The GTM Bottleneck No One Talks About: Revenue-Blocking Permissions

Read time: 3 minutes.

Welcome to the 126th edition of The Growth Elements Newsletter. Every Monday and sometimes on Thursday, I write an essay on growth metrics & experiments and business case studies.

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Most GTM teams don’t fail from a lack of strategy or execution.
They fail in the middle, between idea and implementation, because they’re waiting on someone to say “yes.”

I call it: Revenue-Blocking Permissions.

[1] The hidden drag on your GTM engine

You’ve seen this:

• Marketing has a high-intent lead list → but can’t email them because legal hasn’t cleared consent language.

• Sales wants a case study → but CS hasn’t sent data or the customer won’t approve.

• Product is ready to ship - usage-based pricing experiment → but finance won’t sign off on revenue impact.

Individually, none of these feel like blockers.
Collectively? They kill GTM velocity.

[2] GTM isn’t a strategy. It’s a system, and systems need permission flow.

If your campaigns, onboarding triggers, or pricing changes depend on 3 layers of approvals,
you don’t have a GTM problem.
You have a design flaw in your operating system.

Most startups don’t design for this.
They assume everyone’s aligned.
But alignment isn’t intention, it’s execution structure.

[3] How operators design around the permission bottleneck

This is the unsexy but critical work:

• Pre-approved experiment zones
  → Define what changes can ship without cross-team approval (e.g. <10% price test, 1-click CTA changes, variant emails)

• GTM Design Docs with async buy-in
  → Growth leads share experiments with clear scope, impact, and rollback plan, approvals happen async on Slack/Notion, not in meetings

• RevOps as a central permission bridge
  → Instead of fighting functional silos, use RevOps to unify visibility across Product, Sales, and Marketing and unblock decision debt

[4] Growth dies not from lack of ideas but from permission lag.

• You don’t need 10 more campaigns

• You don’t need 2 more AEs

• You need fewer places where “yes” is trapped

Founders think their GTM is broken.
You know: it’s just slow.

That's it for today's article! I hope you found this essay insightful.

Wishing you a productive week ahead!

I always appreciate you reading.

Thanks,
Chintankumar Maisuria