The GTM Launchpad is where we open the hood on B2B revenue - fixing structure, sharpening outbound and building pipeline that actually holds up

It’s Labor Day so I’m gonna spare you the 2,500 word GTM dissertation this morning but something happened this week that I haven’t really stopped thinking about.

I spent part of Friday interviewing people for a role that, if I’ve done my job right, should eventually make me unnecessary. It sounds kinda weird when I say it like that but that’s really what we were doing.

For the last few months I’ve been inside a B2B SaaS company helping rebuild their outbound motion. We started where most of these things start: messaging, calls, activity, targeting, data, workflows, coaching, tooling and trying to figure out why the numbers weren’t moving the way everyone wanted them to.

Over time though the work started changing. We weren’t just trying to make outbound perform better anymore. We were trying to build something another person could eventually own and that turned out to be a much different question.

A few months ago most of my attention was on the motion itself. Did we have the right accounts? Were we calling enough people? Was the data actually usable? Were conversations turning into meetings? Was the rep struggling or was the system making their job harder than it needed to be?

Those questions still matter. Last week’s issue was basically about this exact thing. Before leadership asks for more activity, the system underneath that activity has to give the rep a legit shot at succeeding.

This week the conversation moved a little further downstream because the company is hiring a senior outbound lead. This person will still prospect and carry a number but they’ll also coach the team, inspect the motion, hold people accountable, improve what’s already there and eventually take ownership of what we’ve been building.

That meant the question I was asking during the interviews wasn’t really “who is the best SDR?” It was “who could own this thing six months from now without me standing in the middle of it?”

Once I started looking at the candidates through that lens the hiring standard changed pretty quickly. I wasn’t only listening for someone who knew how to cold call or write a solid email. I wanted to understand how they’d run a week with a couple reps, what they’d do if activity was high but meetings were low, how they’d coach someone who was producing but ignoring the process, what numbers they’d look at, what they’d automate and where they’d keep the human involved.

More than anything I wanted to know what would happen if one day we handed them outbound and basically said “here it is. Show us what’s broken and make it better.”

One of the candidates said something during the process that stuck with me. He described part of his job as a leader as making it easier for reps to succeed.

I liked that because he wasn’t talking about lowering expectations or babying people. He was talking about making sure reps had the right accounts, good enough data, a real reason to reach out, a problem they actually understood, some proof and enough coaching to know what to do when another human finally answered the phone.

Then he walked through how he thinks about diagnosing performance.

If nobody is answering maybe it’s targeting, data, or activity.

If people answer but the conversations die in ten seconds maybe the opener sucks or the problem isn’t relevant.

If conversations are happening but meetings aren’t maybe we need to look at discovery, value or how we’re asking for the meeting.

If meetings are happening but nothing turns into pipeline maybe the ICP itself is off.

What caught my attention was what he didn’t say. He didn’t immediately go “cool make more calls.”

That sounded a lot like the motion we’ve already been trying to build. Another candidate talked about removing as much friction as possible so SDRs could spend more of their time doing what they were actually hired to do: which is sell.

Different people had different styles and different experience but I kept hearing the same thing underneath all of it.

The job isn’t to become the hero inside the system
The job is to build something that doesn’t need a hero

At one point during one of the interviews I heard myself say something that basically summed up what’s been changing inside this engagement. The person in this seat will eventually need to take ownership of the machine.

That’s what we’re really building toward now.

During another part of the process one of the candidates asked leadership what success would actually look like after 90 days. The answer wasn’t just to book a bunch of meetings. The bigger goal is getting to a point where leadership can say with some confidence “we believe outbound can predictably contribute X percent of pipeline.”

That might sound like a small difference but it really isn’t. A couple reps making calls is activity. A consultant coaching them is support. A stack of sales tools is infrastructure.

When another leader can understand the system, inspect it, coach from it, improve it and eventually forecast from it now you’re starting to build an actual outbound org.

That’s the transition I think we’re in right now. If I do my part right, the win isn’t that this company needs me forever. The win is that eventually they don’t need me for this problem anymore.

There’s an obvious tension in that because consultants get paid when clients need help. There’s probably a version of this business where the smartest thing financially is to stay indispensable for as long as possible.

You could own the process, hold onto the knowledge, become the person everyone has to call when something breaks and bury yourself so deep inside the motion that the engagement never really ends.

I don’t think I want to work that way.

Of course I want long-term client relationships. I want people to call me again and I want to help with the next problem and the one after that. I just don’t want the same problem to require me forever.

If I help rebuild an outbound motion and six months from now nobody internally knows how to run it without me I’m not sure I rebuilt much of anything. Maybe I just made myself another part of the workflow.

That’s been sitting with me this weekend.

The funny part is that this whole thing didn’t really hit me until I was nowhere near a sales call.

My son turned 15 recently and Saturday we threw his birthday party. We had about 12 teenage boys at the movies watching Coyote vs. Acme, eating pizza and popcorn, playing arcade games and basically just being teenage boys for a few hours 😂

At one point one of his buddies looked at my wife and me and said

“You guys are fun parents”

That one got me

Because underneath all the GTM stuff, the clients, invoices, calls, content, flights, partnerships and everything else this is what I’m actually trying to build. I want a business that works well enough for me to be there not just for the big moments but for the normal stuff too.

I want to be at the birthday party. I want to drive my daughter to cheer. I want to sit on the couch with my family and not feel like every hour away from work is costing me something.

Saturday belonged to my son. Afterward I came home and took a two hour nap, did my fantasy football draft, went Squishy hunting at Target with my wife for Izzy, got Chick-fil-A and watched TV with the family.

Nothing about that day is gonna win me entrepreneur of the year on LinkedIn. It was also a pretty damn great day.

I’ve spent a lot of my career thinking about how to build things that perform better. Better pipeline, better reps, better systems, better conversations, better conversion. That part of me probably isn’t going anywhere.

Lately though I’ve been thinking about a different question

Can the thing keep working when the person who built it leaves the room?

That applies to outbound, it applies to leadership, it applies to consulting and if I’m serious about the kind of business and life I want to build it probably applies to me too.

I don’t think the goal is to disappear from everything you build. I think the goal is to build something strong enough that your presence becomes a choice instead of a requirement.

That’s what I’m taking out of this week and for Labor Day that feels like a pretty fitting thing to leave you with.

I got a look behind the curtain at something TitanX is working on this week and I’m not allowed to spoil it yet 😂

I’ll just say this I’ve been in sales for almost 20 years now and I’ve seen a lot of tools, trends and “this changes everything” announcements come and go but what they’re getting ready to release is something I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing out in the wild.

It also connects with a lot of what I’ve been thinking about lately around modern outbound, AI, what reps should actually be spending their time doing and what the systems around them should be handling.

So I’m gonna leave that one there for now 👀

If you want to catch it when the news drops follow TitanX on LinkedIn and keep an eye on what they’re putting out over the next couple weeks.

There’s another reason TitanX is on my mind too

I’m heading to Dallas for the first time later this month for Precision ’26 a small invite only gathering they’re putting together.

This one is right up my alley. It’s not some giant conference with an expo hall, 10,000 badge scans and people speed running LinkedIn connections. It’s a much smaller room built around CROs, VPs of Sales and revenue leaders actually talking about the problems they’re working through. There are only 150 seats and the whole thing happens across two days around AT&T Stadium.

Once you get yourself to Dallas they’re basically taking care of the experience from there hotel, meals, the venue and the rest of it are handled.

I have the ability to get a few people from this community into the room and I’d much rather start here than throw a registration link all over the internet.

So let’s keep it stupid simple.

If you’re a CRO, VP of Sales or revenue leader and you’d seriously want to come hang with us in Dallas, reply to this email with DALLAS.

You can also just hit me on LinkedIn and say DALLAS. I’ll send you the details, answer whatever you want to know and if it makes sense I’ll get you the registration link.

That’s it I’m mostly curious who in this community wants to be in rooms like this with me.

If you’ve got the day off today enjoy it. Get away from the dashboards and Slack messages for a minute, hang with your people, go eat something good and maybe take a nap 😂 the work will still be there tomorrow.

I’ll see you next Monday at 8 AM MST

– Tom ✌️

and if you’re not already subscribed stick around. I send one of these every Monday morning.

P.S. If you ever want help figuring out where your outbound motion is actually breaking, that’s the work I do through The SD Lab.