A few months back I ran a GTM webinar with Rob from Scribe. One line stuck with someone in the room more than anything else I said that day:

Treat your GTM like your product. Test, iterate, improve every week.

The discipline is attractive. Running it every week while building the product is the hard part.

That’s the whole issue this time. One story, one system, one thing to take away.

The founder: strong product, no GTM bandwidth

Wyzr had the shape I built Forte for. Deep domain expertise. A real product for a real niche. What the team did not have was the bandwidth to run a disciplined GTM loop while shipping the product.

We started working together a month ago. Here is where that month landed:

✅ Strategy and ICP locked

✅ Testing running across verticals

✅ 53 interested leads, 25 sales-qualified demos, 5 converted

✅ A fixed weekly sales-process review with the founder in the room

“I had the product and the domain expertise. What I did not have was the bandwidth to run a proper GTM loop at the same time. Alper and his team built the outreach infrastructure, pinned down two ICPs, iterated the positioning, and put a weekly sales and marketing check-in on the calendar with me in the room. In the first 45 days that turned into 25 sales-qualified demo calls, five of which converted.”

Ajit Barik, Founder, Wyzr

The booking is the easy bit

Here’s the part that actually moves a number like that: not the booking, the weekly thinking together. Which ICP is converting. Where the message is landing. What to cut and what to double down on, before the month is out rather than after.

I keep seeing teams find out what is working too late to act on it. They run three or four things at once, wait a full quarter for the results to separate, then optimise for what already happened instead of what is happening now.

How to start the loop yourself

You don’t need Forte to start this. You need four things, done on a schedule rather than when there’s time:

1. Pick two or three segments, not one message for everyone. A single sequence aimed at “anyone who might buy” tells you nothing when it under-performs, because you can’t tell which part failed.

2. Build against buying signals, not job titles. Recently raised, recently hired for the gap you fill, recently posted about the problem you solve. Title tells you who they are. Signal tells you when they’re ready.

3. Put a review on the calendar before you launch, not after. Weekly, fixed time, same two questions every time: what moved, what didn’t. If there’s no meeting on the calendar for it, it doesn’t happen.

4. Move the volume the moment one segment separates from the rest. Don’t wait for the quarter to end to confirm what you already know by week two.

That’s it. Nothing here is a copywriting trick. Faster feedback is what changes the number, not a better subject line.

If you’re running this today

If you’ve got more than one message or more than one channel live right now and you can’t say, this week, which one is actually carrying the weight, you’re already behind the founders who can.

👉 Book a 30-minute GTM diagnostic.

Thirty minutes. I will tell you which of the 13 symptoms you have, where the bottleneck actually is, and what I would build in month one. You get the notes either way.

-Alper

Forte Growth | We build and operate your marketing department in 90 days, then hand it to your team or keep running it fractionally.

fortegrowth.co

Because those 21 calls sat on top of everything else. The content. The client comms. The list building. The copy review. The follow-ups. I was the person doing the selling and the person doing the delivery and the person chasing the admin between the two.

That is not a busy week. That is a broken system. And it is the exact thing I tell founders to fix.

So we fixed ours. Here is what we built, and how you can build the same.

First, the reframe: the answer is not “hire someone.”

When a founder is drowning, the instinct is to hire. Get an SDR. Get a marketer. Add hands.

I think that is usually the wrong first move. Because a new hire walks into a blank page. You pay exec money and six months of ramp for someone to build the system that should have existed before they arrived. I have watched founders hire the rep first and lose both the rep and the six months.

The repeatable work does not need another person. It needs a system. And in the last year the cost of building that system has collapsed.

So before we added anyone, we asked a narrower question: what do we actually do over and over that a machine could own?

What we actually did: name the four things, then build each one properly.

We stripped Forte down to what it repeatedly sells and delivers. Four things:

1. List building

2. LinkedIn DMs

3. Email copy

4. LinkedIn posts

Everything else is secondary. These four are the engine. So we are turning each one into a repeatable AI skill, not a one-off prompt we retype every time and hope for the best.

The difference between those two things is the whole point of this issue.

The distinction most people miss: skill versus context.

Most people use AI like a chat window. They open it, type a request, get something 70% right, fix it by hand, and start from zero the next day. That is not a system. That is a slot machine.

What we moved to is different, and it rests on two ideas:

A skill defines what. It is a fixed, reusable instruction for one job. “Turn this case study into a LinkedIn post.” “Build an outbound list against this ICP.” Written once, refined over time, run the same way every time.

A context file defines how. One central file holds everything that makes the output ours: the ICP, the positioning, the voice rules, the brand colours, the proof points. Every skill reads from it. So the output comes back on-brand and on-voice without us re-explaining who we are each time.

Skill plus context turns a probabilistic chat into something closer to deterministic. Same input, same standard, every run. That is the difference between a party trick and a process you can hand to someone else.

The proof: the job that used to eat half an SDR’s day.

Take list building. The old way was five tools and half a day. Apollo, then a scrape, then LinkedIn, then a spreadsheet, then cleanup.

Here is the run we did for our own outbound this month:

• Fed our target criteria in and pulled an Apollo search: UK and Europe, Series A, the roles we serve.

• Refined the filters down from 792 people to around 500 founders.

• Handed that 500 to Claude, already trained on our own Notion docs, our ICP, our past client patterns.

• It scored the list against who we actually close and complain least about, and returned 13 near-perfect founders and a secondary list of 66.

We launched to the 13.

That is not a faster spreadsheet. That is judgment encoded. The scoring is the part that used to live only in my head and Boris’s head. Now it lives in a skill that anyone on the team can run and get the same answer.

And that judgment is not vague taste. When we read back three months of our own sales calls, the founders who actually activate and pay share a few hard signals: they are raising or have just raised, their inbound has quietly collapsed, or they tried an SDR or an outbound agency before and it did not land. That is what the skill scores for now. Not the job title. The moment.

And because we documented the whole process, the next person we bring on does not learn it by watching me for three months. They read the page and run the skill.

Why this matters: automate the drain, not the judgment.

I wrote something similar a couple of months ago and it holds: you should not automate the parts that require judgment. You should automate the parts that drain it.

The machine now owns the repeatable 80%. The list draft. The first copy pass. The post structure. The formatting and the admin between tools.

The human still owns the 20% that decides everything: the diagnosis on a client call, the positioning call, the judgment on whether a message is actually true and worth sending. Nobody wants an AI running their client relationships. That was never the goal.

The goal was to stop burning my best hours on work that a well-built skill can do to the same standard, so I can spend them where they compound. Better discovery. Sharper diagnosis. More of the right conversations.

The next drain in the queue: follow-up.

Here is the honest part. When we ran this diagnosis on ourselves, list building was not even our biggest leak. Follow-up was.

Read back three months of our own sales calls and the same commitment shows up after nearly every one: send the deck, record a short Loom, pull two or three testimonials, attach the one-pager. Every time, rebuilt by hand. And a couple of decisions where the prospect had given us a deadline sat waiting on a follow-up that quietly drifted.

The thing I diagnose in founders every week was live in our own pipeline.

So follow-up is the next skill. One post-call pack, assembled the same way every time, with a human still deciding what is actually true and what actually goes out. Same principle as the list. Name the drain, build the loop, keep the judgment on the human.

What we’re seeing in client work: this is the most common leak of all.

The reason I am comfortable writing about our own follow-up gap is that I see the same one in almost every founder I talk to. Read back a quarter of discovery calls and the pattern is hard to miss. A decision gets time-boxed - a call back by Friday, a choice before the board meeting, an answer ahead of a competitor’s pitch on Tuesday - and the follow-up that was meant to land first quietly slips.

The counter-intuitive part is who leaks worst. It is usually the founders who feel most on top of their pipeline, because the next step lives in their head, and their head is already full. That is not a discipline problem you can motivate your way out of. It is a missing system, and it stays invisible until you count the deals it costs you.

If that is you, it is one of the cheapest things to fix and the easiest to keep ignoring. Building that loop is a good part of what we do with founders in the first few months of working together.

If you want to build this yourself: here is roughly how.

You do not need Claude Code or a technical setup to start. You need the discipline of separating what from how.

1. Name your repeatable four. Look at what your team does every week that has a predictable shape. For most B2B teams it is close to ours: list building, outreach copy, content, follow-up. Pick the ones that hurt most.

2. Write the context file first. Before any automation, write down who you sell to, why they buy, your positioning, your voice, your proof. One document. This is the thing every prompt should reference. Most bad AI output is not a model problem. It is a context problem.

3. Turn each job into a fixed instruction. Instead of improvising a prompt each time, write the skill once: the task, the steps, and “refer to the context file for who we are.” Save it. Reuse it. Improve it when the output drifts.

4. Keep a human on the judgment step. Every workflow should have one point where a person makes the call the machine cannot: is this right, is this true, does this go out. Automate up to that line, not past it.

5. Document it as you go. The moment a workflow works, write it down. That document is what makes it scalable and trainable, and it is worth more than the automation itself.

Get one loop working. Run it for two weeks. Then build the next. Do not try to automate everything on day one.

The founder lesson underneath all of this.

The reason I could not hire my way out of that 21-call week is the same reason your next hire will struggle: there was no system for them to walk into.

That is the actual product. Not leads. A repeatable engine your team can run, and now increasingly one that AI can help run, so the founder is multiplied instead of maxed out.

We build that engine with founders inside the first few months of working together. Same logic we just ran on ourselves: name what repeats, build the system, keep the humans on judgment, hand over the keys.

If this is useful

If you are the bottleneck in your own go-to-market - doing the selling and the delivery and the admin in between - that is the problem we solve.

👉 Book a 30-minute advisory call - no pitch, just a diagnostic of where your GTM actually stands and what the right next move is.

Not ready to talk yet? Start with the free resources:

• GTM Diagnostic - 10 minutes to benchmark where you stand

• From Early Traction to £1M ARR - the full 20-step system

• All playbooks - everything in one place

• Case studies - see the results before you commit

Forte Growth | We help B2B founders and revenue teams build go-to-market systems that generate leads, close deals, and scale fast.

fortegrowth.co | Services | Case Studies | LinkedIn | Book a call

The real problem is usually not the client conversation. It is everything around it. Booking flows. Prep. Research. Internal handoffs. Note-taking. Summary writing. Action tracking. Deck building. Routing. Follow-up admin.

That is where good teams lose hours. And that is exactly the layer we’ve been building around our sales and advisory process.

The idea was simple: Remove as much operational drag as possible from the journey between booked meeting and final proposal.

When a prospect books a meeting through HubSpot, they submit the information we need up front. From there, our n8n workflow pulls that context, structures it, and triggers the next steps automatically.

We use that input to generate a discovery deck in Gamma, then send it into the relevant Slack channel so we can prepare properly before the call. That means the team is not starting cold. We already have context, structure, and a working point of view before the conversation begins.

Then we run the discovery call.

After that, Fathom captures the meeting and transcript. Once the call is done, the workflow picks that up and uses it to generate a diagnostic-style analysis deck in Gamma. That becomes the working document we refine internally before the final client conversation.

So instead of spending our time copying notes, rewriting summaries, building decks from scratch, and chasing admin across tools, we spend more time on the part that actually matters: understanding the client’s problem, sharpening the diagnosis, and shaping the right next step.

What we actually automated: Not the thinking. The process around the thinking.

That distinction matters. We are not trying to remove human judgment from sales. We are trying to remove repetitive operational work that gets in the way of good judgment.

Here is the flow in practice:

1. A lead books through HubSpot and shares the right context up front.

2. n8n pulls the information and pushes it into the workflow.

3. Gamma generates a draft deck for the discovery conversation.

4. That deck is dropped into Slack so the team can review and prepare.

5. We hold the meeting with the client.

6. Fathom records the call and captures the transcript.

7. The transcript feeds back into the workflow.

8. Gamma then produces a second analysis or diagnostic deck based on what was actually said in the meeting.

9. We review, refine, and use that as the basis for the final conversation.

That is the system. It is not flashy for the sake of it. It is useful. It reduces friction. It shortens the distance between conversation and action. And it means our time goes into interpretation, diagnosis, and decision-making instead of process handling.

Why this matters: You shouldn’t be obsessed about “automation for the sake of it”

Rather focus on what will save you time, create virtuous loops to:

• test → iterate → improve

While removing manual and friction causing activities through an integrator like N8N, Zapier or Make.

This allows you to actually focus on:

• sharper thinking, faster diagnosis, clearer next steps, and confidence that the people in the room know what they are doing.

The operational layer either supports that or slows it down.

If the team is manually collecting inputs, manually rewriting notes, manually turning calls into decks, and manually passing context between tools, a surprising amount of energy gets burned on work that does not actually move the client forward.

That is why we built this system the way we did. Not because automation is trendy. Because it creates more room for real work.

The stack itself is fairly simple: What matters is how the tools work together.

HubSpot handles meeting capture and front-end client information. The n8n acts as the orchestration layer. Gamma helps turn structured inputs into usable decks. Slack becomes the operating environment for internal visibility and preparation. Fathom captures the conversation and transcript after the meeting.

Then the workflow loops that insight back into the process so the team is not starting from a blank page after every call. None of those tools are magic on their own.

The leverage comes from designing the process properly so that information moves cleanly from one stage to the next.

If you want to build this yourself: Here is roughly how

Start with the design, not the tools.

Map your journey from booked meeting to final proposal. Mark every spot where someone copies information, rewrites notes, chases context, or rebuilds a deck from scratch. Those are your automation candidates. Pick the two or three that hurt the most.

Build the pre-call loop first.

This is the highest-leverage half. The flow looks like this:

1. Replace your booking link with a HubSpot meeting form that asks for the right context up front. Company, role, problem area, current stack. Three or four fields max.

2. Set up an n8n workflow triggered on form submission. n8n pulls the form data, enriches it if needed, and pushes a structured payload forward.

3. Pipe that payload into Gamma to generate a discovery deck. Use a fixed prompt and a fixed template so the output is consistent.

4. Drop the finished deck into a Slack channel the team actually watches, with a short summary of who is meeting whom and when.

Once that loop is running cleanly, you have already removed most of the prep drag. Run it for two weeks before you touch the next part.

Then build the post-call loop.

1. Connect Fathom (or Grain, Fireflies, whatever you use) so transcripts land somewhere n8n can read.

2. Trigger a second n8n workflow once a transcript is available.

3. Feed the transcript into a Claude or GPT step with a prompt that pulls out the diagnosis, the priorities, and the open questions.

4. Push that structured output into a second Gamma deck. That becomes your working analysis document.

5. Drop it back into Slack for internal review before the follow-up call.

A few things worth getting right.

Use one source of truth for client data. HubSpot for us. Do not let n8n become the database.

Keep your prompts in version control or at least a Notion page. You will tweak them constantly, and you want to see what changed when output quality drifts.

Build for the team you have, not the team you wish you had. If your AE will not open Slack, do not put the deck in Slack.

Do not try to automate the whole journey on day one. Get one loop working. Run it. Improve it. Then add the next.

If you would rather not figure it out from scratch.

This is exactly the kind of system we build with clients inside the first 30 days of a Forte engagement. Same logic, faster path, fewer dead ends. If you want to see the actual n8n workflow and the prompts we use, reply to this email or message me on LinkedIn.

Happy to walk you through ours and help you map yours.

The real advantage: We spend less time managing the process and more time improving the outcome.

That is the whole point. The more operational drag you remove, the more attention you can give to the client’s actual problem.

• Better discovery.

• Better diagnosis.

• Better recommendations.

• Better final conversations.

A lot of firms still burn strong people on weak process. We would rather build the process properly and use our energy where it creates the most value.

The real system

Done well, this is not just automation. It is workflow design in service of better client work.

• The meeting gets booked.

• The context gets captured.

• The deck gets built.

• The team prepares.

• The meeting gets analysed.

• The diagnostic gets sharpened.

• The final conversation becomes stronger.

That is what we mean when we talk about building GTM systems. Not more busywork. More leverage.

New from Forte: The Repeatable Growth Engine

Over the last year, we worked with 100+ founders and revenue teams across 20+ engagements.

The pattern was clear: most early growth comes from warm intros, founder hustle and one-off campaigns. Then the referrals slow down, outbound gets patchy, content sits on the side, and the founder is still stuck in every sales conversation.

So we built the Repeatable Growth Engine.

It is a 4 to 6 week GTM system designed to help founders move beyond scattered tactics and build a pipeline that compounds.

We diagnose where growth is breaking, fix the essentials around ICP, positioning, messaging and sales process, then get inbound, outbound, content and follow-up working together.

The goal is simple: a system your team can run, not another advisor sitting on the side.

You can see the full launch post here.

If this is useful

If you are trying to create a cleaner sales or advisory process without drowning your team in admin, this is exactly the kind of system we help build.

At Forte Growth, we help B2B founders and revenue teams build go-to-market systems that generate leads, create clarity, and turn good conversations into real commercial momentum.

fortegrowth.co

I’ve always been against spray and pray. Unless your total addressable market is everyone and their mother, you have to be careful. Your ideal prospects are finite. Especially in the short run. When we run LinkedIn outbound for clients, we’re working with 100–120 connection requests and 20–30 messages to start. That’s it. So every name on that list has to count.

Which is why when outbound underperforms, the issue is rarely the stack.

It’s usually something simpler:

• Wrong accounts

• Weak timing

• No signal

• Or messaging that gives people no reason to reply

Run this diagnostic before you change anything:

• Sent 50+ messages, reply rate under 5%? Fix the message, not the list.

• Hearing the same objection repeatedly? That’s a positioning problem, not a sales problem.

• Sent 100+ messages, zero leads? Test a different ICP or a different channel.

• Replies coming in but no meetings? The CTA is probably too big.

That’s usually where the real issue sits.

What actually makes or breaks outbound

Tools help execute. But the work that determines whether outbound converts happens before anyone sends a message.

Here’s the order that matters:

1. Targeting. Not by demographics. By behaviour.

The teams converting at 10–30% reply rates don’t filter by title and headcount. They track signals:

• Hiring for the role your product replaces

• Recently raised, new budget pressure

• Posting about the problem you solve

• Entering a new market or geography

• Visiting competitor sites, reviewing on G2

Demographics tell you who exists. Signals tell you who’s ready.

2. Persona depth.

Getting the ICP right on paper isn’t enough. You need to understand what they care about, what they’re Googling at 11pm, what their trigger events look like, what they want to be educated on. We re-listen to customer calls specifically for this. The brief tells you what to say. Deep persona work tells you how to say it so it actually lands.

3. The trust layer. And this is the one most teams skip entirely.

Even with the right account, at the right moment, with a relevant message - if they don’t know you, conversion stalls. The reply rate is fine. But the meeting rate is low. Because a cold message from a stranger, however well-targeted, still carries friction.

This is why I keep saying: inbound is the best outbound.

When someone has already seen you solve problems like theirs - through a LinkedIn post, a piece of content, a point of view - the cold email isn’t cold anymore. Your SDRs are starting conversations, not interrupting strangers.

At Witco, we ran 200+ enterprise conversations this way. Not spray-and-pray. Content warmed the market first. Reply rates on the back of that were 15–30%, not 1–2%. Same effort. Completely different outcome.

The stack itself is fairly simple

• Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Ocean.io for prospect discovery

• Clay and Trigify for enrichment and signal detection

• Claude, GPT, and Gemini for research and scoring

• LinkedIn, HubSpot, and HeyReach for execution

Nothing especially clever there. What matters is what the system is built on top of.

The data backs this up. Salesforce found sales teams now use an average of 8 tools, while 42% of reps feel overwhelmed by too many of them - overwhelmed reps are 45% less likely to hit quota. LinkedIn found 78% of B2B buyers strongly agree outreach should be personalised. 6sense found buyers are already 69% through their purchase process before engaging with sellers.

So by the time they hear from you, they’ve often already formed a view. The question is whether that view includes you.

The real system

Done well, outbound isn’t a standalone motion. It sharpens your messaging. It exposes where positioning is weak. It tells you what your website needs to say. It gives the founder better angles to speak from.

The breakthrough is rarely another tool. It’s usually:

• A tighter ICP

• Better signal triggers

• Stronger positioning

• A trust layer built before the conversation starts

• And founder-led conversations that actually feel relevant

If this is useful

If you want a clearer view of what’s actually slowing your GTM down, start here.

👉 Book a 30-minute advisory call - I’ll diagnose your growth bottlenecks across 6 key pillars from GTM essentials to outbound and marketing activities that build trust, authority and credibility.

Not ready to talk yet? Start with the free resources:

• GTM Diagnostic - 10 minutes to benchmark where you stand

• Outbound Diagnostics Guide - the foundational diagnostic playbook

• From Early Traction to £1M ARR - the full 20-step system

• All playbooks - everything in one place

• Case studies - see the results before you commit

Forte Growth, We help B2B founders and revenue teams build go-to-market systems that generate leads, close deals, and scale fast

fortegrowth.co

I’ve always been against spray and pray. Unless your total addressable market is everyone and their mother, you have to be careful. Your ideal prospects are finite. Especially in the short run. When we run LinkedIn outbound for clients, we’re working with 100–120 connection requests and 20–30 messages to start. That’s it. So every name on that list has to count.

Which is why when outbound underperforms, the issue is rarely the stack.

It’s usually something simpler:

• Wrong accounts

• Weak timing

• No signal

• Messaging that gives people no reason to reply

and sometimes it’s deeper, like:

• positioning is wrong

• no PMF

• no trust signals

Run this diagnostic before you change anything:

• Sent 50+ messages, reply rate under 5%? Fix the message, not the list.

• Hearing the same objection repeatedly? That’s a positioning problem, not a sales problem.

• Sent 100+ messages, zero leads? Test a different ICP or a different channel.

• Replies coming in but no meetings? The CTA is probably too big.

That’s usually where the real issue sits.

What actually makes or breaks outbound

Tools help execute. But the work that determines whether outbound converts happens before anyone sends a message.

Here’s the order that matters:

1. Targeting. Not by demographics. By behaviour.

The teams converting at 10–30% reply rates don’t filter by title and headcount. They track signals:

• Hiring for the role your product replaces

• Recently raised, new budget pressure

• Posting about the problem you solve

• Entering a new market or geography

• Visiting competitor sites, reviewing on G2

Demographics tell you who exists. Signals tell you who’s ready.

2. Persona depth.

Getting the ICP right on paper isn’t enough. You need to understand what they care about, what they’re Googling at 11pm, what their trigger events look like, what they want to be educated on. We re-listen to customer calls specifically for this. The brief tells you what to say. Deep persona work tells you how to say it so it actually lands.

3. The trust layer. And this is the one most teams skip entirely.

Even with the right account, at the right moment, with a relevant message - if they don’t know you, conversion stalls. The reply rate is fine. But the meeting rate is low. Because a cold message from a stranger, however well-targeted, still carries friction.

This is why I keep saying: inbound is the best outbound.

When someone has already seen you solve problems like theirs - through a LinkedIn post, a piece of content, a point of view - the cold email isn’t cold anymore. Your SDRs are starting conversations, not interrupting strangers.

At Witco, we ran 200+ enterprise conversations this way. Not spray-and-pray. Content warmed the market first. Reply rates on the back of that were 15–30%, not 1–2%. Same effort. Completely different outcome.

The stack itself is fairly simple

• Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Ocean.io for prospect discovery

• Clay and Trigify for enrichment and signal detection

• Claude, GPT, and Gemini for research and scoring

• LinkedIn, HubSpot, and HeyReach for execution

Nothing especially clever there. What matters is what the system is built on top of.

The data backs this up. Salesforce found sales teams now use an average of 8 tools, while 42% of reps feel overwhelmed by too many of them - overwhelmed reps are 45% less likely to hit quota. LinkedIn found 78% of B2B buyers strongly agree outreach should be personalised. 6sense found buyers are already 69% through their purchase process before engaging with sellers.

So by the time they hear from you, they’ve often already formed a view. The question is whether that view includes you.

The real system

Done well, outbound isn’t a standalone motion. It sharpens your messaging. It exposes where positioning is weak. It tells you what your website needs to say. It gives the founder better angles to speak from.

The breakthrough is rarely another tool. It’s usually:

• A tighter ICP

• Better signal triggers

• Stronger positioning

• A trust layer built before the conversation starts

• And founder-led conversations that actually feel relevant

If this is useful

If you want a clearer view of what’s actually slowing your GTM down, start here.

👉 Book a 30-minute advisory call - I’ll diagnose your growth bottlenecks across 6 key pillars from GTM essentials to outbound and marketing activities that build trust, authority and credibility.

Not ready to talk yet? Start with the free resources:

• GTM Diagnostic - 10 minutes to benchmark where you stand

• Outbound Diagnostics Guide - the foundational diagnostic playbook

• From Early Traction to £1M ARR - the full 20-step system

• All playbooks - everything in one place

• Case studies - see the results before you commit

Forte Growth, we help B2B founders and revenue teams build go-to-market systems that generate leads, close deals, and scale fast.

fortegrowth.co

Hi, I’m Alper. I run Forte Growth with Fatih (Growth mgr.) and Boris (SDR). We help B2B founders and revenue teams get to repeatable revenue faster.

Last week I had to tell a founder something uncomfortable.

£1M ARR at home. 50+ enterprise logos. Real product, real customers. UK expansion stalling for months. He thought the product wasn’t landing.

It wasn’t the product.

This issue is about what I keep seeing with entering new markets - and the system that fixes it.

Let’s go.

*fortegrowth.co | LinkedIn | Book a call*

This issue follows one thread:

Get clear on the market. Build the right list. Create founder visibility. Turn calls into content and proof. Let each part strengthen the next.

That’s the flywheel. Everything below is one piece of it.

1. Quick Win 🛠️

Run this outbound diagnostic before you change anything.

I’ve reviewed 20+ startups’ outbound in the last 3 months. The problem is almost never what founders think it is. Before you rewrite your sequences or buy a new tool, run through these 5 steps:

👉 Sent 50+ messages, reply rate under 5%? Change your message. Not your list.

👉 Same objection 3+ times? That’s a positioning problem, not a sales problem.

👉 100+ messages, no leads? Try a different ICP or a different channel entirely.

👉 Good replies but no meetings? Your CTA is too big. “Worth 15 minutes this week?” beats “let me know if you’d like a demo” every time.

👉 None of the above? Stop optimising and start scaling what’s working.

Fix the signal first. Then scale it.

👉 Not sure where your GTM stands right now? Take the free GTM Diagnostic -10 minutes to a clear benchmark.

2. The Big Idea 🧠

The LinkedIn-first revenue system. 30 steps, no paid ads before message-market fit.

This is the playbook I built for an Accelerator portfolio in the last 3 months, based on reviewing GTM funnels of 20 of their pre-seed to Series-A startups.

Mostly sales-led motions, some partnership led.

Linkedin as main channel for visibility and trust, but some have instagram others facebook where main audience lives.

Here’s the order we’ve created as a template to save & adapt.

One size fits noone, so if your audience is real estate agents who live in facebook, adapt!

If your audience is event promoters who live in instagram, adapt.

The cycle: posts build awareness. Comments build relationships. DMs convert warm leads. Email reaches people who haven’t found you yet. Each cycle makes next one faster.

That’s a growth loop. Not a channel.

👉 The full 30-step playbook is available here: From Early Traction to £1M ARR

3. Client Spotlight ✅

“Yes you have Nike as a logo - but that’s Nike Turkey, friend of your friend.”

That’s the harsh truth I had to tell a founder last week. £1M ARR. 50+ enterprise logos at home. Real product, real customers. UK expansion stalling for months.

I ran a quick diagnostic. Here’s what I found:

ICP clarity (UK): 2/10. Three segments from the home market, none tested in UK.

Messaging: 2/10. Product evolved but the UK pitch was never rebuilt.

Founder brand: 1/10. Neither founder posts on LinkedIn. Nobody in the UK knows they exist.

Lead gen: 2/10. One agency running outbound, stalled when the key person left. And £10K already spent on paid ads -before message-market fit. Most common mistake I see.

Home market score? 7/10. Solid business. UK score: 2/10 across the board.

The product isn’t the problem. The GTM is.

A new market is a new game. No presence, no trust, no sales. We’re starting a Sprint together in March to rebuild it properly.

✅ UK-specific ICP. Rebuilt messaging. One founder posting consistently. 3–5 outbound angles tested fast. 2–3 UK case studies at any cost. Earned trust before bought trust.

If you’ve cracked your home market but the new one isn’t responding -the problem is almost never the product. It’s always the system.

👉 See the full OMMA case study | Audit your own GTM first

4. AI for GTM 🤖

👉 I accidentally did our SDR’s 3-hour job in 20 minutes.

Last week I got my hands dirty. Sat down to do some list building myself - Claude connected to Apollo. I was genuinely mind blown.

Honestly every day AI keeps blowing my mind, what took us days, weeks now happens in minutes!

If you’re a leader and only doing “leadership” - you’re missing out on AI.

Last week I got my hands dirty to build some lists using Claude integrations.

WHAT I DID

So far Forte has grown through a mix of inbound-referrals, and now I’m planning to do some outbound trials for ourselves.

I had a list of European B2B SaaS founders to enrich - UK and France, Seed to Series A, no GTM hire yet. The kind of work that normally means Apollo, then Hunter, then LinkedIn, then Sheets, then cleanup.

EXACT STEPS:

👉 Asked Claude to pull target accounts from VC portfolios - Seedcamp, Playfair, Point 9, Kima, Dawn, Notion Cap

👉 Scored them against our ICP inside the same conversation

👉 Connected Apollo to Claude via MCP

👉 Claude queried Apollo directly and returned full contact cards

3 founders. Verified contacts. 11 minutes.

Old way: 5 tools, an SDR, half a day. New way: one conversation.

If you’re in sales, marketing leadership and relying on the old ways, you stay outdated.

Get in the trenches, try new tools and technologies. The world’s changed drastically even compared to 6 months ago.

👉 If you’re curious to discover how I did it, DM and we’ll have a chat.

5. What’s New at Forte 🚀

The Forte Growth Sprint - built for founders who’ve proven the product and need to scale the revenue.

1- GTM essentials and growth plan

2- Lead gen tests to find repeatable meetings on linkedin

3- System that scales trust and visibility with content, linkedin, AIO

4- Scale what works to scalable channels like email and SEO

Here’s what most GTM engagements get wrong: they hand you a strategy deck and leave you to execute it alone. We don’t do that.

What we actually deliver:

The Forte Growth System is a 16-week engagement that builds six connected engines -from scratch if needed, or on top of what’s already working:

1- The idea is to find repeatable growth loops

2- Get first leads in month 2 of testing,

3- Create a stable pipeline of leads by month 4 so the engagement pays for itself

👉 Intelligence -ICP definition, signal-based prospect lists, competitive positioning. Know exactly who to target and why they buy now.

👉 Voice -Founder brand, LinkedIn presence, content system. Build trust before the first outreach lands.

👉 Messaging -Positioning, copy, outbound sequences. Every touchpoint says the right thing to the right person.

👉 LinkedIn -Posting cadence, engagement engine, DM conversion. Your highest-ROI channel, running as a system.

👉 Outbound -Multi-channel sequences, A/B testing, weekly iteration. Built to find signal fast and scale what works.

👉 Sales Foundations -Discovery framework, objection handling, pipeline tracking. So meetings actually close.

Why work with us:

We’ve done this before. £500K ARR at Flowla with zero paid ads. £1M ARR for Witco in a new market. £1M pipeline in 90 days for OMMA. £750K pipeline in 6 months for Wealt.

We build the system with you, hand you the keys, and leave no dependency behind. By the end you have a documented, tested GTM engine your team can run -or you can scale with AI.

One closed deal covers the investment.

Who it’s for:

B2B founders at £500K–£5M ARR. Particularly founders entering a new market, preparing for Series A/B, or done being the entire sales team.

How to get started:

👉 Book a 30-minute advisory call -no pitch, just a diagnostic of where you are and what the right next move looks like.

Not ready to talk yet? Start with our free resources:

• GTM Diagnostic -10 minutes to benchmark where you stand

• Audit Your GTM -the foundational diagnostic playbook

• From Early Traction to £1M ARR -the full 20-step system

• All playbooks -everything in one place

• Case studies -see the results before you commit

6. Worth Your Time

One framework to steal this month: Before you touch outbound, map your existing customers by who bought fastest, paid most, and complained least. That’s your real ICP. Not the one in your deck.

One question worth sitting with: If you stripped out every logo from your last market and had to rebuild trust from zero in a new one -where would you start? The answer tells you whether you actually have a repeatable system, or whether your last market was personal network disguised as GTM.

One thing I keep seeing: Founders who are brilliant at building product consistently underestimate how much of their home-market traction came from pre-existing relationships and reputation. It doesn’t transfer. The system has to.

🎙️Podcast spotlight

• How to Get Prospects to Stop Ghosting You | Sales Logic Podcast

• How to avoid being ghosted by corporate decision makers | Selling To Corporate

• Building a content machine and founder brand | Sales Therapy by Flowla

👀 Only the most useful, and no Fluff Linkedin posts I like this month

7. Final POV

Most teams try to fix growth by adding more. More outreach. More tools. More content. More hires. Growth gets easier when the system gets tighter.

Get clear on the market. Build the right list. Create founder visibility. Turn calls into content and proof. Let each part strengthen the next.

That’s the flywheel.

Here’s to a April with fewer scattered tactics and more of the right conversations.

-Alper

Forte Growth | We help B2B founders and revenue teams build go-to-market systems that generate leads, close deals, and scale fast.

*fortegrowth.co | Services | Case Studies | LinkedIn | Book a call*

“How do we actually use AI without losing our edge?”

“What does great outbound look like today?”

“How can founders create momentum without burning out?”

The next generation of GTM isn’t about more hustle — it’s about stacking leverage:

AI, founder-led sales, signal-based outbound, and growth loops that compound over time.

Over the last month, I’ve been testing new AI tools, launching workshops, running webinars, and helping founders move faster without the fluff.

This newsletter is your field guide to that messy, beautiful stage between product and scale.

Real frameworks, loops, and GTM systems — no fluff, just what works.

1- GTM Strategy of the Month

How AI Is Changing Founder-Led Growth

We’re not in the "should we use AI" phase anymore.

We're in the "how fast can you use it better than anyone else" phase.

🎁 One tool that blew me away this month: Gamma.

I'm using it to build decks, outbound playbooks, and sales assets in record time — faster than agencies and freelancers combined.

Here’s a real example:

🎁Simple landing page I built for Forte

All done with AI in 5 minutes!

🔗 Outbound Playbook built on Gamma

🔗 Founder-Led Sales Playbook

If you haven’t started layering AI into your GTM ops yet, you're already behind.

2- Launch Highlights: Workshops and Webinars

This month, we launched new founder-led sales and zero-to-one GTM workshops, designed to help early-stage teams build momentum without bloated budgets.

Plus, I ran a live Zero-to-Revenue webinar with from @Scribe— the feedback was 🔥:

"This was the first GTM session that actually made me want to build right away — not just take notes."

Workshops are now live for May/June.

You can watch the recording here

(If you want early access to the next cohort, DM me.)

3- Playbook Drop

Outbound That Actually Works in 2025

Outbound isn’t dead.

Bad outbound is.

Here’s the smarter system we’re building with founders:

1. Signal-based targeting

• Use Clay to build lists triggered by real-time events (fundraising, job changes, tech stack changes).

• Layer it with Apollo to enrich data and run better searches.

2. Relevance-first messaging

• Build mini-sequences in Salesforge or Dripify that start with relevance:

  ("Saw you just switched to HubSpot — here’s how we helped another team after that migration.")

3. Multi-channel sequencing

• Use LinkedIn + Email + Event invites to create multiple touchpoints.

• Tools like Clay can automate intent signals into your CRM and sequences.

4. Proof in every interaction

• Drop micro-case studies or screenshots right inside your cold emails or DMs.

• Example: "After switching CRMs, we helped X team reduce lead leakage by 34%."

💡 Bonus Tip:

Use Notion to build a “Proof Bank” — quick snippets of wins and testimonials you can pull from for outbound.

Outbound today = smarter, smaller lists + deeper relevance.

Spray-and-pray is over.

4- Client Win of the Month

A founder we worked with this quarter:

"In just 90 days, we’ve gone from random outreach to a repeatable system:

• 35% reply rates

• Consistent inbound traction on LinkedIn

• A clear pipeline building every week"

Momentum compounds when your GTM system is focused and founder-led.

Simple as that.

Want an outbound system like this? DM me, let’s talk!

5- LinkedIn Highlights

🔥 Must-Save Posts: 💡

• Founder Knowledge: Carta’s Summary of Equity and Rounds

• 41 AI Agents Automating Startups — John Rush

• LinkedIn Commenting Best Practices — Charlie Hills

💬 Worth Discussing: 💡

• 7 AI Tools That Save Hours — Jeremy Grandillon

• Ramp’s $700M ARR — How They Use AI Across GTM

• Best AI GTM Tools for 2025 — Michel Lieben

💡 Audience favorites:

• 365 Days of LinkedIn Growth Strategy — Lara Acosta

6- Sales & Growth Tools I’m Loving

Gamma

✅ Build beautiful decks and assets in minutes

✅ Amazing for outbound and sales enablement workflows

Clay + Apollo Combo

✅ Signal-based prospecting

✅ Cleaner, smarter lead lists with less manual effort

I’m cooking up a full AI-powered outbound system — thinking of dropping it in June’s issue. Let me know if you'd want that.

7- What I'm Reading & Listening — No Fluff

🎧 Podcast Spotlight:

• The Cold Start Problem — Andrew Chen

• Enterprise Sales Playbooks — How to Sell to Big Companies

🔍 LinkedIn Deep Dives:

• Michel Lieben: Best AI GTM Tools for Revenue Teams

• Ramp: Using AI Across Revenue Motions

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnrushx_i-automated-90-of-my-startup-empire-41-ugcPost-7321541494916411392-tFT8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAALts24BQe4FtEXBlmWIUiJGkY4SunbpYdU

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/charlie-hills_how-to-dominate-linkedin-with-comments-activity-7322197826220789761-EjK9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAALts24BQe4FtEXBlmWIUiJGkY4SunbpYdU

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeremygrandillon_7-ai-tools-that-will-save-you-hours-ugcPost-7321910080277286912-dnU-/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAALts24BQe4FtEXBlmWIUiJGkY4SunbpYdU

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-slowey-32580110_ai-marketing-sales-tools-activity-7318536226913808386-m3hi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAALts24BQe4FtEXBlmWIUiJGkY4SunbpYdU

8- Final POV

AI won’t replace founders or sellers.

But founders and sellers who use AI smartly will replace everyone else.

You don’t need 10x more hustle.

You need a smarter system:

AI leverage → founder-led sales → proof-driven growth loops → repeat.

That’s what we build at Fortegrowth.

If you’re ready to install your GTM engine, let’s talk.

Book a call with me

⭐️ If you’re an early stage founder, and want to receive GTM & AI tips from me and other founders, DM me on Linkedin to join our private-access only Whatsapp group!

Hello world, it’s Alper!

Welcome to a new edition of the GTM Journal.

Let’s dive in:

Most startup founders I work with hit a similar GTM wall:

“How do we get our first 100 customers?”

“What channels should we test — and when?”

“How do we build a revenue engine, improve lead gen and win rates?”

The gap between product and pipeline isn’t solved with more tools — it’s solved with clarity on your narrative, offer, and what actually moves the needle.

After exiting Flowla, I started getting DMs from early-stage founders asking the same questions and over the past few months, I’ve been helping founders:

• Build founder-led sales engines that work without fluff

• Design 180-day GTM systems mixing scrappy experiments and scalable plays

• Launch founder brands that attract leads — without trying to be influencers

This newsletter is your field guide to that messy, beautiful stage between product and growth — aka pre-seed to Series B. Think of it like a GTM ops room: frameworks, tests, and loops to steal or adapt — all based on real-world work. No fluff!

1- GTM Strategy of the Month

The Founder Growth Loop (Your First GTM Engine)

When you don’t have a team or budget, this is what you need:

1. Story → Build trust with your narrative

2. Content → Share proof of traction (results, lessons, visuals)

3. Outbound → Reach out manually to validate ICP + messaging

4. Loop → Document what works → share → repeat

✨ Most teams over-complicate this. If you focus on signal > process > scale, you’re already ahead.

It’s easier said than done — but when this loop works, it really works.

In our first year scaling Flowla, it helped us generate over 1,000 leads and build a pipeline exceeding $1.5M.

I get it — LinkedIn, podcasts, “founder brand”… it can all feel hard or even cringe at first.

But the moment you see your name or LinkedIn profile showing up as the lead source, everything changes. You realize: this isn’t just marketing — it’s distribution with compounding trust.

2- Scalable vs. Non-Scalable Channels: How to Pick What Works

You’ve probably heard people talk about scalable and non-scalable channels — but what do they really mean?

✅ Scalable = Channels that grow without needing more time or headcount

❌ Non-scalable = High-touch, manual, or time-intensive — but often high-impact early on

💡 The punchline:

At early stage, your GTM should follow this simple formula:

Choose:

• 2 scalable channels for the year

  • e.g. LinkedIn content, cold outbound, virality

• 1 non-scalable experiment per quarter

  • Q1: Founder-led content (LinkedIn, newsletters)

  • Q2: PR, product launch push

  • Q3: Founder dinners, events, collabs

  • Q4: Paid ads (once you’re closer to message-market fit)

• Year 2+ → Scale what worked. Layer on SEO, paid, and lifecycle marketing.

This approach gives you fast feedback early on, while setting you up for compounding growth later.

Here's a LinkedIn post I wrote on how to pick the right channels based on stage.

GIVE-AWAY: And a full Notion doc with 50+ early-stage growth tactics I use with clients.

Access here

Start small. Test hard. Scale what works.

3- Playbook Drop

How to Spend $20K to Test a GTM Motion in 120 Days

If I raised $1M today, here’s the no fluff budget I’d use to test different channels to turn traction into revenue:

1. $6K → Founder brand engine

   → Canva visuals, ghostwriting support, 3x posts per week

2. $1K → Outbound stack (Clay, Honeysales, Salesforge, Dripify)

   → Signal-based, personalized, AI-augmented outreach

3. $2K → PR, sponsored event or launch

   → Host a PR event or launch a founder POV campaign

4. $9K → SDR/VA help

   → List-building, follow-up, CRM hygiene

5. $2K → 2 non-scalable experiments

   → Founder AMA, private dinner, pilot offers

4- LinkedIn Highlights

🔥 Most saved:

“If I had $1M, here’s how I’d spend it to grow a B2B startup.”

Breakdown by team, tools, and experiments. Read it here

💬 Most debated:

❌ Most cold emails don’t fail because of deliverability.

They fail because of something much harder to fix. Full post

💡 Audience favorites:

• No-fluff toolstack to get to 100 customers

• Relocate to US or not? The big startup founder question </aside>

Want a content system like this? DM me, let’s talk!

Book a call with me

5- Sales Tools I Tested This Month

Honeysales

✅ Pros:

• Quick setup, no-frills UI

• Focused on one thing: booking meetings

• Great for solo founders or early GTM teams

Dripify

✅ Pros:

• Simple LinkedIn automation

• Good for small-batch, high-context outreach

• Easy for non-technical users

  

Trying more next month — DM me if there's a tool you want reviewed.

6- What I liked reading & listening - No fluff!

🎧 Podcast spotlight

• How to Get Prospects to Stop Ghosting You | Sales Logic Podcast

• Avoid Being Ghosted by Corporate Buyers | Selling To Corporate

• Building a B2B Content Machine with Pierre Herubel | Sales Therapy

🔍 LinkedIn Posts Worth Your Time

I only share real NO FLUFF! posts I like. that are super practical and you can steal & adapt, so here you go:

• Michel Lieben: 3 Levels of Intent Signals

• Alex Baldovin: GTM x AI x Tech

• Lewis Owain: Best ChatGPT Alternatives

• Pierre Herubel: 50 B2B Marketing Rules

• Chris Donnelly: Hooks in High-Performing Posts

• Chris Tottman: What I Learned from Valuing 100+ Startups

• Burak Buyukdemir: The founder’s guide to early stage

7- Final POV

You don’t need a head of growth.

You need a system that creates momentum — and the confidence to run it weekly.

If you’re:

• Running cold outreach that lands flat,

• Struggling to turn traction into pipeline...

• Losing winnable deals due to lack of sales experience

What you need is:

• A GTM strategy that mixes scrappy and scalable

• A loop that compounds: content → outbound → proof → repeat

• Coaching and support on upping your sales process and practice

That’s exactly what I help founders build — founder-led growth engines that turn attention into revenue.

If that sounds like something you want, let’s talk. You don’t need to go it alone.

Book a call with me

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