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?

Leading International @Personio | Building community @Pavilion | Architecting Growth @Winning By Design | Showing revenue teams what’s next @GTM OS

Over the past 12 years in SaaS, I’ve seen firsthand where most Founders and Revenue leaders fail: 

- No structured Go-To-Market strategy → Running multiple GTM motions at once. Growth stalls, especially beyond the home market.
- No consistent sales process → Relying on individual performance instead of repeatable systems. No scalable growth engine.
- No clear revenue insights → Looking at blended metrics instead of pinpointing what drives conversions. Low rep productivity, declining ARR per FTE.

I get it. Day-to-day operations take over, and revenue inefficiencies stack up.

The bad news? You’re responsible for fixing it.

The good news? I can help you and your SaaS business.

How I help B2B SaaS teams ($5M-$25M ARR) scale faster:

- GTM & Sales Strategy – Structuring inbound, outbound, and partner strategies across SMB, Mid-Market, and Enterprise.
- Sales Process Optimization – Improving conversion rates and reducing reliance on top performers.
- Playbooks & Execution – Building structured systems, coaching frameworks, and checklists for consistent revenue growth.
- High-Performing Teams – Hiring, developing, and structuring commercial teams with clear accountability.

Results I’ve helped drive:

→ Increased sales team efficiency by 2X through scalable sales team structuring and skill development frameworks.

→ Improved win rates to 25% by implementing structured tactical and operational Go-To-Market tactics.

→ Built GTM playbooks that accelerated ARR growth for early-stage and scaling SaaS companies to $10M ARR.

How we can work together: 

1. Coaching & Advisory – Hands-on support to build a scalable sales engine.
2. On-Demand Sessions – Solving your biggest sales execution challenges.
3. GTM Playbooks & Frameworks – Proven templates for predictable growth.

Scaling isn’t about luck. It’s about building the right systems.

What’s blocking your revenue growth today? Let’s fix it.

DM me and let’s chat.

Koen Stam

Anita has made President's Club 3 years straight. Last year she hit 183% of target while spending Q1 as interim sales leader. Earlier this month, she told 500 colleagues exactly how she does it.
 
It disappointed half the room.
 
If it were up to her, she would keep it quiet. She even called me out on stage. 
"Koen is going to put this on LinkedIn."
 
She was right.
 
Half the room wanted a template. A single tactic. A checklist they could copy.
 
Anita gave them something harder. Pure execution rigor.
 
Here are five things she does consistently that most reps skip.
 
1. She qualifies out early. And she never stops running discovery, even deep into a deal.
 
2. She maps every internal stakeholder. The blockers, the influencers, the people who show up late and kill deals.
 
3. She brings peers and leaders into deal reviews to pressure test risk. Not to show off. To find what she is missing.
 
4. She pulls in partners and customers to validate quality. Social proof from people who are not on her payroll.
 
5. And the thing that ties it all together. She runs every deal through trumpet 🎺, builds a Mutual Action Plan, and uses video to stay present when she is not in the room.
 
No shortcut. No magic script.
 
Just a rep who refuses to wing it on a single deal.
 
That is what 183% looks like up close.

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Co-chapter Lead the Netherlands 🇳🇱 at Winning by Design Growth Institute!

In 2017 I implemented Winning by Design at Teamleader and something clicked.
 
Bowtie. 
Data model. 
RRR emails. 
Compelling event. 
Emotional vs Rational impact. 
Critical event. 
First impact. 
SPICED. 
SP3V.
 
Every framework made sense. Not because it was trendy. Because it was grounded in how buyers actually buy.
 
I walked out thinking: this is how it should work everywhere.
 
Eight years later, I still think that. Every company I have touched got better when I applied these fundamentals. Every single one.
 
And I have watched enough companies do the opposite. More tools. More headcount. More complexity. Still wondering why growth feels broken.
 
The ones that win have better systems underneath their growth. Better process design. Better architecture across the entire revenue engine.
 
That is what Winning by Design called Revenue Architecture. Now it has evolved into Growth Architecture.
 
Together with André, my partner in crime for over five years and a true operator who lives this work every day, we are launching the Dutch community for the Winning by Design Growth Institute.
 
15+ founding members are already in.
 
On Thursday March 26th we are hosting our first informal introduction here in the Netherlands.
 
This is for founders who are done guessing. 
For GTM operators who want proven systems. 
For fractional leaders who want real frameworks behind their work. 
For investors who want their portfolio companies to scale with structure.
 
If any of that sounds like you, DM me "Growth Institute" and I will send you the details.

3 years of ChatGPT. Thousands of prompts.
 
And I still had to explain who I am every single time.
 
That was the moment I knew it was over.
 
Here is what broke it for me.
 
I write LinkedIn posts, a Substack newsletter, and GTM playbooks every week. Content is how I build trust with founders and GTM operators.
 
And for 3 years, every time I opened ChatGPT, I started from scratch.
 
Pasting my tone of voice. Explaining my audience. Describing what I do and do not write.
 
And still the output read like it could have come from anyone.
 
I tried Claude on a random Wednesday. Built my first project.
 
Uploaded my writing instructions. What to write. How to structure. What to avoid.
 
Then I uploaded 20 previous LinkedIn posts, a few newsletters, and two GTM playbooks I had already written.
 
Something shifted.
 
I recorded a voice note on a walk. Raw thoughts, unfiltered. Pasted it into Claude.
 
And what came back read like me. My words. My rhythm. My edge. No cleanup needed.
 
That never happened with ChatGPT. Not once in 3 years.
 
Here is why it works:
 
1. The instructions tell Claude how I write. My rules, my formatting, my voice.
2. The uploaded content shows Claude what my writing actually looks like in practice.
3. Memory compounds. Every conversation makes the next one sharper.
4. My voice input is always the starting point. The raw thinking stays mine. Claude shapes it, it does not replace it.
5. It pushes back. Questions my structure. Challenges a weak hook. ChatGPT just said yes to everything.
 
The workflow is simple. I think out loud. Claude builds with me.
 
The output sounds like a human who has done the work. Because the input came from one.
 
If you want to try this, start here.
 
Create a project. Upload your best previous work. Write clear instructions on who you are, who you help, and how you talk.
 
Then give it a voice note and see what comes back.
 
Most GTM operators are still using AI the same way they did 12 months ago.
 
Are you?

Saturday morning. 45 minute walk. No music. Just me and something my CRO told me in January that I keep coming back to.

“How you start Q1 defines how your full year gets shaped.”

We had a rough start. Pipeline was slow. Energy was off. The kind of January where you tell yourself there is still time.

Fast forward to today. Halfway through Q1. Almost at 100% year to date. Last week was one of our best weeks for new business all year.

What changed?

Not a new playbook. Not a new hire. We stopped drifting and started correcting. Early.

Here is the thing most operators miss in Q1. You get pulled into execution fast. Day to day takes over. Deals move. Fires start. You feel productive.

But the big programs that define your year need to get shaped in Q1. Delay those and you delay pipeline. Delayed pipeline means delayed conversion. Delayed conversion means your new customer cohort shows up late. And late adoption compounds into a weak H2.

A strong Q1 sets up a strong H1. A strong H1 carries momentum into H2. The math is simple. The discipline is not.

This morning I went out with the dog (she is lovely to babysit André 🐶) and the kids first. Then I kept walking. Alone. 45 minutes, maybe 60. No agenda. Just letting my brain process the week, the last 7 weeks, and the 6 weeks we have left in Q1.

What do I need to keep doing. What do I need to stop. Where do I need to course correct.

You do not have to do this weekly. You do not even have to do it monthly. But some cadence of structured reflection is the difference between operating with clarity and just being busy.

I have started using Claude as my reflection partner. Not for answers. For structure. Every reflection compounds on the last one because it remembers context. It turned scattered thinking into a system.

Busy calendars will always win if you let them. Reflection is how you take back control.

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I scaled a SaaS company from 2M to 10M in under 3 years.
 
The playbook that worked was the opposite of what most teams attempt.
 
We narrowed instead of expanded.
 
Netherlands first.
 
Belgium could wait. The book of business was not large enough and I did not care.
 
We trimmed our ICP from "50 to 500 employees" to something so specific it included industry, desk vs non-desk ratio, and tech stack attributes.
 
We gave our CSM veto power over new pipeline.
 
If we could not make a customer happy, we did not accept the deal.
 
Pipeline went down.
 
Win rates hit 34%. ACV went up. Cost of acquisition dropped.
 
Every growth ceiling I have hit in the last decade taught me the same thing.
 
The answer was never more channels, more headcount, more spend.
 
The answer was better execution, better focus, better discipline on what actually moves pipeline.
 
I spent the last months turning that lesson into a system.
 
The GTM Channel Reset Playbook.
 
12 steps across 3 phases. Built on 10+ years of GTM leadership and backed by 100,000+ signals from operators and founders.
 
It includes a self-assessment, a full workbook, an implementation timeline, and a cadence pack to keep the system running.
 
I am publishing it in 3 parts this week on my Substack.
 
Part 1 and 2 are free. Monday and Wednesday.
 
Both designed so you can take what you read and apply it in your day to day immediately.
 
Part 3 drops Friday exclusively for paid subscribers, including the full workbook, implementation timeline, and cadence pack.
 
Part 1 drops today.
 
This playbook is also the foundation of my first GTM OS Cohort.
 
12 weeks. Weekly office hours. All the learnings from 10+ years of scaling SaaS companies, packaged into one program.
 
Starting April.
 
Keep an eye on my posts in the coming weeks.
 
Link in the comments.

I nudged one of my reps to start using Mutual Action Plans on her 25K+ deals.
 
A few months later she messaged me:
 
"I used it pretty much on every opp I won this quarter. And the customers love it."
 
That did not surprise me.
 
Here is what most sellers miss.
 
9 out of 10 of your buyers have never bought your category of software at their current company. They do not know the process, they do not know who to align internally, and they do not know where things can go wrong.
 
That fear kills deals.
 
A Mutual Action Plan removes it. You give the buyer a clear path because you have guided hundreds of buyers before them.
 
But something else happens that most sellers do not expect.
 
The MAP makes your champion look good. When they share a structured, professional plan with their CFO or VP, it signals they have done their homework. I have watched champions go from hesitant to loop in stakeholders to actively pulling them in, because the MAP gave them the confidence to own the process internally.
 
That changes the buying dynamic completely.
 
The data backs it up:
 
1. Deals with a MAP have a 60% win rate. Without one: 29%.
2. MAPs with 6 to 10 completed steps hit 84%.
3. MAPs with 11 to 15 completed steps reach 92%.
4. The sweet spot sits between 6 and 20 total steps. Beyond 30, win rates drop back to baseline.
 
My rep did not just close more deals.
 
She gave her buyers the confidence to move forward. And her champions the credibility to bring others along.
 
We run our MAPs in trumpet 🎺. That is where it started for her. One nudge, one tool, one quarter of closed deals.

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