The Execution Gap That Sparked Goalster

Key Takeaways:

• Even top-performing teams won’t execute consistently without structure, visibility, and accountability

• Great products, training, and strategy fail without frontline activation and follow-through

• Goalster was built to turn best practices into standard practice—at scale, with speed

The Greatest Product None of Us Were Selling

It was a cold January day at a Verizon sales rally in Columbus, Ohio—a big event designed to fire up and align the region. I always left these events feeling very energized.

On the drive home, I stopped at a store in Reynoldsburg, Ohio (not even in my region) just to say hello and check in on the team.

What I found there would go on to shape my vision for Goalster.

In the worst possible position—tucked away in the farthest corner of the store—I spotted a product called Delphi, a vehicle diagnostics device, buried and forgotten. No one on the floor knew what it was.

Neither did I—and I was a Retail Director. 😬

I couldn't recall any training or even mention of this product, but when I picked it up, I noticed it had a SIM card. That meant it was a new activation and a quota-retiring product.

In a sales organization, that’s everything. And yet—it was just sitting there.

From Missed Opportunity to Rapid Mobilization

We huddled around a POS terminal to dig into it, confirmed it was fully sellable, and I immediately called my head of ops:

“Mike, can you get me all the inventory of this SKU nationwide? I reckon we can sell them all this weekend.”

My district managers and I synced for a call during my drive back to Pittsburgh. They mapped out what the teams would need to execute well—and fast.

The team (a phenomenal group of leaders, by the way) came up with a plan to:

• Build or assemble a training toolkit

• Arm teams with a clear pitch and positioning

• Align everyone around the opportunity and urgency

• Set goals and run a gamified challenge for reps and stores

By Monday, we’d sold over 400 units—the equivalent of opening a brand-new store, without the overhead.

All from a product no one even knew existed just days earlier.

Replicating and Scaling Best Practices Shouldn’t Be This Hard

We were fired up about the progress. After all, 400 units in 3 days meant that if we could sustain that pace, we’d generate 4,000 net adds per month in our region.

But imagine replicating that result across the Great Lakes Market—or better yet, across the entire retail channel nationwide. That would’ve meant 420,000 net adds per quarter.

A monstrous opportunity—if only we could align quickly and execute consistently.

So first thing Monday morning, I packaged up everything we’d done—every tool, every training doc—and sent it to all 35 Retail Directors nationwide with the subject line:

“The Greatest Product That None of Us Are Selling.”

Only two responded. They were friends. Everyone else? Who knows.

I was surprised not to hear back from more of them, but we got back to work. We had a big opportunity in front of us.

As a higher market share region, we needed to sell every product on the shelf—especially since many of our customers already had Verizon smartphones. In areas like Indiana, PA, we had ~75% market share. Growth meant relying on broadband or non-phone services like this just to hit our numbers.

Our teams fully backed the initiative—without knowing that Verizon was about to launch a competing product: Hum by Verizon.

And we were perfectly prepared.

For at least the next 10 months, our teams executed and outsold the rest of the country—combined.

Not because we were smarter. Not because we had more resources.

We just aligned every store leader and team member around a clear goal—and executed.

It’s wild to think about what Verizon could’ve achieved if we were able to align all 35 regions and executed in the same way. That realization reshaped how I understood organizational performance and execution.

Funny enough, I once told this story to Ronan Dunne, then-CEO of Verizon. At one point, he literally had his head in his hands, no doubt contemplating what a difference it could have made.

This was a missed opportunity worth hundreds of thousands of net adds per quarter. It was traction and momentum in a completely new product category. It was the kind of moment that, if fully seized, could move stock prices.

Why I Built Goalster

Verizon was already excellent at execution. I’m still grateful every day for the opportunity to build my career there. For all the knocks the company gets, I saw firsthand how teams showed up and delivered—whether it was building the most reliable network, responding to 9/11, running toward the crisis during Hurricane Katrina, or countless other moments that defined our culture.

Execution was in our DNA—not just in our Credo.

But even then, as Lowell McAdam used to say:

“There’s always a higher gear.”

Former Verizon Chairman Lowell McAdam

This was just one example of how we could’ve driven further and faster.

It was a lightbulb moment for me:

• Even great people don’t execute without a system

• Emails and chat messages don’t scale behavior change

• Frontline teams need clarity, nudges, tracking, and support

If I’d had Goalster back then, I could’ve:

• Deployed training and execution tracks to every store, instantly

• Tracked rep-level behavior and engagement in real time

• Tied execution directly to outcomes: sales, participation, follow-through

• Identified gaps and given teams a voice in how we executed

From One Product to a Pattern

In this single moment, we were able to drive real results back to the business by unlocking the potential of one overlooked product.

It reinforced something else Lowell used to say often: across the business, there were “pots of gold”—places where real value could be created by individuals or teams who took initiative to fix problems, improve processes, or push performance to a new level.

Today, we’d call every one of those pots of gold a goal.

Final Thought

The greatest compliment I’ve ever received came from John Stratton, former Chairman of Verizon—and someone I deeply respected and tried to emulate throughout my career. He once told me:

“We always felt like you were one of the real drivers of the business.”

That meant everything coming from someone at his level, but also showed me what people at his level want. They want to see execution, people taking initiative, and acting with a sense of urgency to improve the business and our performance.

Goalster is the performance enablement system I wish I had back then—the one that would’ve taken us to new levels.

Not another LMS. Not another Slack channel. A real performance system. 

One that would have:

• Onboarded and ramped up my new hires faster

• Helped leaders focus on the right behaviors and best practices

• Turned every training into sustained action with measurable outcomes

• Created real accountability and ownership up and down the organization

If Goalster becomes a coach in someone’s pocket, equipping them with clear goals, tools, playbooks, nudges, and visibility, then we’ve done our job.

Because that’s how great execution actually happens. 

That’s Goalster.

Darren Webster is the Founder and CEO of Goalster, a former world championship-level athlete, and a former Verizon executive who led high-performing teams of thousands. He built Goalster to solve the execution gap that holds back even the best teams—by turning development, strategy, and training into measurable results.

👉 If you're ready to improve your team's performance—whether in sales, leadership development, or execution at scale book time here to talk through your organization's goals.