GTMcraft Plays · The Core and Bets Play

You cannot put a 30% growth target on experiments; split the plan into the currency that works and a ring-fenced bets budget, and sequence both to land on time.

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The 90-second read

You are planning next year toward, say, 33% growth. The trap is to build the number on new ideas: a new channel, a new segment, a new motion. Bets do not have known conversion yet, so a plan leaning on them is a wish.

The move is to split every program into two buckets. Your currency is what already works with tracked conversion you can trust. Your bets are the experiments that might work. You fund the currency to carry the number, ring-fence a separate bets budget so experiments never starve the core or bleed into it, and sequence both by sales cycle so revenue lands when you need it.

• Your currency is any program with known, tracked conversion you can forecast.
• Bets are capped and ring-fenced, so they never eat the core or get starved by it.
• Size the split against the ambition: aggressive target, bigger bets pool, core still carries the number.
• Sequence by sales cycle: to move Q1 and Q2, you build in Q3 and Q4.
• Rebalance quarterly, graduate winning bets into the core, kill the rest.

Read time: about 5 minutes. First step runnable Monday morning.

The #1 move this week

Name your currency. Pull every program across marketing, partnerships, and sales into one list, and mark the ones with a known, tracked conversion rate to revenue. Those are your currency. Everything else is a bet until it earns a number.

Most teams cannot draw this line cleanly, and that is the problem. If you do not know a program's conversion, you cannot double down on it, and you should not be funding it like it works.

Start here: list your programs in one sheet, add a conversion-to-revenue column, and split the list into currency and bets. You need your CRM and finance data from the last four quarters.