The GTM Engineer Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

In today's episode, I chat with Leo, founder at Ascend AI, about building AI automation infrastructure with ROI as the actual design constraint—not just shipping chatbots and email sequences, but end-to-end workflows that automate judgment, not just tasks. 

He walks through two campaigns in detail: a B2B SaaS client selling to VP Engineering at mid-market tech companies, where the team built a Clay waterfall using GitHub activity signals—open source dependency issues, legacy migration hiring—to score companies from zero to a hundred on signal density, generate a pain hypothesis for each lead, and show up in the inbox with messaging that referenced what was actually breaking in their engineering stack rather than a generic title-based pitch; and a D2C skincare brand on Shopify struggling with repeat purchase rates, where Leo's team built a post-purchase automation using Make and an AI orchestration layer on GPT-4 to predict next likely purchase, segment customers into education, replenishment, and cross-sell tracks, and trigger personalized emails, UGC sequences, and SMS offers in sequence—pushing repeat purchase rate from 20% to 34% within 40 days, email and SMS revenue per recipient up 62%, and support tickets down 41%. The throughline across both is the same: find the friction point, put intelligence into it, close the loop. Leo's path here is one of the more winding ones—laser engineering degree, left the country, taught himself digital marketing and SEO while freelancing abroad, met a product manager at a cafe in Azerbaijan and fell in love with the discipline on the spot, spent two years in PM working with startups until a growth roadmap he built got featured on Reforge, transitioned into GTM engineering when Clay started gaining traction, and eventually pivoted into AI automation when no-code tools made it possible to bridge the two without a developer background. His prediction: GTM stacks will eventually AB test their own logic autonomously, the GTM engineer role will morph into a hybrid of PM, data engineer, growth marketer, and DevOps, and the most interesting near-term development is models like Claude Opus acting as GTM architects that plan and delegate to other models and human devs underneath. His advice: think from the business owner perspective, not the tool perspective—ask what decision or task is stuck, not what you can build with a given tool—pick one vertical, master one or two tools in it, share your work in public as you go, and fix high-friction points end to end before adding more nodes on top. 

Enjoy 🙂

(0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(0:32) What Ascend AI Does: End-to-End AI Automation Infrastructure With ROI in Mind 
(2:25) B2B Campaign: GitHub Signal Scoring, Tech Debt Hypothesis, Waterfall Enrichment for VP Engineering Outreach 
(6:10) Why Signal Work Only Matters If It Shows Up in the Actual Email 
(8:15) D2C Campaign: Shopify Skincare Brand, Post-Purchase AI Layer, Repeat Purchase Rate From 20% to 34% 
(11:22) Automating Judgment, Not Just Tasks: The Core Philosophy Behind the Agency 
(12:34) Leo's Journey: Laser Engineering to Freelance SEO to PM to GTM Engineer to AI Agency Founder 
(18:05) Predictions: Self-Optimizing GTM Stacks, Hybrid Roles, and Claude Opus as GTM Architect 
(21:41) Advice: Fix What's Stuck, Pick One Vertical, Master One Stack, Share in Public

🔗 CONNECT WITH LEO
 
👥 LinkedIn 
💻 Website

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Michael, founder at DFY Meetings, about why channel selection is the diagnosis most cold email agencies skip entirely—and why he regularly talks clients out of cold email and into direct mail or Upwork depending on how competitive their category actually is. 

His framework is straightforward: the more crowded the outreach landscape for a given offer, the more unique the channel needs to be, which is why a bulldozer rental company can still crush it on cold email while a web dev agency has basically no room to stand out there but can own Upwork or direct mail. On segmentation, he breaks it into two types—logical segments (target companies hiring Salesforce developers if you do Salesforce dev) and personal segments (you're an e-commerce agency and an avid mountain biker, so let's go after mountain bike brands and mention it)—both of which get you most of the personalization benefit without burning API credits or hiring writers. The campaign story that stands out most is the direct mail play: handwritten cards, personalized or joke gifts tied to a specific angle, sent to a dream 100 list, followed up by email and phone. One example was sending a branded piggy bank with a note about all the money they were about to make together. No one does it, almost no one will start doing it because it's expensive and painful, and the conversion rate is accordingly ridiculous. Michael's backstory runs through Instagram page networks in high school, a first exit before graduation, a VA agency he built in Bangladesh and sold, another VA business with an international team he also sold, and finally DFY Meetings—all four grown on cold outbound, which is exactly why the agency works. His prediction: cold email isn't dying, costs are just rising the way Google Ads and Facebook Ads costs rose before it, and the real problem isn't that more people are good at it but that more people are in it making noise without being good at it. His advice for anyone starting out: ask your first two or three clients to forward you the cold emails they receive, spend 30 minutes going through them, and just don't sound like any of those. 

Enjoy 🙂

(0:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(0:30) What DFY Meetings Does: Cold Email, Direct Mail, and Managed Upwork Applications 
(1:19) The Channel Diagnosis: Why Michael Often Talks Clients Out of Cold Email First 
(3:01) Segmentation Framework: Logical Segments vs Personal Segments 
(4:03) Best Performing Campaigns: Wholesale Printer Ink and Why Boring Offers Win on Cold Email 
(4:29) The Direct Mail Play: Handwritten Cards, Personalized Gifts, and Ridiculous Conversion Rates 
(5:44) Cold Email Cost Per Lead Is Rising—And Why Direct Mail Can Actually Be Cheaper at the High End 
(6:57) Michael's Journey: Instagram Pages in High School, Three Exits, and Landing on DFY Meetings 
(9:08) Predictions: Cold Email Won't Die, Costs Will Rise, Noise Will Increase 
(10:33) The History of Cold Email Saturation: From Manual VA Scraping to 99-Dollar Unlimited Sending 
(12:49) Advice: Ask Your Clients to Forward You the Cold Emails They Receive

🔗 CONNECT WITH MICHAEL

👥 LinkedIn
💻 Website
🎥 YouTube 

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 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.

In today's episode, I chat with Tanay Mishra, Clay Coach at Clay Bootcamp, about accelerating people into GTM engineering through one-to-one personalized coaching—two weeks of structured self-learning followed by six weeks of twice-weekly sessions where coach and student build a real project together, creating demonstrable ROI and a portfolio piece by the time the program ends. 

We explore the student demographics: not just RevOps professionals upskilling, but dentists, veterinarians, and an ex-yacht captain who decided sailing was done and GTM engineering was next. Tanay shares his most impactful Clay build: a company research workflow that takes just a domain, runs deep analysis through Perplexity for signals (hiring, fundraising, PR, media), cross-references the vendor's own services and offerings, identifies the perceived pain intersection, and delivers SDRs a rich briefing document with email hooks, subject lines, and conversation starters—all for about $1 per run, saving hundreds of hours on high-value accounts. He also shares a mid-funnel use case: when a prospect fills their email into a live chat on a pricing page, Clay enriches their company in real time and pings the SDR or AE in Slack if it's a unicorn prospect—cutting wait times from 48 hours to seconds. His prediction: MCP adoption will change everything (once he actually figured them out, they stopped being overhyped), and browser use agents improving at a ridiculous rate means any action a human can take online, an AI can replicate and do faster. Tanay shares his path from automating himself out of a job at Accenture in 2011 to discovering Clay at the intersection of GTM and AI and realizing this was the cutting edge worth living on. Saurav also shares SalesRobot's upcoming expert clone feature—AI built in the image of real GTM experts so small businesses get just-in-time access to expertise at a fraction of the cost. 

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:22) What Clay Bootcamp Does: Accelerating People Into GTM Engineering 
(01:30) Who the Students Are: Dentists, Vets, an Ex-Yacht Captain, and RevOps Pros 
(02:52) The Two-Week Plus Six-Week Coaching Model: Build a Real Project, Earn While You Learn 
(05:15) Clay Beyond Cold Email: Mid-Funnel Pricing Page Flow That Pings SDRs in Real Time 
(08:30) The Most Impactful Clay Build: Domain In, Full Research Report and Email Hooks Out for $1 
(11:03) Simple Scales, Complex Fails: Why the Best Clay Tables Aren't the Most Complex 
(13:00) Tanay's Journey: Automating His Accenture Job in 2011 to Clay Bootcamp Coach 
(14:36) Future Predictions: MCP Adoption Changes Everything, Browser Use Agents Are Almost Human 
(17:03) Anything a Human Can Access Online Will Get Scraped: The New Reality 
(18:04) SalesRobot's Expert Clone Vision: GTM Expertise Democratized at Scale

🔗 CONNECT WITH TANAY

👥 LinkedIn 
💻 Website 

🔗 CONNECT WITH SAURAV

🎥 YouTube Channel

🐦 X (Twitter)

📸 Instagram

💻 Website

👥 LinkedIn
📧 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.

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 - 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.

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 - 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.

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 - 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.

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 - 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.

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 - 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.

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 - 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.

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 - 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.