Best of LinkedIn: Go-to-Market CW 34/ 35

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about go-to market in calendar weeks thirty four and thirty five.

00:00:08: Frenness is a B to B Market Research Partner helping ICT and tech providers identify news channel partners By compressing the full journey from identification To qualified first meeting into four or five weeks.

00:00:20: you can find more info In the description.

00:00:22: Any of today's deep dive?

00:00:23: Is really tailored for you The strategic btb marketing professional?

00:00:27: we are completely cutting through the fluff to examine the top go-to market trends across LinkedIn.

00:00:32: Exactly, and we've got a lot of ground a basic headcount problem to a strict systems discipline, we'll get into the brutal reality of ICP focus.

00:00:45: The rise of what's being called the GTM engineer and how AI is acting as this massive double-edged sword for organizational alignment?

00:00:53: Yeah it's huge shift.

00:00:54: I mean if your company strategy right now involves just hiring another batch of STRs this quarter you might literally be throwing money straight in to a furnace.

00:01:02: Right because Before we can even talk about the people running modern GTM.

00:01:06: We have to look at the math, you know The frameworks that are redefining it.

00:01:10: GTM is no longer just sales plus marketing.

00:01:12: No not at all and that brings up a really great insight from Tim Shoyer.

00:01:16: He actually reframes gtm entirely as a mathematical equation.

00:01:20: the

00:01:20: multiplier one.

00:01:21: yes he argues a GTM Actually equals product multiplied by marketing plus sales in parentheses.

00:01:29: Which is such a brilliant way to visualize it, because you know Tim actually learned this the hard way with a product called Oxygen.

00:01:36: he spent heavily on promotion right building all these top of funnel awareness but he ignored that fact.

00:01:41: they had a product activation rate at just twelve point five percent and a churn rate hovering around eight percent.

00:01:47: And thats why the mechanics for that equation are so unforgiving.

00:01:50: Because marketing and sales their added together They represent your operational effort But The Product is a multiplier.

00:01:58: So if your product multipliers basically, a fraction?

00:02:00: Exactly!

00:02:01: It aggressively drags down the total yield of your spend.

00:02:04: I mean activation isn't just someone logging in once.

00:02:07: it means they actually reach that aha moment where they experience the core value right.

00:02:12: so for only twelve point five percent of users hit that milestone.

00:02:16: Your underlying system has broken.

00:02:19: Well its exactly like pouring high pressure water into bucket with giant hole on bottom.

00:02:24: you know The harder you pump, the faster you lose.

00:02:27: Yeah your GTM just cannot outrun a leaky product which means before you start scaling headcount You have to seal the system and we saw a great blueprint for this from Fiva Zaresti.

00:02:38: He mapped out what a sealed system looks like.

00:02:40: based on his work with over two hundred fifty B-to-B companies.

00:02:43: It's just level funnel

00:02:44: Right!

00:02:45: The six level GTM Funnel.

00:02:46: So it is traffic generation lead capture Lead nurture conversion qualification And then finally retention and expansion.

00:02:54: And the most critical thing there is the deliberate separation between level four, which is conversion and Level five qualification

00:03:01: because legacy models just lump them together right?

00:03:04: Oh all The time a prospect fills out a demo request an immediately A human BDR jumps on a call to ask them like budget authority need timeline All those standard bank questions Which Is

00:03:19: Just Incredibly Slow

00:03:21: And expensive.

00:03:21: It's a huge bottleneck.

00:03:23: five those model isolates qualification because in a modern setup level-five acts as this automated datagate.

00:03:30: the moment a lead converts Modern enrichment tools instantly cross reference them against your firmographic requirements.

00:03:37: So if they don't have the right headcount or revenue, They just get bounced

00:03:40: automatically disqualified and routed entirely away from The sales team.

00:03:44: it surgically protects Your human reps.

00:03:46: so they only spend time on accounts that mathematically fit the profile.

00:03:49: but you know Just because an account Mathematically fits It doesn't mean You should immediately drop them into a sale sequence.

00:03:54: And That introduces this really interesting framework From David Emmanuel Marrera.

00:03:58: he calls it the demand compass.

00:04:00: I love This one

00:04:01: yeah?

00:04:01: It's great.

00:04:01: He basically places every single account in your market onto a two by two grid, and the axes are their current awareness of your brand.

00:04:09: And they're readiness to buy

00:04:10: which completely dismantles that old spray-and-pray outbound motion.

00:04:15: you just can't treat an account with high awareness but low readiness The same way You treat in active in market buyer

00:04:21: exactly if They read Your blog But show absolutely zero buying signals.

00:04:27: no leadership changes No new funding.

00:04:30: Putting them in a high-pressure sales sequence just ruins the relationship.

00:04:34: The compass dictates, you just nurture them!

00:04:36: You wait for a signal...

00:04:38: But the real operational challenge happens in the opposite quadrant?

00:04:42: ...the

00:04:42: danger zone

00:04:43: Right — the danger zone High readiness but low awareness.

00:04:46: Like they just hired a VP In your exact category.

00:04:49: So they're actively looking to buy…but have literally never heard of you.

00:04:52: And traditional marketing takes way too long on that scenario.

00:04:55: You have to interrupt their day immediately before a competitor locks them into a pilot.

00:04:59: Which requires serious surgical intervention, yeah.

00:05:02: and that leads us right in to this next theme which is the level of targeting that honestly most founders are terrified.

00:05:09: implement brutal

00:05:10: ICP discipline.

00:05:11: yes because perfect six-level system and demand compass completely useless if they're pointed at wrong target.

00:05:20: Dal Wister shared some fascinating math on just how expensive a messy ICP really is.

00:05:26: Yeah,

00:05:26: he said founders who apologize for a messy ICP are costing themselves millions and the data backs it up.

00:05:34: He noted that a founder-led team focused relentlessly on one tight segment closes around twenty five percent.

00:05:40: But if you take that exact same team and spread them across three different segments It drops under twenty percent.

00:05:46: And meanwhile He highlighted one hyper-focused customer that closes ninety five point six percent of their inbound leads.

00:05:53: Ninety Five Point Six

00:05:54: Just because they refuse to entertain anyone outside, there are perfect parameters.

00:05:58: But the question is how do you actually know if you've drifted out side your ICP before completely ruin close rates?

00:06:03: Because it happens so slowly?

00:06:05: Well Heidi Atendorf mapped out warning signs for this.

00:06:08: The biggest red flag when you start getting frequent custom requests Like the prospect wants software but need three specific integrations built just

00:06:17: Or they constantly push back saying you're too expensive.

00:06:19: Exactly, which usually just means that your pitching a premium solution to the buyer who only has basic commodity problems or see an easy cheap substitute for your product.

00:06:31: So let's look at Christian Placencia.

00:06:36: he built a GTM motion from scratch for a vertical sauce company in the landscaping industry.

00:06:41: And they didn't just target, you know, landscaping businesses?

00:06:44: No!

00:06:44: They got hyper-specific —they wanted landscape contractors with two to twenty million in revenue and exactly ten to fifty employees.

00:06:51: But demographic data isn't enough to trigger an outbound sequence anymore.

00:06:55: so they layered on a twelve point intent rubric to score every single account...

00:07:00: ...and one of those criteria was just brilliant A prospect scored twelve points if they had an outsourced design footprint.

00:07:07: Let's unpack why that is so powerful!

00:07:10: If a landscaping company's portfolio shows all these high-end complex design projects, but their LinkedIn page show zero in house designers you've just found hidden operational bottleneck

00:07:21: right?

00:07:21: You know for a fact They are outsourcing designs

00:07:23: which eats Their margins and slows down

00:07:25: quoting.

00:07:26: So the use These signals And The result was insane seventy three thousand seven hundred and twenty-seven touch points, which yielded fifty three booked meetings in just fifty days.

00:07:36: That is wild volume!

00:07:38: And by the way before we look at the brand new org chart required to actually execute seventy three thousand touchpoints make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss our future deep dives.

00:07:46: You don't want to miss them because this sheer volume of that campaign really highlights the problem.

00:07:52: with a traditional sales org chart A team of junior SDRs manually scrolling through LinkedIn cannot execute a twelve point intent rubric at that scale.

00:08:02: The math just doesn't

00:08:02: work.".

00:08:03: Which brings us to the rise of the GTM engineer, David Turretz mapped out the twenty-twenty six GTM work chart and it completely rewrites who is pushing.

00:08:11: In a ten-seat team, three roles have shifted entirely from managing to building.

00:08:17: Right so the VP of sales instead sitting in spreadsheets doing forecasting becomes a GTM engineer running outbound

00:08:23: The SDR manager become a Rebops GTM Engineer.

00:08:26: Sales Ops becomes content engineer.

00:08:28: But the biggest shift is at bottom of chart.

00:08:30: It isn't spreadsheet or outsourced agency anymore.

00:08:34: it AI

00:08:35: Like Claude Code.

00:08:36: Exactly!

00:08:37: AI's doing sourcing, routing and heavy lifting which allows the humans to focus on strategy.

00:08:44: And this changes team dynamics completely.

00:08:47: Rob Cook shared his experience at Clay and he says there is no longer an SDR-AE handoff, it's just dead.

00:08:54: Wait really?

00:08:55: No hand off at all?

00:08:56: None!

00:08:56: Instead SDRs and GTM engineers work as a partiled team in exact same account.

00:09:02: The GTM engineer interprets signals and prioritizes territory mechanically.

00:09:07: Well, the SDR handles the actual multi-threading in human conversations.

00:09:11: Exactly!

00:09:12: But there is a huge warning here from Lauren Chumet.

00:09:15: she said hold on.

00:09:15: just because someone knows how to use clay or N-A-N at end doesn't mean they actually understand your strategy?

00:09:20: Oh that's such critical point.

00:09:22: tech scales strategy it cannot invent if you're ICP wrong.

00:09:26: Better Enrichment gives more information.

00:09:28: with the wrong accounts

00:09:29: faster You are failing machine speed

00:09:32: exactly and that warning perfectly segues into the elephant AI.

00:09:38: It's not just a tool, it is fundamentally changing internal alignment.

00:09:42: Jay Gaines pointed this out.

00:09:44: He said that AI actually accelerates cross functional misalignment.

00:09:48: How so?

00:09:48: Well previously sales marketing and product drifted apart slowly but now A sales leader can literally build their own segmentation in ICP using AI over single weekend without ever talking to marketing.

00:10:03: Oh wow!

00:10:04: So you get shadow marketing

00:10:05: Exactly.

00:10:06: Suddenly internal teams are sprinting in completely different directions at light speed.

00:10:10: and while internal teams were fragmenting, AI is changing the buyers themselves.

00:10:14: Frank Casale noted that sellers now have to navigate three distinct AI buyer types often inside of the exact same account.

00:10:21: Right!

00:10:21: The buying committee has fractured

00:10:23: Very much.

00:10:23: so First you have an offense buyer.

00:10:25: They're looking for growth revenue a competitive advantage.

00:10:28: Then your defense buyer

00:10:29: Like legal or compliant?

00:10:30: Exactly they worried about risk data privacy, guardrails and you pitch aggressive automation to them.

00:10:36: You kill the deal

00:10:37: instantly.".

00:10:37: And then there's the no-fence buyer?

00:10:39: Right!

00:10:39: The No-Fence buyer is just outright refusal.

00:10:41: they see AI as a threat to their job...and they want to block the purchase entirely.

00:10:47: So one generic sales strategy will mathematically fail…and making matters worse—as Alon even pointed out AI makes execution so cheap and easy now that everyone just sounds the same.

00:10:59: The digital noise is deafening,

00:11:00: it really is.

00:11:01: anyone can spin up a hundred cold emails in three minutes.

00:11:05: So Alon argues that positioning and perception you know?

00:11:09: The old-school fundamentals of marketing are actually the most valuable parts of the job.

00:11:13: Now

00:11:13: if you don't have a real point of view ai Just multiplies your relevance

00:11:17: exactly.

00:11:19: Andrew Riesenfeld summed it up perfectly.

00:11:21: He said the GTM edge used to be having better data than it was having better intense signals,

00:11:27: but now those are commoditized

00:11:28: right.

00:11:28: so today The Edge is context.

00:11:30: It's connecting external data to your first-party data So that human reps and AI agents know exactly why?

00:11:36: It's the right time to

00:11:37: act!

00:11:37: It's not about volume anymore.

00:11:38: It's about flawlessly timed relevance

00:11:40: Exactly.

00:11:41: We've covered a ton today, but I want to leave you with one final provocative thought from Louis Fernandez to mull over.

00:11:48: Oh this is a good

00:11:49: one.

00:11:49: What if the metrics we use to measure all of success are actually corrupting our behavior?

00:11:54: Remember Goodheart's Law

00:11:56: When a measure becomes a target it stops being a good measure.

00:11:59: Yes, if you are targeting MQLs in pipeline volume your system might just be fighting itself.

00:12:07: Are your GTM targets actually economically healthy or have they been gamified by the team?

00:12:12: Something to think about

00:12:13: If you enjoyed this episode.

00:12:15: new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:12:17: Also, check out our other editions on field marketing channel and partner marketing AI in B to be more tech AVM and social selling.

00:12:24: Thanks so much for joining us on this deep dive.

00:12:26: Don't forget to subscribe And we'll see you next time.