The 90-second version
A deal we had worked for weeks went from we are able to sign on Monday to on hold on Thursday. Both buyers had said yes out loud, more than once.
A new country leader started on Monday. By Tuesday he was in the weeds on 5 open roles. Deliberate, and the only leadership onboarding I believe in.
An event for 320 ran the way it did because of a phone call at 15:15 that nobody in the room heard about.
The European read: in smaller markets the account list is finite and the talent pool is small, so one deal carries more of your quarter and a slow leadership start costs a hiring season.
The thread: the result everyone sees was decided by work nobody saw. Go and find it before it decides the next one.
Read time: ~8 min
320 in the room, 15 finalists, 5 open roles, 3 days from yes to on hold
Week 37 of 52, which leaves about 11 weeks you can actually sell in once the December freeze is priced in. Count them before you plan the rest of the year.
Three things in this one looked like 3 different stories. One loss, one start, one night that went well. Underneath each was the same shape: work that decided the outcome and that nobody watching could see.
Two of those I got right. One I did not.
Hi, it is Koen Stam and welcome to GTMcraft OS: The European GTM Operator. This newsletter is built from 100,000+ GTM signals collected from 100+ operators and founders, combined with 13+ years of my own lessons and failures from the trenches. I write at the intersection of go-to-market practice and AI-powered systems for founders and GTM operators scaling their next 2M, 5M or 10M ARR.
Lesson 1: 3 days from we are able to sign to the project is on hold
We had spent weeks on this one. Negotiation calls, proposal work, pricing built to work for both sides, follow-ups on the follow-ups.
On Monday evening I sent the final offer myself, to be specific about which terms were exceptions and why. The systems owner had said they were going to sign. So had the director who would own the rollout. More than once, both of them.
On Thursday at 13:01 the email arrived. The project is on hold. Priorities had been reset by the group’s owners, and we were told this moves quickly in a private-equity environment.
The deal size had already come down twice. The process was never smooth. We had our doubts and carried on anyway.
My take: I have lost deals to a cheaper competitor and to a better one, and I can coach a team against both. This was neither. What I did not have was the customer’s own priority list. I knew exactly where we ranked in their process. I had no idea where we ranked in their portfolio, and the second list is the one that killed us. My rule out of this week: before anyone calls a deal committed, I want the 3 things competing for the same signature, and whoever last reset that order. The other lesson I said out loud on Friday. Never let one number be the plan. We have plenty of alternatives, and the only reason that is true is we built them before we needed them.
The European read: in a smaller market the account list is finite, so one deal carries a bigger share of your quarter than it would anywhere with 10 times the accounts. An owner reprioritising in another country resets your pipeline without anyone in your market being asked.
Do first: open your 3 largest open deals. Per deal, write the other projects competing for the same budget signature this quarter. Mark any where you cannot name one.
Do this week: on the deal closest to signature, ask your champion what sits above you on that list and who decides the order. Ask whoever reports to the person who sets it, not only the person who likes you.
Do this month: make the last reset date a standing line in your deal review. When were this customer’s priorities reordered, and by whom. No deal review? Put it in the deal note.
The rule: a verbal yes tells you where you rank in their process. It tells you nothing about where you rank in their portfolio.
You know it worked when: your late-stage slip rate falls and your close dates stop moving in the last 2 weeks of a quarter. Founder read: no single deal is worth more than a fifth of your quarter, and you can name the 3 that would replace it.
The play: 5 steps to drive late-stage deals to signature with a mutual action plan (2026 series). Builds the plan with the person who can commit their own organisation, so a stalling plan shows up as risk weeks before an email does.
Lesson 2: a new leader was in the weeds by day 2, and that was the point
A new country leader started on the Monday. On Tuesday I pulled him into 5 open roles: a BDR, a partner manager, a regional marketing manager, an account executive and a solution engineer.
Not a briefing. The actual decisions. Who we want, what the bar is, which of the 5 comes first.
By day 4 it already felt normal that he was in the seat. That is fast, and it is not an accident.
My take: I have never seen a leadership onboarding work where the leader stayed out of the day to day for the first weeks. The half-built org chart is not a distraction from the job. It is the job, and the first 5 hires will shape that market for 2 years. So I hand it over on day 2 rather than protect someone until day 30. What I watch in myself is the other failure: immersion with no gate. Throwing a leader into live decisions only works if I wrote down what good looks like by day 60, before they start. Otherwise I am not onboarding them, I am just busy with them, and I cannot tell the difference for 2 quarters.
The European read: in a smaller market the senior talent pool is small and everyone in it knows each other. A leader who spends 90 days observing is one whose first 5 hires were made by somebody else, in a hiring season that will not come again this year.
Do first: for your most recent leadership or senior hire, write the 3 live decisions they own this week. If all 3 are still yours, they are observing, not leading. No leader hired yet? Run it on the person you most want to stop reviewing.
Do this week: hand over 1 decision with a real consequence, and tell the team you handed it over. The second half is what makes it real.
Do this month: write the day-60 gate before the next hire starts. Three observable things they should have done, not felt. No formal review cycle? Put the 3 lines in a shared doc and diarise the date.
The rule: a leader you protect from the mess for 90 days is a leader you cannot judge for 6 months.
You know it worked when: your new leader makes a hire, or kills a req, without checking first, and you agree with the call. Founder read: the person you hired has taken a decision off you, not just a task.
The play: 5 steps to know by day 60 whether your leadership hire is working (2026 series). Sets the observable gate before the start date, so immersion on day 2 does not become a shrug on day 90.
Lesson 3: the room worked because of a call at 15:15 nobody heard
Thursday afternoon, 15:15, my phone rang. My co-organiser: where are you, we need to start the dry run.
That evening was the third edition of an event I co-host. 320 people in the room, 100 nominations, 15 finalists.
I had prepared it by hand. Pen and paper, early mornings, evenings, the gaps between meetings, writing out the key lines from every nomination so each finalist heard the right context in their peers’ own words.
Nobody in that room saw any of that. What they saw was 3 finalists coming off stage and, inside a minute, asking each other for a meeting.
My take: the trophy is the receipt. The product was 2 minutes of somebody else’s words about you, said out loud, in front of a room. That only lands if the words are right, and getting them right is unglamorous work done alone at 06:00. Every polished thing I have ever admired had a 15:15 call behind it. The people who do that work are almost never on the stage, and almost never the ones who get thanked. That is exactly why we built this thing. The same is true of every customer meeting you walked out of thinking that went well. Either 2 people rehearsed it, or it was luck, and only 1 of those repeats.
The European read: in a small market your reputation is built in rooms of 300, not campaigns of 30,000, and the same people are in the next room in November. What you rehearse gets remembered, and so does what you clearly did not.
Do first: take your highest-stakes customer meeting in the next 10 days and book 20 minutes of dry run with everyone else in that room. Not a prep doc. A run-through, out loud.
Do this week: name the 3 people who did the invisible work on your last launch, event or big deal. Say what they did, specifically, in front of others.
Do this month: put recognition on a fixed rhythm, not a mood. One slot, one named contribution, same time every month.
The rule: the polish everyone notices is made of preparation nobody sees. Budget the preparation or stop expecting the polish.
You know it worked when: the same 2 names stop being the only ones mentioned, and someone thanks a person you had not thought of. Founder read: your quietest contributor gets named in front of the team this month.
The play: 5 steps to run a recognition rhythm that does not play favorites (2026 series). Turns recognition into a standing slot with a named contribution, so the invisible work gets seen on a schedule instead of when someone remembers.
Save this. 3 lessons from my week as a European operator, each with a play you can run today and my own take from the trenches.
Send it to 1 founder or GTM operator scaling toward 10M in Europe who is about to discount a deal that was never about price.
This week’s play to steal
Lesson 1 is the one that cost me. A deal we had counted stopped being real 3 days after 2 people said it was. The next step is not a better deal review. It is a forecast that only holds what a buyer has actually done, and it is the play I am taking into my next 4 weeks.
Fixes: the forecast that counts intent as commitment, so a quarter looks covered until the week it does not.
Best for: 2-5M and 5-10M teams on the upmarket or new-country leg, where a small number of large deals carries a large share of the quarter.
The 5 steps (over 4 weeks):
Week 1, strip it: for every deal in the current quarter, delete any stage that rests on a verbal. Keep only what the buyer has done: a document opened, a security review started, a date agreed in writing.
Week 1, name the competition: per deal, write the projects competing for the same signature, and who ranks them.
Week 2, re-date it: move the close date to the first month the buyer can sign, not the month you need. Count how much of the quarter just moved.
Week 3, cover it: if any single deal is worth more than a fifth of the quarter, name the 3 that would replace it and put real work behind 2.
Week 4, gate it: nothing re-enters the committed column without a buyer-side action and a named signer who can overrule the list. No commit column? Keep a 5-line will-close list and apply the same 2 conditions.
Template: a 1-5 rubric scored per deal. Rows: buyer-side action in the last 14 days, competing projects named, signer named, close date the buyer confirmed, share of quarter. Anything under 3 still in commit is the gap between your forecast and your quarter.
Paste this into your AI:
Here are my open deals this quarter with stage, value, close date and the last buyer-side action: [paste]. Flag every deal whose stage rests only on something a person said, and recount the quarter without them. Then name the deal whose slip would take more than 20 percent of the number.
Full play, template and workbook inside GTMcraft OS. Reply or DM me to get access.
One question for the room
Take the last thing that went wrong and the last thing that went well. For each one, name the work nobody could see: the priority list you were never shown, the decision you never handed over, the preparation nobody logged. Reply or send me a DM.
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Koen
Your (human) GTM Coach
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PS. Co-written by Wispr + 3 GTMcraft Skills + Claude Opus 5; edited & approved by Koen
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