Here is one I actually shipped. What happened, what I did, and the stack if you want to run it yourself.
I was hired to scale a go-to-market. What I found was one that lost money on every selling head: churn and downgrades on one side, an expensive new-business engine on the other. The math did not need interpretation. More heads were not going to outrun a broken engine. Every added head deepened the hole.
The instinct everyone defends in that seat is volume: keep the team, add coverage, push harder. The second option is the slow walk: let attrition do the cutting over a year and call it kindness. The third is the one nobody wants: cut deep, once, and rebuild the seat around a new profile. I have taken a headcount bet twice in my career to set the right trajectory, and this was one of them. The bet is never on fewer people. It is on the profile and the system waiting behind the cut.
So the cut was made, and the profile got redefined: the seat rebuilt around who actually wins it, not who was available when the last rep left. And behind the cut, the system was already waiting. PLAN selling installed and inspected weekly. A ramp with a certification bar instead of a countdown. Coaching run off what inspection surfaced, so it landed on real gaps. A forecast with a confidence and a reason on every commit. That system now has a name, RAISE: recruit the profile, accelerate the ramp, inspect the work, sharpen the coaching, earn the forecast.
The smaller team outproduced the one it replaced. New business nearly doubled on about 80 percent fewer selling heads, and the unit swung from losing money to net positive. Conversion went from one in five to better than one in three. Win rate doubled, 21 to 42 percent. Forecast accuracy went from 65 to 94. Roughly seven figures of inefficient spend came out along the way.
I will not pretend the cut was a formula. It is the hardest call this seat makes, and the people who left were not the reason the engine was broken. What I can defend is the order: fix the engine, define the profile, and only then bet on fewer, better-supported people. A purge without a system waiting is just a smaller version of the same problem.
- GA go-to-market losing money on every selling head, staffed as if the problem were effort instead of the engine.
- IWhat it took was a profile, not a pep talk: the seat redefined around who wins it, plus PLAN selling, deal inspection, and a forecast cadence.
- AAI took the prep, the scoring, and the reporting drag. The smaller team kept the conversations, the coaching, and the calls that carry consequence.
- NRAISE: recruit the profile, accelerate the ramp, inspect the work, sharpen the coaching, earn the forecast. The rebuild was that system becoming the default.
- TNet positive on about 80 percent fewer selling heads, win rate doubled, forecast accuracy 65 to 94, and the smaller team outproduced the one it replaced.