Don’t Become A GTM Engineer In 2026 ft. Enzo Carasso

This Is What Modern Community-Led Growth Looks Like ft. Juan Luis Ramirez

In today's episode, I chat with Nelson and Juan from Tennis One, a tennis coaching academy in Auckland, New Zealand, that's building itself into a lifestyle brand rather than just a service.  The GTM story here is unlike anything else on the show: Juan runs an influencer outreach operation entirely on Instagram DMs, targeting micro to macro influencers between 5K and 50K followers whose content naturally aligns with the Tennis One lifestyle, offering them free coaching in exchange for content creation. The reply rate is 60-80%, and the first seven months produced nothing—then one influencer said yes, and the snowball effect took over. Mission Bay Tennis Club just won the 2025 New Zealand Tennis Club of the Year award, and inbound brand partnerships now come to them rather than the other way around. Juan's background runs from waiter in a Colombian restaurant in Takapuna—where he consistently outsold every other staff member on the monthly special—through an IT degree he pivoted away from, into tech sales startups, and eventually into GTM engineering at Tennis One. Nelson's take as the business owner is straightforward: one specialized person who can contact influencers effectively and build the system around it is worth more than a full marketing team running ads. Their advice: always lead with value, think in systems, show employers outcomes not effort, and persevere long enough to find the trigger—because once it clicks, it compounds fast.  Enjoy 🙂 (0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards  (0:26) What Tennis One Does: Coaching Academy Turned Lifestyle Brand in Auckland  (2:17) The Instagram Influencer Outreach Playbook: 60-80% Reply Rate, Free Coaching for Content  (5:29) Seven Months of Nothing, Then One Yes, Then a Snowball—and a National Club Award  (7:45) Juan's Journey: Top Waiter to IT Student to Tech Sales to GTM Engineer  (9:46) Predictions: GTM and RevOps Are the Careers of the Future, SDRs Are Being Replaced  (12:49) Advice: Lead With Value, Think in Systems, Show Outcomes Not Effort, and Persevere 🔗 CONNECT WITH JUAN 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-luis-ramirez/] 📸 Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/tennisone_nz/] 💻 Website [https://clubspark.kiwi/tennisone]  🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV 🎥 YouTube Channel [https://www.youtube.com/@_sauravgupta/videos] 🐦 X (Twitter) [https://x.com/saguppa] 📸 Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/saurav_salesrobot] 💻 Website [https://www.salesrobot.co/] 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurav-g-43b959225]📧 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.

Don’t Become A GTM Engineer In 2026 ft. Enzo Carasso

In today's episode, I chat with Enzo Carasso, founder at C17 Lab, about why he's actively steering away from B2B SaaS clients and going deep on professional services, manufacturers, and logistics—industries that represent 80% of US GDP but get ignored by most outbound agencies chasing the same SaaS slice.  The campaign story is one of the best on the show: a client getting 500 leads a month but converting at 5% because their prospects—traditional business owners—were responding to emails at 6-7am from their phones, then disappearing into the field all day. The fix wasn't better copy. It was switching device: email replies triggered an SMS prompt that moved the conversation to the SDR's phone, where these owners were already comfortable. The result was a dramatically higher show rate. Enzo has since built SMS and iMessage directly into the post-reply funnel and is pulling heavily from B2C info product playbooks—abandoned cart logic, newsletters for anyone who replies regardless of outcome, multi-channel nurture sequences—and applying them to B2B. His background is corporate outbound at Booking.com and Square, where he was leading acquisition records quarter over quarter before deciding at 29 he wasn't going to be working for someone else at 30. His prediction: the mid-tier agency charging $4-7k is going to get squeezed out—what survives is either the high-volume factory model or the genuinely high-ticket strategic partner, with software-like fulfillment on both ends. His advice is the most contrarian on the show: don't become a GTM engineer. The tools are becoming commoditized fast, and what actually matters now is the strategic thinking that connects them to ROI—study other industries, find alpha, and think like a business owner first.  Enjoy 🙂 (0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards  (0:20) What C17 Lab Does: Full Funnel Revenue Engineering From Lead to Booked Call  (1:09) Why Enzo Is Running Away From B2B SaaS—And the GDP Argument Behind It  (4:00) The Device-Switching Campaign: 500 Leads a Month, 5% Conversion, and the SMS Fix  (7:15) Building SMS and iMessage Into the Post-Reply Funnel  (9:20) What B2B Can Learn From B2C: Abandoned Cart Logic, Newsletter Retargeting, Multi-Channel Nurture  (10:43) Enzo's Journey: Booking.com, Square, Crushing Acquisition Records, Going Solo at 30  (12:25) Predictions: The Mid-Tier Agency Dies, Two Models Survive—Factory or High-Ticket Strategic Partner  (16:56) Advice: Don't Become a GTM Engineer—Become Someone Who Thinks Strategically About ROI 🔗 CONNECT WITH ENZO 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/coldoutreach/]  💻 Website [https://www.c17.ai]  🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV 🎥 YouTube Channel [https://www.youtube.com/@_sauravgupta/videos] 🐦 X (Twitter) [https://x.com/saguppa] 📸 Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/saurav_salesrobot] 💻 Website [https://www.salesrobot.co/] 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurav-g-43b959225]📧 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.

The GTM Industry Has A Shiny Object Problem ft. James Barrell

In today's episode, I chat with James, founder at Litehouse, about why offer, volume, and deliverability are still the three pillars that actually move the needle—and why most of the fancy workflows people post about on LinkedIn are more performance than necessity.  The standout campaign is a competitor-ranking angle for a local SEO client: find what keyword the prospect wants to rank for, scrape who's outranking them, pull that competitor name into the copy, and pitch an asset breaking down exactly why the competitor is winning. Simple, personal, and it works because the prospect already knows and wants to beat that competitor. James also walks through an automated audit workflow where a positive reply triggers Clay to pull context, Claude generates a bespoke doc, and it gets sent back as a PDF—fast turnaround, high perceived value. His take on the market is worth paying attention to: 18 months ago he was sending 20-30 emails per inbox per day comfortably; now it's a max of 5 new contacts, inboxes burn out in months, and $4-5k a month is the new floor to run cold email properly. Volume is the underrated lever right now—doubling sends will often outperform spending hundreds of hours optimizing copy. His path started with a web design agency, using cold email to generate their own meetings, realizing lead gen was the only thing reliably working, and deciding to sell that as the service itself. His advice: don't chase shiny objects, listen to your own data over LinkedIn noise, and stick with things long enough to actually get good at them.  Enjoy 🙂 (0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards  (0:21) What Litehouse Does: Cold Email at Scale, Clay Automations, LinkedIn  (1:22) Competitor Ranking Angle: Scraping Who Outranks Your Prospect and Using It in Copy  (2:01) Automated Audit Workflow: Positive Reply Triggers Clay, Claude Builds the Doc, PDF Sent Back  (2:57) The Three Pillars: Offer, Volume, Deliverability  (6:29) James' Journey: Web Design Agency to Cold Email as the Actual Product  (9:35) Predictions: Volume Is Underrated, Clay Pricing Is a Big Deal, Inbox Burn Rate Has Exploded  (13:08) Cold Email Is Harder But Still Working—A Client Closed $22K in One Day  (15:36) Advice: Ignore Shiny Objects, Trust Your Data, Stick With It Long Enough to Get Good 🔗 CONNECT WITH JAMES 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-barrell-b92520207/] 💻 Website [https://litehouse.so]  🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV 🎥 YouTube Channel [https://www.youtube.com/@_sauravgupta/videos] 🐦 X (Twitter) [https://x.com/saguppa] 📸 Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/saurav_salesrobot] 💻 Website [https://www.salesrobot.co/] 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurav-g-43b959225]📧 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.

Cold Email Is Becoming An Engineering Problem ft. Swagatam Maji

In today's episode, I chat with Swagatam, GTM engineer at oneaway, about collapsing 12 Clay tables into one and routing leads into 12 campaigns from a single source of truth—a restructure that produced 223 interested replies at a 7.12% interest rate in 30 days for a major data provider client.  The campaign had five angles: showing US founders that the tool already had their colleagues' phone numbers as a proof-of-data move, a competitor angle using BuiltWith to reference what tools they were already running, and three more cuts based on sales team size pulled from AIR.com—a database worth knowing for its 30-day data refresh. Swagatam's path here is one of the more unusual ones on the show: skipped campus placements after graduating in 2022 because he was already deep into cold email, joined a Netherlands-based agency, then spent two years at Instantly handling 90-100 support tickets a day and building the AI support agent that now handles the majority of their inbound queries before escalating to a human. Two years of watching exactly where people break down at scale turned out to be a better GTM education than most get deliberately. His prediction: saturation keeps climbing because volume is still the default, and Claude Code will increasingly replace Clay for enrichment as pricing rises. His advice: before building workflows, go into Slack communities, find real problems people are stuck on, solve them, and post what you learn on LinkedIn two or three times a week—you never know who's watching even when the likes are low.  Enjoy 🙂 (0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards  (0:21) What oneaway Does: Cold Email and LinkedIn Outbound for High-Growth B2B SaaS  (1:08) The 12-Tables-to-1 Restructure: 223 Interested Replies and a 7.12% Interest Rate  (3:01) Campaign Breakdown: Phone Number Angle, Competitor Angle, and Sales Team Size Segmentation  (5:25) AIR.com: The Underrated Database With 30-Day Data Refresh  (6:20) Swagatam's Journey: Skipping Campus Placements, Netherlands Agency, Joining Instantly in 2023  (8:52) Two Years of 90-100 Support Tickets a Day and Building Instantly's AI Support Agent  (10:15) Predictions: Saturation Gets Worse, Claude Code Replaces Clay Enrichment, Homework Wins  (12:39) Advice: Solve Real Problems From Slack Communities, Post on LinkedIn, Let the Work Get You Noticed 🔗 CONNECT WITH SWAGATAM 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/swagatammaji/]  🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV 🎥 YouTube Channel [https://www.youtube.com/@_sauravgupta/videos] 🐦 X (Twitter) [https://x.com/saguppa] 📸 Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/saurav_salesrobot] 💻 Website [https://www.salesrobot.co/] 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurav-g-43b959225]📧 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.

Great Content Converts Better Than Outreach, Here's Why ft. Tiffany Spahl-Nally

In today's episode, I chat with Tiffany, founder at RevEnvy, about why leading with content before outreach changes the entire dynamic of that first sales call—instead of fighting for credibility from zero, the prospect already knows you, trusts you, and has been getting value from you before you ever asked for their time.  RevEnvy runs LinkedIn outreach, email, and SDR calling like most lead gen agencies, but the layer on top is content-led outreach paired with lead magnets that are genuinely good enough that people say they would have paid for them—a cybersecurity client's lead magnet is getting exactly that response right now. The fitness instructor example is a good illustration of how the approach works in practice: full workout plans as lead magnets, prospects using them and realizing they actually want a real coach, and the conversation following naturally from there. Tiffany's journey into this is the kind that a lot of people in lead gen will relate to—decade-plus in enterprise sales, a layoff landing on the exact day she and her family closed on the sale of their house in Kentucky while in the middle of moving five states to Florida, taking the first contract VP of Sales role available just to stabilize, spending three months doing go-to-market work for one company, realizing at the end of it that a difficult boss was actually the best thing that could have happened because it made walking away easy, and asking herself why she was doing all of this for one company when she could do it for many. RevEnvy was born from that question. Her prediction: AI SDRs will get there on LinkedIn and email, probably within a few years, and the people who lean in now will have a real advantage over those who wait—but cold calling stays human both because the skill ceiling is genuinely high and because the regulatory environment around AI voice calls is a hard wall. The more interesting near-term development she points to is live AI coaching for SDRs on calls in real time, which compresses ramp time and changes the economics of building a sales team entirely. Her advice: don't go cold turkey the way she did if you can avoid it—keep the day job while you build, find a mentor who has already made the mistakes you're about to make, and don't recreate the wheel when the tools are already out there.  Enjoy 🙂 (0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards  (0:22) What RevEnvy Does: Content-Led Outreach Plus LinkedIn, Email, and SDR Calling  (1:04) Why Content Before Outreach Changes the First Call Entirely  (2:36) Client Focus: B2B Tech, SaaS, Cybersecurity, Coaches and Consultants  (3:10) Lead Magnets That People Would Actually Pay For: Fitness, Cybersecurity, and the Bar to Clear  (6:00) Tiffany's Journey: Enterprise Sales, Layoff on Moving Day, Contract Role, and Starting RevEnvy  (8:00) Why a Difficult Boss Was the Best Thing That Could Have Happened  (9:28) Predictions: AI SDRs Are Coming, Cold Calling Stays Human, Live AI Coaching Changes Ramp Time  (13:29) Advice: Keep the Day Job While You Build, Find a Mentor, Don't Recreate the Wheel 🔗 CONNECT WITH TIFFANY 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-spahl-nally/]  🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV 🎥 YouTube Channel [https://www.youtube.com/@_sauravgupta/videos] 🐦 X (Twitter) [https://x.com/saguppa] 📸 Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/saurav_salesrobot] 💻 Website [https://www.salesrobot.co/] 👥 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurav-g-43b959225]📧 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.