How to build your GTM system that doesn’t rely solely on you.
A practical guide to the most common problems founders hit between finding early traction and building a repeatable sales engine.
No paid pilots? Long sales cycle?
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Why your blocker might be further upstream than you think.
Neal and Richard discuss why most GTM problems are connected — and why fixing the right upstream constraint first matters.
Four stages. Fix the earliest broken one first.
You don’t need eleven initiatives at once. Work from message to visibility, pipeline and operating rhythm — then add the more advanced layers when the fundamentals are working.
Get your message right.
Get seen — and understood.
3 · LinkedIn Presence & Authority
Build the sales engine.
5 · Prospecting
6 · Repeatable Sales Engine
7 · Sales Assets
Keep it running.
Amplify what already works.
10 · Retention & Expansion
11 · AI Skill Pack
Get your message right.
Problem / friction:
Buyers don’t immediately understand who you are for, what important problem you solve or why they should choose you.
Benchmark:
High-ICP-fit accounts are around 8× more sales-efficient and can deliver 5.1× higher lifetime value than poor-fit accounts.
Fullcast / Ebsta · State of GTM 2025
Options:
Narrow the ICP, sharpen the problem and value proposition, then standardise the message across founders, product and GTM.
Quick test:
Ask three people independently who you sell to, what problem you solve and why customers buy. Do the answers match?
Learn more / enlist support
Get seen — and understood.
Problem / friction:
A good proposition still fails when buyers can’t find you, understand the offer quickly or establish enough trust to continue.
Benchmark:
96% of marketers surveyed by HubSpot reported that personalised customer experiences increased sales.
HubSpot · State of Marketing 2025
Options:
Clarify the buyer journey, sharpen the website and build visible founder/company authority where your customers already spend attention.
Quick test:
Give a target buyer 30 seconds with your website or LinkedIn profile. Can they tell what you do, who it’s for and why you’re credible?
Learn more / enlist support
Build the sales engine.
Problem / friction:
Founder contacts have dried up. Ad hoc interest. Sales are unpredictable, opportunities are decreasing and live in the founder’s head, deals stall without explanation or only one person knows how to move them forward.
Benchmark:
Well-qualified opportunities showed a 50% win rate versus 8% for poorly qualified opportunities — more than a sixfold difference.
Fullcast / Ebsta · State of GTM 2025
Options:
Build one visible pipeline, create systematic prospecting, codify discovery and qualification, and give sellers the assets needed to progress deals.
Quick test:
Can you see every live opportunity, its owner, buyer, next action, qualification evidence and reason it should close?
Learn more / enlist support
AI can accelerate the whole loop.
Use AI to remove repetitive work, expose patterns faster and support better decisions — not as a substitute for the GTM system itself.
Target
Position
Reach
Qualify
Learn
AI analyses and interprets. Automation keeps repetitive work moving.
The GTM tech stack that the big boys use
While this is the core stack, specific integrations change according to need.
Salesforce
Attio
2Checkout
Typeform
Zapier
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Fireflies
Riverside
Apollo
Trello
Notion
Miro
Google Drive
OpenAI
Claude
WordPress
Carrd
Gumroad
Keep it running.
Problem / friction:
Improvements fade because nobody owns the whole system, priorities move week to week and there is no consistent rhythm for reviewing results.
Benchmark:
Goal-aligned teams are 6.4× more likely to produce high-quality work and 4.9× more likely to meet deadlines.
Atlassian · Goal Alignment Research
Options:
Set one 90-day commercial mission, define the measures and owners, then establish a weekly operating and monthly strategic review cadence.
Quick test:
Can everyone state the current commercial priority, success measure, owner and next review date without searching for the answer?
Learn more / enlist support
Amplify what already works.
Problem / friction:
Once acquisition and conversion become repeatable, the constraint shifts from establishing the engine to expanding, differentiating and increasing leverage.
Benchmark:
There is no useful universal threshold here. The key question is whether the core acquisition motion is repeatable enough to optimise rather than repair.
Options:
Shape the category, increase retention and expansion, and use AI and automation to create greater leverage across a GTM system that already works.
Quick test:
If demand doubled tomorrow, would your GTM system handle it predictably — or would the founder simply become twice as busy?
Learn more / enlist support
Find the one GTM constraint to tackle first.
Answer a few questions about your current stage and challenges. We’ll identify the highest-priority issue, explain what it means, show how you compare and suggest what to do next.