How to Set Up GTM Operations | Roee Hartuv, Head of Revenue Architecture at Winning by Design

A revenue architect diagnoses the commercial system, identifying what works and what needs to change. The architect then designs sales, customer success, team structure and the intended growth path. Rollout follows, requiring gradual introduction and reinforcement until the design shapes daily execution.

Hartuv treats the go-to-market organisation as a revenue factory. Each team or motion has an input, throughput and output, revealing how the parts interact. Revenue architects examine data and use models to find underperformance. They avoid copying another company’s playbook or accepting a tool’s limitations.

Hartuv’s threshold is product-market fit, not headcount, contract value or revenue. A company does not need an external consultant then. However, someone who understands revenue architecture must start designing the right go-to-market strategy. Waiting until substantial growth makes implementation harder.

No universal test establishes product-market fit, but common patterns emerge. Companies close similar customers, while contract values, sales cycles and deal metrics become more consistent. Renewals provide another strong signal because customers choose to continue, though that evidence can take a year or longer. Leaders should combine commercial consistency with available retention evidence.

Product-market fit shows that a recognisable customer group repeatedly finds value in the product. Go-to-market fit means the company has a repeatable method for acquiring and serving those customers. The motion itself does not determine fit. Product-led growth, enterprise models, and one-stage or two-stage sales processes all qualify if they reliably produce comparable outcomes.

A practical test asks whether another team can follow the process. Leads enter, the team completes a defined sequence, and performance remains consistent. If new SDRs and account executives can reproduce that operation after onboarding, the company is moving beyond isolated sales success. It now has a go-to-market model that can scale.

Start with a unified data model that maps the customer journey into measurable stages. Winning by Design’s bow-tie model covers acquisition on the left, including marketing, outbound activity and sales. Onboarding, retention and expansion sit on the right. Each stage needs recorded inputs and outputs, giving teams a shared view of revenue creation and retention.

Without consistent data, an audit cannot reveal priorities. The model helps leaders identify gaps, such as stalled onboarding, and compare results with internal or industry benchmarks. Hartuv recommends incremental improvements instead of redesigning everything at once. Smaller companies often have fewer operational resources but face fewer entrenched systems than organisations with hundreds of employees.

Begin with an unbiased review of available data, even when employee or customer interviews are planned. Quantitative evidence shows where the team should investigate, reducing reliance on assumptions. This sequence helps when departments offer conflicting explanations for weak performance. It also supports businesses with limited analytical capacity.

Data alone does not explain every pattern. Interviews add context and show what happens within measured stages. The diagnosis should assess enablement, workflows and whether commercial teams follow the intended process. Numbers locate the likely bottleneck, while qualitative evidence reveals its causes and operational context. Hartuv says this diligence typically takes four to six weeks.

Executive sponsorship is necessary. Without visible senior support, change is likely to fail regardless of the analysis. Hartuv aligns executives first, conducts the analysis and returns with data-backed findings. Leaders then agree on priorities and explain the change to the organisation. Employees give messages from senior leadership more weight.

Implementation should rank initiatives by difficulty, speed and expected impact. Each initiative must address people, process and tools. Teams can need new skills, workflows need design, and systems must support new behaviours. Appetite for change determines how many initiatives run together. Large companies can work across functions, while smaller organisations can address one improvement at a time.

In large organisations, Hartuv recommends starting with a strong “domino” team. It adopts the change and demonstrates an effect before wider rollout. A focused sprint combines an initial design period with training and implementation. Frontline managers act as change ambassadors. They train alongside individual contributors and learn to coach the new behaviour.

Narrow initiatives are easier to implement and assess than sweeping transformations. A sprint can address negotiation or discounting while tool changes run in parallel. Teams should record a baseline and measure results, without expecting every metric to change immediately. Field feedback can provide early evidence. Numerical signals can emerge over the next month or two. Broader changes require longer programmes.

The current challenge is delivering high growth at lower cost. Hartuv urges recurring-revenue companies to focus on gross and net revenue retention. Acquiring customers remains difficult, while retaining and expanding accounts costs less than replacing them. That demands effective customer-success processes and sustained customer impact. Professional-services firms have different retention dynamics but still need to understand pipeline mechanics and customer value.

Hartuv calls this the growth formula: the GTM factory’s algorithm. Leaders should track leads, marketing-qualified leads per win, average customer value, retention length and lifetime value. They can work backwards from targets to calculate required customers, pipeline, marketing investment and headcount. GTM operations should challenge arbitrary top-down allocations using conversion rates and operating capacity.