Looking for 1-2 companies as an AI-native revenue leader & company builder / CRO, Revenue Architect & GTM advisor / Winning By Design Ambassador

As a Chief Revenue Officer, I operated 25+ B2B AI, SaaS and traditional companies in more than 20 industries, I can help you: 

- to build an AI-native modern revenue system. 

- to take your revenue system and team to the next level by taking full ownership as a CRO (full-time) or fractional CRO (every day, half a day)

- by supporting you and the team as a Certified Revenue Architect and/or GTM advisor.

Stephane Maes

Olivier Tytgat 🪖

Co-Founder & Head of Sales

CEO @ Outbound Catalyst | generate pipeline consistently with our revenue systems

👋 I'm Ollie, and here's my journey in a nutshell: 

- Helped over 25+ tech companies get their first 10-50 clients through smart revenue systems
- Trained over 250 people from diverse backgrounds on becoming the best cold callers ever
- Hosting a podcast where we decode B2B Revenue Systems: https://open.spotify.com/show/5LMwgSpPBRfffF4OyQsXC5?si=7bb99931399e40aa

🚀 On a mission to helping another 25+ tech companies increase their pipeline and net new revenue (building out Outbound Catalyst to be the 🥇 GTM agency in the EU).

🧠 Sharing my learnings from generating 100 million plus in pipeline and growing a growth/GTM agency in my newsletter -> https://bit.ly/newsletter-linkedin-website-profile 🧠

What you'll get by following me:

🚀 Actionable tips to grow smart outbound/revenue systems

🔥 Transparent & actionable advice, no fluff

💼 Exclusive updates on Outbound Catalyst's growth 

I’ll be posting growth tips and tactics - so hit that “Follow” button!

DM "GTM Scan" & see if you qualify for a free GTM Audit (value: €5K)

Peace, pipeline & revenue ✌️

Ollie

Founding Member

As a Founding Member of the Sales Hacker community, I exchanged ideas on how to provide value for the community. 

Sales Hacker is a community where B2B Sales Professionals share their experiences, best practices and exchange interesting ideas and other content.

Olivier 🔎 Tytgat

I just took a 2-week break in Thailand. 🇹🇭

Not a "check Slack every hour" kind of break.

A real one.

Here's the honest reason why:
I wanted to test if the business could run without me.

Most founders — myself included — carry this silent belief that if we step away, things fall apart. That the anxiety, the constant presence, the "I need to be available" mindset... is what's keeping it all together.

But towards the end of 2025, I started questioning that.

What if it's actually the opposite?

What if a business that only works because you're there isn't a business — it's a job?

So I went. No pressure. Just curiosity.

What breaks? What doesn't? Do clients even notice?

The result?
Things ran. Clients got results. The team handled it.

And I had one of the best trips of my life — because I wasn't constantly putting out fires or worried.

That moment changed how I think about building.

In 2026, my #1 professional goal is simple:
Build a company that grows profitably and consistently without relying on my time and effort.

Not because I want to disappear.

But because a business that doesn't need you is one worth building.

If you're a founder still grinding like everything depends on you being present 24/7...

Maybe the real work isn't in your inbox.

It's in the systems, people, and processes that make you unnecessary.

Have you ever tested your business without yourself in it?

p.s. Would highly recommend Thailand, by the way. 🙏

Olivier Tytgat 🧪

Helping tech revenue leaders engineer effective growth without the bloat | DM ‘Roadmap’ → 3 ways to grow revenue this quarter

Most B2B companies don't have a pipeline problem.

They have a fundamentals problem.

Everyone's chasing the next signal-led play, the hottest Clay workflow, the AI sequence that'll "10x their outbound." 

Meanwhile, they haven't answered three basic questions:
1. Who are you actually for? 

Not a TAM-SAM-SOM slide. Not "HR managers at companies with 10-100 employees."

The HR manager who runs everything alone. Who has partners, limited capacity, and has to choose her battles carefully. 

That specificity changes everything — your list, your message, your entire motion.

If you can't describe your ICP without opening Sales Nav, you're guessing.

2. Can you explain their problem better than they can? 

This is what creates demand. Not captures it.

Look at what Aikido Security did. They didn't lead with credentials. 

They led with deep market understanding, packaged in a way that made their buyers feel seen. That's the differentiator. Not "ex-Google" on a pitch deck.

If your messaging doesn't create "aha" moments, you're just adding noise to an already crowded inbox.

3. Do you have the infrastructure to scale what works? 

Not tools. Process. Rules of engagement. Operational clarity from leadership down to execution.

One of our clients was leaving 3-4 qualified opportunities on the table every month. Not because of bad leads. Because their reps' calendars were already full.

That's actually the right problem to have. It means the system is working. 

And when you're consistently struggling to find open slots for incoming leads — for one, two, three months in a row — you don't need a spreadsheet to tell you it's time to hire. The calendar tells you.

Most companies hire to create pipeline. 

The better model: build the system, max out current capacity, and let the output tell you when to scale headcount.

Technology scales what works. It cannot fix what doesn't.

This is what we do at Outbound Catalyst. 

We help B2B revenue teams build the system underneath the tactics — market mapping, message validation, programmatic infrastructure — so outbound (and ABM) produces consistent, predictable pipeline.

It takes months, not weeks. It requires discipline, not hacks.

If you're in crisis mode and need revenue this quarter, we're not your answer. 

Pick up the phone yourself and go close something.

But if you're building something that lasts — we should talk.

The outbound evolution in 4 stages:

2018-2020: first dedicated sales email automation tools start to raise after we realize that 1-to-many platforms like mailchimp aren't covering for this use case. 

2020-2022: lemlist → Manual guessing 
Send emails to job titles + industries. 
→ Get 20-50% reply rates.

2022: Instantly.ai → Improved guessing
More volume, better deliverability. 
→ First drop in reply rates:  10-20% reply rates.

2024: Clay → AI personalization Research + personalization at scale.
Reply rates drop even more... (for most): 1-5% reply rates

2026: Signal-led → Predictive GTM Context over triggers. 
The best way to finally hit 8-15% reply rates again. 

When you stop reverse engineering reasons to reach out to companies, you start identifying companies already deploying budget toward the exact problems you solve.

How to get this data? Leveraging job descriptions. 

It can give a behind-the-scenes into: 
- Active projects (they're hiring to fix it)
- Budget allocation (they approved the headcount)
- Pain points (written in their own words)
- Perfect timing (the role is live NOW)

Example: Don't pitch sales automation to everyone with "VP Sales" titles.

Find companies hiring for roles that mention "manual prospecting," "unscalable outreach," or "SDR burnout."

They're literally telling you they have the problem. They're in-market. They've approved budget.

That's not outbound. That's predictive go-to-market.

The companies hitting 80%+ meeting conversion rates aren't better at cold email.

They're better at knowing who's actually ready to buy.

What signals are you tracking?

Why do calling teams underachieve even with a 75%+ connect rate? 

(It's rarely the calls. It's everything before the call.)

I just finished a discovery with a team that had genuinely impressive numbers.

4 reps. 77% connect rate. Strong show rates. Real pipeline. Good amount of meetings booked. 

But they were doing ~23 dials per rep per day. Target should've been closer to 50.

When we dug in, the bottleneck wasn't skill. It was data quality.

Reps were picking up a record, hitting a dead number. 

Moving to the next, no mobile. 

Opening LinkedIn to find the right contact, disappearing for 30 minutes. 

Manually researching what should've already been there.

The signal layer didn't exist. So every call started with friction.

Here's how I think about building it — in order of priority:

1. Start with what you already have. 
-> Clean and enrich your existing CRM before chasing new signals. 7,000 records with bad data is worse than 1,000 clean ones.

2. Layer website intent second. Former opportunities re-visiting your pricing page are the warmest calls your team will ever make. 
Most teams don't even know it's happening.

Then build outward with external signals. 

3. Competitor reviews, LinkedIn connection patterns, social mentions, new company registrations — each one adds a layer of timing to your outreach.

The mistake most teams make? They jump straight to complex signal architecture before fixing the basics.

If your reps are spending half their time hunting for a valid phone number, no signal in the world will save your conversion rate.

Signals don't create urgency. They reveal it.

Fix the foundation first — then build the intelligence on top.

What's the #1 thing slowing down your calling team right now?

p.s. random photo off me on an island in Krabi, Thailand (gotta drop em somewhere)

We're obsessed with the wrong metric.

ARR growth is sexy. NRR sustainability is profitable.

I had a conversation with a founder who hit $1M ARR in 9 weeks.

Impressive, right?

First question I asked:
"What's your NRR?"

"130%."

Now THAT'S impressive.

Here's why NRR > ARR. 

ARR tells you how fast you're acquiring revenue

NRR tells you how well you're keeping + expanding it

The benchmarks nobody talks about:

- <80% NRR: You're bleeding. Fix product or ICP.
- 80-100% NRR: You're surviving. Reduce churn.
- 100-120% NRR: You're healthy. Standard SaaS.
- >130% NRR: You're compounding. Keep going.

Let’s look at an example. 

Company A: $1M ARR, 80% NRR

- Loses $200K annually
- Needs $1.2M in new ARR to grow 20%

Company B: $1M ARR, 130% NRR

- Gains $300K from existing customers
- Needs $700K in new ARR to grow 20%

Company B has 2x more leverage from the same starting point.

Why this matters for GTM:

If your NRR is <100%, you have an ICP problem or a product problem.

Scaling GTM just accelerates the bleeding.

Fix retention before you scale acquisition.

Most founders would be better off spending 6 months getting NRR to 120%+ than spending 6 months scaling ARR.

Because ARR is a vanity metric if you can't keep the revenue.

The companies that win long-term don't just acquire customers fast.

They keep them and expand them systematically.

What's your NRR today?

Most SDR teams aren't failing because of effort. 

They're failing because they're set up to lose.

(Only 20% of SDRs consistently hit target. Your top 2 reps drive 80% of pipeline. Sound familiar?)

There are only 3 things that actually fix this:

1. Give them data that's ready to use 

Valid emails. Mobile numbers. LinkedIn profiles. Company signals already researched. 

Not a raw CSV they have to clean before they can even think about picking up the phone.

2. Remove everything that isn't customer facing 

List building, CRM data entry, manual account research — none of this is their job. 

In an ideal world: they log in, see their tasks, and start executing immediately. 

No friction. No doubt. No wasted hours.

3. Make cold calling the primary activity 

Sorry not sorry, but basic email + LinkedIn sequences stopped booking meetings years ago. 

3-4 hours of dialing = 5+ meetings on a good day. At least 1 on a bad one. 

Multiply by your team size. That's your monthly pipeline math done.

Here's what frustrates me most:
Aaron Ross never said "spray templated messages at a random list." 
He said go after your market proactively — with real value and real insights.

The Salesforce playbook got misread, and SDR teams have been paying for it ever since.

Revenue leaders: are your SDRs spending more time selling or preparing to sell?

I’ll be in London from Wednesday until Friday. 

Mainly to attend some Clay events, but while I’m there, I’m super happy to meet for specialty coffee, great Japanese or Thai food, or a walk in the park (weather should be okay I saw) with anyone who’s:

1. Building with Claude Code

2. Interested in applying AI across their GTM motion

3. A revenue leader doing 20M+ ARR and struggling with consistent pipeline 

Who should I meet?

taplio

The Battle

Stephane Maes

Olivier 🔎 Tytgat

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Olivier 🔎 Tytgat

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