Your H2 plan is built on last year’s inputs
Organic search is thinning, buyers want to pay by usage, and GTM orgs are flattening to senior ICs. A recount before you lock the number, with my operator take on each.
Save this. 3 GTM problems from this week’s signal, injected with the sharpest expert thinking, reframed for a European operator, each with a move you can run today, the play behind it, and my own take from the trenches.
Send it to 1 founder or GTM operator scaling toward 10M in Europe who reads everything and ships none of it.
Applied GTM: Pay For Behavior - Wednesday July 15, 2026
People do what you pay them to do, not what your strategy deck says. That is the whole edition.
11 signals from 41 GTM newsletters and the signal databases. 3 problems. 1 playbook. Covers July 5 to 11. Read time ~7 min.
The 90-second version
The inputs under your plan moved. Where leads come from, how you price, and how you staff are all being repriced in 2026, so a plan built on last year’s inputs will quietly miss.
Organic search is thinning, and even a number-1 ranking can lose more than half its clicks. Work the demand you already have, not just the net-new.
You have a pricing gap. The dead zone between self-serve and talk-to-sales is quietly costing you expansion a ready buyer wanted to give you.
Your org is top-heavy while the work moved to senior ICs. Seniority plus AI is beating a manager plus a layer of juniors.
The European read: 1 lean plan has to hold across several markets at once, so the input that shrinks in 1 country while you fund it flat is where the number leaks first.
The thread: recount the inputs before you run last year’s plan faster.
Read time: 7 min
This week’s number 1 move
Recount where your growth actually comes from before you plan the second half.
Pierre Herubel put hard numbers on the channel shift: AI answer boxes now sit above the search results, and even a number-1 ranking can lose more than half its clicks. The inbound you modeled is thinning while you still budget it flat. The GTM AI Podcast made the deeper cut through Helmer’s 7 Powers, arguing the durable advantage was never the tool or the channel, it was the system of record and the data only you hold, and AI is compressing everything in between.
Read together, they say the same thing: the lead source, the pricing model, and the team shape you treated as fixed are all moving, so the first move of H2 is to recount where growth comes from, not to run last year’s plan faster.
My take: I just spent a week rebuilding next year’s plan from 6 quarters of my own data, and the lesson is the same at the input level. Do not plan off a number you inherited, plan off the source of it. When I recount my markets by revenue, the honest picture is rarely the one in last year’s deck, and that is the point of doing it.
Start here: put your top 3 pipeline sources on 1 line and write each one’s share of closed-won revenue for the last 4 quarters. Any source trending down while you fund it flat is your first problem.
The rule: if a lead source is search-dependent, treat it as shrinking until proven otherwise, and move the next dollar to a channel and a list you own.
Sources: Pierre’s Content Guides, “The Shift from SEO to Social Content” (Jul 16) · GTM AI Podcast, “The Moat Was Never the Model” (Jul 13)
Hi, it is Koen Stam and welcome to GTMcraft: The Future 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 scaling 0 to 10M+ ARR.
100,000+ GTM relevant signals from LinkedIn, Newsletters and Podcasts indexed. Translated into 100+ GTM plays for you to implement today.
13+ years over 3 GTM operator jobs across 3 GTM motions (SMB, MM, ENT). Scaling from 2-10M+ ARR multiple times. Same recipe. Different motions.
Now all part of the GTMcraft Operator Room.
Problem 1: Your inbound is drying up and you are still chasing net-new
Pierre Herubel put a number on what every operator feels: AI answer boxes are eating organic search, and pages that used to convert are losing more than half their clicks even at the top spot. His fix is a repurposing engine, turning the case studies, reports, and long articles you already own into social and video on channels you control, instead of praying to the ranking. Jason Lemkin hit the same thinning funnel from the sales side. Most teams point their new AI outbound at the hottest leads, the ones a rep would call anyway, and get nothing extra. The revenue sits in the B and C leads that scored real interest and then went untouched, the middle of a list you already paid to build. When the top of the funnel shrinks, the highest-return move is working the demand you already have harder, not chasing more net-new.
My take: the base you already have is your cheapest growth, and this is the same lesson I run at the market level. I hold my plan to the markets where I already have revenue, because deepening a source you own beats chasing a new one you do not. The interested-but-ignored middle of your list is the demand-gen version of that call.
The European read: in fragmented markets you cannot outspend a thinning channel across 5 countries at once. So you work the list you already own in each market, in its own language, before you buy your way back to the top of a ranking you do not control.
Do first: chart your organic-search-sourced pipeline across the last 4 quarters. If it is flat or down, your channel mix, not your conversion rate, is the problem.
Do this week: pull every lead from the last 90 days that scored as interested and was never worked, sort by fit, and hand your reps the top 25 to call.
Do this month: stand up 1 repurposing loop: each week take your best existing asset and cut it into 3 pieces of content on a channel you own, so demand stops depending on a ranking you cannot control.
The rule: if a lead source is search-dependent, treat it as shrinking until proven otherwise, and move the next dollar to a channel and a list you own.
You know it worked when: your next-quarter plan names the owned channels replacing the search leads you used to count on, and your reps are calling the interested middle of the list, not just the hand-raisers.
The play: 5 steps to replace fading search traffic with a repurposing engine (2026 series). Inventory the assets you own, cut them into owned-channel content, and work the demand already on your list. Get full access below ↓
Sources: Pierre’s Content Guides, “The Shift from SEO to Social Content” (Jul 16) · SaaStr, “Don’t Put AI on Your Hot Leads” (Jul 13)
Problem 2: Your packaging and comp still assume seats while buyers moved to usage
Two signals show your monetization model drifting from how buyers actually buy. Jason Lemkin describes the pricing gap, the dead zone between your highest self-serve tier and your lowest talk-to-sales deal, where a buyer ready to spend more has no way to, so they churn down or never expand. One company he cites lifted revenue about 15% just by filling that gap with a middle tier. CJ Gustafson shows the other half through Databricks, which pays reps on consumption, not bookings: quota attaches to the account rather than the rep, hunters land small and let usage grow, and the forecast is built on projected consumption. Seat pricing and bookings comp assume the buyer commits up front. More of your market now wants to pay as it uses, and packaging that punishes that leaves expansion on the table.
My take: every 2 points of net revenue retention is worth almost 2 months of new-business target to me, so I read expansion friction as hard as I read new-logo pipeline. A pricing gap is expansion you already earned and cannot collect. That is the most expensive kind of leak, because the buyer already wanted to pay you.
The European read: the base you already won in a country is cheaper to expand than the next country is to open. If your packaging blocks a ready buyer from spending more, you are leaving your cheapest growth on the table while you fund the expensive kind elsewhere.
Start here: mark the gap between your top self-serve tier and your smallest sales-led deal, then pull your last 10 lost or downgraded deals and count how many died in it.
Do this week: take your 3 largest accounts and model what they would pay on usage versus seats. If usage is higher, your seat pricing is capping your own expansion.
Do this month: test 1 usage-aligned tier, or a consumption component in the comp plan, on a single segment, and watch whether land-small deals expand faster than seat deals.
The rule: if a ready-to-spend buyer cannot give you more money without a sales call, that is a pricing gap, and it is costing you expansion you already earned.
You know it worked when: a buyer between self-serve and enterprise can expand without friction, and at least 1 rep is paid on the usage they grow, not just the seats they sign.
The play: 5 steps to close the pricing gap between self-serve and sales (2026 series). Find the dead zone, fill it with a middle tier, and align a rep incentive to consumption. Get full access below ↓
Sources: SaaStr, “Do You Have a Pricing Gap Holding Back Sales” (Jul 14) · Mostly Metrics, “How Databricks Pays Reps to Drive Consumption” (Jul 14)
Problem 3: Your org is top-heavy while the work moved to senior ICs
CJ Gustafson describes the rise of the director-level individual contributor: as headcount growth flattens and AI absorbs the junior grunt work, senior people are back doing the work themselves instead of managing 3 people who do it. Hakan Ozturk sees the same thing in the hiring data, with 552 open customer success roles tracked and AI-native companies hiring senior CS aggressively while asking them to sit onsite and build. The pattern is a leaner, more senior, more hands-on team, where the coordination layers you added on the way up are now the fat. If your org chart has more people managing the work than doing it, you are carrying cost the best 2026 teams already cut.
My take: I run a lean org in the tens of millions of ARR, and the reason it works is that the senior people are close to the work, not managing a layer that is close to it. This week I was covering an interim seat and doing the deal reviews myself, and the number kept moving. Seniority plus AI does absorb what a layer of juniors used to.
The European read: across several markets you cannot afford a management layer in every country. A senior IC with AI covers more ground than a manager plus juniors, and it is the shape that lets 1 lean team hold multiple markets at once.
Start here: count the layers between you and the person who talks to a customer, and mark each role as mostly coordinating or mostly doing.
Do this week: take your most senior IC and give them 1 real piece of execution back, the kind you would normally push to a junior, and see if it ships faster.
Do this month: redesign 1 team around senior ICs plus AI instead of a manager plus juniors, and reinvest the saved headcount into the roles that touch revenue directly.
The rule: if more of your team coordinates the work than does it, the org chart is the cost problem, and seniority plus AI beats a layer of juniors.
You know it worked when: your most senior people are close to the work again, and every layer between you and the customer earns its place.
The play: 5 steps to add output without adding headcount (2026 series). Move the work back to senior ICs, put AI on the junior grunt work, and cut the coordination layer that stopped earning its place. Get full access below ↓
Sources: Mostly Metrics, “Closer to the Metal: The Rise of the Director-Level IC” (Jul 16) · The CS Cafe, “Companies Hiring Customer Success Managers” (Jul 15)
Steal this move: work the demand you already have in 4 weeks
Play: 5 steps to replace fading search traffic with a repurposing engine (2026 series)
Fixes: an inbound plan that still leans on organic search while AI answer boxes thin the channel, so demand quietly shrinks under a flat budget.
Best for: operators at 0 to 10M+ ARR whose second-half plan assumes the same search-led inbound that worked in 2024, across 1 or several markets.
The 4-week move:
Week 1, map the inputs. Chart your top 3 lead sources by share of closed-won over 4 quarters and mark each growing, flat, or shrinking. Name the search-dependent ones.
Week 2, rework the demand. Pull the interested-but-ignored middle of your list and hand reps the top 25 by fit, while you inventory the owned assets worth repurposing.
Week 3, build the loop. Each week cut 1 owned asset into 3 pieces of content on a channel you control, so demand stops depending on a ranking.
Week 4, govern it. Set the owned channel as the default next dollar, and review source mix monthly so a thinning channel is a decision, not a surprise.
Template: a 1-line-per-source table: source, share of closed-won over 4 quarters, trend (growing / flat / shrinking), owned or rented, next-dollar verdict. Any shrinking rented source you fund flat is the leak.
Paste this into your AI:
Here are my top lead sources with their closed-won share over the last 4 quarters and a list of content assets I already own [paste]. Mark each source growing, flat, or shrinking and whether I own or rent it, then design a weekly repurposing loop that turns my best owned assets into content on channels I control, and tell me which interested-but-unworked leads to hand my reps first.
Full play, template and workbook inside GTMcraft. Reply to this email or DM me to get access.
Also on the radar
30MPC, “How to Build Your Discovery Playbook from Scratch” (Jul 14) and SaaStr, “Should You Visit More of Your Prospects In Person” (Jul 13): when the inputs move, win on the fundamentals you control. Structured discovery that ends on a dated next step, and showing up in person on the deals that matter, both move win rates while you cannot control what AI does to your channel. The play: 5 steps to decide when an in-person meeting is worth the trip.
GTMnow, “How to Drive AI Adoption: Lessons From 21 GTM Leaders” (Jul 13): real AI adoption comes from protected build-time and productizing what 1 rep builds, not from buying more tools. Give 1 rep protected build-time this week and turn their best manual workflow into something the team can reuse.
The CS Cafe, “Customer Success Risk Ownership System” (Jul 12): half of most at-risk lists are cross-functional risks a CSM cannot fix alone. Split your at-risk list into risks you own and risks you must escalate, and route the second half today.
SaaStr, “An Hour With Our Top AI Agent Cost $13.42” (Jul 15): running an AI agent is near-free once built, the cost is bursty build time, and the bottleneck is who can write a tight spec. Price 1 agent workflow you already run against the loaded hourly cost of the person doing it now.
3 questions for the room
Which of your growth inputs, lead source, pricing, or org shape, moved the most in the last year, and are you still planning as if it did not?
Where is your pricing gap, and what is it costing you in expansion you already earned?
If you drew your org chart today, how many layers sit between you and the customer?
What is your number 1 takeaway this week? Reply or send me a DM.
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Koen
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