What It Takes To Win

Three techniques great GTM executives obsess over

Chuck Noll knew what it took to win.

As head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Chuck led his team to fifteen winning seasons and four Super Bowl championships. In a hyper-competitive league like the NFL, he must have been doing something a little different to create those kind of results.

But if you asked Chuck for his secret to building a championship team, he’d give you a simple answer. Here’s his best line on the subject:

“Champions are champions not because they do anything extraordinary but because they do the ordinary things better than anyone else.”

I love that quote. It’s a little smug. A little cocky. A little dismissive. “There is no secret,” Chuck is saying. “You win because you’re better than the other guy at the basic stuff that matters most.”

But there’s another reason that quote hits home with me. A deeper reason. It implies that winning is workmanlike. It implies that winning only comes after you develop an obsession with mastering the basic techniques of your game. It implies that it’s the relentless pursuit of getting good at the simple stuff that helps you win.

In other words, it’s about picking a couple important but otherwise ordinary parts of your job and really giving a shit about them.

What We Know vs. What We Do

At this point, we’re all familiar with the basic best practices of how to grow a business. Whether you’re an investor, a CEO, a sales leader, or a marketing exec… you all know what you’re supposed to do. How can you not be? It’s all over the internet.

You’re supposed to talk to customers. Build a compelling case for why someone should buy from you. Run effective sales calls. Qualify properly. Handle objections. Follow up consistently. Navigate the buying committee. And hang around the people that that don’t buy right away so you stay top-of-mind.

These aren’t secrets. They’re not proprietary insights you need to pay a consultant to uncover for you. This is the blocking and tackling of business. Literally everybody knows this stuff.

So why doesn’t everyone do it?

Because, as I’ve written about before, knowing what to do and making it happen are two entirely different things. One requires awareness. The other requires discipline, repetition, and a deep, personal level of care about execution of the basics. A level of care the vast majority of the population can’t be bothered with.

The companies that grow the fastest haven’t cracked some secret commercial code. They’re the ones just a little more obsessed with basic execution - with actually doing the things we all know we’re supposed to do, but too many of us gloss over because they feel unglamorous, time-consuming, or obvious.

So what are those things? If you’re trying to grow faster, what techniques should you be obsessing over?

Here’s my top three.

1. Understanding Your Customer

You can’t be good at selling something if you don’t understand why people buy it.

That sounds obvious. And yet, most companies operate on a pile of assumptions about what their customers care about, why they chose them over the competition, and what actually makes their product valuable. Basically, they guess. They rely on anecdotes from that one big deal they closed six months ago. They let the loudest voice in the room (usually a founder, CEO, or a longtime salesperson) define the narrative.

And then they wonder why their pitch isn’t landing, and why they aren’t feeling the pull from the market they know should be there.

Here’s the thing: You don’t need to guess. The truth is out there. Your customers will tell you exactly why they bought from you, what problem you solved for them, and what made you different from everyone else they looked at. All you have to do is ask.

But you can’t just talk to one or two customers and call it a day. You need volume. You need to hear the patterns, and dig into what life was like before, during, and after their decision to work with you. You need to know what the moment was when they realized they had a problem worth solving. What they were using or doing before they found you. Where they went to look for solutions. What they were most curious about during the sales process. And what would have made them walk away.

This is how you turn yourself into the most dangerous kind of sales or marketing person there is: a customer mind-reader. You do this not by making educated guesses, but by systematically collecting real stories from the people who had the exact problem you solve, considered all of their options, did their homework and then chose you to fix it.

And when you know those stories (when you’ve heard them enough times that you can predict what someone’s going to say before they say it) everything else gets easier. Your marketing gets sharper. Your sales pitch gets tighter. Your product roadmap gets clearer. Because you’re no longer operating on assumptions. You’re operating on evidence.

You stop guessing, because you know the truth.

Knowing the truth helps you win.

2. Being Curious

Discovery is the most important part of the sales process.

These days, it’s also the most painful.

Here’s why: Most modern-day salespeople treat discovery like a census-taking exercise. They ask the questions they need answered so they can fill out their CRM fields, pass inspection from their manager, and move on to pitching their product. It’s transactional. It’s selfish. And it’s making the experience of buying stuff for your business, on average, pretty terrible.

Most salespeople have forgotten something important: Discovery isn’t about you. It’s about them. It’s about helping the person on the other end of the line understand their own situation. It’s about asking questions that make them think, reflect, and articulate their pain in ways they hadn’t before. It’s about being genuinely curious - not as a sales tactic, but as a mindset.

But here’s something else most salespeople out there seem to have forgotten: you have to earn the right to get curious.

You do that by being credible and helpful first. By asking good questions. By sharing what you know. By giving them context about what’s working for other people like them and what isn’t. By offering frameworks that broaden their thinking. By proving that you’re not just another vendor looking to check boxes and push product.

This isn’t just about qualification. It’s about education. You’re helping them discover what their problem really is and how urgent it should feel. You’re helping them understand their current state. You’re giving them the language to describe what’s hard about where they are right now.

And here’s an underappreciated fact about great discovery: It’s not only helpful. It’s also entertaining. Not in a stand-up comedy kind of way, but in an “I’m actually enjoying this conversation” kind of way. When someone feels like you’re helping them think through their problem and see their world a little more clearly (not just trying to sell them something) they lean in. They open up. They start to trust you.

That’s the dance of discovery done right. You educate. You entertain. You ask questions. And somewhere in the middle of all that, you figure out for sure if you can actually help them or not.

It’s being curious that gets you there. It’s being curious that helps you win.

3. Providing Proof

Here’s where most sales pitches fall apart: They’re built around what the seller thinks is impressive, not what the buyer actually cares about.

You’ve built something amazing. You’re proud of it. So you walk into a sales call and start showing them everything. Every feature, every workflow, every login screen, and every other little detail that makes up your product. Before you know it, you’re 45 minutes into the demo and you realize you haven’t asked a single question. You’ve been talking the entire time. And you’ve spoiled the magic trick.

The problem isn’t that you went too deep or got too technical. The problem is that you decided what was interesting instead of discovering it. You made up your mind about what to highlight based on you, not based on the person sitting across from you.

Here’s what great sellers do instead: They connect the pain the customer just told you about to a short list of highly relevant capabilities that only they can deliver. They build a pile of evidence that’s hard to argue with.

This isn’t about showing off. It’s about being relevant. It’s about saying:

“Here’s what you told me hurts. Here’s exactly how we fix that specific thing for people like you. Here’s proof that it works.”

That proof can come in many different forms. Case studies from similar customers. A demo that teases the promised land and the turn-by-turn directions for getting there. Earned secrets that only experience can provide. But it all starts with listening. With discovering what matters to them before you decide what to show them.

When you get this right, the sales process stops feeling like you’re pushing a product and starts feeling like you’re constructing a case. A case built on their words, their priorities, and their pain.

That’s what makes the difference between a pitch that falls flat and one that actually converts. Between a conversation that feels like a waste of time and one where the customer walks away thinking:

“Yeah, these people get me.”

And in a tough decision between two products, companies, or partners, guess who tends the win?

The one who provides more, better proof.

Mastering Your Craft

There’s this Bruce Lee quote that almost everyone has heard before,

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

That’s obsession. It’s not about having more tools. It’s not about buying another piece of software or hiring another consultant to tell you what you already know. It’s about taking a fundamental technique that everyone agrees is important and mastering it.

Understanding your customers. Being curious. Providing proof. These aren’t revolutionary ideas. They’re ordinary techniques that anyone can get practice and get better at.

But like Chuck Noll said, champions do the ordinary things better than anyone else.

There is no secret. You just have to be better at the basics than the other guy.

So pick one of those techniques. Go work on it. Go obsess over it.

And get excited.

Because it’s that work, and that obsession, that’s going to help you win.