Cold email is dead — unless you do this. Harris Kenny on what replaces it.

In this episode, Harris Kenny, founder of Outbound Sync, unpacks the evolution of cold outreach, arguing that while traditional single-domain email sequencing is dead, outbound at scale is thriving for those who adapt. He highlights a critical gap in the modern go-to-market stack: advanced tools like Smartlead and Clay give teams a deliverability and data edge, but they fail to 'phone home' to CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce. Without this synchronization, companies are left guessing about revenue attribution and multi-channel campaign success. Kenny also tackles the 'agency versus internal team' debate when it comes to standing up outbound infrastructure. Because deliverability, domain warming, and data enrichment have become incredibly complex, internal teams often fail by treating outbound as a 'second shift' side project. Agencies, on the other hand, bring dedicated expertise and speed, allowing companies to iterate faster and avoid accumulating paralyzing go-to-market tech debt. Finally, the conversation explores the impact of AI on sales consulting and the necessity of shifting away from vanity metrics. AI might build a basic workflow or draft an ICP, but it cannot execute the nuanced, iterative critical thinking required to win. Kenny urges revenue leaders to delete open rates from their dashboards entirely, refresh their ICPs quarterly, and focus on delivering high-value, low-risk offers through deeply specialized multi-channel campaigns.

Discussed in this episode

Why internal outbound efforts often fail because they are treated as an evening side gig rather than a dedicated strategy.
The 'phone home' problem where edge outbound tools fail to sync critical engagement data back to the primary CRM.
How high-value, low-risk offers, like custom merchandise mockups, are driving massive meeting volume in saturated markets.
The effectiveness of single-channel cold email in less fatigued geographic markets and non-tech industries like construction.
Why the era of a single sales rep running sequences from a primary domain is effectively over.
The emerging enterprise trend of pushing raw outbound and advertising data directly into Snowflake to act as a CDP.
How AI will change agency structures by raising expectations without replacing the need for human operational execution.
The necessity of deleting vanity metrics like open rates from dashboards when rebuilding a go-to-market foundation.

Episode highlights

0:00 — Welcome and Harris Kenny introduction
2:15 — Internal teams vs. agency outbound execution
6:30 — Does outbound at scale still work?
10:45 — The 'phone home' CRM sync problem
14:20 — Success stories with compelling offers
19:00 — The origin story of Outbound Sync
23:10 — Sending enterprise data to Snowflake
26:45 — Will AI replace GTM agencies entirely?
31:30 — The hidden risk of GTM tech debt
34:00 — The future of outbound specialization
37:15 — Deleting vanity metrics from dashboards
39:50 — Rapid fire questions with Harris

Key takeaways

Single-domain outbound sequencing is dead.
Treating outbound as a side project guarantees failure.
Sync your edge sequencer data back to your CRM.
AI generates ideas, but agencies execute and iterate.
Delete open rates from your GTM dashboards.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Bridge the Gap powered by Revenue Reimagine. We have Harris Kenny with us today who is the founder of outbound sync. I think it's a super cool tool because it solves a problem that I'm dealing with right now. How do you attribute revenue, sync activities, manage block lists from tools like Smart Lead and Instantly that do outbound at scale that don't historically tie back to your CRM.

Prior to that, Harris ran a gold tier hubspot Solutions partner agency. We could certainly talk about that because we do that as well. Um, was one of the first clay experts and spent past life scaling hardware companies and selling ERP consulting. Man, you've done a little bit of everything.

Welcome to the show. Thanks, great to be here. Yeah, I bounced around. It took me, it took me some time to uh figure out what I'm doing, but I'm also not young.

So that helps. All right. I mean Dale Dale's old. I mean, you're not young, I'm not young.

Dale's old. I'm old. It's definitely true. Although now that I shaved my beard off, I'm a little bit younger, but um Well, if you I mean one one one one of our clients did send me a slack yesterday being like, oh my God, Dale looks so young without his beard.

True story. That's great. Well if you if you follow Brian Johnson, you know, maybe maybe we can extend our lives a bit here. We'll see how it goes.

Yeah. Second person this week to tell us about that. True story. Yeah.

Yeah, I I followed Brian a little bit. Adam's like, who's that? So we're we're trying to get Adam into the 21st century on taking care of himself, but let's see how that how that progresses. Jim every morning, man.

Every morning. So, Harris, you know, one of the thing one of the big things that we've always been struggling with and actually the market's struggling with is like outbound at scale or top of funnel or like any of these things that we talk through. Um, and and it's a problem that you're trying to help solve with partnerships like uh, Instantly, Smartly, etc. Um, where should people be starting to think about outbound at scale?

Is it as they're building? Is it after product market fit? Is it where is it in the life cycle of building an organization? Yeah.

Well, I think where we're, so a little bit about Outbound Sync. So we've got um, hundreds of companies using our product now. Uh, we've got we've synced tens of millions of records. So we we do have some visibility into where we're seeing things working and and I I do think about this.

I split this in my head of are you working with an agency or not? Because if you're working with an agency, it it's going to fundamentally change the types of plays you can run and what you can do with the data and frankly how quickly you can move versus if you're a direct team and and the types of resources and the types of people required to be successful. Um, Why why is that? Why do you why do you split it that way?

Well, I mean, we I just see a really big difference between like the on our side, the amount of time it takes for a team to move forward, for example. Uh now just like to to get their bearings. We have a company we've been talking to they are I don't want to be name names. You I'll just say they're using a conventional sequencer and they're like, look, we we're landing in spam.

We know we need multiple domains. We know that Instantly solves this problem for that they, you know, liked Instantly for their for their use case. We know Instantly solves this problem for us. The problem is we went to go cancel our contract and um they auto renewed us automatically, right?

So you have this like these like variety of things that like a traditional team has in place. Now, in this situation, like they have a a really strong internal person. I would say that is the X Factor of like, do you have an internal person that themselves can can drive this entire conversation across the internal org around like, hey, here's the problem. They need to be able to pick up and learn really quickly about deliverability and these other things and have the the kind of the guts to be like what we're doing right now is not working.

I'm going to be the one to say it out loud. Um, you know, and then and then they have to do the research and they have to find there's a lot they have to be able to do and then and then get that will. With if you're working with an agency, it's not the agency themselves they bring a lot of skills, but also the decision to hire an agency seems to suggest like a decision has been made, a commitment has been made. Let's bring in someone to solve this.

And so we just find that companies that do that are able to get stuff off the ground faster. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but so then the question of like at what stage do companies do this kind of outbound that that like starts to affect it because if you're working with an agency and you have a really clear goal of like I want to test my positioning or I want to test a couple different ways to then you can do it earlier with different expectations. But if you want pipeline generated, yeah, there's some traction. There's some offers.

You you you have to know what to put into clay to get the right lists. Um, you know, to know the to numbers to dial and then and then you do the validation, you do you have reps that can do calling. It's definitely becoming a game for companies with more resources, I think. Um, versus more.

I think what I I think what I heard you say, I think what I was hearing you say was like the agency model will just get you there faster, more efficiently, more effectively versus like if you're doing it internally, it's almost like a side project. It's like, okay, do all your other work and then like, oh, by the way, we also have to figure out this outbound at scale type of motion. Yep. So it it would like it's a it's a matter of and I and I say this a lot with like sales and marketing, like salespeople can help you generate awareness outside, but it could take you 12 to 18 months to do that where marketing may take you six months.

Yep. And I think that analogy is probably the same as like if I hire an agency because they do this all the time. They know all the modifications because things are changing so quickly, right? It's like just because it worked today, like a month from now, whatever you did today is not really going to be working.

And you guys are on top of that all the time. Yep, yeah. I think the side project analogy is like exactly right. Because that's what I mean, I look, I get an email at 8:00 from, you know, uh Head of sales.

an email at 8:00 at night being like, okay, I did a bunch of research about how to set up domains like, can you tell me about DKIM? And it's like you obviously just put your kids to bed. You know, I know because I just did the same thing, right? And now we're like getting online for our second shift.

So I think the side gig analogy is exactly right. Our second shift. That's funny. Um, Does outbound at scale work?

And let me piggyback off that for a second. So there's a gazillion AI tools out there, right? There's a gazillion agencies out there all claiming, you know, I we could enrich everything amazingly through clay and like we're going to get you this great data. But you're still going to send out 10,000 emails and you're going to get a 1% response rate.

Like is outbound at scale worth investing in? And I understand you're a little biased based on your product, but like does it work and if so, where? Yeah, well, I I would say with our product sometimes customers use our product to disprove that, you know, to say, oh, outbound is not working. Um, and that's okay, too.

Right? I mean, our my core beliefs. Sure. As long as they pay the subscription, I don't particularly care what they use it for.

Yeah, yeah, right. And that's part of why we're like going to be looking at moving it supporting other channels is because it's like well maybe email isn't working or maybe this, you know, and so it's like, okay, what about LinkedIn? What about phones? But I mean, like our core my core thesis has been like, look, this we had the like period of like the early sequencers for whatever, five to seven years and outreach created the created the category, I think.

Um, and Salesloft and these other players. But that like one one rep in one seat with like that has a one Zoom info seat and they have one sequencer seat. With with one domain, with one domain. From the main domain.

One CRM seat, that era is is over basically. Um, I'm not saying that people aren't continuing to use all of those tools, but the use case is different than it was before. And so, um, The question is like, what is this new, what is what is different now? And and when people switch to different tools to get deliverability edge or to get like different better data, maybe more segmented custom data with clay, there is still this like phone home problem.

And so I think the the main thing that we're trying to solve right now is that people choose new tools to get an edge, but then those new tools on the edge don't phone home. And so they they can't say confidently whether it's working or not. And even like what is success? Is it positive reply right away?

What if outbound influences a lead that converts through another channel like paid ads? Does that count? Does they does the outbound get credit for that? Well, we don't know because there's no record that we emailed them in the first place.

So that that's kind of where I think the where we sit where the market is. I think the market's very, it's very early in a lot of ways for these new tools in my opinion. So I I hear you. Um, and I hear everything you're saying and I agree with you, but where does outbound at scale work and where doesn't?

Like I'm looking for a very very definitive answer. Like if I'm a Series A or Series B or Series C or I have three BDRs she thinks I'm talking to her and I'm not. Um, where does outbound at scale work? And I Yeah.

To piggyback, Harris, I love that you said we could be used to prove that it doesn't, because I'm a big believer there's places where it doesn't and you have to be able to track the activity to know that it doesn't. Yeah, I like I can give some examples of people that like are real companies that I I see in the slack that are booking meetings right now. Great. You don't you don't even have to name them.

Yeah, yeah, I won't name them because I because I can't. Um, I understand. But like, um, so okay, there's um There are uh like busy there are there's there's types of products where customers are repeat buyers. Uh so there's a company that does, well, they've talked about this publicly.

So I can say this publicly. The an agency that we work with called C17, they work with uh a merch company called Jamio. And so and Jamio's a little different because they have really, really high quality merch. Like if you want to buy merch, most of the companies like it's really cheap and it's flimsy and it's just hard to get good stuff.

And so they take a like a more of a higher value approach. And so what C17 did was they developed a really good offer. So, okay, so like ingredient one of why this is working is that companies are repeatedly buying merch. So if they're not buying it right now, they might be buying it in three months, right?

So that is like a prerequisite to this being a thing. There's like an acknowledgement of a problem, they have some put a set aside budget, they're they're kind of they're they're in motion. There's a little bit of friction because they've got like a commitment to maybe a certain vendor. They've got like a pre-configured shirt design with an existing shirt printer.

So, okay, we got to get them to consider doing something else besides clicking the reorder button. Um, and so what they did was they developed a good offer. And the offer was, we'll develop our designers will develop for you a custom they call them jams, but like some custom looks basically with some of our higher quality merch, some of our fleeces and things like that. If if you're game, like I can send it to you and you let me know if it if it looks cool.

And it's like a very, very low risk offer. And so and so they are crushing it on that campaign. I mean, they're booking a ton of meetings and it's extremely successful for them. Um, because it's something compelling.

People like to see their brand use in different ways. A lot of times the person that's designing the shirts and ordering the shirts, like they're looking for new ideas on how to do things and and they want to keep it fresh. They don't want to just do the logo with like uh the founder designed version of merch, which is like the logo is like 300x blown up on the front of the shirt and and that's the whole shirt. Um, so that's like that's one example where I can tell you for a fact that's winning.

So, yeah. Um, we can we can go through some more. Um, other people that I'm seeing winning are that are combining multiple channels. So they're using paid ads plus email or they're using phones plus Link uh plus um plus like some LinkedIn touches and things like that.

Um, to to to find the right channel for the right person. Um, because not everyone. What you just said is key though. It's not just email.

And I tell this to everyone. Outbound at scale, I think has its place. There's a place for brand awareness. I'm also a big believer the goal of any campaign is to book a meeting, right?

It's to get a response. Yes or no to get a response and ultimately to book that meeting. If you and I'm super curious your thoughts on this, if you go start doing outbound at scale and we're going to email 10,000 people and hope that we're going to get great response rates and they're going to book a meeting and all we're going to do is email them, you're going to be fucked. Pardon my French.

If we do outbound at scale and couple that with a multichannel approach and we add in phone calls, we add in LinkedIn and we make sure that those emails are high value, that's where I think your outbound at scale has its place. But if you are just outbound, barring very few niche industries, do I think people are going to be like holy shit, Harris, I have been waiting for your email for the past three months of my life, the timing is perfect that you sent this and I cannot wait to get on the phone with you. Yeah, well, so okay, let let me drive a bus through I agree, but let me drive a bus through that except niche industry thing because I do think there are a lot of industries and I will also say like geographic markets where the recipients are less let's just say cynical, maybe, or less like fatigued with outreach where we do have agencies that are using alternative data provider sources, like scraping Google Maps directly and going to other places, state scraping like public databases of business registrations and different types of like liquor tax registration, restaurant register, whatever, things like that where where they are succeeding with a single channel. But like others, you know, we have a you know, the customer that um, where they sell to contractors and like a lot of those contractors are like, they don't even they don't even have websites at all, you know, and they're using a Gmail address kind of thing, but then if you find him on Angie's list, you see, oh, actually, this is a very good roofing company that has tons of reviews and they could totally use this product.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that that that specialized industry like what does that mean? That can also mean different geographic markets. I know that we have some agency partners in Europe who are absolutely printing money because they're sending their cold emails in Dutch to people that speak Dutch. And they it's it's like it's like you turn back the clock and it's like it's 2016.

And people are like, hey, oh my gosh, like thanks for emailing me. This is great. They are treating it like that because they don't ever get emails like that. Um, so they it's like the future's here, but it's just not even like so so so it works outside of B2B tech.

Yeah, definitely. Oh, definitely. And I think that's and Dale, I know you're like, fuck dude, let me talk, but that that's another thing that I don't think people realize. We we work with a lot of tech companies.

We talk to a lot of tech companies who see email at scale every day, who see 100 cold calls every day. There's lots of industries out there. Even LinkedIn is the same thing where none of the shit exists. This is so novel to them that people do respond.

Now, I'll let Dale speak. Thanks for getting my coffee this morning, man. What? Let's face it y'all.

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If you're looking for a proven way to win and retain more customers, visit sendoso.com. I think it's more I think it's like beyond that as well. It's like where back to fundamentals in sales, where do your buyers live?

Yeah. And if they live in a place like we're working with a client that, you know, they're in the construction industry as well and they're their you'll get them on the phone much faster than you get them on email because they're be on job sites or, you know, they'll be in the middle of something. So you can send as many emails as you want at that point, but uh, it may be a supplemental piece. So as you're going through, like calling them, calling them, then sending an email versus like email first, then call.

So, it's all about where the buyers the buyers live, um, in the space. Um, I want to switch topics a little bit, Harris. So, um, what was the prep like why'd you say like, let's let's build Outbound Sync, what are the first three things when you were kind of like building out the foundational elements of your business that you found challenging that now you can like say, good, I kind of put a bow on that and I can move forward off of it. Hmm.

Well, the first thing I was running a HubSpot agency, which we could talk about, like really was had a great experience being in a HubSpot partner program and we were also doing outbound because I was originally doing outbound. And then we had these clients that were also using HubSpot and then I decided, okay, well, why don't we why don't I join the HubSpot partner program, too. And so originally I was doing sales consulting like back in April 2019, I went out on my own. And we had clients that were asking, hey, can you get this outbound data like sort of like, uh, can you get this outbound data into HubSpot actually?

And I was like, oh, that's a great question. Uh, currently, no, I can't. Um, so the first question was, um, do does anybody want that? Do people want this outbound data inside of their CRM or not?

Because like at the time, none of these tools had any integrations and even now, a couple of them have introduced some very basic ones, but nothing like, uh, you know, in all humility, nothing like what we've built because this is all we do. So like we better we better make it better. Um, otherwise, what business, you know, what are we doing? Um, so we started to get requests of people being like, hey, I don't I don't want your agency services.

I just want the app. So that was kind of like that first checkbox. Like, okay, yeah, I think there's room for this. Um, and and I think the second big question was, okay, but then how um are are bigger companies, um, willing to use these new tools?

And at the time, two years ago, like that was not clear that that was going to happen. None of these tools had SOC 2 type 2. A lot of companies denied that that this was even an issue. They were like, we're landing in the primary we're landing in the inbox just fine.

What are you talking about? Um, I believed because of a couple of early calls that we had that that it would happen and that the mid-market, um, would move in this direction. But that at the time was very unclear. Now, that is like definitely the case.

I mean, we have um, some really great customers. We have quite a few series D companies who are using our product like that that is now this this this kind of growth hacking movement and has gone mainstream, I think. Um, and then I think yeah, which is really exciting. So those are those are I think probably the two, um, two of the big ones.

And and I think the third question was like, okay, people agree they want the data in in their system of record. They want it in HubSpot or Salesforce. Um, but then like what are they going to do with it? And that I think we are still in the process of um, getting better and better at identifying like workflows and automation and how to set up call tasks and how to set up revenue attribution reports and that I think is going to be the like the long-term project of like how do we help them.

And maybe the scary part is like how do we get too much data? Like do we have too much data and like how do we manage all this data? Like is there a use for the data? So Yeah, that that's an interesting challenge.

Oh, definitely. Well, and I think tied into that, it's like what we're starting to see like in the past three weeks, uh or maybe month. I've had three different people ask me about sending this data to Snowflake. So like, which to me is like, holy enterprise Batman.

There's a name I haven't heard in a long time, but yeah. You know, um, and so it's like are we sending are we sending too much or are we not sending enough? Because what they're they're considering like like a CDP almost. They're like, we're running tons and tons and tons of paid ads and impressions.

We've got like an insane amount of data and we want even more. We have this like voracious appetite to push everything into a data warehouse and then from there, we'll take care of sending it where it needs to go. And so like on the one hand, you've got the CRM where it's like, okay, the CRM is sacred. We don't want to push too much in here.

But then there's this other conversation of like, okay, but what if every single data point is something that we want to capture? Um, so that I I don't know where that's going to go. It's only come up a couple times, but it's already kind of given me that it's already giving like, I think there's more there. It just feels exactly.

Well then you could just You could aggregate the data outside of the CRM and then only push in the calculations on what you really want into the CRM versus like the raw data. Like the raw data is an interesting position for people that have a data warehouse, is it is it question like do we do we push it into a place where we aggregate it and give you the right data points versus having to aggregate it inside the CRM. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think I think it's still pretty early days. And this is why I'm such a believer in agencies. Like this stuff is super complicated.

And so anything that's complicated enough, you've got someone to help you think through it. No matter what it is in life, you know what I mean? So I just I that's why I'm a big believer. Some some some people are skeptics of agencies in the space and they say, oh, agencies are going to die or this type of agency is going to die or salesforce agency is going to die or, you know, I've seen some software companies be like, we used agencies for like our early validation, but now we're like moving up market.

We're moving on. And like I fundamentally disagree with that. I do not think agencies are going anywhere. Um, sure it'll change here.

Well, that's good to know. I really believe that. It's a huge part of our business model and it's a huge core belief of mine. I don't think it's just this stuff is too hard.

Like sorry, you know, nobody has enough time to learn it like an agency does in my opinion. Can't be a side project. No, yeah, it can't be a side project. No.

You don't have time for it, you know. It's too fundamental to the go-to-market strategy. Like But how how does it how does AI affect that? And we were just talking to someone the other day who and it it was an agent an agency owner for lack of better terms who very much believes Harris that we are all consultants, agencies, going to be out of a job in the next three years because AI is going to build the playbooks, do this, do that and I I have my opinion, which we can talk about in a second, but does does AI affect anything that you're saying as the next two to three years goes on?

Yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, I mean I'll I'll take the I'll take the other side of that bet. I'll take I'll bet against that for sure. Um, I think that I mean, okay, so I this is maybe a hot take or not.

But like in in in a year from now, I think there will be fewer people in like if you look at like the org chart of an organization, I think the number of people in like sales, revenue, go-to-market roles, I think that number will be lower. Um, but I think spend per person will be higher. And so it's possible that there will be fewer agencies or that the average agency has fewer employees or something like that. Like, sure.

AI is huge. We use it all the time. I mean, I was playing around with them 01, um, ChatGPT 01 where it does like the deep research. It was really awesome this weekend.

I went on like a long walk. And I would ask it a question and it was going and doing research and it was building it. It's really cool. Um, but you still have to know like the questions to ask and how to put it together.

So, yeah, I mean, I I don't think AI is going to fundamentally disrupt the existence of agencies, but I do think it'll change them. They'll be smaller. Spend will be higher. I think the expectations will be higher.

Um, I don't know, what do you guys think? I mean, you run an agency. What what do you what do you how do you see it affecting your business? I think the expectations are already higher.

Um, it's why when we started, we started with we're we're operators, not consultants. Those days are gone. I think two years ago, you could be a consultant and hand someone a pretty slide deck and people were very happy to pay you tens of thousands of dollars for it. Um, I think that's done.

Um, I think AI is going to help with things like an a HubSpot agency, for example. We're we're a HubSpot gold partner as well. Um, how do I build this really complex workflow? Shit, ChatGPT can tell me that.

And if you're relatively intelligent, you can follow the steps and go build your workflow and it's going to get you 90% there. When it comes to things like how do I develop a comprehensive outbound motion? How do I get the right copy and the right systems and the right reporting? How do I build a go-to-market motion?

How do I define my ICP? ChatGPT will tell you how to build an ICP. I don't think it tells you how to do it correctly. Um, but it will, you still need someone to execute.

And I will I also will bet against it. Our moat isn't that we have the knowledge to tell you what to do. Our moat is that we can execute and show you how to do it. Because ChatGPT can tell you what you need, but not how to do it the right way.

Yeah. And and I'll go a step further. I think the the second part of that moat is like it's going to be wrong the first time you build it. Like you're going to have to iterate over it based on feedback from the market, feedback from internal, feedback from like and and this this process of like or this this thought process like the market is never going to it never fails.

Like they'll tell you whether you they think your value proposition is the best or not. Like if you believe that you have some impact on people, and people are like, nope, I don't like that impact. Guess what? You're wrong.

Like So, you got to take all that back into account and like put it back into the mix to then come up with a new ICP or a new value proposition or ask the next question. Like when you have kids, you you're like the kids are like the three Y's. Like do this. Why?

Because I said this. Why? Because I because it and like finally you get to like the real reason on why you want someone to do something. Um, so like that is in my mind where the agency world or the consulting or the operation world's going to be.

And and as simple as like, we're working with a founder right now, he's going through a funding exercise. Yes, you could go ask ChatGPT, like we were talking about CAC and we were talking about, you know, LTV and a bunch of stuff. Yes, you can go ask ChatGPT, like what does that look like? But then you got to go build it in HubSpot or wherever you're going to do it.

You're going to look at like what the uh, what the iteration actually ends up looking like and then you're going to modify it based on like, look at, we only have four records. Like that's not enough data points for you to give back to an investor. Like maybe we need a data set of 10 to 20, so maybe we need to open things up and it's just it's that critical thinking of the plus one and not the initial conversation. Yeah.

That I think will be the value. Yeah, I agree with that. And and I'll say like, so we were talking about like the nuance, right? Of like this is where like we told it's where things get complicated.

Um, I think it's going to like, I think some of these agencies are going to go, it's going to be like a little bit of a throwback to like the system integrator, like the earlier days where it's like, look, this is really complicated. And like, you know, you start talking about things like, okay, why why why what this matters for like maintenance and like long-term. Okay, fine. Like let's say it works.

Let's say your sales team doubles. And then someone wants to know like why this one random property in HubSpot keeps changing. And you're like, I don't know, let's go troubleshoot the workflow. And like, okay, well, the the naming convention is just called, you know, untitled workflow, you know, 2021-01-01 or whatever.

You know what I mean? And so it's like that's where I think, you know, it. Wait, you you mean you should have a naming convention for your workflows? No.

Yes, you're going to start having like GTM tech debt basically. You know, you have people that if if they don't have enough background and experience, if they haven't done this and made the mistakes enough times, they're going to be creating tech debt for the go-to-market organization, basically. Where it's like someone's going to have to come in and unwind this stuff and figure out what the heck is going on and why did we give right access to like make Zapier and N8N and Clay and then you have like these race condition problems where like these different all these low code things are like competing with each other. You know, so it like the complexity can really get difficult quickly and and again, like to me these are spaces why you bring why you have expertise.

And also, sometimes it's wrong. Like I spent I have spent time just like for no reason, just for my own like getting out my frustration, like getting back at GBT and being like, this workflow action doesn't exist. Like stop telling me to do it. It's not real.

It's not in HubSpot. This is no you're you're completely hallucinating this. I I've I've run across that a couple times. So that's like not like let's say you can get past all of that and let's say like, you know, whatever.

You you still have this problem of like how are you designing these systems and then and I think I think to your point, Dale, like it's like, okay, but then are you bringing some unique novel idea and it's that like listening to the customer and then it's a new company who's raising money. Fundamentally, they're going to do something new. You're raising money because you believe something is going to change in the market in the next five years and that's why you're raising money to go build that business. So something that's built defined by the past is not going to be able to as effectively write that deck with you, you know, and tell you what metrics are really going to matter and stuff.

So, yeah, like I love AI. I use it all the time. Um, but I don't I don't know. I don't I don't think I don't think I don't think some of this stuff is going to change or is really meaningfully going to go away.

So what does the future hold? For go to market, for outbound, for specifically top of funnel. What's the future hold? Let's let's just talk next six months.

What what what what are you seeing because you you you work with so many companies who are like really top of funnel focused right now and I would argue everyone's top of funnel focused right now. It's the number one problem we hear. What does the future hold? How do you stand out?

Yeah, I mean, I I think that like in a word, it's specialization. Like I mean, what we're seeing is people are really specializing in like these different channels and the best way to do it. It's like we're not just making phone calls anymore. We've got like, you know, multiple layers of validation and we're finding we're calling people with a high propensity to respond.

And for those, we use a power dialer. And then for these other lists, we're using a parallel dialer. You know, to me, it's like it's every single area you're going to get more and more specialization in order to get that that like Delta, to get that, to get that return. Um, and so I think most of the market is behind.

Um, I think that the next I think that I think that so for people that are behind, I think they've got catching up to do. Um, you know, if they're still like, what's clay? Um, they've got some catching up to do. And then I think for the people that are ahead, I think the next six months are going to be less interesting than the last six months because because they're ahead, they're getting bigger and bigger clients and I'm seeing I'm seeing this.

Companies with 1500 employees and stuff like that are now saying, all right, you know, let's set up a smart lead. Um, the next like six months of meetings are going to be like with this uh CRM administrator. Being like, okay, so it's really important for our data hygiene that we have the territory mapped. Like can you and you know, and and whereas like they're used to just gripping and ripping.

Hey, I got a list. Boom, we're sending. Replies are coming into Slack. Let me know if you have any questions.

Now it's going to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We need this, this, this, this, this done. These are our requirements ever. So I I think that's like a good thing.

It means it's more money. It's working with bigger companies that have bigger problems. But so to me that's like it's it's going to be a tale of two two levels of adoption. The winners growing up.

Um, you know, or like having to like not grow up as that's like condescending, but having to like slow down, I should say. I I I'm condescending all the time apparently. So you're good. Don't worry about it.

Winners having to slow down all the time. Basically. And then and then for the for the laggards just definitely needing to catch up and just kind of get up to speed because I think um, like yeah, I mean stuff's just going to stop working. It's going to be like it's going to be like pushing a rope and so, you know, it's like you can solve that a lot of ways.

You don't need to use our product. You don't need to use, you know, work with revenue reimagine, whatever. There's a million ways to do it, but but it's but it's not going to work. Some of these things are just are going to completely stop working at some point.

That's what I think. Yeah. It's uh, it's an interesting time, man. It's an interesting time.

Um, thank you for sharing. Thank you for your knowledge. Um, I love what y'all are doing. Um, I've seen the product, uh, be used.

We're using it at some clients. Um, I'm excited to see what the future holds for you. Let's uh, before we depart as we wrap up, let's uh jump into some rapid fire here. Um, when you look at the go-to-market gap, so stabilization, foundation, repeatability, scalability.

What in your mind is the number one thing you need to move from stabilization to foundation? Um, Well, I have to I'm going to I'm going to this is not a speed answer. I'm going to have to fi a little ignorance here. Help me understand this model a little better.

Yeah. I just I don't want to give a I don't want to give a made up answer here. So So said differently, what what needs to be fixed? So when we come into companies, a lot of times they they don't know what's working and what's not.

And we have to stabilize them, right? Any company needs to be stabilized before you start rebuilding that foundation. What is the number one thing thing that you think needs to be fixed before you could rebuild? I think I think people are focusing on the wrong metrics.

I think like for the most organizations that are pre before they're ready to to lay the new foundation, they're still talking about like open rates and stuff like that. And so it's like, listen, like the dashboard, if you're if you're on that previous model, the dashboard you're looking at, we're probably going to delete like at least half of it, basically. And the numbers that you're used to looking at, like we're going to have to stop looking at those. I think.

I think that's like the first step. And if there's not alignment on that, then probably not going to get anywhere. Love it. 100%.

So, one of the things that we're looking at a lot is how often you should revisit those go-to-market foundations, ICP, buying persona, value propositions. How often do you think you should be revisiting those or pressure testing them at least to make sure you're in the right realm? Yeah. I mean, if you look at like Octave by Zach Vidor, it's a really interesting um, software company.

We we we know Zach well. I spoke with him for an hour yesterday. Okay, there you go. There you go.

There you go. Oh, hopefully you were hopefully you were nice to him. He's a nice guy. He's uh Always.

Zach's great. We're we're we're a partner. Oh, there you go, okay. He's just Adam's just condescending to everybody, so I don't know.

Everyone's all only everyone named. So this was not coordinated at all, at all. But that's great to hear. So I think, you know, if you talked to like Zach, you'd say, yeah, continuously.

We need we need to have feedback loops on this and we need to be looking at it and looking at changes in the market. Um, you know, I think if you're not doing that, I don't know. Um, defining a cadence that's sustainable for your organization, whether that's monthly or quarterly or something like that. But it's definitely not a set it and forget it kind of thing.

Uh I I know for sure that's not it. Okay, cool. I I think quarterly is probably the right place for most people right now, but Yeah. That's a lot.

I mean, that's a huge change versus a deck that marketing gave sales three years ago, kind of thing. A year ago. Yep. Two years ago.

Yeah. Three, I'm working with a client now where the deck is six and a half years old. True story. Uh, Harris, early bird or night owl?

Um, both, unfortunately. Oh. First happy check when you wake up in the First happy check when you wake up in the morning. Um, Slack.

Adam too. Interesting. No, my first app is Aura. Um, favorite guilty pleasure snack?

Mm. We talked about Brian Johnson, so he's got this cacao powder which I have that in the afternoons as like a little hot chocolate kind of thing with the with the blueprint cacao powder. Cool. Last one, uh, dream vacation destination.

Right now, the one that we're talking about a lot is New Zealand. I've been uh doing Lord of the Rings. I've been telling Lord of the Rings to our four-year-old and she's like obsessed with it. So it's our fifth time through the whole series.

And so we talk about ring story all the time. She asks me questions about Gandalf and stuff. So that that's our I've wanted to go to New Zealand, you know, for a long time. So that's I'm going to say that one.

Cool. Awesome. Definitely on my list as well. I've heard that's a very bumpy flight, but that's a whole separate conversation.

Um, over the ocean. Yeah, big water. Yeah, big water. Uh, listen, any flight these days, um, that lands successfully is a good day.

Um, I I say that getting on an airplane first thing tomorrow morning. Harris, thank you for joining us, man. Everyone go check out Outbound Sync, find Harris on LinkedIn. Uh and thanks for joining the show.

Thank you guys. I really I really like I said, I really appreciate what you're doing. This is great. Thanks.