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Over the next year, Roku predicts that 100% of the streaming audience will see ads. For growth marketers in 2026, CTV will remain an important “safe space” as AI creates widespread disruption in the search and social channels. Plus, easier access to self-serve CTV ad buying tools and targeting options will lead to a surge in locally-targeted streaming campaigns.
Read our guide to find out why growth marketers should make sure CTV is part of their 2026 media mix.
Stop Treating Outbound Like a Lottery
Every week on AI GTM WTF, one theme keeps punching me in the face:
Outbound isn’t broken — your process is.
When I sat down with Elijah Awoke, an operator who’s helped build GTM systems for Brex, Prompt Cowboy, and dozens of hypergrowth teams, he said something brutally simple:
“People think if we just double SDRs, pipeline goes up — but it never does.”- Elijah
Outbound isn’t a volume game anymore.
It’s not luck.
It’s not brute force.
And it’s definitely not “spray 200 contacts and pray.”
Outbound today is a design discipline.
And if you’re treating it like a lottery, you’ve already lost.
The Real Reason Outbound Fails
Most teams start at Step 6:
“Write a sequence.”
But the game is won (or lost) at Step 0:
“Who should we even talk to?”
Elijah calls this the GTM mistake of the decade:
Teams obsess over messaging but ignore account selection.
Here’s what that looks like in the wild:
Sales Teams reaching out to accounts that will never buy
No scoring
No signals
No prioritization
No segmentation
No logic behind “why now”
Then everyone wonders why reply rates tank.
Outbound doesn’t fail because reps lack effort.
It fails because they are aiming at the wrong targets.
The Shift: From Activity to Accuracy
We asked him. “Everybody has the same tools… so what happened to signals?”
In 2025, every team has:
Clay. Apollo. ChatGPT. Sales Navigator.
The edge isn’t the toolset — it’s how you rank your targets.
Modern outbound teams have moved from:
Volume → Signals → Orchestration → Precision
And the results aren’t subtle.
Higher connect rates
Higher reply rates
Higher meeting quality
Higher close rates
Why?
Because when you talk to the right people at the right time with the right message…
you don’t need 200 touches.
You need 20.
How Top GTM Teams Design Outbound (Not Guess It)
Elijah broke down the framework used by top operators who consistently outperform everyone else.
1. Score Accounts First
Industry, hiring velocity, tech stack, funding, revenue band, layoffs, contracts expiring —
these signals tell you exactly where to aim.
2. Enrich Before Outreach
Clay becomes your second brain:
Find buyers
Clean emails
Pull job changes
Check intent
Add custom attributes
Clean inputs → clean output.
Dirty CRM → dirty pipeline.
3. Write Prompts, Not Emails
Elijah uses ChatGPT as a prompt engine, not a writer.
Give the AI the context, angle, and signal — and it produces a message that hits.
4. Human-in-the-Loop
AI drafts.
Human edits.
The perfect middle ground.
This Is Why Top Performers Win
Elijah said something that every GTM leader should print out and tape above their laptop:
“It’s played out if you’re doing the generic stuff.”
Generic = ignored.
Signal-based = respected.
Relevance = revenue.
Outbound isn’t dying.
Bad outbound is.
Stop Betting. Start Engineering.
Outbound is not a numbers game.
It’s an information game.
The winners aren’t lucky.
They’re precise.
The losers aren’t lazy.
They’re flying blind.
The teams that dominate 2025 will be the ones who treat outbound not as a lottery ticket…
but as a system that produces predictable outcomes when built correctly.
Because at the end of the day:
You don’t need more activity.
You need more accuracy.
AI GTM WTF POV
Outbound isn’t dying.
Bad outbound is.
AI won’t fix a broken process —
it will expose every weakness in it.
The future of GTM isn’t more tools, more sequences, or more noise.
It’s better judgment, cleaner data, and sharper targeting.
When you stop treating outbound like a lottery
and start treating it like a system,
pipeline stops being unpredictable.
It becomes engineered.
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AI GTM WTF isn’t here to celebrate the hype cycle. We’re here to arm you with what actually moves revenue.
If this hit, forward it to one operator who’s drowning in “AI strategy” decks and needs the signal, not the noise.
No AI SDR fairytales. Just the future of GTM.
Sincerely,
Rahul 👋