Mark Kosoglow, Co-founder and CEO of Operator.ai, and Max Altschuler, Founder and General Partner of GTMfund, dive into the shifting landscape of sales and marketing tech. They discuss the alarming trend of buyers tuning out 90% of sales outreach, known as The Great Ignore. Mark shares how Operator.ai leverages AI to personalize outreach by uncovering unique insights, radically streamlining the process from 20 contacts to just 2 touches needed to secure a meeting. The duo reflects on their shared history and the challenges of relying on outdated data practices in a rapidly evolving market.
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insights INSIGHT
Fuel Not Automation Problem
The real problem is not automation but the basic, low-value data fueling it.
Minimal personalization no longer captures prospect attention effectively.
insights INSIGHT
The Great Ignore Emerging
Buyers now ignore most automated sales messages creating the "Great Ignore."
Overuse of signals causes prospects to tune out generic outreach, reducing effectiveness.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Enrich Data for Insightful Outreach
Build lists with free basic data but focus on enriching with difficult-to-get, interesting insights.
Analyze individual entities to find compelling data that breakthroughs generic outreach noise.
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Mark Kosoglow is the Co-Founder and CEO of Operator.ai, a company incubated by GTMfund. Mark was employee #1 at Outreach and former SVP of Global Sales, where he helped grow the company from zero to over $200 million in revenue. He is joined in this special edition podcast episode by Max Altschuler, Founder and General Partner of GTMfund.
Discussed in this Episode:
The current state of sales and marketing tech, with too much automation leading to spam and prospects tuning out messages.
The Great Ignore, the place we have reached where buyers are ignoring 90% of sales activity.
How basic contact and account data has become commoditized and no longer provides a competitive advantage.
The launch of Operator, its manifesto and mission.
The founding story and team behind Operator, including Mark and Max's history of working together.
Operator's unique approach to using AI for finding interesting insights to enable relevant, targeted outreach.
Incubating a company within GTMfund.
Highlights: (4:00) Mark's background at Outreach and the early days of sales automation. (6:41) The problem with relying solely on basic contact and account data for outreach. (8:41) How Operator uses AI to find unique insights for personalizing outreach (14:01) The vision for Operator: going from 20 sales touches to book a meeting back down to 2. (27:58) The founding story of Operator and how the team came together. (32:47) Comparing Operator's approach to other sales tech tools and their shortcomings. (38:00) The dangers of AI-powered spam and the need for more targeted, relevant outreach.
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The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
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