Walking Through the Bow Tie

Stephen unpacks the bow tie, conversion metrics, and the missing closed‑loop continuous improvement process.

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Episode notes

Stephen Diorio, author of "Revenue Operations" and a go-to-market strategy veteran with decades of experience — from co-founding one of the first GTM strategy firms in 1993 to serving as a Gartner analyst — joins Janis and Philipp to unpack the math of growth. Stephen explains why the financial systems behind most B2B organizations fundamentally fail to measure what actually drives revenue, and how RevOps can close the gap between what the business spends on growth and what it actually gets back.

We cover:

Why traditional accounting treats all go-to-market spend as expense — and why that's fundamentally wrong
Growth assets: databases, brands, digital channels, content — and why no one measures their value
The bow tie model: what it captures, what it misses, and why the back end is where CFOs get scared
Why a third of closed deals originate from actions taken 12–18 months earlier
The 25 post-booking variables that can double or halve lifetime customer value
Why "cost to sell" has 100 definitions across 100 companies — and none are right
The dark funnel and LLM search: why 90% of the buying process is invisible
Forward-looking vs. backward-looking signals: product telemetry, adoption, and renewal prediction
The nine customer behavior changes that every growth investment ultimately drives
Why documenting assumptions — not just measuring outcomes — is the key to continuous improvement
Treatment models and customer experience: why no one can answer "what does a good CX cost?"
Share of wallet and account penetration: the massive untapped opportunity most orgs can't quantify