Hello GTM folksl - As we enter a new quarter - what is the most pressing issue you/CRO are looking to solve? We are struggling to grow top of the funnel in this crazy noisy time - love to hear what others are experiencing
Hey Jean! Feeling this one as well - I’ve been leading enterprise teams for over a decade and reply rates on volume plays have fallen off a cliff this year (sub 1%). Every inbox is a wall of the same AI-written email now. What changed things for my team was flipping the targeting question from who fits our ICP to who fits our ICP and had something happen this week. A new exec building their agenda, or a job post for work your product would replace. Same market, a fraction of the sends, meaningfully better meetings. I ended up building internal tooling around it because the manual research was eating two hours of my morning and for each of my reps. Happy to walk through the approach if useful, no pitch, just comparing notes on what’s working. Calendar below if a call is easier. https://calendly.com/alex-trydaimyo/30min
All sales starts with Attention, Trust, Value, and Funding additionally understanding how your solution is best implemented, configured, abs upkept for your target market. Would ask where do you find you're struggling? Can do a quick assessment for you if you're in the B2B tech space which is where my agency works in. Here is my direct email: [email protected]
Jean T. , Gino C. , Alexander J. I completely agree that ICP is foundational. One thing I've been thinking about is that AI hasn't just made outbound easier, it's made it much harder to earn attention. Once the ICP is defined, the next challenge becomes giving that audience a reason to care. Personalization is quickly becoming table stakes because everyone has access to similar tools. The teams that seem to be breaking through combine a narrow ICP with a differentiated point of view that actually matters to that audience. AI can scale relevance, but it can't create it.
Hassan M. - thats actually exactly what I and my team have built out at Daimyo. You said it best: AI can scale relevance but can't create it. Our whole bet is that you don't manufacture a reason to care, you find the moment one already exists. We scan target accounts for what just changed, a new exec, a hiring surge, a raise, then build the outreach around that trigger with the reasoning shown, so the rep sees why now instead of a black box score. And nothing goes out on its own. Every draft lands in the rep's inbox to edit and send. The research grunt work gets automated, the judgment stays human. For our first enterprise team it's been 23 meetings booked per 500 contacts. Seems its working!
Hassan M. nailed it — "AI can scale relevance but can't create it." the same pattern shows up in how teams actually use AI internally. we've assessed 1,000+ professionals on their AI skills (aisa.to/state-of-ai-fluency) and the biggest gap isn't tool knowledge, it's knowing when to trust the output vs when to override it. teams that figure out that judgment layer are the ones whose outreach doesn't read like everyone else's
Hi Jean T. and GTM folks. Trying not to be lengthy but I head up biz dev at a top of funnel lead gen and meeting setting company started 10 years ago. First, Everything said here is 100% correct. The best lead gen is still People as a service. The areas that AI has accelerated growth has been in generating the contacts for the leads within the ICP, so strong ICP is foundational. Narrow ICP isn't really necessary but specific, segmented verticals are needed so you can check the data on response rates and pivot or iterate on the poor performers. And that's it, Our copy is our own, our sequences and follow-ups. I guess I do use AI for meeting summaries but we find writing down my own notes and reading them back helps build rapport. I'm happy to have a no sales BS convo, if anyone wants to DM me on our process and success. Of course if you are interested in some help, I wont say no. 🙂 Keyoutreach.com Also, as P.S. The AI Slop has helped us stand out in inboxes, not get buried. We have grown more and gotten more meetings in 2025-2026 than any previous year.
What I'm seeing in my business and in my clients’ is buyers now form their perceptions of sellers on their own during their silent research and make their decision based on that initial perception. So by the time the cold email lands, they've already decided if that kind of seller is worth a reply. Relevance alone isn't closing deals anymore. You need strong leverage that shapes the right buyer perception when buyers research you before any sales conversation happens.
Ok, I am going to disagree with everyone other than Sayanta G.. All these other things matter, but these are strategies, and they are good, and they aren't going to move the needle. Frankly doing all this drilling down into ICP and stuff should be a regular motion, not a reaction to being behind on the revenue. Here's what I mean specifically. You're looking at the wrong end of the funnel. If you know your close ratio, and you add more to the funnel, when is that revenue gonna actually hit. What I think people should be focusing on is improving the conversions of what's already in the funnel. You're missing your number not because of the top of the funnel, you're missing it because your sales team probably sucks to be frank.
Deals slipping = Bad Discovery
Discount Dystopia = Bad Discovery and Negotiation
Competitor Loss = Bad discovery + Cowardly Crossroads
Ghosting = Clueless on how to actually ask for an appointment other than some weak and lame attempt.
Didn't Have Right Champion = Bad Discovery
Blindsided = Happy Ears and Bad Discovery
Why does this happen? It's simple.
The CRO and VP of Sales want to blame someone other than themselves.
They want to blame the SDR team.
Yeah, let's blame the people with the least amount of experience SDR managers who were promoted because they could set meetings, not the real human skills to manage.
Let's blame the player/ coach person because we are too cheap to pay for real leadership.
What do you mean they can't get better we bought them Gong and ChatGPT?!!
SDR leader, I need 16 reports now that the quarter is over to prep for the board meeting. (Yeah, that won't affect coaching at all)
What you should be doing is teaching your sales team how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask, and when to ask them. Sorry, not sorry. If I offended anyone, especially a CRO or VP of Sales, good. Hit me up, I'll prove it all to you. Jared R. happy to do a live knock-down, drag out, no holds bard, lumber jack cage match! And for those who want to send this to your leadership, use the hashtag #BlameRichard. 🫳 🎤
Richard H. - would love to do a webinar for the community on this with you. i think it would rock
If your team is using the phone then this would be the way. Get your data scored by who is likely to pickup the phone and increase your teams connect rate on the phone. Going from a 2-5% connect rate to a 20% connect rate on your prospects is a major improvement to get meetings scheduled and pipeline quickly.
Hey Mike S. how can you find out who is likely to pick up the phone when doing outbounding?
