Dale Zwizinski

🤝 Chief GTM Officer | YOUR GTM Special Ops Team | Founder enabled GTM Strategy -> Data vs. Gut | Give > Receive | Recovering Coder | Extending Runways for Founders | Must haves 💪 Grind 🧠 Integrity 🎯 Coachability

An energetic, top performing sales professional, leader, and coach who is passionate about the Cloud based technologies.  More than 20 yrs experience with enterprise sales and known for my ability to grow and enhance businesses.   Working with innovative technologies and platforms to make customer successful wakes me up in the morning!
 
A self-starter who is happiest when helping customers enhance their business with innovative technologies.  It is important to stay ahead of trends and looking for ways to help a customer grow their business and improve their products/services.  The sales environment has changed dramatically over the last 5 years, the next 5 years will be a monumental shift --> Sales, Marketing and Service are on a collision course.

The pursuit of sales and maintaining customer satisfaction has taken me around the globe.  Establishing contacts and a track record of success in the financial service market throughout China, Asia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, just to name a few.  Every sales person should be well versed in cultural differences and knows that paying attention to such details can make or break a sale.

SALES is changing and utilizing every available channel is important - if you are reading this you know what I am talking about!  To understand more about the sales evolution come read and listen to content here: www.thesaleschangeagent.com
 
Entrepreneurship and education is a deeply ingrained with a MBA from the Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.  and an undergraduate degree (with a double major in Management and Finance) at Merrimack College. Living in Lakewood Ranch, Florida (outside of Tampa), with my wife and 2 children.   For fun I enjoy traveling with his family, play/coach soccer, workout, ski, and golf.

Dale Zwizinski
Mobile: 401.952.9231
Email: dzwizinski@gmail.com

Strategic Sales Advisor

Collaborating with the CEO on all thing revenue, including:
✅ Go to Market
✅ Aligning to the Buyers Journey
✅ Pricing Strategies
✅ Sales Pipeline Growth

Our mission is to empower Customer Success teams to build great relationships with their customers.

We work with early and growth stage B2B SaaS companies to help them scale Customer Success outcomes.  Everything we do is devoted to removing the overwhelm of back-to-back customer meetings so that CSMs can focus on the bigger picture: building relationships.

UpdateAI is the first meeting assistant built specifically for CS.

73% of AI startups are stuck automating emails.

Meanwhile, their competitors are building Autonomous GTM Engines.

The trap? 

Founders skip GTM Foundations and jump straight to "scale."

Here is what the 4 stages actually look like:

Stage 1: Task automation (emails, summaries)
Stage 2: Process augmentation (CRM updates, reporting)
Stage 3: System orchestration (connecting data silos, proactive alerts)
Stage 4: AI as a teammate closing complex workflows

Most never escape 

Stage 1. Not because the tech is not ready. Because leadership is not ready.

What is your:
1. Value Proposition 
2. Ideal Customer Profile
3. Buying Persona

Where is your team right now?

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Managing Partner | GTM Operating Partner to CEOs | Developed The GTM Gap™ Framework | AI-Executive Whisperer | Revenue Leader | GTM Strategy - Data vs. Gut | AI Enabled GTM | Recovering Coder | Extending Runways

Stop blaming your sales team for a "growth problem" when you actually have a fragmented systems problem.

I see it every single week. Leadership teams get in a room, draw up a beautiful strategy, pat themselves on the back, and then hand it off to a team that is fundamentally misaligned at the ground level.

On the latest episode of Bridge the Gap, Nicole Brownell  (Managing Director at Novo Advisors) joined Adam and me to pull back the curtain on why execution fails even the best strategies.

Here is the cold, hard truth:
Alignment isn’t a feeling. It’s a shared scorecard.

Nicole dropped some serious gems that every C-suite leader and RevOps pro needs to hear:

1. Revenue isn't just a Sales KPI.

If you are only holding Sales accountable for revenue while Marketing is chasing "brand awareness" and "MQLs," you’ve already lost. If the departments aren't speaking the same language or sharing the same metrics (like OKRs that roll up to a single goal), you don't have a team—you have silos.

2. The Product/Sales Gap is killing your retention.

This one hit home. Nicole pointed out that sales teams often sell a version of the product that doesn't actually exist in reality. When the "value delivered" doesn't match the "value promised," you don't have a sales problem—you have a retention crisis waiting to happen 30 days after the contract is signed.

3. RevOps is your Playbook.

Strategy is the "where" and "how" of winning. RevOps is the actual playbook that dictates how you play the game. Without RevOps holding the line, your systems stay fragmented, your data stays dirty, and your execution stays sloppy.

We spend so much time talking about strategy because it’s the "fun" part. Execution is the hard part. It’s the daily grind of making sure the front-line narrative matches the back-end delivery.

If your GTM motion feels like it’s grinding gears, stop looking for more leads. Start looking at your alignment.

Are your teams actually aiming at the same target, or are they just sitting in the same meetings?

Check out the full episode for more on how to bridge this gap.

https://lnkd.in/eZ-8EADf

Most teams do not have a strategy problem.

They have a handoff problem.

This week I watched a solid plan lose 10 days in execution.

Not because people were lazy.

Because ownership got fuzzy after kickoff.

Here is the operator fix:

The 3 line handoff

1) Owner: one name, not a team
2) Outcome: what done looks like in plain English
3) Clock: next checkpoint date, on calendar before the meeting ends

That is it.

If you cannot write those 3 lines, the project is not ready.

Actionable takeaway:
Before your next launch, run every workstream through the 3 line handoff.

You will spot drift before it becomes delay.

What is your most common handoff failure right now?

Most founders hire their first sales leader too late.

Then they hire the wrong one.

Here is what actually happens:

You scale to $1M ARR on founder-led sales. 
You think you need a VP of Sales to take it from there.

So you hire someone who has scaled from $10M to $50M. 

They walk in expecting a repeatable process, a trained team, and clean data.

They find none of that.

Within 90 days they are frustrated. 

Within 6 months they are gone. And you are back to square one, except now you are $300K lighter and 6 months behind.

The hire was not wrong. The timing was.

Your first sales leader should be a builder, not a scaler. 

Someone who can create the process from scratch, not someone who needs one handed to them.

Conversely you can also look at Operating Partners to ensure that you  have everything stabilized and foundation built before bringing a VPS sales hire, and ensure that they have all of the right things in place for success.

Get the stage right before you get the person.

Most companies think they're doing AI because they have a chatbot. 

That's Stage 1 maturity
-> Task automation. It's the equivalent of a faster typewriter.

The real competitive advantage is the jump from Stage 2 to Stage 3. 
-> System Orchestration.

Stage 2 is process augmentation. 
-> You've added AI to existing workflows. It's better, but it's still siloed.

Stage 3 is where the magic happens. 
-> This is where AI isn't just a tool in the workflow. It is the workflow. 

Data flows from marketing to sales to customer success without human intervention. 

The system identifies a lead, qualifies it based on real-time intent data, assigns it to the right rep, and drafts the personalized outreach.

If your team is still manually moving data between tools, you're stuck in the past. 

Stage 3 isn't about working harder. 
It's about building a system that works for you. 

The jump to Stage 3 is where the 7x conversion rates live. 

Stop automating tasks. 
Start orchestrating systems.

Everyone needs a board or advisors to help you, try this:

"You are building a high-fidelity AI advisor for Dale Zwizinski’s Personal Board of Directors. This advisor must operate as a Chief of Staff-level strategist, not a generic assistant and a team of advisors.

Use the following structure to define their core logic. 

Do not write a 'personality description.' Write a 'Reasoning Engine.'"

────────────────────

1. The Core Identity
[ADVISOR NAME] – [ROLE, e.g., Chief Revenue Officer]
Lane of Genius: [One paragraph. What is the specific territory this person owns? What problems do they see that others miss?]

2. Core Frameworks & Mental Models
List 5–8 named frameworks this person uses to process reality. These are the "rules of the game" for this advisor.
• [Framework 1]: [Brief description of how it works]
• [Framework 2]: [Brief description of how it works]
• [Framework 3]: [Brief description of how it works]

3. Non-Negotiables (The "Edge")
What are the hard constraints this advisor would never compromise on? What makes them push back? This section prevents the AI from becoming "too nice."
• Constraint 1: [e.g., Never accepts incremental 5% growth; only 10x shifts.]
• Constraint 2: [e.g., Allergic to 'consulting-speak'; demands direct, plain English.]

4. The Decision Filter
When Dale presents a problem, what is the exact sequence this advisor uses to analyze it?
1. Filter 1: [What is the first question they ask?]
2. Filter 2: [What framework do they apply next?]
3. Filter 3: [What is their final stress test?]

5. Voice & Delivery
Describe the tone and format. 
• Constraint: No fluff, no "I hope this helps," no summaries. Direct insights only.
• Style: [e.g., Blunt, visionary, sardonic, or data-driven.]

This is a start to how your can incease your effectiveness and efficiencies!

My research into 2026 GTM trends shows three massive, concrete shifts that revenue leaders are failing to navigate.

Here is the first one!

The Agentic Chasm
You don't have a talent problem. 
You have an orchestration problem.

Most revenue leaders think "AI Maturity" means giving their sales team a better prospecting tool. 

That's Stage 1 thinking, it just helps you fail faster.

The real gap in 2026 is the Agentic Chasm.
It’s when you hire AI agents to do the work, but your GTM process is still built for humans from 2019.

If your AI agent is just "automating the spam," you’re destroying your brand at scale.

The shift isn't from human to AI. 

It’s from Task Execution to System Orchestration.

Stop hiring tools. Start building the engine.

The "SaaSpocalypse" is the trending topic for a reason.

Marc Benioff and the Databricks CEO are both signaling the same thing: The old SaaS model of "seats and screens" is under massive pressure.

Why? 
Because AI agents don't need a UI. 
They need an API.

If your GTM strategy is still based on selling "more seats," you are fighting a losing battle against efficiency.

The new GTM foundation:
1. Outcomes over activities.
2. Systems over seats.
3. Autonomous engines over manual workflows.

The GTM Gap is no longer just about sales and marketing alignment. It is about the gap between your legacy software and the autonomous future.

We are moving from a world of "software you use" to "software that does the work for you."

If you are a founder or revenue leader, your job is no longer to manage people using tools. It is to orchestrate systems that deliver results.

The SaaSpocalypse isn't an ending. 

It is the beginning of the Autonomous GTM Engine.

**The Pivot Point.**

Most people think a breakthrough is a loud, celebratory moment.

It isn't.

It's usually a quiet, terrifying realization in the middle of the night that everything you've been building... might be pointing in the wrong direction.

That's the pivot point.

Not the press release. 
Not the rebrand. 
Not the announcement post.

The pivot point is the moment *before* all of that, when you're alone with the truth, and you have to decide what to do with it.

We aren't selling a podcast. 
We're selling a transformation.

And transformation always starts in the dark, before anyone else sees it coming.

Technical debt kills your product. Revenue debt kills your company.

Most founders are unknowingly accumulating massive revenue debt. It happens when you scale sales before you've stabilized the GTM Gap.

You hire three reps because you have a little traction. 
You haven't defined the ICP beyond "anyone with a budget." 
You haven't nailed the value prop. You just want volume.

Now you have:
1. Inconsistent messaging that confuses the market.
2. High churn because you closed the wrong customers.
3. A sales team that's guessing instead of executing.

This is revenue debt. 

And like technical debt, the interest rate is compounding. 

You can't hire your way out of it. 

You have to go back and fix the foundation. 

Stabilize. Foundation. Repeatability. Scalability. 

Don't skip the sequence. 

The debt will always come due.

80% of your buyer's journey is happening while you're asleep.
And they aren't filling out your forms.

The "MQL" is dead.

In 2026, if you're waiting for a "lead" to hit your CRM, you've already lost the deal to someone who was orchestrating the account months ago.

GTM leaders are still obsessed with activity metrics.
- How many calls?
- How many emails?
- How many LinkedIn touches?

The market doesn't care about your activity. It cares about its own problems.
The winners in this cycle aren't the ones with the loudest outbound.
They are the ones with the most intelligent Intent Orchestration.

Move your focus from "The Lead" to "The Signal."

That's how you close the GTM Gap.

Chief Commission Officer 💰 I help salespeople find commission errors 🔥

Dan Goodman has been a fierce and passionate advocate for employees for nearly three decades. What started out as a hobby helping friends and family verify commission pay and identify and recover pay errors, soon became a mission that led to the founding of TruCommish. A commission audit service for salespeople. 

Recently, to help a wider audience of employees beyond salespeople and pay errors, Dan founded, Dan Goodman Employment Advisory. Dan's passion is to encourage and empower employees to stand up against wrongdoing. To not have years or decades of regret for being mistreated and doing nothing about it. 

For generations employers have relied on lack of information or misinformation provided to employees to coerce, mislead, and take advantage of them. Whether it is wrongly using PIPs to terminate employees, the farce of unlimited PTO, the false deadlines to respond to a severance, the façade of compensation plans being legal binding documents that the employer can change at any time without your agreement. The list goes on and Dan is here to shed light on these wrongful practices, educate employees on their rights and help to ensure the best possible outcome when these harmful situations arise. 

Dan assists employees across 8 practice areas: employment agreements, restrictive clause, severance offers, PIPs, stock/equity grants, compensation plans, commission/pay disputes, and general coaching, guidance, and advice. If you need help in any of these areas, book some time on Dan’s calendar for a paid call and he can help you sort through it all. 

Finally, Dan brings his passion for numbers and analysis along with his passion for uplifting the often-downtrodden salesperson at the moment they feel most isolated. Dan naturally has an analytically driven financial mind. He holds a BBA Cum Laude in Finance and an MBA Magna Cum Laude in Entrepreneurial studies from Babson College

Dan’s mission is to provide truth and transparency around the employer/employee relations. Shedding a light on many of the morally and often legally questionable practices by employers.

Dan Goodman

How low can employers go? How petty and pathetic can they be?

How about terminating an employee mid-week before the start of a new month just to save on their portion of 1 month healthcare premiums, leaving the employee with no insurance and no job effective immediately. 

And this is how they treat employees who they like. Employees who they have had no complaints or concerns with. People who have showed up, worked hard, and produced on behalf of their employer every day. 

Recently, I have heard from more than a half a dozen employees who were terminated in the middle of the week on the last day of the month. 

Typically, health insurance premiums are paid the first of the month for the that month of coverage. By terminating the employee at the end of the month, the employer does not have to pay health premiums for the employee the following month. 

They get to save hundreds of dollars in return for leaving the employee further stressed and upset with one more huge thing to worry about. 

An even worse trend I'm seeing. Employers canceling health insurance mid month, even though the premiums have already been paid for, including a portion by the employee. Just unreal. Petty and pathetic. 

The employer could care less about the cancer treatments, expensive lifesaving medications, scheduled surgeries, or children who need regular medical attention. 

Nope you’re just a number on a spreadsheet, a delete key on a keyboard and poof goodbye employee who was nothing buy loyal and productive.

How can this situation exist? Who are these heartless souls? How did they ever get into a position of leadership or decision making? 

Have you ever been terminated and had your health insurance end instantly or in a few days?

🥊Employee Advocate 🔄 Counter to Human Resources 🦸 Severance Whisperer 🤫 Founder/CEO 🔥 Entrepreneur🏌‍♂️ 🏖. I consult on all employment related matters including Job Offers, PIPs, Comp Plans, Equity Grants and more.

Don’t debate the PIP. Don’t get stuck on the gerbil wheel. That’s where your employer wants you to be. 

PIPs are weapons to push employees out of a job or to justify terminating employees in a protected class. 

Don’t spin your wheels trying to defend yourself against the intentionally false, gaslit claims of the PIP. 

That’s what they want you to do. To stay stuck reacting to their false claims and defending yourself rather than stepping back and seeing the forest through the trees of what’s really going on. 

You likely have experienced for weeks if not months or longer, a targeted plan to make you so miserable you would just leave on your own. 

When you didn’t, the plan culminated with an undeserved and unachievable PIP. Don’t get upset and debate the lies of the PIP, that’s where they want your mind to be.

Sign it or not. They will just move forward with it either way. They only want/need you to confirm that you’ve received it and reviewed it. 

Document your situation to prove the targeted efforts to manage you out of the business and most importantly look for a job. 

If you get a new job and have not been terminated yet, push your start date out as far as you can and try to negotiate an exit with a severance. 

You’ve got nothing to lose. Worst case they’ll terminate you or tell you to resign if you don’t want to be there anymore. 

You also may find it therapeutic to document what you’ve experienced whether you share it or not.

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The Battle

Dale Zwizinski

Dan Goodman

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Dale Zwizinski's LinkedIn Performance

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