Thought Leadership Branding For SAAS Founders Who Want To Explore International Markets l Thought Leadership Branding Strategist | LinkedIn Branding Expert | Social Selling Specialist

𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐞 

Linkedin is not for you if you want to spend millions on Ads.

If you don't want to generate leads and build a brand organically.

Remember people trust people and do business with people, not brands.

Hi! I'm Shiva Dudigama, a LinkedIn Consultant and Founder of BDM Ads, a Branding and Marketing Agency. I specialize in helping Founders and service providers build their personal brands, generate organic leads, and increase revenue. 

With my 3-month 1-1 LinkedIn Acceleration Program, you'll gain valuable insights and actionable strategies to optimize your profile, grow relevant connections, create compelling content, automate processes, onboard clients, and maximize lead generation. 

Let's position you as an industry expert and elevate your global personal brand together!

Shiva kumar

Most people do not fail on LinkedIn because they cannot write.


They fail because they are writing for the algorithm instead of for people.

Here is the reality of LinkedIn content today.

The algorithm follows attention.
Attention follows clarity.
Clarity follows thinking.

Not hooks.
Not gimmicks.
Not engagement bait.

High-performing content consistently does three things.

First, it is specific.
Vague ideas produce vague results.
“Here is how I grew” says nothing.
“Here is how one post generated 12 inbound leads” creates interest.

Second, it has a point of view.
Content without a perspective is invisible.
If everyone agrees with you, no one remembers you.

Third, it delivers immediate value.
The first two lines decide whether someone keeps reading.
Your audience must feel understood or learn something instantly.

The most common mistake is trying to sound professional.

Effective LinkedIn creators sound clear, human, and decisive.
Not polished.
Not corporate.
Not forgettable.

If you want better results, do not write more.

Think better.
Edit harder.
Post with intention.

LinkedIn rewards creators who respect their audience’s time.

Do that, and reach becomes a byproduct.

Thoughts ?

#Linkedin #Thoughtleader #Founderledbranding

Shiva Dudigama

Over 6 months, we build the content + positioning system that gets you relevant followers who actually convert into conversations.

Most B2B founders are sleeping on LinkedIn.


And it’s costing them deals.

Not because LinkedIn is “nice to have.”

But because LinkedIn is where modern B2B trust is built.

Here’s the truth most founders don’t want to hear

If you’re not visible on LinkedIn,

your prospects are forming opinions about competitors instead.

Why LinkedIn matters specifically for B2B founders 

Your buyers are already there

Decision-makers don’t Google first anymore.
They check you.
Your profile.
Your posts.
Your thinking.
No presence = no confidence.

Trust beats ads in B2B
B2B buying cycles are long.
Risk is high.
Budgets are scrutinized.

Founders who share real insights, lessons, and opinions shortcut trust before the sales call even happens.

 Your content works while you don’t
One post can:
Warm up leads
Pre-handle objections
Attract inbound conversations
That’s leverage most founders never build.

 You don’t need to go viral to win
You need to be relevant to the right 200–2,000 people.
Consistency > popularity.

Your story is your unfair advantage
No sales deck can compete with:
Your failures
Your lessons
Your point of view

People buy from people who sound human, not companies that sound polished.

The biggest mistake B2B founders make?

Outsourcing their voice before they’ve ever used it.

If you’re building a serious B2B company in 2026,

LinkedIn isn’t optional.

It’s your credibility engine.

Thoughts ?

#B2B #Linkedin #Founders

Most deals are lost because people follow up at the wrong time.


Not because your offer is bad.

 Not because they’re not interested.

But because you waited too long…

 Or followed up with just checking in.

Here’s the follow-up timing I’ve seen work over and over:

• 24 hours after a sales or discovery call

 • 48–72 hours after sending a proposal

 • 3–5 days after sharing value (audit, resource, free doc)

 • 30–60 days for warm leads who said “not right now”

And here’s the real rule most people miss 

Every follow-up must add clarity, context, or value.
If it’s just

 Hey, any thoughts?

Don’t send it.

Follow-ups aren’t about chasing.

 They’re about guiding decisions.

Timing + relevance = replies.

Thoughts ?

#Leadgeneration #Followup #Founderledbranding

Your prospect says

“We can get this cheaper somewhere else.”

That’s normal.

 And that’s where many expensive mistakes begin.

Multiple industry studies show that over 30% of business projects fail or require major rework because of poor execution and bad early decisions.

PMI reports that nearly 12% of project investment is wasted due to lack of expertise, weak planning, and avoidable errors.

Cheap almost never fails on day one.

 It fails later.

When timelines slip.

 When quality drops.

 When the same work needs fixing twice.

 When internal teams spend weeks cleaning up someone else’s mess.

Experts don’t charge more for effort.

 They charge for judgment.

Knowing what to do.

 Knowing what not to do.

 Knowing how to spot risks before they turn into costs.

Cost is what you pay today.

 Risk is what you carry forward.

I’m not trying to win on price.

 I’m trying to protect outcomes.

If doing it right the first time matters,

 that’s where experts earn their fee.

#Linkedin #Clients #Planning

The biggest lie in B2B sales


We just need better closers

As a CEO, that belief is expensive.

Because by the time a deal reaches your sales team, most of the decision is already made.

Over half of the B2B buying journey is completed before a buyer ever speaks to a vendor

6 to 10 stakeholders influence the outcome

Most buyers describe their last purchase as complex and risky

This is not a closing problem
It is a leadership problem
Your buyers are not looking for persuasion at the end
They are looking for certainty

They are asking
Will this decision survive internal scrutiny
Will this implementation fail quietly or publicly

Will this choice reflect well on me six months from now
No closer can answer that with a pitch
At the bottom of the funnel, the role of the business shifts

From selling
To de risking the decision
This is where CEO presence matters

For high value accounts, senior buyers expect senior intent

A short, direct note from the CEO changes the entire frame of the deal
It signals
This matters to us

We stand behind the outcome
This is a partnership, not a transaction
Instead of pushing for another sales call

Reduce friction
A brief personal video walking through a relevant case
A no obligation audit that surfaces real risks

A clear executive point of view on trade offs and priorities
This is not sales theatre
This is decision leadership

Automation creates efficiency
It does not create trust
The companies that win consistently do not rely on better closers

They build buying journeys that make the decision feel safe
Enable the buyer at the executive level
And revenue becomes predictable

Thoughts ?

#CEO #B2B #Leadership #SalesStrategy #Revenue

Most B2B deals are decided before the first sales call even happens.

Multiple studies show that over 70 percent of the buyer’s journey is completed before a prospect ever talks to sales.

During that 70 percent, buyers are not researching your product.

They are researching you.

Founders who actively build a personal brand create familiarity, trust, and authority long before a sales conversation starts. 

And that changes everything.

Data from large-scale LinkedIn content analysis shows that posts written in a personal, founder voice outperform brand content by a wide margin on reach, engagement, and comments

That matters because engagement is not vanity.

It is pre-conditioning.

When a buyer has already consumed your thinking, your opinions, and your lessons in public, sales conversations shift from persuasion to confirmation.

Founder-led branding does three things traditional sales cannot do at scale.
It builds trust before intent exists.

It compresses sales cycles by removing skepticism.

It creates differentiation in markets where products look increasingly similar.

The biggest mistake founders make is treating branding as optional until revenue feels stable.

By the time you need demand, it is already too late to build it.

The strongest companies today do not separate sales and brand.

They use founder-led content as the top of the funnel.

Not polished company posts.

Not outsourced thought leadership.

Not generic expertise.

Real perspective. Real conviction. Real experience.

That is what people follow.

That is what people remember.

That is what people buy from.

Thoughts ?

#Founderledbranding #Sales #Leads

Most agencies do not fail on LinkedIn because they lack talent. 

They fail because no one notices them.

LinkedIn now has over 1.2 billion members worldwide, and users view more than 1.3 million feed updates every minute. 

Yet only a small percentage of people post content consistently and strategically.

Over 80 percent of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is their most effective platform for lead generation, and nearly 90 percent use it to find quality business opportunities. 

Twenty-five percent of users interact with brand content daily, and engagement continues to rise year over year. 

I have seen founders, coaches, and consultants show up consistently and still get no leads, no messages, and no real opportunities.

It is not because LinkedIn does not work.

It is because they are posting without a system.

There is no clear positioning.

No defined content strategy.

No process to turn views into conversations.

At the same time, professionals with an intentional personal brand and a clear operating process are closing clients every week without paid ads.

The difference is not luck.
It is clarity, consistency, and execution.

Thoughts ?

#Personalbranding #Leadgen #Founderledbranding

Gaurav Patel

High Performance SaaS Sales to reach $10 mil ARR Faster | Generated 1400+ B2B SaaS Appointments in 1 year

Your sales pipeline is burning cash on expensive talent executing outdated strategies. While your team automates outreach that turns sophisticated buyers into skeptics, your CAC climbs and close rates plummet. Nothing worse than this situation.

I built the Buyer-Certainty Revenue Engine that transforms how prospects research, evaluate, and buy from you:

✓ 3-Level Buyer Intelligence: Map business, functional, and personal decision drivers
✓ Certainty-Building Narratives: Address the real psychology behind B2B buying decisions
✓ Self-Service Conversion Funnels: Let buyers research confidently without pushy sales interference

The result? Lower CAC, 1.5-3x close rates, and SQLs who arrive ready to buy.

While your competitors struggle with $200K+ sales hires who underperform, PipeBagger leverages world-class Indian marketing and sales talent at 40-70% lower cost. We don't just reduce expenses - we execute superior buyer-psychology strategies your competition hasn't discovered.

Recent client results:
→ HRTech founder: 40% CAC reduction, 35% SQL increase in 180 days
→ IoT startup: 2.5x demo booking rate with zero additional headcount
→ B2B Fintech platform: shorter sales cycles, higher close rates, consistent pipeline

The window is closing. As AI democratizes automation and global talent becomes mainstream, early adopters of buyer-certainty systems will dominate their categories. Companies that build these engines now will have a 3-5 year competitive moat.

Your buyers are already avoiding traditional outreach. The question isn't whether you'll adapt - it's whether you'll lead the change or follow your competitors.

Founder and SaaS Marketing Success Head

Helping SaaS Leaders and Sales teams create strong awareness and build trust and relationships to grow revenue with least objections and increased conversions.

We generate leads for B2B SaaS companies using our Unstoppable SaaS Growth Framework

It helps a SaaS company build lasting relationships with ICP, Top talent and Investors.

How we do it?

Using Linkedin Marketing, Account based Marketing and Targeted Email Marketing for SaaS.

Why are we focussed with SaaS only?

We love technology that solves business challenges in day to day life (we have faced them too and solved using technology).

A lot of promising SaaS products are dying because of struggling market share and organic awareness would have helped them grow.

We want to help reduce this phenomenon and help promising SaaS companies cross the US$ 100 million mark and reach Unicorn status.

We want to support the SaaS SDRs and AEs to generate more quality leads and convert them with least objections.

I'm building a team of skilled SaaS Sales, Customer Success and SaaS Content writers. DM if interested to know what in it for you.

There are two significant levels of B2B business clarity.

And most founders stop at level-1: "Why Buyers Buy From Me"

This is clarity about your positioning + value prop + what problem you solve.

Most founders get here. They can articulate it. Sometimes on a website. Sometimes in a pitch.

"We help SaaS companies sell faster."
"Reduce onboarding time by 40%."
"[Tool] gives you pipeline visibility."

It's clear. It's specific. It's... fine.

Gets you to $500K ARR. Maybe $1.5M if you're doing multiple things right.

But their buyers still feel like they're choosing between options, thinking they're one among five. A commodity. Gotta discount to close.

Long sales cycle.

Level 1 doesn't answer the deeper questions like "Why does this person understand my problem better than everyone else?"


Level 2: "Why Buyers Chase Me to Pay Premium"
This is clarity about what you know that others don't.

Here, founders have documented on how buyers should actually approach the problem.

Not "how to use our product."

Rather, how to think about the problem itself.

They have frameworks. Diagnostics. Methods. Proof of their thinking in action.

When Level 2 founders talk about their positioning, something shifts. Buyers don't feel like they're shopping, but they're being taught.

Pricing objections dissolve. Not because its cheaper. Because the buyer is afraid of not having that perspective.

See The difference here.

Level 1 founder: "We help GTM teams build faster sales motions."
Buyer thinks: "So do 5 other companies. What's the difference?"

Level 2 founder: "I've reverse-engineered 80+ GTM failures.. founders build systems before they validate motion. Here's how to avoid that."
Buyer thinks: "This person has a theory I need to learn."

How to Build Both (Step by Step)
Step 1: Document Your Framework (Level 2 Foundation)
Which you already have it living in your head. Extract it.
👉 The 3 biggest misconceptions in your space
👉 The patterns you see in every failed buyer
👉 The specific sequence that separates winners from everyone else
👉 The diagnostic question that reveals a real buyer

You now have the skeleton of Level 2 clarity.

Step 2: Build Your Positioning on Top of It (Level 1 + Level 2)
Level 1 is your value prop. Level 2 is the thinking behind it.

"We help SaaS companies build repeatable sales motions" (Level 1).

"Because most founders build GTM systems before validating actual buyer motion, which is backwards" (Level 2).

The 2nd sentence is your authority. It's why buyers take you seriously.

Step 3: Use It as Your Marketing Engine
Every post, call, pitch, use your framework. Not to sell. To teach.
Buyers don't follow salespeople, but those who teach them something they didn't know before.

So My Question Is - Can you articulate your Level 2 clarity? The specific framework or perspective that only you have?

If you can, you'll make more money and close faster.

If you can't, you're competing on Level 1 forever.

Which are you building?

#GTM

Gaurav R Patel

I reverse-engineer why B2B deals die (hint: buyer uncertainty, not price) | Building self-service revenue systems that buyers actually prefer

Your product is working for your competitors.

Not because your product is bad.

Because your buyers are confused.

That confusion? It funds your competitors.

Every vague message on your homepage. Every feature list instead of outcome promise. 

Every "we serve everyone" tagline.

Each one pushes the buyer toward a clearer alternative.

Clarity is not nice-to-have copy.

Clarity is revenue.

When a buyer lands on your site and can't finish this sentence in 5 seconds

"This company exists to help me ______".... they're already leaving.

And where do they go? To the competitor who answered it clearly.

This plays out at every level.

Your family sacrifices so you can build. 

Your product is working for your competitors because you haven't claimed what you actually solve.

You raise capital. Investors believe in your vision. But if your messaging is vague, that capital is fueling competitor growth instead of yours.

Your team burns out shipping features. But if the buyer doesn't understand why those features matter, that burnout bought them nothing.

You pay bills, take risk, pour energy into the business.

And every unclear positioning decision... monetizes a competitor.

The fix is brutal in its simplicity.

Not more features. More clarity.

Not more marketing. Better positioning.

Not more messaging angles. One clear, differentiated answer to: "Why do I choose you over every alternative?"

That answer must create two things:
1) Trust: "This founder understands my actual problem."
2) Urgency: "I can't afford to wait or keep comparing. I need to move now."

Vague messaging kills both.

Clarity creates both.

40-60% of B2B purchase processes end with no decision.​

The buyer couldn't confidently pick between you and the alternatives, so they picked neither. 

Imagine if your positioning was clearest. 

40-60% is huge, right?

The companies winning in 2025 weren't the ones with the most features.

They're the ones where buyers overlooked their competitors' existence.

Because the positioning is so clear. So specific. So obviously built for them.

Everybody thinks it's luck.

But in reality, that's clarity at work.


#GTM #GTMEngineering #Positioning #MarketingStrategy #Branding

Every B2B founder chase $1M and, only 4% make it.

The story's mostly the same:
Month 1 → Building the product. Excited.
Month 3 → They've launched. No customers.
Month 6 → They've pivoted. Burned through savings. They quit.

I know this because I've watched it happen. Over and over.

So I did something different. I asked the founders who did make it.

Not the ones with 92K followers or prior exits. The regular ones. The disciplined ones.

And there was a pattern.

The founders who scaled to $5M didn't chase speed.

They chased CLARITY about how to make it happen.

See, here's what most founders get wrong:
👉 They build the product first. Then they try to find customers.
👉 The winners did the opposite.
👉 They found the customer first. Then they built.

One founder spent the first 8-weeks doing something boring.

Talking.

No code. Just fifty conversations. Hospital IT directors, specifically.

By week-6, one of them said: "I will pay you $3,000 a month starting next quarter if you build this."

One LOI before a single line of code existed.

That was her runway. Her permission. Her proof.

By month 12, she had 8 customers and $45K MRR.

Why?

Because she validated before she built.

Once she had the product, she did something else the winners all did:

She ran the 40% test.

Asked 15 customers: "How would you feel if this disappeared?"

And if less than 40% said "very disappointed," she kept iterating.

She didn't scale a broken product.

By month six, the signal came. 40%+ genuinely wanted it.

Green light.

Then she made a choice most founders get wrong.

She picked one channel.

Not content marketing, cold email, LinkedIn, partnerships, and paid ads all at 
once.

One.

She picked cold email. Committed to 6-months of cold emailing. By month 14, $45K MRR.

Then she hired someone. Not a quota-crushing sales AE.

A customer success person.

Because the bottleneck wasn't sales.

It was keeping customers happy.

By month 18, she had $90K MRR.

A 3-person team.

A documented playbook.

And a choice:

1: Hire more salespeople and burn cash on a process she barely understood.
Or 
2: Stay disciplined. Document first. Then scale.

She chose discipline (2).

By month 18, if you've done it right: $80K-$100K MRR.

Real revenue. Real customers. Real product-market fit.

Step 1: Validate
List 50 people in your ICP.
Call 20 of them.
Get 2-3 commitments in writing.

Step 2: Build
Ship the minimum.
Get 30-50 customers.
Ask: "How would you feel if this disappeared?"

Step 3: Pick a channel
Not five channels.
One.
Commit six months.

Step 4: Document
Write down how you sell.
How you onboard.
What works.
Then hire.
Not before.

The speed comes after the foundation is right.

Not before.

#B2BSales #GTM #AiSDR #RevOps #TechSales

I’ve never liked being hard sold.

Not as a kid buying my first phone.

Not as a founder buying a $100K retainer.

So I don’t 'hard sell' my clients.

I don’t chase.

I don’t “circle back” 9 times.

I don’t send “just bumping this up” emails.

Because buyers don’t just want solutions.

They want freedom.

Freedom to decide in their own way, on their own time, without someone breathing down their neck.

I’ve been in sales 18 years.

Now I run a B2B marketing agency.

Same rule.

No pressure.

No pushing.

No persuasion tricks.

But.... This also created a new problem...

If I’m not pushing…

How do I still help buyers feel confident enough to say “yes”?

That question bothered me for years.

Until I realized something simple: "The deals that closed fastest, stuck longest, and created the best results…"

All had one thing in common.

The buyer was already certain.

Certain they had a real problem.

Certain we understood it.

Certain we were the right fit.

Certain they were ready to act.

No chasing.

No begging.

No “just following up.”

Just two adults making a clear decision.

So instead of asking: “How do I pressure more buyers into saying yes?”

I started asking: “How do I help the right buyers reach that level of certainty, without pressure?”

That question hasn’t left me alone.

It’s shaped every piece of my work.

Every call.

Every deck.

Every campaign.

It’s the reason “buyer certainty” went from a fuzzy idea in the back of my head…

To the core of how I help clients generate results now.

No extra pressure.

Just extra clarity.

And the required amount of certainty in them.


Follow Gaurav R Patel

#BuyerCertainty

In August 2025 my client fired 6 SDRs, out of 9.

Not because they were bad. Because they were expensive noise.

Six reps. Over $40K in monthly salary. Thousands of emails sent daily.

Result? 12 meetings. 1 deal. In 4-months (Over $160k per deal?).

And during one of those review meetings with me, he looked very distracted and frustrated.

Barely paid attention to detailing we walked through about our weekly work.

Upon asking, he discussed. And lead to this point - "Everyone says we need more volume. We tripled our outreach. Nothing changed."

[I was only managing his LinkedIn content, not leadgen.]

And I asked him one question: 

"When was the last time YOU bought something from a mass email?"

Silence.

Within a couple of weeks from then, here's what we did instead:

Found 47 companies actually struggling with his exact problem right then. Not 10,000 leads from a scraper. Just 47 real businesses.

Spent three weeks understanding their world. Their language. Their priorities.

Created a simple video, announcing a realistic yet critical narrative, about solving an immediate problems, and highlighting the consequences.

Backed by proofs (client's relevant case study).

Then reached out. Not with templates. With relevance.

Not asking for meeting at all. Rather, sending them to the video made just for their immediate problem.

7 meetings booked in the first week.

Acquisition at a fractional cost, and higher speed.

Same founder. Different approach.

Volume is a crutch for lazy positioning. When you know exactly who needs you and why. 

You don't need armies of SDRs.

You need precision.

Want a real solution to your b2b revenue in 2026? Follow Gaurav R Patel.

Now, don't ask for the link to that video. Your solution might be different. 

Discuss that rather :)


#CRO #GTM #ColdEmailing #AiSDR #AIGTM #TechFounder

I watched a founder burn through $2M Series A in 14 months.

Because she didn't understand one fact.

Flawless pitch deck. Solid Product. Hungry Team.

But when I asked, "What's your CAC payback period?" she paused.
"Maybe... 18 months?" she said.

I didn't say anything. She kept talking.

"But that's fine. We raised $2M. We have runway."

I realized that she thought capital solved the payback problem.

It didn't.

What actually happened:
🤜 Revenue grew. Hired fast. Spent harder.
🤜 CAC payback hadn't improved. Actually extended (market saturation).
🤜 Cash burn accelerated. Monthly burn kept increasing.
🤜 First customer cohort broke even.
🤜 Out of cash.

Not because she scaled wrong.

Because she never fixed the math underneath.

I've tracked this pattern across 20+ B2B companies since 2023.

And what separates survivors from the rest is intead of speed they focus on  unit economics (CAC, LTV, Payback)

Most founders can't answer these with precision.

They have estimates. Assumptions. Hope.

Not numbers.

Let us look at two different companies.

Company A:
$3M ARR, 200% growth 
CAC: $8K
LTV: $12K
Ratio: 1.5:1 (broken)
Payback: 20 months
Cash runway: 6 months

Company B:
$1.5M ARR, 40% growth
CAC: $2.5K
LTV: $10K
Ratio: 4:1 (healthy)
Payback: 8 months
Cash runway: 18 months

Company B grows slower early. But reaches $10M ARR while Company A fights for survival.

The mistake was thinking "Unit economics improve at scale."

They don't.

CAC gets worse at scale (market saturation).

LTV stays flat without intentional retention work.

The only thing that scales is problems.

If you can't measure CAC payback to the month, you're not running a business.

You're running a hope.

And hope is risky and expensive.

What to do immediately?
💪 Calculate true numbers
CAC, LTV, Ratio (= LTV ÷ CAC)

Payback = CAC ÷ Monthly profit per customer

(Most founders discover real numbers are 30-40% worse than estimated. That's clarity, not failure.)

💪 Diagnosis
If ratio < 3:1 or payback > 12 months:
Segment customers: Which have best churn? Highest LTV?
Audit channels: Which have worst CAC? Which have best?

Find missing costs: CS onboarding, support, infrastructure usually hide here


💪 Track religiously
Blended CAC (by channel, by month)
Monthly churn
LTV/CAC ratio

Don't scale until ratio is 3:1+ and payback is <12 months.

I know that sounds conservative.

It is.

And that is why companies survive, and beat competitors.

The real cost of ignoring this is not sudden death. It's the slow invisible death.

You hit $3M ARR feeling successful. Raise Funds. Burn accelerates.

You hit $10M ARR but can't scale profitably. Investors get angry.

You hit $15M ARR and sell to a strategic at 8x ARR.

When disciplined unit economics would've reached $100M.

The difference between ignored economics and disciplined economics isn't binary.

It's $20M exit vs. $200M exit.

The founders winning right now aren't the ones who hit $1M fastest.

They're the ones who hit $1M right.

A founder came to me last quarter:

👉 $1.2M ARR
👉 Selling into mid-market
👉 Burning 6-8 hours/week “doing LinkedIn” partially himself

His setup:
1️⃣ $2K/month on a “done-for-you LinkedIn engine”
2️⃣ 40–60 automated connection requests/day
3️⃣ AI-personalized DMs
4️⃣ 3–step follow‑ups in everyone’s inbox

7 months in:
🤜 Connection acceptance: <8%
🤜 Meaningful replies: 2–3/month
🤜 Qualified pipeline from LinkedIn: zero

This is the automation trap.
It looks like progress.
It feels like progress.
It produces… nothing.

I asked him to pause every tool for 30 days.
No automation.
No bulk requests.
No AI DMs.

And rather we did:
💪 Step 1 - Define reality (not theory)
We wrote down his actual best customers... 12 logos, deal sizes, why they bought, who signed.

From that we got a painfully specific ICP:
“Seed-Series-A/B B2B infra startups, 10-100 employees, technical founder still in deals, 3-6 person sales pod, North America + Western Europe.”
Not “B2B SaaS.”
Not “mid-market tech.”

💪 Step 2 – Built a list "manually"
Pulled 200 founders + sales leaders who matched this, by hand. No tools. Just Sales Navigator and filtering.

💪 Step 3 – Listen before speaking
For 2 weeks, he didn’t send a single DM.

He:
📌 Read every post these people had made in the last month
📌 Commented thoughtfully on 2-5 posts/day, per convenience
📌 I saved patterns: what buyers complained about, what they celebrated, what language they used

💪 Step 4 – Start actual conversations
Targeted DMs everyday
Every DM anchored in a specific thing they’d said or done
No pitch. Just “I see what you’re trying to solve, here’s what I’ve seen others run into.”

And 60 days later:
🔥 11 real conversations
🔥 3 pipeline opportunities
🔥 1 closed‑won logo directly traceable to those conversations

Same founder. Same offer. Same platform.

What changed?

He traded reach for relevance.

Automation for precision.

#SocialSelling #GTM #AiSDR

Let me try sharing one unpopular opinion, unapologetically.

“Your AI SDR is making you poor”

I know, I know. Your inbox is full of vendors promising "10x outreach with zero effort."

And you bought it. Because who doesn't want effortless revenue?

But they won’t tell you that your buyers are getting the SAME AI-generated garbage from 47 other companies.

They can smell it from the subject line itself.

In December, a founder showed me his "AI-optimized" campaign. 5,000 emails sent. 2.3% open rate. Less than 1% replies. 

"But the AI said it would work!" 

The AI lied.

And in real, AI can’t really build real sales pipeline with consistency, as it promises. Not even close. (Award winning, right?)

But, skilled humans can.

We've run 100+ campaigns. The highest-performing ones? Always the ‘most’ human.

Yes, it takes more time. Yes, it costs more upfront. Seemingly.

But makes it work and shows revenue.

So, would you rather send 10,000 ignored emails or 100 that start conversations?

Stop outsourcing your thinking to machines. They're tools, not strategies.

Otherwise, your cheap alternatives will suck a huge opportunity cost which is permanently in favour of your competitors, in the form of lost accounts.

#B2BSales #GTM

We analyzed 10,000 cold emails from SaaS companies last quarter.

The results will make you rethink your entire outreach strategy.

Email length? Didn't matter. Personalization tokens? Barely moved the needle. 

Follow-up sequences? Hurt more than helped.

You know what did matter?

Only and only one thing. 

Did the email prove that you understood their specific problem better than they did?

The emails that worked had zero fluff. No "I read that you had a great trip to Greece." 

No "We help companies like yours."

And, Just: "I noticed [specific observation within context, not hobby]. This usually means [specific problem]. Here's why that matters now."

Response rate? 27%.

Compare that to the "personalized at scale" garbage everyone's sending. 2-3% if you're lucky. And super lucky if they cross the closure line.

In real, most founders don't have a volume problem. They have a ‘buying confidence’ problem. Which is very different from ‘selling confidence’.

You're reaching the right people with the wrong message. Or worse, the right message at the wrong time.

We work with barely 9-12 clients at a time. Not because we're exclusive. 

Because that's how many we can deeply understand.

Each one gets 40+ hours of research before we send a single email. We map their buyer's world. Track their triggers. Find the moment they're actually ready to listen.

Inefficient? By AI standards, yes. Effective? Our average client sees work with us for 10-12 months, compared to under 3 months with other agencies.

Because the higher the inbound inquiries, smaller the sales duration. And reduced CAC.

Happier sales team. And investors. And CFOs.

The market doesn't reward the fastest outreach. It rewards the most understood and skilled.

#ColdEmailing #DirectSelling #SalesStrategy #ColdOutreach

I've been looking at this wrong.

Last month I audited 1,000+ founder posts. Tried to figure out why some drive pipeline and some just get comments.

Then I asked the right question - "What buyer question does this actually answer?"

The pattern became obvious.

Posts answering buyer questions (diagnostic, urgency, comparison, credibility):
👉 4-6% take real action.

Everything else:
👉 0.3-1% take real action.
👉 6-20x difference.

If 80% of your posts answer zero buyer questions, your next 30 days will have:
📌 1,500 impressions
📌 50 generic comments
👎  Zero inbound meetings

And if 80% answer real buyer questions, your next 30 days will have:
📌 900 impressions
👍 15 qualified replies
👍 2-4 demos

Same posting frequency. Completely different outcome.

Why?

Buyers don't care posts that make your company look brilliant. They share posts that make them look brilliant to their peers.

When your post answers what they're actually asking their team... that's when it gets Slacked, screenshotted, shared.

Your audit now...

Check your last 30 social posts. 

Count how many of those answer: How do I know I have this? Why urgent? A vs B? What to ask vendors?

If 25+ are answering those: You Got Real inbound.
If <5: You're getting engagement, not pipeline.

What number are you?

-------

Once you get this, you will face better problem - 'how to identify right questions to answer through the posts?'

I will cover that in future posts.

Follow Gaurav R Patel


#GTM #ContentMarketing #ContentStrategy

I've diagnosed 80+ companies stuck at $2-5M revenue. Guess how many figured out what was actually broken?

I met this HRTech founder last month.

Stuck for months at $3.7M ARR.

His first words?

"We need to hire a better VP Sales and a Demand Gen Agency. My team's execution is weak."

Totally logical guess.

Wrong diagnosis.

When we dived into his CRM data (6 months, 400+ opportunities), the pattern was clear:
👉 Close rate: 9% (should be minimum 18-20%)
👉 Sales cycle: 87 days (should be around 50)
👉 CAC: $7,800 (should be under $4,000)

And to worsen, a lot of his closed deals failed during onboarding.

First suspicion - his ICP wasn't best fit.

And his CRM deep dive enhanced the doubt further.
 
I told them that it is not a sales problem.

But, a clear customer fit problem.

Every business revenue I diagnose, the CEO thinks they know what's broken.

The reality is different because most of them actually don't.

The reason being they're diagnosing the symptom, not the cause.

Diagnosing the symptom is very natural. 

But in 2026, you gotta strengthen things from the root levels.

Imagine you run a retail business, who should be optimizing your space usage - you or the interior designer?

If your revenue plateaued, have you ever pulled your CRM data to see where you're actually losing deals?

Or are you operating on assumptions?

#GTM

"The biggest $400-700K mistake I see founders make happens around Months 7-12 of being stuck."

That founder I mentioned in my last post?

When he witnessed the ‘quantification of the impact’ of his incomplete diagnosis, something moved. And move was uncomfortable.

This is how I walked him through his revenue math:

📌 Failed onboardings: $380,000 previous year
📌 Extended sales cycles (bad word of mouth): $162,000/year
📌 Founder time spent rescuing bad deals: over $100,000/year

Total constraint cost: $642,000 annually.

He'd already been stuck for 8 months exactly. Lost already about $423K in those 8-months, which was damage for real.

And he still had no idea what was actually broken, until then.

He wasn't ignorant.
He was smart.
He just couldn't see the pattern because he was living inside those patterns daily.

You can't diagnose every aspect of your own business.

Your brain filters what it expects to see.

It blinds you to what's actually there.

If your revenue's been stuck for 6+ months, ask yourself:

"Am I treating symptoms or causes?"

Because one costs you $1M+. 

The other costs you 4 weeks of focused work.

Ok, 6-weeks to the max.


#Attribution #CAC #CMO #Positioning #RevenueEngine

Most CXOs think authority = thought leadership.

Wrong.

Authority = systematic certainty-building.

Here's what I call "Authority Physics"... the science behind why some founders attract eager prospects while others chase reluctant leads:

⚡ Law 1: Certainty Compounds
Each piece of certainty-building content makes the next one more powerful

⚡ Law 2: Trust Accelerates Decisions
Buyers who trust you decide 3x faster than those who don't

⚡ Law 3: Resistance Decreases with Understanding
The more prospects understand your world, the less they resist your solution

Real example from a Singapore based AI founder:

Before Authority Physics:
• 5-7-month sales cycles
• 13% close rate  
• Constant objection handling

After Authority Physics:
• 3-4-month sales cycles
• 23% close rate
• Prospects booking demos themselves

The difference? We stopped building "personal brand" and started building systematic buyer certainty.

No interruption marketing.
No pushy outreach.
Just physics.

What would happen if your prospects came to you 100% certain they needed your solution?

#ThoughtLeadership #BuyerCertainty #SocialSelling #B2B

Most consultants diagnose. Then they disappear.

That's why 73% of their recommendations barely get implemented.

Back then I used to think the problem was bad analysis.

Wrong frameworks. Surface-level thinking. Generic/ junior consultants pretending to be experts.

Turns out, I was wrong.

After working with 30+ B2B tech founders stuck between $1M-$10M ARR, I realized the actual problem looked like:

Founders don't believe the diagnosis until they see it work. Yes, working for real.

Like this one:
👉 $4.2M ARR SaaS. Stuck for 9 months.
👉Hired a prestigious firm. $35K diagnostic.

The actual finding: "Your constraint is ICP mismatch. You're targeting companies without implementation resources. 43% of your deals fail post-sale. And, here is the 58-page roadmap to fix it."

Brilliant analysis.

Founder nodded through the presentation.

Internally? "Maybe they're right. Maybe they're not."

So he half-implemented. Cherry-picked the easy recommendations. Skipped the hard ones.

And 3 months later, metrics barely moved.

His conclusion - "Consultants are useless."

But the fact was that the diagnosis was probably correct.

He just never believed it until he could see it.

Diagnosis without proof = No conviction.

No conviction = Selective execution.

Selective execution = No results.

Same constraint.

Two different approaches:

Path A: 
Get the diagnosis → Hope you're right → Spend 6 months guessing → Maybe it works.

Path B: 
Get the diagnosis → Prove it works before Week 3 → Build conviction → Scale what's proven.

One path costs you 6 months of plateau.

The other costs you 4 weeks.

If you're bringing in someone to diagnose what's blocking your revenue growth, then

Don't just ask for their analysis.

Ask for their proof methodology.

"How will I know your diagnosis is right, before I commit months to implementing it?"

"By what week will I see measurable evidence this is working?"

"What happens if your hypothesis is wrong?"

Anyone who dodges those questions?

They're selling reports, not results.

And you've probably already wasted money on enough reports.


Follow Gaurav R Patel


#GTM #RevenueEngine

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