u/the_outbound_guy

I've been running outbound for B2B SaaS for the last few years — currently head outbound at Instantly.ai where we send 60K+ emails/day. Watching the GTM motion change in real time has been wild. Here's what I'm seeing from inside the engine room.

The old GTM stack is dead. SDR army → MQL handoff → AE demo → close. That motion is dying for three reasons:

1. Inboxes are saturated. Average B2B buyer gets 100+ cold emails/week. Generic "Hey {firstname}, saw you're at {company}" pitches don't even register anymore.
2. Buyers self-educate. 70%+ of the buying decision happens before they ever talk to a rep. By the time they book a call, they've read 3 case studies, watched a YouTube teardown, and lurked in 2 subreddits.
3. SDR economics are broken. $80K fully loaded for an SDR who books 5-8 meetings/month. That math only works at enterprise ACV. For SMB SaaS, it's a money pit.