Outbound Wizards by SalesRobot

In today's episode, I chat with Gerda, from Leadprinter AI, about running end-to-end cold email systems for B2B companies across a surprisingly wide range of niches—SaaS, video agencies, investment firms, solar panels, real estate, conferences—with a bold guarantee of minimum 20 leads per month or extensions and refunds, which has only failed twice out of 200 clients. We explore two campaigns: a Bali villa real estate campaign where they scraped relevant Facebook groups and LinkedIn to build a hyper-targeted list, ran a webinar funnel via cold email, booked 350 attendees, and sold the villa; and a Latvian financing company campaign where basic industry and job title filters across a 2,000-company TAM produced 150 leads per month—effectively reaching nearly 10% of the entire market every single month. Gerda's consistent observation: the most effective campaigns are almost always the simplest ones, and over-engineering with Clay enrichments and complex personalization introduces more failure points than value. Her prediction: the real winners going forward will be the ones who learn when not to automate—because if everything is automated, people notice and it starts to feel cold. Gerda shares her path from arts and culture studies to door-to-door sales in the US, to freelance copywriting for coaches and online businesses, to joining V-Design as a project manager before discovering cold email when her Estonian team started experimenting and nobody in Latvia was doing it—building the whole thing herself while living the digital nomad lifestyle across six months of travel and six months of Latvian summers. Her advice: understand your numbers—emails to reply, replies to lead, leads to meeting—because once you know the ratios, cold email becomes predictable and scalable. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:21) What Leadprinter Does: End-to-End Cold Email With a 20-Lead Guarantee (01:40) The Refund Model: Extensions First, Refunds Only if Still Short After 60 Days (02:51) Bali Villa Campaign: Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Scraping, Webinar Funnel, 350 Attendees (04:00) Latvian Financing Campaign: 150 Leads a Month From a 2,000-Company TAM (04:37) Simple Always Beats Complex: Fundamentals Over Fancy Clay Tables (05:28) Gerda's Journey: Arts Student to Door-to-Door Sales to Copywriter to Cold Email (07:34) Building the Whole System Herself While Traveling as a Digital Nomad (08:44) Future Predictions: The Winners Will Know When NOT to Automate (10:44) Copywriting Background as the Secret Weapon in Cold Email (13:27) Advice: Understand Your Numbers—It's a Predictable, Scalable Numbers Game🔗 CONNECT WITH GERDA 👥 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 Tanay Mishra, Clay Coach at Clay Bootcamp, about accelerating people into GTM engineering through one-to-one personalized coaching—two weeks of structured self-learning followed by six weeks of twice-weekly sessions where coach and student build a real project together, creating demonstrable ROI and a portfolio piece by the time the program ends. We explore the student demographics: not just RevOps professionals upskilling, but dentists, veterinarians, and an ex-yacht captain who decided sailing was done and GTM engineering was next. Tanay shares his most impactful Clay build: a company research workflow that takes just a domain, runs deep analysis through Perplexity for signals (hiring, fundraising, PR, media), cross-references the vendor's own services and offerings, identifies the perceived pain intersection, and delivers SDRs a rich briefing document with email hooks, subject lines, and conversation starters—all for about $1 per run, saving hundreds of hours on high-value accounts. He also shares a mid-funnel use case: when a prospect fills their email into a live chat on a pricing page, Clay enriches their company in real time and pings the SDR or AE in Slack if it's a unicorn prospect—cutting wait times from 48 hours to seconds. His prediction: MCP adoption will change everything (once he actually figured them out, they stopped being overhyped), and browser use agents improving at a ridiculous rate means any action a human can take online, an AI can replicate and do faster. Tanay shares his path from automating himself out of a job at Accenture in 2011 to discovering Clay at the intersection of GTM and AI and realizing this was the cutting edge worth living on. Saurav also shares SalesRobot's upcoming expert clone feature—AI built in the image of real GTM experts so small businesses get just-in-time access to expertise at a fraction of the cost. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:22) What Clay Bootcamp Does: Accelerating People Into GTM Engineering (01:30) Who the Students Are: Dentists, Vets, an Ex-Yacht Captain, and RevOps Pros (02:52) The Two-Week Plus Six-Week Coaching Model: Build a Real Project, Earn While You Learn (05:15) Clay Beyond Cold Email: Mid-Funnel Pricing Page Flow That Pings SDRs in Real Time (08:30) The Most Impactful Clay Build: Domain In, Full Research Report and Email Hooks Out for $1 (11:03) Simple Scales, Complex Fails: Why the Best Clay Tables Aren't the Most Complex (13:00) Tanay's Journey: Automating His Accenture Job in 2011 to Clay Bootcamp Coach (14:36) Future Predictions: MCP Adoption Changes Everything, Browser Use Agents Are Almost Human (17:03) Anything a Human Can Access Online Will Get Scraped: The New Reality (18:04) SalesRobot's Expert Clone Vision: GTM Expertise Democratized at Scale🔗 CONNECT WITH TANAY 👥 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 Roshan, co-founder at Kale Acquisition, about building cold email systems for companies selling to local businesses—and why staying deeply involved in the revenue conversation long after the lead is generated is what separates a growth partner from just another cold email agency. We explore how Kale generates 250 positive replies a week for their top clients by sending around 30,000 emails weekly, then maps every reply through sentiment analysis directly into the client's CRM so the sales team has full visibility—qualified leads, booked calls, and pipeline all in one place rather than isolated systems. He also shares their unique sales approach: running anonymized outbound on behalf of prospects during the sales cycle itself, proving the system works before asking for a signature. And for their longest-running client, the engagement went from zero BD function to a team of 10 with a newly hired SDR manager—built from scratch over a year together. Roshan also breaks down the local business niche advantage: you're talking to an owner, not five layers of procurement, so sales cycles are short and decisions happen fast. His prediction: they're now actively scaling new client acquisition after years of product-first growth, running the Clay Toronto community, and building a system that retains clients well past the industry average of three to six months. Roshan shares his path from engineering at University of Ottawa to calling his co-founder Mike right as Mike was about to quit his job—20 minutes after his manager conversation—and together building an engineer-first approach to outbound that treats sales as a system problem, not a headcount problem. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:22) What Kale Acquisition Does: Cold Email for Local Business Sellers (01:00) Origin Story: Two Engineers from Ottawa Building Sales Systems (04:00) How the Local Business Niche Happened Organically Through Clay Expert Inbound (07:08) First 30-60-90 Days: Kickoff, Weekly Calls, Anonymous POC Campaigns (09:25) 250 Positive Replies a Week: The Scale of What They're Running (12:15) Integrating Into the CRM: Sentiment Analysis, Reply Routing, and Full Funnel Visibility (13:34) From Zero BD Team to 10 Reps: What a True Growth Partnership Looks Like (15:51) Roshan's Journey: Engineering Mindset Meets Sales, Learning You Can't Sell to Someone Who Doesn't Want It (18:40) The API Story: How Roshan's Question Pushed SalesRobot's API Direction (19:19) Future: Scaling New Client Acquisition After Years of Product-First Growth🔗 CONNECT WITH ROSHAN 👥 LinkedIn 🌐 Clay Experts Page 🔗 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 Sergio Perea, founder at Boost Hero, about what he calls revenue engineering—treating GTM as a system, not a guessing game, by optimizing every part of the funnel from how leads enter to where deals slow down, with data, tools, and clear processes rather than random growth hacks. We explore his core philosophy: AI is a maximizer, not a foundation—you need solid business fundamentals, a clear ICP, a differentiated offer, and simple communication first, and only then does AI actually amplify results instead of amplifying confusion. He also shares his approach to service-based offers: give away 5% of the process for free as a no-brainer lead magnet, so the prospect experiences your quality and thinks "if they did this much for free, imagine what the other 95% looks like." His prediction: teams will get dramatically smaller while revenue goes up—billion-dollar companies with two or three people is not far off, and we're already seeing early signals with companies like Shopify growing 50% while cutting headcount. Sergio shares his path from top-performing B2C appointment setter for e-commerce coaches, to moving into biotech and scientific animation in B2B, to spending three years building out a full-funnel GTM system for one client before discovering Clay through that same client and using Claygent to pull clinical trial data for biotech prospects—the moment that made him go all in. His advice: learn business and economics first, then find the AI tools that execute those fundamentals better—because clients don't pay for someone who knows a piece of software, they pay for someone who understands the whole funnel and can deliver real revenue. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:21) What Boost Hero Does: Revenue Engineering for B2B Companies (01:27) Client Segments: SaaS, Travel Tech, Scientific Animation (02:00) No-Brainer Free Offers: Give Away 5% to Earn the Other 95% (03:19) AI as a Maximizer, Not a Foundation: Fundamentals First Always (05:20) Sergio's Journey: B2C Appointment Setting to B2B Biotech GTM (06:36) Discovering Clay Through a Client and Using Claygent for Clinical Trial Data (07:56) The Aha Moment: When Clay Finds in Seconds What Took BAs Hours (09:00) Future Predictions: Billion-Dollar Companies With Two or Three People (10:08) Shopify's 50% Revenue Growth While Cutting 2,000 People: Early Signal (11:16) Advice: Learn Business and Economics First, Then Layer in the Tools🔗 CONNECT WITH SERGIO 👥 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 Omar, GTM Engineer at Flexcode, an Odoo partner operating across Europe and the GCC, about the research-heavy, high-stakes world of selling enterprise ERP implementations to C-suite buyers where you get exactly one shot and the work before outreach is double or triple the work after. We explore Omar's philosophy on personalization: use Clay and AI for research—college background, industry, company stage, market share, growth signals, family vs. corporate business—but write the message yourself, because AI-generated copy at this level is immediately spotted and the cultural nuance of speaking to a Harvard-trained finance executive versus a technology-school founder versus a GCC business owner requires a human touch that LLMs consistently miss. He also shares his channel strategy: LinkedIn and email only in Europe due to GDPR, but in the GCC, cold calls and WhatsApp outreach work extremely well because decision makers run their businesses on WhatsApp—sending around 100-140 targeted outreaches per week across both regions. His contrarian prediction: AI in GTM is a bubble similar to the dot-com era—real value will emerge but the hype is disproportionate to the investment, tool costs will eventually exceed product value, and the cycle will reset back to mindset and strategy as the actual differentiator. Omar shares his path as a double-major biomedical and systems engineering student, from knowing nothing about lead generation to an internship at Voyance Health where a mentor taught him the full SDR process, to a cloud engineering stint, to joining Flexcode as a hybrid SDR-marketer-technical-implementer who now contributes to both selling and building Odoo itself. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:21) What Flexcode Does: Odoo Partner Across Europe and the GCC (01:29) Why Pre-Outreach Research Is Triple the Work of the Outreach Itself (02:12) Using Clay for Research, Writing Messages Yourself: Why AI Copy Fails at C-Suite Level (03:31) Personalizing by College Background, Culture, Company Stage, and Market Position (06:26) Follow-Up Is Where Sales Actually Happen: Be Thick-Skinned and Keep Going (08:17) Channel Strategy: LinkedIn and Email in Europe, WhatsApp and Cold Calls in GCC (09:47) Omar's Journey: Biomedical Engineering Student to Hybrid GTM and Odoo Implementer (12:38) Why Building and Selling the Same Product Sharpens Your GTM Thinking (13:00) Future Prediction: AI in GTM Is a Bubble, Mindset and Strategy Will Always Win🔗 CONNECT WITH OMAR 👥 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 Jordan Lange, founder at Axon, about building a product that solves the unsexy but showstopping problem underneath all GTM engineering: CRM data quality. Axon acts as an observability layer for HubSpot, identifying messy, duplicate, and missing records that break downstream automations—then cleaning them automatically. We explore a real example where a Zapier automation was completely falling apart because the product was sending clean domain strings while the CRM data had www, HTTPS, and query params attached, meaning there was no shared key to join on across 437,000 records—a problem Axon fixed in hours. Jordan's analogy: putting olive oil in a Ferrari. The GTM engineer is the Ferrari, but if the fuel going in is dirty data, nothing moves. His prediction: GTM engineers are more important than ever as contact data gets commoditized and companies need people who know how to activate it—and right now is the window to build serious infrastructure using relatively cheap AI tools before those tools get expensive as dependency on them grows. Jordan shares his path as the first RevOps hire at Gorgias, scaling from $10M to $70M ARR, watching CRM cleanup slowly eat his entire job as automations multiplied and data quality became the single biggest blocker to growth—quitting to start a RevOps agency, immediately hitting the same wall at his first client, and realizing the problem was unavoidable wherever GTM automation existed, so he built Axon to solve it. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:21) What Axon Does: CRM Observability and Automatic Data Cleanup for HubSpot (02:01) Real Example: 437,000 Records Fixed After a Domain Mismatch Broke All Automations (04:09) The Ferrari Analogy: GTM Engineers Need Clean Fuel or Nothing Moves (05:36) Onboarding Process: Two-Minute Form, One-Hour Analysis, Same-Day Portal Access (07:14) Jordan's Journey: First RevOps Hire at Gorgias, $10M to $70M ARR (08:51) How CRM Cleanup Slowly Ate His Entire Job as Automations Multiplied (09:17) Quitting to Start a RevOps Agency, Hitting the Same Wall at Client One (10:06) Building Axon After Realizing the Problem Was Unavoidable Everywhere (12:49) Future Predictions: GTM Engineers Are Most Valuable Right Now, AI Window Is Open (15:00) The Human Detection Problem: AI Spam Whiplash and Why Human Voice Still Matters🔗 CONNECT WITH JORDAN 💻 Website 👥 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 Nate Calhoun, founder at Inbox Accelerator, about a genuinely different business model in the cold email space—setting up clients' entire email infrastructure for free, getting paid as an affiliate at wholesale rates, so clients pay less than they would going direct while getting full setup support across sending software, email accounts, and data. We explore his core thesis that nobody talks about enough: your offer has to be designed for cold traffic specifically, because the know-like-trust that makes referral and inbound offers work simply doesn't exist when you're reaching a stranger—and he illustrates this with a client running a pay-per-lead model for small businesses that was pulling 12-15% reply rates and 80 meetings a week just by removing ad spend friction from the equation entirely. He also shares the Wall Street data client who closed $40K deals over email without a single call, just by adding "200K LinkedIn followers" to his signature and using direct, no-fluff language suited to institutional buyers—showing how verbiage and positioning shift completely depending on how upmarket you go. Nate shares his thoughts on where cold email infrastructure is heading: data becoming a flat-rate commodity rather than per-row pricing, intent data platforms letting companies identify and reach website visitors by name and net worth, and AI lowering the barrier to entry across the whole stack. His path: started running ads for chiropractors and HVAC companies, spent seven figures in ad spend young, got mentored by his partner Ben on retention over quick money, and evolved into email infrastructure and B2B data tooling. His advice woven throughout: optimize every stage of the funnel, not just output—and if reply rates are low, send 100 times more before blaming the channel. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:21) What Inbox Accelerator Does: Free Infrastructure Setup, Affiliate-Based Revenue Model (05:24) Designing Offers for Cold Traffic: The One Thing Most Marketers Get Wrong (07:00) Wall Street Client: $40K Deals Closed Over Email, No Calls, LinkedIn Credibility in Signature (09:10) Soft CTAs Beat Calendar Links: Optimize Every Stage of the Funnel (14:55) Pay-Per-Lead Client: 12-15% Reply Rates and 80 Meetings a Week (17:12) Google vs Microsoft vs Private SMTP: Why the Big Agencies Always Use the Big Two (19:27) Nate's Journey: Running Ads for Local Businesses to Email Infrastructure and B2B Data (23:31) Future Predictions: Flat-Rate Data, Intent Platforms, Website Visitor Identification (26:07) First-Party Data Independence: Knowing Who Visited Your Site and Reaching Them Directly🔗 CONNECT WITH NATE 💻 Website 🌐 RetargetIQ 👥 Instantly Partner Page🔗 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 Sahil, fractional GTM engineer working with companies that have small TAMs—sometimes as tight as 1,500 accounts—where mass cold email doesn't make sense and the real value comes from building smart in-house GTM systems. We explore his highest-ROI win: not more pipeline, but faster lead routing—building an automated system that pushed positive replies straight to Slack with full enrichment context, so the SDR could call within 10 seconds instead of hours later when the lead had gone cold, taking meeting conversion from 1-in-4 replies to 20-30%. He also shares his approach for a client with only 1-2K accounts: year-round air cover across the decision maker ecosystem so cold outreach never lands out of the blue, automated job change signals triggering enriched SDR briefings with full company context and a draft email, and a dormant lead reactivation sequence pulling from call transcripts that brought back 20% of ghosted leads. His prediction: every SaaS company builds outbound in-house within two to three years, and deliverability skills become the quiet differentiator nobody talks about enough. Sahil shares his path from entrepreneur-with-no-sales-skills to B2B SaaS sales roles, to discovering Clay when there was barely any content about it, spending six months studying during his wife's pregnancy, and landing his first inbound client right after his daughter was born. His advice: don't get intimidated by the top 1%—focus on low-hanging fruit like lead routing first, and build from there. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:21) What a Fractional GTM Engineer Does for Small TAM Clients (02:00) Highest ROI Win: Automated Lead Routing Cutting Response Time to 10 Seconds (03:45) 1-2K TAM Strategy: Year-Round Air Cover, Job Change Signals, SDR Briefings (06:33) Dormant Lead Reactivation From Call Transcripts: 20% Came Back (09:23) Sahil's Journey: Entrepreneur Bug to B2B Sales to Discovering Clay With No Content About It (11:05) Six Months Studying During Wife's Pregnancy, First Client After Daughter Was Born (13:18) Future Predictions: Every SaaS Company Builds Outbound In-House Within 2-3 Years (14:19) Advice: Don't Aim at the Top 1%, Focus on Low-Hanging Fruit Like Lead Routing First🔗 CONNECT WITH SAHIL 👥 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 Lucas Paiva, GTM Engineer at Scient, about building Brazil's GTM engineering ecosystem from the inside—Scient is a go-to-market consulting firm founded by Silicon Valley alumni who brought frameworks like Winning by Design to Brazilian companies doing 50M+ ARR, and Lucas sits at the intersection of their education arm, running a six-week GTM Engineer Certification program and growing the community of practitioners in a country where they've mapped only 20 people with the actual GTM engineer title and around 150 doing similar work without the name. We explore Lucas's first real GTM engineering win: launching an AI SDR for Scient's new certification course, hitting 70 sales against a target of 50 in the first week—learning lead enrichment, lead scoring, and ICP segmentation on the fly, and applying everything he was going to teach before he'd even written the curriculum. He also shares how he manually mapped the entire GTM engineer landscape in Brazil to get precise data on how fast the role is growing, and what their projections look like for the next few years. His prediction: the role will grow very fast in Brazil and become standard at startups—one person who can sit between sales, marketing, and customer success and say "we can automate this, and here's what that frees you up to focus on" is going to be indispensable. Lucas shares his path from Link School of Business entrepreneurship program, to community and content manager at Scient translating GTM newsletters into Portuguese, to spending four weeks of university vacation studying n8n every day, to his founder-teacher Giovanni coming back from Bali, seeing the transformation, and immediately asking him to become their GTM engineer. His advice: understand which AI is best for which task—Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic all have different strengths—study automation to build workflows that do many jobs repeatedly rather than one at a time, and keep a close eye on how established platforms like HubSpot are integrating AI into their core products, because they have to ship something genuinely good for small businesses to adopt it without a consultant army. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:21) What Scient Does: Go-to-Market Consulting and Revenue Architecture for 50M+ ARR Companies (01:33) First 30-60-90 Days: Getting Marketing, Sales, and CS Speaking the Same Language (03:17) Lucas's Role: Growing the GTM Engineer Community and Running the Certification Program (04:01) Lucas's Journey: Business Student to Community Manager to GTM Engineer (05:32) Four Weeks of Studying n8n Every Day During University Vacation (06:03) First GTM Engineering Win: 70 Certification Sales Against a Target of 50 (07:54) Manually Mapping Brazil's GTM Engineer Landscape: 20 With the Title, 150 Doing the Work (09:11) Future Predictions: The Role Will Become Standard at Brazilian Startups (10:01) Advice: Match the Right AI to the Right Task, Build Repeatable Workflows, Watch HubSpot🔗 CONNECT WITH LUCAS 👥 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 Dario Dean, GTM Engineer at Reach, about being the first GTM engineer hired at a merchant of record company helping SaaS and e-commerce businesses expand globally—and what it looks like to build GTM strategy from scratch in-house versus the rinse-and-repeat agency world he came from. We explore his favorite campaign: a LinkedIn content agency client targeting business authors releasing books, where Dario got the agency's internal content playbook, turned it into a Clay prompt, scraped Penguin Publishing to find authors with upcoming releases, pulled chapter-level detail about each book, and generated two personalized LinkedIn content samples per prospect—sending them in the outreach email as a free preview of what working together would look like. Proof of work at scale, made to feel handcrafted. He also shares his Eventbrite scraping campaign for a printing franchise, pulling companies hosting events, enriching them in Clay, and running outbound sequences that drove 60-80 leads per month and deals worth $200K a year per location. Dario's take on where the space is going: it's somewhere between the LinkedIn crowd claiming they replaced 100-person SDR teams in two days and the people dismissing cold outreach entirely—the real answer is automating the research and prep layer while keeping humans close to the actual outreach, with GTM engineering eventually bleeding into RevOps and dark funnel marketing to build a complete picture of who's engaging and when. Dario shares his path from social content and newsletters at marketing agencies, to discovering Apollo during COVID while running virtual team-building events, to joining a cold outbound agency, to landing his current role at Reach. His advice: just get in and do it—he learned Facebook ads by selling dog portraits, learned outbound by running his own campaigns during COVID, and reckons no course or tutorial replaces the feeling of actually spending real money or sending real emails and seeing what happens. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:20) What Reach Does and Dario's Role as First GTM Engineer Hired (01:27) Agency vs In-House GTM Engineering: Rinse-and-Repeat vs Constant Strategy Innovation (03:12) Printing Franchise Campaign: Eventbrite Scraping to 60-80 Leads Per Month (04:30) LinkedIn Content Agency Campaign: Playbook-to-Prompt to Personalized Lead Magnet at Scale (06:10) Proof of Work in Cold Outreach: Making Automated Feel Handcrafted (07:07) Future Predictions: Volume Still Wins But Can't Stand Alone Anymore (08:31) Conference Prep Workflow: Enriching Attendee Lists Before the Event (09:55) GTM Engineering Bleeding Into RevOps and Dark Funnel Marketing (11:16) Dario's Journey: Social Content to Newsletters to Apollo During COVID (12:03) Advice: Just Get In and Do It—Learn Facebook Ads by Selling Dog Portraits🔗 CONNECT WITH DARIO 👥 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 Clark Hess, GTM Engineer at Supio, about building the entire go-to-market data infrastructure from the ground up at a legal AI startup—handling Clay, Gong, CRM architecture, and database-building for a very specific TAM: plaintiff personal injury attorneys in the United States, roughly 60,000 total. We explore two initiatives: first, building custom scrapers to pull every personal injury firm in the country (since ZoomInfo coverage for this niche is thin), then running agents against each firm to identify the right contacts—giving Supio a complete picture of their TAM from nearly day one; and second, a cohort reporting project where Clark is piping Gong transcripts into Clay via webhooks, converting them into field values, creating custom CRM objects per call, and making it possible to analyze patterns across hundreds of calls at once—competitors mentioned, objections raised, deal signals—rather than reviewing transcripts one by one. His insight: combining first-party data from calls with first-party data scraped from prospect websites means you're building a picture of your market according to your own company, not a third-party data broker. His prediction: GTM engineering will become a household name as a career field, Clay is positioned to threaten CRM incumbents, and computer use agents getting good enough to operate Clay autonomously is the genuinely wild card nobody has a confident answer for—but right now the role creates undeniable impact and is only growing. Clark shares his path from political science major to SDR at legal marketing company Avvo, to startup OfferUp where he taught himself web scraping to outprosect his peers, to pivoting into RevOps after realizing he enjoyed finding people who wanted to say yes more than closing them, to getting laid off from his first RevOps role, to a year and a half of contracting in what is now called GTM engineering before Supio brought him on full-time. His advice: learn Clay, get operationally solid with CRM, and work for cheap or free in the beginning just to get reps—because once the numbers are behind you, the opportunities follow. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:21) What Clark Does at Supio: GTM Engineering for a Legal AI Startup (01:31) Cohort Reporting from Gong Transcripts: Webhooks, Clay, and Custom CRM Objects (03:30) Building a Complete TAM Database for 60K Personal Injury Attorneys Across the US (05:23) Why First-Party Data Beats Third-Party Brokers for Niche Local TAMs (06:52) Clark's Journey: Political Science to SDR to Teaching Himself Web Scraping (07:50) Pivoting from Sales to RevOps After Realizing He Liked Finding Yeses More Than Closing (08:50) Getting Laid Off, Going Independent, and Accidentally Becoming a GTM Engineer (09:35) Future Predictions: GTM Engineering as a Career Field, Clay Threatening CRM Incumbents (11:18) Computer Use Agents Operating Clay Autonomously: The Wild Card Nobody Can Predict (12:32) Advice: Learn Clay, Get Solid on CRM, Work Cheap to Get Reps Early🔗 CONNECT WITH CLARK 👥 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 Thomas McCourt, founder at CalendarInvite, about running a B2B lead generation agency focused on small to medium marketing agencies—helping them build outbound systems through cold email and cold calling for clients who are great at marketing everyone else but have no formal offer or sales process for their own services. We explore his campaign for a non-agency client selling into care homes, construction, and schools—where Apollo couldn't build the list so they scraped an online care home directory, enriched the domains in Clay, used Clay's AI to find care home managers, and chained the whole workflow together—only to find the carefully segmented industry campaigns barely scraped 1% reply rates, until Thomas had a simple idea: drop the industry segmentation entirely, search Apollo by job title across all industries, use messaging that had already shown positive signals, and run one broad campaign—jumping to 3% overall reply rate and 10% positive reply rate overnight. The lesson: there's a time for creative workflows and a time to stop ignoring what's right in front of you. Thomas also shares his take on cold email deliverability: he started in 2022 when the channel was more forgiving—buying dodgy cheap domains, skipping warmup, ignoring bounce rates, sending seven-step sequences—and got away with it, but anyone starting today has to get everything right from day one because ESPs and AI spam filters have made the margin for error much thinner. His prediction: infrastructure will keep tightening, agencies that survive will be the ones building their own tools and software rather than depending entirely on third-party platforms, and adaptability at speed will be the defining skill. Thomas shares his path from a manual business development agency in 2022 working with creative agencies and brands, to moving in-house at a communications and events agency, to stumbling across an automated lead gen account on Instagram, discovering Smartlead, Clay, and the whole new wave of sales tech, running his first campaigns just to see what was possible, accidentally landing a client, and building CalendarInvite from there. His advice: follow the right voices on LinkedIn and podcasts, absorb everything, but more importantly put it into practice—and don't be afraid to cold message people you look up to and ask for advice, because most of them will say yes. Enjoy 🙂(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards (00:20) What CalendarInvite Does: Lead Gen for Small to Medium Marketing Agencies (01:20) How Thomas Chose His Niche: Comfort and Familiarity Over Grand Strategy (03:48) First 30-60-90 Days: Auditing Current Sales Process and Building the Offer (06:47) Care Home Campaign: Scraping Directories, Enriching in Clay, Chaining Workflows (09:44) The Pivot That Worked: Drop the Segmentation, Search by Job Title, Watch Replies Jump (11:02) When Simple Beats Creative: The Lesson Thomas Is Taking Forward (12:15) Thomas's Journey: Manual Business Dev Agency to In-House to CalendarInvite (14:44) Discovering Smartlead and Clay on Instagram and Accidentally Landing a First Client (17:00) Why Starting in 2022 Was More Forgiving Than Starting Today (19:24) Future Predictions: Infrastructure Tightening, Agencies Need to Build Their Own Tools (22:14) Advice: Follow the Right Voices, Test Everything, Cold Message People You Admire🔗 CONNECT WITH THOMAS 👥 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.