In today's episode, I chat with Harshil Bhimani, founder at Clay Consultancy, about helping B2B sales-led teams do outbound and implement GTM systems (mostly $20M+ ARR mid-corporations either scaling outbound knowing what message works with which audience, or testing outbound to find which segment/offer works—the fun part requiring lots of messaging testing). 

We explore his creative campaigns including sending handwritten personalized notes to prospects' homes, using Gamma beta API (paying since early days) to automate demo slide creation post-discovery call, and building personalized SEO dashboards with Bold (similar to Lovable) and Supabase backend—didn't implement it because way too expensive to run but fun project, and his philosophy that best campaigns don't use AI for messaging at all (AI shines at research/clicking stuff not writing, helps salespeople talk with people more). Harshil shares his journey from hard-tech hardware entrepreneurship building wearables for powerlifters (failed due to technical issues), doing Amazon FBA and various businesses, cold emailing for chief of staff role where interviewer said "you have good prospecting skills, go into sales" (didn't even know what prospecting was), discovering Clay in Feb 2024 putting prospecting skills on steroids. He predicts not thinking years or months ahead (just focus on this week's problems), not trying new tools unless current tech stack can't solve problem (even if 2x-3x better, need 10x difference to switch), email getting harder over time like all marketing channels, cold calling having best ROI with people getting tons of meetings, and bar being pretty low to write nice cold email (friends get irrelevant pitches on X/LinkedIn constantly). Harshil's advice: learn basics first if zero sales/RevOps background—figure out which GTM engineering path (wide field), learn fundamentals like what salespeople do daily and how they write messaging, then learn tools—he did opposite learning Clay first then realizing "I don't know what enrichment is, just clicking buttons" so learn fundamentals before tools. 

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:32) What Clay Consultancy Does: Outbound for $20M+ ARR Teams 
(01:55) Creative Campaigns: Handwritten Notes, Gamma API, SEO Dashboards 
(03:49) AI Shines at Research Not Messaging (Best Campaigns Don't Use AI) 
(05:20) Journey: Hardware Wearables to Amazon FBA to Discovering Clay 
(06:00) Chief of Staff Interview: "You Have Good Prospecting Skills" 
(06:56) Future Prediction: Focus This Week, Not Months/Years 
(07:42) Cold Calling Best ROI, Bar Low for Nice Cold Email 
(09:08) Advice: Learn Fundamentals Before Tools (Wide GTM Engineering Path) 
(10:22) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH HARSHIL

👥 LinkedIn
🐦 X (Twitter)

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

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