Hey – it’s Alex.
If you joined my GTM advisory calls for a month, you’d probably hear me repeat the same sentences over and over:
“Ship it.”
“Don’t do everything at once.”
“Talk to customers.”
“Give it more reps.”
“Don’t outsource this.”
A lot of GTM problems look different on the surface.
❌ One founder struggles with outbound.
❌ Another with positioning.
❌ Another with pipeline.
❌ Another with their sales process.
Despite all those differences, I keep coming back to the same beliefs about how GTM should be built.
But the advice I give often comes back to the same principles.
Here are the 10 GTM principles I probably repeat the most (+ believe in most).
In case you missed the last 3 episodes:
✅ The 13 GTM Workstreams in my GTM advisory work
✅ Your GTM Foundation on One Page
✅ Pricing Guide 101
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1. Ship fast & iterate
Don’t wait until it’s perfect.
Ship the new homepage.
Launch the campaign.
Publish the post.
Test the new pitch.
Then see what happens and improve it.
I’ve seen founders spend weeks discussing things they could have tested in days.
My bias is almost always toward shipping.
I’d rather see a founder put an 80% version in front of customers this week than spend another month getting it from 80% to 95%.
And I know quality matters. Because real feedback is usually more valuable than another internal discussion.
Think about how you build your product.
You ship something.
Collect feedback.
Look at the data.
Learn.
Prioritize what to improve.
Then ship again.
GTM should work the same way.
That’s why I like working in 2-week GTM sprints.
Your GTM isn’t something you “figure out” once.
You build it.
2. Repetition matters: Get enough reps before you draw conclusions
Most things need more reps than you think.
❌ You won’t know whether LinkedIn works after five posts.
❌ You won’t become good at discovery after ten calls.
❌ One outbound campaign probably won’t tell you whether outbound works.
Of course, there is a point where you should stop something that isn’t working.
Define what “enough reps” means before you start.
Maybe that’s 30 posts. 500 targeted outbound messages.
Then evaluate.
Otherwise, you either quit too early or keep going forever.
3. Find the bottleneck
Founders often tell me:
“We need more leads.”
Maybe.
But maybe you don’t.
❌ If you’re generating 30 demos per month and closing 5%, more leads probably aren’t your biggest problem.
Your win rate is.
❌ If plenty of people visit your website but nobody books a demo, traffic isn’t your biggest problem.
Conversion is.
❌ If customers buy but leave three months later, acquisition isn’t your biggest problem.
Retention is.
Your job is to identify the constraint currently holding growth back.
Ask yourself:
If we could fix ONE part of our GTM in the next 30 days, which one would have the biggest impact?
Start there.
P.S. This is also why I always start an engagement with a GTM audit.
I don’t want to walk in with a predetermined answer like “you need outbound” or “you need better positioning.” I want to understand where the biggest constraint is first.
4. Stay close to the market
Especially from €0 → €1M ARR, you as the founder need to stay close to customers.
✅ Be on sales calls.
✅ Analyze the recordings.
✅ Join customer success calls.
✅ Talk to lost prospects.
✅ Ask customers why they bought.
✅ Ask why they didn’t.
✅ Listen to the exact words they use.
The insights you learn from your customer conversations are the source for your GTM foundation:
Your ICP. Your positioning. Your messaging. Your sales process.
All of them should improve as you learn more from the market.
5. The founder needs to own GTM: GTM can’t be outsourced
I don’t believe in done-for-you GTM from €0 → €1M ARR.
And yes, that’s coming from someone who sells GTM advisory.
This one might sound slightly ironic coming from a GTM advisor.
But I strongly believe it. Especially early on:
❌ GTM can’t be outsourced.
An advisor can guide you.
Challenge your thinking.
Share frameworks.
Review your work.
Help you avoid mistakes.
But you, the founder, need to own GTM.
That’s also why my advisory isn’t done-for-you.
I want founders to do the work while I guide, challenge, and give feedback.
Because you need to understand your GTM.
Not your agency. Not your freelancer. Not your advisor.
You.
Want to go deeper?
6. Narrow before you scale
One of the first things I work on with almost every founder is the ICP.
And one of the most common reactions is:
“But couldn’t we also sell to X?”
Probably.
That’s not the point.
The question isn’t:
“Who could buy?”
It’s:
“Who should we focus on right now?”
Especially early on, trying to serve everyone makes everything harder.
❌ Your positioning becomes vague.
❌ Your messaging becomes generic.
❌ our outbound becomes less relevant.
❌ Your content speaks to nobody in particular.
Start with a beachhead.
Learn who gets the most value.
Understand why they buy.
Win more of them.
Then expand.
Want to go deeper? → My Ideal Customer Profile framework
7. Prioritize. You can’t do everything at once.
This is probably one of the things I do most in my advisory:
Tell founders what NOT to work on.
There’s always another idea.
You can easily fill every week and still make very little progress.
A simple way I prioritize initiatives with founders is:
Impact × Effort x
Then we do them one after another.
8. Measure to make decisions, not dashboards
I love data.
But please don’t give me a GTM dashboard with 100+ metrics.
I want every founder I work with to have a GTM dashboard we can open and quickly understand:
✅ What’s working?
✅ What’s not?
✅ Where are we behind?
The purpose of measurement is to answer questions.
✅ Where does pipeline come from?
✅ Where are we losing deals?
✅ Which channels perform?
✅ Are conversion rates improving?
✅ Are we on track to hit our targets?
Every important metric should support you in making a decision:
“So what are we going to do about it?”
If it doesn’t, ask yourself why you’re tracking it.
Want to go deeper? → The only GTM Dashboard you need
9. Do things that don’t scale before you automate them
In 2026, founders love asking:
“How can we automate this?”
I usually want to know something else first:
Does it work manually?
✅ Ask for referrals yourself.
✅ Write the first posts yourself.
✅ Do cold calls yourself.
✅ Hang out in communities yourself.
✅ Review lost deals.
✅ Write the first outbound messages.
At this stage, you want to learn.
Once you understand what works:
Document it.
Build the process.
Automate the repetitive parts.
Then scale it.
Want to go deeper? → 9 tactics to get your first 50 customers
10. Master before you multiply
You don’t need:
Outbound + LinkedIn + SEO + paid + partnerships + events + influencers + communities.
You need 1–2 channels that reliably generate qualified pipeline.
Which ones depend on your target audience, ACV, product, market, resources and your own skills as a founder.
For many B2B founders I work with, primary channels could be:
Outbound
Founder-led LinkedIn
Social listening
BOFU content
Then you can add secondary channels such as paid search, paid social, GEO/SEO, partnerships, influencers or events.
Add new channels because the first one works and you’re ready for more.
The same principle applies elsewhere.
❌ Don’t add another ICP before you’ve learned how to win the first.
❌ Don’t add another sales motion because the first one is difficult.
❌ Don’t hire five GTM people before you know what they’re supposed to repeat.
Master before you multiply.
Want to go deeper? → The 21 SaaS GTM Channels
Bonus: Fix GTM Foundation first
If you’ve followed my content for a while, this one won’t surprise you.
I believe most early-stage companies need fewer new GTM tactics and a better GTM Foundation.
When pipeline isn’t growing, founders naturally start looking for another channel.
Outbound? LinkedIn? Ads? Partnerships? GEO?
Sometimes that’s the answer.
But often, the problem sits further upstream.
❌ Your ICP isn’t sharp enough.
❌ Your positioning isn’t clear.
❌ Your messaging doesn’t resonate.
❌ Your website doesn’t convert.
❌ Your sales process is broken.
Adding more traffic on top of that doesn’t solve the underlying problem.
That’s why I keep coming back to:
ICP → Positioning → Messaging → Collaterals → Channels → Sales Process → Pricing
Get the foundation right. Then build on top of it.
Want to go deeper? → Your GTM Foundation on One Page
Happy growth
3 ways I help founders build a strong GTM foundation 👇
If you’re somewhere between €0 → €1M ARR, I can help you with your GTM.
1️⃣ GTM Foundation Library
→ More than 50 frameworks, guides, and templates.
2️⃣ GTM Clarity Sprint
→ A complete GTM audit and a six-month action plan delivered in < 7 days
3️⃣ 1:1 GTM Advisory
→ Work directly with me to build your GTM, workstream by workstream
The 'give it more reps' point maps almost exactly to what I see with AI-native tools right now: teams ship an AI feature once, get a lukewarm response, and shelve it instead of iterating five more times on the prompt or the onboarding flow. Reps compound faster in AI products because the cost of a variant is so low, so the founders who win are just the ones running more loops per week, not smarter loops. Curious if you've seen that pattern show up differently for AI-first companies vs traditional SaaS in your advisory calls.