Outbound Wizards by SalesRobot

In today's episode, I chat with Tom Dingwall, AI Growth Manager at Passionfruit, about why the future of GTM engineering is human connection enabled by AI — not AI replacing humans. Passionfruit is a freelance marketplace helping companies flexibly resource their teams, with an AI tool (PIP AI) built on top to help marketers free up time from repetitive work and focus on real relationships. Tom's role sits somewhere between SDR and AE — he runs outbound, takes calls, and works deals through to close — and he walks through what that looks like day to day, including how Passionfruit's cold calling unit of four optimizes not just on list quality but on what they're saying in the first few seconds and when they're calling. He makes a strong case for AI as a calendar-clearing tool rather than a headcount-cutting one: use it to find the right companies, research why they're a fit, and then show up to the call with nothing to do but actually connect. We also get into his path — PPE at uni, six months in recruitment, then a co-founder at Passionfruit reached out — and why he ended up in sales specifically because of how human the job is. His predictions for the next few years are clear: companies will split into those that overshoot on AI and lose the human side, those that ignore it and fall behind, and the ones that get the balance right and compound hard. He closes with two pieces of advice: if you don't genuinely enjoy talking to people all day, GTM isn't for you — and if you do, go deep on AI tools, because the people who combine both will be world-class.Enjoy 🙂(0:00) Introduction to The GTM Engineer Podcast (0:21) Tom's Role as AI Growth Manager at Passionfruit: SDR, AE, and Everything Between (1:29) Creative Campaigns and Cold Calling Optimization at Passionfruit (3:59) How Tom Uses AI to Build Lists — and When He Steps Away From It (5:18) Why Teams Enabling SDRs With AI Beat Teams Replacing Them (7:31) Tom's Journey: PPE, Recruitment, and Landing at Passionfruit (9:49) Predictions: The Three Types of Sales Teams That Will Emerge in the AI Era (13:35) Advice for Aspiring GTM Engineers: Grit, People Skills, and AI Literacy🔗 CONNECT WITH TOM 👥 LinkedIn 💻 Website 🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV🎥 YouTube Channel🐦 X (Twitter)📸 Instagram💻 Website👥 LinkedIn📧 Email - saurabh@salesrobot.co🙏 LEAVE A REVIEW If you enjoyed listening to The GTM Engineer Podcast, we'd love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show :)👋🏼 GET IN TOUCH You can also reach out with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you've learned from the episodes.

In today's episode, I chat with Marc, GTM Director for LATAM at Eleven Labs, about what it actually takes to open a brand new region for a company that already has strong penetration in the US and Europe—building a hub in Mexico City, covering the entire Latin American market except Brazil, and going after enterprise tech and consumer companies that can use Eleven Labs' voice AI to automate customer success or sales processes internally. The story here is less about a single campaign and more about the outbound culture Eleven Labs has built from the ground up: SDRs carry a target of 50 conversations per week—not just prospects, actual conversations—and that expectation extends to AEs and directors too, because the bet the company has made is that outbound, when the product is genuinely working, is the highest-margin growth motion available. 30% of all Eleven Labs revenue comes from outbound despite the strength of the brand and inbound, and over 80% of the GTM team is hitting targets consistently. Marc's path into this role is a good one—started at 17 helping his brother build one of Spain's leading food delivery companies, founded a rental marketplace called Renty that was ahead of its time, sold it to a Barcelona company called Cipro, went into B2B SaaS at TravelPerk learning enterprise sales, moved to London for a company called 11Next that was building sales agents on top of Eleven Labs voices, realized that wasn't defensible, reached out directly to a Eleven Labs leader who happened to also be Catalan, got in, and within weeks was asked to relocate to Mexico City to own the LATAM opportunity. His prediction cuts against a lot of the current noise: selling will not get automated away because trust between people is what closes deals, customer support will shrink, but anyone who thinks AI replaces the human in a complex enterprise sale is underestimating what's actually happening in those conversations. His advice for anyone starting out in GTM: attitude over tools, passion over process—tools are a commodity, what isn't is the competitive drive to get into accounts before your competitors do and the genuine enthusiasm that makes someone on the other end of a call actually want to listen. Enjoy 🙂(0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (0:20) Marc's Role: GTM Director LATAM at Eleven Labs, Building the Mexico City Hub (1:23) Outbound Culture at Eleven Labs: 50 Conversations Per Week, Every Level of the Team (3:53) 30% of Revenue From Outbound Despite a Strong Brand and Inbound Motion (4:43) Marc's Journey: Food Delivery in Spain at 17, Founding Renty, TravelPerk, 11Next, Eleven Labs (7:41) Relocating From Barcelona to London to Mexico City in the Space of Weeks (8:00) Advice: Attitude Over Tools, Passion Over Process, Get Into Accounts First (9:54) Predictions: Selling Is About People, Tools Will Be a Commodity, Trust Doesn't Get Automated🔗 CONNECT WITH MARC 👥 LinkedIn 🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV🎥 YouTube Channel🐦 X (Twitter)📸 Instagram💻 Website👥 LinkedIn📧 Email - saurabh@salesrobot.co🙏 LEAVE A REVIEW If you enjoyed listening to the podcast, we'd love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show :)👋🏼 GET IN TOUCH You can also reach out with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you've learned from the episodes.

In today's episode, I chat with Michael, founder at DFY Meetings, about why channel selection is the diagnosis most cold email agencies skip entirely—and why he regularly talks clients out of cold email and into direct mail or Upwork depending on how competitive their category actually is. His framework is straightforward: the more crowded the outreach landscape for a given offer, the more unique the channel needs to be, which is why a bulldozer rental company can still crush it on cold email while a web dev agency has basically no room to stand out there but can own Upwork or direct mail. On segmentation, he breaks it into two types—logical segments (target companies hiring Salesforce developers if you do Salesforce dev) and personal segments (you're an e-commerce agency and an avid mountain biker, so let's go after mountain bike brands and mention it)—both of which get you most of the personalization benefit without burning API credits or hiring writers. The campaign story that stands out most is the direct mail play: handwritten cards, personalized or joke gifts tied to a specific angle, sent to a dream 100 list, followed up by email and phone. One example was sending a branded piggy bank with a note about all the money they were about to make together. No one does it, almost no one will start doing it because it's expensive and painful, and the conversion rate is accordingly ridiculous. Michael's backstory runs through Instagram page networks in high school, a first exit before graduation, a VA agency he built in Bangladesh and sold, another VA business with an international team he also sold, and finally DFY Meetings—all four grown on cold outbound, which is exactly why the agency works. His prediction: cold email isn't dying, costs are just rising the way Google Ads and Facebook Ads costs rose before it, and the real problem isn't that more people are good at it but that more people are in it making noise without being good at it. His advice for anyone starting out: ask your first two or three clients to forward you the cold emails they receive, spend 30 minutes going through them, and just don't sound like any of those. Enjoy 🙂(0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (0:30) What DFY Meetings Does: Cold Email, Direct Mail, and Managed Upwork Applications (1:19) The Channel Diagnosis: Why Michael Often Talks Clients Out of Cold Email First (3:01) Segmentation Framework: Logical Segments vs Personal Segments (4:03) Best Performing Campaigns: Wholesale Printer Ink and Why Boring Offers Win on Cold Email (4:29) The Direct Mail Play: Handwritten Cards, Personalized Gifts, and Ridiculous Conversion Rates (5:44) Cold Email Cost Per Lead Is Rising—And Why Direct Mail Can Actually Be Cheaper at the High End (6:57) Michael's Journey: Instagram Pages in High School, Three Exits, and Landing on DFY Meetings (9:08) Predictions: Cold Email Won't Die, Costs Will Rise, Noise Will Increase (10:33) The History of Cold Email Saturation: From Manual VA Scraping to 99-Dollar Unlimited Sending (12:49) Advice: Ask Your Clients to Forward You the Cold Emails They Receive🔗 CONNECT WITH MICHAEL 👥 LinkedIn💻 Website 🎥 YouTube 🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV🎥 YouTube Channel🐦 X (Twitter)📸 Instagram💻 Website👥 LinkedIn📧 Email - saurabh@salesrobot.co🙏 LEAVE A REVIEW If you enjoyed listening to the podcast, we'd love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show :)👋🏼 GET IN TOUCH You can also reach out with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you've learned from the episodes.

In today's episode, I chat with Danilo, founder at Viralnetix, about why he's deliberately steering away from the oversaturated B2B SaaS and IT services space and into niches most agencies won't touch—insurtech, CPG brands, and others where two-plus years of domain experience becomes the actual differentiator rather than just another Clay workflow. He walks through two campaigns in detail: an insurtech ABM play targeting roughly 600 European insurance companies where the team built a full signal-tracking system around leadership changes, new offices, and board movements, then sent automated emails the moment a gap appeared—and where, against conventional wisdom, longer emails outperformed short ones because that's just how insurance people want to be talked to; and a US protein brand campaign where a single SDR was spending his entire day manually building Google Maps lists and sending 20 emails, forgetting to follow up whenever a deal came in, and losing pipeline in both directions—until Viralnetix rebuilt the whole thing in Clay and Instantly, mapped every juice bar and chiropractor in the US, and got him to 2,000 emails a day with his only job now being to call back the positive replies. Danilo's origin story is one of the more entertaining ones I've heard on this show—charging his parents 10% commission on cash at age six, grinding through dropshipping and affiliate marketing failures at 14, building Instagram pages to 100k followers and selling them, launching the first version of Viralnetix as an influencer management company at 19, realizing they were sending manual PDFs for two to three hours per email with nothing to show for it, joining Jeremy at TC9, becoming a partner, burning out hard enough to spend two full months lying on the grass doing nothing, and coming back to restart Viralnetix with Jana. His prediction: Clay tables as a skill will get automated, but the experts who understand the underlying logic will get faster and better because of AI rather than redundant—and Claude Code is already worth watching as an alternative for qualifying records at a scale and cost Clay can't match. His advice: if you're non-technical, go deep on Clay and email infrastructure first; if you're technical, go straight to Claude Code; either way, do it manually by hand first so you actually understand why automating it matters. Enjoy 🙂(0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (0:28) What Viralnetix Does: Growth Partner, Not Just a Lead Gen Agency (1:05) Niching Into Insurtech and CPG to Escape Agency Saturation (3:27) InsurTech Campaign: ABM on 600 European Companies, Signal Tracking, Long Emails That Actually Worked (6:42) CPG Campaign: US Protein Brand, 20 Emails a Day to 2,000 a Day, SDR Now Just Closes (9:01) The Real Competition Isn't Other Agencies—It's the Manual SDR (12:20) Danilo's Journey: 10% Commission at Age Six to Burning Out as a Partner at TC9 (16:37) Restarting Viralnetix After Two Months of Doing Absolutely Nothing (17:17) Predictions: Clay Tables Will Get Automated, Experts Will Survive, Claude Code Is Coming (20:01) Advice: Learn Clay End-to-End First, Then Upgrade to Claude Code If You Want to Go Deeper🔗 CONNECT WITH DANILO 👥 LinkedIn 💻 Website 🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV🎥 YouTube Channel🐦 X (Twitter)📸 Instagram💻 Website👥 LinkedIn📧 Email - saurabh@salesrobot.co🙏 LEAVE A REVIEW If you enjoyed listening to the podcast, we'd love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show :)👋🏼 GET IN TOUCH You can also reach out with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you've learned from the episodes.

In today's episode, I chat with Soumya, founder at GTM Walnut, about engineering revenue pipelines through AI-powered GTM automations that span marketing, outbound, CRM, and content. Soumya works primarily with B2B SaaS and services companies from seed to Series C—companies that have found product-market fit and are now trying to scale. She walks us through two very different campaign types: one running 100,000+ cold emails a month targeting local businesses like dentists and lawyers, scraped from Google Maps via Clay, Applify, and Surfer Dev, enriched using website content for personalization, and generating 100-120+ positive replies per month; and another hyper-targeted ABM play where they go after just 300 accounts a week using a stack of intent signals—online, offline, and social—to surface the 25 or so that are actually worth reaching with a full multi-channel sequence across email, LinkedIn, direct mail, and WhatsApp. Soumya shares her path from organic growth and SEO at a Series B startup, through two head-of-demand-gen roles at seed-stage companies, to spotting the GTM engineering wave coming and going all-in full-time since April 2025 after her co-founder joined the Clay bootcamp. Her prediction: GTM is moving from people-driven to system-driven, with one GTM engineer supervising the entire system and one SDR handling replies—human in the loop, not human at the center. Her advice for anyone starting out: ignore the noise, get the three basics right (list, messaging, infrastructure), learn one or two tools per segment, and resist the urge to build complexity for its own sake—because your clients don't care how many tools you know, they care about meetings. Enjoy 🙂(0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (0:20) What GTM Walnut Does: GTM Engineering, Outbound, CRM, and Content (1:46) Client Profile: Seed to Series C B2B Companies Ready to Scale (2:08) Campaign 1: 100K+ Emails a Month to Local Businesses via Google Maps Scraping (3:43) Campaign 2: 300-Account ABM With Intent Signals and Multi-Channel Outreach (5:01) Soumya's Journey: SEO to Demand Gen to GTM Engineering Full-Time (7:51) Future Predictions: System-Driven GTM, One GTM Engineer, Human in the Loop (10:08) Advice: Get the Basics Right, Learn Two Tools Per Segment, Keep It Simple (12:11) Why Simplicity Serves the Client Better Than Complexity Ever Will🔗 CONNECT WITH SOUMYA 👥 LinkedIn 💻 Website 📧 Email - soumya@gtmwalnut.ai🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV🎥 YouTube Channel🐦 X (Twitter)📸 Instagram💻 Website👥 LinkedIn📧 Email - saurabh@salesrobot.co🙏 LEAVE A REVIEW If you enjoyed listening to the podcast, we'd love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show :)👋🏼 GET IN TOUCH You can also reach out with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you've learned from the episodes.