Koen Stam, Leading International @Personio | Building community @Pavilion | Architecting Growth @Winning By Design | Showing revenue teams what’s next @GTM OS, recently posted something that made me stop scrolling: "Munich, here we come ✈️ Time for GTM Kick-off 2026. Yes, all Go-To-Market. One revenue team. New business teams. Existing business teams. All together. All cross-functional. Oneteam. Onedream."

That short rally cry is doing a lot of work. It is not just hype for an offsite. It is a clear operating philosophy: treat Go-To-Market as one connected system, not a set of departments handing work to each other.

I want to expand on what Koen is pointing to, because "all GTM" and "one revenue team" sound obvious until you try to run it. Then you discover the hidden frictions: misaligned incentives, conflicting priorities, unclear ownership, and separate definitions of success. A great GTM Kick-off can either amplify those problems or fix them.

The real message behind "all Go-To-Market"

When Koen writes "Yes, all Go-To-Market," I read it as a pushback against the classic split: Sales kickoff over here, Marketing planning day over there, Customer Success QBRs somewhere else, and RevOps trying to stitch it together after the fact.

In practice, "all GTM" means bringing the whole revenue engine into the same room (or the same virtual experience) to align on four things:

The target customer and their priorities
The outcomes you will be measured on
The plays you will run together
The operating cadence to keep it aligned after the event

If your kickoff only covers pipeline targets and product updates, you will get energy for a week and confusion for a quarter.

"One revenue team" is not a slogan. It is a design choice about goals, processes, and decision rights.

One revenue team: what it actually requires

Koen’s line "One revenue team" implies that New Business and Existing Business are not competing fiefdoms. They are two expressions of the same promise to the customer: value delivered and value captured.

Here is what has to be true for that to work.

Shared definitions

Teams fight when words are fuzzy. A one-team GTM org gets painfully specific about definitions like:

What counts as a qualified lead (and for whom)?
What counts as pipeline (and what is excluded)?
What is the handoff standard between SDR to AE, AE to CS, CS to Expansion?
What is the "moment of value" for the customer, and when should CS escalate risk?

If you do not align these, you will celebrate different wins and argue about the same loss.

Aligned incentives and metrics

The quickest way to kill "one team" is to pay teams to optimize against each other. You do not need one universal comp plan, but you do need connected metrics. Examples:

Sales is measured on quality pipeline and conversion, not just volume.
Marketing is measured on revenue influence and pipeline health, not just MQLs.
CS is measured on retention and expansion, but also on time-to-value and adoption inputs.
RevOps is measured on forecast accuracy and cycle time improvements, not only tool administration.

Clear decision rights

Cross-functional work fails when no one knows who decides. A practical model is:

One DRI (directly responsible individual) per GTM play
A short list of required collaborators
A single metric that defines success

That is how you keep speed without losing alignment.

New Business and Existing Business: one story, two motions

Koen explicitly calls out both "New business teams" and "Existing business teams." That matters because many companies still treat retention and expansion like a separate planet.

If you want to operate as one revenue team, your kickoff should connect the motions:

New Business shares what messaging is resonating in-market.
Existing Business shares what outcomes customers actually achieve and where they get stuck.
Product and Marketing translate that into positioning, onboarding improvements, and proof points.
RevOps turns it into measurable stages, hygiene, and reporting.

A simple but powerful kickoff exercise is building a single end-to-end customer narrative together:

What triggers interest?
What makes a buyer trust you?
What makes them buy now?
What makes them adopt?
What makes them renew or expand?

When each team owns a chapter, you get handoffs. When everyone co-owns the full story, you get a system.

Why cross-functional is the point, not the bonus

Koen writes "All together. All cross-functional." I like that framing because cross-functional is often treated as a nice-to-have. In a modern GTM environment, it is the whole game.

Buyers are overloaded, switching costs are real, and product parity is common. The difference is execution: tight feedback loops, coherent messaging, and coordinated account coverage.

Cross-functional kickoff content should not be generic. It should be built around shared problems like:

Reducing sales cycle time without discounting
Improving stage conversion with better enablement and proof
Increasing activation rates so retention is not a rescue mission
Improving forecast accuracy so the company can invest with confidence

A kickoff should create shared context so teams can make good decisions without constant escalation.

A practical GTM Kick-off agenda that matches Koen’s intent

If I were designing a GTM Kick-off based on Koen’s "Oneteam. Onedream." energy, I would structure it around outcomes and joint execution, not department updates. Here is a clean blueprint.

1) The North Star: where are we going and why?

Market reality: what changed, what did not
Company strategy: ideal customer profile, positioning, top segments
The 3 to 5 bets for the year

2) The revenue system: how we win end-to-end

Lifecycle map: from first touch to renewal
Handoff standards and definitions
The top constraints (bottlenecks) and how you will remove them

3) The plays: what we will run together

Pick 2 to 4 cross-functional plays and go deep. Examples:

A new outbound motion for a priority segment
A partner-led motion
A churn reduction play for a risky cohort
An expansion play based on product usage signals

Each play needs: owner, target accounts or segments, enablement assets, SLAs, and weekly metrics.

4) Enablement that sticks

Messaging and objection handling tied to real calls
Demo and discovery standards
Customer stories that connect purchase to adoption

5) Operating cadence

This is what keeps "one team" alive after the travel and the applause:

Weekly: pipeline and execution review (cross-functional)
Monthly: segment performance and play iteration
Quarterly: strategy refresh and resource allocation

The hidden value: culture and identity

Koen ends with "LFG" and that "Oneteam. Onedream." line. That is culture building, but not the fluffy kind. It is identity: who we are when things are hard, when the quarter is behind, when a big deal slips, when churn hits unexpectedly.

A kickoff can create a shared identity if it answers:

What does great look like in our GTM org?
How do we treat customers, and how do we treat each other?
What behaviors do we reward, and what do we stop tolerating?

One practical tip: end the kickoff with commitments that are observable. Not "collaborate more," but "Marketing and Sales will run one weekly pipeline quality review for the top segment" or "CS and Sales will define a single expansion qualification checklist by end of month."

A quick checklist to take into your next GTM Kick-off

If you want to apply the spirit of Koen Stam’s post, here is a lightweight checklist you can use immediately:

Do we have one shared view of the customer journey?
Are definitions (qualified, pipeline, stage exit criteria) written and agreed?
Did New Business and Existing Business co-design the top GTM plays?
Do metrics connect across teams, or do they create internal competition?
Are decision rights clear for cross-functional work?
Is there a post-kickoff cadence with owners, dates, and dashboards?

If you can say yes to most of these, "one revenue team" stops being a vibe and becomes a system.

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Koen Stam, Leading International @Personio | Building community @Pavilion | Architecting Growth @Winning By Design | Showing revenue teams what’s next @GTM OS. View the original LinkedIn post →