Best of LinkedIn: Go-to-Market CW 10/ 11

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about go-to market in calendar weeks ten and eleven.

00:00:08: Frenis a B to B Market research company helping enterprises gain customer competitive positioning insights needed to drive GTM success.

00:00:21: Top Go To Market Trends.

00:00:22: Seen Across LinkedIn.

00:00:23: Welcome everyone to this deep dive because you know if you think building a bad product is the most expensive mistake an early-stage company can make right now You're well, you're actually mistaken.

00:00:34: Oh yeah

00:00:34: one hundred percent.

00:00:35: today We are cutting straight through all of the noise to look at the real completely unfiltered state of go-to market Right Now.

00:00:41: so if your B to be pro and you're feeling Just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tactical advice out there cuz it's a lot This is for you.

00:00:49: we're focusing purely on what top operators or actually sharing from The trenches

00:00:53: Ray, and looking at the data from the past couple of weeks we really have to look pass-the-hype because I mean everyone is just so desperate to jump straight into shiny new AI tools.

00:01:03: And you know automated outbound sequences

00:01:05: Oh absolutely!

00:01:06: The Shiny Object Syndrome's real.

00:01:08: It's

00:01:08: So Real.

00:01:09: But a massive theme is emerging from the practitioners who are actually doing the work, which is The absolute necessity of building the foundation first and we see this clearly in a pattern that Scott Travis recently pointed out regarding That exact expensive mistake you just mentioned right?

00:01:24: The costliest error.

00:01:25: A startup makes isn't the product it's It's Actually hiring a VP of sales before establishing an actual go-to market system.

00:01:36: that make so much sense when you look at how companies typically scale, because you know a founder will use their own reality distortion field.

00:01:42: Their personal network just sheer willpower to get the company into its first one or two million in revenue.

00:01:48: Yeah

00:01:49: The Founder Magic Exactly!

00:01:50: But then the board demands scale.

00:01:52: so what do they do?

00:01:53: They go out and hire VP of sales with this sparkling resume from some massive tech giant but nine months later that VP is gone...the cash has totally burned..and the founders right back to selling.

00:02:03: Yeah, and the failure wasn't necessarily of the person.

00:02:06: It was a sequence of events right?

00:02:08: They expected the VP to operate a machine that literally hadn't been built yet

00:02:13: Which means we have talk about what actually constitutes That Machine And it starts with strategy.

00:02:19: in positioning KKKator brought some heavy scrutiny into this area recently.

00:02:24: He identified hidden gaps that just quietly drain revenue from GTM teams.

00:02:30: What was at the top of his list?

00:02:32: At the very top are fuzzy ideal customer profiles, your ICPs alongside misaligned messaging.

00:02:38: You can hire an army to best sales reps in the world but if strategic targeting isn't ruthlessly defined they're just going generate surface level demo requests and those inevitably turn into churned accounts.

00:02:50: Wow yeah I mean if you're ICP is fuzzy it's kind like passing a net on desert wondering why aren't catching any fish?

00:02:55: That exactly that!

00:02:59: Precision is literally everything right now.

00:03:01: It is and Jamie Walsh recently provided a really stark wake-up call on why this precision cannot wait until tomorrow because we used to rely on This.

00:03:11: um, this eighteen to thirty six month differentiation window.

00:03:15: Oh

00:03:15: the good old days.

00:03:17: Right.

00:03:17: if you built a great product You had time while your competitors scrambled to hire engineers.

00:03:22: design alternatives raise capital all of that

00:03:24: But AI has entirely collapsed that timeline.

00:03:27: Completely, as Walsh noted a competitor can now replicate your software mode in days.

00:03:32: they can spin up a minimum viable product over a single weekend.

00:03:35: the Timeline cushion is just gone so you're defensible wedge In The Market.

00:03:39: like Your unique perspective and positioning it Has to be locked-in long before You write the code for your next feature.

00:03:46: If you treat positioning As A phase two problem you know build the Product First And Figure out the Messaging.

00:03:52: We'll

00:03:52: Be in Trouble

00:03:53: Exactly.

00:03:54: You will arrive at the market to find competitors offering these exact same features, but with a sharper story.

00:03:59: I have asked though...I mean if Features can really be copied in a weekend.

00:04:03: How do you actually figure out where you belong on the Market?

00:04:07: Because Sangram Vashar offers A really useful framework for this.

00:04:10: He categorizes The market into three distinct lanes.

00:04:13: Okay let's break those down.

00:04:14: Yeah so lane one is the product first Lane.

00:04:17: This Is Where you compete purely On efficiency and volume.

00:04:20: Your Product basically gets cheaper To produce every day And you win by having the widest distribution.

00:04:25: Got it, like a sheer numbers game.

00:04:27: Exactly then lane two is the customer first line.

00:04:30: This where you compete on transformation The customers business actually operates differently because of your intervention

00:04:37: Right

00:04:37: and that's what allows you to command premium pricing.

00:04:39: Okay so whats third lane?

00:04:41: Well danger lies in lane three Which Vajra calls the muddy middle.

00:04:45: Uh oh Muddy Middle.

00:04:47: Yeah its the instability zone.

00:04:49: You aren't the cheapest option.

00:04:50: So lose volume gain But you aren't the most transformational either, so...you lose the premium game.

00:04:55: Oh that's a tough place to be!

00:04:57: It's terrible.

00:04:58: companies get stuck here because they're terrified of alienating any potential buyer.

00:05:02: So they try to compete on everything and end up winning on nothing.

00:05:07: it forces You The Listener To ask A very difficult question Are you pretending your in lane two when Your market realities actually Place you In Lane One?

00:05:17: Because pretending you're in lane two when your really in Lane one is where companies go to die.

00:05:21: Absolutely,

00:05:22: it's just fascinating how different business cultures approach this exact challenge of finding their lane.

00:05:29: A.L.

00:05:29: Harrison actually recently shared a cultural breakdown of GTM philosophies.

00:05:34: that is just, it's as hilarious as it is observant.

00:05:36: Oh I saw this.

00:05:37: tell me about the Israel approach.

00:05:38: So in Israel The GTM philosophy Is largely based on pure Chutzpah.

00:05:42: Just

00:05:42: pure audacity Exactly!

00:05:43: The product might not even exist yet But they're out there selling it Inventing pricing tiers Mid-conversation Texting prospects On WhatsApp at midnight.

00:05:52: That is wild.

00:05:53: And how does that compare to US?

00:05:55: Well, contrast that with the U.S.

00:05:56: approach.

00:05:57: here teams will build a beautiful majestic notion document outlining their strategy.

00:06:03: they'll calculate total adjustable market down to the decimal craft of flawless pitch deck

00:06:07: but delay actual revenue generation for months

00:06:10: exactly holding out for that multi-million dollar enterprise deal.

00:06:14: and then in Europe Companies often get completely paralyzed waiting for GDPR compliance permissions that just never arrive.

00:06:21: So they have a perfect legal checklist, but absolutely zero sales.

00:06:25: That is painfully accurate.

00:06:27: But yeah let's assume you navigate all of that.

00:06:29: You know your lane?

00:06:30: Your messaging is sharp and you ever real strategy?

00:06:32: that strategy Is entirely useless if your infrastructure cannot support it.

00:06:36: oh hundred percent.

00:06:37: you need someone to actually build the operational machine.

00:06:40: And this brings us to a massive shift in how teams are structured.

00:06:44: We're seeing the rapid rise of what is arguably the hottest new role in B to be marketing right now.

00:06:49: The GTM engineer

00:06:50: Yeah, the GTM Engineer Michael Sirugia recently charted the Incredibly rapid evolution of this position because if you think about it just a couple years ago In twenty-twenty four the data orchestration platform clay basically willed this category into existence.

00:07:06: Yeah,

00:07:06: it was super niche back then

00:07:07: a very niche but looking at the landscape now in twenty-twenty six This role has blown up.

00:07:12: It's become The core infrastructure builder for entire revenue teams.

00:07:17: it touches outbound sequencing SEO CRM data hygiene complex account based marketing.

00:07:23: it's everywhere.

00:07:24: It really is, and to understand what a GTM engineer actually does on like a random Tuesday afternoon, Jorge B. Macias posted this hilarious but incredibly accurate breakdown of the daily realities of the job.

00:07:35: Oh

00:07:36: I love this list!

00:07:36: What's on it?

00:07:37: Well...it is way beyond just logging into software.

00:07:40: they're mastering dozens of disparate data providers.

00:07:42: They are figuring out how to scrape target websites at scale without getting their IP addresses blocked

00:07:46: Which is an art form in itself.

00:07:48: Right And crucially..they are managing complex JSON data structures which is basically the underlying code language that allows different software tools to actually talk with each other.

00:07:58: And on top of all this technical work, they act as business psychologists.

00:08:03: Psychologists?

00:08:03: Yeah trying to mediate the eternal war between sales and marketing All while trying explain their family what a GTM engineer means at Thanksgiving.

00:08:13: Good luck!

00:08:14: But bridging gap in deep technological logic and human-sales strategy really is core.

00:08:20: OffmaningHodgery pointed out that we're currently undergoing a major transition in how this job functions.

00:08:25: How so?

00:08:26: He describes it as shifting from the clay era into the Claude Code Era.

00:08:31: Okay,

00:08:31: the Claud Code Era.

00:08:32: What does that mean for The Operator?

00:08:34: Well, in the previous era an operator was mostly just clicking around a UI running manual plays but The Cloud Code Era is defined by autonomous orchestration.

00:08:44: So instead of an operator clicking a button to enrich a list of hundred leads which are linear work A GTM engineer builds a compounding system Like

00:08:51: a script.

00:08:52: Exactly!

00:08:53: They build a script that gives AI agent strategic parameters to evaluate every future lead autonomously They're essentially encoding their strategic judgment into software.

00:09:04: Okay, I have to push back on that narrative a little longer.

00:09:06: Oh really?

00:09:07: Why is that?

00:09:08: because autonomous orchestration sounds like this perfect utopian Silicon Valley dream.

00:09:13: But in reality most gpn professionals i talked who are just trying to get there marketing automation platform To sync with their CRM without the whole thing crashing.

00:09:23: Fair point fair point

00:09:24: right.

00:09:24: Like our.

00:09:25: we really an era of compounding Autonomous AI systems or is the reality much messier?

00:09:32: If we look at the first-ever state of GTM engineering report by Jan Brockvich and Anshul Bhatia, The facts on the ground are pretty sobering.

00:09:39: What did the data say?

00:09:40: Well yes...the compensation is high!

00:09:47: But the report highlights that the vast majority of these practitioners are entirely self-taught, and most still in their very first year doing this specific job.

00:09:56: Wow!

00:09:56: So they're getting paid really well but figuring it out as they go?

00:09:59: Exactly And Shreya Soni raised a brilliant question on this front.

00:10:03: Do we have a talent problem or seat design problem?

00:10:06: Because despite high salary GTM engineers currently spending sixty percent of time on manual task work

00:10:14: Wait...sixty percent?

00:10:15: Sixty

00:10:15: percent just doing basic list building and manual data enrichment.

00:10:20: They're basically highly paid data entry clerks for over half their week, they were hired to do high level judgment work like signal design but there bogged down in manual tasks...

00:10:30: And you know why they are stuck doing that manual labor right?

00:10:32: Right!

00:10:33: Because the tech stacks they inherited is an absolute disaster which brings us directly into our next major area of focus stack simplification & signal routing.

00:10:43: We've really reached a point where a massive tech stack is just severe liability.

00:10:47: Well, it's totally liable like I'll be you and called out this phenomenon perfectly.

00:10:50: She noted that posting a diagram of your fifteen tool GTM stack on linkedins has become the new vanity metric.

00:10:56: Oh

00:10:56: with all the pretty color-coded arrows.

00:10:58: Yes The arrow mapping out this crazy web of integrations.

00:11:03: It looks sophisticated But in practice more tools simply equal more chaos reporting headache.

00:11:11: When your sequencing platform says two hundred emails were delivered, but your CRM only logged a hundred and forty activities which system do you trust?

00:11:19: You can't trust either!

00:11:20: You're just paying expensive subscriptions to inject noise into your own business.

00:11:24: Exactly

00:11:24: So what's the antidote?

00:11:26: Nico Jarrell said we need to ruthlessly cut the stack in half.

00:11:29: He argues that four layers of technology actually matter.

00:11:33: Just four, what are they?

00:11:34: First

00:11:34: is your system of record.

00:11:35: That's your CRM if it isn't in there?

00:11:37: It didn't happen.

00:11:38: second Is your system Of context.

00:11:40: this might be a tool like octave or github repo.

00:11:43: This is the logic brain where you're.

00:11:44: AI pumps and ICP definitions live

00:11:47: make sense.

00:11:47: What's the third

00:11:48: third as Your system of orchestration Lake clay think of this has The muscles it pulls data from the Context layer enriches it And moves along.

00:11:55: and finally your System of activation.

00:11:58: that's your sending Tool Like lemlist or unify.

00:12:01: one tool per Layer.

00:12:02: That's it.

00:12:03: And you don't even need a massive enterprise budget for that lean approach!

00:12:07: Judith Zoo recently shared this highly actionable example of a thousand dollar-a month stack

00:12:13: A THOUSAND-A MONTH?

00:12:14: THAT'S INCREDIBLY

00:12:15: LEAN Very lean.

00:12:16: She used Apollo, Clay Smart Lead, Hayreach and HubSpot...that's IT!

00:12:21: ...and that Hyper Lean Stack successfully generated two hundred fifty thousand dollars in revenue.

00:12:26: That

00:12:26: is a serious ROI

00:12:28: Huge.

00:12:29: It proves its not about the sheer number tools.

00:12:31: It's about seamless connection.

00:12:33: And that seamless connection is vital, especially when it comes to buyer intent.

00:12:38: Matteo Foix highlighted a crucial insight here.

00:12:41: most teams think they have a signal problem like capturing enough intent, but Flaw argues they actually have a routing problem.

00:12:48: A routing probably?

00:12:48: Yeah

00:12:49: when a signal fires whether it's website traffic or key champion changing jobs and needs to trigger the right motion instantly.

00:12:56: if It just becomes a statistic on a dashboard its useless.

00:12:59: It means automatically route an alert to the account executive slack channel with pre-drafted email.

00:13:04: Okay is to pump the brakes here for second.

00:13:05: pumping the breaks.

00:13:06: okay

00:13:07: because this lean stack With perfect automated routing sounds incredible.

00:13:11: But what if the data routing to these stacks is just absolute garbage?

00:13:16: Joe Ligretta and Rashmi Kishin-Kanjwani both sounded the alarm on this.

00:13:20: Oh,

00:13:20: The State of CRM?

00:13:21: Yes!

00:13:22: If your CRM data is a mess full of duplicates in outdated contacts AI just scales bad decisions faster.

00:13:30: Applying AI to bad gate is like putting Ferrari engine into car with square wheels.

00:13:34: it makes disaster happen faster.

00:13:36: That's terrifying but very accurate analogy garbage in garbage out at speed of light

00:13:41: Exactly.

00:13:41: But if company does manage get that right.

00:13:45: They simplify the text act, clean their data.

00:13:47: let AI handle the routing.

00:13:49: It forces us to ask what exactly are the humans supposed do?

00:13:54: That is a defining question right now which brings this to our final theme sales enablement teams and human element.

00:14:00: because The Human Role isn't disappearing it's just shifting.

00:14:04: be on Henry talk about how the SDR role changing AI handles signal recognition but humans must handle trust

00:14:11: And Trust becoming ultimate currency.

00:14:14: Mental Forbes uncovered this fascinating paradox when talking to founders.

00:14:18: Because AI makes generating noise totally effortless, the premium on human credibility actually skyrocketed

00:14:25: because our inboxes are just flooded with AI emails.

00:14:29: exactly The inbox is a useless channel of infinite noise.

00:14:32: now so in-person relationships Are becoming the ultimate sales lever for enterprise deals?

00:14:42: But to build that trust, the whole team has to be aligned.

00:14:45: Jack Berry reminds us that GTM isn't just sales.

00:14:48: it's marketing product and customer success.

00:14:51: acting as a growth engine together

00:14:52: Yeah!

00:14:53: And Mike Timulti pointed out getting all those humans on this same page requires real sales enablement which is not just reciting his shiny powerpoint deck right?

00:15:00: It's about driving behavior change at scale.

00:15:03: but I want spare thought for people holding this altogether when fails.

00:15:06: Oh operations teams.

00:15:07: Yes Mary Gilbert made this incredible observation.

00:15:11: RevOps and MOPs teams have become the shock absorbers for organizational misalignment.

00:15:17: when The strategy is broken leadership rarely fixes it.

00:15:20: they just ask ops to build another dashboard To patch It over,

00:15:24: it's so true.

00:15:24: operations can only measure how broken a strategy They can't fix

00:15:28: it.

00:15:28: Exactly,

00:15:29: you know connecting all of this leaves me with a final somewhat provocative thought.

00:15:33: if AI eventually handles All the data The routing even the initial technical outreach does go to market Eventually split into two entirely separate motions.

00:15:42: Two separate motions like what?

00:15:44: Like one motion that is purely API-to-API for the technical buy in your ai negotiates With their Ai.

00:15:50: and then A second Motion That Is Purely Human To Human.

00:15:53: No Technical Selling Just Dinners Handshakes And Building Prust.

00:15:56: It's Definitely Want Something the listener to chew on as they look at their own operations.

00:15:59: Wow, that's a massive paradigm shift!

00:16:02: Are you preparing for those

00:16:21: roles?