StartupGTM.com | I help b2b founders hack traction | Profitable founder (YC)

Transforming a startup from early to repeatable sales is HARD.

If you’re a B2B founder with early sales, then you've done many things right to win your first customers.

BUT - to raise a round A, your startup will need to have a product that's ready to scale because it can be 𝙨𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙮.

To get repeatable sales - there are four blockers. 
 
You'll need to change each one from "not working" to "working": 
 
1️⃣ Consistently creating a 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 of conversations with customers 
 
2️⃣ Converting these conversations into a 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 of first meetings 
 
3️⃣ Converting these meetings into a 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 of trials 
 
4️⃣ Converting trials into a 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 of deals. 
 
These blockers need to be removed 𝙨𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 - i.e. one by one. 
 
💡 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗪. 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀.

—

I'm a former co-founder and CEO at ApolloShield - a profitable YC startup.

I work hands-on with B2B founders on turning their early sales into repeatable sales through a combination of disciplines:

1️⃣ 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀: Understanding the market, identifying target customers, and analyzing competitors.

2️⃣ 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴: Defining how the product fits into the market and crafting compelling messages to appeal to the target audience.

3️⃣ 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀: Developing strategies for selling the product, including choosing sales channels and partnerships.

4️⃣ 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵, 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Creating and executing campaigns to build brand awareness and generate leads.

5️⃣ 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀: Managing discovery and commercial discussions with clients and partners to get their business.

5️⃣ 𝗢𝗻𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸: Gathering customer feedback and continuously adapting the product and strategies accordingly.

6️⃣ 𝗜𝗧 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: Building support systems to holistically orchestrate and manage your GTM efforts.

7️⃣ 𝗥𝗮𝗽𝗶𝗱 𝗜𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Developing a method to move forward quickly, iterate and get market feedback - doubling what works and tossing what doesn’t.

🚀 Let's connect and accelerate your startup together!

Nimo Shkedy

James Hanzimanolis

Co-Founder @ Erudite | Content Marketing Agency | GTM Leader | Startup Advisor

Co-founder @ Erudite. We're a content marketing agency with the goal of driving more inbound leads and helping startups and small SaaS build a brand through social media.

Founder

Johnny is launching an outbound motion for a startup and only has $250 to spend! This might sound impossible, but here are 6 ways to make this work:

Option 1. Dialer + data
Option 2. Email sender + data
Option 3. Social selling
Option 4. All-in-one SEP
Option 5. Free options
Option 6. DIY

Let's get into it.


Option 1. Dialer + data
BitScale announced their $99 plan today. This plan gives you 20K credits per month and is equivalent to Clay's $350 plan.

Trellus (YC W22)'s top plan allows for parallel dialing, power dialing, and integrates nicely with everything. $150/mo.

Total: $250/mo


Option 2. Email sender + data
QuickEnrich is the cheapest email vendor on the market right now. $83 for 132,000 emails or $24 for 36,000 emails.

Instantly let's you send 100,000 emails/mo for $97/mo.

Maildoso's new gmail mailboxes cost $4/mo. Get 5 (at a min).

Total: $141-$200/mo


Option 3. Social selling
Kondo: Superhuman for LinkedIn DMs for LinkedIn DM management: $35/mo
In combination with ReactIn ($29/mo) for outbound campaigns and Floqer for data + insights: $149/mo.

Total: $213


Option 4. All-in-one

FlashLabs is the BEST tool in my arsenal. Hands down. It's a LinkedIn automation tool (comparable to HeyReach), email sender (comparable to Instantly), parallel dialer (comparable to Nooks/Orum), and uses LLMs for image and website generation. Absolutely insane.

Total: $211/mo


5. Free options
Apollo, Wiza, and Lusha all have free plans for data.

And, *if you ask nicely* and are in a jam... there are some vendors that'll give you free licenses for a few months.

2 years ago, I was fired from a role and had absolutely nothing to my name. Luckily good people like Mavlonbek Muratov (Salesfinity) and Neil Gandhi (Paage & Send) gave me free access to help me land back on my feet. Thanks again for that!

Total: $0/mo


6. DIY
You can build dialers, email tools, SEPs, automation tools, etc. that mold to your GTM strategy with Replit, Lovable, Caffeine, and bolt.new.

Total: $25-$250/mo


Honorable mentions
- Aloware
- AskElephant
- Bardeen
- Icypeas
- LeadMagic
- Symbo
- TrueDial
- RogerRoger

And so many more.

You got this, Johnny!

Generate 250K-1M impressions per month | Fractional Head of Content for GTM Tech

I don't believe in work-life balance.

3 of my founder friends are going through divorces right now.

All of them share a similar story.

Why? Three reasons:

1. They pick family > business
And their business suffers

2. They pick business > family
And their family suffers

3. They pick themselves (their mental health, happiness) > family & business
And their family + business suffer

Founders who made it work: What's the secret?

No outbound team should use Salesloft or Outreach.

I'll die on this hill.

They worked great in 2020.
Not in 2026.

My biggest pet peeve in legacy GTM tech is that they've stopped evolving. Once they hit $50M ARR (or whatever the magic number is), they refuse to adapt.

Anyone who's stuck on SL/OR is now using multiple tools in combination (usually a dialer, email sender, integration tech, and more).

So your $125/mo SEP license increases to $750+/mo.

Any for what?

To have a stitched together, Frankenstein tool set that barely works. I can't stomach it.

Here are 12 alternatives worth checking out:
1. Reply
2. Mixmax AI
3. Regie.ai
4. Perlon AI
5. FlashLabs
6. lemlist
7. Outplay
8. SmartReach.io
9. Simpl
10. Klenty
11. Salesforge.ai 🔥
12. Snov.io

When I was an SDR manager, my CEO, CRO, and VP of Sales would shoot down my ideas for growth (despite leading the team to 215% quota attainment in the quarter). I eventually said f**k it and went over their heads. 2 months later, I was fired:

I was managing 6 SDRs at the time.

I pushed them into a Boiler Room/Wolf of Wall Street style outbound approach. This meant 300 calls each day on a single-line dialer.

(Judge me all you want - it was working).

But for me, it wasn't enough.

I secretly wanted to hit 300% quota attainment across the team. If I managed to do that, I'd add an extra $13K to my quarterly commissions. But I was only allowed to hire 1 more rep. And there was way he could get us from 215% to 300% alone.

Then I had an idea.

A few months earlier, I met an email agency owner in SV who cost $4,000/mo. That was $500 less than what I was paying my cold callers.

He was good. Apparently, he was generating 1,000+ meetings per month for other clients.

I wanted to give it a shot.

So I brought it up in my weekly 1-on-1.

*5 minutes into our call*

VP of Sales: "Sorry Jim. We don't do agencies. Your next hire needs to be full-time with us."

Naturally, I called up my new agency friend with a slick idea.

The plan: He'd pretend to be full-time with us (despite running a 3-person agency).

What's the worst that could happen?

Fast forward 2-months: I had exceeded my attainment goal by an extra 25% (325% total). Which was an extra +110% in pipeline (coming from email alone)!

Brilliant.

My CRO eventually found out. And he didn't care about the increase in pipeline, revenue, or sweet logos we were bringing it.

He felt like he couldn't trust me or my friend.
And we were both canned.

If I was able to go back in time, here's what I would've done differently:

1. Tried it on my own
2. Gotten an Instantly subscription
3. Purchased 250 inboxes w/ Maildoso
4. Sent 250,000 emails/mo

**(THIS IS THE FASTEST WAS TO SAFELY SCALE COLD EMAIL BTW.)**
I'm using a ton of Maildoso inboxes today for Erudite and the process is so simple.

But since cold email was foreign to me, that wasn't really an option.

Who was right in this situation? Me or the CRO?

I built a prospecting tool inside of Google Sheets.

Here's everything it can do:

➜ Finds a person's LinkedIn profile
➜ Finds company phone number
➜ Finds company website
➜ Finds LinkedIn link
➜ Finds Twitter link
➜ Finds Instagram link
➜ Finds Facebook link
➜ Finds company email
➜ Finds state from phone area code
➜ Checks phone number reputation
➜ Gets company name from LinkedIn
➜ Removes "LLC", "Inc", or "Co"
➜ Cleans phone number
➜ Shows time zone for a state

After some small update, I'm releasing it again.

Comment "DM" if you want access

My LinkedIn posts that generate 5,000 impressions today would've generated 50,000 impressions a year ago.

LinkedIn is constantly kiIIing reach for creators. And it's 100% intentional.

The rationale: If we drop everyone's reach, they'll start paying for more impressions.

Smart, right?
Well, the opposite is happening.

Creators are dropping off of the platform.

They've spent years building their brand and following simply for the LinkedIn gods to annihilate their reach.

It's insane.

Erudite has a secret folder of 50 high performing post templates.

Whenever we use a template from this folder for a client, they generate 50K+ impressions on their post (with an average of ~117K).

It's worked for the past 18 months.

This changed in early January.

These templated posts, which rake in over 100,000 impressions, are now doing 10K-20K instead.

Which isn't bad.

But man, it sucks compared to last year.

A few weeks ago, I realized I had 97 C/L leads in the past year.

These were leads who took a sales call with us and went quiet.

Usually, I'd call them up to re-engage them. Or maybe I'd send an email.

But this time, I sent them text messages.

Result: 21% of those cold leads re-engaged.

That number surprised me, but the reason makes sense. A text is harder to miss than an email, and it feels more human than another follow-up.

Text is just so easy.

What worked for me:
- Keep it under two lines
- Use their first name
- Reference the original context in a few words
- End with a simple prompt like “Still interested?” or “Want me to send options?”

I found an awesome tool to do this.

Comment "TOOL" and I'll share what I've been using. 

PS this keeps high-volume campaigns organized by managing sending and replies in one place.
[attach screenshot of lead who replied over text]

PSS
(Remember, you need them to opt-in to legally do this - you need to stay compliant).

taplio

The Battle

Nimo Shkedy

James Hanzimanolis

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The Battle

Nimo Shkedy

James Hanzimanolis

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}James Hanzimanolis's LinkedIn Performance

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