AE @ Branch | SDR to AE in 10 months | Helping newbies break into tech sales | Helping SDRs crush quota and promote to AE

Helping marketing and product teams grow and engage their mobile app user base.

Tyler Hickey

GTM Engineer | Uber driver turned sales guy

Creative and analytical GTM Engineer with 3 years of experience in tech sales, now focused on building advanced go-to-market, workflows and automation. I am experienced in leveraging tools like Clay, Leadmagic, HubSpot, Make, and Apollo to build scalable outbound systems, streamline prospecting, and drive measurable results. I combines technical expertise with frontline sales knowledge to deliver systems that generate pipeline and revenue.

Particularly interested In AI, great founders, products, and people!

I believe talent exists everywhere and is not bound by location - which is why I champion global hiring and remote work.

Need anything? Let's connect!

Chris Mbanta

POV: when a client makes joke on a call.

Salespeople ⬇️

While I was away for the holidays,
Daniel was in the motherland.

We planned to link up on the evening of Dec 29.

I had returned from Cotonou 🇧🇯 in the morning to make sure it happened
Because he was flying back to Dublin 🇮🇪 the next day 30th Dec.

For some unforeseen reasons we couldn't see on the 29th.

Past 9pm, my phone rang.

“Chris, it’s Dan.”
I screamed, “DANIEEEEL?!”
It was all joy and happiness on both ends of the call.

He said he couldn't leave Nigeria without seeing me
So we made it happen
We saw the next morning, the same day he was to travel.

That was very intentional
And that’s what great friends would do.

Here’s to meeting people on LinkedIn
Who turn into real-life friends…
And friends who become family.

Cheers to more of that in 2026 🤍

Go where you can win the most.

When I was an SDR I was heavily focused on old calling 
Because that was where most of my meetings came from....

Don’t get me wrong,
I was using other channels.

Email sequencing
Social selling (LinkedIn DMs, even tried X for a bit)

What didn’t work was trying to be great everywhere at once.

The phone was the channel that consistently gave me pipeline,
So I anchored on it.

I even had personal KPIs to hit,
Minimum number of calls I must make every day.

Once I mastered the phone
(confident on calls and consistently booking meetings)

I moved to other channels,
Doing multi-channel became easier and more successful.

𝐌𝐲 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬

Focus on one channel until you’re good at it.
Then layer the rest

That’s how you'll win faster.

Agree or disagree?
Let me know In the CS.

I wouldn’t do a 100% commission-based role.

I've done a few in my career especially in my early days.

I thought it would “build grit” and fast-track my growth.

What it actually did was drain my time
Every day became about survival
I was chasing quick wins
To get paid.

I avoided learning curves I couldn’t afford
There was no room to get better at the craft
No room to slow down and understand what actually worked.

At the end of the day I realized I was wasting my time
I was better off working for free.

WHY?
Because working for free is intentional 
With growth as top focus, I wouldn't expect 
Anything in return and that'll help me learn and grow fast.

100% commission shouldn’t be the norm.

It pushes people to optimize for short-term wins, 
Not long-term skill.

And that’s very different from working for free.

Working for free is a deliberate choice to learn, get reps, and build leverage.

Commission-only roles demand output before you’ve built any.

There’s a big difference between betting on yourself
and being set up to scramble just to stay afloat.

If you think otherwise,
Let me know in the CS.

The fight to “turn off LinkedIn” is real.

Every few weeks, 
Someone posts about why LinkedIn is noisy, or should disappear.

And honestly, I get it
People don’t like what they feel they hate
And make all sorts of opinions on what should be done to it.

I responded to one 
Saying "B2B can't survive without LinkedIn"

And this is absolutely true.

Because for B2B companies, LinkedIn isn’t a distraction
It’s infrastructure.

Where conversations start
It’s where trust compounds
Where companies find leads
Where careers change with/without applications.

So when I see “LinkedIn is useless” takes
I usually assume one thing:

They don’t sell to other companies/agencies.

You don’t have to love LinkedIn
Your personal opinion about it also doesn't matter
Because there are more than a billion people on here.

They love it
And they conduct business here
And in B2B, not being in the room is the real cost.

What do you think?

I wasted time building an outbound campaign the wrong way.

Started with job titles:

CISO
VP of Security
Head of Security

It made sense in my table
But in practice, everything broke.

I kept pulling in companies selling 
What I was trying to sell, rather than those who need it.

That’s when I realized my mistake, 
Was the flawed logic behind the campaign.

I was asking first, “Who should I talk to?”
Instead of asking, “What companies actually need this right now?”

Job titles answer the first question
But they don’t answer the second.

Signals do:

Infra changes
Expansion moves
Specific hiring activities.

This is the reason I started 
Planning out first before building any campaign. 

Once I flipped the order to these two

𝐒𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 → 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 → 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭
𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 → 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 → 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭

My workflow became better:

Cleaner lists
Fewer false positives.

Learning from my mistakes was my biggest play here
Growth forces you to confront the gaps in your thinking.

Most GTM Engineers come from one of two backgrounds:

Sales
Or engineering.

Sales folks usually understand:
ICPs
Messaging
Objections
What actually gets replies.

Engineers usually understand:
Systems
Data
Automation
How to scale without things breaking.

But to really level up, people coming from sales have to learn the engineering side: data, systems, automation, and scale.

And vice versa for folks coming from engineering.

Because the best GTM Engineers sit somewhere in the middle.

They take commercial instincts
and merge them with engineering execution.

They don’t just know what works.
They know why it works and how to operationalize it at scale.

That’s what turns a background into a GTM Engineer.

Which side did you start from?

If you think otherwise, 
Let me know in the CS.

Give inexperienced candidates a chance.

Every experienced candidate you admire today started somewhere
At some point, someone took a chance on them before they had the proof.

Early in my career, I didn’t have much to point to on paper.

What I did have was hunger, curiosity, and a lot of time to learn
A few people saw that and gave me room to grow.

That changed how I think about experience
It’s useful, but it’s not the whole story.

Progress usually comes from people who are willing to be uncomfortable, make mistakes, and improve fast.

Now when I look at early careers, I remember that growth has a starting point
And that starting point is often inexperience.

If you’re in a position to hire or mentor, consider the upside of potential.

And if you’re early in your career, remember that one “yes” can change everything for you.

Can you remember that one person who gave you a chance?

Giving your employees fair pay isn’t generosity.

It’s the baseline.

A lot of companies talk about “culture” and “loyalty"
That part makes sense.

But if you’re underpaying the people doing the actual work,
That’s not culture.

That’s cost control disguised as values.

Fair pay signals a few simple things:

- You respect the work
- You value your people
- You understand replacement cost
- You’re serious about retention, not just hiring.

People don’t leave teams first,
They leave when effort and compensation stop lining up with output.

You don’t build long-term results by squeezing short-term margins,
You build them by making staying worth it.

Think otherwise?
Let me know in the CS.

P.S. I went to the beach on a monday evening.

taplio

The Battle

Tyler Hickey

Chris Mbanta

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taplio

The Battle

Tyler Hickey

Chris Mbanta

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Chris Mbanta's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreChris Mbanta's LinkedIn Performance