You are quick to work the tool, the motion, the hire, the dashboard. The one letter that has to be solved before any of them is the one everybody skips. GIANT is how a Sales Operator approaches a GTM problem: five questions, and the first one carries the weight.
It is almost never the tool, the hire or the motion. The work is usually right. The sequence is wrong, and it is wrong at the first step: nobody grounded the problem before the money moved. These are the three I have made, and watched made.
We hired before we knew what the seat was for.
Headcount got approved against a number, not a problem. The reps arrived with a quota and no motion to run it in, and ramp meant finding out alone.
The cost is the rebuild: the same seats, hired twice, a year apart.
We bought the tool before we mapped the data.
The demo was good and buying felt like progress. The tool was powerful and useless in the same month, because it only knows what it is fed, and nobody had mapped the events.
The cost is the sunk cost, and the clock it puts on everything after it.
We built the motion around the team we had.
Not around how the buyer wanted to buy. Nine private workflows, a CRM that tells nine stories, and a board deck that still says AI-first.
The cost is a motion nobody can enforce, because nobody defined it.
Nothing in the other four letters starts until G has a buyer, a payer, a number and a kill line. That is the whole order rule, and it is the one most teams skip.
What are we solving, for who, who pays, and what number says it is solved?
Is that the actual problem, or a symptom of something deeper?
The 3 Whys for a business: the symptom, the pattern underneath it, and the broken foundation that produces both. Fix the foundation and the symptoms go with it.
Who has it, who pays to fix it, who decides?
The 3 Whys end at a person, so the buyer is inside the problem, not a second question. A problem the payer does not feel is a problem nobody funds.
What number says it is solved, by when, and what number says stop?
Today's number, the target, the window, and the kill line, set before anything is built. A problem with no number is an opinion. A problem with no kill line is a roadmap item that never dies.
On the product channel: the board said more pipeline. Three Whys down, the problem was that thousands of people used the product every week and nobody in sales could see what they were doing. The buyer was the user already inside the product, and the leader whose team had to learn to sell to them. The number was sales-qualified pipeline from the product, measured against plan. I had not grounded any of that before the intent tool was bought.
Weak sounds like: “We need more pipeline.” A symptom, named where it hurts instead of where it lives, with no buyer and no number. Strong sounds like: “Stage-two conversion dropped in one segment after the pricing change. The ops director feels it, the CRO pays, and it costs a known amount per quarter.”
After G, the letters read in the order of the name. I and A size each other: the motion sets the cost, and the cost tests the motion. Each letter below is one question, what lives underneath it, and how it ran on the product channel, the build where I skipped G and paid for it.
What does solving it take: the data, the context, the tech, and what does it cost?
What do we already know, and where is it dying?
Most of what a build needs already exists somewhere in the company, as exhaust. The warehouse, the product events, the call notes. Find it before buying anything that promises to create it.
What makes the data mean something?
The few facts that turn a record into a reason: which events predict a sale, which accounts fit, what changed this week. That is judgment, not a query, and it is the part no tool ships with.
What does it take to run, and what stops to pay for it?
Tech comes last, sized by the data and context it will be fed. Every piece has a cost in money and in rep time, and something on the list stops to fund it. Say which.
On the product channel: the data was product events sitting in the warehouse. The context was the handful of events that predicted a sale, decided by an operator, not a query. The tech was an intent tool, bought before either of those existed. Powerful and useless in the same month, and the sunk cost put a clock on everything after it.
Weak sounds like: “Buy the tool first. It demos well, and buying feels like progress.” Strong sounds like: “The events mapped before the tool is bought. The cost of each piece, and what comes off the list to fund it.”
How does this buyer want to buy, what would they choose us for, and who or what meets them there?
Which buyer gets the product, which gets a machine, which gets a person?
Product-led, marketing-led, sales-led, partner-led, or a mix, chosen from how the buyer G named wants to buy, not from the team you already have. Aim is Responsive Selling at the motion.
What does the machine do, and what stays human?
Inside whichever motion: repeatable and safe goes to the machine (enrich, route, log, score, summarize). Context, relationship and consequence stay human, on purpose, with the tools to do them well. The line moves as the models improve and gets redrawn per motion, out loud.
Why would they choose us, and how do they find out we exist?
The claim the alternative cannot make, and the path from their world to ours. At a launch, the same aim with a zone, a window and the proof.
On the product channel: three motions defined with marketing, sales-led, sales-assisted and no-touch, by what the user was already doing in the product. The Split: the system maps, enriches, scores and routes; the operator decides what a signal means; the rep owns the conversation. The route: the usage itself became the reason for the call, so every touch was a response, never an interruption.
Weak sounds like: “Hire the AE pod, because that is what we have always done.” Strong sounds like: “The motion chosen from how they buy. Inside it, the Split drawn on purpose: what the machine does, what stays human.”
Does the new way become the default for the people doing the work, with the incentive moving with it?
Who runs it first, before the floor gets it?
A few reps who can execute pilot the motion. Rep time is money and the screwup budget on anything new is finite, so the company's experiment does not land on everyone's quota at once.
When is it inspected, and does the money move with it?
A named rhythm where the new way gets looked at, and comp and goals that reward it. A motion the incentive does not follow is a side project, whatever the deck says.
What does the team have to learn, and who teaches it?
The enablement arc: the new way trained as a skill, not announced as a policy, and a date when it stops being a pilot and is simply how the team sells.
On the product channel: a tiger team piloted the motion first. The reps learned SMART on a warm product lead, opening with what the account already did, coached as a response. Comp was thought through before launch so nobody paid for the experiment. The cold-list habit retired because the warm way kept winning, and signals became the default.
Weak sounds like: “A side experiment two enthusiasts run after hours.” Strong sounds like: “The new way is how the team works on a Tuesday, comp moved with it, and there is a date when it stops being a pilot.”
Did it hit the number G set, and what does the result, win or loss, change in the next Ground?
Did it hit the number, by the date?
One number and one date, the ones G set, answered honestly. Not the activity, not the launch, the number. Every build has a receipt or it was a project.
If it missed, what did the miss teach?
The loss teaches the next Ground more than the win does. A kill line that was hit is a result, not a failure, and the sunk cost is already sunk.
What does this change about the next problem?
The result becomes the new baseline. The second build costs half of what the first one did, because the data, the context and the motion are already real.
On the product channel: the receipt was a channel built from nothing that became the number one new-business source, with the highest qualified win rate of any channel. The loop fed back: product learned which usage patterns preceded a win, marketing learned the words converting buyers used, sales learned which play to run next. The next Ground started from that.
Weak sounds like: “Shipped and celebrated. Nobody checked the number.” Strong sounds like: “The number, hit or missed, and what the result changes in the next Ground.”
Ground the problem before anything else, then aim the motion at the buyer who has it.
The problem, the buyer, the bet, and the motion the deal runs inside.
Run the deal inside the motion GIANT aimed.
A motion that works, and the profile it takes to run it.
Hire and scale against a motion that already works.
Every result, win or loss, feeds back into move one as the new baseline. The system compounds instead of resetting.
Three places on the site, each one serving a letter. The skills that read the data and score the receipt, the stack the data gets fed into, and how to draw the Split and make it stick.
Operator-built skills you install in one line: the ones that read the data, build the context, and score the receipt. Grouped by the outcome they move.
Open the libraryThe tech, sized to the data and context it will be fed. What runs in the seat today, what each piece is for, and what it replaced.
See the stackThe Split drawn on purpose, and the rollout that makes the new way the default. How to set up, prompt, connect and run it without you.
Start hereOne story a week on putting AI to work in sales, with the reps still in the room. Every playbook runs GIANT, and shows you how to run it yourself.