Q1 Leadership × GTM Lead Review
Prepared by: Robert Tseng (CEO) For: Luke Scorziell (GTM Lead) Date: March 2026 Purpose: Course-correct GTM Lead role alignment, set 2-week performance plan, and establish CEO leverage/resourcing commitments for Q2 planning.
1. Adjusted Role, Alignment, and Leveling
What we hired for (January onboarding)
The original JD described a “zero-to-one GTM builder” who would:
- Design and run 3–5 fast-cycle experiments per week with ≤1-week learning loops
- Own insight generation + market clarity
- Architect repeatable GTM systems (messaging libraries, ICP frameworks, sequencing, SOPs)
- Produce A-level GTM briefs that drive end-to-end execution
- Lead hands-on GTM execution (write/test messaging, run ICP interviews, build funnels)
- PM Hannah + Ryan; act as connective tissue between strategy and execution
The onboarding plan mapped a 6-month ramp: orientation → team alignment → AI GTM focus → sales process optimization → strategic enablement / codified playbooks.
What actually happened (drift)
Over the course of Q1, the role shifted from experiment-driven conversion ownership toward content production + partner event execution + team coordination:
| Original expectation | What performance shows now |
|---|---|
| Fast-cycle experiments (3–5/wk) with tight learning loops | Experiments were slow to launch; “micro-pivots” without compounding learning |
| Own MQL→SQL conversion system | MQL→SQL conversion is ~0%; no reliable follow-up/qualification workflow |
| Crisp ICP/service mapping so services can be pitched | ICP conversations not consistently tracked; service-to-ICP mapping still unfinished |
| Data accuracy + CRM hygiene | WBR/pipeline inputs repeatedly incorrect; CEO debugging dashboards |
| Minimize meeting time; high-signal discovery only | Too many meetings; discovery calls with wrong-level contacts (operators vs decision-makers) |
| Architect repeatable GTM system | Team coordination consumed time; content/partner execution became the primary lane |
The scope narrowed organically from “full GTM builder” to “partnerships + content + office hours execution.” That’s not inherently wrong—but the JD, leveling, and success metrics need to match reality.
Re-leveled role: Partnerships, Brand & Narrative Lead
New title: Partnerships, Brand & Narrative Lead (Slow Marketing)
Core accountability: Storyline integrity across content + partners + office hours. Set the guardrails and standards so our brand narrative is consistent, ICP-aligned, and feeds the right leads into the conversion system.
What you own:
- Brand guardrails: Consistent storyline across all content and partner-facing materials
- Content standards: Weekly content plan (capped at 8–10 pieces/week), aligned to ICP/service angles and partner office-hours promotion
- Partner office hours narrative: Cohort framing, attendance quality, and promotional content alignment
- High-intent engagement execution: Curated lists, commenting discipline, and external engagement lever(s) that drive awareness
- Marketing-leading indicators: Engagement quality, high-intent actions/week, office hours attendance rates
- CRM/WBR accuracy for your lane: Your pipeline inputs must be correct and on time
What you do NOT own:
- MQL→SQL conversion mechanics (qualification, follow-up workflow, handoff timing)
- Discovery call qualification decisions
- Nurturing/sequence execution for active SQL deals
- Fast-cycle experiment design or conversion optimization
Success metrics (immediate):
| Metric | Target |
|---|---|
| Content volume | 8–10 pieces/week (down from 12) |
| High-intent ICP actions | ≥ 10/week |
| MQL ICP quality | ≥ 50% of MQLs meet target ICP |
| Office hours attendance + follow-up completion | Tracked by cohort; completion rates improve week-over-week |
| CRM/WBR accuracy | Inputs correct by deadline; zero debugging required |
| Meeting time | Measurably reduced; propose calendar changes |
Counterpart role needed: GTM Conversion & Qualification Owner
To close the gap the re-leveling creates, we need an explicit owner for the MQL→SQL conversion system. This is either a new hire, a reassignment, or temporarily held by Robert/UTAM.
What this counterpart owns:
- MQL intake → qualification → discovery → SQL handoff workflow quality
- Follow-up/nurturing system so deals don’t stall in active SQL stages
- Tight feedback loop: cohort learnings → conversion improvements
- Data accuracy for conversion metrics
- Whether to run/halt specific plays based on conversion outcomes (not just meetings booked)
Counterpart success metrics:
| Metric | Target |
|---|---|
| MQL→SQL conversion rate | Improving week-over-week (cohort-based) |
| Active SQL stage velocity | No deals stalled >14 days |
| Discovery-to-proposal effectiveness | Increasing; fewer low-signal calls |
| Decision-maker rate on discovery calls | Measurably higher than Q1 |
2. Performance Improvement Plan (2-Week Sprint + Next Quarter)
Week 1: Lock the system basics
-
Fix WBR/pipeline correctness discipline
- Today’s output must be trustworthy. Inputs for your lane are accurate by end of day, every day.
- No more “it’s wrong / outdated” discoveries during review meetings.
-
Office hours become a cohort, not a recurring event
- Choose a cohort wave; execute follow-up and vetting rules for conversion.
- Do not schedule the next event until you’ve advanced prior attendees through the next step.
-
Meeting rules
- Reduce your discovery/qualification burden. Discovery calls: pair with Robert/UTAM for higher-signal qualification.
- Propose the specific calendar changes you will make.
-
Content/engagement adjustments
- Reduce content pieces to 8–10/week.
- Shift effort to external engagement leverage: curated lists + commenting (not more volume).
-
Qualification quality improvement
- Stop spending time on low-signal operator-level calls.
- Async outreach until you’re within 1–2 degrees of decision-maker.
Week 2: Partnerships & Content Roadmap for Q2
Week 2 deliverable is a written Q2 Partnerships & Content Roadmap that Luke presents, grounded in an honest Q1 activity audit and conversion results. The roadmap must show he understands where he spent time, what worked, what didn’t, and what the next quarter’s experimentation cadence looks like.
Part A: Q1 Recap — Bets and Results
Luke must produce a structured recap of everything he ran in Q1. Based on transcripts and Slack activity, here is what Robert observed Luke spending time on. Luke should confirm, add to, and attach results to each:
Content & engagement
- Doubled content volume from ~6 to 12 pieces/week; later pushed to 10/week cadence
- Launched his own LinkedIn account as a third content source
- Focused content themes: partners, services, thought leadership, problem/solution
- External engagement: commenting on influencer posts, reciprocal engagement
- Gating experiments: tested gating lead magnets vs ungated; experimented with Tally forms
- Content quality concern raised: “I don’t know that I want this on my LinkedIn” (AI slop recognition)
- Video content bet: sales clips via Rico/Ray for higher engagement lifecycle
- Result needed: engagement rate trends, high-intent actions/week, content-to-MQL attribution
Office hours & events
- Ran first agency office hours → “significantly higher number of MQLs that came in”
- Shifted from agency OH to MotherDuck OH to avoid doing both “mediocre”
- Recognized back-to-back scheduling prevented follow-up: “we didn’t follow up with the leads from the last one”
- Followed up with ~6–8 attendees from first cohort of 26 (Kayla, Keeley, Leo, George, Stanley, Lisa/Richard, Alice)
- Planned partner OH calendar: MotherDuck (Mar 26), Omni (Apr 9), Amplitude (Apr 23), Talisma (May 14), MoEngage (TBD), Contextual (TBD)
- Defined success metrics in Slack: 50–60 invites → 10–15 MQLs → 3–5 SQL meetings → 1–2 SOWs per OH
- Built MotherDuck event brief with Luma page, event flow, target audience, outreach sequences, follow-up templates
- Collected customer pain points from Hami for MotherDuck targeting (outgrowing spreadsheets, Power BI frustration, Snowflake overkill, complexity cliff)
- Result needed: actual attendance vs target, MQL count, SQL conversions, proposals sent per OH cohort
Partnerships
- MoEngage: advanced to blog post stage; “two weeks ago they were ready to move forward with us” but post didn’t ship; set up Slack workspace with full MoEngage team; waiting on topics from Kartik
- Omni: light engagement (liking/commenting on social); expressed desire for “clean demo going out every week”; discussed Gold/Silver/Bronze partner tiering
- Snowflake: expressed desire for weekly demo content for Snowflake reps; no concrete deliverable shipped
- MotherDuck: most advanced — built event brief, planned targeting (Directors of IT / “accidental data person”), collected pain points, defined invite/RSVP/attendance targets
- Mixpanel: event “crashed and burned”; pivoted to virtual event idea; got 3–4 submissions
- Talisma: planned May 14 event with Aaron Schwarzberg
- Result needed: partner-sourced MQLs, SQLs, and proposals per partner; status of each activation plan
Campaigns & outreach
- Ran E2A (Edge-to-Activation) campaign — noted it was “most revenue-facing”
- Ran agency campaign
- Recognized dbt campaign was not working: “DBT stuff seems more probably a passive issue”
- Networking calls → referral pipeline (described as his primary outbound motion)
- D&G: found lead on LinkedIn, ran through multiple phases, moved to Q2/NDA stage; took too long to identify non-decision-maker
- Result needed: campaigns launched, response rates, meetings booked, proposals sent from each
Where Luke got stuck (themes from transcripts + Slack)
- Metric definitions: repeatedly asked what MQL/SQL/pipeline means and how to calculate (“Can we just change SQL to… discovery calls times 30K?”; “Do we need contact info for MQL?”; “We’ve been under-tracking”)
- Data accuracy: WBR took ~2 hours to update; formulas wrong; engagement growth % off; numbers not matching
- Context switching / capacity: “I can do one full lane of vision to execution, but I can’t do vision on a couple lanes and execution on a couple lanes too”
- Delegation quality: “I give Ryan and Rico a document… but if I’m gonna build the whole thing then I might as well send the message”; list quality from Ryan was “still not good”
- Follow-up discipline: recognized gap but didn’t close it: “we haven’t had a process on following up”
- Partnership velocity: MoEngage blog post could have shipped 2+ weeks earlier; Omni engagement was surface-level (social likes); Snowflake had no concrete deliverable
- Content quality vs quantity tradeoff: recognized AI content wasn’t landing but didn’t shift the system
- Meeting load: asked Robert “Did you mean to schedule the retro for three hours?”; pushed standup to async; spent time in long working sessions
Part B: Cohort Conversion Report
Luke must answer concretely for each office-hours cohort and campaign:
| Source | Attendees/Contacts | MQLs | SQLs | Proposals | What follow-up worked | What failed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agency OH #1 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| MotherDuck OH (planned) | Targets: 10–15 | ? | ? | ? | — | — |
| E2A campaign | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Agency campaign | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| D&G (LinkedIn) | 1 | 1 | 0 (moved to Q2) | 1 (NDA stage) | Found lead, ran pricing | Too many meetings to reach decision-maker |
| Partner referrals | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
Part C: Q2 Experimentation Roadmap (2 experiments/week)
Luke must propose a repeatable experimentation cadence of 2 experiments per week. Each experiment must include:
- Hypothesis
- Target cohort or audience
- Channel/tactic
- Expected signal (what “working” looks like within 1 week)
- Kill/continue criteria
Example experiment types (Luke should propose his own, drawing from Q1 learnings):
- Follow-up timing: test 24hr vs 72hr vs 1-week post-OH follow-up on meeting-book rate
- Message angle: “accidental data person” framing vs “Director of IT modernization” framing for MotherDuck OH invites
- Decision-maker filter: only follow up with attendees who are director+ or can introduce director+ (vs following up with everyone)
- Partner co-promotion: test whether partner sharing invites to their network changes RSVP quality
- Content format: video recap of OH vs written recap — which drives more re-engagement
- Gating vs ungated: does gating the OH recording drive more email captures than ungated
Rules:
- Avoid “endless list-building” that creates back-and-forth with Ryan/Rico and produces low-quality outcomes
- Each experiment must have a written 1-paragraph brief before it starts and a 1-paragraph post-mortem within 1 week
- Experiments should compound: Week 2 experiments should build on Week 1 learnings
Part D: Handoff discipline
- Once a lead is SQL-credible, it moves quickly to Robert/UTAM lane.
- Luke defines the handoff criteria in his Artifact 2 (Handoff Contract) and enforces it in the roadmap.
”Basics competency” checklist (end of Week 2 gate)
By end of Week 2, Luke must demonstrate:
- WBR/pipeline inputs are accurate and on time
- Office-hours cohort follow-up is real and tracked
- MQL→SQL improvement is evidenced by cohort data (not narrative guesses)
- Meeting load reduced; no increase in low-signal calls
- Engagement targets stayed healthy with less content volume
- Q1 recap completed with honest results attached to each bet (Part A)
- Cohort conversion table filled in with real numbers, not estimates (Part B)
- Q2 experimentation roadmap with 2 experiments/week proposed and first 2 already running (Part C)
- Handoff criteria defined and first handoff executed cleanly (Part D)
Next Quarter OKR Changes
Keep (Sales — Robert-owned):
| KR | Owner |
|---|---|
| SQL to Discovery Calls rate ≥ 30% | Robert |
| 0 active deals stalled >14 days | Robert |
| ≥ 25% deals advance one stage each week | Robert |
| ≥ 60% SQL post-discovery call win rate | Robert |
| Expected 30k | Robert |
| ≤ 25% forecast variance (requires trustworthy pipeline inputs) | Robert |
Keep (Partnerships — Uttam-owned):
| KR | Owner |
|---|---|
| ≥ 50% of active SQL is partner-sourced | Uttam |
| ≥ 70% of partner-sourced leads meet target ICP | Uttam |
| 3 partners run full 90-day activation plans (Snowflake, Omni, Talisma) | Uttam |
| X partner-sourced SQLs with raised-floor deal size | Uttam |
| Median cycle time account list → first meeting ≤ 3 weeks | Uttam |
| At least 1 repeatable co-marketing surface per partner | Uttam |
Re-assign (Marketing → Conversion Owner):
| KR | Old Owner | New Owner |
|---|---|---|
| ≥ 30% of new SQL pipeline comes from MQLs | Luke | Conversion Owner (Robert/UTAM interim) |
Keep (Marketing — Luke-owned, re-scoped):
| KR | Owner |
|---|---|
| ≥ 10 high-intent ICP actions per week | Luke |
| ≥ 50% of MQLs meet target ICP | Luke |
| Weekly on-message storyline coverage maintained across content + partner office hours | Luke (new) |
3. CEO Resourcing & Leverage
What Robert commits to
Process leverage (reduce friction):
- Pair on discovery/qualification calls during the 2-week sprint so the team learns what “good SQL-worthy qualification” looks like.
- Set the intake/hand-off rules: SQL goes to Robert/UTAM; Luke focuses on the marketing/partner/event lane and cohort follow-up.
- Enforce “metric accuracy deadlines” so the system is managed with truth, not approximations.
Resourcing leverage (what changes on the team):
- Reduce “cooks in the kitchen” by tightening ownership and likely removing/downsizing overlapping roles.
- Ensure nurturing + recurring sequence execution happens (nurturing is a gap; fix requires someone to own sequences).
- Fix CRM/workflow reliability so logging and WBR numbers stop drifting.
Coordination leverage (reduce communication lag):
- Co-working/in-person where possible to reduce remote taste/communication lag that slows sales velocity.
- Guardrail templates provided so Luke has the format for storyline/campaign briefs and handoff criteria.
What Robert is considering (not yet committed)
- Coordinator under Luke: Will not be approved until Luke demonstrates he can own the basics (end of 2-week gate). If he passes, a coordinator is on the table to handle scheduling, content queuing, and CRM data entry.
- Counterpart at level: A GTM Conversion & Qualification Owner who handles the fast-cycle conversion system. This is a Q2 hiring/assignment decision contingent on whether the re-leveling sticks.
- In-person / LA office: Under discussion with co-founder. If committed, Luke would be expected to participate.
What Luke must do (homework — due before end-of-week leads call)
Artifact 1: 2-Week Slow Marketing Plan (1 page)
- Office hours plan: schedule + target cohort intent angle (what story are we running?)
- Content plan: weekly content cap (8–10) and breakdown by partner/storyline angles
- Engagement plan: what “high-intent touchpoints” means operationally (curated lists/commenting rules)
- What you will explicitly not do (to protect meeting time)
Artifact 2: Handoff Contract (Luke → Conversion Owner)
- For every lead cohort source (office hours, partner referrals, content-driven actions): what qualifies as “SQL-worthy handoff”?
- What fields/events must be correct before handoff (so the conversion system isn’t fed garbage)?
- Who receives it first (Robert/UTAM) and when Luke stops engaging?
Artifact 3: Budget Draft (Reallocation Proposal)
- A budget split proposal across: content production support, partner/event promotion, any tools/contractors
- Based on the P&L detail shared: what Luke is willing to allocate vs cut
- A short justification: “If we spend X here, we expect Y outputs”
- Explicit tradeoffs: “If this doesn’t happen, I cut this instead of adding meetings or output volume”
Timeline
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Luke receives this document | This week |
| Homework artifacts due | Before end-of-week leads call |
| 2-week sprint begins | Immediately after leads call |
| End of Week 1 check-in | 1 week from sprint start |
| End of Week 2 gate review | 2 weeks from sprint start |
| Q2 role/resourcing decision | End of March |
Non-negotiables
- Meeting time reduction is a requirement, not a suggestion. Luke must propose the calendar changes, not just agree in theory.
- Content volume goes down, but standards go up. Engagement must come from higher-leverage actions, not posting more.
- Handoff clarity is mandatory. If the conversion owner can’t convert, Luke’s lane didn’t feed the funnel correctly.
- Budget ownership is real. Luke sets the budget based on conversations we’ve had and the P&L he’s seen. He must make tradeoffs, not ask for more resources without demonstrating he can run with what he has.
This document is a working agreement between CEO and GTM Lead. It will be revisited at the end-of-month decision point.