Your 2027 Revenue Plan Is Also a Roster Decision

Brian Shea
31 minutes ago
7 min read

What NFL roster construction can teach CEOs about building the GTM organization required to deliver next year’s strategy

Across the NFL, an annual exercise is taking place that looks remarkably different from how many companies approach strategic planning. Teams are deciding who deserves a place on the final roster. The process is unforgiving.

Last year’s performance matters, but it doesn't guarantee this year’s position.

Contracts matter, but they don't determine who should be on the field.

Experience matters, but only if that experience translates into the capabilities required by the system the team intends to run.

Every position is being evaluated against a fundamental question: What combination of system, capabilities and talent gives us the highest probability of winning the games ahead?

Now imagine applying that same discipline to your 2027 GTM organization.

The comparison creates an uncomfortable question for CEOs: If your 2027 GTM organization had to earn its roster spots based on the strategy you are about to approve, would you field the same team, roles and operating model you have today?

For many companies, that question deserves far more attention than it receives.

Because while the 2027 revenue target may be different, much of the machinery expected to produce it will remain remarkably familiar.

Same organizational structure.
Same functional boundaries.
Same seller roles.
Same territories.
Same account coverage.
Same performance measures.
Same pipeline methodology.
Same enablement model.

Then leadership asks that system to produce more growth. That isn't necessarily a strategy. It may simply be a larger bet on last year's roster.

NFL Teams Build the Roster Around the Game They Intend to Play

An NFL general manager doesn't begin roster construction by asking: How do we keep everyone we currently employ?

Leadership determines what kind of football the organization intends to play and what capabilities that system requires. The roster follows the strategy.

Consider what would happen if CEOs approached 2027 GTM planning the same way.

Instead of beginning with: “What should our revenue target be?”

Begin with: “What must our company become exceptionally good at to win in the market we expect to face?”

That distinction matters.

Because the market your GTM organization was designed for may not be the market your company is entering.

Buyers increasingly educate themselves before engaging sellers. Buying decisions involve broader groups of stakeholders. AI is changing how buyers research problems, evaluate alternatives and interact with suppliers. Competitors can identify and respond to market changes faster. And information that once gave sellers an advantage is increasingly available to everyone.

The implication is significant: The capabilities that produced yesterday's revenue may not be the capabilities that produce tomorrow's growth. Yet organizational design frequently lags market change. That is where the roster analogy becomes useful.

The 2027 GTM Training Camp

Before finalizing next year's organizational structure, imagine putting your GTM system through training camp. Not to decide who gets fired. To determine whether the organization possesses the capabilities required by the strategy.

There are six exercises CEOs can lead.

1. Define the Game Before Evaluating the Players

Start with market reality. Ask the executive team: What will be materially different about winning customers in 2027 than it was three years ago?

Look beyond your own company.

What is changing in customer markets?
What pressures are affecting customer economics?
What are competitors doing differently?
Where are new entrants appearing?
How is AI changing customer behavior?
What is happening across critical supply chains and ecosystems?
Where are buying decisions moving inside customer organizations?

Only after answering those questions should leadership define the GTM capabilities required to compete.

Perhaps your organization needs greater executive business acumen.
Perhaps it needs stronger account intelligence.
Perhaps sellers must engage earlier.
Perhaps marketing needs to identify buying motion rather than simply generate leads.
Perhaps account management must become responsible for detecting expansion and churn signals.
Perhaps RevOps must move from reporting historical performance toward improving forward revenue visibility.

Strategy defines the system. The system defines the roster. Not the other way around.

2. Build a Capability Depth Chart

NFL teams don't simply know how many players they employ. They know their depth at every critical position. CEOs should demand the same visibility into GTM capability.

Create a 2027 GTM capability map.

For each capability required by the strategy, determine whether the organization is:

Elite A competitive advantage.
Capable Sufficient to execute the strategy.
Developing Present, but inconsistent.
Exposed A material risk to the revenue plan.

The resulting depth chart might include:

Market and account signal interpretation
Executive business acumen
Financial value articulation
Buying-organization navigation
Opportunity creation before declared intent
Problem shaping
Competitive positioning
Account expansion
Customer retention intelligence
AI-enabled research and preparation
Cross-functional orchestration

Now the CEO can see something an org chart cannot reveal: Where the 2027 growth strategy is dependent upon capabilities the company does not yet possess at sufficient depth. That is strategic risk.

3. Change What Makes the Scoreboard

Football teams ultimately care about wins. But coaches don't manage games by staring at the final score. They monitor the activities and conditions that produce it.

GTM organizations often do the opposite.

Executives review:

Revenue.
Bookings.
Pipeline.
Quota attainment.
Win rate.
Forecast accuracy.

Those metrics matter. But by the time many of them deteriorate, the conditions responsible for the deterioration may have existed for months.

The 2027 GTM scorecard needs another layer. CEOs should ask: What would we measure if our objective were to predict revenue performance rather than explain it afterward?

That could include:

Buying organizations showing meaningful change
Emerging buying motion detected before formal intent
Executive relationships established
Buying-group penetration
Opportunities influenced before requirements are defined
Competitive position before an RFP
Financial cases established
Customer expansion signals detected
Churn risks identified early
Signal-to-action speed

This represents an important management shift. Lagging metrics tell leadership the score. Leading signals tell leadership whether the team is getting into position to score. Both matter. But they answer very different questions.

4. Watch the Film

NFL coaches study film relentlessly because outcomes alone don't explain performance. GTM leaders should do the same.

Take the largest wins, losses, stalled deals, churn events and expansion opportunities from 2026 and reconstruct what actually happened. Then move backward in time.

When did the customer's situation first begin changing?
When could your organization have known?
When did the customer begin forming its buying group?
When did competitors become involved?
When were requirements established?
When did your seller enter?
When did your company realize the opportunity existed?

This exercise can expose one of the most consequential problems in modern GTM: The team may be executing well once it sees an opportunity while still entering the game too late to shape it.

That isn't necessarily a seller performance problem. It may be a visibility problem. And adding more pipeline inspection won't solve it.

5. Decide Who Needs Coaching, Who Needs a Different Position and Where the Roster Needs New Capability

This is where CEOs must resist an overly simplistic interpretation of the roster analogy.

The objective isn't to replace everyone who doesn't immediately fit the future model.

Great sports organizations develop talent. Companies should too.

For every critical capability gap, leadership has several choices:

Develop it.

Can existing people acquire the capability through training, coaching and repetition?

Redesign the position.

Has the market changed enough that the role itself needs to change?

Augment it.

Can technology, AI, intelligence or workflow redesign make the existing team materially more effective?

Recruit it.

Does the organization simply lack a capability that must be brought in from outside?

Remove structural barriers.

Is talent underperforming because marketing, sales, customer success and RevOps are operating against different definitions of the customer and buying motion?

This turns talent planning into something more useful than headcount planning.

The question becomes: What is the most effective way to close each capability gap before it becomes a revenue gap?

6. Don't Wait Until the End of the Season to Change the Roster

NFL rosters change.
Players develop.
Injuries happen.
Opponents adjust.
Strategies evolve.
The roster responds.

Corporate GTM structures are often far more static.

The annual plan gets approved.
Territories are assigned.
Quotas are distributed.
SKO launches the year.
And then leadership spends four quarters trying to make the original assumptions work.

Signal-Led GTM™ suggests a different operating model. Leadership continuously monitors what is changing across:

Customers.
Prospects.
Competitors.
Markets.
Supply chains.
Partners.
And the broader economic environment.

Those signals should not only determine where the company sells. They should help determine whether the GTM system itself needs to change. The CEO should therefore establish quarterly GTM roster reviews. Not simply pipeline reviews.

Ask:

What changed in the market?
What assumptions in our plan are no longer true?
What new buying behaviors are emerging?
Where are competitors gaining advantage?
Which capabilities are becoming more important?
Where is our team improving?
Where is the system constraining performance?
What should we change now rather than explain at year-end?

That creates a GTM organization capable of adapting while the season is still being played.

The CEO's 2027 Roster Review

Before approving the 2027 GTM plan, I would put seven questions in front of the executive team:

1. What will be materially different about how our customers buy in 2027?

2. What capabilities will winning under those conditions require?

3. Where do we possess those capabilities today — and where are we exposed?

4. Which current GTM roles were designed around market conditions that no longer exist?

5. What leading indicators will tell us whether our strategy is working before revenue tells us it isn't?

6. Where should we develop, redesign, augment or recruit capability?

7. What signals would cause us to change the GTM roster or system during 2027?

Those questions force an executive conversation that a revenue target alone cannot.

The Number Is Not the Strategy

Every NFL team enters the season wanting more wins. Wanting more wins isn't a strategy.

The strategy is the system, talent, preparation, intelligence and execution required to produce them. Revenue growth works the same way.

A CEO can approve a 15% growth target.
A CFO can model it.
A CRO can distribute it.
Sales leaders can translate it into quotas.
Marketing can calculate the pipeline required to support it.

None of those activities establishes that the organization possesses the capability to deliver it.

That is why the most important question in 2027 strategic planning may come before the revenue target is approved: If you were building your GTM organization today specifically to win in the market you're about to enter, would you build the organization you currently have?

If the answer is yes, you should be able to demonstrate why.
If the answer is no, the planning process has just surfaced something far more important than next year's number.

It has identified the work that must happen before opening day. Because the worst time for a CEO to discover that the company fielded the wrong GTM roster isn't during strategic planning. It's two quarters into the season, when the revenue miss finally makes the problem visible.

That is the difference between planning around a number and building an organization capable of producing it. And it may be one of the most important distinctions CEOs make as they prepare for 2027.