People first: hire the right team

NEW: @Paul Fipps (President of Global Customer Operations at @ServiceNow) joins GTMnow to break down how ServiceNow built the customer engine behind $10B+ in revenue and 20%+ growth for five consecutive years.

From CIO at Under Armour overseeing a 300 million-member connected fitness ecosystem, to now leading global sales, customer success, field marketing, and partners at one of the most disciplined GTM organizations in enterprise software, Paul has seen what it takes to scale from both sides of the table.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

- Why complacency is a bigger threat than competition at scale

- How to detect churn long before it shows up in a report

- What a CIO cancelling 900 AI pilots tells you about where enterprise AI is actually headed

- How ServiceNow unified sales, customer success, field marketing, and partners into one GTM motion so customers never feel the org chart

- Why ServiceNow monitors customer health daily — and what signals their teams actually track

- How community became a core GTM advantage, not just a marketing channel

- How ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower governs agents across the enterprise stack

- Inside “Now on Now”: how ServiceNow generated $335M in annualized AI productivity gains using its own platform

- How integrating Claude into the GTM workflow cut account planning from days to minutes

- What DTC product thinking from Under Armour unlocked in enterprise GTM

- How ServiceNow shifted from 6-month product releases to monthly innovation cycles

- Paul’s advice for building a world-class GTM organization: put the best people in the right seats

Guest links:

Guest - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulfipps/

Guest company - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicenow/

Guest company website: https://www.servicenow.com/

Host links:

Sophie Buonassisi - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

Sophie Buonassisi - X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona

Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

Sponsors:

HockeyStack - the AI platform that unifies GTM data to help teams convert, expand, and scale. Learn more at https://www.hockeystack.com/

Transcript available under the episode here: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/

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Highlights:

00:00 – How ServiceNow built one of the most disciplined GTM engines in enterprise software01:22 – 80B workflows, $10B+ revenue: what gets harder and easier at scale02:05 – Why complacency is the real threat at scale05:49 – Why ServiceNow unified sales, customer success, field marketing, and partners under one motion06:49 – The post-sale handoff problem: signing on Friday, new team showing up Monday08:22 – How to spot churn before it shows up in a report09:55 – How often ServiceNow teams check customer health12:25 – If you took away the dashboards, how would you know a customer is truly winning?15:35 – Why Paul blocks calendar time every week for direct customer conversations (and responds within 24 hours)17:53 – From Under Armour to ServiceNow: what DTC product thinking unlocks in enterprise B2B21:06 – The personalization gap in B2B enterprise software and how ServiceNow is closing it25:18 – The CIO with 900 AI pilots who cancelled every single one26:03 – How embedding agentic AI inside existing workflows drives measurable ROI32:39 – "Now on Now": $335M in productivity gains running on their own platform34:18 – Integrating Claude into the GTM motion for all 10,000 go-to-market team members36:44 – The AI control tower: governing every agent across the entire enterprise39:15 – Paul's one piece of advice for every GTM leader: get the best people in the right seats40:21 – The book that shaped Paul's career: Execution by Bossidy & Charan

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email gtmnow@gtmfund.com

GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/