If you were to close your eyes and imagine what the best home builder is like, you’re not thinking about the hammer they use to drive the nail into the 2x4s.

You’re thinking about a seamless layout, mindful design, and construction that feels intentional - like every choice was made on purpose.

They’re the best because of the quality of the homes they build; and they can do it using mediocre tools when needed.

Just like Steph Curry can drain 3 pointers no matter what shoes he’s wearing; at the high end, craft becomes an art, and the operator becomes the artist.

Today we’ll explore why builder-first GTM has always won, still wins today, and is set to keep winning into the future.

I love tools; we all do.

But they’re not the unlock. An idiot with a hammer isn’t building a masterpiece.

Every craftsman has their preferred brands, their own reasoning, and if they’re any good - they’ll fall on their sword for some ridiculous opinion.

They’ve earned the right to care like that, because they’ve actually built something.

They’ve shipped.

They’ve been wrong.

They’ve learned the hard way.

So the tool choice becomes a reflection of a deeper point of view.

Sometimes that ridiculous specificity loudly says: “I know wtf I’m talking about. Hire me and get out of the way.”

A real pro is fine with that.

They’re okay losing the people who aren’t aligned with how they think, because they’ve seen what internal friction can do to a good idea before it ever gets tested.

They want to work in environments where they can actually make a difference.

You don’t hire the “I work on anything” guy for your vintage Ferrari.

And if your company’s goals are measured in millions (or more), your GTM can’t be built by people who treat every problem like the same job.

It should be built by people who can think.

A pattern I see all the time is someone hears about a cool tool.

They imagine what it could do.

They feel demand for the tool.

They buy it.

And then they ask: “how should we use this to do the thing we want?”

This is backwards.

Start with goals - what do we want to accomplish?

Then strategy - what do we think will get us there?

Then tactics - what does it operationally look like to execute?

Then tools - what do we need to orchestrate those tactics?

Then metrics - how do we measure effectiveness?

Then people - who’s running it, and how much horsepower do we actually need behind the system to win?

If you aren’t clear on what will get you there, committing early to what tools you need to orchestrate tactics is a big risk.

Because those tools might be misaligned - and you’ll just scale the wrong thing.

I’ve been earning my living via outbound B2B sales development since 2018.

For about a third of that time, I was a rep - the kind who gets fired if pipeline targets aren’t met.

For the next third, I was a revenue leader (with a few titles) responsible for company-level pipeline and revenue metrics.

And the last third, I’ve been a founder building a GTM agency - working with B2B teams to deliver the same thing.

All to say - we’ve been in the outbound game.

My company started before the AI era, and the same problems from back then still show up today.

The most common mistake is simple:

People set a goal (meetings booked, pipeline created), do something random, and then look back and judge whether it worked.

If it didn’t, they repeat the same feeble attempt - low thought, no strategy, no system.

And eventually they conclude outbound doesn’t work.

Companies miss goals.

People lose jobs.

And a beautiful methodology for acquiring revenue gets blamed for the wrong reasons.

Worse, we waste our truest scarcity: time.

Teams spend weeks just to get a single idea out, then let months pass spinning their wheels instead of building traction - even when it’s obvious things aren’t working.

It doesn’t need to be this way.

In my company, The Deal Lab, we borrow from clinical trials when thinking about outbound campaigns.

This starts with a simple shift:

Outbound isn’t a one-off attempt.

It’s a series of controlled experiments designed to affirm or reject a perspective.

Not just “what do people respond to?”

But: does the market agree with the way you see the world?

That relationship over time is message-market-fit.

Every company has assumptions.

You believe something about who the buyer is, what they care about, what’s broken, and why you’re the right answer.

GTM is how those beliefs get tested.

The Deal Lab frames the possibility space as a simple chain:

Market → Segment → Persona → Angle

That’s the core GTM matrix.

It’s not meant to be fully tested.

It’s meant to show what could work - so a perspective can form about what’s most likely to work first.

Then campaigns get used to narrow from possibility into proof.

Each campaign is just one thing:

An angle, to a persona, inside a segment of a market.

That’s the unit of learning.

And that’s exactly the kind of data leadership should understand and use for decision-making.

Because if you don’t know which segment + persona + angle is working, you don’t really know why pipeline is happening.

Tests get prioritized based on upside, fit signals, and learning value.

Then campaigns run long enough to get signal.

Not perfect execution.

Signal.

Velocity matters here.

If you can’t keep up with the rate of learning, the loop breaks.

Every campaign result maps back to the same GTM metadata - market, segment, persona, angle.

And the goal isn’t just tracking numbers.

It’s capturing evidence: replies, objections, language, behavior.

Over time, the matrix becomes a living model of what works.

You start wide: what could work.

Then you narrow into what does work.

Then you narrow into what works best.

And “best” is always relative.

Sometimes best means: scale it.

Other times best means: kill it.

Either way, the system learns - and that learning compounds.

This only works if the campaigns are representative.

Copy that’s too safe, too generic, or too template-y won’t produce clean signal.

Later issues will go deeper on how ideas are felt, how to diagnose where messaging is off, and what’s usually missing when something looks “fine” but doesn’t convert.

Companies don’t hit their goals because of what they do in the next 60 days.

It’s a function of execution over time.

Zoomed out, month-over-month iteration can mean spinning wheels - or it can bite in and find real traction.

What sets the two trajectories apart?

Sure, luck plays a role.

But a lot of it is judgment.

We control framing.

We can iterate what we say.

We can change how we position the problem and why it matters.

We don’t always control what the company does or who they want to target.

But we can build and test the strength of the connection.

Messaging iterates faster than product.

You can build something that sends a ton.

But most companies don’t win off their early swings.

Builder-first GTM is a mindset.

It means you do not confuse motion with progress.

You do not treat one bad week as proof the channel does not work.

You run loops until you understand the market.

You learn what segments exist.

What buyers care about.

What language actually lands.

And you earn the right to have opinions about tools, because you have evidence behind them.

Builders do not need certainty first.

They build to create it.

A core mantra of mine is:

Everything I’ll ever receive is on the other side of something I’ll do for someone else.

All the people I’ve ever looked up to took giving seriously.

This newsletter is my way of capturing thinking that’s served me, distilling it into bite-sized pieces, and sharing it with a community of people I think will benefit from it.

GTMcafe.com was built for builders.

This newsletter is where I’ll share the lessons - and keep sharpening them alongside the community.

If you liked this, I’d love if you shared it with a friend.

See you next week,
Kellen