I hop out of bed every morning...fired up and excited to get to work.

Why?

God has a plan.  I finally realized I'm along for the ride, but I need to be an active participant.

His plan put me in situations where I succeeded, failed, and learn some tough lessons.
Likely true for most of us.

After selling my startup I "fell" into the world of executive search.  And I loved it.  Still do (strange to say).

Then it happened.

God sent me down a path I didn't see coming.  An opportunity to join a startup as employee #4...at at time where I had found comfort running a small consultancy - and success.  

I didn't think I could learn, grow and frankly, find ways to be better at this point in my career.
Instrumentum is a special place, with an amazing team.  We are reinventing the surgical landscape.

Change is hard.  We are a dedicated bunch, committed to seeing this through.

As Chairman and Founder of Cruxible Partners, I get to watch an amazing group of talented "talent finders" grow that business as well.

Unfortunately, that's not how many people feel about their job, or their state in life.
Doesn't need to be that way.

Trust God, but don't be a passive participant in the journey.

Try a hobby.
Start a side hustle.
Meet new people (on LinkedIn, I've met some wonderful people who inspire and teach here).

If I can be this energized at this stage, so can you...

Pete Durand

MacGyver’d the hotel AC today.  

Taking video calls from the desk, AC blowing 40 degree air on my bald noggin unless I shut it off.  

Then sauna like temps. 

Improvised a little curtain. 

Problem solved.  

#macgyver

President, Instrumentum | Host of the Eating Crow Podcast | Chairman, Cruxible Partners

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Most companies have a plan.  

We do. 

2025 was about laying a foundation after several acquisitions and heavy integration. 

A few lessons, a few scars, and a few wins.  

Looking back it’s about the people who joined the team more than anything.   Amazing people.  

We laid the foundation together. 
We built this plan together. 

2026 is off to a great start - we are firing on all cylinders, well ahead of plan.

It’s rare air.  

Grateful for our team who work tirelessly to care for our customers, travel nonstop and support each other. 

Many of us go through entire work life without experiencing this feeling. 

I freaking love my job and am blessed to know how lucky I am.  Heard the same energy from our team today 💪👍👏

Hope everyone finds an opportunity to be part of a fast growing company who isn’t afraid to dare, think big, stumble now and then, but get back up and go. 

It’s a blast. 

Jeff Eardley Dean E. Darby Hubbell Rachel Meador (Knorr) Austin Wratchford, FACHE Bradley Schoening, CFO, MBA, CPA Ken Maready Jennifer Del Real, MSHRM Candy Schlicklin

SPD is not a sexy investment conversation.

Until you see the numbers.

I'm presenting at LSI USA '26 next week in Dana Point, CA — and I'll be making the case that the most overlooked bottleneck in surgical growth isn't clinical. It's operational.

Health systems are adding ORs. Recruiting surgeons. Forecasting case volume.

And then hitting a wall they didn't see coming.

Tray capacity. Sterilization throughput. SPD.

Instrumentum removes that ceiling. Variable costs tied to volume. No massive capital outlay. No construction timeline.

The ASC market grew 33% year over year. That growth goes somewhere.

Make sure it's going to you.

See you in Dana Point.

"I'm so sorry, how can I help?" 

This response seems natural, but ACTUALLY helping tends to put us in a place of discomfort, and so we say it, but don't really mean it.

This hit me during my morning meditation.  The topic:  The Corporal Works of Mercy (Matthew 25:35-46): 

Feed the hungry
Give drink to the thirsty
Clothe the naked
Shelter the homeless
Visit the sick
Visit the imprisoned
Bury the dead

If I'm being honest, my batting average is low here.

Jesus wasn't pulling any punches.  How will we be judged by these works?

Time to reassess my priorities, which typically focus on "things of this world" and prayer, when action should the call of the day.

Visit the imprisoned?  

Pick any of the above; probably not at the top of most of our to-do lists.

Perhaps they should be?

Admitting there is a better way is difficult.




Southwest's new "That Was Wild" ad campaign does this with humor, humility and tremendous creativity.

At Instrumentum, we are constantly trying to find a better way.  The industry needs it, the old ways don't work.

And yes, it's wild 🙃

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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the-sales-change-agent

revenue-in-a-box

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.

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The Battle

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