{"id":522,"date":"2025-08-19T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/?p=522"},"modified":"2025-08-21T13:15:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T13:15:59","slug":"gtm-159-scaling-zoominfo-to-over-1b-arr-the-upmarket-playbook-and-launching-copilot-to-over-100m-acv-in-6-months-james-roth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/19\/gtm-159-scaling-zoominfo-to-over-1b-arr-the-upmarket-playbook-and-launching-copilot-to-over-100m-acv-in-6-months-james-roth\/","title":{"rendered":"GTM 159: Scaling ZoomInfo to over $1B ARR, the Upmarket Playbook, and Launching CoPilot to over $100M ACV in 6 months | James Roth"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n<p>The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/in\/podcast\/the-gtm-podcast\/id1369291464\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2SA1dgQ2Yc5t4V5GcBLnD2?si=b9dcb3e53b2d4ad2&amp;nd=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spotify<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLGXnz4Tyz3-SfJ5DPByHtUOQOFB3yJ6zZ&amp;si=Yj3qgzFty48-h9uI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YouTube<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/james-roth-3a913b51\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">James Roth<\/a> is the Chief Revenue Officer at ZoomInfo, where he oversees a global revenue engine supporting over 37,000 customers and more than $1 billion in ARR. With a background in scaling hypergrowth teams and building enterprise go-to-market machines, James has helped reposition ZoomInfo from a sales tool to the foundational data layer for modern GTM teams. Under his leadership, ZoomInfo launched Copilot, its flagship AI product, and executed a bold shift upmarket \u2014 transitioning from transactional selling to a data-first, enterprise-driven GTM strategy.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Discussed in This Episode<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>How ZoomInfo transitioned from transactional selling to enterprise go-to-market<\/li>\n<li>The \u201cGood Co, Bad Co\u201d framework for segment-specific product retention<\/li>\n<li>Why ZoomInfo changed its ticker symbol to GTM<\/li>\n<li>Launching Copilot and driving $100M ACV in under 6 months<\/li>\n<li>How internal AI usage became the go-to-market motion<\/li>\n<li>Key shifts in comp design and team segmentation for scaling upmarket<\/li>\n<li>Using telemetry and real-time signal tracking to measure rep effectiveness<\/li>\n<li>Lessons in long-term execution vs. short-term growth pressure<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Episode Highlights<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>00:00<\/strong> \u2014 ZoomInfo\u2019s evolution from a sales tool to a data-first platform<br \/>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=0<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>03:20<\/strong> \u2014 Why data as a service is ZoomInfo\u2019s fastest-growing business<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=200\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=200<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>06:43<\/strong> \u2014 How to build and apply the \u201cGood Co, Bad Co\u201d segmentation framework<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=403\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=403<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>12:48<\/strong> \u2014 The hard part about going upmarket? Aligning the full funnel org<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=768\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=768<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>16:32<\/strong> \u2014 Changing your ticker to GTM: A bold positioning play<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=992\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=992<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>20:21<\/strong> \u2014 Copilot\u2019s $100M launch: The power of internal usage<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=1221\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=1221<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>26:05<\/strong> \u2014 Most AI tools show &lt;5% revenue lift. Here\u2019s why<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=1565\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=1565<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>29:42<\/strong> \u2014 How ZoomInfo is operationalizing AI across the org<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=1782\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=1782<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>34:43<\/strong> \u2014 The signals &gt; activity shift in modern sales measurement<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=2083\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=2083<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>38:32<\/strong> \u2014 What James wants future CROs to steal: Think long-term, build patiently<\/p>\n<p>Watch:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=2312\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szKcRK2bpPc&amp;t=2312<\/a><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ol start=\"1\">\n<li><strong>Shrink to grow.<br \/><\/strong>ZoomInfo deliberately reduced its SMB footprint to fuel upmarket growth, trading short-term revenue gains for long-term profitability and retention. This disciplined bet shifted their mix to 72% enterprise, unlocking higher net retention and stronger LTV.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong>PMF is not universal.<br \/><\/strong>The \u201cGood Co, Bad Co\u201d framework reveals which products win in which segments, using retention and growth data \u2014 not opinions. Doubling down on winners per segment beats trying to force-fit a product everywhere.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><strong>Internal usage is the ultimate proof.<br \/><\/strong>Copilot\u2019s $100M ACV launch worked because 1,600 internal GTM pros used it first, giving real-world feedback and case studies. Customers saw exactly how ZoomInfo\u2019s own team used the tool to win.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li><strong>Signals beat raw activity.<br \/><\/strong>Instead of counting dials and emails, ZoomInfo tracks how often reps act on high-intent buying signals. This shifts the focus from \u201cmore activity\u201d to \u201cthe right activity.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li><strong>AI\u2019s ROI is still hidden.<br \/><\/strong>The biggest wins so far aren\u2019t direct revenue boosts, but time savings \u2014 like cutting deal prep from 85 hours to 10. Those productivity gains let teams redeploy talent to higher-impact work.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"6\">\n<li><strong>Repositioning starts in the product.<br \/><\/strong>Changing the ticker to GTM was only powerful because ZoomInfo had already become the data layer powering other GTM tools. Branding moves land hardest when they reflect a real operational shift.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"7\">\n<li><strong>The first 90 days decide your legacy.<br \/><\/strong>James warns CROs against chasing quick marginal wins early on. Use that window to tackle the big, hard changes \u2014 or risk getting stuck optimizing at the edges.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n<li><strong>Telemetry &gt; gut feel.<br \/><\/strong>ZoomInfo monitors real-time internal usage to decide which features to double down on. If the market isn\u2019t adopting something your own team loves, rethink it fast.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"9\">\n<li><strong>Build for workflows, not wow factor.<br \/><\/strong>AI features that slot into existing workflows \u2014 like Slack alerts or CRM push notifications \u2014 drive higher adoption. Standalone \u201ccool tools\u201d risk being ignored.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"10\">\n<li><strong>Segment discipline prevents wasted cycles.<br \/><\/strong>ZoomInfo avoids pushing irrelevant products (like SMB data) to enterprise accounts, even if it could mean more short-term revenue. That discipline protects rep credibility and focuses resources where they\u2019ll hit.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Thanks to Our Sponsor \u2013 UserEvidence<\/strong>:<\/h3>\n<p>UserEvidence is the Customer Evidence Platform that helps you collect feedback, surface proof points, and turn customer wins into bite-sized assets your sales and marketing teams can actually use. Capture social proof at scale. Arm reps with credible stories. Close more deals with trust.<\/p>\n<p>Learn more at: <a href=\"https:\/\/userevidence.com\/gtmnow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/userevidence.com\/gtmnow<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Recommended Books<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Call Sign Chaos<\/em> by Jim Mattis<\/li>\n<li><em>Ride of a Lifetime<\/em> by Bob Iger<\/li>\n<li><em>What It Takes<\/em> by Stephen A. Schwarzman<\/li>\n<li><em>Radical Candor<\/em> by Kim Scott<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>James prefers biographies over \u201cself-help\u201d \u2014 favoring real-life leadership stories over theoretical advice.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Referenced<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>UserEvidence: <a href=\"https:\/\/userevidence.com\/gtmnow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/userevidence.com\/gtmnow<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Databricks: <a href=\"https:\/\/databricks.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/databricks.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Snowflake: <a href=\"https:\/\/snowflake.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/snowflake.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Gainsight: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gainsight.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.gainsight.com\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Copilot (ZoomInfo): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zoominfo.com\/products\/copilot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.zoominfo.com\/products\/copilot<\/a><\/li>\n<li>ZoomInfo: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zoominfo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.zoominfo.com\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Guest Links<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>LinkedIn:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/james-roth-3a913b51\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/james-roth-3a913b51\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Host Links<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>LinkedIn: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/sophiebuonassisi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/sophiebuonassisi\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>X (Twitter): <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/sophiebuona\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/x.com\/sophiebuona<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Newsletter: <a href=\"https:\/\/thegtmnewsletter.substack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/thegtmnewsletter.substack.com\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Website: <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/gtmnow.com<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Where to Find GTMnow<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Website: <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/gtmnow.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li>LinkedIn: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/gtmnow\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/gtmnow\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>X (Twitter): <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GTMnow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/x.com\/GTMnow<\/a>_<\/li>\n<li>YouTube: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@GTM_now\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@GTM_now<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The GTM Podcast: <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\/tag\/podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/gtmnow.com\/tag\/podcast\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Episode 159 Transcript<\/h2>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>00:00<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest shifts is that we have a sales tool, a sales platform that all sellers can and should use. It\u2019s really more about data. It\u2019s about funneling our data into the respective systems. We had a machine that was very much set to significant growth<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>00:38<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll be right back. UserEvidence is the customer evidence platform for go-to-market teams that makes it easy to collect customer feedback throughout the customer lifecycle to rate the best proof points and share it with your go-to-market team to use. When asked about how Gong uses UserEvidence, Udi Ledegor, chief evangelist at Gong, who is also part of the GTM Fund community network said, UserEvidence helps Gong showcase the value our platform provides by generating high quality customer proof. With the ability to scale content creation, we can dedicate more time to enabling our sellers and building relationships with advocates. Trust is everything, and your customers are the best source of trusted feedback. Highly recommend you check out User Evidence, the customer evidence platform. You can do so at userevidence.com forward slash GTM now. That\u2019s userevidence, all one word, .com forward slash GTMNOW. Now, on to the episode. This episode explores what it takes to scale a go-to-market engine past $100 billion in ARR and be at the helm of revenue at that level. James Roth is the Chief Revenue Officer at ZoomInfo. He shares how the company evolved its go-to-market motion to move up markets repositioned itself as the go-to-market platform and launched its AI product Copilot, which took off. You\u2019ll learn how to transition from transactional sales to value-led enterprise selling, build a full funnel go-to-market engine, and operationalize AI across every customer-facing function. James also breaks down ZoomInfo\u2019s good co, bad co segmentation model, how they think about product market fit by segment, and how comp design and internal usage drive adoption. This episode offers a rare look into what enterprise excellence looks like at the over a billion dollar scale. As the saying goes, the fastest way to scale is to study someone 10 steps ahead. All right, let\u2019s get into it. James, welcome to the podcast.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>02:41<\/p>\n<p>Hi, Sophie. Good to be here. Thanks for having me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>02:44<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a pleasure. Super excited to have you on. And there has just been a ton of momentum around Zoom Info. I\u2019m excited to pick your brain on it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>02:53<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, absolutely. Happy to share anything I can.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>16:43<\/p>\n<p>It sounds like you incentivized the right behaviors. You structurally made the shifts to have the SMB function, firing on all cylinders, but also carved that out from the enterprise. And you went from $750 million to over a billion in revenue. Were there any subtle or non-obvious go-to-market shifts that you found moved the needle?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>17:06<\/p>\n<p>You know, I think from a product pricing and packaging standpoint, you know, there\u2019s\u2013 One of the key things, and it\u2019s arguably our best performing business, I think as you look into the upmarket, the level of sophistication, if you will, is very different from a small business. And it\u2019s sophistication, maturity, but also just resourcing. And so one of the biggest shifts is that we have a sales tool, a sales platform, that all sellers can and should use. But as you start to move more upmarket, it\u2019s really more about data. It\u2019s about funneling our data into the respective systems that a large enterprise might have. And so I think shifting from a, I\u2019m going to go try to sell every BU and every single group these sales licenses into these more mature, more tech-forward companies that are centralizing data. And they\u2019ve got a massive Snowflake instance, and they\u2019re trying to drive all of these different territory analysis, TAM, and segmentation. One of the things we found is don\u2019t fight that. really move to where the ball is going. And so, you know, with, you know, you think of a Databricks or a Snowflake or this, you know, this push, if you will, for enterprises to centralize data, you know, we have that as a tailwind for us, especially in an AI world where Larger companies are less looking for something outside of the box from an AI tool perspective. They\u2019re really trying to build it internally. And I think for a period of time, our sales teams were trying to just go sell what we\u2019ve always sold, which is a sales license. And shifting that in what we call our data as a service business, which is basically a direct feed of all of our go-to-market data from a graphics signals into these respective systems. It\u2019s been our best net retention and best growth business. And so I think from moving upmarket, it\u2019s one thing to say, okay, I\u2019m going to go hire a bunch of salespeople from Salesforce and Oracle, and I\u2019m just going to put them in there, and then upmarket\u2019s going to happen. I think it\u2019s understanding the product market fit by segment, and I think it\u2019s understanding what the customers are really asking for upmarket, and looking at, we\u2019ve got this every quarter, we look at what we call good code, bad code, like different products into different segments. and really understanding what the data is telling us, aka what the customer is telling us in terms of the retention of each product in each segment, in each vertical, and saying, okay, this is clearly having our best impact in the enterprise space, so let\u2019s double down from a resources perspective here, and it\u2019s exactly what we\u2019ve done, and that data as a service business, again, 150% net retention, it\u2019s growing significantly, 40% year over year, and it continues to do so, and I think rather than trying to fight that shift or fight that market dynamic that\u2019s saying these folks are looking for less sales tools and they really want to build their own, that\u2019s okay with us because we can be the underlying data foundation for it. So again, that\u2019s one example of just having really the customer dictate or a segment dictate where we should really focus our resources.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi :<\/strong>20:29<\/p>\n<p>So in good code, bad code, it sounds like every quarter you sit down and you look at the data, thinking if a company wants to replicate this and take inspiration from this good code, bad code framework, what are kind of the step by steps to doing that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>20:43<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I mean, it\u2019s very simple. I mean, we have over the years made several acquisitions. We\u2019ve got a significant amount of products, if you will. And really what we do is we look at segment by segment, subsegment by subsegment, and we look at each of those products and we look at their retention, their net add, their sort of upsell or their new business. We look at each of the respective ways a customer could buy, renew, grow, or shrink with each respective product. And so what we see is that in the down market, again, a less resourced, you might have a RevOps team of one or two, you might have a sales ops person but you don\u2019t have like a large data science team, you might see that we don\u2019t sell any data as a service into down market. And you might see in the up market, you know, you have less kind of sales tools or certain products and you see, you know, basically looking at each of those saying, okay, from our down market perspective, these are the two to three best products that are being confirmed by net retention, being confirmed by growth, et cetera. I think a lot of times bigger companies are, you have the ability to fall into the trap of anecdotal feedback, or you have somebody that loves this product because they were the ones that led the acquisition, or somebody from that legacy product ends up in your leadership. And so you might get differing opinions in terms of where to focus and what to focus on. And I think every company, irrespective of size, deals with limited resources. And as I think about even our account management team, it\u2019s roughly 400 account managers covering 37,000 customers. the ability to distract is a really, really big detriment, if you will. And so I\u2019ll use an example. We just came to market with a specific data asset. SMB data is very challenging. There\u2019s not nearly as many firmographic attributes or there\u2019s not as much, there\u2019s just not as much data on a 10 person company. And it was something that we\u2019ve been trying to solve and we went out and we built this, what we call first mover advantage data set. And basically, Secretary of State of every state saying, give me every new business formed in the last week. And so we can then go to our customers and say, if you sell to small business, this is a goldmine of data because if you\u2019re selling to small business, you really don\u2019t have any way to understand. They might buy an office or they might rent office space. They might be in a garage. You just don\u2019t know. But if they file and they have an actual business, you have this drove of data that can tell you these are the small businesses small businesses. And a good example of this is that we probably two years ago would have rolled this out to every salesperson saying, hey, go sell this as a data asset. And if you look at companies like Zscaler, Zscaler has 7,000 enterprise customers. They have zero interest in SMB data. That may change over time, but for the time being, if that account manager were to go to Zscaler and say, you should buy this data, it would be a waste of time, it would be a waste of energy, and frankly, you\u2019d probably lose a little bit of credibility because they have no interest in that. Our ability to say, okay, this segment, This subsegment, this vertical, this company cares about this data. And so rather than taking it to 37,000 customers, we\u2019re able to say these 2,000 are the ones via first party data that have talked about our SMB data in the past or on an earnings call, they\u2019re saying they\u2019re moving down market. So getting very targeted with each respective product into the right segment is really the foundation of this good co, bad co. So again, I think as I\u2019ve spent many years at this, and you think about a room where you have a lot of loud voices, and you\u2019ve got a lot of anecdotal feedback that might not always be driven by the right motive, and you\u2019ve got this particular product that maybe new business sells a ton of, but its retention is very low, having that to say, Why fight this? Is there something that we\u2019re missing in the product? Or should we kind of decommission resources and potentially put this product elsewhere and then look towards a partnership or something else like that? And I would say over the last two years, that has been a huge initiative for us. I think a lot of companies in our space raced to get to this last product you\u2019re going to need. And so you don\u2019t need these folks anymore. You don\u2019t need these folks anymore. And everybody built out or acquired some of these bolt-ons that could say, OK, we\u2019re the consolidator, if you will. And I think what the market really dictated is that they wanted best in class across each of these respective things. And so we\u2019ve taken several products, whether we built them internally or we acquired them externally, and said, rather than continuing to try to move this rock up the hill, let\u2019s go explore partnerships that get us to a better customer outcome where we can actually get this best of both, if you will. So again, it\u2019s long-winded in terms of the good co, bad co, but that is something that we are hyper-focused on just to make sure that every resource that we have and everything we\u2019re going to invest in, we know that it is the right move and the right bet before you end up one year significant investment to, you know, again, keep pushing the rock up the hill.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>26:07<\/p>\n<p>Well, I appreciate the long-winded answer, as I\u2019m sure everybody else does, too, because it really is, it sounds like that data-driven approach where you\u2019re getting really, really tactical and relevant with the data. And as you scaled, you go upmarket, what was the hardest part?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>26:26<\/p>\n<p>You know, I think building the machine, if again, back to account loads, you know, our CSMs in 22 when I first started were all on activity metrics, again, which is very much a down market metric for a CSM. And so I think setting the foundation right to the earlier point, it\u2019s one thing to say upmarket. It\u2019s one thing to hire some expensive upmarket salespeople. It\u2019s another thing. to have a truly upmarket engine in that full customer journey. And that\u2019s, you know, new business was not segmented. New business was a one size fits all. new business, close anything that comes in, whether it\u2019s inbound or outbound, and shifting that new business machine towards a segmented model where you had enterprise new business reps closing enterprise deals that then went to enterprise onboarding implementation delivery and then went to enterprise CSMs and enterprise account managers. It sounds rudimentary, but we had to do all of that so that we knew that the acumen of the new business rep and the sort of products and the solutions that they were selling to land then went to the right folks to onboard and implement that then went to the right folks to support and ultimately manage the account. And so I would say the first six months was very much just kind of table stakes in terms of we have to set it up this way. And then I think the hardest thing to your point earlier was on the talent side. is saying, okay, you can\u2019t just go out and hire everybody externally because it\u2019s going to take them three, six, nine months to ramp. You\u2019re going to have this gap and you\u2019re going to have a bunch of, you know, quasi disgruntled people that have been at ZoomInfo for a long time that got kind of passed over for this. And so I think one of the hardest parts was just getting the right teams or the right individuals into the right places. And this is all, by the way, while we\u2019re a public company, so you\u2019re kind of changing the tires at 80 miles an hour. Yeah. We had an example where one of our best reps over, call it 10 years, moved them into enterprise because they were one of the best reps. Six months later, they said, I don\u2019t love the enterprise. I really liked the action of closing transactionally. And so moving that person back into a down market role, you know, there\u2019s just That takes a lot. It takes a lot of manager conversations. It takes a lot of leadership conversations. And then I think more importantly, training the folks and building out a framework for true upmarket, having a sales methodology, having a rigorous forecasting system, like none of those things existed. And so having to build those out, it just takes time. And then you have that believability of someone who\u2019s been here for 10 years and seen extraordinary success that says, I\u2019ve never had to use a sales methodology before. I\u2019ve never had to forecast like this. I\u2019ve never had to, you know, dealing with that kind of noise, if you will, was probably one of the more challenging parts outside of just kind of setting the foundation for a real upmarket business. And then I think educating the customers, again, on these are the products that you\u2019re accustomed to. These are the products that we\u2019re moving towards in an enterprise standpoint. You know, that just comes with the territory, I think. And I think having the right teams and the right Emotions certainly help that. But yeah, I would say just the shift in mindset, the shift in kind of culture, what we rewarded, what we were celebrating, that was probably the hardest part now looking back on it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>29:52<\/p>\n<p>Makes complete sense. It sounds like just lining up everybody so that everybody\u2019s firing on the same wavelength would be extremely challenging. Yes. And you didn\u2019t just take the company upmarket, you actually repositioned the entire company. When did you know that it was time to kind of put stake in the ground with changing your ticker symbol to, and just for everybody\u2019s context, ZoomInfo changed its ticker symbol to GTM?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>30:19<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, you know, I think what\u2019s interesting is For the better part of 10 to 15 years, one of the core value propositions was fix your underlying CRM data. CRM data, if you\u2019ve ever been in sales, if you\u2019ve ever been a sales leader, I mean, there are meme pages about this in terms of just like, hey, go update Salesforce, update Salesforce, update CRM. And I think for a long period of time, everyone knew that it was a problem. And I think these companies that are, by the way, amazing, there\u2019s no discredit to them, but they\u2019ve become kind of more backend systems, finance, IT, they\u2019re kind of the box, if you will. And I think when you think about go-to-market, there are companies that, frankly, have gotten so big and so good at what they do, one of the key areas in terms of like real go-to-market data or a go-to-market interface within those, it really didn\u2019t exist. And so we saw the opportunity just given, again, being known for sales and marketing and being kind of the de facto in that space, 37,000 customers, call it 70% of the Fortune 500, using us as this central go-to-market data foundation or go-to-market intelligence foundation. We saw this opportunity, the ticker was available, and I think becoming synonymous with all of the different go-to-market tools, our point of view is, You know, if you look at forecasting, there are phenomenal companies that focus on forecasting. Those need great go-to-market intelligence. If you\u2019re running forecasting over just CRM data, there\u2019s a whole world of first- and third-party data that you don\u2019t have. You know, the example being, if you\u2019re trying to sell to, you know, me at ZoomInfo, and you don\u2019t have the recent earnings call data, and you don\u2019t have the fact that we just promoted a new CFO and promoted a new CTO, like, those don\u2019t typically exist in CRM. Because that rep, the likelihood that they\u2019re inputting that into the information, you\u2019re getting a fraction of the picture in your forecast. And so forecasting is one. If you think of sales sequencing tools like Outreach and Sales Loft and great, phenomenal tools, if they\u2019re not getting all of this go-to-market intelligence across first and third-party data, you\u2019re just running these spray-and-pray sequences. And so it\u2019s kind of like this hub-and-spoke thought of each of your respective go-to-market tools tools or functions, if you will, require great intelligence. And we really wanted to be at kind of the epicenter of that, not saying that we\u2019re going to go build a forecasting tool or we\u2019re going to build a sequencing tool. We want to partner with the best of those and make sure that they\u2019re getting all of their conversation, all of their email data, all of that rich first party married with the best third party data to then go drive, whether it\u2019s a forecasting input, whether it\u2019s a sequencing, whether it\u2019s a workflow, whether it\u2019s signal to action, making sure all of those are based on great foundational intelligence. We saw an opportunity to kind of exemplify that, if you will, in changing the ticker. Again, changing the ticker doesn\u2019t really change anything except for the ticker, but I think really centering ourselves as that foundational go-to-market intelligence that fuels all of your different go-to-market outcomes, inputs, outputs, et cetera, was really the mission.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>33:47<\/p>\n<p>Definitely. I mean, while it is three letters, I think the impact is massive. Overall, it felt like a wave around go-to-market and around your positioning, like you said. So I think it\u2019s a good lesson for everyone, too, around unconventional ways of repositioning yourself or painting your own story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>34:08<\/p>\n<p>Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>34:10<\/p>\n<p>And you launched Copilot. Congratulations. Yes. And in less than six months, you achieved over $100 million of ACV sold. That\u2019s incredible. Staggering go-to-market achievement, proof point for the product\u2019s value. What was that go-to-market motion like? Because that is an incredible timeline for that revenue. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>34:31<\/p>\n<p>And we, again, it\u2019s all public. We just publicly announced that we\u2019re over 220 now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>34:38<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>34:40<\/p>\n<p>Thank you. You know, I think\u2026 a big part of it back to the earlier point on why I decided to come. Anytime you have a new product launch, if it\u2019s something that you can deploy to the teams and they can see it, touch it, feel it, believe in it, and more importantly, use it, on a regular basis to see, okay, I\u2019ve used SalesOS my entire career, which was our legacy platform. Now I have access to Copilot, which takes my territory and it prioritizes based on signals and based on firmographics and based on best fit, and then basically tells me what to do. Rolling it out to our team first, it\u2019s one of the unique advantages that we have. because if you think about a beta or if you think about early access, we got to go give it to 1,600 go-to-market professionals, get their feedback, who\u2019s using it, who\u2019s using the heck out of it, and then more importantly, as we optimized and made the platform to their liking, you think about an org of that size, you\u2019re gonna get a little bit of everything in terms of feedback. We felt incredibly confident with the utilization internally, with the feedback that we were getting internally, And then you basically flip a switch, and from a go-to-market standpoint, it\u2019s go to your customers and just show them how you\u2019re using it. That is a unique opportunity for us. where if we were releasing, you know, again, a cybersecurity product or, you know, it\u2019s hard to get that. I\u2019m a salesperson. I\u2019m a marketer. I use this. This is how I use it. And then basically a demo is a day in my life. You know, even at my level, I use Copilot. You know, we\u2019ve got a tool called Account AI, which basically summarizes all of the first party data and all the third party data. And so I can see, like, I used to have to go to my reps every time I\u2019d go to Dreamforce or go to Money2020 I\u2019d have to say I\u2019m meeting with these 30 customers. Write me a brief for each of them. Now, I just go into Account AI and it gives me the summary of the conversations, summary of all of their, you know, public filings, a summary of who we\u2019re talking to, the good, the bad, the ugly, and then there\u2019s an AI, you know, queryable, I can build an account plan, I can build a prep doc, I can ask it questions, what\u2019s Sophie going to be most mad about, what\u2019s she going to be very happy about. And so, you know, for the first six months, it really was as simple as get in front of your customers, get in front of your prospects and show them how Copilot has changed the way you do business. And so from that perspective, it was kind of a dream scenario where you really, it was that simple. If you as a salesperson are using this product, which they all were, and then you can go show what it\u2019s like to, you know, basically take old sales OS, which is pull out of Zoom Info. I want to contact Sophie. I have to pull that profile out of Zoom Info. to now a push motion, which was AI driven to say, this is why you should talk to Sophie. This is what her business is doing. This is what they just said on an earnings call. And they just raised $50 million in funding. Here\u2019s a pre-built message based on all of these signals. Anyone in sales, anyone in marketing would say, wow, this is really impactful. I think aside from just the ACV number, which of course we\u2019re proud of. I think one of the things that we\u2019re very proud of is seeing that net retention follow. It\u2019s one thing to release a new product. It\u2019s another thing to see significant upticks in the net retention or the utilization or the health score of that product. And again, it was our bet, which is if we force people to have to pull information out of ZoomInfo in a world of conflicting different tools that they\u2019re using on a regular basis versus something that can run in the background, either in CRM or alerts you in Slack or alerts you in Teams or alerts you via email to say, here\u2019s all of this data that I\u2019m now summarizing based on your product. I\u2019m summarizing based on your territory and I\u2019m shipping it to you. I would say that we are far more excited about than just the ACV number is seeing not only the growth, you know, kind of the growth in footprint. SalesOS was a lot of times an SDR deployment where it was like, hey, it\u2019s a prospecting tool. It\u2019s going to help you prospect. And we\u2019re seeing growth and co-pilot into account management functions, into sales leadership, into CSMs, because getting that full 360 picture across all that first and third party data, that\u2019s where we\u2019re seeing more growth in the actual footprint if if you will, of the overall go-to-market team, and then the retention of that even coming up after we\u2019ve hit our first year of anniversaries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>39:25<\/p>\n<p>Incredible. And not only did you publish, or not only did you launch Copilot, you actually published the State of Go-to-Market Intelligence 2025 edition report. And I was pretty shocked, actually, from a stat in there. I think it said something around people are spending millions of dollars on AI, yet people are seeing under five percent revenue lift what\u2019s where\u2019s the disconnect happening there between revenue lift and ai utilization<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>39:53<\/p>\n<p>you know i think we\u2019re still so early into ai if you will and i think folks are clearly being pushed to adopt ai and it\u2019s tremendous if you\u2019ve ever used any form of it, it does dramatically increase your productivity. I think From an ROI perspective, internally, we put it into three buckets. You\u2019ve got reduction of number of people that you need based on the AI being able to do certain things. And you\u2019ve seen very large companies announcing large kind of efficiency-driven, we\u2019re using AI for this. We used to have 100 people here. Now we only need 10. So you have that. And then you have the actual productivity gain, especially in things like go-to-market, where one example that we use internally Because of all of this data that we have, we took a case study on a large deal that we had one of our best enterprise reps do. And they had, call it, 35 hours worth of meetings in a given half, half a year. And then they had 85 hours of prep, deck creation. And that\u2019s all, again, it\u2019s all data that\u2019s driven by your time spent in Google Sheets, time spent in Google Docs, et cetera. And then the actual process presentations that they put together across a buying committee of 20 people. And the ability to shrink that 85 hours down to call it 10 hours when you have AI that can build the decks, they can do all of that prep work and do all the summary for you. There\u2019s an unlock there that I think is still yet to be articulated in a clear ROI. You know, it\u2019s very different to say, hey, we\u2019re going to buy this thing and it\u2019s going to drive up win rates by 10%. I think there\u2019s a layer under that within go-to-market where you\u2019ve got, okay, the ability to say, we\u2019ve served up this many signals, this many signals have not been actioned. And so there\u2019s kind of a hidden ROI to say, if you can just drive that team to go action against these signals, again, that\u2019s very specific to us. In the overall state, I think we\u2019re still in this early days, AI is cool, these use cases are cool, but we haven\u2019t really figured out how to unlock either the incremental productivity or the, for lack of a better term, shrinkage of certain teams that are doing this. There\u2019s a lot of noise on AI SDR. Is there going to be an SDR function? And I think that there have been several cases where largely unproven in terms of a true AI SDR. Some of that\u2019s regulatory. Some of that\u2019s just the ability to do outbound into certain people with an AI bot. But again, I think all of these are probably still early runway. And as we start to see more and more of them come out and drive that incremental productivity, take that 85 hours down of that rep that\u2019s building decks and doing prep work. But then more importantly, I think the biggest unlock is to be able to say, this is everything happening in your territory. These are the signals that you should go action, and then a maniacal focus on the folks that either action that or don\u2019t. I think that\u2019s probably the next phase of unlock for us specifically, but I think in general in the market.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>43:16<\/p>\n<p>And how are you currently operationalizing AI? That sounds like the next move that you\u2019re moving towards, and obviously you\u2019re probably using your own product, but are there any external or overall systematic ways that you\u2019re leveraging AI right now?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>43:29<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I think we are, like many companies, our size. There\u2019s a build and there\u2019s a buy. And some of the lower-hanging fruit use cases, like support, You know, I think if anyone is looking at where they can make an impact the fastest, support, you know, deflection rates, that AI is incredibly strong. And there\u2019s a variety of companies that do it very well. But, you know, support is where we started low-hanging fruit. You have like tickets and intake. You know, basically what we do is we look at each one of those systems, if you will, that requires a lot of manual effort, but it\u2019s more just kind of hands-on keyboard work non-strategic effort if you will and then how can we go augment that and then i think one of the biggest areas and we built this internally again not for sale but just for our own internal we built a company-wide chatbot that basically allows you to query everything so we\u2019ve got our snowflake instance we\u2019ve got crm we\u2019ve got every bit of anything happening within zoom info every every employee now has access to this chat bot and so i can say show me the top 10 sales reps from h1 and write a note from the cro to them congratulating them you know that\u2019s something that probably would have taken me a couple hours over a weekend prior Now I can have it in an instant and it is better than most anything that anyone\u2019s putting together. And you think about the deck creation, you think about the prep work. Again, that is a product that we go to market with. But those are the, I think, low hanging fruit use cases, our ability to, again, not necessarily cut heads in support, but if you can take, call it 30 tier one support people out of the mundane password reset, the easy, if you will, things that AI can do, and then repurpose that capacity to go then hire Tier 2 and Tier 3 for a much more complex support instance. I think it\u2019s a big reshift in where do we want to make bets, and then where can we subsidize those bets in some of these lower-requiring, resource-heavy areas. areas like support. So that\u2019s really the mission we\u2019ve been on. And I think there\u2019s a handful of things, if you think about, you know, again, in the account management function or the CSM function, the ability to take, you know, tools like Gainsight, tools like CRM and say, okay, these things traditionally weren\u2019t really talking well together. How can we put this AI wrapper over it so that at any given time, an account manager can say, what should I talk to Sophie about? You know, where does she want to grow? Where does she, you know, I think that\u2019s where we\u2019re most focused, both self-serve internal productivity, but also as we can optimize Copilot and our products to serve those particular use cases and go to market. Back to Copilot, it\u2019s a great way for us to test out where is the unlock, where are our teams having the most success. And so we\u2019ve got this internal competition, if you will, between like this chatbot build and account AI and all of these different areas to see like, okay, who\u2019s using what the most? And then how can we productize that? Because if we\u2019re struggling with it, I know a lot of other go-to markets are as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>46:42<\/p>\n<p>It sounds like a similar system to when you went on market, you\u2019re actually looking at all the different products or systems and then measuring the utilization and doubling down on what is being used and is effective.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>46:55<\/p>\n<p>Exactly. Exactly. And I think seeing the utilization real time, like having that telemetry, both with our internal reps and external customers, it does allow you to, because again, I think a lot of companies will have product and engineering and they\u2019ll think something is amazing. They\u2019ll build this tool that really, really proud of. but then the market might not utilize it, but they\u2019re all in on it. And so I think the ability to have that kind of internal AB testing to say, you might be really excited about it, but the teams aren\u2019t using it. And so, especially in, again, the account management base, we saw account AI, you know, we\u2019re talking 50% increase on utilization. It\u2019s very, very easy to go in and say, okay, we\u2019re really focused over here, but look at this thing. it is performing better than anything we\u2019ve ever brought to market. We need to go iterate and invest here. And then on the go-to-market side from an outbound and a marketing standpoint and then a sales standpoint, we know that this is the thing. And so let\u2019s go double our efforts in getting this thing in front of everyone else. In this world of AI, there\u2019s 15 other tools that we sell. And then everyone else has 15 other tools. And so knowing what is driving the adoption, driving the utilization, what customers are really using and wanting, the ability to then go make that the main thing, I think is really important.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>48:16<\/p>\n<p>Sounds like you take a very data-driven, almost signal ingesting approach to a lot of things. How do you translate that to your teams? How are you measuring your teams? Is it activity, signal? What does that actually look like for you?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>48:29<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, it\u2019s a great question. And I think we are heavily data-driven, and I think we have to be. In terms of the metrics that we used to track versus the metrics that we track now, there weren\u2019t a lot of great options traditionally. You had a call detail report. You saw how many calls SDRs were making, how many emails they were sending, and it was primarily a volume game. And I think one of the best\u2026 kind of transitions, if you will, is the ability to track really what matters more. And so, you know, talked about the signals actions. That is probably the number one thing that we track. If you think of being a salesperson and you think of having to make a hundred phone calls in a day, blind phone calls are back in my day, the door knocks and you have no idea if you\u2019re knocking on the right door, the wrong door, if it\u2019s a government building, if you\u2019re going to get thrown out, you have no idea. And now we can basically say in your territory, in your total addressable market, in your particular 50 named accounts, you have five that are exuding significant signals. They just hired a new CRO, they just said on earnings that they did XYZ, one, two, three, they just raised funding. Why on earth would you not action that? And so in the old days, you would have had those 50 accounts. You would have had no idea what was going on inside of them. And it would have just been a volume game. I\u2019m going to call each of them until somebody picks up and tells me what\u2019s happening. Now we can take it to a point where it\u2019s, here\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening. Here are the five out of your 50 that are exuding the highest density of signal. Looking at the signal to action and the action taken and what that action is, I think some of the tracking that we have today did not exist five years ago. And so the ability to say, these things happened, these were the outreaches that you did, here are the conversations that you had, the ability to to track those things and then AI summarize. I mean, that\u2019s one of my favorite things is like, show me the five best AMs. And you\u2019ve got conversion rates, you\u2019ve got all of those kind of legacy metrics. But now you can take it such a step further to say, okay, you actioned the signal, good. The actual outreach was good, but here\u2019s your first call. And again, conversational intelligence, AI summary, good. you really missed the boat here. And so you can track into a level of detail that just wasn\u2019t feasible five years ago. And I think looking at overall volume metrics, it\u2019s an indicator, don\u2019t get me wrong, we still look at it, but it\u2019s a fraction of the pie in the overall, like what we\u2019re tracking. We have a tool that basically tracks all kind of systems that would touch your day to day. And I still think seeing someone whose activity level drops significantly is always an indicator. So you have that in the background. But I think what is far more important to coaching, developing, training, ramping, are that next layer of what are the activities you\u2019re taking? Which of those are effective? Are you following those particular signals? And are you following them effectively? We just didn\u2019t have the ability years ago to do that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>51:44<\/p>\n<p>Makes sense. And James, when you joined ZoomInfo in January of 2022, the company was already at a quite impressive ARR, about over 700 million ARR. But under your leadership, like we\u2019ve broken down, ZoomInfo crossed the $1 billion revenue mark within the year, which is nearly a 47% jump. When future CROs study you, what\u2019s one leadership advice or principle or system that you hope that they steal or take inspiration from?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>52:18<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I mean, I don\u2019t know how many will study me. I think I would love to go back to our market cap back then. You know, I think all joking aside, you know, one of the key things to like the what\u2019s hard in that shift up market, you know, we\u2019ve been in this sort of shrinking our down market which we know does not retain as well and all that while growing our up market you tend to on paper look like you can run in place so yes a billion two in revenue we spit off close to 500 million dollars in free cash like we\u2019re very proud of those things but you know from a growth perspective and this is to the what i would hope people take away You have what we know is right, which is we want to be a business that\u2019s 75% upmarket and 25% downmarket. The willingness to put your helmet on and go for a year, basically say downmarket\u2019s going to shrink while upmarket grows. And so from an overall growth perspective, it\u2019s going to be flat-ish. It\u2019s really hard to do that because you get bored, you get investors, you get shareholders, and while everybody knows it\u2019s the right thing to do, at a public company every quarter you have to go tell them basically what you\u2019re doing. And so, you know, we made that decision, and I think the commitment and the willingness to build for a future great company versus it would be really easy to just say, go turn on the SMB spigot. We\u2019ll go add $20 million of SMB business, which is relatively easy in the grand scheme of things, and it will make our growth in the quarter look really good, and everybody will give us high fives. I think, you know, that\u2026 that is the the easy way to do it and i think for what we are building here we\u2019ve gone from basically 50 50 up market down market to now we\u2019re 72 28 72 up market it is really hard it\u2019s not a ton of fun and i think that commitment or that optimism of saying when we get to a business that is 75 up market the net retention is well north of 100 and the growth is in the you know high double digits And the SMB business, albeit retained 60%, 65%, that\u2019s okay because it\u2019s a much healthier portion of the SMB and it\u2019s a smaller overall number. I think if anybody\u2019s listening to this, you are always faced in this role with like, oh my God, I got one quarter. And so I\u2019m gonna go do the things that in this particular quarter are gonna make the board happy or the investors happy. And I think balancing that, And it\u2019s very similar in the shift up market. If you can say, this is where we want to be in a year, this is where we want to be in two years. And several folks from my background, and they\u2019ve ended up in the CRO role, and this is always the advice that I give them, is like day one in the seat, you\u2019re going to want to go in and make these little incremental tweaks, and you\u2019re going to say, hey, look, this was over here, and we increased it marginally, like I\u2019m doing great. And they don\u2019t take the time to say, these are the big, hairy issues. And it\u2019s going to be a long slog to get there. But this is what we\u2019re going to do over this quarter, next quarter, this quarter. And I think getting really prescriptive on this is what we\u2019re going to do with down market. This is what we\u2019re going to do with up market. You know, you\u2019re not just going to see up market pipeline overnight. It\u2019s going to take time. And so I think plotting that out versus taking the kind of quick wins quarter to quarters. Harvard Business Review did a study where CROs like the number one lowest tenure, fastest fired, all that fun stuff, which certainly plays through, I think, everybody\u2019s head. And so I think the tendency or the advice that I would give is when you first get somewhere or you\u2019re in this role, whether you\u2019re promoted or you\u2019re external, is don\u2019t fall into that trap of just saying, okay, this is the run rate. and I\u2019m going to go do a little thing here and I\u2019m going to do a little thing here and I\u2019m going to come in with a little bit better of a result and I got to hope the macro changes and helps me out so that the board gives me a high five in the first quarter. If you don\u2019t go after the big things, you will be in six to nine months in a hot seat because you will have missed your opportunity to articulate what those big things are quickly and then the commitment to doing them through what are challenging times, and we have certainly seen our share here, when you take a business whose net ad was primarily SMB for the great years, and then you shrink that SMB significantly, and now you gotta go do it in where it\u2019s really hard in the upmarket, you always have that in the back of your head, and we joke internally, like, should we just go turn SMB back on? because we could go show a massive growth because upmarket is growing. And if we went back into the, like those types of things, the commitment to the company that you want to be or that turnaround that you want to execute has to outweigh kind of the insatiable need for short-term results. And that\u2019s really easily said, really hard to do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>57:27<\/p>\n<p>Discipline and commitment, long-term game. Sounds like you\u2019ve got the long-term vision, you\u2019re playing the long-term game, which is speaking our language, James.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>57:35<\/p>\n<p>Well, we\u2019re trying to. We\u2019re trying to.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>57:38<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s incredible. Are there any books you\u2019d recommend for anyone listening that have really inspired you throughout your career?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>57:45<\/p>\n<p>Oh, that\u2019s a hard one. You know, I\u2019m always a big fan of the\u2026 I\u2019m not a big fan of the self-help-y, kind of catchy titles. I love business biographies. And not just business, basically anyone who\u2019s done anything great, I love to read their books. So I just finished Steve Schwartzman\u2019s. Jim Mattis is a general. Call Sign Chaos was great. Bob Iger, Ride of a Lifetime, he was the Disney CEO. I love those because there are these amazing stories and there\u2019s tons of tidbits, and I try to get as many of them as I can across industries, across different vocations, and just love to kind of map back what awesome people do versus somebody who you\u2019ve never heard of who writes a book with a catchy title that\u2019s sort of self-help guru. I\u2019d much rather read about\u2026 you know, Bob Iger or some of these folks that have done it and done it in like an awesome fashion. So those are a couple. You know, Kim Scott is another favorite, especially from a leadership standpoint. Kim was at Google under Sheryl Sandberg and then she went to Apple. You know, Radical Candor. Those are probably the ones that I recommend is just any sort of great success story, biographical, this is how they did it. And then trying to map back as many of those things that are kind of relatable to what I\u2019m doing or just great people in general. That\u2019s where I spend most of my time in reading those. And, you know, they\u2019re fun to read because these people have amazing stories. And I just think they\u2019re chock full of great information that are relevant.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>59:31<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ve been there. They\u2019ve done that. Maybe we\u2019ll read a book from you someday. And where can people find you if they want to follow along?<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth:<\/strong>59:40<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. I mean, I\u2019m on, I try to be as active on LinkedIn as one can with a busy schedule. Um, and so I try to get to the messages that come in. Um, you know, zoom info. We, we are out there quite often. I mean, people can reach me via email. People can reach me. If you use zoom info, you can reach me via email, via text. Um, I\u2019m probably better on text. I\u2019ll regret saying that, but much better on text, just given how crowded LinkedIn box and email boxes are. But, um, You know, I try, especially knowing that our users are primarily salespeople and I\u2019m a salesperson at heart, I try to answer as many inbound requests as I can. But yeah, my LinkedIn is James Roth. It\u2019s probably the best place to find me. And then, you know, I\u2019m pretty accessible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>1:00:28<\/p>\n<p>Amazing. Well, who knows? You might get a couple texts after this, but either way, we\u2019ll drop your LinkedIn in the show notes for everyone. Probably skip the phone number in there. But thank you, James. This has been a phenomenal conversation. Can\u2019t wait to share it with everyone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Roth: <\/strong>1:00:41<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, thank you, Sophie. Thanks for having me on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sophie Buonassisi: <\/strong>1:00:44<\/p>\n<p>Absolutely. Thank you to our listeners. Thanks for joining us, and we will see you next week.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\/gtm-159-scaling-zoominfo-1b-arr-copilot-launch-upmarket-strategy\/\">GTM 159: Scaling ZoomInfo to over $1B ARR, the Upmarket Playbook, and Launching CoPilot to over $100M ACV in 6 months | James Roth<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\">GTMnow<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube James Roth is the Chief Revenue Officer at ZoomInfo, where he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/19\/gtm-159-scaling-zoominfo-to-over-1b-arr-the-upmarket-playbook-and-launching-copilot-to-over-100m-acv-in-6-months-james-roth\/\" class=\"read-more-link\">[Read More&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alaskansawmill.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}