In a world drowning in AI-generated content, the difference between standing out and blending in comes down to one critical choice: are you using AI to amplify your original thinking, or are you letting it think for you?

If you're like most marketing teams today, you've experimented with AI content generation. You're encouraged by how quickly it can produce blog posts, social media updates, and even lengthy whitepapers. But you've also noticed something troubling: everything is starting to sound the same. The internet is becoming an echo chamber full of squawking parrots.

The problem isn't AI itself—it's how we're using it. The traditional 80/20 approach to content creation isn't wrong, but it needs refinement for the AI age. The key insight? We need to redistribute that 20% of human input—moving half of it to the beginning of the process.

It's time for a new model: the 10/80/10 rule. This isn't about replacing the 80/20 principle but evolving it.‍

By strategically bookending AI with human expertise—10% of original thinking upfront and 10% of expert refinement at the end—we transform AI from a thought replacement tool into a thought amplification engine.

Are you using AI to amplify your original thinking, or are you letting it think for you?

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The Pareto Problem: Why Most AI Content Falls Flat

If you're trying to build brand authority and generate qualified leads, you've likely discovered that AI-generated content often falls short. You've heard AI can automate 80% of the heavy lifting, leaving just 20% of the work for you to weigh in on, multiplying your ability to get shit done.

You give it a shot, initial progress is encouraging, and you see the light at the end of the tunnel leading you to your 5x content-engine machine. But the end of the tunnel seems always out of reach the more you work at it. Something's wrong with the process. Does any of this sound familiar?

• You generate an article in 30 seconds, but then spend 2 hours editing it to make it "good enough" to publish, realizing that won't scale
• You spend 30 minutes in add-on prompting trying to make the AI article not sound like an AI-generated article, "make this 5 bullets, not 3", "extend this paragraph", etc.
• You try to find the source for a statistic the article included, but it doesn't exist
• You've published 30 AI-generated articles for your company but web traffic's not moving
• You used an AI article generator, published 300 articles last month, traffic ticked up, but no one's engaging

This is what 95% of the marketing world is doing wrong today. They're starting with AI—asking it to generate content from scratch—and then trying to fix the output. This is the naive approach to the traditional 80/20 rule, applied to content creation:

• 80%: Start with a prompt, get 80% to the finish line (e.g., "write me an article on a topic that's trending in go-to-market aligned to my ideal customer profile")
• 20%: Edit the output, add additional thoughts, make follow-up prompts

The problem? When you start with AI, you're starting with recycled, derivative thinking. You're building on what AI has learned from analyzing thousands of other articles—many of which were themselves uninspired or generic. You're amplifying the noise, not the signal.

This approach fails to position you as an industry leader because it lacks the originality needed to truly stand out. Let’s give this approach a name - call it, the Prompt-to-Human method (P2H).

The idea is that 80% of the effort starts by relying on prompt engineering, followed by 20% of the user rationalizing and modifying the results to an acceptable output.

Note - there are plenty of use cases where this approach works great, but thought leadership specifically is what we’re concerned with here.

Why 80/20 Doesn't Work for Thought Leadership

The traditional 80/20 approach fails with AI content generation for three key reasons:

1. It scales the wrong thing: Instead of scaling your unique expertise and insights, you're scaling generic information that dozens of other companies in your industry are also publishing.
2. It puts the heavy lifting in the wrong place: You end up spending most of your time editing generic content rather than contributing original thinking—the exact opposite of where your value lies.
3. It creates a race to the bottom: As more companies adopt this approach, content across the web becomes increasingly homogenized. Your brand voice disappears into a sea of AI-generated sameness.
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The true cost of this approach goes beyond wasted time. It damages your brand reputation as readers recognize the lack of original insight. It creates audience fatigue as people tire of reading slight variations of the same ideas. It undermines your search visibility as algorithms increasingly prioritize original, high-value content. And perhaps most importantly, it squanders the opportunity to establish genuine thought leadership in your industry.

Traffic might tick up temporarily, but it's a vanity metric that doesn't translate to meaningful engagement or conversions. Using AI the wrong way simply gets you a different version of the same bad results.

Scale Your Experience with 10/80/10

There's a better way to leverage AI for content creation—one that amplifies your expertise rather than diluting and marginalizing it. Think of it as the 10/80/10 approach, or simply a ‘modified Pareto principle’.  This approach focuses on leveraging AI to help you scale your content engine without sacrificing originality or authenticity. The key is simply relocating 10% of human ‘think time’ to the beginning of the process to get better results. Here’s what it looks like:

First 10%: Original Thinking

The process begins—not with AI—but with you. What original opinion do you have about the topic? What experience have you gained that shapes this opinion? How can you help your audience learn faster from your experience?

This first 10% is where you identify the core insight that only you can provide. It's the seed of true thought leadership—the unique perspective that comes from your expertise and experience in the field.

This step cannot be outsourced to AI. It's where you differentiate yourself from competitors who are letting AI do the thinking for them.

Middle 80%: AI-Enhanced Development

Once you've established your original thinking and articulated an opinion, now is the time to bring in AI. But instead of asking it to generate content from scratch, you're asking it to build upon your foundation:

• Draft the article from your base opinion and thought
• Fill in the gaps in your prose and points
• Connect the narrative and tell a better story
• Add supporting research that reinforces your original insight
• Help translate complex expertise into accessible content

In this model, AI isn't making things up for you—it's amplifying what you already know. It's handling the "busywork" of content creation so you can focus on contributing original value.

Final 10%: Human Refinement

The last step is adding the final touches that make the content truly yours:

• Include details and illustrations from your personal experience
• Add emphasis to key points that reflect your priorities
• Ensure the final piece authentically represents your perspective
• Add nuance that only human experience can provide
• Incorporate more specific details from a case study

This final polishing ensures that the content remains authentic to your voice and expertise, even with AI assistance.

Implementing 10/80/10: Practical Frameworks

To get the most from the middle 80% where AI plays its role, use these prompting frameworks to start your next thought leadership piece. By investing time here, at the input, you're investing in the most important part of the process. There are dozens of these out there, but here are four to start with.

Experience Amplification

This keeps your original thinking central while using AI to develop supporting arguments. For example.

"Based on my experience that [your specific insight], help me expand on the following [key points]..."

Storytelling Enhancement

This approach leverages AI's ability to structure content while keeping your experiences as the foundation.

"Using my core insight about [X], help me craft a narrative arc that illustrates this point through these specific examples..."

Perspective Preservation

This approach creates guardrails to prevent generic content.

"I'm writing from the perspective of someone who has [your unique experience]. Using that lens, help me articulate how [topic] connects to [your audience's needs]

Expertise Extraction

This uses AI to make your expertise more accessible without diluting it.

"Based on my expertise in [field], I believe [key insight]. Help me articulate the implications of this for [target audience]."

Measuring Success Beyond Vanity Metrics

When you adopt the 10/80/10 approach, you need to shift your measurement focus as well. Traffic alone is a vanity metric, not a conversion. Instead, look at engagement metrics that actually matter:

• Time on page (are people actually reading your content?)
• Return visitors (are they coming back for more?)
• Lead attribution (are new leads coming in being influenced by your articles?)

These metrics reflect the true impact of thought leadership—not just eyeballs, but engagement, influence, and ultimately, conversion. Just remember, the investment in authority content takes time. Stay focused on disciplined execution, maintain high quality standards that set you apart from your competition, and see your brand evolve into the industry leader you need it to be.

We Need Thought Leaders, Not Noise Amplifiers

In a world where anyone can generate content at scale, the competitive advantage doesn't come from publishing more—it comes from publishing with purpose, perspective, and expertise that no one else can offer.

Lazily applying the 80/20 rule to thought leadership content turns you into a parrot, repeating variations of what's already been said. The 10/80/10 approach turns you into a thought leader, amplifying your unique expertise and making it more accessible to your audience. By focusing on your ideal customer profile and using responsible AI practices, you can build brand authority and position yourself as an industry leader.

The choice is clear: start with your original thinking first, then let AI amplify your expertise. In a world of AI-generated noise, authentic expertise is the ultimate differentiator.

Are you ready to stop being a parrot and start being a thought leader?

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The Authority Content Quick-Reference Checklist

5 Questions to Identify Your Unique Expertise

1. What problem did you solve this week for a client?
2. What challenge have you solved that most of your industry is still struggling with?
3. What conventional wisdom in your field do you disagree with based on your experience?
4. What mistake have you made that taught you something valuable?
5. What trend are you seeing that others haven't recognized yet?
6. What counterintuitive approach has worked for you when conventional approaches failed?

3 Prompting Templates for the Middle 80%

1. "Based on my core insight that [your original thought], expand on how this applies to [specific audience situation]."
2. "I've provided my unique perspective on [topic]. Help me structure this into a compelling narrative with supporting points while maintaining my distinctive point of view."
3. "Using my expertise in [field] as the foundation, help me articulate the practical implications of [your insight] for professionals who need to [audience need]."

4-Point Quality Check for the Final 10%

1. Does this content contain specific examples or anecdotes from my personal experience?
2. Would someone who knows me recognize this as reflecting my authentic perspective?
3. Does this content go beyond conventional wisdom to offer a new perspective?
4. Would this content be valuable even if 100 other articles on this topic already existed?

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In 2025, the best brands aren’t just talking about their industry—they’re leading the conversation within it. Podcasts have become a critical tool in Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy, providing a platform for thought leadership, customer engagement, and industry influence.

For brands looking to modernize their growth tactics and channels, a podcast is more than just content—it’s an owned media channel that supports demand generation, sales enablement, and market positioning. If you’re serious about growth, launching a podcast isn’t just an option—it’s a strategic advantage.

Podcasts Are a Brand Game-Changer

Few initiatives can compete with the authenticity and thought leadership that come from a well-executed podcast. As part of a strategic go-to-market framework, a brand podcast serves multiple purposes including:

• Building brand authority – Position your company as the go-to expert in your industry.
• Accelerating demand generation – Engage prospects earlier in the buying journey with valuable insights.
• Fueling sales enablement – Equip sales teams with high-value content that addresses customer pain points.
• Enhancing market education – Educate your audience on key trends and innovations, reinforcing your value proposition.

By integrating a podcast into your GTM playbook, you're not just producing content—you’re engineering a system that drives demand, nurtures leads, and strengthens your market position.

A Real-World, Mid-Market Example

To show how effective a podcast can be in a go-to-market strategy, we recently helped a warehouse automation systems integrator launch a branded podcast as part of their GTM efforts.

• Within 30 days, they went from concept to publishing their first episode.
• They now release two episodes per month, featuring industry partners and customers discussing innovations in automation.

Minimal Time Commitment, Maximum Impact

Mid-market businesses can’t afford to burden senior leaders with busywork and coordination that comes with managing, producing, and distributing a podcast, let alone the creation of all the derivative content that comes with a successful initiative.

If your podcast feels like yet another burden layered onto the leadership team, you’re doing it wrong.

The good news is the right partner (like Trelliswork) can ensure your brand gets all the benefits of a regular podcast without the operational burden, and at a fraction of the cost.

As an example, our team  handles production, distribution, content repurposing, and all content promotion - meaning the internal team spends just 60 minutes every two weeks showing up for a new recording.

This process ensures the podcast supports business growth without adding excessive workload and cost, making it a scalable and repeatable part of their overall GTM effort.

Podcasts Are Essential in 2025

Branded podcasts are no longer a niche experiment—they’re a proven GTM channel, and the numbers speak for themselves:

• 42% of Americans (12+) are monthly podcast listeners.
• More people listen to podcasts weekly than have Netflix accounts.
• 82% of marketers plan to maintain or increase investment in podcasts.
• Podcast ad spend is projected to surpass $2.6 billion in 2025.

Podcasts Build Trust, Improve SEO, and Accelerate Sales Cycles

In an era of AI-generated content, human connection is critical. A podcast establishes trust by:

• Featuring candid conversations with industry leaders, customers, and partners.
• Providing actionable insights that buyers can use to solve real business challenges.
• Keeping your brand top of mind throughout long sales cycles.
• Establishing expertise, experience, authority, and trust (E.E.A.T) for SEO improvement

Studies show that 81% of podcast listeners trust the hosts and content they engage with, making this format one of the most effective trust-building tools in modern marketing.

As an additional piece of rich content for your brand, every episode gives you an opportunity to share the most recent industry insights in follow-up emails and lead nurture sequences you send as part of your business development.

A Podcast is a Core Asset in GTM Engineering

Consider you’re going after a strategic account. You hear from the chief revenue officer that they’re struggling to navigate all the different AI tools getting thrown at them, they’ve jumped at a few that promise ‘guaranteed leads in 3 days’, but the results are never what they expect and they’re lost.

Now, consider the simple feedback loop of incorporating a segment in your next episode related to mid-market founders struggling to navigate the barrage of AI tools that all promise incredible results, yet never deliver. You explain why they never deliver, what the offer looks like, and why under the surface there’s no shortcut to first establishing the brand fundamentals. That episode is now a slam dunk for a follow-up email to try and close the deal with the CRO, and every other deal like it down the road.

You’ve established authority and expertise with the CRO, and she is more likely to forward your mail and link to the podcast to their CEO who is struggling with the exact problem.

The CEO now feels like you’re talking directly to him. Like you’re reading his mind! To the CEO, you’re now exactly who they want to work with, you’re human, you have an opinion that resonates with what they’re currently experiencing.

You win.

Your Podcast Pays Content Dividends. 10x.

A single podcast episode fuels an entire GTM content engine. What you’re capturing is the purest form of thought leadership, recorded straight from your train of thought into a shareable video and audio recording. If you do it right and plan your content engine, each episode creates a goldmine of content for you to remix, repurpose, and reshare.

For a single podcast episode (w/ video recording), here’s an example of what your podcast content engine should produce:

• 1 Podcast streaming episode (e.g. Spotify, Apple Podcast, etc)
• 1 Youtube Video
• 1 long-form article (from transcript)
• 5 topical articles
• 15 social posts
• 5 Youtube Shorts
• 10 more social posts

Here’s what that looks like in relation to the workflow required to connect the pieces from beginning to end.

A branded podcast isn’t just a marketing tool—it’s a structured GTM Engineering asset that scales across channels.

Podcasts Improve SEO and Brand Discoverability

Search engines are prioritizing rich media content, making podcasts a powerful asset for SEO and inbound marketing.

• Transcripts improve search indexability, capturing high-intent queries.
• Video podcasts gain visibility across key platforms (YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok).
• Search engines now index podcast content, boosting organic discovery.
• Long-form discussions generate backlinks, increasing domain authority.

By integrating a podcast into your GTM strategy, you're not just producing content—you’re engineering an evergreen SEO and demand generation asset. Once you get into the rhythm, you’ll also find yourself spending less time thrashing on that latest blog post that’s taken you over two weeks to get right.

The secret sauce here is that a podcast lets you capture your thoughts in a more raw and authentic medium, with virtually zero latency. From here, AI is great at remixing your thoughts into structured, consistent narratives. Let chatGPT will get rid of the structural, grammatical busywork that actually prevents you from getting your content out into the world.

And that’s structural, grammatical business is the work we want AI to get rid of, so we can prioritize more thinking.

The Biggest Challenges: What Holds Brands Back?

Staying consistent with a podcast is harder than it sounds. Life, work, and shifting priorities can easily push recording sessions down the to-do list. But consistency is what separates brands that build loyal audiences from those that fizzle out. The key is to create the right conditions—batch recording episodes, setting a realistic release schedule, and making podcasting a core part of your marketing rhythm. Without a system in place, even the best intentions can fall apart.

Consistency is Key to Podcast Success

• Build a backlog. Make sure you have at least two recorded episodes before launching. This ensures you never fall behind schedule if unexpected delays arise. Having a buffer allows you to maintain consistency, even when life or work interruptions occur. It also gives you time to refine your format, improve production quality, and gain confidence before releasing episodes to the public. A backlog eliminates last-minute scrambling and sets the foundation for a sustainable, long-term podcasting strategy.
  • We try to keep at least 2 episodes in the ‘ready to publish’ backlog. We’re not perfect, it doesn’t have to be, but so far this has worked for us!
• Set a cadence. Weekly or biweekly releases work best for audience retention. Sticking with a set schedule builds listener habits and keeps engagement steady.
  • For example, we record our episodes every Friday at 2:00 PM, allowing us to reflect on the week’s discussions and industry trends as part of our content approach. Having a fixed time each week ensures that podcasting becomes part of our routine, rather than an afterthought.
• Plan, but don’t over-plan. Avoid long production cycles—speed and authenticity matter more than perfection. You don’t need anything more than a few bullet points in notion ahead of your next recording, which serve as discussion prompts and starters, or incorporate strategic topics you know you want to hit on.
  • With the latest recording and distribution tools today a lot of the busywork goes away.

Stop Overthinking It

Authenticity wins in B2B storytelling. Be real.

I get it. There’s not enough time, everyone’s busy, what will you talk about, who’s going to listen, what’s the ROI, is it worth the effort?

It’s worth it, with the right approach. Just keep these tips in mind:

• Be human. In a world flooded with AI-generated content, authenticity stands out. The real, unscripted voices of industry leaders cut through the noise, building trust and credibility. Podcasts let your team share raw, unfiltered insights, making your brand more relatable. The more human you are, the stronger your connection with your audience.
• Don’t script it. Listeners can tell when something feels forced—don’t let your podcast sound like a corporate press release read by your lawyer. And it's not politics - there's no teleprompter!
• Keep it real. Your audience wants authentic, casual conversations - these resonate more than polished, corporate messaging.

How to Start Your Podcast: GTM Essentials

Equipment (Keep It Simple)

• Microphone: Shure MV7+ (great balance of quality & simplicity)
• Microphone stand: Gator Boom Arm Desktop Stand
• Headphones: Any reliable over-ear monitor headphones
• Video Camera: We're rolling with front camera on our macbook pros for now. Gets the job done!

Recording Software (Our Picks)

• Riverside.fm – Best for remote interviews and high-quality audio/video recording. Editing and distribution features are great. (We also tried zencastr, didn’t love it).
• Descript – we’ve used this in the past, easy editing and transcription, better if you need to get into the weeds with transcripts and higher fidelity editing.

Make a Podcast Part of your GTM Playbook

Launching a podcast is one of the smartest GTM Engineering plays you can make in 2025. With 505 million global podcast listeners projected this year, brands that invest now will establish a foothold in a high-growth channel that supports demand generation, sales enablement, and brand authority.

The hardest part? Pressing record.

So, what’s stopping you?

Need a hand getting started, or want to offload the heavy lifting to our team?

Let’s talk

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Having worked with many founder-led professional services firms, we’ve seen a familiar pattern: they thrive on exceptional client service, deep expertise, and strong relationships. But when it comes time to scale or prepare for an exit, these strengths quickly become liabilities.

Growth stalls because it's built on the founder's personal network, and there's little to no GTM infrastructure in place—no structured marketing, sales, or revenue operations.

Investors recognize this as a glaring red flag. A founder-dependent GTM model creates substantial risk. The question on every investor’s mind is: What happens when the founder steps back? The answer is usually not reassuring. In fact, 73% of CEOs in PE-backed companies are replaced during the investment lifecycle (AlixPartners 2022). If your firm's growth is tied to you, expect lower valuations or outright disinterest from serious buyers.

This isn’t just about maximizing your exit. Firms without a scalable, repeatable GTM engine inevitably hit a growth plateau. Competing against firms that have systematized client acquisition and revenue generation becomes an uphill battle.

The Mid-Market is Moving—Are You Ready?

The private equity (PE) landscape is heating up. 2025 is projected to be a strong year for exits, with global buyout investments and exits surging by 37% and 34% in 2024 alone (Bain & Company, 2025). Mid-market deal flow is increasing, driven by lower interest rates.

However, don’t assume this trend will benefit all professional services firms. Investors and acquirers are scrutinizing firms more than ever, looking for predictable, sustainable growth. If your revenue depends on founder relationships, you’re already at a disadvantage. The large PE firms have the resources to fix this problem post-acquisition, but mid-market investors expect you to have it figured out before they write a check.

Ask Yourself These Hard Questions:

• Are you consistently engaging your ICP audience across key channels every week?
• Is your content driving meaningful conversations, or just adding noise?
• Are inbound leads growing at a predictable rate, or are you relying on referrals?
• Do your sales leaders own the pipeline, or are you still the main closer?
• If you increased GTM investment tomorrow, could you confidently predict the results?
• Do you have full visibility into which GTM efforts are converting and why?

A Repeatable GTM Engine: The Difference Between Stagnation and Growth

We’ve built, fixed, and optimized countless GTM engines. The benefits go far beyond just “driving more revenue”—they impact the very foundation of your business:

• Predictable Revenue: Stop guessing. A structured GTM engine removes uncertainty and builds a repeatable, data-driven revenue model.
• Higher Valuations: Firms with scalable GTM processes command higher multiples. Investors pay a premium for predictable growth.
• Better Talent Retention: High performers don’t thrive in chaotic sales environments. A clear, repeatable GTM strategy attracts and retains top talent.
• More Time for High-Impact Work: Systematizing GTM allows leadership to focus on strategic growth, not chasing deals.
• True Scalability: Growth shouldn’t rely on individual heroics. A solid GTM engine enables sustainable expansion.

The Blueprint for a Scalable GTM Engine

For professional services firms, the road to a scalable GTM engine follows clear steps:

• Define Your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) with Precision: Surface-level targeting isn’t enough. You need to understand pain points, decision-making processes, and where you provide unique value. Instead of just targeting "healthcare consulting firms," narrow it to "mid-sized healthcare consulting firms (50-200 employees) struggling with revenue cycle management and value-based care model transitions."‍
• Map the Client Journey: Every interaction matters. Define how your ICP moves from awareness to decision and what content and engagement they need at each stage.‍
• Develop Repeatable Processes: Document and systematize everything—lead scoring, sales playbooks, demo scripts, and proposal templates. Without clear processes, scaling is impossible.‍
• Measure, Analyze, Optimize: Track conversion rates, sales cycle length, client acquisition costs, and lifetime value. GTM efficiency is declining across industries (SBIGrowth, 2024), making optimization a top priority.‍
• Leverage Technology Intelligently: Tools don’t fix broken GTM models—but the right CRM, automation, and AI-powered solutions enhance efficiency when implemented correctly. Technology should serve the process, not the other way around.

Trelliswork: The Partner for Revenue Growth and GTM Execution

We help mid-market professional and managed services firms build scalable, repeatable GTM engines. Unlike traditional marketing firms that focus on awareness and brand-building, we go straight to the source—revenue execution.

Our approach is different because we don’t just automate outreach and hope for the best. We integrate AI-powered efficiency with a human element, ensuring brand authenticity while maximizing cost savings and conversion rates. The result? A fully outsourced GTM function that accelerates revenue growth without the need for costly internal hires or ineffective agencies.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

The reality is simple: a scalable GTM engine isn’t a luxury—it’s a business imperative. Whether you want to exit, attract investment, or simply break through a growth ceiling, your firm must transition from a founder-driven model to a process-driven one.

Unlock Sustainable Growth: The Time to Act is Now

• Are your processes truly scalable and repeatable?
• Will your GTM function still succeed after you step back?
• If not, it’s time to change.

You have three choices: build it yourself, hire the right team, or partner with an expert. But doing nothing is no longer an option.

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Dear Mid-Market Services Firms: Narrow Your ICP, or Accept Your Fate

If you run a services firm, there’s a good chance your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is too broad—and it’s quietly sabotaging your growth.

This trap is all too common in founder-led boutique consultancies. Many founders started scrappy, building a business with a sharp focus. They weathered market swings and lean times by taking on generalist staffing work—think plugging IT gaps or providing temp project managers. Over time, that revenue grew, maybe even becoming half the business. It’s not all bad: it can secure client MSAs to upsell, fund solution R&D, and keep cash flowing. But here’s the catch—it’s also a giant distraction. It clouds your firm’s true focus, dilutes your positioning, and forces offerings into vague, buzzword-heavy territory. Sales gets confused about what to prioritize if compensation isn’t aligned, and soon you’re competing on price with commoditized staffing firms charging a fraction of your rates. Sound familiar?

I’ve Been There

This isn’t just theory—I’ve lived it. I’ve felt the resistance to refocusing an ICP when revenue hits a comfortable level. It’s tough to let income dip temporarily to regroup, refine, and reposition. But dodging that choice is what sends firms sideways instead of forward. It starts with client attrition, then a stagnant pipeline, and eventually, key employees bail out of frustration. I’ve seen it play out too many times: firms flounder because they won’t define a tight ICP, wrecking their go-to-market strategy before it even begins. At Trelliswork, we’re obsessed with this because we know everything hinges on a clear ICP. Skip it, and no fancy tech or marketing budget will save you.

Generalists Are Invisible

Broad, catch-all service labels like “digital transformation” don’t cut it anymore. In today’s crowded market, they’re not differentiators—they make you invisible. Clients don’t want generalists; they want specialists.

Take a firm that started with a narrow retail analytics ICP but took on generic IT staffing during a slow year. Five years later, they’re losing deals to low-cost giants like Randstad or global outsourcers, wondering how they got stuck in a price war. That’s the fate of an unfocused ICP.

Why Specialization Wins

Narrowing your ICP isn’t just a buzzword—it delivers results:

1. Clarity in Focus & Positioning – A tight ICP sharpens your story. Compare “We help businesses with digital transformation” to “We help mid-market healthcare firms streamline patient data systems for compliance and efficiency” or “We help fintech startups accelerate customer onboarding with automated workflows.” Which one grabs attention?
2. Stronger Marketing & Content – A broad ICP leads to generic, forgettable content. Focus lets you zero in on your ideal client’s pain points—think whitepapers on HIPAA compliance or blog posts on fintech scaling woes—making your marketing hit harder.
3. Higher-Value Clients & Better Close Rates – A clear ICP attracts clients who need exactly what you offer. Less persuading, more closing deals with prospects who already get your value.
4. Increased Pricing Power – Specialists charge more. When you’re the go-to expert in a niche, clients pay a premium for your expertise. If you’re facing pricing pressure, it’s a sign your differentiation’s gone soft.

The Hard Truth: The Game’s Changed

I get why firms cling to a broad ICP—it worked before. Staffing gigs kept the lights on, landed MSAs, and opened cross-sell opportunities. But that steady revenue? It’s a short-term crutch that erodes your long-term edge. The market’s shifted, and today’s game demands an ultra-tight ICP and laser-focused positioning. Fix that before you waste time tweaking marketing or chasing a flat pipeline.

How to Start Narrowing Your ICP

Ready to refocus? Here’s how to kick things off:

• Audit Your Clients: Look at your last 10-20 clients. Which ones were most profitable and aligned with your strengths? That’s your clue.
• Test a Niche: Pick a segment—say, mid-market manufacturers—and target them with tailored content and outreach for 90 days. Track the response.
• Align Sales: Tweak incentives to reward your core offering over staffing revenue. Clarity starts with what you pay for.

The firms crushing it today aren’t the ones doing everything—they’re the ones owning a niche so well they’re the obvious choice.

Your Move

Take 5 minutes today: Write down the one industry or problem your firm solves better than anyone else. That’s your starting point. Is your firm focused enough to win, or are you still playing yesterday’s game? Specialization isn’t optional—it’s survival.

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Rethinking Go-to-market Roles.

For years, your company's growth has been fueled by the founder's vision and personal network. But now, as a mid-market B2B in manufacturing, managed IT services, or professional services, you're likely facing a common challenge: growth stagnation. Referrals and repeat business are no longer enough to hit ambitious revenue targets. Customer expectations are evolving, competition is fiercer than ever, and the pressure to leverage the latest technologies – especially AI – is mounting. To break through this plateau, you need a structured, scalable, and modern approach to revenue operations: GTM Engineering.

We’ve been watching the conversation around GTM Engineering grow, and we particularly appreciate insights from industry leaders like Clay, who emphasize its natural synergy with Revenue Operations (RevOps). Think of RevOps as the essential foundation – providing the data infrastructure and processes you need. GTM Engineering, then, is the architect and builder, applying cutting-edge tooling, AI-driven automation, and data-backed experimentation on top of that foundation. Together, they empower businesses like yours to rapidly iterate and refine your go-to-market strategies with unprecedented speed and precision.

Understanding GTM Engineering: Beyond Traditional Sales & Marketing Operations

GTM Engineering is more than just a new job title. It's a an appreciation of what modern go-to-market performance demands to be effective in today's AI-enabled, technically inclined, and fragmented world of growth marketing. Unlike traditional marketing and sales operations, which often rely on manual processes and intuition, GTM Engineering is built on a foundation of data and experimentation. It's about enhancing customer acquisition, boosting sales efficiency, and accelerating revenue growth through intelligent automation and data-driven insights. It requires technical abilities from API integrations, to low-code scripting, no-code workflows, and increasingly complicated orchestration.

Not Your Typical Marketing Manager

Today's technology-forward marketing specialist needs to be grounded in customer empathy and growth strategy, yet fluent in systems thinking.

Technology has been making its way into the sales and marketing world for decades, but until recently, the demands of the core function of marketing have largely remained unchanged. This is changing with the degree of technical integration, automation, and AI-enablement that's taking the marketing and sales operations landscape by storm. It's no longer about drafting social media posts, email newsletters, and campaign strategy. It's increasingly about doing all of these things and more, automated, with a smaller, scrappier, tech-enabled team. For example, a typical set of weekly tasks for marketing now include:

• Workflow Automation & Scripting: Streamlining repetitive tasks across your sales and marketing workflows. Imagine automating quote follow-ups for your manufacturing sales team or personalizing onboarding sequences for your managed IT service clients – freeing up valuable time for higher-value interactions.
• AI & Data Enrichment: Enhancing customer understanding and lead scoring with the power of AI. This means moving beyond basic demographic scoring to AI-powered predictive lead scoring, identifying your hottest prospects with far greater accuracy.
• Scalability & Experimentation: Rapidly testing new sales and marketing tactics, optimizing performance based on real-time data, and quickly iterating to find what truly moves the needle for your specific industry and customer base.

This isn't to say that marketing or sales are dead of course. Rather, they're both changing dramatically, and businesses need to recognize the change that's needed in their existing workforce to navigate and embrace this change to ensure they have the organization they need for future, competitive growth.

What about RevOps?

Peanut butter and jelly. GTM Engineers and Revenue Operations specialists are the superhero duos that will define the modern growth marketing organization. Let's look at Revenue Operations (RevOps) in more detail before connecting the dots. Simply put, RevOps provides the critical infrastructure for an efficient go-to-market motion. If you're already using HubSpot (or a similar CRM), you're likely familiar with the promise of RevOps. It's about aligning sales, marketing, and customer success by establishing:

• A Unified Data Infrastructure (Often Built on HubSpot): Ensuring all your revenue teams are working from the same single source of truth.
• Structured Pipeline, Forecasting, & Reporting: Providing clear visibility into your sales pipeline and reliable revenue projections.
• Operational Consistency: Establishing repeatable processes that support sustained, long-term revenue growth.
• Seamless Cross-Functional Collaboration: Breaking down silos and fostering alignment between sales, marketing, and customer success teams.
• Continuous Performance Tracking & Optimization: Utilizing robust analytics and KPIs to monitor and improve performance.

While RevOps enhances operational efficiency, it often falls short in driving innovation and unlocking truly scalable growth. It won’t solve founder-led growth challenges or guide AI adoption on its own. This is where GTM Engineering becomes essential.

At Trelliswork, we take an intentional approach to building a revenue engine—one that embeds repeatable processes and workflows into the fabric of your operations. This is where GTM Playbooks live. Our RevOps foundation is designed to make it easier for teams to manage and execute these playbooks, ensuring growth is structured and scalable. Through our managed service, we provide the guardrails your business needs to accelerate growth—without getting lost in orchestration. Ultimately, there's a system we're putting in place, so you don't have to. It starts to look like this:

RevOps & GTM Engineering: Connecting the Dots

GTM Engineering builds directly upon your RevOps foundation, injecting new AI-powered tools, intelligent automation, and data-driven experimentation strategies to ignite revenue growth. More than anything, these two functions perfectly complement one another in a modern growth organization.

At scale, this coordination between function is what makes it possible to move beyond coordinating, strategizing, and simple talking about growing the business, and actually putting plans into motion that build on one another, not compete for resources and data in organizational siloes. This is how companies:

• Move Beyond Founder-Led Leads with AI-Powered Lead Qualification: Stop relying solely on personal networks and referrals. GTM Engineering leverages AI to dynamically score and prioritize leads based on a much wider range of data points, identifying high-potential prospects you might otherwise miss. Imagine your sales team focusing only on the warmest, most qualified leads, dramatically improving efficiency and conversion rates.
• Scale Personalization with Dynamic Sales Engagement Automation: Move beyond generic outreach. Implement AI-driven automated outreach and follow-ups triggered by individual prospect behavior. For example, automatically nurturing leads who engage with specific content on your website or downloading key resources. This level of personalization at scale was simply impossible before AI-powered GTM Engineering.
• Agile Growth with Real-Time GTM Adjustments: Static strategies are a recipe for stagnation. GTM Engineering enables agile adjustments to campaigns and sales strategies based on live performance data. If a particular marketing campaign for your managed IT services isn't performing, AI-driven insights can quickly pinpoint the issue and recommend real-time adjustments, maximizing your ROI.
• Optimize Your Underutilized HubSpot (or CRM): Stop letting your CRM become shelf-ware. GTM Engineering provides the strategies and AI-powered automations to finally unlock the full potential of your HubSpot investment, transforming it into a powerful engine for growth and sales & marketing alignment.

By integrating GTM Engineering into your RevOps framework, your mid-market B2B company ensures you're not just operating efficiently, but also continuously learning, adapting, and evolving your revenue generation approach to stay ahead of the curve – and finally break free from founder-led growth limitations.

The Business Case for GTM Engineering in Mid-Market

For companies like yours, GTM Engineering isn't just a "nice-to-have" – it's a game-changer and a competitive imperative. You likely lack the vast internal resources of enterprise giants, making agile, scalable go-to-market strategies absolutely essential for sustained success. The key benefits are clear:

• Accelerated, Scalable Growth: Faster iteration cycles mean quicker identification of what resonates with your target market and what doesn’t.
• Dramatically Improved Sales & Marketing Efficiency: AI-powered automation slashes manual effort, freeing up your sales and marketing teams to focus on high-value activities like building relationships and closing complex deals. Managed IT service providers are leveraging GTM Engineering to reduce sales cycle times by as much as 20%, allowing them to onboard new clients faster and drive revenue growth.
• Gain a Critical Competitive Edge: In today’s dynamic market, businesses that continuously experiment and refine their GTM motions through data and AI will consistently outperform those clinging to outdated, static strategies.
• Stronger Sales & Marketing Alignment: GTM Engineering acts as the bridge, ensuring sales, marketing, and RevOps teams are unified around a data-driven, AI-powered approach to revenue generation, eliminating silos and maximizing impact.

Implementing GTM Engineering: A Hands-On Approach

At Trelliswork, we understand that adopting GTM Engineering can feel daunting, especially when you're already stretched thin. That’s why we offer a managed service solution specifically designed for mid-market B2B companies like yours. We provide a structured, phased approach to adopting GTM Engineering without the massive investment and risk of building an in-house team from scratch. Our approach helps you:

• Implement Tailored GTM Engineering Strategies: We deploy proven, AI-powered playbooks specifically designed for your industry and business goals. This includes implementing AI-driven lead scoring playbooks, dynamic sales engagement sequences, and real-time campaign optimization dashboards.
• Optimize Your Core Revenue Processes: We seamlessly align GTM Engineering with your existing RevOps framework (often built on HubSpot) to maximize efficiency and data utilization.
• Transition to Sustainable Self-Sufficiency: Our goal isn't just short-term gains. Over time, we guide your internal teams in taking ownership of these GTM Engineering functions, empowering you to operate with a stronger, more adaptive GTM framework long-term.

This phased, hands-on approach ensures your company can adopt GTM Engineering with minimal disruption and risk, while rapidly unlocking significant revenue potential and building a future-proof growth engine. And remember, the whole point is to build repeatable growth systems, which keeps your teams out of the never-ending busywork that consumes traditional growth teams. Your go-to-market needs outputs to drive results, not death by coordination and strategy meetings.

The magic happens when you intentionally engineer the conditions for an AI-enabled growth strategy. Here's a more tactical example of what that starts to look like at scale. RevOps and GTM Engineering functioning in concert to enable the growth functions you need, powered by a catalog of playbooks under the surface to make it all seem easy.

Ready to Re-Engineer Your Revenue Growth?

The convergence of GTM Engineering and RevOps isn't just a trend – it's the future of sustainable revenue growth for mid-market B2B companies. As you navigate an increasingly complex and AI-driven go-to-market landscape, adopting a structured yet agile and intelligent approach is no longer optional, it's essential for survival and success.

Is your company stuck in founder-led growth and unsure how to leverage AI for revenue acceleration? Let Trelliswork show you the practical, AI-powered path to scalable, sustainable revenue growth. Get in touch for a free GTM assessment today to get started.

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