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?

Notion! Notion is an infinitely customizable blank canvas of ultimate power. 

Notion's greatest advantage is also it's biggest weakness. That's where I come in.

As the GTM Lead @ Optemization, I specialize in helping companies in hyper growth mode scale effectively without letting their workspace become a "dumping ground" for scattered info, links, meetings notes, and outdated docs that no one can trust. 

Optemization is an Ops Design consultancy focused specifically on the adoption of Notion. 

That could mean large migrations onto Notion, improving current workflows, creating custom automations and integrations, or auditing what you're currently working with.

If you've made it this far and want to learn more, here's some resources that can help:

Notion's Eleven - A free online course exploring the fundamentals of building an effective Notion workspace for teams of all sizes:

https://optemizations.notion.site/Welcome-to-Notion-s-Eleven-317a0fd26bf24d0295504e4cab1eba83

AND, my last offer is if you ever want to about anything related to Notion, I'm your guy 😎 

Lastly the fun part. My Special Skills and Fun Facts include:

🏆 3x Cornhole Champion 🏆 
🏅 3x Dodgeball Champion 🏅 
👨‍🍳 Former Food Cart Owner 👨‍🍳 
🥩 Steak Off Champion 🥩 
🐔 Notoriously known as “The Chicken Man” 🐔

Skyler Birk-Stachon

Mama I made it! I'm officially a Notion consultant.

Haters are fuming right now.

What's the first thing I should build? 

**note that everyone on our team were already Notion consultants and I was just late to the party

Ask me how we optimize Notion workspaces for 150+ of the world’s top companies

I threw 10 Notion stickers at a camera to signify 10 harsh Notion truths.

#1 98.6% of companies use Notion wrong

#2 You can’t use Notion AI properly if your workspace is a dumping ground

#3 You need to stop letting your employees create random loose pages

#4 The reason you’re not getting the most out of Notion is that you haven’t properly invested into it

#5 I love Notion but 90% of Notion’s fancy features don’t actually matter to your employees

#6 You don’t have a Notion problem, you have an adoption problem

#7 Your company has a tool culture problem if you don’t have a unified way of working in Notion

#8 If your company didn’t architect Notion correctly from the start you probably hate it now

#9 If your company isn’t database driven you’re using Notion wrong

#10 No company should ever be on the plus plan. Business or Enterprise only

Fight me on them 👇

--

Psssst if you need help optimizing your Notion workspace we should talk

1000 podcast episodes produced. That's a lot of freaking episodes! Huge huge congrats to Jake Hurwitz and the Thursday Labs team on an epic accomplishment. Best in the business. And an even cooler person.

You'll be celebrating 5k in no time.

You're a legend. 

And also heard you have a pretty impressive Notion setup.... 

Wonder who built it 😉

Fun fact: We don't just help with Notion 😏

Notion has over 100 million users, over 4 millions paying customers, and over 35,000 companies using it but most of companies are still using it wrong. Here’s the reality if you want a successful rollout:

#1 You need an adoption plan - Don’t wing it. Be intentional.

#2 Define a unified way of working in Notion - How will you work in Notion at X company?

#3 Exec alignment - Why do you actually care about rolling out Notion? What bigger initiative is this a part of?

#4 Need to assign Notion champions - Internal owners who are in charge of each teamspace / the big databases

#5 Patience - Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your Notion workspace be.

Get these right and Notion becomes your company's greatest productivity asset. Get them wrong and it becomes just another abandoned tool.

I’m gonna let you in on a secret.

Your employees don't give a shit what software your org uses.

Notion. Confluence. Asana. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. They couldn't care less about your tech stack.

**unless you give them clear enablement and support

Here’s what this looks like in practice for Notion:

Most companies look like this: (wrong way)

→ “Hey we use Notion for knowledge management or product roadmapping or xyz use case”

**leads to uncertainty, negative sentiment overtime and people using it however they see fit (and an FAQ / youtube tutorial rabbit hole) 

Here’s what it should look like:

→ “Here’s how you use Notion in your day to day role and here’s how it enables you to get more done and become a better employee”

- Here’s how product uses Notion to do their roadmapping

- Here’s how marketing uses Notion to plan their content calendar and upcoming launches

- Here’s how eng uses Notion to find information across scattered tools in the snap of a finger

- Here’s how sales uses Notion to find commonly asked questions for enablement

**Much better what to do it ^^

To have a successful rollout you must define:

1. What is the pain point this tool solves for?
	- and why?

2. How do I use it my day to day role?
    - and how am I being set up for success?

3. What are my expectations around the tool? 
    - how do I use this tool for success not failure

Remember, You don’t have a Notion problem. You have an adoption problem.
The tool isn't the problem. The rollout is.

Stop debating the tool. Start investing in the rollout.
That's the difference between a tool people hate and one they can't live without.

-- 
Pssssst this is exactly what we help with at Optemization, let us know if you need Notion help :)

Just an average Optemization team meeting...

Creating custom agents designed to roast Tem ‎and building Notion sauce.

All a part of our great agentic bakeoff where everyone presented the craziest, funnest, and most useful custom Notion agents they've been working.

It's more fun to highlight the goofy + fun ones but I promise we're cooking up some ones that are going to change our clients' workspaces forever.

Stay tuned 👀

-- 

Want to be a part of our epic team culture? 

We're actively hiring for our next great Notion workspace developer 👀

Check out the full job description (link below) and send your resume + a 90-sec Loom to Natalie Pottie at hiring@optemization.com.

**expecting bangers only in that Loom

https://lnkd.in/evXuHNZi

Just fired off 100 of these cold emails to COOs who went to Villanova.

Think I'll get any takers??

"Skyler, don't hate this personally but we hate Notion" 

Said the Head of internal comms at a 1000-person fintech to me.

Now, normally a statement like that would piss me off. 

But in this case, I couldn't blame them. 

They had been using Notion for the last 3 years but:

1️⃣ They never set up the infrastructure correctly
2️⃣ They didn't have a unified way of working in Notion 
3️⃣ They had over 100,000 loose pages
4️⃣ They had random databases all over the place not tied to anything
5️⃣ They didn't have any Notion champions in charge of governance 

The result?

Their workspace was a "Dumping ground of meeting notes, scattered workflows, links, and out of date docs that no one can trust"

It doesn't matter how good Notion AI is if it's only helping you find outdated info 5x times as fast.

So we ran a workspace audit, created a health report, aligned on a solution and a gameplan moving forward.

And put our hardhats on and went to work.

The result? 

🤩 46,638 pages optimized 
🤩 64% teamspace consolidation
🤩 46% reduction of outdated content

And the best part?

They LOVE Notion again :)

YAY

If your workspace has become a dumping ground over time and it's time for a refresh, know you're not alone.

But also shoot me a note, we'll run an audit for you and create a let's fix it gameplan! 🙏

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