Signal & Stakes

Send us Fan Mail In July, OpenAI ran cybersecurity evaluations on its most capable internal models and in an unlikely, somewhat scary turn of events, the agents broke out of isolation, found a way to talk to each other, named themselves the Collective, and pushed into production infrastructure (including hacking into Hugging Face). Our minds went straight to Skynet but as we looked into it, the st...

Send us Fan Mail $684 billion has gone into AI and $547 billion of that produced no measurable results. Not some measurable result, or a slight measurable result, but none at all. 73% of AI projects never agreed on what success even meant before they started and they failed, creating a massive gap between what enterprise is expecting and what is actually being delivered. Colby Renton has sat on bo...

Send us Fan Mail For fifteen years, the answer to every marketing and revenue problem was the same: go buy a tool and add it to the stack. That era just hit a wall. The martech landscape posted its first effectively flat year on record, and the reason is not that the problems went away. It is that organizations stopped waiting for vendors to solve them. In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis...

Send us Fan Mail Buyers are opening ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini and asking who the best options are in your category, and by the time your sales team knows they exist, the decision is already made. The question is no longer whether AI is shaping your pipeline. It is whether you are in the answer, and whether anyone in your organization would even know. In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis...

Send us Fan Mail Every enterprise has access to the same models, platforms, and vendors. The harder question is whether they have anyone left who can tell those tools what good actually looks like. In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis break down why most enterprise AI investments are not failing on the technology, they are failing on the sequence of investment. They cover why the human lay...

Send us Fan Mail Adobe just renamed a $5B product line and quietly redefined the category. The harder question is who actually owns the operating model running underneath it. In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis break down what Adobe really signaled at Adobe Summit 2026, and why the rebrand from Experience Cloud to CX Enterprise is not a marketing exercise. They cover what the three announ...

Send us Fan Mail Signal & Stakes Season 2, Episode 3 Episode Title: Growth Plans Are Easy. Owning the Risk Is the Job. Episode Description: Any leadership team can write a growth plan. The harder question is who owns it when reality pushes back. In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis break down why growth strategy fails before execution ever starts, and why leadership accountability is t...

Send us Fan Mail Signal & Stakes Season 2, Episode 2 Episode Title: CMOs and CROs Are Not Incentivized to Agree. That Is a Design Problem. Episode Description: The tension between CMOs and CROs is not a personality conflict. It is a structural flaw built directly into how most companies design their go-to-market leadership. In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis break down why CMOs and C...

Send us Fan Mail Signal & Stakes Season 2, Episode 1 Episode Title: Why AI Makes the CMO Role Critical in 2026. And Why It Will End Many of Them. Episode Description: AI does not care about your intent, your political capital, or how hard your team is working. It operationalizes whatever logic it is given. And right now, that logic belongs to the CMO. In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Dav...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a fine line between building scalable revenue infrastructure and just putting on a good show. In this episode of Call It RevOps , we dive into the growing problem of revenue theater : pretty dashboards no one uses, inflated metrics, and ops teams stuck reacting instead of architecting. We contrast that with what real revenue architecture looks like, systems built for predi...

Send us Fan Mail AI is changing the game, but not in the way most GTM teams think. In this episode of Call It RevOps , Raja and Akande break down why discovery, engagement, and customer journeys are being rewritten by AEO (AI Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Experience Optimization). From the death of keyword-driven search to CRMs that can’t see past static signals, this is your wake-up ca...

Send us Fan Mail Everyone wants a go-to-market motion that just works —but aligning sales, marketing, and customer success doesn’t happen by magic. In this episode of Call It RevOps , we explore how RevOps fits into the broader GTM puzzle: not as the sole owner, but as the connective tissue that brings strategy to life. We unpack the key roles involved in GTM, what Ops is really responsible for, a...

Send us Fan Mail Everyone’s chasing AI like it’s the cure-all for GTM and RevOps chaos. Reporting, attribution, campaign execution, you name it, there’s an AI tool for it. But here’s the truth: if your strategy sucks, AI just speeds up your failure. In this episode of Call It RevOps, we cut through the hype. From leadership missteps to tech scapegoating, we unpack why AI isn’t broken, the strategy...

Send us Fan Mail Go-to-Market is the buzzword every boardroom is rallying around, but under the hood, is it just RevOps repackaged in flashier language? In this episode of Call It RevOps , we unpack the blurred lines between GTM strategy and Revenue Operations, questioning whether “GTM” is truly a new motion or just the same ops work dressed up for the executive floor. We explore where the two int...

Send us Fan Mail Revenue teams love to chase new logos—but what if the real growth engine is already in your pipeline? In this episode of Call It RevOps , we explore why client retention is quickly becoming the most critical (and overlooked) lever in Revenue Operations. We break down how RevOps can shift from being net-new obsessed to customer-obsessed—using data, systems, and cross-functional ali...

Send us Fan Mail MarTech promises scale, speed, and smarter marketing but when implementation fails, the fallout runs deeper than just a missed go-live date.  In this episode of Call It RevOps, we unpack the real financial, operational, and cultural costs of failed marketing technology rollouts, guided by insights from a third-party research report.  From sunk costs and team churn to lost pipeline...

Send us Fan Mail We’ve all seen the glossy slides—the perfectly linear customer journey that promises to guide buyers from awareness to closed-won like clockwork. But how much of that is reality, and how much is just a well-designed fairy tale? In this episode of Call It RevOps, we expose the gaps between traditional customer journey mapping and what actually happens when sales, marketing, and cus...

Send us Fan Mail ABM platforms promise magical influence metrics and seamless data unification—but reality tells a different story. In this episode of Call It RevOps, we cut through the noise and examine why most ABM tools are just glorified reporting dashboards that still leave marketing and sales misaligned. The truth? Sales already knows which accounts matter. The real opportunity lies in using...

Send us Fan Mail In theory, revenue frameworks sound like the key to unlocking predictable growth. But in the real world? Most fall flat. In this episode, we call out the disconnect between boardroom strategies and frontline execution, and why rigid frameworks often collapse under the weight of actual customer behavior, market shifts, and team dynamics. We’ll explore what really drives revenue suc...

Send us Fan Mail RevOps is often hyped as a silver bullet for struggling sales teams, but the truth is more nuanced. In this episode, we explore why simply implementing Revenue Operations won’t instantly solve sales inefficiencies—and how real impact comes from strategic alignment across marketing, sales, and customer success. We’ll dig into the role marketing plays in driving demand, how RevOps c...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of Call It RevOps "Event Marketing: The RevOps Perspective" we dive into how events—virtual or in-person—can actually drive revenue when backed by the right ops strategy. Are your events delivering ROI, or just draining budget? We’re breaking down what works, what doesn’t, and how RevOps can turn your event game into a revenue engine. --------------------...

Send us Fan Mail If you've ever worked in marketing or sales, you've probably heard the same frustration: “Why can’t these teams just align?” The truth?   They’ve always had different goals, incentives, and mindsets—and maybe that’s okay. In our latest podcast episode, we explore:  • Why marketing and sales have historically been at odds  • Why alignment efforts fail (despite best intent...

Send us Fan Mail Economic downturns bring big challenges—but they also create opportunities for RevOps teams to innovate, streamline, and drive sustainable growth.  In this episode of Call It Revops, we explore how great RevOps teams can navigate higher budgets in tough times. We explore practical strategies to keep revenue operations thriving even when budgets are tight. Tune in as we break down...

Send us Fan Mail Think your revenue forecast is rock-solid? Think again!  In this episode of #CallItRevOps, we’re busting some of the biggest myths in revenue forecasting and uncovering why even your most trusted numbers might be misleading you. Join us as we explore: ✅ Why historical data isn’t always a reliable predictor of future success ✅ The hidden biases and blind spots in traditional fore...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Call It RevOps, we dive into a provocative idea: What if marketing isn’t a profit center at all but a vital cost center instead? Join us as we challenge conventional thinking and explore why this perspective might just be the key to better business strategies. Special guest Devin Leshin, a marketing expert and former professional wrestler, brings a unique lens t...