🔥 Tom Slocum

Your Future Homie- In- Law | Founder @ The SD Lab | Sales Consultant | 7x Strategic Advisor | 4x Sales Leader | SDR Coach | #empathyactivist

Hey I’m Tom I help B2B leaders, SDR teams and founders fix broken outbound when pipeline is dry and reps are stuck spinning

After 18 years in sales from 400+ daily cold calls in a cubicle to building $3M+ in pipeline from scratch I’ve built a repeatable system that gets outbound back on track

Here’s how I help

Weekly workshops (theory + tactical execution)

Rebuilt call flows, messaging and targeting

Sequencing + workflow installation

Call reviews with live coaching + scorecards

Fast performance gains tied to KPIs

Client Wins

Kustomer → 50%+ lift in meetings → 100% SDR attainment in 3 months
ServiceChannel → 30% SQL lift with sharper messaging + coaching
Rockledge, Distran → 10–20 meetings/month booked after outbound reset

I’ve also worked with brands like ServiceChannel, Kustomer, Apollo, ZoomInfo, Smartlead, Surfe and more to coach teams and represent their tools

Outbound isn’t dead it just needs fixing

👉 Want sharper messaging, predictable pipeline and reps who book meetings?

Book an Outbound Strategy Tour (Featured below)

Or join my newsletter (7K+ readers) for free outbound playbooks (below)

Founder

The SD Lab is a top-of-funnel sales consulting agency. The SD Lab offers customized services to help businesses optimize their sales process and achieve measurable results. The SD Lab offers a 14-week Revenue Acceleration program, Custom Sales Playbooks, and Team Coaching packages that cover all things Top of Funnel. If you're looking to optimize your sales process and achieve sales success, The SD Lab is here to help. Let's work together to transform your sales approach

Helping SaaS build trusted content with third-party expertise • Co-Founder @ AudienceLed • GTM & Partnerships Operator • Your buyer trusts 👉 People, brands, and places they already transact with. Activate them.

I help SaaS revenue teams integrate third party expertise (the people, brands, and places) that influence their buyer to surround them (instead of spam them)  👉 where buyers already transact and spend their dwindling attention credits 👇

Buyers don’t believe brands as much as they believe the people, companies, & places they already work with and listen to.

That’s why your sales and marketing team need a network of trusted people in your ecosystem.

When you activate that network, you get:
👉Warmer doors opening faster
👉Higher win rates
👉Deals that close sooner
👉Bigger deal sizes

Proof I’ve lived this:
✅Built enablement programs that boosted partner retention by 70%
✅Created a partner motion that matched sales revenue with 1/3 of the headcount
✅Outperformed a full SDR + AE team using ecosystem plays
✅Scaled a business to $1M in less than 12 months → acquired

(And yes - I’m in the room developing relationships with the influential people your buyers already listen to.)

Activate an ecosystem-oriented modern go-to-market system that focuses on QUALITY and CONVERSION by:
1) Following me here for weekly systems sharing
2) Or DM me if you want me to show you how to:
- Map who your buyers already trust
- Layer partners into your GTM to build pipeline with less spend (without building any new systems)

Oh, I'm also writing a book on rewiring your mindset, which incorporates psychological, sociological, and philosophical concepts. Go-to-market with your market at www.audienceled.com

Will Taylor

I don't have an MBA, but since co-founding AudienceLed (my first business) in Feb 2025, we grew to $65k MRR.

Feb last year we closed a good month's start at ~$27k MRR. About 2.3x growth (in MRR).

MRR is nice, then we learned cashflow wasn't 100% (about 60% to start).

Since then, we've improved cashflow to ~80% and are aiming for 100% (thanks to Lauren Makielski).

Now we sit at $65k MRR ($780k annualized) contractually.

I reflected this weekend on what that means. Most businesses don't even make money in their first 6 months, even from seasoned business folk.

Since Feb of last year I have also:
- sold my home
- gotten engaged
- saw my brother get married
- went to Italy for another wedding
- went to Nicaragua for another one
- went to 2 conferences (out of pocket)
- planned a wedding (we'll my fiancé did most of it)
- had an offer accepted on a new home (firming conditions this week! 🤞)
- hired 3 people that were supposed to stay on and become partners but... life happens

... and of course interviewed hundreds of third party experts on behalf of our clients.

I am learning at scale. My brain is flooded with information across GTM and business at large.

AudienceLed is a conduit of knowledge share with, for, and through the ecosystem, funneled into our clients.

... and we have yet to even do our own marketing...

I am FIRED UP.

My grandma, who beat breast cancer twice, reminds me:
- buying/selling a home
- planning a wedding
- running a business
- having kids

... are all the top stresses of life.

Well grandma, I decided to take on 3/4 of those at once 😂

And I am grateful for the pain and effort this requires. 

Focusing on humanizing business and operationalizing relationships is worth it...

... every god damn hour of the day.

And I would not be here without the help of my network. Way too many to thank and show appreciation to... even if you've played a small part so far:

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! 🙏

And a big thank you to our clients, our partners, and of course our legendary team that gets deep into the trenches to deliver and manage the chaos... Rob, Lauren, Sam, Amy, Lydia, Dani, and anyone else who has been with us for the ride.

Happy Monday everyone. Much love.

If I can do it, so can you.

Get after it.

My entire career has been in go-to-market tech. Common Room has completely leveled up our craft. That's why I'm excited to share...

... that I get the honour to share that excellence - with and through people just like you - out to the market.

On Thursday Feb 26 @ 4PM ET we will have our first instalment of the new industry event "GTM Heroes Live" where you'll learn:

Real plays
From real customers
And real practitioners
With real experiences
And the real outcomes

AI is not coming for your job. But it will give you leverage.

I first came across Common Room during my time at Reveal (acquired by Crossbeam) and immediately thought about how data can be properly contextualized.

"This is exactly what partnerships needs to impact revenue..." I thought.

Then I dove in. Got an account. Created content with them. Became an advocate for them. And now we work together at AudienceLed.

Sales leaders and practitioners who are stressed to build pipeline do not need another data tool. They don't need more lines of commoditized information to weed through. They don't need another custom CRM field.

They need a place to take action. 
They need prioritized, contextualized information at the ready.
They need PIPELINE gosh darn it!!!

👉 AI doesn't need new gatekeepers.

The promise from other vendors has been leverage for everyone... but then they've created a "specialist trap."

They force you to confuse complexity with leverage. But complexity is a barrier, especially when it is outside of the system of action. 

Leverage should REMOVE work... not add additional headcount.

Common Room has built GTM AI that gives leverage. Not replacement of people. It solves for stale data, research time, CRM management, and figuring out who to prioritize, what to say, and when to say it.

We are going to show you how.

Right from the people - just like you - in the field.

If this resonates with you and you want content that actually moves the needle, join us this Thursday, February 26 @ 4 PM ET to hear from Saad Khan, Jacki Leahy 🪄... with a special appearance from Heath Barnett 🤙, your peers, and YOU.

Everyone is welcome on stage!

Let's figure this out - together.

Here's the link. Bring your hot topics and questions: https://lnkd.in/gS3_W4tP

The bar is so incredibly low. Treat buyers like humans. Respond in a timely manner, empowered by AI. I am deep into the GTM AI scene with the clients we serve. I'm seeing some things:

I just got back from Common Room's SKO. Holy. Moly. This team is on fire. Some of the brightest minds operating here.

Common Room has exciting updates you'll continue to see from people you trust - their customers, their partners, themselves, and allies in the space.

Everyone can buy data from the 5x5 Coop. Everyone can white label another providers intent data. But not every solution is contextualizing it and making sense of it like Common Room is.

Another team - Spara - is taking AI sales and marketing conversion and doing it the right way. Contextualized information, real time, right when you are asking questions and need more information. The implications are massive... take your signals (from Common Room and/or Sequel.io) and leverage that in real time in systems like Spara.

Sequel.io (not a client) taking event data and passing it to other places (pay attention here!). 

The list goes on.

Your buyers want:
- Real time
- Right time
- Right message
- Right relevancy

Spam cannons will not deliver that.

Enterprise and mid-market companies need to deliver a better EXPERIENCE as any vibe-coded app can give the same spot functionality.

Vibe-coded companies look for easy buttons. That's why they spam you.

The sea of noise only continues to grow... to break out of it you need to get intentional.

You need to focus on humanizing the buyer. 

At AudienceLed we are out here, in the field, executing at scale and plugging into all of these systems. 

Blog content on websites as playbooks from experts.

Round-up reports of complimentary brands (AEO + SEO benefits...)

Stories with customers delivered to accounts based on look-alike data + the right signals.

Ads being relevant because of better targeting (shout out Vector 👻!) + more human content.

Humanizing the buyer's journey requires activating the ecosystem.

Keep watching. I post weekly. Follow along. More content soon 👀

We have now run over 1000 co-marketing programs. This is the biggest marketing unlock I've ever come across in my entire career:

After a recent recording session with Kathleen Booth for one of our clients, it dawned on me:

The opportunity to distribute value WITH others is the missing link for reaching buyers that are otherwise inaccessible.

"Others" = 
Complimentary brands
Formal Partners
Influencers
Customers
Agencies

Each with their own unique set of incentives. 

But guess what - most WANT to participate. You just need to make it easy.

You just need to take the first step (no one else is).

I knew this before... but the fact that Kathleen - not a formal 'partnerships' person - is one of the FEW I can name that's organically come to this conclusion herself... is what makes this dawn on me.

Most marketers are so stressed that they focus on what's in front of them.

Our ads.
Our website.
Our email list.
Our social media.

And with more expectation and stress than ever, every activity becomes a rush to produce impact on pipeline and more and more outcomes. 

Then double it. With less budget.

It leads to shorter term thinking (honestly, reasonably so)...

But it misses a whole wide world of opportunity while these blinders are forced on them.

Sharing.

Share your blog.
Share your email distro.
Share your social presence.
Share your event road show.

Not because of something feel-good and immaterial.
Because this has a tangible, increased impact on the metrics you hope to overachieve on.

Third-party validation on your narrative, problem-space, or even solution results in:
- More distribution (eyeballs + attention)
- More conversion (less biased content)
- Access to buyers otherwise unaware

Including third-parties in your marketing AMPLIFIES your marketing. It will not take up a precious spot in your newsletter, blog, or social channel.

Best yet... starting by GIVING opens the opportunity to receive. "The Law of Reciprocity" never went away. We just forgot about it.

As you plan your next marketing campaign... think:
"Who outside of our company could we include in this?"

Then make it easy to do so.
----
You probably already follow her, but take note of what Kathleen Booth is doing and what's upcoming. 

Sequel.io is doing things the right way and has an incredible team on their side (and some upcoming exciting announcements 👀).

Content is your secret to inbound networking. It also increases your "luck surface area." Here's what I mean:

On a recent episode with Sam Yarborough and Jason Yarborough 🐻 on the Friends With Benefits Podcast I dug into my journey with content.

It has allowed me to meet people I would never have been able to meet.

It has gotten me new jobs and new roles.

It has allowed me to start a business.

It has gotten me direct $.

The more you are out there, the more people know you for something. 

And you don't need to be right all the time.

There are people that will be cheering you on in complete absolute silence all while they learn from you. Sometimes they never engage.

But they will still see the content... They will still learn...

Want to hear the full story? And learn how to do this yourself?...

Watch the episode:
https://lnkd.in/gwjPzTH4

Cold email reply rates? ~5%. Connect rates? Single digits. 70%+ of B2B buyers expect RELEVANT experiences before they engage...

The bar is low.
And yet… most teams are still blasting 'personalized' emails.

Or... even worse...
The system is hidden behind a gatekeeper (usually an expensive one).

Common Room's SKO taught me one important thing:
👉 Third-party data is a commodity and the market was sold a lie that it all needs to be 'engineered' together.

Their focus?

Creating the cockpit for revenue teams to actually execute. Not some siloed data centre that requires APIs or Zaps or a degree in data.

Make it make sense.
Make it easy.

Everyone has access to the same data.

Not everyone can:
- Resolve identity properly
- Contextualize that data
- Route and prioritize people intelligently
- Empower reps *in real time*
- And deliver a human experience at scale

I wrote this week about other solutions doing this well. Now, I'm hosting two top experts - in the field practitioners that the market trusts - on Common Room's new live series.

GTM Heroes Live 🦸‍♀️

A community-driven space to talk about what is actually working. 

From us. 
From the experts. 
From YOU.

First session:
Signals on signals on signals. What’s next?

I’ll be joined by Saad Khan and Jacki Leahy 🪄 to unpack:
- GTM AI done the right way
- Why data alone isn't enough
- And why gatekeeping cannot be the solution (your wallets depend on it)

Thurs. Feb 26 | 1pm PT / 4pm ET
https://lnkd.in/gS3_W4tP

If you care about building real GTM experiences that humanize buyers - not just engineered workflows treating them like a datapoint - join us.

(13/30) Something not often talked about in partnerships: The risk of working with partners (& the analysis/mitigation needed).

The reality:

Different industries bring different personas with different buying cycles & different incentives. The same is for partnering potential.

This is partly why partnerships are complex & hard to grasp by non-partner teams (& their source of skepticism).

There are 3 core factors influencing the propensity to partner:

1) Response rates.

Some people are just not accessible. Ex. Cyber security is the hardest persona to reach.

Sales & marketing people are (probably) more accessible on LinkedIn versus email.

Some people are just too busy.

Your TAM, SAM, & SOM are not just hypotheticals - they are reality (probably smaller than you think, too).

This analysis - per partner type - is critical to better manage expectations with the rest of the team.

2) Do they know how to partner?

Is this an already established ecosystem? Is this organic or foreign for them?

If this isn’t something that normally comes by their desk, they will be less likely to participate.

Requiring you to be more concise, more clear, & better understand THEM BEFORE you meet..

If... you were even able to achieve #1.

3) The well dries up.

Every partner program faces this. You build partnerships, they seem to be going in the right direction, 20% produce 80% of your success, then what?

You have to find more? At what success rate?

Or, you show up & ask for leads.

----
These are basic factors that everyone in sales & marketing faces, but there’s an additional layer of complexity here:

Every idea is a good idea until you execute it. Even if they respond and are interested you have to:
- align value
- get teams enabled w/ the right info
- have the relationship owner (w/ the client) be incentivized to take action.

How are we tackling this at AudienceLed?

Co-marketing. At scale. Always on.

If partners don't generate pipe w/ you, why are you waiting while you could be marketing?

If the agency w/ 20 clients has pitched those 20 clients, put the agency in the spotlight & run ads to content you create w/ them.

Third-party validation on your product, narratives, or problem space... in a system you control... that benefits you as much as it does them.

Higher converting content is made when it’s through third-party trusted sources (your partners).

We’ve made a few different campaign types to help us co-market:
- Without permission
- To start a relationship
- To create groundswell in a community

I’ll be sharing them in this series.
----
This is a series dedicated to helping marketing & partnerships teams execute w/ excellence. No gimmicks. No fancy hooks.

I’m Will, passionate about making markets move together & producing results. I’m the Co-Founder of AudienceLed, a demand gen marketing agency producing pipeline with existing spheres of influence & third-party expertise.

Please criticize this content or ask me questions. I’m here to help.

Most businesses don't even know who they are selling or marketing to. Full stop. The bar is incredibly low to give a good buyer experience.

Now I'm not saying teams are incompetent! They have a lot going on and why would it be anyone other than the executives who run the company to make sense of who the actual customer is.

But those executives are also busy... and (likely) don't even speak with customers anymore.

Their initial success was founder-led. 
Then the founder removed themselves from boots on the ground work. 
Then all of that tribal knowledge of what worked, with who, and why, was never documented.

Time and time again I see businesses making millions of dollars that don't have a coherent, documented Ideal Customer Profile (let alone the signals they give to reach them).

The incentive is also not there to document it... but this will eventually come to bite them.

Their marketing becomes less buyer-centric.
The product is built for execs and market data (instead of based on customer feedback).
The RevOps team then builds systems and lists to target people that are hypothetically a fit.
The sales team reaches out to those people with a script approved by people that don't speak to customers.

Then...

Targets are missed.
Buyers churn.
And that fast growing company struggles.

Execs points at leaders.
Leaders point at the market (or worse, the employees).
Employees may have good ideas, but they are too pressured and stressed to spend time building a system.

Then the people who have direct access to the buyer (boots on the ground people) are let go.

And the cycle continues to feed into itself.

I've seen this first-hand at companies. I've seen it from commentary from consultants and agencies like Scott Martinis and Kellen Casebeer.

It makes me wonder... is a more coherent, documented targeted buyer profile (and all the signals associated) the solution?

I think it's a step in the right direction.

What excites me most is an increased focus on the customer and buyer profile... interviewing them, creating content with them, spending time with them (at the exec level)...

Who would have thought surveying your buyer profile would unearth what they actually want instead of in a board room.

Or maybe I'm naive here...
----
Inspired by a great chat I had yesterday with Heath Barnett 🤙 talking shop on how Common Room is changing the game and enabling better alignment with the buyer journey.

Winning by Design + Jacco van der Kooij were brought up too! Which made me happy - been a big inspiration for this journey.

(For the record - Heath and his team DO know who their buyer is and they are architecting their revenue motion accordingly)

There are some amazing insights coming soon from practitioners in the field. Let's build the stack of proof together - in public - that a buyer-first mentality is the sustainable, defensible path to success.

Trying to help change that over here at AudienceLed. Let's go! 💪

"You're wrong, do this" will never work in an industry trained to click easy-buttons to build pipeline... especially when it no longer works.

Instead, we need to:
- Align with their incentives
- Integrate into their existing workflows + behaviours
- Still give them an easy button (perhaps even easier than before)

The first wave of partnerships failed.

Not because it was wrong. Not because it didn't work... but because it was being gate-kept with jargon and vendor-speak.

(I should know...)

I'm on a mission to change that - to create seamless integration of a buyer-first mentality into GTM motions. Through trust. Through the ecosystem.

Full convo with Olivier Roth and The Swarm 🔆 here: https://lnkd.in/gqD32yUF

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🔥 Tom Slocum

Will Taylor

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The Battle

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