The market is racing to "bodify" the sales team — replace sellers with agents and call it the future of go-to-market. Michael Kiernan, CRO at Nextdoor, named his entire nine-month plan to reject that idea: Human Plus Agentic GTM. The plus is the whole point.

Kiernan is an operator-first CRO running revenue for the neighborhood network connecting more than 110 million verified neighbors across 350,000 neighborhoods — one in three U.S. homes. He came up through ad tech and bizops at Brightroll, Turn, and Yahoo, joined Nextdoor in 2018, and is now two months into a plan to put agentic AI into a real revenue motion without removing the humans who carry the relationships.

In this conversation with LeanScale co-founder Anthony Enrico, Kiernan lays out the spectrum framework for how much AI belongs in each motion, the centralize-vs-decentralize pendulum that produced a $20,000-in-a-month AI bill, how he measures agentic GTM in the P&L instead of the API bill, the four-priority color-coded calendar he runs his weeks on, and what's next in monetization beyond advertising.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARNWhy "Human Plus Agentic GTM" is a deliberate rejection of bodifying your sales teamThe inverse relationship between deal size and how much AI belongs in the customer-facing motionWhy new products need more human-in-the-loop, not lessHow Nextdoor splits agentic AI across enterprise, mid-market, and SMBThe centralize-vs-decentralize pendulum — and the $20K-in-a-month bill that forced guardrailsWhy your data foundation decides whether you can decentralize AI at allHow to measure agentic GTM in the P&L and the funnel — not the API billThe four-priority, color-coded calendar a public-company CRO runs his weeks onThe RevOps-to-CRO path: see the whole elephant, feel the pressure of a numberWhat's next in monetization: local services, peer-to-peer commerce, and the neighborhood data graph

CHAPTERS00:00 — Cold open + intro02:16 — "The plus is the point": rejecting the bodified sales team03:54 — Accountability, inbound spam, and the three-segment model05:30 — Enterprise vs. mid-market vs. SMB: where agentic fits08:45 — The framework: ACV + product surface10:49 — Why new products need more human, not less12:19 — Centralize vs. decentralize: the "Neighbor" AI group14:39 — The $20K bill and the guardrail pendulum16:11 — One house or two? Structure and the data foundation18:58 — Measuring agentic GTM: speed to market and the P&L23:35 — Operator-first: from public accounting to CRO29:14 — The RevOps-to-CRO path32:59 — Stay close to the customer (and mine your call data)35:35 — The four-priority, color-coded calendar42:29 — What's next: plumbers, cookies, and the data graph

ABOUT THE GUESTMichael Kiernan is the Chief Revenue Officer at Nextdoor, the neighborhood network connecting more than 110 million verified neighbors across 350,000 neighborhoods. An operator-first revenue leader, he built his career across ad tech and bizops — campaign management and sales engineering at Brightroll, then operational turnaround work at Turn — before joining Nextdoor in 2018. He's now two months into a nine-month "Human Plus Agentic GTM" plan, helping CEO Nirav Tolia build new monetization systems beyond advertising while delivering quarter over quarter as a public-company executive.ABOUT THE LEANSCALE PODCASTThe LeanScale Podcast is the show for GTM operators building the next generation of revenue infrastructure. Hosted by Anthony Enrico, co-founder of LeanScale, we go deep with the operators, founders, and executives shaping how modern go-to-market teams are designed, scaled, and transformed.

▶ Subscribe for new episodes▶ Learn more about LeanScale: https://www.leanscale.team▶ Follow Anthony on LinkedIn▶ Follow Michael on LinkedInHASHTAGS#RevOps #GTM #GoToMarket #AgenticAI #AITransformation #RevenueOperations #CRO #Nextdoor #AdTech #B2BSaaS #Monetization #LeanScale #LeanScalePodcast

Why AI Won’t Close Your Biggest Deals | Michael Kiernan, CRO at Nextdoor

The LeanScale Podcast with Anthony Enrico

Why AI Won’t Close Your Biggest Deals | Michael Kiernan, CRO at Nextdoor