The Foundation Before the Funnel: Why Revenue Leaders Should Own the Values Conversation

Most revenue leaders don't think of themselves as the person who should be facilitating a Core Purpose exercise. That's a founder thing, or a branding agency thing, or something the exec team does at an offsite with a facilitator who uses lots of sticky notes.

When I was in marketing, I thought it was my responsibility. I wasn't necessarily wrong, but then I spent 3 days in a leadership deep dive developing this foundation, and I learned that it wasn't about who scheduled the sessios - it's about the commitment to the work. Later in my career I spent six weeks embedded with a pre-revenue startup, building their GTM architecture: funnel stages, conversion assumptions, partner channel model, unit economics, investor narrative. The whole operating system. And about three weeks in, I hit a wall that had nothing to do with pipeline mechanics.

The wall was this: the founding team couldn't agree on why the company existed.

Not what it did. Not how it made money. Why it existed. And until that question had an answer the entire team could point to, every downstream decision I was making in the revenue model was built on sand.

The Problem Revenue Leaders Inherit

Here's a pattern I've experiened. A company hires a head of sales, fractional CRO, head of markeing, or brings in a revenue operations consultant to build the growth engine. The scope is clear: define the funnel, set up the CRM, build the forecast model, create the investor deck. Operational work. Measurable work.

But the work stalls. Not because the team can't execute, but because the foundational questions were never answered. Questions like: Who are we really for? What do we refuse to do, even if it's profitable? What would we defend if the market rewarded the opposite?

These are not as abstract as they may sound. They are the inputs that add conviction when you determine your ICP, your pricing, your partner criteria, your expansion model, and the story you tell investors and customers about why this company will still matter in ten years.

When the inputs are missing or contradictory, you can end up reverse-engineering a strategy from tactical assumptions. You build the funnel, then realize the funnel doesn't know who it's for. You write the investor deck, then realize the narrative doesn't hold because the company hasn't decided what it believes.

Why Jim Collins Still Matters for Revenue Architecture

Jim Collins' framework from Built to Last and Good to Great sounds like brand work. It's not. It's the operational foundation that tells us what to build and why to build it.

Here's the real translation: Collins separates what your company IS (Core Purpose and Core Values) from what it ASPIRES TO BECOME (BHAG and Vivid Description). But for revenue leaders, the translation is operational, not theoretical.

Your Core Purpose becomes your ICP filter. It's the answer to "who are we built to serve?" and it changes how you say no. If your Core Purpose is being a values-driven partner to mid-market companies who care about their people, you're not chasing a startup that just wants to grow at any cost. That's not a branding decision. It's a revenue architecture decision.

Your Core Values become part of your partner selection criteria and your hard-call decision framework. Walking away from a deal because it doesn't align with what you believe is something a lot of companies cannot do because nobody knows what they believe. But if you've debated and committed to your values, you can make that call and explain why consistently.

Your BHAG becomes the number you model backward from. "We want to grow" doesn't give a revenue architect anything to work with. "By 2036, be responsible for $10B in new revenue created by our clients" gives you something to forecast from.

Your Vivid Description becomes the narrative you tell investors when they ask whether you'll still believe in this in ten years. This is the signal you want to hear from investors, "I didn't just invest in a product. I invested in your conviction."

Without those inputs, you're configuring the pipes without knowing what building you're constructing. And that's when RevOps gets dangerous.

What I Actually Built (and Why It Worked)

Back to the startup. When I realized the GTM architecture needed a foundation that didn't exist yet, I had a choice: keep building on assumptions and flag the risk, or make this part of the revenue work and facilitate the foundational conversation first.

I chose the second option. Here's the framework I used, adapted from Collins but structured for a revenue leader's lens.

Step 1: Core Purpose as a Reaction Exercise

Collins' instruction is clear: the best Core Purpose is one the founding team recognizes, not one that was just well-written. So instead of asking "what's your purpose?" (which produces generic answers), I presented three distinct options and asked the founders to react.

Each option was written to test a different orientation: human-centered, practical/governance-centered, and movement-oriented. The founders didn't pick one cleanly. They thought about it. They combined elements. They pushed back on language. The friction is the point, they have to feel something. By the end, they had a purpose statement they could defend under pressure, not just approve in a slide review.

Step 2: BHAG With Measurable Stakes

The same approach applied to the BHAG. I drafted three options, each with different time horizons, scale metrics, and emotional registers. One was market-defining and infrastructure-focused. One was human-impact-centered and harder to measure short-term. One used a competitive analogy (the "become what Toyota became for manufacturing practices" framing).

The key insight for revenue leaders: a BHAG that includes a number and a deadline gives you something to model. "Be responsible for $10B in new revenue created by our clients by 2036" translates directly into annual targets, hiring plans, and capital requirements. "Make a difference in AI" does not.

Step 3: Core Values as Observed Behavior

This is where most companies go wrong. They treat values as aspirational statements. Collins' test is the opposite: would you hold this value even if it became a competitive disadvantage?

Values are based on what has already been observed in the company's behavior: how the leadership talked about clients, how they handled a sensitive situations, how they responded when their pricing model was challenged. The values weren't invented in a workshop. They were documented from real behavior, then the leadership team had to react.

One example: the team had a stated commitment to employees building long careers within their organization. But when I asked whether they'd commit to never cutting headcount even if the existing team didn't have the needed skills for growth, the room went quiet. That silence was more valuable than any branding exercise. It forced a real conversation about what the value actually meant in real life.

Step 4: Positioning Statement as a Revenue Tool

The final deliverable was a Geoffrey Moore positioning statement. For, Who, Is, That, Unlike, We. Six fields. One paragraph.

Revenue leaders underestimate how powerful this format is. When the positioning statement is tight, everything gets easier to build: the website, ads, content, sales deck, the pricing page, the partner pitch, the board narrative. When it's loose, every asset requires a judgment call about who you're talking to and why they should care.

The Revenue Architecture Came After

The most concrete proof came when we needed to explain differentiation to investors. Before the values work, the team's answer was a feature list. After, it was a conviction.

In one scenario with a large multi-national company, the shift happened in the room where the leadership team considered how their culture aligned with the evolving 80+ year old company. Twelve people, sometimes loudly, debating. They were proposing shifting from a loyalty-based culture to a performance-based one, and it was uncomfortable. Not because the idea was bad, but because it meant being explicit about something they'd previously left implicit.

The team had to show up differently after that. They had to make decisions consistent with what they'd committed to. They had to repeat it, give examples, reinforce it in their own behavior. Months in, the employees started to feel it wasn't just talk. And when people believe leadership isn't just configuring pipes, they work differently.

That's what a strategic foundation does for revenue architecture. It makes the work coherent instead of scattered.

Why This Is a Revenue Leader's Job

I know the objection. "This is brand work. This is founder work. This is not what you hire a fractional CRO to do."

Here's my counter: who else in the organization sits at the intersection of product, sales, marketing, customer success, and finance? Who else has to translate technical capability into market positioning, investor narrative, and customer language every day?

Today's revenue leaders are often the only people in most organizations who have to make the foundational assumptions operational. If those assumptions are wrong, incomplete, or contradictory, the revenue leader is the first person who feels it. The funnel doesn't convert because the ICP is wrong. The investor deck doesn't land because the narrative is hollow. The sales team discounts because they can't articulate differentiation.

I'll go further: a CRO who can't facilitate a values conversation is a CRO who will always be dependent on someone else to set the strategic context for their work. And in a pre-revenue or early-stage company, that someone else often doesn't exist. The founders are product-focused. The board wants metrics. Nobody is doing the foundational work that connects identity to revenue architecture.

If you're a revenue leader and you've inherited a GTM motion that feels like it's running on borrowed conviction, the problem might not be in your funnel. It might be underneath it.

A Framework You Can Use

If you're considering running this exercise with your own leadership team, here's the structure I recommend (but getting the team aligned is most important piece):

Before you start: Read Collins' Built to Last, specifically the chapters on Core Ideology. The framework has to be understood on its own terms before it can be applied operationally.

Core Purpose: Write three options that test different orientations (human impact, market position, technical mission). Present them as reaction prompts, not proposals. They should provoke dialogue. Let the team argue (respectfully). The friction is productive.

BHAG: Write three options with different time horizons and scale metrics. At least one should include a specific number and a deadline. Test which one the team can actually model backward from.

Core Values: Do not brainstorm in a room. Observe behavior over weeks. Document what the team already does under pressure. Propose values based on evidence, then ask: "Would you hold this even if it cost you?"

Positioning Statement: Use the Geoffrey Moore format. Capture the following: For (ICP), Who (Problem Statement), (Company/Product), Is a (Solution/Category), That (Main Benefit/Problem Solved), and Unlike (Competitive Alternative), We (Primary Differentiator). If any aspect is vague, the positioning isn't done. Test it by reading the assembled statement aloud to someone outside the company. If it doesn't survive a skeptical listener, keep refining.

Then build the revenue architecture. Not before. The temptation will be strong to skip ahead. The board wants pipeline numbers. The investors want a forecast. The sales team wants a deck. All of those things will be better if you take the time to build the floor before you frame the walls.

The Real Cost of Plumbing Without a Building

Here's what happens when you build revenue architecture without the foundation. You make a small tweak to the funnel. It works, so you add another elbow joint to the pipes. Then another. Each adjustment makes sense in isolation. But six months in, the whole system is so far afield from where you started that you don't know how to undo anything. You're maintaining technical debt instead of building a business.

Every small pivot without knowing what you're building for adds complexity instead of clarity. You end up responding to anyone with a pulse and a budget, instead of working with buyers who actually align with who you are. Your RevOps team becomes a firefighter instead of a strategic partner. Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success are all working from different playbooks because nobody grounded the work in what the company actually believes.

The foundation work changes that. Once you know what you're building for, every tweak to the pipes either reinforces that or it doesn't. When it doesn't, it's easier to say no. When it does, everyone moves in the same direction.

If your GTM motion feels scattered, if you're making small moves that feel disconnected from each other, if your revenue team is optimizing different things than your marketing team, the problem isn't in the pipes. It's probably in the foundation of your house.

If this framework resonates with where your company is right now, Book 30 minutes directly on my calendar and let's talk about what's underneath your funnel.