Behavior Hacking Ep 7: “Operational Rhythm” is the Key to Sales Execution

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Paul Stansik:
Our last conversation was all about simplicity, one of the two big ideas we’ve been discussing. The other is operational rhythm, which means different things to different people. What does it mean to you? And when it’s done well, how does it show up?

Nate Nasralla:
If we want to stage-gate a buying process, what does that mean for the activities we expect from sellers? How do we document and test whether those things are actually happening? What’s the exit criteria for each stage?
Typically, over time, the playbook for this gets long and complex. Instead of cutting things out, most teams just add more.
As the business evolves — launching new product lines, moving upmarket, segmenting teams — it all tends toward complexity. You end up with commercial, enterprise, low enterprise, high enterprise, key accounts... and suddenly, things aren’t getting done.
A simple test: spot-check a few deals in Salesforce or HubSpot. Look at three deals and ask:
Did every step in our playbook happen?
Is there an account plan? A demo brief? A handoff doc for CSMs? A business case?
Most of the time, those things are missing. And that’s because nothing ever gets removed, only added.
We worked with a $600M ARR company last year and rewrote the exit criteria for their sales stages in a single sentence.
Most people would say, “Our accounts are too complex. We can’t possibly define exit criteria in one sentence.” But if we don’t believe that sentence is happening, nothing else matters. We have to nail that first, then layer things back in.
So the process for designing an operational rhythm is simple:
Cut everything.
Add back only the core things that matter, one per stage.
Make sure those things actually get done.
Once that’s happening, then you can decide if more needs to be added.

Paul Stansik:
It’s a lot like fitness and nutrition. You can build the most complex workout plan, track every macro, optimize supplements. But if you don’t stick to it, none of it matters.
There’s a phrase I love: “Adherence trumps dogma.” The best system is the one you actually follow.
If a sales leader prints out their playbook and asks themselves, honestly, “How many of these steps happen in every deal in my pipeline?” — that’s a wake-up call. But it’s also an invitation to simplify.

Nate Nasralla:
There’s another saying: “One idea, violently executed, beats a book full of good ideas.”
So the question is: what do we keep? You have to be highly strategic about what stays. And that ties directly into becoming a strategic leader, which I know is a big focus for you.
What does it mean to be strategic? And how does that apply to designing operational rhythm?

Paul Stansik:
Strategy isn’t some elite skill, it’s just three techniques:
Diagnosing — Figuring out what actually matters.
Choosing — Deciding what to do and what not to do.
Planning — Turning that decision into action.
The best leaders don’t just track data. They use an operational rhythm to feed their diagnosis — because data is only as good as the conversations it creates.
That’s why I start with questions, not metrics. I’ll literally write on a whiteboard:
Are we going to hit our number this quarter?
Are we creating enough pipeline?
How’s the sales team performing?
What deals matter most?
The problem is, most teams answer these questions with gut feel—or reactive data they pull only when needed. They don’t bake it into their operational rhythm.
For me, the missing piece is always: Start with the question, not the metric.

Nate Nasralla:
That reminds me of a recent customer story. We were celebrating some big wins with a team’s SVP of Sales and SVP of Enablement. They’d been struggling with mid-funnel deals disappearing, even though they had strong logos coming in at the top.
So we asked: Why are deals stalling at stage two?
We looked at their data and saw the real issue: deals weren’t tied to an existing executive priority. Teams in customer experience and e-commerce loved the platform, but they couldn’t get buy-in from leadership.
So we made one change: Every stage-two deal had to include an executive summary business case.
Then, leaders would score that document, testing for gaps before moving to stage three. The business case became the gate for advancing the deal.
Now, whenever a sales engineer gets a demo request, they check the business case first. When pricing requests go to finance, they ask for the business case before approving discounts.
This one document, tied into every go-to-market role, completely changed their operational rhythm.
And the result? In 90 days, they saw a 7% increase in stage-two to stage-three conversion.
At their scale, that’s not a small number.