7 Ways to Generate Pipeline (in Q4 of 2024)
The Signal
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Happy Friday, y’all! 👋
The markets continue to rip. Crypto touches new ATHs. And some big rounds were announced in SaaS-land this week. Are we back?!
Anyway, let’s talk about the future of gtm.
My goal with The Signal is to explore this emerging new world and share what I’m finding along the journey—separating the signal from the noise (get it?).
There is a new gtm playbook emerging right in front of our eyes. And much of it has not been created (or discovered) yet.
That could mean new tools, unique strategies, emerging roles (like the GTM Engineer), and more.
So, in the spirit of “thinking in public,” I wanted to share some of the things that I’ve been learning over the last couple of months—things I’ve learned from conversations with other founders and GTM leaders. And things I’m learning from the consulting work I’m doing, where we’re personally shipping experiments for gtm teams.
[Which reminds me… I’m looking for someone to help me with some of my consulting engagements. ~5-10 hours a week right now. 2-3+ years experience in sales development and running modern gtm like I’ll talk about in this post. If this sounds like you, dm me on linkedin.]
Alright, let’s get into it.
7 Ways to Generate Pipeline (in Q4 of 2024)
I've talked with ~70 Sales/Sales Dev Leaders or Founders in the past 90 days since leaving my full-time job at Apollo.io. And there is one thing that everyone agrees on: the SDR Playbook doesn't work like it did 5 years ago.
So, I wanted to share 7 things that are working to generate pipeline right now.
1. Warm Outbound
Warm outbound is simply reaching out to companies and people who are the most likely to take a sales conversation with you today. Stop spamming tons of people cold. Figure out who will find value from your product or service, and reach out to those people first.
Use things like website visitors, job changers, CRM data (think: closed-lost deals, etc.), MAP data (people in your ICP engaging with marketing emails), data warehouse (product sign-ups/usage), etc. These are people already familiar (“warm”) with your brand and/or the problem you solve.
Work smarter, not harder.
2. Signal-Based Selling
Figure out what signals are best for your go-to-market team. There are hundreds. Start with the 3-5 highest impact signals, then layer in more over time. You can use tools like Apollo, Champify, CommonRoom, Koala, LinkedIn Sales Nav, Pocus, RB2B, Unify, UserGems, Warmly, Zoominfo.
And again, don't overlook your own first-party data - some of your highest intent signals are hidden away, ready to be activated.
It’s still really hard to operationalize these signals (Which signals are best for my business? How many? Do I roll them into a score? Or a tier? Do I automate actions off the back of (some of) them? Where do I surface them to reps?) This is a lot of work. But, it’s work worth doing.
More here: How to Automate Signal-Based Selling
3. Micro-Campaigns
My favorite motion right now.
Here’s how I define a micro-campaign:
Small, highly-targeted lists of, say, 50-250 contacts. Generated using *very* specific filtering and/or signals (usually using AI/agents at least for certain parts). Each list (aka "micro-campaign") is relevant this week, but won't be next month. (The timing piece is the most powerful).
AI agents and Clay can help you execute and scale micro-campaigns.
One example of a micro-campaign I’m running for a client right now:
People who have 1) engaged with a piece of the company’s marketing content this month and 2) engaged with the founder’s content on LinkedIn and 3) the company is hiring for salespeople (my client is in the sales talent space).
Also, ensure the company is an ICP-fit (we are scraping for funding raised from several sources + SaaS-proxied + certain number of salespeople AND the person has to be a certain title).
Micro-campaigns require an internal expert to come up with these creative, strategic experiments. They won’t all work. Think of it like building a portfolio of bets, and even if 9 fail, the 1 that succeeds should “pay back the fund.”
They’re hard to do. And cannot be automated-away. The alpha is in what is hard.
More here: “Micro-Campaigns”
4. Automated Outbound at Scale
This motion should be run by a GTM Engineer. This role is becoming increasingly essential in orchestrating success across the entire customer lifecycle (from abm → inbound/outbound pipe gen → sales cycle optimizations → onboarding+adoption → upsell/cross-sell expansion → retention → to win-backs).
Automated outbound at scale works best for companies selling a low-ACV, high-TAM product.
Wondering if this motion is a fit for you? Here’s the image I shared this week around if you should use an AI SDR (same applies for automated outbound at scale):
5. Cold Calling
I keep hearing companies booking 33-50%+ of their meetings on the phone. Use Nooks or Orum, and Hyperbound to practice. I never pick up cold calls so this one has been surprising to hear, but hey!, data is data.
And the data says - cold calling is working right now.
6. Founder/Exec Brand
I'm particularly bullish on content on LinkedIn. I think it's still early.
My thesis is that in the next few years, with AI-generated content (fluff), people with a unique/smart point-of-view will rise to the top even more.
Read (or re-read) Dave Gerhardt’s book, Founder Brand. And study Adam Robinson, and many other sales tech founders running this playbook right now.
Attention and building "trust-at-scale" compounds.
7. Return to Rigor
Honestly, hard work is alpha right now. Put in the hours. And do the hard things that don't scale. (I'm also speaking to myself here! aha). Don’t forget the fundamentals while you test other motions.
If I was building a venture-backed SaaS business right now, I would try to get the team to be in-person. Hard to compete with a gtm team that is selling in the same room together.
Conclusion
Every company is struggling to generate pipeline right now.
But, there are ways to consistently book meetings.
It just looks different than it did 5 years ago.
The playbook is evolving in real-time.
It's a massive opportunity.
Learn, and lean in.
Other portals to interesting corners of the internet that I explored this week:
I continue to be impressed with Kareem (CEO of Clay) from afar. He was recently on the SaaStr podcast, it’s worth listening if you’re curious about where AI is tactically applicable to gtm right now. Moving Beyond Traditional Sales, Clay CEO & Co-Founder Kareem Amin on the Future of AI-Driven Growth.
Trump is About to Change Everything For Tech Startups (particularly in AI, crypto, and defense) - a16z podcast with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
I’ve been spending a little bit more time trying to learn about writing and building internet businesses off the back of content/audience (no plan to ever charge you for reading my content, btw). So, I listened to a couple podcasts episodes from two of the best in this space:
Lenny Rachitsky on How I Write podcast - How Lenny Rachitsky Got 531,000 Substack Subscribers
Not a Bitcoin bull yet? Here’s the savage, Michael Saylor, giving a talk on the topic last week: Bitcoin, The Red Wave, and The Crypto Renaissance - Michael Saylor Speaks at Cantor Fitzgerald (the last 5 mins are wild). Watch it and try to not be bullish. $100K, soon. Then $200K. And eventually, $1M. (I’m a bull)
I’m a long-time Casey Neistat fanboy. And have been running more lately, so this one particularly hit for me. DO HARD THINGS (5-minute YouTube video).
Quote of the week:
Software is eating the world, but AI is going to eat software.
-Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia (quote from 2017)
Thank you for continuing to explore the new gtm playbook with me.
Your attention is greatly appreciated.
See you next time,
Brendan 🫡
Brendan, DM + sent a connection request on LinkedIn about helping with consulting engagements!