The GTM Engineer Podcast

In today's episode, I chat with Hlib Storchak, GTM engineer at Strongest Group, about building targeted outbound campaigns for niche markets and the power of simple, repeatable strategies. 

We explore a creative campaign for tennis hardware companies that required scraping Google Maps, federation websites, and using AI to research court counts, renovation history, and tournament hosting. Hlib shares his PVP (Personalized Value Proposition) approach offering Finnish meeting bookings as a lead magnet, achieving 60% positive reply rates. We discuss his journey from failed SMMA attempts at 17 to mastering cold email, why he ignores the noise of complex workflows, and his prediction that sales teams will get smaller but more leveraged. Hlib also reveals his timeless strategy of targeting competitor followers on LinkedIn that works across every client.

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:26) What Strongest Group Does and Client Types 
(02:18) Most Creative Campaign: Tennis Hardware Segmentation 
(05:53) PVP Campaigns and Finnish Meeting Lead Magnets 
(08:24) Journey from SMMA to GTM Engineering 
(10:42) How Instantly Changed the Game 
(12:44) Future of GTM: Data Layer and Intent-Based Targeting 
(14:15) Smaller, More Leveraged Sales Teams 
(15:23) Advice for New GTM Engineers: Cut the Noise 
(17:01) Why You Don't Need 100-Step Clay Workflows 
(19:24) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH HLIB

👥 LinkedIn
🎥 YouTube

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Ceyhun Sahin, co-founding GTM engineer at Front Row AI, about building a stealth-mode GTM platform that aims to replace 20+ tools in the typical GTM stack. 

We explore their agency-first approach to finding product-market fit, working with major brands and perfecting their infrastructure. Ceyhun shares fascinating insights on email deliverability, revealing that over 60% of cold emails land in spam despite zero bounce rates, and why that metric alone is meaningless. We discuss his journey from quantitative trading and crypto sentiment analysis to GTM engineering, his philosophy on manual reply management, and why he believes AI SDRs miss the point. Ceyhun also shares a counterintuitive data insight: including "I hope this email finds you well" increases reply rates by 32%.

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:29) What Front Row AI Does and Stealth Mode Strategy 
(02:14) Agency-First Approach to Product Market Fit 
(03:50) Client Onboarding Process and Lookalike Generation 
(06:10) Deliverability as Priority One 
(08:00) LinkedIn vs Email for Cold Outreach 
(10:04) Journey from Quantitative Trading to GTM Engineering 
(12:22) Data-Backed Copywriting and ESPs Insights 
(14:15) Reply Management and SDR Handoff Process 
(17:31) Future of GTM: Integration and Communication Tracking 
(20:00) Why AI SDRs Aren't the Answer 
(21:12) The Need for More Deep-Tech Innovation 
(21:54) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH CEYHUN

👥 LinkedIn

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Moaaz Mazhry, a software engineer turned GTM specialist, about building automated outbound systems and the future of lead generation agencies. 

We explore his unique positioning as a fulfillment engine for outbound agencies, combining technical expertise with sales strategy. Moaaz shares a creative campaign targeting newly registered UK businesses by scraping company registry data and automating personalized outreach within hours of registration. We discuss his transition from door-to-door sales in Pakistan's energy sector to GTM engineering, and why he believes most agencies won't survive the next two years without true productization and DevOps capabilities.

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:28) What Moaaz Does and Agency Model 
(01:39) AI Automation and Agentic Systems 
(03:11) Tool Stack and Infrastructure 
(04:49) Most Creative Campaign: UK Company Registry Automation 
(07:24) Journey from Software Engineering to GTM 
(09:10) Transitioning to His Own Agency 
(10:20) The Future of GTM Agencies and Market Maturation 
(13:00) Why Selling Leads Isn't a Business 
(13:52) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH MOAAZ

👥 LinkedIn

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Zinonas, Head of GTM Engineering at Relevance AI, about building effective outbound systems for early-stage startups. 

We explore his journey from travel consultant to GTM engineer, discussing how he helps companies establish their ICP and get their products in front of the right prospects. Zinonas shares a challenging campaign where he built a 50K company TAM under tight deadlines, and breaks down his three-tier approach to outbound based on company maturity - from finding message-market fit through email, to multi-channel strategies, to full ABM with offline outreach. We also discuss the future of the GTM profession and why he believes traditional SDR roles will evolve.

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:27) What Relevance AI Does and Client Focus 
(00:57) Helping Early-Stage Startups with GTM 
(02:36) Most Creative Outbound Campaign Story 
(04:10) The Company and Their Offering 
(04:57) Email vs Multi-Channel Outbound Strategy 
(07:58) Zinonas's Journey into GTM Engineering 
(10:19) The Future of GTM Engineering 
(14:11) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH ZINONAS

👥 LinkedIn

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Louis from ColdIQ about building scalable cold outbound systems and the reality of running a high-growth lead generation agency. 

We explore his approach to capturing inbound-led outbound leads from LinkedIn posts and website visitors, why he only sends 7,000-8,000 emails per month (not 200,000), and the importance of reusing cleaned lists. Louis shares his philosophy on copywriting - less is more, skip the fancy frameworks, and lead with value in the first 10 words. We discuss ColdIQ's implementation of Twain for AI copywriting at scale, why AI gets "drunk" in Clay after 1,000 contacts, and how his sales background became his competitive advantage. Louis also opens up about getting fired five times, the dark side of agency churn, and his prediction that smaller agencies will struggle as tools like Clay and Instantly make it easier for businesses to run outbound in-house. 

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:16) What ColdIQ Does and Services Offered 
(01:59) Client Stories: Inbound-Led Outbound Systems 
(05:17) Volume vs Precision: 7K Emails vs 200K 
(06:10) Reusing Lists and Burning Reputation Myths 
(07:24) Building Multi-Channel Orchestration Systems 
(08:35) Strategy Over Creativity: What Actually Works 
(09:47) Skip the Frameworks: Lead With Value in 10 Words 
(11:11) Why AI Gets "Drunk" in Clay After 1K Contacts 
(12:02) Using Perplexity for Research, Not Full Copy 
(13:06) ColdIQ's Implementation of Twain for Copywriting 
(15:36) Louis's Journey: From Sales to Cold Email 
(18:00) Joining ColdIQ and the Culture of Learning 
(21:05) Future of Agencies: Tools Make DIY Easier 
(22:40) The Agency Model is Under Pressure 
(26:10) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH LOUIS

👥 LinkedIn 

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Namit, founder of AeroSend, about solving the biggest black box in outbound: email deliverability.

We explore how AeroSend provides private email infrastructure specifically built for cold email, why they're seeing 3-5x improvements in reply rates for clients switching from Google/Outlook resellers, and the first principles approach they took to building a deliverability solution. Namit shares how he went from burning domains at a design agency to building a SaaS product that now powers some of the biggest cold email operations. We discuss why deliverability isn't just about infrastructure - it's about copy, list quality, and monitoring, and how AeroSend is building an engine to help clients manage all of these factors. Namit also breaks down his own GTM strategy: 60%+ from cold email, expanding into LinkedIn, Twitter, and School, while building long-term content engines for inbound.

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:15) What AeroSend Does and Who Uses It 
(00:50) Why Clients Switch to Private Infrastructure 
(02:02) Namit's GTM Strategy: 60% Cold Email 
(03:12) The Power of Content-Driven Inbound Leads 
(04:14) Client Results: 3-5x Reply Rate Improvements 
(05:28) Namit's Journey from Agency to SaaS 
(06:25) First Principles Approach to Deliverability 
(07:35) Why Copy and List Quality Still Matter 
(09:00) Building a Copy Analysis Engine 
(09:30) The Future of Cold Email and Omni-Channel 
(11:00) Aggressive Multi-Touch Without Hard Pitching 
(12:00) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH NAMIT

👥 LinkedIn 
💻 Website 

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Ratko from UltB about building B2B sales engines that have booked over 5,000 opportunities in the last year. 

We dive deep into their partnership-focused approach with clients, exploring how they streamline onboarding and achieve 80% response rates on first emails. Ratko shares compelling case studies including a forwardable email strategy that dominated spam filters and custom scraping workflows for education and point-of-sale clients. We discuss the evolution from hyper-personalization back to relevance-focused messaging, his journey from Forex cold calling to agency success, and why "volume beats luck" in today's competitive landscape. Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:29) What UltB Does and Expert Partner Status 
(02:21) 30/60/90 Day Client Onboarding Process 
(04:07) Partnership Philosophy vs. "Press Play" Service 
(05:51) Flowa Workflow Automation Platform 
(07:26) Creative Forwardable Email Campaign Strategy 
(09:47) Education Sector Custom Scraping Case Study 
(12:28) Relevance Over Fancy AI Tools Philosophy 
(14:06) Video Sales Letter Framework and Strategy 
(16:23) Timing vs. Relevance in Cold Outreach 
(18:31) Micro-ICP Mapping and Volume Strategy 
(20:14) Ratko's Journey from Forex to B2B Sales 
(23:32) Growing UltB from 5 to 15 Team Members 
(24:59) Future of Cold Email: Return to Relevance 
(27:40) Multi-Channel Engagement Strategy 
(29:36) Segmented Approach: Scalable vs. Account-Based

🔗 CONNECT WITH RATKO

👥 LinkedIn 

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel
🐦 X (Twitter)
📸 Instagram
💻 Website
👥 LinkedIn 
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Aivers from Growth SDR about building automated outbound engines using tools like Clay and Smartlead. 

We dive deep into his collaborative approach with clients, exploring how he validates company databases and identifies high-quality prospects through AI-powered filtering. Aivers shares two compelling case studies: validating a 4,000-company government database (discovering only 20% were actually viable) and using BuiltWith data to identify web development prospects with outdated websites. We discuss his experimentation-focused methodology, the rise of custom GTM tooling using AI co-pilots, and his journey from managing 10 SDRs to founding his own agency. Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:27) What Growth SDR Does and Client Focus
(01:24) Collaborative Process and 30/60/90 Day Framework 
(02:16) Experimentation-Driven Campaign Strategy 
(02:54) Government Database Validation Case Study 
(04:44) Website Development Agency Targeting Case Study 
(07:19) Multi-Channel vs Email-First Approach 
(08:07) AIvers' Journey from SDR Manager to Agency Owner 
(10:09) Future of GTM Engineering and Custom Tooling 
(12:03) Advanced Python Scripts for Campaign Optimization 
(14:33) Advice for Aspiring GTM Engineers 
(15:56) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH AIVERS

👥 LinkedIn
💻 Website

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel
🐦 X (Twitter)
📸 Instagram
💻 Website
👥 LinkedIn 
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Nico Gillard, co-founder of medialab, about building intelligent GTM systems using Clay and data-driven ICP definition.

We explore Nico's approach to going beyond basic firmographics to identify the ideal client situation (ICS) - not just who your customer is, but when they're ready to buy. Nico shares examples like targeting ERP software buyers who've outgrown Xero or MyOB, and event management platforms that reach out before flagship events when pain points are highest. We discuss how medialab works with scale-ups (10M+ ARR) in APAC, their use of Clay and Open Router to uncover intelligence nobody else can find, and why they're exploring new channels like Instagram DMs and WhatsApp. Nico also explains their enterprise approach of building sales intelligence dossiers rather than automated outreach for high-ACV deals.

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:15) What medialab Does and Target Clients 
(02:11) 30-60-90 Day Client Onboarding Process 
(03:42) Beyond Firmographics: Defining True ICP 
(05:00) ERP Software Example: Outgrowing Xero/MyOB 
(07:06) ICS vs ICP: Ideal Client Situation 
(08:13) Event Management Timing Example 
(10:01) Workshop Approach to Uncover Intelligence 
(11:10) Using RB2B for Intent Signal Capture 
(13:00) Enterprise Automation Challenges 
(14:00) Inbound Use Cases and High Reply Rates 
(15:03) Building Sales Intelligence for Enterprise ABM 
(17:03) Exploring New Channels: Instagram, WhatsApp 
(19:12) Physical Gifting and Offline Strategies 
(20:33) Partnership Model for Channel Execution 
(21:40) Nico's Journey into GTM Engineering 
(22:50) First Client Loss and ICP Learnings 
(24:00) Future of GTM Engineering Functions 
(25:40) Why Startups Will Win with Early Adoption 
(27:23) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH NICO

👥 LinkedIn
💻 Website 

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Pranam Lipinski, co-founder of Email Outreach Company, about building effective cold email campaigns and the role of AI in modern outbound.

We explore Pranam's journey from selling a tech startup through cold email to building an agency that sends millions of emails monthly. He shares his team's creative approaches, including their unique "advice-based" messaging strategy. Pranav breaks down his 30-60-90 day client onboarding process, explains why he focuses primarily on email over multi-channel outreach, and reveals his technical setup using Clay, Open Router, and various AI models. We also discuss the future of GTM roles and why humans will become "schedulers and tool pickers" who develop taste and intuition rather than execute manual tasks.

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:16) What EOC Works Does and Client Sweet Spot 
(01:11) 30-60-90 Day Client Process 
(02:43) Creative Campaign Strategies 
(05:08) Advice-Based Messaging Approach 
(06:14) Dog Food Donation PS Line 
(07:06) Multi-Channel vs Email Focus 
(08:38) Newsletter as Long-Term Play 
(10:01) Pranav's Journey into Cold Email 
(11:31) Impact of AI on the Industry 
(12:00) Open Router and Clay Integration Tips 
(14:00) Future of GTM: Schedulers and Tool Pickers 
(18:23) Closing and Contact Information

🔗 CONNECT WITH PRANAV

👥 LinkedIn 

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 Email - [email protected]

🙏 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.