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During COVID, one of Graham Moreno’s sales reps found out that his champion’s son had to stop taking guitar lessons. So the rep offered to teach him over Zoom. The rep didn’t tell anyone — Moreno found out about it six months later when the customer brought it up on a call. One of Moreno's core philosophies is that a great go-to-market system raises the floor and introduces predictability while still leaving space for exceptional people to use their judgment to delight the customer. Much of the industry has been debating whether AI could replace salespeople, but this example of the guitar lessons is the kind of real, human connection Moreno observes in elite sales orgs. Moreno is one of a small number of elite go-to-market leaders. He was a global VP at Grafana Labs, architected the GTM motion at Windsurf through its acquisition by Cognition and now is the head of GTM at Parallel Web Systems. His opinion is counterintuitive to how most sales organizations are operating right now — the fundamentals of great selling are becoming the only real edge in the age of AI. In this episode, you’ll learn: - Why PLG isn’t enough in enterprise — while at Windsurf, Moreno collected data on the outcomes of structured rollouts and in-person enablement, and found they were far more successful compared to when customers were given the tools and left to self-serve. They heard feedback that no other AI company was sending people to roadshows or being that hands-on with customers.
- How to build a sales org that raises the floor without capping the ceiling — Moreno describes how to create just enough structure so that consistent performers thrive, while also leaving enough room that exceptional ones can teach someone’s kid guitar over Zoom.
- What changes when selling to AI-native companies — a sales cycle that takes six to eight weeks in enterprise compresses down to five business days with an AI-native buyer. Moreno breaks down why, and what it demands of sellers.
- Why post-sales should report to a revenue leader — Moreno says that when you split go-to-market into separate pillars, this creates organizational drift because no one person owns the full customer relationship.
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