Welcome to Season 3 of 10/10 GTM: The Podcast for Revenue Leaders!
Our guest for Episode 87 is Dana Therrien, VP of Sales Performance Management, Anaplan. Dana began his career as a U.S. Army Officer in the Finance Corps, with his first assignment at NATO headquarters in Belgium, followed by a role in Army Intelligence in Washington, D.C. He later transitioned into finance and operations roles across various companies. He brings over 20 years of experience to the conversation.
In this episode, Ross and Dana discuss why an unapologetically decisive approach to GTM planning is the ultimate key to executing a fast start and winning the market.
Listen to the episode here, and get the key takeaways from our conversation below.
Planning with Speed, Agility & Accuracy
For most companies, planning cycles span three to six months — and yet, much of that time is still spent on manual work: assembling data, building spreadsheets, and chasing updates. Operations leaders are constantly asking themselves:
- Where is the data I need?
- How do I get access to it?
- How do I keep it updated?
- How do I share it across teams?
How do I help stakeholders analyze it? - How do I collect feedback and get updates back?
How do I feed it into downstream systems like the CRM or ICM?
When you're relying on disconnected tools and spreadsheets, the planning process becomes inefficient, slow, and error-prone. Instead of spending time on strategy and decision making, teams are stuck cleaning up and stitching together data.
“I joined Anaplan because it’s a platform that puts all those processes in place and connects everyone to the necessary data. It's like showing up at a job site and having it prepared for you to be there rather than having to go and stage the entire thing every single time you go through it,” says Dana. “The advice I have to everybody out there is perfect that process and, and immortalize it in some sort of a tool, whether it be Anaplan or something else, so that you don't have to go back there and do the job prep every single time you show up.”
Optimizing Territory Planning for a Strong Start
For many companies, the territory and quota-setting process is where the real GTM execution begins. At this point, finance has delivered the annual plan, sales has translated it into targets, and now it’s time to operationalize — cascading that plan down through theaters, regions, and individual reps. Getting this part right is critical.
The Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) recently published research showing that companies that achieve a “fast start,” meaning every rep leaves sales kickoff with clear, believable territory, quota, and comp information, grow at an average of 11% annually. For those that don’t? Growth drops to just 3%.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: Companies that don’t start strong almost never catch up. A distracted or uncertain sales force in Q1 is incredibly hard to recover from. It’s not just about lost time, it’s about lost confidence. As Dana explains, "Reps aren't going to invest themselves in a territory or account they’re not sure they’ll own. It’s human nature. Why would you?"
To hit the ground running, every rep needs to walk out of the sales kickoff with a territory, quota, and compensation plan that is accurate, explainable, and believable. Otherwise, you spend the next nine months trying to dig your way out of a delayed start.
So what does “great” look like in territory planning today?
“We’ve raised the expectations,” says Dana. “Employees today won’t accept a vague or opaque process like they might have 15 or 20 years ago. They expect the same level of due diligence to go into their territory, quota, and comp plan as goes into that of the CRO or CSO. They want to understand the math. You have to sell the plan to them — show them how and why it was set, and prove it’s achievable. Because if it’s not? The best reps will leave first. And when you lose one high performer, it’s like losing five people.”
Leading Companies in Strategy & Operations
There are certain companies that consistently set the standard when it comes to strategy and operations, and their results speak for themselves. It’s hard to argue with the success of organizations like Amazon, AWS, ServiceNow, and Workday. These aren’t just product powerhouses, they’re operationally excellent, consistently translating vision into execution at scale.
As Dana discusses Anaplan’s ability to scale and grow, he specifically calls out its ability to move quickly: “When I joined Anaplan five or six years ago, it was a $450 million company. Today, it’s over $1.1 billion. And we’ve done that in a tough, complex market.”
What makes that growth meaningful isn’t just the numbers, it’s the transformation behind them. Anaplan helped usher in a new paradigm in sales performance management (SPM), proving that organizations no longer have to live with disconnected, manual processes. From territory and quota planning to segmentation, capacity, and incentive compensation, companies can now run all of it on an integrated, data-driven platform. That shift has been key to competing, and winning, in a crowded, demanding space.
So what do companies like these consistently do right? What separates the best from the rest?
According to Dana, decisiveness is a defining trait — not just in business, but in life. “Top-performing companies are unapologetically decisive. They don’t get paralyzed by indecision or over-engineer their choices. They move. They’re not afraid to make the wrong call, because they understand that inaction is far riskier.”
It’s a mindset he traces back to his military training: “If you’re at a crossroads and don’t know which way to go, go somewhere.”
And we’ve all seen the flip side where companies get stuck in analysis paralysis.“Think about the companies that drag candidates through 20 interviews over three months, often with people they’ll never even work with. Whether they make the offer or not, it leaves a bad taste. It signals a culture of indecision. And who wants to work for a company that can’t make a call?”
The bottom line? Great strategy and operations don’t just come down to tools or frameworks. They come down to action. The companies that win are the ones that are aligned and unafraid to move — fast.
About Dana
Dana is a globally recognized sales and revenue operations leader known for driving double-digit growth and profitability. He leverages leadership skills honed in the military to lead operations in both midsize and Fortune 100 companies. A sought-after speaker and writer, Dana has been published in Forbes and DemandGen Report and frequently appears on industry podcasts and national events.
To learn more about Dana or connect with him directly, follow him on LinkedIn.
