What Happened When I Stopped GTM Planning The Hard Way

RevOps leaders know how painful disjointed planning can be. Late-night data pulls, broken models, and constant fire drills just to get leadership the information they need. Sales reps, frontline managers, and even the CEO are waiting for answers while you’re scrambling to make sense of conflicting reports and outdated spreadsheets. It’s a mess. And for too many companies, it feels like the only option.

I’ve been there. I know exactly how brutal end-of-year and end-of-quarter planning cycles can get. But then, everything changed. The stress, the scramble, the wasted hours—it all got dramatically better. I realized that I had a choice to make. I could keep fighting through the friction or fix it. But doing nothing was no longer an option.

So, I started using Sigma.

The GTM planning grind

In previous roles and planning cycles, I lived through the all-too-familiar nightmare. Forecasting became a weekly panic session—bouncing between Salesforce, Excel, and a stack of BI dashboards to produce three versions of next quarter’s outlook (none of which were quite right). Capacity planning felt like educated guesswork, built on numbers that were already stale by the time they made it into the model. 

Forecasting became a weekly panic session—bouncing between Salesforce, Excel, and a stack of BI dashboards to produce three versions of next quarter’s outlook (none of which were quite right).

Leadership’s “what if” questions meant all-nighters for me. I was constantly trying to model every possible scenario before the next exec review. Territory carving was opaque at best. It was hard to tell if we were balancing regions fairly, or just making high-stakes guesses. And commission—don’t even get me started. Endless disputes triggered by misaligned data across CRM, spreadsheets, and finance systems. 

These inefficiencies didn’t just kill morale. They had real financial consequences. Every fix was a painful, manual slog that cost us time, trust, and money. Bad forecasts led to bad hiring decisions. Wasted RevOps and Sales hours stacked up fast, draining productivity. Commission miscalculations chipped away at trust as well as the budget. Poor segmentation sent the wrong reps after the wrong accounts, leaving money on the table.

What was really broken: The GTM tech stack

The root of the problem was clear: everything was stitched together. A BI tool for reporting. Spreadsheets for modeling. A CRM for pipeline data. A separate capacity planning tool. Territory mapping software. Commission tracking systems. All disconnected. All requiring constant exports, manual updates, and late-night fire drills just to answer a basic question.

It was inefficient, it was expensive, and worst of all—it didn’t even work well.

Enter Sigma: The operating system for RevOps

Eventually, I hit a wall. The manual workarounds, the disconnected tools, the constant fire drills—it just wasn’t sustainable anymore. I needed a way to actually run GTM planning, not just survive it.

That’s when I started using Sigma. I felt the difference instantly. 

Sigma’s not just another BI tool—it’s something completely different. A live, flexible platform where I can build and run the entire GTM planning engine in one place. All the essentials are built in. No more CSV exports. No stale numbers. No “last updated” guesswork. My forecasts, capacity plans, and commission models are all pulled from live data, and stay connected.

Capacity planning no longer feels like guesswork. Scenario modeling doesn’t require an all-nighter. I can now answer leadership’s “what if” questions in real time. Territory mapping and segmentation have become clear and defensible. And commission disputes? Practically gone, because everything finally aligns.

And the best part is that I don’t need to be so technical in my approach any more. Sigma’s no-code, spreadsheet-like interface lets me build models, adapt plans, and answer ad hoc questions without waiting on the data team.

With Sigma data apps, I can build interactive, business-ready planning tools right on top of my data. They’re not just dashboards. They’re live, usable workflows

But what made everything click from the beginning, though, was Sigma data apps. With them, I can build interactive, business-ready planning tools right on top of my data—territory planners, forecast override workflows, comp calculators. They’re not just dashboards. They’re live, usable workflows. All dynamic. All real-time. All in one place.

The most expensive choice is doing nothing

Looking back, the old way wasn’t just painful. It was costly. Every bad forecast drained our budget. Every manual update stole time. Every commission dispute chipped away at trust. Every misaligned territory left money on the table.

Sticking with that status quo felt easier—until it clearly wasn’t.

Once the noise was gone, I could focus on what actually drives growth. I started to make better calls. Faster. With more confidence. And that changed everything. Sigma didn’t just help fix GTM planning—it gave me the space and clarity to lead.

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