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About this episode
Jared Robin spent 15 years selling before he built a community. He cold called office managers for Seamless, made President’s Club at FedEx over seven years, and took a string of pay cuts to sell for early-stage tech. On the side, he built a fashion publication whose film won awards in Copenhagen. When COVID hit in 2020, he started a LinkedIn group chat for RevOps people. LinkedIn kept crashing under the load, members pushed him to move, and that signal became RevGenius.
Host Paul Perrett recorded this conversation in person at the Lighthouse in Brooklyn. Jared draws on what he hears from RevOps and sales leaders every week. He describes three companies structuring GTM engineering in very different ways. He explains why GTM got conflated with outbound, and why the first GTM engineers came from Clay-powered outbound agencies. He discusses GTM Engineer vs RevOps and makes the case for mining closed-lost deals before you chase net new.
The second half moves from systems to people. Jared covers why founders are the biggest social lever a company has. He explains why taste now matters as much as output. And he shows why the smartest community plays start with existing customers and partners. It’s a practical, unvarnished look at where go-to-market is heading in 2027.
Key topics covered
- [02:48] From FedEx President’s Club to an award-winning fashion film: how an eclectic sales career built a community instinct
- [09:12] LinkedIn crashing every day was the signal to turn a group chat into RevGenius
- [12:37] Sellers used to hoard their secret sauce; now the market is too hard to sell into alone
- [13:36] RevOps has moved from siloed ops to org-wide systems, and AI makes seller selling time a measurable KPI
- [15:06] Three companies, three GTM engineering models – including one that swapped two BDR seats for one GTM engineer
- [17:28] Why GTM got conflated with outbound: the first GTM engineers were outbound agencies in Clay’s ecosystem
- [18:30] Closed-lost deals in your CRM may hold more revenue than net new pipeline
- [20:45] Tools like Claude are teaching sellers to think in systems and build a context layer
- [26:46] Taste is measured by how much content you kill, not how much you produce
- [34:17] Build community with your own customers before you chase demand gen
Notable quotes
“Taste isn’t how much content you could produce, because we’re in a world that you could produce everything. It’s how much content you could kill and let what’s truly magnificent through.”
“There is no bigger lever in an organization on social than the founder, period.”
“So many people come to me wanting to build community for demand generation without even thinking of their own customers.”
FAQs about GTM Engineer vs RevOps
RevOps owns the systems and processes across the whole revenue organization. A GTM engineer builds technical, often AI-driven workflows to create or capture revenue. Jared Robin sees companies blend the two differently: some hire GTM engineers for pipeline, while others retrain technical RevOps staff into the role.
Jared Robin says cold calling has become one of the most predictable channels as inboxes fill with automated email. Many companies now centralize email under one technical owner. That frees SDRs to spend more time on the phone.
Treat it as marketing, not self-promotion. Jared Robin argues the founder is the biggest social lever a company has and usually outlasts any marketing leader. Posting the right content costs nothing and can generate inbound volume.
Who this is for
This episode is for RevOps leaders, CROs, and sales leaders deciding whether to hire GTM engineers, retrain ops talent, or restructure SDR teams around AI. Founders who feel uneasy posting on LinkedIn, especially in ANZ, will get a clear reason to start. If you own pipeline targets in a crowded market, you’ll leave with new places to find revenue.
CTA
- Subscribe to The B2B Sales Blueprint for conversations with the operators building modern go-to-market teams.
- Explore Firmable to give your RevOps and GTM engineering teams accurate company, contact and tech stack data to build on.
