consolidating multiple point solutions onto a single, unified platform.
A Practical Framework for Evaluating New Technology (and Auditing Your Own)
To avoid the Frankenstack trap, Helena recommends a systematic evaluation framework that goes far beyond the sales demo. Before signing a contract, RevOps leaders should ask:
- Problem Definition: Are we solving for efficiency or effectiveness? A tool might make a bad process faster, but a better tool could make the process unnecessary.
- Total Cost of Ownership: Does this tool require hiring more people just to manage it? The true cost includes implementation and maintenance resources, not just the subscription fee.
- User Impact: Does this solution add five more steps to a sales rep’s day? If adoption is low, the ROI will be negative.
- The “Breakup Test”: What happens if you decide to part ways? Ask upfront about the off-boarding and data extraction process to avoid a difficult and costly exit.
This disciplined approach ensures that technology serves the strategy, not the other way around.
A unified platform like Fullcast for RevOps addresses these core challenges directly.
Future-Proofing Your GTM: Using AI as a GPS for Your Annual Plan
Today, the most successful companies won’t be the ones with the most tools, but the ones with the most agile methodology. The key to agility is using AI as a real-time GPS to execute your strategic GTM map, not as a replacement for critical human thinking.
AI isn’t a replacement for strategy, of course, but it is a powerful tool to enhance execution and adaptability.
Your Annual Plan Is the Map, AI Is the Real-Time GPS
Helena offers a powerful analogy for modern GTM planning:
“If annual planning is your map, your AI gives you signals that are your GPS.”
The annual GTM plan sets the destination and overall route, but AI provides the real-time signals and course corrections needed to navigate changing markets.
This approach allows teams to pivot quickly based on new data and market shifts without the immense administrative burden of completely rebuilding their plan every quarter.
It’s the key to connecting high-level strategy with agile, on-the-ground execution.
Don’t Outsource Your Thinking: Using AI for Execution, Not Strategy
Both speakers were adamant about one crucial point: AI is a phenomenal execution engine, but critical thinking must remain with humans.
In short, we can all agree on the golden rule of AI: “Never outsource your thinking to AI, only outsource the structure of your thoughts.“
AI can analyze data, identify patterns, and automate tasks at a scale humans cannot match. However, it lacks context, strategic judgment, and an understanding of business nuance.
Helena ends with a hilarious yet practical warning about the need for human oversight: “The next time you go send an AI-generated note, just make sure you didn’t send a two-headed baby.”
(Yeah, you’ll definitely want to watch the full webinar to get the context for that one).
How to Build a Resilient Revenue Engine in 2026
The constant cycle of missed quotas and reactive fixes isn’t inevitable. It’s a choice.
Adopting a scientific RevOps methodology is the decision to move from treating symptoms to curing the underlying issues in your GTM engine. The biggest competitive advantage won’t come from having the most tools, but from having the most disciplined and integrated approach to revenue.
This is how you build a GTM motion that is not only efficient but truly resilient.
Ready to replace disconnected spreadsheets and reactive fixes with a unified GTM planning and execution platform? See how Qualtrics optimized its GTM process with Fullcast or head over to grab a demo with one of the experts from the Fullcast team.
