What happens when you stop managing activity and start managing outcomes?
Dennis Sorenson welcomes longtime friend Matt Reubendale, Senior Advisor for Enterprise Growth at Horizons West, for part one of a two-part conversation. Reubendale spent nine years as an account executive, hitting 90% of quota and closing the biggest deal of his career at Teradata before meeting Sorenson in 2016. He shares how Process-Driven Sales and Sorenson's blunt question, "Do you own your house?" pushed him past managing activity toward playing for real potential. "You can't unsee it," Reubendale says of the shift disciplined execution brought to his career.
The conversation traces Reubendale's journey from treating GOST as a bulleted task list to mastering it as a discipline that connects every meeting to a real goal. He and Sorenson revisit the hundred-million-dollar whitespace analysis, the "elephant off the toothpick" account turnaround at Teradata, and a spring-break outage that tested a disciplined plan under real pressure. Why does execution matter more than activity? "It's not about doing more," Sorenson says, "it's about knowing what matters." Part two continues the story in the next episode. (84 words)
In This Episode:
(00:00) Meet Matt Reubendale and his career before process-driven sales
(03:24) The Midwest Misfits and a new kind of sales leader
(05:47) Playing for potential, not quota, and the mortgage story
(08:40) Introducing GOST as the execution discipline
(13:16) Plan, prepare, practice, and connecting every action to the goal
(17:19) A crisis call, an outage, and disciplined execution paying off
(19:51) The elephant on the toothpick and transforming a major account
(24:13) Why the customer's outcome has to matter
(28:42) Matt's pitch on ambition, execution, and accountability
(32:00) Disciplined execution is about what matters, not doing more
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About the Show
Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process.
The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time.
Resources:
Produced by Castos Productions
Matt Reubendale LinkedIn
Dennis Sorenson LinkedIn
Chapters
- (00:00:00) - The Discipline of Execution and the Ghost Framework
- (00:01:21) - Matt Rubendale on Think Big Win Bigger
- (00:01:58) - The Sales Manager Who Changed My Career
- (00:06:34) - The Process Driven Sales Coach
- (00:08:37) - In the Elevator With Philanthropist
- (00:10:03) - The Process of Execution at Salesforce
- (00:18:38) - Has Ghost and Execution Made a Difference at Work?
- (00:20:58) - Describing the Ghost Plan
- (00:24:16) - The Future of Teradata's Strategy
- (00:27:28) - Timothy Teradata on the Vision
- (00:30:10) - The Importance of Execution in Ghost
