Listen on YouTube // Apple // Spotify
Who you’ll learn from
Ross Rich is the co-founder and CEO of Accord and spent five years leading go-to-market and partnerships at Stripe. He talks to hundreds of CROs and serves thousands of reps, so he has an unusually clear view of what the top performers actually do differently.
His starting point: roughly the top 20%, often closer to 10%, of any sales team drives most of the revenue. Every leader says they want to move the middle 60%, and Ross doesn’t think AI is doing it. Tools like Claude and Codex make the people who already have the taste and judgment far more efficient, and the gap widens from there. What closes it is unglamorous and human: a leader with a point of view, a shared language simple enough to stick, a field-friendly process, and only then the technology to reinforce it.
Ross gets specific on what “best” means for a seller (trust and EQ first, then frameworks learned so cold they run subconsciously), the disconnect between what CROs think they’re buying and what reps actually receive, the “no-ask note” for multithreading into a CRO, why he sells through his own executives instead of around them, and the biggest lesson of his founder journey: market beats product.
What you'll learn:
What separates the top 10% of reps from everyone else, and why AI is widening that gap instead of closing it
The two ingredients of a great seller: the “give a shit factor” you can’t fake, then plays run so subconsciously you can get creative
The waiter analogy that explains great salesmanship in one sentence
Why the people, process, technology order is the one most teams get backwards in the AI rush
The disconnect between a CRO’s multimillion-dollar investment in the field and what reps actually receive: a 76-page laminate, more Salesforce fields, none of it touching the customer
Why the best methodology is simply the one that gets used, and why debating how many Ps are in MEDDPICC is optimizing the fringes
“Unavoidable excellence”: how to take what your top performers do organically and make it standard across the team
The “no-ask note” for multithreading into a CRO by showing respect instead of asking for time
Why CROs own revenue and not tools, and how to sell through their rev-ops and enablement leaders
“Show, don’t tell”: leading with peer references at stage two when everyone can sound the same and ship a surface-level solution
The founder-led sales handoff mistake Ross has made twice, and the curse of knowledge behind it
Why market beats product, via April Dunford’s positioning and the surfer, surfboard, wave framing
Episode highlights
01:18 - Welcome, and what Accord does
01:49 - Why he left Stripe to build the tool he wished he had
03:26 - What he’s hearing from hundreds of CROs
04:48 - What “best” means for a seller: the waiter analogy
06:40 - Trust, EQ, and learning the plays until they’re instinct
08:48 - The leader-vs-field disconnect on frameworks
11:56 - The best methodology is the one that gets used
13:14 - People, process, technology, in that order
17:01 - Why starting with technology fails
17:44 - “Show, don’t tell”: proof over claims in the AI era
20:03 - Who Accord serves, and why non-famous PE-backed companies win on selling
23:45 - The five-star hotel sales experience
24:54 - The biggest learning: market beats product
26:19 - The surfer, the surfboard, and the wave
27:41 - The isolating side of leadership
29:23 - Is AI really changing sales? Top performers vs. the middle
33:22 - The application layer and “unavoidable excellence”
35:33 - The self-driving car analogy: does it touch the customer?
37:07 - How to sell to a CRO
39:55 - The “no-ask note” explained
41:30 - How to multithread by selling through your own executives
44:38 - The biggest misconception about sales
46:52 - The founder-led-sales handoff mistake he made twice
49:13 - Fill in the blank: leadership, underrated advice, best advice ever
51:19 - Where to find Ross
Key takeaways
1. AI is widening the gap, not closing it.
Reps already at 150 to 200% of quota can write skills and pull sharper customer insight. The middle 60% can’t, because none of these tools were built to be collaborative. Ross: “I don’t think organically it’s moving that middle.”
2. People, then process, then technology. Teams keep running it backwards.
The point of view on how you engage customers comes from the most senior leader, and the process has to be field friendly and built around the customer’s journey, not internal inspection. Only then does technology reinforce a standard that exists.
3. The best methodology is the one that gets used.
Ross credits the line to Russell Sherman. If you’re debating how many P’s belong in MEDDPICC, you’re optimizing the fringes. What’s rare is an entire company, leadership through frontline, asking the same questions in the same language.
4. Leadership thinks it’s investing in the field. The field experiences homework.
One CRO told Ross he’d never spent more time, money and effort supporting his sellers. On the ground that looked like a multi-million dollar consultancy, more Salesforce fields, more quarterly inspection, and a 76 page laminated PDF. None of it touched a customer.
5. Don’t sell to the CRO. Sell through the people who own the tools.
CROs own revenue strategy and forecast, not the tech stack. Multithread into RevOps and enablement first, then send a no-ask note: a short drip in their own language about what you’re hearing from their team, no meeting request attached. And you don’t send it. Your CEO does.
6. Your buyer sees less than 10% of your product before they sign.
“Even with a POC, it’s probably less than 5 to 10% if you have a mature platform.” The rest of the decision is the sales experience itself. Several of Accord’s largest customers today are ones Ross disqualified at the time, who came back a year later because they remembered the experience.
7. The founder-led sales handoff runs to $20M or $30M, not your first VP.
Ross has made the same mistake twice: hire strong reps, hire a great VP, feel confident, move on, lose momentum. He calls it the curse of knowledge. You’ve obsessed over it so long it feels obvious, so you say it once and assume it landed.
Ross Rich
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossrich/
Accord: https://inaccord.com/
Sophie Buonassisi (Host)
X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
Newsletter:
GTMnow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
X / Twitter: https://x.com/GTMnow_
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
The GTMnow Podcast - subscribe to support
It would mean the world to us if you subscribe to the show on your platform of choice. This helps support our growth, which in turn helps us continuously bring on bigger guests and deliver the content that you want to hear most.
The GTMnow Podcast shares how the best in tech build, scale and invest.
Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes, The GTMnow Newsletter editions, and other content.
GTMnow is run by GTMfund, an early-stage venture firm made up of 350+ go-to-market executives from the fastest-growing companies.
