Welcome to Season 3 of 10/10 GTM: The Podcast for Revenue Leaders!
Our guest for Episode 78 is Catie Ivey, Chief Revenue Officer at Walnut. Catie’s on a mission to empower the next generation of sellers and sales leaders, and she brings more than a decade of sales experience to the conversation.
In this episode, Ross and Catie discuss Catie’s three keys to drive execution excellence: taking a strength-based leadership approach, product-centric selling, and aligning your go to market teams.
Listen to the episode here, and get the key takeaways from our conversation below.
Taking a Strength-Based Leadership Approach
Rather than fixating on gaps and weaknesses, Catie recommends taking a strengths-based leadership approach. Start by asking yourself, “What am I naturally good at?”
“One example that comes to mind is when I was working as a frontline mid-market manager at Marketo,” says Catie. “There was a gal on my team who had been a Division I soccer player — an incredible human. But it was only her second sales role. She lacked business acumen, had a lot of gaps in sales systems and operations, and was super nervous.
But to this day, I’ve never met anyone as naturally gifted at building relationships as she was. She could connect with people in a way that felt superhuman. I remember in our second one-on-one, I told her to lean into that even more — because that was her superpower.”
You can also help the individuals on your teams identify their own superpowers by observing what energizes them, what teammates consistently rely on them for, and where they shine under pressure.
Product-centric Selling
Buyers aren’t coming in cold anymore. They’ve already started researching your product or service long before they ever talk to a sales rep.
“The buyer is in the driver’s seat and has a ton of power, and we’ve got to be giving them more of what they want. For us at Walnut, this means giving them access to your product earlier,” says Catie. “They’re spending so much of their own time learning and educating their team, so make sure they’ve got the product-centric resources they can leverage when you’re not in the room.”
Also, another important note: product-centric selling isn’t just about giving buyers early access. It’s about making that access feel relevant by showing them how your solution solves their specific problems — in a way that makes sense for their role, industry, and stage in the buying journey. The more personalized and focused the experience, the more confident your prospects will feel saying yes and moving forward.
“The product should be the thing that’s teaching, tying together, and integrating the whole buyer journey,” Catie emphasizes.
Aligning GTM
A lot of companies underestimate how important it is to get the fundamentals of GTM alignment right. Sales, marketing, and customer success should all be on the same page when it comes to defining key terms — like what counts as an MQL — and understanding what’s expected from each team. If your brand positioning isn’t consistent, if the messaging shifts from one stage to the next, or if your teams aren’t aligned on how you talk about and bring products to market, things start to break down. Misalignment creates friction, slows down deals, and chips away at trust both internally and externally.
“The intangible things — like shared definitions — are the building blocks of a successful org, but they’re harder to write into a playbook or turn into a step-by-step process,” says Catie. “That said, until you can get aligned on that core piece of the positioning and the messaging, it’s impossible to build the right systems and operating layers on top of it to create alignment.”
The main takeaway? Alignment starts with the basics. Get those right, and everything else, including your systems, your messaging, and your results gets a whole lot easier.
About Catie
Catie is a revenue leader on a mission to help reps become the best versions of themselves, by tapping into their superpowers, learning to create real value, and becoming indispensable business partners and trusted advisors.
Before joining Walnut in 2023, she held leadership roles at Pendo.io, Demandbase, and Marketo. To connect with Katie or learn more about her journey, follow her on LinkedIn.
