Full Pipeline without 3+ BDRs or a Lead Gen Agency ✨ Top 5 Clay Creator | Founder @ Enablement.ch

You're doing cold outreach already. So your sales pipeline should be full. 

But where are the leads & deals? 

Creating a full sales pipeline is easy. 

You just have to:
→ Create an apollo account and build a list
→ Use an email template from a "LinkedIn Influencer"
→ Send emails & LinkedIn DMs with Lemlist

and on top of that - share content on LinkedIn every day 

You probably tried this already. 
Or hired a Lead Gen Agency to do it for you. 

Why does it not work? 
Here's the truth

#1 - Time
You don't have the time to manually build lists 
AND personalise every message. 

So either reach out to just a few people
or you just spray and pray

#2 - Trust
Everyone can send 1000 emails. 

Just look at your inbox:

→ You are spending 5-10 minutes every DAY to delete emails
→ You look like another Joe Shmoe wanting to ""jump on a call?""

= You & your message don't stand out. 

BUT 

You also know that this can work. 

You see people raving about tools like Clay, RB2B and AI generated messages. 

And you heard about that through people on LinkedIn. 

Ergo personal branding & outreach DO work. 
they can generate qualified meetings,
a full pipeline
and $$$

ONLY 

If you do it right
and create an actual engine
where everything is connected & automated

This system is not just cold outbound
and not just praying that your LinkedIn content creates inbound
This is ALLBOUND

And how do I know this? Two reasons:

#1 - I've done it twice already
 
I generated over $2.4m in revenue in my last role as sales leader at a HubSpot Agency
↳hyper personalised messages at scale in 2022 - BEFORE ai was even possible. 

And now at enablement we generated $200k pipeline in 20 days from a single campaign. 

We practice what we preach. 
Here's how we make our money: 
→ 49.4% Outbound
→ 29.3% LinkedIn
→21.3% Referrals

#2 - We worked with over 70 B2B Tech Companies in the last 18 months

Bound (fintech) 
→ 2x Pipeline in Q1 24
→ 70% Revenue from Cold Outreach

Scrypt (fintech) 
- 10 meetings with C-level per month

Skribble (B2B SaaS)
→ Reduced BDR Team by 80%
→ Still hit revenue targets

XPLN (B2B SaaS)
→ 20+ meetings with CEOs per month

Fruitcore Robotics (Robotics) 
→ Consistently book 85+ meetings per month
→ $543k in Pipeline

If you're thinking now:

"That makes sense, I want know how you REALLY use AI & Automation to create a full pipeline - without a Lead-Gen-Agency or a big BDR team" 

here's the next step. 

DM me and we have a chat. 

PS: This only makes sense if you ACTUALLY want to make a fundamental change in your business and not just looking for a quick fix

Lanny M. Heiz

Adam Robinson grew RB2B from 0 to $7,000,000 ARR in under 24 months - with ZERO funding and only 3 people. He broke down his GTM strategy to grow to $10m ARR. Here's his 8 Step playbook:
 
ATTRACTION STAGE
 
1/ LinkedIn Content
 
Adam is the GOAT of founder-led marketing and is documenting his journey.

After analysing 10,000 viral post, here's how go viral: 
→ Visuals are key (gif, flowcharts, memes)
→ Take a clear stance (don't be vanilla)
→ Share results & learnings
→ "How I" not "How to"
→ Strong hook

It's also our strongest channel, bringing in $80k new sales a month. Tks to our n8n AI Agents, it takes me only around 2h a week. 
 
2/ Thought Leadership Ads
 
Goal:
- Expand audience
- Build your brand
- Create trust
 
How you do it:
→ Sponsor your best performing posts
→ Exclude customers & followers
→ Go for max reach
 
3/ SEO
 
Attracting people who already KNOW their problem (how to identify website visitors). Even if they don't convert, Adam can identify them (with rb2b) + retarget them with emails + ads
 
Types of content:
→ Landing pages
→ How-to's
→ Listicles
 
4/ Cold Email
 
40% of RB2B's customers come through email. They message their entire TAM 1x a month with a short message.
 
Step-by-step to do the same:
→ Build entire TAM list (apollo, salesnav, clay etc)
→ Sending 1 email a month to entire TAM
→ Full focus on deliverability
→ Great & simple offer
 
CONVERSION STAGE
 
5/ Website & Landing pages
 
Adam created the "ugliest website in SaaS" (his words, not mine).
 
Why it works:
→ Cuts through the noise
→ No-brainer offer (free forever)
 
6/ Allbound Email
 
Because people have a lot of touchpoints on LinkedIn and the website, RB2B can now retarget them with Allbound Emails.
 
How you do it:
→ Identify LI interactions Teamfluence™ 
→ Identify website visitors (RB2B or Syft Data )
→ Score Leads for ICP fit (Clay)
→ Add to email campaign
 
7/ Retargeting Ads

In addition to Allbound Emails, retarget your website visitors with ads
 
Channels:
→ Youtube
→ Meta
 
Formats:
→ Selfie Videos
→ On Desk / Talking Heads
 
 𝗖𝗟𝗢𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗚𝗘
 
8/ Closing the deal
 
The goal of all the efforts above is to convert people into trial customers. Once they see how many leads they were missing out on before, purchasing RB2B becomes a no-brainer.

Adams brand creates so much trust that they don't even need a salesperson anymore. 
 
TAKEAWAY
→ Build a strong brand on LinkedIn
→ Follow up with Email (and ads)
→ Bootstrap to $6m ARR and beyond
→ Have F-U money because it's mostly profit (and no VC)
 
 
PS:
Adam Robinson , Taylor Haren , Alex Fine🌲 - tell me where I went wrong -  you know the exact details as you actually run it.

Lanny M. Heiz ✨

GTM Agents that build inbound + outbound pipeline | Clay Enterprise Partner | Founder @Enablement.ch

A LinkedIn Ghostwriter charges $4,000 p/m for this. And I’m giving it away for free. 

Over the years, I tried 10+ tools and systems to create content - but none of them were perfect. 

→ Same topics over and over 
→ No context about me / my business
→ Didn’t learn/improve base on results

So I made a deal with myself last Friday. I don’t close my laptop until I’ve built the perfect LinkedIn Ghostwriter with Claude Code. 

My wife wasn’t happy about it. But  1 day + 1 all-nighter and an angry wife later, it’s done. 

Full disclaimer, it's trained on EXACTLY what we used to generate 2.2M impressions last year + and how we turned it into $142k MRR

Here’s how it works

1. Finds topics in your niche that go viral (no guesswork) 
2. Learns from your sales + client calls (dynamic context) 
3. Writes posts + QA loop (no AI slop)
4. Sends it to slack for approval (or feedback) 

Want access?
→ comment “Content” below
→ connect with me if we're not already linked

...and I'll send you the complete setup personally.

"Claude Code replaced my $500,000 SDR team"

 Anthropic: hold my beer

SDRs aren't dead, the old way of using them just is...

thoughts?

$466,841 in pipeline last year came from referrals, and we closed 48% of it - with NO system . So I spent the last 3 weeks building it.

and best part?

It's super simple.

I systematised the whole thing. Five minutes of setup. Runs automatically.

It's embarrassing I wasn't doing this before.

In January,  I checked the numbers.

 We were doing all kinds of things:
 → Sending 500-1000 emails every day
 → Posted on LinkedIn 2-3x a week
 → Closing 38% of our deals

Meanwhile, the best converting channel was an orphan.
An afterthought.

Just because we had no system to ask for referrals

So it depended on luck and hoping that our customers remembered to mention us.

Now I built a referral engine using Clustr 

Here’s how it works:
→ Connect your CRM / List of personal network
→ Clustr scans their network for opportunities you never knew existed
→ Scores them for ICP fit
→ Writes an intro message
→ Sends it

Full autopilot (or human in the loop if you want)

Just launched it yesterday and have 2 meetings booked.

Cold outreach is fine - but you’re competing with 100 other emails in the inbox.

With a warm intro you are 1 of 1.

That’s why I turned the referral engine into a plug-and-play template.

You get:

👉 Full workflow you can just plug and play
👉 Step-by-step implementation guide
👉 What to say (and what to avoid) in your intro message
👉 Find 100 opportunities for free

Want it?

Comment “REFERRAL" (must be connected)

Repost and I'll DM it to you directly (or you wait till the automation does)

LinkedIn right now...



Credit: no idea, saw it on x. Shoutout to whoever.

6 months ago, our cold outbound stopped working - the new system works 14x better. Here's what we changed.
 
Last September, we stopped running classic cold outreach
 
No more:
 
“Saw you’re hiring SDRs...”
"Congrats on the new role at {company}" 
"Had a quick look at your website and noticed..."
 
Why?
 
Because cold-first outreach stopped working.
 
Meeting rates drop (from 1.7% in 2024 to 0.44% in 2025).
Deal cycles stretched from 21 → 45 days.
 
It's not 2024 anymore, when it was a blue ocean and we were one of the first GTM agencies. 
 
It's 2026 and everyone knows clay, n8n and the power of AI. We're in a red ocean right now. 
 
So we flipped the motion.
 
Instead of guessing who’s warm,
We made people warm.
 
Here’s how it works:
 
🧊 The Cold Layer (Demand Engine)
 
First, create attention/demand with organic LinkedIn posts, signal-based cold outreach and paid ads
 
Direct all that to one high-value lead magnet (not just an ebooks/ROI calculators - think: custom landing pages, roundtables, micro-tools)
 
Goal is not to book meetings - it's to open curiosity loops/demand
 
Tools used: 
AuthoredUp, claude code, Canva, Onepage , Smartlead , Trigify.io , TheirStack  
 
🔥 The Warm Layer (Conversion Engine)
 
→ Track signals (lead magnet downloads, website visits, LinkedIn interactions) 
 
→ Enrich company details and score for ICP fit in Clay.
 
→ Get the phone number and assign lead to SDR in CRM
 
→ Warm outreach (phone, LinkedIn, email) 
 
The calling alone books a meeting for every 1 in 3 leads. 
 
And if we can't reach them, we send them this email (steal it): 
 
“Saw you grabbed {lead magnet}. Recorded a 90 second loom video how a GTM agent could help you with that. Here it is {loomlink}."
 
This is not automated. It's an actual video with actual value. 
 
Book a meeting for 1 in 5 leads. 
 
Tools used: 
Clay, n8n, Syft Data, lemlist 

✨Hot layer (Closing Engine) 

Once they book the meeting, they had several touch points with us. 

Because of that, the trust is high, problem awareness even higher.
 Last month, a prospect told me “I’ve been following you for a year and now I saw your ad. I know already what you guys do and want to work with you.”

That’s not selling anymore, that’s taking an order. 

It’s why we win 2 out of 3 deals. and 10k MRR deals close in 22days or less. 

Even better, we now turned that into a feedback loop. Every sales call gets analysed, updates our ICP documentation and is used to create new content. 

The system improves itself. 

Tools used: 
HubSpot, Claude Code, Fathom.ai, emlen 
 
This is the shift:
 
→ Reduced direct outreach volume (from 100s → 15 leads/day)
→ Increased meeting rate by 14x
→ SDR only calls warm leads
→ Sales cycle < 22 days
 
Highly competitive markets need a different GTM 
 
One that asks for the meeting when people are ready. 
 
That's what Allbound Engines are designed for.

"So you've bought Clay, n8n and Lemlist?

"Yes Dave"

"And you have 5 SDRs"

"Correct Dave"

"What are you paying them?

"Around $450,000 a year"

"And what do these SDRs do?"

"Build lists in Zoominfo, validate them in Clay and upload a CSV to Lemlist"

"Hmmm"

In 2026, the average B2B scale-ups spends over $535,000 a year on their GTM tools (Outreach, Zoominfo, Clay, Salesforce etc.) - but nobody shows you how you actually connect them into a true GTM system. 
 
The Old Predictable Revenue Model looked like this:
→ SDR gets Zoominfo seat
→ Builds list manually
→ Prospects each lead 1:1 (or just spray and pray)
→ Load it into apollo / outreach
→ Pray someone replies
 
This model stopped working 2,3 years ago. 
And AI now completely killed it.
 
Why?
 
Because everyone can create a list and send emails within seconds.
 
But few create an actual system. Here's the flow we see working in 2026 (based on 100+ clients)  
 
Signal → Enrichment → Relevance → Momentum → Feedback
 
This is not a sequence.
 
It’s a loop, and every part feeds the next.
 
01. SIGNAL (Identify intent)
 
Buyers leave clues.
Way before they reply.
Way before they fill the form.
 
What to track:
 
(1) Who’s on your site?
(2) Who saw your ads?
(3) Who engaged on LinkedIn?
(4) Who just joined as Head of Sales?
 
🛠️ Syft Data , Trigify.io , Jungler Fibbler , Clay 
 
02. ENRICHMENT (Orchestration)
 
Every signal is not intent.
Some signals are just noise.
And enrichment filters the signal from the static.
 
What to do:
 
(1) Enrich account (industry, size, tech)
(2) Score the ICP fit with AI
(3) Pull contacts + pain points
(4) Sync everything to your CRM
 
🛠️ Clay, Claude, Gemini, OpenAI
 
03. RELEVANCE (with relevance)
 
If your outreach isn’t shaped by your enrichment, it’s just a cold email with extra steps.
 
What to do:
 
(1) Generate 1:1 copy (based on context)
(2) Build offers people actually want
(3) Hit them from 2–3 channels
(4) Auto-sync to CRM
 
🛠️ Lovable , Smartlead ,@lemlist, n8n 
 
04. MOMENTUM
 
The reply isn’t the win.
The follow-up is.
 
If you wait >5 mins to call back, connect rates drop by 4x.
 
What to do:
 
(1) Auto-label replies (negative, neutral, positive) 
(2) n8n workflow to get the phone number
(3) Slack ping to rep
(4) Personal Loom
(5) Book the call
 
🛠️ OpenAI, n8n, BetterContact , Slack, Loom
 
05. FEEDBACK
 
This is where most teams tap out.
But this is where the loop begins.
 
Feed it back into:
 
(1) Channel: what combo led to the fastest close?
(2) Timing: how long from intent signal to reply?
(3) Persona: who’s actually converting?
(4) Content: What triggered the reply?
 
Because every loop sharpens the next.
Every reply trains the system.
And every win compounds.
 
This is GTM in 2026.

I played football with my son at 1am in an underground parking lot - while missiles flew over our heads. 

It's words I never thought I'd use together in a sentence. And yet, I'm writing them. 

This weekend, Iran launched over 500 drones and missiles at the UAE. I was woken up by a government emergency alert: "Seek shelter immediately."

War is something you follow in headlines — Ukraine, the Middle East, conflict zones that feel abstract and distant. Until your phone goes off at 1am and it's about your family.

I had my emergency bag ready. Grabbed my son. Grabbed my wife. Down to the basement.

My son is 18 months old and had no idea what was happening. He just wanted to play football. 

So we did - in a concrete parking garage, missiles being intercepted somewhere overhead, sounding exactly like fireworks going off.

It's the memory I'm taking from this. Not the alert. Not the adrenaline at 1am. It's just him running around, laughing, completely unbothered. 

The next morning, the UAE government confirmed they'd intercepted everything and that we're safe. By 10am, I was sitting at a cafe with my wife. Watching kids on the playground and people walking their dogs. 

Like it's just another Sunday.

It also tells you a lot about what good leadership is. What it 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 like. 

They said: "We have it under control. Move on with your day"

And we did - because we can trust them. 

Stay safe, everyone in the region.

2 weeks ago, I thought I didn't need Claude Code (I have clay, why would sales need it?) - Now I use these 7 AI tools that are saving me 100+ hours. 

Let me be honest, I can't code. I can't read a single line - let alone write one. 

And I thought Claude Code is for developers/product people. Not for sales guys like me. Clay can do everything I need. 

But I got Fomo, so I gave it a try - and got hooked. Now I use it every day. 

Here are 7 tools every sales leader should use. 

→ Wispr Flow 

This is THE biggest productivity gain in my day-to-day work. Speech to text that just works. 

Like everyone else, I used my keyboard and mouse to do stuff on my mac. 

Now I just talk. No type. Not click. Talk. I use it for emails, Slack, docs and to build automations & agents. Last week alone, I spoke 18.9k words to it. 

→ Claude Code  
The one tool that changed everything. 3 weeks ago I thought I don't need it. I know n8n, clay etc. Besides, I'm not an engineer. 

Now, I use it every day. 

There are so many little automations I've always wanted to have but weren't worth the effort to build in n8n. 

Now I just tell Claude Code what I need and it builds it. 

-> ICP Builder
-> Sales Coach
-> Lead qualifier
-> Follow-up writer
-> Proposal creator

I don't understand a single line it writes. Don't need to. Claude just builds it in minutes. 

And it costs me $25 p/m

→ GitHub 
Before, everyone in the team had their own little custom GPTs and Claude projects.

Now we have a repo in GitHub. It's our agent library. 

One person builds it - all of us use it. 

→ Replit 
Everyone can write a personalised email now. AI makes it easy. 

What moves the needle now are personalised lead magnets. 

Not just whitepapers and videos

Little tools that provide real value in seconds. 

With Replit, we build them in 1-2h for every client. 


→ Exa 
Lets your AI agent find datapoints every other scraper misses. 

We use to unique signals in niche industries like oil & gas or asphalt & concrete manufacturing 


→ Firecrawl 
Exa finds, firecrawl extracts (especially complex sites) 

Yesterday I wanted to scrape a directory. 

Every scraper bugged or returned errors

Firecrawl scraped it in the first go. 

→ @AI Arc / DiscoLike 
You can vibe build your TAM. Just describe your ICP and it builds your target list. 

This allows us to build a target account list automatically from the onboarding form within 30minutes. 

You don't need to be technical to use any of this.
 
You just need to be curious enough to try.

The gap between sales leaders who try this stuff and those who don't is getting wider every week
 
The winners will be the ones who adopted tools like these 6 months before their competition did.
 
That window is right now.

AI tools 2026 (3)

A client was spending $330,000 on their GTM and closed ONE customer only in the last 3 months. We changed their setup and instantly saved $200,000. Here's how:

They had the classic "predictable revenue" setup:

→ 5 SDRs supporting 3 AEs
→ ZoomInfo for data
→ Apollo for sequences
→ HubSpot for CRM

All the "right" tools. All the wrong results.

Their SDRs had high "activity" but little to show for it: 

→ Manually researching prospects with no buyer intent signals
→ "Personalized" outreach (wasn't personal at all)
→ Playing the numbers game

They booked some meetings, but the leads were not qualified AT ALL. 

The fundamental problem wasn't effort. 

It's the GTM Setup 

They used a 2020 sales playbook in a 2025 world. 

We replaced 4 out of 5 SDRs with 1 GTM Engineer and built automated workflows that identify prospects based on dynamic signals: 

→ Teamfluence to track social engagement
→ Sales Navigator to spot job changes 
→ TheirStack to monitor job openings
→ Clay for champion tracking 

We implemented Clay to:
→ Qualify accounts and leads using AI 
→ Find the right decision-makers
→ Generate hyper-personalized messages that reference specific pain points

To reach out to the leads, we used
→ Smartlead for emails
→ Heyreach for LinkedIn
→ Make to connect the 2

We kept just ONE SDR who focused exclusively on call leads that responded on LinkedIn and email and booked qualified meetings for the AE

In the old setup, the costs were massive: 
→ $30,000 for tools alone
→ $300,000+ for the SDRs

I.e. a total of over $330,000. With the new setup, they save 61% and spend less than $10,000 on tools. 

KEY TAKEAWAY
Shift from a 2 SDR to 1 AE ratio to a 1 SDR to 3-5 AE ratio. 
Shift from tools that support people to tools that replace people. 

What do you think about this new GTM approach and team setup?

Over 1,000,000 people are still paying for tools that are irrelevant for GTM in 2026. I've wasted $100K+ just to learn which ones to drop. 

I’ve seen at least 10+ posts this week on “tools to buy in 2026.” But zero talking about the ones you should’ve dropped 2 years ago.
 
01. Website visitor tools that only give you “company name”.
 
Think: Leadfeeder / Albacross without a real behavioral layer.
 
Yes, they tell you “Someone from <company> visited your website.”
 
Cool. 
 
But who?
Why now?
And what triggered them?
 
Because in 2026, if your signals don't go beyond “someone from HubSpot visited your homepage,” you’re 3 steps behind.
 
What I use instead:
 
• Syft → identifies the actual person on the site
• Clay → scoring for ICP fit
• Prospeo → pulls email + adjacent decision-makers
• Claude → context + relevance, not “Hi {{first name}}”
 
Now the flow becomes:
Person → trigger → context → message
 
02. LinkedIn automation treated like email automation.
 
The problem isn’t LinkedIn automation tools.
It’s the mental model behind them.
 
You cannot automate a relationship.
A senior executive can smell a bot in 0.3 seconds.
 
LinkedIn is not email.
It’s chat.
 
Every time someone drops a 5-step pitch sequence in my DMs, I know exactly what stack they’re running and why it won’t work.
 
What works instead:
 
- Trigify identifies active linkedin users 
- Clay qualifies the ICP fit
- Lemlist sends connection requests
- Kondo takes over once accepted (human-led) t
 
New mental model: 

Approach linkedin like a gigantic networking event. 

Would you approach someone and directly pitch them? 

No

So don't do it in the DMs. Start a conversation

03. ZoomInfo for listbuilding 

Let me be clear:

ZI is not bad (well their data mostly is) 

It's just the wrong tool for most companies

It only makes sense if: 

You only have 100 accounts in your TAM, and
You rely heavily on manual research
 
Most teams don’t.
 
What I prefer instead:
 
Listbuilding → Discolike, Exa, AI Ark
Signals → Trigify, Theirstack, Clay, Syft
Contacts → Leadmagic, Prospeo, Bettercontact
Automation → Clay
Sending → Smartlead, Lemlist

Lists are now built around signals, not filters. 

04. Legacy Outreach tools 

Outreach
Salesloft
 
Manual, outdated, poor deliverability

In 2026, sequencers are about 2 things_

Does your email land in the primary inbox and
Do you have strong APIs to build on top of it?
 
What I’d run instead:
 
- Smartlead / Instanly for warmup+sending
- Zapmail + Maildoso for inboxes
- Claude code to build with their APIs

The best email with the best targeting does not matter if your email ends in spam. Nobody will read it. 

But honestly, that's not the takeaway here. 

Changing tools is easy. Changing motions isnt.

Every old tool on this list was built for a GTM playbook that buyers have already learned to ignore. You can swap the software. But if the mental model stays the same, nothing changes.

Signals. Context. Timing. Relevance.
That's the actual stack.

Most B2B companies use only 14% of what Clay can do. It's like buying a Ferrari but you don't know how to drive it. We've implemented Clay now for 53 companies. 7 Use cases most of our clients need:
 
BACKGROUND
Last week, I asked clients"How are you using Clay currently?"
 
The answers made me laugh and cry at the same time.
 
One said: "We bought a Ferrari and now we're stuck in traffic"
 
Another one put it like this: "We bought all the gym equipment, top of the line. Now we're going max 1 once a week to run 500m on the treadmill"
 
So why do spend companies $10,000 (or more) on Clay but don't use it?
→ No time to implement
→ Don't know how to do it
→ Don't even know all the things Clay can do
 
Nr. 3 is the worst. You leave so much potential on the table. Here are the 7 workflows we implement for most of our customers.
 
1️⃣ Inbound Leads
- score inbound leads
- segment into tiers
- identify the challenges they want to solve
- create personalised outreach
 
2️⃣ Signal-based outbound

Best signals:
- Track customers changing jobs (champion tracking)
- new leadership hires
- Social listening
- Webtraffic
- open jobs

↳Tools:
Social Listening - Teamfluence™ , Trigify.io 
New Leadership - Clay 
Champion Tracking - Clay + HubSpot / Salesforce 
Open jobs - TheirStack 
Webtraffic - Syft Data
 
3️⃣ Hiring
- find candidates
- score them for job fit
- create personalised outreach why they should join you
 
↳ Tools
Find: Clay, apollo, linkedin
Score + find contact details:  Clay
Outreach: lemlist + Smartlead 
 
4️⃣ TAM Scoring & ABM
- find/upload your entire account list
- research every account
- use AI to score them into tiers
- create a unique POV for every target acount
 
5️⃣ Customer retention & expansion
- Monitor accounts with upcoming renewals
- Understand strategic goals (earnings call, open jobs, social media posts, news)
- Identify new key stakeholders
- Create relevant & personal POV for renewal & expansion
 
6️⃣ Find Content ideas
- Monitor (sub)reddits
- Monitor linkedin profiles & posts
- Identify hot topics
 
7️⃣ Prep for discovery / demo calls
- research account before disco
- deep research into every stakeholder in the demo call
 
What workflow is the most useful to you?

7.22 - ENABLEMENT - 7 Clay Use Cases

LinkedIn alone booked us more meetings for in 2025 than our entire GTM motion in 2024. 256 meetings. 184 from social.

And in 2024, we booked 182 total meetings (only 142 came from social.)

Here's what I didn't do:

I didn't post "comment X to get my lead magnet" every week.
I didn't use shortcuts, hacks and guru tactics
I didn't use engagement pods.

But I did change the system.

Before, I only posted when I felt like it and had a good idea. Now I have a ContentOS that does the hard work for me.

Here's what we changed.

01. We stopped “posting” and started systemising ideas.

2024 was me hoping for divine inspiration from the LinkedIn gods.

In 2025, we created an AI agent that scans:

→ LinkedIn
→ Reddit
→ X

Its only job: surface hot topics (burning problems people are already talking about.)

02. AI drafts. Humans decide.

The flow looks like this:

→ Ideas come to me
→ Claude helps explore angles
→ Claude drafts post
→ QA agent sharpens it
→ Human final pass (this part is non-negotiable)

AI doesn’t replace my writing but it helps get started so I don't look at a blank screen for an hour.

That alone 3-4×’d our output without killing quality.

03. Visuals became the real hook.

This part gets massively underestimated.
The visual stops the scroll.
The words earn the save.

Before I was doing nightshifts in canva. Once we invested in an in-house designer, the engagement didn’t just go up a bit. It blew up

In the first week, I had my first truly viral post with over 300,000+ impressions (and it wasn't a meme - it was pure value)

People started asking how I created these visuals and it got copied/stolen 10+ times

But it's not just engagement/reach that went up
Familiarity went up too.

People started recognising the shape of our posts before reading the name.

And that matters more than most GTM teams realise.

04. Meetings became a side-effect, not the goal.

Most of those 184 meetings didn’t come from “asking for time”.

They came after:

→ people seeing our content all the time
→ posts being saved
→ leads following us for over 1 year
→ buyers already knew what we do before we spoke

By the time we reached out, it wasn’t cold.

It was:
“Yeah, I’ve seen your stuff.”

The real mistake GTM teams make?

They treat LinkedIn like "a thing you have to do", as marketing providing "aircover" and creating "background noise" for the sales team.

But aircover is just what you call your excuse when your social isn't converting.

 LinkedIn didn't support our outbound in 2025.
 It became the reason the outbound landed.

 Outbound just collected the momentum.

 That's the actual game.

Your job is done...and most people haven't even noticed yet. 

Anthropic (the company that created Claude) just released the most IMPORTANT chart about the AI - Jobmarket

Here’s what it shows.

The blue area is every task AI could theoretically do right now. 

The red area is what people are actually using it for.

The gap between them is your career runway

How much you have left before AI takes your job. 

Programmers are already around 40% there

Lawyers, accountants, data analysts are next. And of course, sales people. 

But mass layoffs haven’t really started. 

Unemployment isn't skyrocketing. 

So what’s actually happening?

Companies are closing the front door - hiring for workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed jobs has dropped 14%.

AI isn't coming for the blue-collar workers. College graduates looking for white-collar jobs are the target. 

49% of US jobs now have at least a quarter of their tasks inside AI’s reach. 

That’s up from 36% just one year ago.

And the real-world usage, the red area in the chart, is still a fraction of what’s possible.

Every month, it grows a bit. 

Anthropic published the scoreboard and most people haven’t looked at it yet.

This has to be the best response I ever got to a cold email

What's yours?

We improved our cold email results by 20x because we stopped using it like everyone else.  
 
9 months ago, our cold outreach hit a wall. Reply rates collapsed, meetings dried up - something had to change. So we rebuilt our GTM motion into an Allbound system. 
 
The results came in. 
 
We went from 0.3% to 6% meetings booked from our outreach. Not by writing better AI copy or fancier clay tables. By completely changing who we email and when.
 
The reason most outbound fails is because it's just...
  
Cold → as in “who are you?”
Timing → as in “3 weeks too late”
Personalisation → as in “saw you liked John Doe's post"
 
In his latest YT video, Adam Robinson said this:
 
“Stop emailing strangers. Start emailing people who already know you exist. Start Inbound-Led Outbound”
 
That clicked.
 
That's what we’ve been building,
 
We just called it “Allbound.”
 
What does Allbound/Inbound-Led Outbound actually look like?
 
(1) You post content that doesn’t suck.
 
- Founder POV 
- Industry tea 
- real stories (good, bad, ugly) 
 
People start lurking
 
 
(2) They hit your site.
 
→ They check your pricing 
→ They hit your ‘About Us’ 
→ They bounce (because buyers don't book on first touch).
 
(3) You identify the person (not just the company)
 
→ Job title, company, geo AND Pages they looked at, how long they stayed.
 
(4) You trigger a DM or email like (RB2Bs actual copy)
 
“Hey [FirstName], saw you were on our site. Any questions?"
 
This creates 1 signup for every 10 emails sent. 
10% conversion
 
You won't find that doing cold outreach. 
 
(5) You do this in real-time.
 
Not 2 weeks later.
Not with a “sequence.”
Just when they’re actually curious.
 
💀 Compare that to traditional cold email:
 
1 in 500 or even 1000.
 
The future isn’t cold.
The future is Allbound.
 
It's what got Adam to $7M ARR with 3 people and it's what got us past $1M.
 
Content x Context x Contact (in that order.)

AiSDR just patented "sending emails with AI."

Not a new algorithm.
Not a breakthrough in personalization.

Literally: generate email → send email → auto-reply.

That's it. That's the patent.

Any n8n or Claude code workflow can do that. 

We've reached the point where AI outbound tools can't differentiate on product anymore.

So now they're differentiating on… lawyers.

People will hate me for saying this but let's be honest:

90% of AI SDR tools do the same thing:

They all use the same LLMs
They all scrape the same data sources
They all send the same "I noticed you recently…" emails

The only real differentiator left?

Whether a human actually thought about the strategy/message before it went out.

But that's not scalable, so we don't talk about it.

Instead we patent email sending and call it innovation.

Am I the only one who finds this ridiculous?

We spent $50k combined on GTM tools last year (and burned $10k on stuff we never needed). 
 
Every day I see 5+ posts flexing tool stacks as if that's the only thing that matters.
“We use Apollo, Clay, SalesNav, Smartlead, Zapier, Lemlist, HubSpot, AI AI AI…”
 
Cool.
But ask them how those tools talk to each other?
 
Because GTM is 25% tools and 75% orchestration.
 
Every week, we get asked: “Which tools am I using?”
Nice. But wrong question. 
 
The right question would be:
“What signal tells you who to reach out to and when?”
 
So here’s how we actually wire intent → action → outreach:
 
STEP 1: Signals.
(refer to the infographic image)
 
STEP 2: How we track it, the tools we use.
(also, refer to the infographic image)
 
STEP 3: Validate the signal.
(Is this real intent or a false positive?)
 
Clay checks for: ICP fit, title relevance, buyer role.
 
STEP 4: Enrich the context.
(What do we know about them?)
 
 • Tech stack
 • Recent hiring
 • Company stage
 • What content they engage with
 • What problem they might be solving
 
STEP 5: Choose the play.
(Based on signal type, the right motion fires)
 
 • Cold message
 • Warm Loom
 • Founder-to-founder DM
 • Retargeting ad
 • SDR call drop
 
STEP 6: Message gets auto-written.
 
AI pulls enrichment into a fully contextual line.
(And no, it doesn’t say “I saw you downloaded our ebook.”)
 
STEP 7: What we send (not templates.)
 
Outreach copy is simple when you know why now.
 
Examples:
 
Ex 1
​𝘍𝘐𝘙𝘚𝘛_𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌, 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘢𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 3 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 "𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘴." 𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦. 𝘞𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 15-𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘵𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘴?
 
Ex 2
𝘍𝘐𝘙𝘚𝘛_𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌- 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘐 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘴, 𝘢𝘴 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦? 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸
 
Every message feels handwritten.
 
STEP 8: FEEDBACK LOOP (The part everyone skips)
 
This is where the system becomes a compounding loop.
 
We track:
 
 • Which signals → fastest replies
 • Which signals → deepest convos
 • Which org triggers → fastest close
 • Which channels work best per signal type
 • Which AI-generated copy → best reply quality
 • Signal-to-demo speed
 
That data goes back into Clay → resets weights → makes the next outreach sharper.
 
Most teams send emails.
Top 1% teams detect buyer motion.
 
Then show up at the right time, and with the right context (with zero BS).
 
This is GTM in 2026.

Marc Randolph (Netflix Co-founder) just posted something 99.99% of outbound teams still don’t understand (and made us and clients millions) 
 
He basically said:
“If we’ve seen your name before, your email stands out.”
 
When Marc says “we notice thoughtful comments,” he’s not talking about: "great take!” or the AI-generated comment that summarises the post and adds a question
 
He’s talking about:

 • a funny comment 
 • reframing the idea
 • sharing a micro post
 • adding a contrarian perspective

In 2026, comments are distribution + positioning. 20-30% of my impressions come from them. 
 
But more importantly?
People remember them.
 
When your name shows up in someone’s inbox, their brain runs a 0.3 second scan:
 
 • Have I seen this person before?
 • Were they smart or annoying?
 • Did they add noise or vibes?
 
If the answer is “oh yeah, that person who always drops sharp takes in comments”, you just skipped 80% of the trust-building phase.
 
No personalisation line will beat that.
 
This is why Allbound isn’t cute theory.
It’s common sense. 
 
The top 0.01% teams don’t generate more leads
They warm warm them up

They:
 
 – Comment with actual thinking (not AI slob)
 – Share a unique POV about their topic) 
 – Show up consistently
 – THEN follow up when intent shows up
 
And tools like Jungler, Teamfluence, Trigify.io hel you orchestrate it.
 
Let's be honest, nobody cares that you:
 
 – saw they raised funding
 – saw they hired an SDR
 – saw they use HubSpot
 
What hits in 2026 is familiarity. And familiarity creates trust. And no amount of AI personalization and signal-based outreach beats trust. 

Marc basically confirmed what we’ve been seeing with our own outreach and our customers. 

If people know you, they trust you
If they trust you, they listen to you
If they listen, they are open to talk (and buy) 

Is 2026 about more scaling AI outreach or about scaling trust?

Alper Yurder 🤝

Co-founder & CRO of Flowla, interactive deal rooms your buyers LOVE 👉 Follow our podcast #salestherapy by Flowla 🎙️ on spotify

We build and operate GTM systems for B2B startups expanding into new markets.



I've seen it over and over. Businesses hit the same wall after product-market fit. Outbound isn't landing. LinkedIn feels like shouting into the void. The first SDR hire can't sell what they don't understand. There's no strategy to execute trust building, visibility, outbound and inbound growth loops to scale.



Agencies deliver generic playbooks that go nowhere.I've been there. 



I started in strategy consulting at Bain and Accenture, then spent a decade in the trenches. Five startups. One IPO, one exit. $60M+ in revenue closed as founder and CRO. I co-founded Flowla and scaled it to $1M ARR with zero paid ads. Just founder-led growth, LinkedIn, outbound, content, marketing hacks and systems that compounded.



Now I run Forte Growth. We run GTM Sprints for B2B SaaS founders at $500K-$5M ARR who need to find their repeatable buyer and start booking meetings fast.In 12 weeks we build your founder brand, LinkedIn presence, outbound engine, and test message-market fit. Then we scale what works. No 6-month strategies. No generic playbooks. Just a system that compounds outbound with trust and content.



Last year we ran Sprints with 12 startups. 10 got to 15-20 qualified meetings in under 4 months.Results from recent Sprints:



OMMA: £1M pipeline in 90 days

Genifea: 20 qualified meetings by month 3

Wealt: £750K pipeline in 6 months



For founders and revenue teams who want ongoing GTM leadership after a Sprint, I also offer Fractional GTM and Advisory. But most people start with a Sprint, see results and go from there.



DM me "SPRINT" or visit fortegrowth.co" to learn more.If you are earlier stage, I offer 1-2-1 coaching sessions on a weekly basis, and I help VC portfolios such as Tenity, Antler, EIF, Natwest, EF among others.

Co-Founder

Hey there, I'm an ex-sales leader turned co-founder, and I spend all day sharing ideas, solving problems and having #salestherapy with sales professionals from every sector and level. If you're after sales and G2M advice, you've come to the right place! And believe me, I've been through it all - from building SDR teams to closing multi-million dollar deals and everything in between. So, let's have some fun and chat sales!

👉Leaving a well-paid C-suite job for the startup grind is terrifying. I know because I did it. And some days I think of going back.

Some days I ask myself why I don’t just go back. Take a C-suite role at a mature company. Well-paid. 9 to 5. No 24/7 start-up hustle. No weight of the world on my shoulders.

Then I remember.

I travel when I want. I work from where I want. I work with incredible startups, VCs, on my own terms. Every win is self-made. Full ownership. I get to hire who I want. Build my own team. Build my own legacy.

Then I say ok it’s incredibly hard but it’s well worth it.

To anyone considering making the move from employment to entrepreneurship.

It’s incredibly hard. But it’s the best.

I’ve been on early stage grind for 6 years now since leaving late stage well-paid C-suite jobs. 

First as a CRO for a seed stage startup, then co-founder from zero, and now as a solo founder building Forte, where we provide cofounder level gtm and growth service to other founders scaling their businesses.

So it’s a few times the stress of building one company as we build 2-3 at a time as a fractional service and even more when I take care of vc portfolios as an advisor. But the early stage energy is different! I love it.

✈️Now on my way to Istanbul for a series of workshops, client work, and a visit to my parents. If you’re around, let’s meet.

P.S. I try to fly at least once a month. Not just to travel. Turns out a plane is the best place for deep focused work. No interruptions. No notifications. No AI.

Just thinking. The kind we get less and less of.

Alper Yurder

Founder @ Forte Growth | GTM Strategy & Market Expansion for B2B Startups | VC Portfolio Advisor | Former SaaS Co-Founder & CRO (1 IPO, 1 Exit)

No alternative text description for this image

👉 Just updated my 34-page playbook on how to audit your GTM and build a strategy that gets you to more leads and revenue in 8-14 weeks.

This is the exact framework I’ve used to help 16 startups from 2025 to date:
→ Create clarity across founders, sales, and product
→ Build roadmaps they actually stick to, to run 30 day test sprints
→ And in 2 cases - use the outcome directly in their fundraising decks

Normally I charge £3,5k to implement this in 2 full day workshops + write up.

Grab it while it’s free 👇

Please give a like & Comment “GTM” and I’ll send it your way.

Must be connected so I can DM.

👉 WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Most revenue teams get burned by outbound.

They launch channels. Spray messages. Burn budget.

Eventually, the realization hits:

❝We don’t need more tactics. We need a real strategy.❞

Because the unlock isn’t better copy or lists.

It’s alignment, trust, and clarity.

That’s what this GTM audit helps you build:

✅ Where to play (and what to ignore)

✅ What to say—and when to say it

✅ How to warm demand before you ever jump on a sales call

What you’ll get:

A GTM strategy audit you can run yourself

Or— if you need help, DM me and I’ll do the audit with you, and help you craft your roadmap

If you'd like to receive the playbook and start your own self-audit, please give a like, repost and comment

"GTM"

and I'll send it to you.

Happy building!

👉 No fancy visual, just the exact playbook that built our linkedin-first revenue machine at Flowla thru founder brand & what I now implement with founders I work with to scale GTM - use linkedin as testing lab then scale email and SEO.

1-Define your persona as the people who book a call fastest and close fastest.
2-Pick three main persona types to target.
3-Write down urgency signals that confirm someone is your persona (role, pains, triggers).
4-Re-listen to customer calls. What do they want, care about, want to learn?
5-Summarise what they most want to hear from you in a few sentences.

6-Pick five competitors and study how they and their founders post on LinkedIn.
7-Note what works: topics, hooks, formats, CTAs, comment style.
8-Do external listening on Reddit and elsewhere. Ask ChatGPT what your audience cares about.
9-Optimise your LinkedIn profile fully for this persona (headline, About, banner, proof, clear next step).
10-Make sure it clearly says who you help, with what, and what they should do next.

11-Follow 1,000+ people matching your persona and urgency signals to train your feed.
12-Build a core list of 20–30 ICPs and allies you engage with every week.
13-Comment on their posts daily. Specific, useful, on-topic comments (you or your SDR).
14-Share your tone of voice with your SDR so they comment like you.
15-Publish thought-leadership posts 2–3 times per week.

16-Focus on the problems, questions, and topics your personas care most about.
17-Mix TOFU–MOFU–BOFU: awareness, evaluation, and decision-stage content.
18- 70–80% core domain, 20% other things to stay human.
19-Before and after each post, engage with ICPs' content. Be in their feed and comments.
20-Occasionally post product/FOMO content with screenshots so they see what you do.

21-Connect with people from your list and commenters. No pitch in the first message.
22-Test two DM styles. Friendly/curious vs. direct. See which opens more conversations.
23-Use posts and assets in DMs. Send a relevant post or guide instead of a cold pitch.
24-Track who replies, books, and closes fastest. Refine personas based on real data.
25-Collect repeated questions from comments and DMs. Turn each into a new post.

26-Move into assets: carousels, checklists, guides, mini-playbooks on topics they react to.
27-Reuse assets in comments and DMs. They get saved, shared, and boosted by the algorithm.
28-Keep doing competitive listening. Fold new angles back into your content.
29-Ask for testimonials, quotes, or screenshots as you deliver. Even from small wins.
30-Publish social proof regularly so talking to you feels like the obvious next step.

👉 Save this. Come back to it when you're ready to stop posting randomly and start posting with intent.

👉 Your prospect list is your strategy. Get it wrong and the best message in the world won't save you.

I've always been against spray & pray. Unless your Total Addressable Market is everyone and their mother, you need to be careful with your outbound. The more targeted you are the shorter the sales cycle.

Which is why when we work with a client, we make sure our prospect lists are well curated. We start with LinkedIn outbound, which means you only get 100-120 connection requests and 20-30 messages to begin with.

So we don't spray and pray. We aim for high reply rates.

Unfortunately though, most B2B teams build lists the same way. Open a database. Filter by title, size, industry. Export 500 names.

Reply rate: 1-2%. Result is noise and pollution.

The reason our conversion is at 30% is because we don't filter by demographics. We decode the buyer and track their behaviour.

5 buying signals that work for most B2B companies 👇

1️⃣ HIRING SIGNALS Are they hiring for the role your product replaces? New leadership in your buyer's department? Team growing fast? Budget is unlocked and they're building.

2️⃣ FUNDING SIGNALS Recently raised. New budget cycle. Growth targets announced publicly. Money is available and there's pressure to spend it on results.

for this obviously Crunchbase or Clay  is best.

3️⃣ CONTENT SIGNALS Posting about the problem you solve. Asking for recommendations. Engaging with content in your space. They're telling you what they need. Listen. 

👉 Use a tool like Trigify.io for social listening to see what your buyers are posting.

4️⃣ EXPANSION SIGNALS Entering new markets. Opening new offices. Hiring in new geographies. The biggest buying window is when a company is growing into unfamiliar territory.

5️⃣ INTENT SIGNALS Visiting competitor websites. Reviewing tools on G2 or Capterra. Downloading industry reports. They've already decided they need something. Will they find you or someone else?

Demographics = who exists. 

Signals = who's ready.

The difference between a 2% reply rate and a 20% reply rate isn't your message. It's your list.

When you find the right buyer, there's a buyer for every product.

At Forte we help you find your buyers and convert them fast when you enter a new market. If you're going through a similar exercise DM me, let's chat.

☀️2 days in Lanzarote and I feel like a human being again after 4 months of working with AI and turning into a 🤖. Afternoon run done and now responding to 100s of unresponded messages - finally. thank you sunshine, you always help me recover!

Founder @ Forte Growth | Revenue & Market Expansion for B2B SaaS | VC Portfolio GTM Advisor | Ex-SaaS Co-founder & CRO (1 IPO, 1 Exit)

👉 If you want to grow your business in the next 180 days, write down these GTM essentials and track them with a simple tracker👇

Without it, here's what happens:

One co-founder wants to update the website. Another wants to run five outbound sequences. The third is rewriting the pitch deck for the fourth time this month.

Everyone's busy. Nobody's aligned. Nothing compounds.

I've seen this pattern at every startup I've worked with. And at my own.

At Flowla, we burned months doing "a bit of everything." Content one week, outbound the next, partnerships the week after. We looked productive. We weren't.

The moment we got clear on ICP, channels, messaging, and priorities, everything changed. Revenue followed clarity. Not the other way around.

Now every engagement I run starts the same way.

Before we touch outbound. Before we write a single post. Before we open the CRM.

We build the GTM Clarity Tracker.

One document. 31 components. 30/60/90/180-day goals.

It covers everything:

✅ Who you sell to and why they buy now. 
✅ How customers find you and which channels actually work. 
✅ Your messaging, positioning, and proof stack. 
✅ Your content engine, LinkedIn rhythm, and visibility plan. 
✅ Your sales process from first touch to close. 

Your 3 mission-critical priorities - not twelve, three: product, sales, marketing. 

Revenue targets broken into a formula you can track weekly.

Every co-founder sees the same page. Every decision maps back to it. Every week has a clear priority.

It's not a strategy deck that sits in Google Drive. It's a living document you open every Monday.

When I built this for a legaltech startup preparing to raise, the founding team went from three different versions of "our GTM plan" to one page everyone could point to. They raised shortly after.

When I built this for a salestech company post-raise, the CEO stopped asking "what should we do next?" and started asking "are we on track against the plan?"

That's the shift.

From chaos to clarity. From scattered to focused. 

From "let's try everything" to "here's what matters this month."

I'll share the full playbook, 31 components. Description of each one. Examples. And the 30/60/90/180-day milestones to track against.

Comment "clarity" and I'll share the whole thing.

If you can't fill in a row, that's your priority.

👉 In the past year my SDRs created prospect lists for various clients from B2B SaaS to fintech, to edtech etc. These are the major sources we used across almost all engagements: (check the post for others) 

One source gives you volume. Three sources give you precision. Here are all 7, and when each one makes sense 👇

1️⃣ GENERAL DATABASES 
Apollo, Sales Nav, Prospeo. Your starting point for broad filtering. Everyone has the same data here, so your message has to be sharper. Use when you know your ICP and need volume fast.

2️⃣ LOOKALIKE SEARCH 
Ocean.io, Apollo lookalike. Feed in your 5 best customers. Find 50 more like them. Use when your ICP is proven and you want to scale what's already working.

3️⃣ GOOGLE MAPS 
Nobody talks about this one. If your buyer isn't on LinkedIn - local businesses, agencies, clinics - they're on Google Maps. Scrape by location and category.

4️⃣ VC PORTFOLIOS + DIRECTORIES 
Our secret weapon. We scraped Antler's portfolio page. 900 startups. Clay Chrome extension. Free. 4 minutes. Filtered down to 80 perfect prospects. Pre-qualified, funded, and actively building.

5️⃣ YOUR OWN AUDIENCE 
LinkedIn connections. Post commenters. Website visitors. Past customers gone quiet. The warmest list you'll ever build. Use this one first. Always.

6️⃣ PEOPLE PURSUING SOLUTIONS 
Competitor followers. G2 reviewers. Event attendees. They already decided they need something. The only question is whether they find you or someone else.

7️⃣ JOB POSTING SIGNALS 
Companies hiring roles that reveal priorities. "Preparing for IPO." Sales hire in a new geography. Intel no database can give you.

other sources include Claude enterprise (at 90 USD Claude provides great lists) - Facebook, specialist magazines, chambers of commerce for international expansion - these should cover the TAM at 80-85%

The list is the strategy. One source isn't a strategy, it's a starting point.

👉 What other source do you use to build prospect lists in a new market? Share in comments and I'll check'em out.

🎉 Client Success story: Atria was one of our very first clients when we started Forte last year.

Technical founding team. Product gaining traction. But sales and marketing plan needed clarity to help them close the round.

We built their GTM one-pager - product, positioning, how they'll acquire clients and close them,

90-day roadmap, and founder-led sales and marketing playbook together.

They closed their +£700K shortly after.

This was the same formula I used before we raised our $1.5M round for Flowla.

Same equation every time: great founders, product somehow gaining traction.

But without GTM clarity, it’s hard to raise.

VCs don’t fund confusion. They fund conviction.

When an investor can immediately understand what you do, why now, and why you, conversations move faster. Rooms open. Rounds close.

A GTM plan isn’t a document. It’s a trust accelerator for the investor.

It creates alignment between cofounders, and creates focus for execution.

That’s why I start every engagement with creating a GTM one pager, all your GTM essentials, product, marketing and sales plan in one place. then we execute, test-iterate-update. but we have one point of reference to look at.

if you’d like to see an example DM me,

👉 When you work too much, your language changes first.

You get shorter with people. More agitated. Less patient. You're technically "fine" but everyone around you can feel it.

I see this around me all the time. Founders, managers, execs who look completely calm and collected on the outside. Then they share what's actually going on... Or they don't but it comes out in a team meeting, and noone understands where it's come from.

The stress is real. For everyone. At every level. I'm no exception. And noone truly is.

This AI craze. Staying on top of everything. Managing people for the first time. Running a business alone. None of it is easy. And no one is immune to it.

At Flowla, I had a rule: take a break every two months. A small escape. A day off. Whatever. Just reset.

Then I became a solo founder. Hiring. Delivering. Building product. Frameworks. Workshops. Client work. The rule quietly disappeared.

Last week I was catching up with an old friend. A growth manager who recently moved to Athens to work from there. She looked bright. Happy. Recharged. 

☀️ Luckily, I'm off for a much needed break. First in 8 months. I had no Xmas, no holiday no weekend these last months. Building, delivering. The balance lost.... 

So. Some much needed sunshine after the most horrendous rainy stretch London has seen in years.

Life isn't just about work. We all know this. We just forget it when things get busy.

The pipeline will still be there when you get back. The inbox will survive. Your clients won't disappear.

👉 But your energy, your patience, your clarity? Those need topping up.
If you're reading this and can't remember your last proper break, book one. 

Seriously. Even a long weekend.

I'm taking mine this week. Pics incoming. Something I haven't done in a long time. You should do the same.

"yes you have Nike as a logo but that's Nike Turkey, friend of your friend. a new market is a new game. no presence -> no trust = no sales!"

is the harsh truth I had to tell a founder last week expanding to the UK. $1M ARR. 50+ enterprise logos at home. real product, real customers. but the UK isn't working.

so I ran a quick diagnostic. here's what I found:
👉 ICP clarity (UK): 2/10. three segments identified from home market, none tested in UK.
👉 messaging: 2/10. product evolved but the UK pitch never got rebuilt.
👉 founder brand: 1/10. neither founder posts anything on linkedin. nobody in the UK knows they exist.
👉 lead gen: 2/10. one agency running linkedin outbound, stalled when the key person left.
👉 competitive positioning: 2/10. can't articulate why you'd pick them over the well-funded incumbents.
👉 growth tests/ non-scalable channels: non-tried so far, no podcast, no event presence, no industry expert interviews.
❌ paid ads: +10K spent on paid ads! most common mistake I see all the time. before message-market or channel market fit. 

home market score? 7/10. solid business. UK score? 2/10 across the board.
the product isn't the problem. the GTM is.

yes you have Nike as a logo but that's Nike Turkey, friend of your friend. a new market is a new game. no presence -> no trust -> no sales

this is the pattern i see over and over with SaaS companies expanding to the UK:

they assume what worked at home will work here. they hire an agency before 
they have message-market fit. no founder builds any visibility in the new market. they pitch features instead of positioning around a wedge.

the fix isn't complicated. it's just not obvious from the inside.
✅ pick a UK-specific ICP 
✅ rebuild the messaging for UK buyers 
✅ get one founder posting on linkedin consistently 
✅ test 3-5 angles fast on linkedin outbound 
✅ get 2-3 UK case studies at any cost
✅ balance earned vs. bought trust

we're starting a sprint together in march. so we can put the company back on track,

if you've cracked your home market but struggling internationally, the problem is almost never the product. it's always the system.

👉 Here's the playbook we use to source the right buyers for our clients.
Go to market is figuring your way to revenue. Revenue starts with knowing your buyer. Next step is finding those buyers: sources, signals, list building.

Before the list building, let me set this straight, this is step 3 of the 24 step process we use as part of the Forte Growth System:

1) Set your GTM one-pager. Revenue architecture. Execution plan. Which channels to acquire, build trust and credibility, how: Done by me.

2) Define the right buyers. Where they live. What message converts. Done by me and our content lead.

3) Source them. In the AI age, the sources are endless. Boris our SDR does this himself. We review then he launches campaigns. Then we test-review-improve every week. That's how we get more SQLs that convert faster in time.

Source them well, we help our clients get to revenue faster. 

Source them badly, we lose time.

This is the playbook we use for prospect list building and lead sourcing:

✅ Why demographic filters produce 1-3% reply rates and signal-based lists produce 10-30%.

✅ 7 places to build prospect lists. Most teams only use 1.

✅ 5 buying signals that beat any database filter.

✅ The AI scoring system. How to research 30 companies in 45 minutes with the exact Claude prompt.

✅ The 6-phase process from zero to 200 qualified prospects.

✅ Tools by stage. £0/month through £750+/month.

✅ 6 things your first SDR needs from you before they start.

✅ Weekly checklist. Signal scoring quick card. Everything in one document.

✅ 20+ engagements compressed into one playbook.

👉 Comment PROSPECT and I'll send it to you.

p.s. You can check our previous playbook, the Full 34 page - GTM Audit playbook at https://lnkd.in/ehsBttdv

❌ You have no idea how many founder calls I have where they've just let go of a sales hire in a new market. 
Same story. +10 times last year alone. 👉 I've made the same mistake myself. Now I'm obsessed with helping others avoid it!

Raise money. Decide to expand. Hire a country manager or BD person in the new market. Give them a target and say "go get meetings."

3 months later: zero pipeline. The hire quits or gets fired. Back to square one.
The problem wasn't the hire. It was what they walked into. A blank slate with no system.

🤯 Mind you. I've been the leader told off for not being fast enough. Then been the leader or founder telling people off. Same story repeats!

6 things you owe yourself and your first hire before they start 👇

01 REBUILT ICP Your home market ICP won't transfer. At Witco, French property managers bought on relationships. UK buyers bought on ROI and case studies. 10 buyer conversations in the new market before you hire anyone.

02 TESTED MESSAGING 50 messages sent by you personally. 3 angles tested. See what resonates. Your hire needs proven templates. Not guesses from a brainstorming session.

03 CHANNEL STRATEGY What works HERE. Not what worked at home. In France, events drove 80% of deals. In the UK, LinkedIn content and targeted outbound converted faster than any event.

04 AI SCORING Claude scores every prospect 1-10 against signal criteria. Nobody under 7 gets a message. Quality over volume from day one.

05 WARM PIPELINE 5-10 conversations already started. Meetings already booked. Your hire walks into active pipeline. Not a cold market where nobody's heard of you.

06 DOCUMENTED PLAYBOOK What worked. Every objection you heard. The full sales cycle mapped. Your hire needs your brain on paper. Not your hope that they'll figure it out.

Founder-led first. Handover second.

I've done the Turkey to UK journey twice. Built two companies past £1M ARR in a new market. The playbook is different here. The buyer is different. The trust signals are different.

If your board is pushing expansion and your instinct is to hire first, you're starting at step 6. Start at step 1.

👉 Save this. Comment EXPAND and I'll send you the full expansion Sprint checklist.

💡 Hiring a GTM lead costs £80-120K a year if you're lucky!
You still have to manage them. Ramp them. Hope they figure out your market.
Here's what a Revenue Sprint gets you instead:

✅ GTM strategy locked in week 1-3, not month 3 
✅ Messaging written and tested before you spend a penny on ads 
✅ Target list built from your actual ICP, not a job description 
✅ First meetings booked by month 1 if you're post PMF
✅ A system your team can run after we're gone

A full-time hire is the right move. Eventually.

But not when you're still figuring out what works.

The Sprint is how you figure out what works.

👉 If you're between £500K and £5M ARR and expanding into a new market, DM me "Sprint" and I'll show you what 90 days looks like.

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