Great stuff, and as a longtime marketer/GTM leader I am looking forward to following along here on Substack :)
Question for the Clay team: what have you been seeing w/r/t the GTME function supporting higher price points in B2B, where personal (human) touch is critical? What are you still engineering, and what are you keeping human/manual?
thanks Leslie! excited to publish more / let us know if there are any topics you want us to explore ever. re: your question—our current sales team does very high-touch work selling clay to mid-market and enterprise companies. we engineer as much of their manual research, scoring, data entry, etc as possible, so they can focus on the human aspect of selling. we've played with some automated messages like inbound lead follow ups, trial conversion plays, etc but when it comes to landing and upgrading large customers, that's all human work. does that make sense? happy to expand on this!
You nailed the framing: GTM motions aren’t under‑staffed, they’re under‑engineered. But here’s the kicker: GTM Engineering isn’t just about automating tasks — it’s about architecting signal-to-revenue systems. I’ve dismantled countless sequencers, refactored enrichment stacks, and reverse-engineered inbox infra to fight deliverability decay. The real shift isn’t using AI — it’s building flows that adapt to spam filters and hydrate data contextually, not just batch/profile refreshes.
Most orgs are slapping tools together. Real GTME builds API-native, observability-heavy architectures, with message hygiene and enrichment cascades baked in. Clay’s definition of the role is solid  — now let’s preach that GTME is the growth architect, not the growth upgrader. Kudos to Clay for defining the role and spotlighting the era — next step: proving that GTM mutation is the edge.
"Our trial-to-paid rate won’t budge.” - ooooh, what specific actions do paying customers take that trial users don't?; what are the data points that predict conversion?; can we ID trial users facing urgent problems that Clay solves?
I'm thinking:
1: "The Integration Struggle" Segment (trying, but hitting tech barriers, this one is Self reflective, but #girlswhoclay & Jordan Crawford kept me going!))
2: "The "Feature Discovery Gap" Segment (don't understand value prop)
3: ""Budget Approval Delay" Segment (stuck in procurement)
Great stuff, and as a longtime marketer/GTM leader I am looking forward to following along here on Substack :)
Question for the Clay team: what have you been seeing w/r/t the GTME function supporting higher price points in B2B, where personal (human) touch is critical? What are you still engineering, and what are you keeping human/manual?
thanks Leslie! excited to publish more / let us know if there are any topics you want us to explore ever. re: your question—our current sales team does very high-touch work selling clay to mid-market and enterprise companies. we engineer as much of their manual research, scoring, data entry, etc as possible, so they can focus on the human aspect of selling. we've played with some automated messages like inbound lead follow ups, trial conversion plays, etc but when it comes to landing and upgrading large customers, that's all human work. does that make sense? happy to expand on this!
Very helpful to hear your POV - and also good to know we are on the same wavelength here. Appreciate the response!
for sure! <3
This is a great!
You nailed the framing: GTM motions aren’t under‑staffed, they’re under‑engineered. But here’s the kicker: GTM Engineering isn’t just about automating tasks — it’s about architecting signal-to-revenue systems. I’ve dismantled countless sequencers, refactored enrichment stacks, and reverse-engineered inbox infra to fight deliverability decay. The real shift isn’t using AI — it’s building flows that adapt to spam filters and hydrate data contextually, not just batch/profile refreshes.
Most orgs are slapping tools together. Real GTME builds API-native, observability-heavy architectures, with message hygiene and enrichment cascades baked in. Clay’s definition of the role is solid  — now let’s preach that GTME is the growth architect, not the growth upgrader. Kudos to Clay for defining the role and spotlighting the era — next step: proving that GTM mutation is the edge.
really glad this resonated. very cool to hear how the concept applies to your own past work!
This is gold !
thanks for reading!!
"Our trial-to-paid rate won’t budge.” - ooooh, what specific actions do paying customers take that trial users don't?; what are the data points that predict conversion?; can we ID trial users facing urgent problems that Clay solves?
I'm thinking:
1: "The Integration Struggle" Segment (trying, but hitting tech barriers, this one is Self reflective, but #girlswhoclay & Jordan Crawford kept me going!))
2: "The "Feature Discovery Gap" Segment (don't understand value prop)
3: ""Budget Approval Delay" Segment (stuck in procurement)
ooooh so fun 🔍