#584 Go-to-Market: Fix the Operating Model Before You Hire, with Bart Fanelli | Niels Brabandt
Go-to-Market: Fix the Operating Model Before You Hire, with Bart Fanelli
By Niels Brabandt
Niels Brabandt is an expert in Sustainable Leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and research.
If you want to scale your revenue, why not simply hire more salespeople? More sellers, more sales, more profit. I hear this logic from founders and executives again and again. In this week's interview, I put it to someone who has run the numbers at the highest level: Bart Fanelli, CEO and co-founder of Skillibrium, former Chief Revenue Officer of OutSystems and former Vice President of Global Field Success at Splunk. His answer was blunt: it is a terrible belief.
A career built on the operating model
Bart Fanelli worked his way up from account manager to Chief Revenue Officer. Today his company, Skillibrium, builds what he calls AI-driven revenue operating systems. The aim is to take go-to-market teams on a consistent journey, so that companies can run on a repeatable cadence, develop their people with the right balance of skill and willingness, and stay on brand while the culture evolves.
That sounds technical. In practice, it is about leadership.
Why founder-led companies slow down
I asked Bart Fanelli where companies go wrong. His observation applies to many organisations I work with. Founder-led businesses, and he includes companies with revenues of 100 million dollars a year, tend to believe that success comes directly and solely from the founder. That is a limitation.
Success, in his view, comes from a group of people with a common mission, a belief system everyone can follow, and a strong, integrated culture that stays on brand. The flaw is emotion. Emotional decisions at the top create a pendulum swing, fear spreads, and the company slows down. Once leaders find a consistent, repeatable pattern at the most senior level and take the fear out, people can work within that pattern, and the company speeds up.
Why hiring more salespeople is the wrong first move
The story Bart Fanelli told me is one every board member should hear. In his first meeting with investors, the first question was: "How many quota carriers can you hire?" His answer: "I have no idea. I will be able to tell you in three months, after I have visited everyone in the business and know whether we have the right system and the right people."
His conclusion comes from practice, not theory. You cannot arbitrarily add capacity to scale a company. You have to fix the operating model first. In his experience, most companies could reduce capacity in the field without losing performance, and save cost in the process. In the case he described, his team reduced capacity by almost 20 per cent and still met the commitment to the board. Only then did they scale capacity again, faster.
The principle is simple: find what works, double down on it, and only then add people. Throwing people at the problem is the easy button. It does not work.
Why mass AI outreach erodes trust
Many companies have now found a new easy button: AI. Automated emails, automated calls, automated meeting booking, millions of contacts. I see the results myself. My podcast receives a flood of AI-generated enquiries of very poor quality.
Bart Fanelli is clear: we are heading for a disaster in which the human element is minimised, quality falls and customer trust erodes. He distinguishes two worlds. In transactional segments, with one or two calls before a deal, high-volume approaches can work. In the enterprise, which represents most business today, they do not. A ten-year-old software company with a thousand customers has to turn towards its customer base and ask: What value are you getting from our relationship? How are you using our technology? What outcome are you pursuing? That is where the money is for executives who want to grow and stabilise their companies.
How to win over reluctant founders
Many listeners will recognise the next problem. You know your company needs help, but your founders believe they have figured it out and that their niche is too special for outside advice.
Bart Fanelli sees this as an inability to sell internally. Executives who can sell internally can usually sell externally and take their teams with them. So Skillibrium does not go around them. It helps them prepare the narrative for their own executives, for example a forward-ready message or a skip-level communication written in their voice. If they succeed internally, everyone wins. That, he says, is how professional selling should work: mutual, not transactional.
What Leaders Should Do Now
1. Review your operating model before you approve any new sales headcount.
2. Identify the patterns that already work in your go-to-market organisation, and scale those first.
3. Remove fear from senior decision-making by establishing a consistent, repeatable cadence.
4. Use AI to support relationships with existing enterprise customers, not to replace them with volume.
5. Strengthen your ability to sell internally before you try to convince external stakeholders.
Apply, apply, apply.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
When you want to have success in the business world, the question is how do you do it. And there is someone who is out there to help you, because we know that you need a system that actually makes you succeed. The question is: how. And we have an expert on the matter with us here today. Hello and welcome, Bart Fanelli.
Bart Fanelli
Hi, Niels. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Thank you very much for for making the time here. I mean, you have one career. You really were. You worked your way up from account manager to now being a founder, former CRO. So you're the founder of Skillibrium. So what is Skillibrium doing?
Bart Fanelli
So Skillibrium in the purest sense, applies what we'll call AI-driven revenue operating systems for companies.
Bart Fanelli
That brings people, their teams, in the go-to-market organization on a consistent journey so they can run their companies on a repeatable cadence.
Bart Fanelli
They can develop their people and ensure they have the right level of skill and willingness.
Bart Fanelli
And they can make changes within the culture to ensure they maintain brand affinity.
Bart Fanelli
They run the business on brand and develop their people the best way possible.
Bart Fanelli
That's what we do.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent. So what do you think are the most - because you will meet people out there who think, "Look, we have a company. I think we figured it out, right? I think we know how to do it." And you see so many people failing with this, especially with these go-to-market strategies and then the ongoing development.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And you know, when people founded something and it's their little thing, they are not easy to consult on. So what, in your opinion, are the main errors that people do in that space?
Bart Fanelli
So it's a great - it's very true. And it's different by company. And you know this from your experience. Small founder-led companies and we can say a $100 million a year company would be a small founder-led company. They get way smaller, but as an example, they usually believe that the successes derive directly from them and solely from them. And it really is - that's a limitation.
Bart Fanelli
So the problem is it's derived from a grouping of people that have a common mission, a belief system that everybody can follow and get behind, and usually from a strong, integrated culture that stays on brand and on narrative. The flaw is most of the time, emotions create the pendulum swing within those types of companies, and they slow down. And until you get a handle on that emotion, until you find some consistent, repeatable pattern that you can execute at the senior-most level so that you don't put fear into people, you will continue to slog along slowly.
Bart Fanelli
But when you take that fear out and you give a pattern that is repeatable and people can work within the pattern, you speed up. So that's commonly observed across industry.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
I think you have a great line. I saw it on your website. High-performing companies build systems. Skillibrium is that system. And I now have one thing here.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
One thing I heard quite frequently from founders who said, "Look, I can tell you how we scale. We just hire salespeople at scale." Yeah, you know, more salespeople, more sales, more revenue, more profit.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So where's the problem? Why do I need consultancy here? What do you think of this approach of, "Hey, let's just hire salespeople and the growth will come across what it is that means"?
Bart Fanelli
It's a terrible - it's a terrible belief that's been challenged multiple times. So I'll tell it in the form of a story. Sitting in a boardroom with investors, and the first question in my first meeting with the investors: "How many quota carriers can you hire?"
Bart Fanelli
The exact question you just asked, or concept you just shared with me, "I have no idea. In fact, I'll be able to tell you in three months after I go visit everybody within the business and realize if we even have the right system and the right people, and then I can tell you."
Bart Fanelli
So my belief, and it's from practice, not from theory, I've done the job, as you've mentioned, from contributor all the way to senior executive globally. You cannot arbitrarily just hire capacity to scale a company. You have to fix the operating model first.
Bart Fanelli
In fact, most companies we see, they could reduce capacity in the field and performance would not change. In fact, then you, they would reduce cost by doing so. You pattern match what's working, then you double down and accelerate based on what's working, and you can start to scale capacity at that point.
Bart Fanelli
However, in that particular scenario that I described, we did reduce capacity by almost 20% and still made the commitment to the board. And then we started scaling capacity afterwards to go faster.
Bart Fanelli
But you can't just throw people at the problem. It doesn't work that way. Even though we all, it's the easy, that's the easy button. Just add more salespeople.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah. And now, of course, people, after they realize that this probably is not working, throwing people at the problem, they say, "You know, we got a new thing that we're throwing at the problem. We don't hire people. We do something with AI. You know, AI is going to do automated email outreach, automated phone calls, automatic meeting agreements. We put out that millions of contacts, and just by the pure mass of context, the whole meetings will come in and our salespeople just, just convert them."
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
What do you think of that approach? Which we now, even with my podcast, I, I now see a mass of AI inquiries of extremely poor quality flooding in. So what do you think of this? Let's put AI on the field from, from there.
Bart Fanelli
I think it's a terrible, I think, I think we're heading for a disaster where the human aspect is being minimized and the digital aspect is being amplified by AI, and it is, it's reducing quality and it's eroding trust within what I would say the customer base.
Bart Fanelli
So there's two ways to think about it. We have we have new customer acquisition, which is clearly important to everybody. And there's transactional segments where this approach works very well. They're one or two calls and you have a transaction.
Bart Fanelli
But in the enterprise, which the big enterprise, which is the majority of, of business today, let's say 10-year-old SaaS company that has a thousand customers, well, they have to turn into their customer base and they have to work with their teams to represent their companies professionally in a pragmatic, slow, and relationship-based way.
Bart Fanelli
What's the value you're deriving from our relationship? How are you using our technology? What is the outcome you're pursuing? That is where the money is for executives that want to grow and stabilize companies.
Bart Fanelli
So I think there's important aspects to both approaches. However, in enterprise or in SaaS, in large companies that exist, the volume play does not work. The turning in and the pragmatic highly structured, professional representative way, that is how you build, rebuild companies to scale again.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent. Brilliant answer here. But now someone's listening and they say, "Because of course I prepared for the interview, and a couple of people were immediately enticed and say, 'Hey, this is something we really need.' But," and then they say, "Look, I think we really could need help here. However, I know how our founders are. Our founders think they figured it out. They are extremely reluctant to accept external advice, and they will tell any one of them and say, 'Look, it's a really special niche field in which we operate. How do you want to know how we can scale and go to market from here?'"
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
How would you approach when someone says, "I think we need help, but we know how difficult it can be within our organization to reach top people who have a proven track record of success, even financially, but who now struggle to move further from there?"
Bart Fanelli
that's a very interesting concept. I, I think that actually represents itself to me as an inability to sell internally. So it challenges the executive or the persona that we might be talking with immediately as not being prepared to have that type of conversation with their own executives, which is inherent in almost all companies. So we find executives that know how to sell internally usually have the ability to then sell externally or bring their teams on that external journey.
Bart Fanelli
So how we address that is we actually help them sell to their executives by getting with them and preparing what that narrative might look like or writing what would be a forward-ready or an executive skip-level communication in their voice. Think about that. We can't sell around them if they don't even know how to sell to their executives. That would be futile.
Bart Fanelli
However, if we can help them sell to their executives on our behalf, we both win. And that is exactly how professional selling should work. It isn't transactional. It is mutual. And so we call that skip-level communicating or skip-level selling forward-ready communicating. And we would do that with them to help them succeed on our behalf. That would make us successful by default.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah. Excellent. Very good. And of course, but now people say, "Hey, I think this is exactly what we need right now." One question, of course, sticks around when someone says, "Hey, we need you as a speaker, trainer, consultant, whatever, you can help us." How can people get in touch with you?
Bart Fanelli
Well, most importantly, the website is skillibrium.com. LinkedIn is my primary or our primary channel. Hit me up on LinkedIn and DM me and, and we'll talk and strategize. Our goal, help other executives be successful in their own companies, not go around them. That's the, that's the concept a hundred percent of the time.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Brilliant. We see now that go-to-market, there is a system, and here is the system that can make you succeed. So at the end of this interview, there's only one thing left for me to say, Bart, thank you very much for your time.
Bart Fanelli
Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you.