Welcome to the GTM Launchpad newsletter! Each week I will share a sales play to help you grow your business, level up your sales game and succeed in the trenches

Lets be honest its noisy as hell out there

Every influencer's pushing a new framework. Every tool promises 10x results. Your reps are getting fed 14 different "must dos" a day just from scrolling LinkedIn

And here you are a founder, a VP, a player/coach trying to

• Drive pipeline

• Hit revenue targets

• Keep reps motivated

• And figure out what’s actually working in outbound right now

This week I went heads down. No LinkedIn posts. Just building, listening, coaching and working with founders and sales leaders 1:1.

And after 10+ calls, 3 audits, 2 live playbook builds and dozens of sales conversations reviewed... a few patterns stood out

This issue isn’t about telling you I have all the answers. I don’t

But I do have some receipts

And if you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed or just tired of the noise? This is what I’d want someone to hand me right now

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5 Truths from the Frontlines

👉 1. Your email isn’t broken. Your infrastructure is

This one continues to slap me in the face

I had a potential client this past week who was running everything through Outreach. <1% reply rates. Their reps were cooked and when they asked how to fix it the answer was simple

Change the system

Swapped them to Maildoso + Instantly. Cleaned up the domains. Launched with warmed boxes. Boom the replies started hitting

Same with my client Distran. After 8 months of fighting Apollo we moved their system and got more replies in one day than we had in 9 months. Even booked a meeting same day. Why? Because we finally landed in the inbox

Andrew and Mike a market research firm sending hundreds of thousands of emails came to me saying Gmail was punishing their domain and it was costing them business.

Different industries. Same problem

Fix the pipes before you fix the pitch

👉 2. Cold calling isn’t dead but your list probably is

Carlos and Leal proved this all week long

Rockledge. Tolstoy. Distran

4–8% connect rates. 10–15% meeting conversion from convos. Reps booking off cold calls like it was 2015. Why?

Because they weren’t worried about which opener to use or if it was PBO or not.

They had

• Targeted lists

• Real mobile numbers

• ICP that actually picked up

And when they did connect? They knew how to talk like a human

Most teams aren’t losing because they suck at cold calling. They’re losing because they’re calling the wrong people with broken tech and robotic talk tracks.

👉 3. Your best insights are already in your system

This week I told Ricky Pearl I went full goblin mode with my data

I fed every discovery call, call recording, pickup, Slack convo and proposal into my AI stack. Built projects around them. Scored calls. Pulled trends

Carlos had 49 convos and booked 1 meeting. That doesn’t make sense until you dig in.

That’s how we coach better. Not from vibes. From data

Most orgs are sitting on a goldmine of insights and not pulling any of it. If you’re not using your own activity to guide what you do next you’re flying blind

👉 4. Founders and leaders are overwhelmed by the noise

Everyone’s talking. Few are proving it

And if you’re like most leaders I talked to this week you’re sitting there thinking

"Tom what’s real? What’s BS? What the hell should we actually be doing?"

I get it. You’re scrappy. You’re stuck doing player/coach work. You don’t have time to evaluate 17 sales influencers pitching their own method.

Here’s the truth

There is no universal outbound playbook

But there is your playbook

Build it by

• Telling your story as a company

• Understanding your buyers

• Filtering what you hear through your own motion

Ignore the noise. Design the one that fits your world

👉 5. Momentum > Mastery

This is what made the biggest difference across every team I touched this week

Distran didn’t need a rebrand. Tolstoy didn’t need a new team. Rockledge didn’t need more SDRs

They needed

• Clearer call blocks

• Email that landed

• Reps getting coached in real time

We didn’t blow anything up. We made small changes that moved fast

And momentum unlocked trust, buy-in and pipeline

That’s the game

Explore. Engage. Evolve.

🎥 Video of the week - Morgan Ingram How to Run a Content Led Outbound Strategy
It’s not about going viral. It’s about leading with insight. If your reps are struggling to create pipeline on LinkedIn send them this

📚 Book of the Week - "Amp It Up" by Frank Slootman
If you’re leading a team and feeling stuck this book will slap you awake. Less theory. More fire 👉 Get it here

Bonus Sales Tactics 🤑

1. The 3-3-3 Follow Up Test
Before you give up on a thread make sure you've

• Sent 3 emails

• Made 3 calls

• Left 3 voicemails or LinkedIn touches

If they still ghost you? Put a pin in it but don’t quit at 2 touches

2. The "Objection Jam" Slack Thread
Every Friday drop 1 objection in your team Slack. Have every rep reply with how they handle it. Vote on the best. Roleplay the top 2 next week

Fast feedback. Low lift. Game changing reps

3. The 15 Min Sequence Audit
Once a week pick a rep’s live sequence and

• Read the first 3 emails

• Check CTA clarity

• Review timing and spacing

If you wouldn’t reply to it your buyers won’t either

4. Cheat Code from the Field (via Morgan Ingram + John Barrows)

This one’s wild and it works

John Barrows told Morgan he fed a public company’s 10K report into AI and asked it to turn the key insights into a fake podcast conversation between two people discussing the business

He listened to it. Learned their real priorities then used that context in his sales call and landed the deal

If he hadn’t said it was AI? Morgan would've thought it was a real pod episode

That’s the bar

Try it

• Grab your targets 10K or leadership interviews

• Paste it into ChatGPT or Claude

• Prompt: “Turn this into a podcast dialogue between two experts discussing this company’s growth priorities”

• Pull 3 insights. Use them in your call or outbound

Credit to Morgan Ingram for the share. Credit to John Barrows for the play

This isn’t about chasing trends it’s about tuning into the signals that are already working

You don’t need 5 new tools

You need

• Clean data

• An inbox that actually delivers

• Reps who run the plays consistently

That’s the stuff that’s winning right now and if your system’s not built to spot those signals? Fix it

Less noise. More signal. More pipeline. More clarity

Lets get it!
Tom

Thanks for reading. See you again next week at 8 am MST!

- Tom Slocum ✌️

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