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Pocus hosts “Ask Me Anything” sessions with GTM experts to share best practices, frameworks, and insights on this emerging category. These AMAs are an opportunity to ask leaders any question — ranging from hiring to sales compensation to tech stack — in a low-key, casual environment.
AMAs are for members of Pocus’ 10x Go-To-Market Community. The 10x GTM community is on a mission to help sellers become experts in emerging AI tools and the latest playbooks/tactics so you can stay ahead of the curve.
Interested in joining? Apply to join the next cohort here.
Meet Kyle Poyar, Investor & Newsletter Author 👋
Entrepreneurship has always been a part of Kyle’s life. Growing up, he watched his grandfather and father manage successful businesses, and as an Operating Partner at OpenView, Kyle helped scale well-known companies like Calendly, UserTesting, and Expensify.
"My passion is working with builders who have great products or business ideas and helping them turn those into profitable businesses."
Today, Kyle is the Co-Founder and Operating Partner at Tremont and the creator of the Growth Unhinged newsletter, read by over 50,000 subscribers.
We recently chatted with Kyle about:
- How he built an audience of over 50,000 newsletter subscribers
- Why companies should make the switch from ABM to ABX
- Ways to leverage data and AI to achieve growth
Prefer to watch instead of read? Catch the full conversation:
Building a successful newsletter for GTM leaders
The year was 2020. In-person interactions were limited, and Kyle wanted a way to engage with folks in the SaaS space, so he turned to LinkedIn. "I wasn’t able to meet people in real life or attend events, so I started writing more on LinkedIn,” he recalls.
After months of sharing his thoughts on LinkedIn, Kyle was ready to build his own community. "I was getting the itch to have an owned community, rather than being at the whim of the algorithm, and go deeper on topics I was passionate about without character limits,” he shares.
With that in mind, Growth Unhinged was born.
From 2,000 to 50,000: Scaling Growth Unhinged
Within the first week of launching his newsletter, Kyle had 2,000 subscribers. Over the next few years, Kyle grew his audience to over 50,000 subscribers by:
# 1 Focusing on how-to content: Originally, Kyle featured well-known execs, but eventually learned that actionable and niche insights resonated more with his audience.
I realized the pieces that did best were deep, tactical topics. Those are the things people wanted to share or bookmark, not topics like founder mode.
#2 Increasing content frequency: Kyle changed his newsletter cadence, sending it weekly, rather than biweekly, to deliver in-depth insights more often.
#3 Diversifying formats: Today, Growth Unhinged includes content directly from Kyle’s POV and interviews with industry leaders.
#4 Building a community flywheel: Kyle started testing topics with his LinkedIn followers and using audience feedback to inform his newsletters.
The newsletter has become a growth loop. I write on LinkedIn, find what ideas are resonating with the community, learn a lot, and then I’m able to write much better content because I know what people are passionate about.
After writing hundreds of newsletters about the fastest-growing startups, Kyle identified a shift in the way modern revenue teams are going to market. Check out more advice on newsletter writing from Kyle here.
Reimagining go-to-market: From ABM to ABX
Capturing and converting enterprise logos hinges on a coordinated, focused, and data-driven go-to-market approach.
However, for many years, GTM teams have relied on siloed strategies.
Marketing teams ran account-based marketing (ABM) plays to target high-value accounts, product teams targeted users based on product usage data, and sales conducted cold outbound to reach key decision-makers. But none of these strategies were integrated or scalable.
Today, modern GTM teams are taking a different approach by adopting account-based experience (ABX) and unifying sales, marketing, and product teams around the right people, accounts, and signals.
Essentially, you’re doing ABM, but with intent and in a unified fashion, where it’s not just owned by the marketing team as one channel.
This strategy enables B2B SaaS companies with a well-defined ICP to more efficiently and effectively expand their book of business.
To drive success with ABX, Kyle highlighted the importance of identifying the right data, tools, and teams.
Use a variety of data sources
ABM of the past relied on surface-level definitions of fit and intent, which didn't capture the complete picture. Today, ABX relies on high-quality and relevant data from many different sources.
Even within PLG companies, people realize that product usage data isn’t the only important signal. There are other signals of intent. Maybe you have a decision-maker attending your webinar – that’s a signal of intent.
To truly understand the inner workings of an account, Kyle recommends using:
- Product usage data: How users are interacting with your product
- Firmographic data: Information like company size, industry, and geography
- Intent data: Engagement with your website, webinars, emails, and events
- Technographic data: The software a company uses
- Company growth data: Signals like number of new jobs posted, funding raised, and more
We used to look at industry and company size and maybe geo now we can also look at things like what other technologies are they using? Are there signals showing the company growing? We can look at how many jobs they have posted and if those roles align with what our product does.
Evaluate your tech stack
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all tech stack, but here are some of the tools Kyle recommends B2B SaaS companies use to execute a more data-driven strategy.
- Clay: Automate and personalize outbound outreach at scale
- Keyplay and LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Identify target accounts and contacts
- Warmly: De-anonymize website data
- Pocus: Consolidate and act on all your data to help reps win more deals
- Parabola: Automate workflows and account stage changes
Align internal teams
It’s critical to unify all GTM teams to drive success. Moving prospects through the buyer’s journey should be a coordinated effort based on critical fit and intent signals.
It shouldn't matter whether you got to that point in the buyer journey because of SDRs, AI, marketing activity, or PLG. What matters is that you find the right way to reach and influence those accounts and ultimately generate sales-ready pipeline in a scalable and efficient way.
Leveraging AI for modern GTM
Kyle closed out our discussion with his advice on using AI effectively. With the technology currently available, he believes AI is best suited for top and middle of the funnel efforts.
AI can play a role across the journey, I think it's especially effective in the earlier parts of the buying journey when you're looking to reach a large number of people efficiently. And then as you get people that are ready to buy, that's when that additional level of human touch, that additional creativity and doing things that don't scale, comes into play.
Specifically, he advises go-to-market teams to use AI to:
- Identify good fit accounts: Using historical firmographic and intent data, AI can help sales teams more accurately pinpoint the right accounts to target.
- Automate account research: By leveraging AI, reps can gather critical insights, fueling a smarter outbound strategy.
- Personalize outreach at scale: Sellers can send a high-volume of customized emails with AI-driven tools.
Thanks to Kyle for sharing his insights! If you’d like to check out more AMAs with GTM experts, join our community.
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