yahav

SDR as a service, done right -- also building community spaces starting with a modern bathhouse in the midwest

[yahav @YahavSal]

1/ hiring a sales rep for an unproven product is the most expensive experiment you'll run

everyone thinks a new rep or moving X to Y to Z product is the solution

[yahav @YahavSal]

@ZHeerwagen Wow! This is actually insane to see - when giving users the option to route orders no one venue really leads the pack significantly

[yahav @YahavSal]

@predofficial @Agg_Market @ZHeerwagen @AMahensaria Lfg!

[yahav @YahavSal]

Quick context: I own a communal sauna and cold plunge studio. Mindbody is the booking and membership software studios like mine run on.

I spent an hour on the phone with Mindbody support. They couldn't fix my problem. I asked @Muse to look at my actual setup. Five minutes later it had the answer, and support agreed it was right.

The problem: a member with unlimited sessions plus 4 instructor-led classes a month kept having instructor-led classes deducted when booking regular sessions. The scarce resource, gone. The unlimited, untouched. That's backwards.

The cause: Mindbody decides which pricing option pays using a priority hierarchy. Both options defaulted to Medium. This effects purchase order, and inside the sale the instructor-led classes were rung up just before the membership itself. Leading to me getting a message that they couldn't book with an instructor.

The fix: one dropdown. Unlimited sessions to High priority.

Here's the part that matters: the rep wasn't dumb, they were structurally blind. They work from scripts and general product knowledge. They can't see your configured state. Muse read my actual setup...in 5 min

Every support interaction is a diagnosis problem, and diagnosis needs ground truth. The L1 support role is done. Not in ten years, now.

Just like anything else AI, humans move up the stack: the ambiguous 5%, the judgment calls, the trust moments. Everything else gets replaced by what can see the truth of your setup. Question is, can support reps catch up fast enough?

[yahav @YahavSal]

Everyone should be building a second brain for their org with Claude or another LLM

[yahav @YahavSal]

@ZHeerwagen LFG! Finally - well deserved Zach

[yahav @YahavSal]

@ZHeerwagen @Agg_Market Ready

[yahav @YahavSal]

cold outbound is one of the most underrated GTM strategies still to this date

it’s cheap, effective, and gets results almost immediately

[yahav @YahavSal]

if you’re running signal based GTM you need great error handling on your workflows

big miss if you’re overlooking that

[yahav @YahavSal]

@morganjingram its honestly going to be about building support systems and letting reps do what they used to do best, which is build IRL relationships

[yahav @YahavSal]

our reply rate looked healthy

then we checked the trend week over week

it was falling (from 7% reply rate -> 0.8-1% WoW)

we changed the channel instead of optimizing a metric that was hiding the problem

topline metrics are useful
they are not the sales motion

[yahav @YahavSal]

60% ready and outbound shipped, is better than 95% ready and no messages sent

learn as you go and don't over engineer what you don't have answers to yet

[yahav @YahavSal]

better data can make bad gtm harder to notice

now the list is cleaner
the timing is better
the personalization looks sharper

but is it really working? teams get stuck on over optimization when you should be testing

positive replies
booking rates
no show rates
2nd meeting conversion

until you know more about the target customer, you should not be heavily engineering your gtm

[yahav @YahavSal]

@ZHeerwagen LFG!

[yahav @YahavSal]

Signal-based GTM usually fails before the signal ever matters.

Teams use a funding round, a new VP, or a hiring spike as proof of demand.

It isn't.

A signal tells you something changed.
It doesn't tell you the change is painful.
It doesn't tell you the buyer cares.
It doesn't tell you your product is the answer.

Without that, you're just sending a better-timed generic message.

The signal gets you into the account.
The pain gets you a reply.

Most teams want better signals.
They need a better reason to reach out.

[yahav @YahavSal]

@0xForecaster @Agg_Market

[yahav @YahavSal]

@edleonklinger Would love to learn more about how to build this on my own. Got a short explainer? @edleonklinger

[yahav @YahavSal]

seeing hate on static data and “generic lists” in outbound

this isn’t a take that flows with the zeitgeist but you need the static information

use an assumption to start then introduce signals & iteration

you won’t know what to look before validating who you’re selling to

[yahav @YahavSal]

just ran an experiment on my own cold outbound

Apollo told me deliverability across two domains was great (>90% health score) when in practicality they were returning <18% open rates

if you would’ve iterated copy on this, you would’ve lost both domains and thousands in time

[yahav @YahavSal]

everyone is selling signals when the problem with your GTM is the foundation.

those who know how to fix that, have a massive opportunity ahead of them.

[yahav @YahavSal]

most founders default to buying the sales tool.

blindly spending hundreds on tools marketed as your solution to revenue.

reply % bad
poor ROI on outbound
meetings you do book -> unqualified

if I was starting to sell a new product, business, vertical, I’d do it all by hand.

send cold outbound by

icp
channel
persona

test that until something sticks. Then move on to copy (variants) until that sticks.

once you’ve seen with your own eyes what’s works, then scale it.