SaaS Backwards - Reverse Engineering SaaS Success

Ep. 169 - Reviving Inbound: Why Your SaaS GTM Needs a Buyer-Centric Reboot

• Ken Lempit • Season 4 • Episode 22

Share episode

Guest: Google’s NotebookLM

In this special episode of SaaS Backwards, we handed the mic to AI.

We took our newest ebook on reviving inbound marketing—coming soon for download—and ran it through Google’s NotebookLM to see what kind of podcast it could generate. 

The result? A surprisingly sharp—if occasionally cheesy—take on how B2B SaaS companies can reimagine their go-to-market strategies for today’s buyer. You be the judge.

The episode explores why the traditional inbound playbook is falling short and what CROs and CMOs must do to adapt. From the collapse of predictable revenue models to the rise of buyer-centric marketing, we break down how to align sales and marketing, test messaging organically, and coordinate campaigns across email, ads, and outreach.

Key Takeaways:

  • The old predictable revenue model no longer works in today’s B2B SaaS landscape
  • Buyers now do deep independent research before ever talking to sales
  • Marketing and sales alignment must happen before the formal buying process begins
  • Jobs to Be Done and qualitative ICPs help create relevance and resonance
  • Organic testing (especially on LinkedIn) is essential before scaling paid campaigns
  • Email, ads, and SDR outreach must be tightly coordinated around buyer triggers

If you’re a SaaS leader looking to modernize your inbound strategy and connect with today’s buyer, this episode offers a bold, practical roadmap—created by AI, guided by strategy.

---

Not Getting Enough Demos?

Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review

We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations.

And the best part?

💡 It’s completely free.

No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos.

Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Welcome to SaaS Backwards, the podcast that helps go to market leaders, accelerate growth and enhance profitability. This week we're running a bold experiment. We recently wrote an ebook on how to revive inbound marketing, and we decided to feed it into an AI system to see what it would generate as a full podcast episode.

And I'm not gonna lie, there is a little bit of cheese, but overall it's surprisingly good. Of course, we'll let you be the judge. So without further ado, here's our AI generated take on what it takes to revive inbound today. 

Okay, let's unpack this. If you're working in enterprise SaaS, you know that old marketing and sales playbook, the one that you know, felt. Pretty reliable for a long time. 

Yeah, the predictable one. 

Exactly. Well, it feels like it's just not been, not really delivering like it used to. It's getting, frankly, really tough to depend on those old ways to drive growth.

Oh, definitely. We're hearing that across the board. 

So we've dug into a bunch of sources, articles, some great research notes you've shared, and they really explore why things have changed so much. Right. And crucially. What you actually need to do about it. Now, a really strong theme that keeps coming up is how you're advertising your email outreach and what your sales team does.

Well, they have to be working together in a totally different coordinated way. 

Yeah, that coordination piece is massive. 

Yeah. 

Uh, it's not optional anymore if you want to actually connect with buyers and, you know, have real sales conversations. 

So for this deep dive, our mission is pretty clear. Understand why that old predictable revenue engine is stalling out.

Get our heads around this shift towards being genuinely buyer-centric. Yeah. And then walk through the practical, actionable steps you can actually take right now to make your go-to market work in this well new reality. 

And look, this isn't just theory, is it companies stick into the old ways or seeing it hit their bottom line?

Customer acquisition costs see hours are going up. Mm-hmm. Outreach just isn't landing. And honestly, marketing and sales teams are getting pretty burned out. It's a big shift and ignoring it. Well, it's costly. 

Okay. Let's re rewind a bit. First, that predictable revenue model, the one that you know, fueled giants like Salesforce and HubSpot, way back when, how did it work and why was it so effective then?

Ah, yeah. The classic funnel, it was basically an engine run on content. Lots and lots of content, right? The idea was to pull visitors in, mostly via search engines. They'd land on your site, fill out a form for some gated content, become an MQLA marketing qualified lead, an 

MQL. Yep. 

Then your BDRs are SDRs, depending on the acronym you used.

Always acronyms, 

huh? Always. They'd nurture those leads, qualify them a bit more, and then pass the baton to the account executives, the AEs, to seal the deal. It really felt like this, um, predictable machine. Put more on the top, get more at the bottom. 

And the reason that machine worked so well was because of how buyers behaved back then, wasn't it?

Exactly. Buyers back then, they really relied on Google. They relied on email for finding information, vendor content. That was a primary research source, especially early on. So 

if you made good content, got their email, 

you had a pretty clear path to building pipeline. More content equaled more leads, which generally meant more pipeline.

The math felt, you know, relatively straightforward, 

but as our sources are screaming from the rooftops, that math just doesn't add up anymore. What's the fundamental change causing this breakdown? 

It's the buyer. Simple as that. Their behavior is completely different now. They're just drowning in generic sales emails, cold outreach stuff that isn't relevant.

Yeah, the noise level is incredible. 

Right, and ghosting salespeople. That's not an accident. It's practically a survival tactic for buyers now. Yeah. Especially in enterprise deals. They built up this, this stiff arm defense against pitches that don't immediately show value. 

It gets ignored. 

Totally ignored.

Yeah. And the data backs this up. Consistently. Buyers are way, way deeper into their own research before they'll even think about talking to a sales rep. Some data says two thirds of the way. Some even pushes it to 90%. 

Wow. 90%. 

They've done their homework long before your SDR even gets them on the phone, assuming they even.

Pickup 

and the places they used to do that homework, like Google aren't helping vendors like they used to either. I saw a startling stat in the sources. Google now sends basically zero traffic to something like 95% of webpages. 

That's a massive shift. Relying purely on SEO search engine optimization for that early stage demand capture.

It's just getting harder and harder. 

Why is that? Well, 

Google wants to keep users on Google. So they prioritize things like their own AI summaries, big established publishers. It pushes smaller vendors down. It's much harder to get discovered organically through search early on. Rand Fishkin talks about this a lot.

Traffic gets concentrated. 

Plus, let's be honest, buyers are just more skeptical of vendor content now, aren't they? You download that white paper, you know the sales calls are coming. 

Exactly. The trust factor has definitely eroded. So they're going elsewhere. 

Where 

To places they do trust. Yeah, their own networks.

Private peer groups. Think pavilion, specific Slack communities. And definitely review platforms like Trust Radius G two. That's where the real candid talk happens. 

That makes sense. 

And Venia BGA from Trust Radius had this. Killer stat, 78% of buyers, and it jumps to 86% for enterprise deals. They pick products they've already heard of before they even kick off their formal research.

So familiarity and trust built somewhere else entirely are driving Who even makes the first cut 

precisely. It's not about discovering you through a random cold email anymore. And this directly impacts how your advertising, your email marketing and your sales outreach need to work together. They have to build that familiarity and trust before the formal buying process even starts.

Okay? So if you are the CRO, the Chief Revenue Officer, you're kind of stuck, right? Your whole engine was built on this. Predictable model. Mm-hmm. But the fuel isn't working. C rising, the returns aren't there. Your teams are getting demoralized because their emails and calls aren't working, 

and the CEO's getting impatient, wanting quick fixes, 

right?

And those old ways of coordinating marketing and sales around those funnel stages. They don't map to reality because the buyer isn't moving through that neat little funnel anymore. Nope. 

The journey is way messier now. 

So this brings us right to the core problem these sources are trying to solve. How do you actually break out of this cycle?

The research seems to suggest that what we used to call inbound in say 2025, isn't about just generating heaps of leads anymore. 

No, it's about consistently earning attention and building trust slowly, deliberately over time. 

It's a pivot you have to make 

absolutely necessary. You've gotta show up where buyers actually are, you know, on the platforms they hang out on.

With content, with outreach that actually gives them something valuable right away. 

Stand out from the noise. 

Exactly. Stand out from all the generic stuff, especially the AI generated fluff that's starting to flood everything. 

I liked the reference in the source material to Gary Vaynerchuk's. Day trading attention.

Yeah, that's a good one. 

Using those platforms to like test your messages, see what actually resonates with people before you dump a load of cash into advertising it. 

It really underscores the creativity, relevance, that human touch. Those are the filters. Now. They're essential for cutting through. 

So the new path forward is genuinely becoming buyer-centric.

That's the heart of it. Deliver what buyers actually need when and where they need it. Start by attracting people who already know they have a problem you can solve, or at least are open to understanding that problem better. 

And then framing your solution well, 

right? Maybe using something like the reframe concept from the Challenger Sale.

Show them an angle or an opportunity they hadn't considered. Really dig into why your best customers bought from you. What was their aha moment? Use that to sharpen your unique selling proposition 

and test, test, test 

crucially. Yes, test your messages organically. First, LinkedIn communities, wherever your buyers are.

See what sticks before you amplify it with paid ads. That organic targeting is gold. It tells you what messaging will actually work when you coordinate it across email ads and sales conversations. 

Okay? So that's the philosophy, but how do you actually do it? Let's get into the actionable steps. The sources lay out for this new playbook, 

right?

Let's translate theory into practice. 

Step one is slow down to speed up, which honestly sounds completely counterintuitive when the pressure's on for results. Now 

it does feel that way, doesn't it? But the analogy in the source is spot on, just hammering away with the old tactics. It's like spinning your wheels in the mud, 

lots of effort.

No forward motion. 

Exactly. You're burning energy, but your core message isn't landing. So you have to hit pause, take a breath, and really truly understand your audience first. 

And the key concept here seems to be Bob MOTA's, jobs to be done. 

Yes, fundamental, absolutely critical. Most his insight is that people don't just buy products.

They hire them to make progress in a specific situation, 

hire them like an employee, 

sort of. Your software, your service, it's a tool they're hiring to overcome a struggle to get from point A to point B to achieve some desired outcome. If your marketing and sales messages don't speak directly to that job, to the progress they're trying to make, 

it's just noise, irrelevant, 

total noise.

So understanding their struggle, their context, what actually triggers them to start looking for a solution. That's the bedrock for all your go-to-market efforts, your ads, your emails, your sales calls. They only to stem from that understanding. 

Practically speaking, the source suggests building qualitative ICPs ideal customer profiles, 

right?

Qualitative. Going way beyond just company size and job titles. You need to dig into the why. Why are they searching? What language do they use to talk about their problems? Moesta calls it the language of your customer's struggle. 

Use their words, not yours. 

Exactly. I. And then maybe reframe the problem in a way that helps them see a path forward, see how progress is possible, like Mke suggests.

There's a really good example in the material about Cisco Meraki. Rebecca Stone shared how they connected with self-serve buyers by really focusing on those buyers specific needs and jobs to be done. 

Yeah, that's a great illustration. 

Instead of just. Pushing Cisco features, they aligned everything with the buyer's reality and that deep understanding then informed how they coordinated their advertising, their email, their whole approach.

It shows it works 

and understanding this helps redefine what you even consider a lead. Right In this new world, chasing every form fill is a waste of resources. 

So what is a lead now? 

It's someone who, number one has a problem. You can genuinely help solve. A and d. Number two shows some intent to actually do something about it.

You need to focus on people who are already problem aware as McHugh puts it. 

Think about Chet Holmes' idea. 

The buying pyramid or buying window. Yeah. Only a tiny fraction. Maybe 3% of your potential market is actively buying right now. Maybe another 7% are open to it. 

Your job is finding that 10%, not shouting at the other 90% 

precisely.

Don't blast the whole ocean. Find the fish that are actually hungry. 

Okay. Which leads logically to step two, design your interviews to understand intent. And these aren't your standard customer feedback calls, are they? 

No, definitely not. The goal here is to uncover those real struggling moments. The frustrations, the events that actually push someone to look for change for a new solution.

You are not fishing for compliments about your product. 

Not at all. You're trying to be an anthropologist. Understand the context. What was the trigger? What did their search process really look like? How did they evaluate options? What were the internal politics, the emotional roller coaster? Even ask what they wish was better after buying.

The source gives some great question, examples based on MOTA's work, asking about the struggle, the trigger events, how they searched 

the decision process, the emotions, future improvements. Yeah, those are gold 

and some solid practical tips too. Record the calls, transcribe them. Use tools like Otter fireflies 

makes analysis so much easier.

Then use LLMs like chat, GPT or Google's notebook lm, to quickly summarize the key themes and pull out those crucial language of the struggle quotes. 

Then crucially, share those insights far and wide. Yeah, marketing, sales, product, customer success. Everyone needs to swim in this understanding of the buyer.

The source even suggests maybe using an agency, sometimes people might be more candid with a third party. 

Right. And these insights, they, they become the raw material for everything else, don't they? 

Absolutely. Yeah. They dictate the angles for your ads, the hooks for your emails, the talking points for your sales team.

This is the foundation for coordinating everything effectively around that buyer's reality. 

Okay. Step three, build your confidence through testing the sources. Really hammer this point. Test organically first before you spend big on paid ads. 

Yeah, this is super important. Organic testing on platforms like LinkedIn May in relevant communities.

It's your low cost, low risk way to validate your messaging, 

see what actually resonates 

exactly. Take those insights from the interviews, the reframes, the pain points, turn them into posts, maybe short videos, articles, newsletter snippets, share them where your buyers hang out, see what gets clicks, comments, shares, questions.

That feedback tells you if you're on the right track. 

So not just broadcasting, but listening to the reaction. 

Listening intently. Send out small targeted email tests too. See which subject lines get opened, which messages get clicked. If a message bombs organically throwing ad budget behind it won't magically make it work.

This testing phase is critical for refining the messages you'll coordinate later, 

which brings us neatly to step four, iterate and build momentum, right? Because you won't nail it 

perfectly the first time. Nobody does. 

It's about progress, not perfection. 

Exactly. Look at the engagement data from your organic tests.

Tools like Shield dap.ai for LinkedIn are mentioned. See what worked, what didn't. Tweak your messaging based on that data and the ongoing insights from buyer interviews. Then maybe test the refined messages with small targeted paid campaigns. See if the organic success translates. 

It's a cycle. 

It's a continuous loop.

Learn from interviews, test organically, analyze results, refine test. Again, maybe paid scale. What works? This iterative process ensures that your coordinated efforts across advertising, email and sales stay sharp and relevant. 

Okay, now let's get specific about channels. Step five. Prepare your email campaign.

Email's still powerful, but the source stresses that the copywriting has to be incredibly sharp now. 

Oh, absolutely vital. I love Devon Reed's analogy in the source. Think of your email like a movie trailer, 

huh? I like that. 

It's job isn't to tell the whole story or close the deal right there. It's job is to peak interest to make them wanna see the main feature.

Maybe that's clicking through to insightful content, a compelling case study a different perspective, 

not just book a demo now. 

Exactly. The copy has to feel like you genuinely get their world like you understand their specific struggle. That's what earns the open and the click. 

So what are the key parts?

Well, the source highlights subject, arguably numero would no have to grab them, use their language, hint at the problem or niche, you understand, 

make them wanna open it. 

Then the opening line needs to immediately build on that promise. The body, concise, super relevant, directly referencing the insights you gained in steps one, three.

Show. Don't just tell that you understand and the call to action clear, obvious, easy. 

This sounds like it needs real direct response copywriting, chops. 

It does. And you need to test different angles, different trailers, and manage expectations. The force rightly points out, don't assume downloading an asset means they're ready for a sales call.

Lets them consume the value first. Nurture them with insights. 

Okay, which flows right into step six. Prepare your advertising campaigns. Ads aren't separate. They work with email and sales. Coordination is key here. 

Absolutely. Think of digital ads as a powerful amplifier, and another way to capture intense signals.

This is where the coordination really pays off 

because seeing someone engage with both an email and an ad is a much stronger signal, 

much stronger. It tells you there's likely real interest there. So message consistency is crucial. Your ads need to reflect the same core insights, the same language that worked in your organic tests and emails.

How about targeting? 

For search ads, use the actual terms and phrases buyers used in your interviews for social, especially LinkedIn for B2B, target by company sure, but also by skills, seniority level, and definitely upload your key contact list from your CRM. Hit the right people with the right message.

And the source had a warning about using LinkedIn ads just to push for demos, didn't it? 

Yeah, that's often not the best play. LinkedIn is more for building awareness, reinforcing your message, staying top of mind. It compliments your other touches. The goal is often to give multiple signals. They saw the ad and they opened the email and they visited your pricing page.

That's when sales gets involved armed with that context. 

So the adss job isn't always conversion, but contribution to the overall picture of intent. 

Exactly. It informs the sales conversation. Plan for conversations, not just pitches. 

Any pro tips on ads? 

Yeah, the source mentions avoiding super rigid targeting skills and seniority might be better than exact job titles sometimes.

And this idea of surround sound, lead gen, 

surround sound. Yeah. 

Hitting the entire buying committee at a target account simultaneously, but with messages tailored to each role. If your solution impacts it, finance and operations craft slightly different ad messages for each of them, hitting them across different channels around the same time.

Much more powerful than a single generic blast 

that sounds sophisticated and all of this, the email, the ads, the eventual sales outreach relies heavily on having a good clean UpToDate contact lift 

foundational. Absolutely foundational. The source notes something like 25% annual turnover in contact databases.

Wow, that's huge. It 

means constant vigilance, making sure your list actually matches your ICP cleaning out contacts who aren't a fit tracking engagement across all these channels. Who open what click, what viewed what? Linking up on social strategically, not to pitch immediately, but to build connections.

Jason Myers from Austin Lawrence Group is mentioned as a resource here for list hygiene and cold email strategy. Your list quality dictates the effectiveness of almost everything else downstream. 

Okay, so that list hygiene feeds right into the final piece. Rethinking SDR or BDR follow-up in 2025. That old dial for dollars book meetings at all costs, model is dead, 

has to be, it's just not effective and buyers hate it.

The new way for SDRs and BDRs is all about leveraging triggers and lead intelligence. Meaning their outreach isn't cold anymore. It's prompted by something the buyer actually did or something happening at their company. It's contextual. It shows you're paying attention. Like 

what kind of triggers? 

Do they just download that specific white paper you promoted via email?

Did they attend your webinar? Are they a current user showing certain product usage patterns? Did their company just announce a new initiative? Did they engage with one of those surround sound ads? 

Uh, okay, so the outreach starts with relevance. 

Exactly. Yeah. Source gives an example like, Hey, I saw you engage with our recent deep dive on specific challenge.

It immediately connects the dots for the buyer 

and lead intelligence. 

That's using all the data you have from the CRM, from intent data providers, from those crucial buyer interviews to tailor the outreach further, understand their likely context, anticipate the gap they're trying to bridge, veer the language they use, help them make progress like Moesta says, 

and the source makes a really bold point.

Remove the incentive for SDRs just to book meetings. 

Game changer. Seriously, if the only thing that matters is meetings booked, you get quantity over quality. You get SDRs pushing for calls that aren't ready, wasting the AE time burning bridges. 

So shift the metrics 

shift to meaningful engagements.

Quality conversations. Did the SDR successfully identify a buyer who genuinely agrees that the problem you solve is a priority for them? That's a much better measure of success. 

It means fewer meetings overall. Probably. 

Probably, I. But the ones you do get are far more likely to progress. The conversation should be laser focused on the problem, not just ramming the product down their throat.

SDRs is problem solvers, not appointment setters. 

That's the goal. Using questions like what's really holding you back an area. 

Mm-hmm. 

If you could wave a magic wand, what would change? What happens if you don't solve this? 

It reminds me of that Jason Meyers quote in the material, when you reach out to people who already agree, it's a problem worth solving.

You don't have to convince them. 

Exactly. The heavy lifting on problem awareness has already been done through your coordinated marketing. Sales isn't starting from zero. Wow. Higher quality leads, higher close rates. Makes sense, right? 

Yeah, it really does. And the final piece is making sure SDRs and the AEs are tightly aligned, 

crucial, seamless handoff.

All the context that triggers the engagement history, the key points from the SDRs conversation needs to flow smoothly through the CRM. Maybe even a quick handoff call. The buyer needs to feel like it's one continuous intelligent conversation, not like they're starting over with someone new. That whole integrated journey from the first ad or email to the AE call helps the buyer feel understood.

Makes progress easier. 

This whole buyer-centric playbook coordinating everything, it's definitely a big shift from that old assembly line model. The source even pointed to Clickup as a company that grew super fast using a different kind of approach. 

Yeah. Melissa Rosenthal from Clickup shared some fascinating stuff.

They weren't afraid to use humor, be bold, even poke fun at competitors in their campaigns, 

built awareness quickly. 

Massively market saturation, smart out of home ads, really getting the brand seen everywhere. And they use this portfolio approach to their creative 

meaning 

constantly testing lots of different ideas, iterating super fast.

Hmm, adapting based on what the data showed. Was working. A lot of it was done in-house apparently for speed and cost efficiency. 

High output. Lots of tester. 

Exactly. And their marketing wasn't just about leads. It built a strong brand. Culture even helps with hiring because people were drawn to their vibe.

It's a great example of how creative coordinated messaging that builds brand awareness first can really prime the pump before sales even gets involved. 

So let's try and wrap this deep dive up. The clear message from all the sources is that old predictable revenue model for enterprise SaaS. It's running on fume.

Yeah, the buyer has changed too much. 

Just scaling up the old tactics, siloed content, siloed ads siloed, email disconnected sales outreach just won't cut it. You can't expect predictable results from a disconnected process anymore. 

The necessary shift is towards being. Truly buyer-centric. 

Hmm. 

And it's more than just tweaking tactics.

It's a fundamental mindset change. 

It means really digging deep to understand the buyer's job to be done 

rigorously. Testing your messages organically before you spend big 

and critically. Coordinating your advertising and email based on those validated insights and the engagement signals you're seeing 

and totally revamping that S-D-R-B-D-R role focusing on meaningful conversations sparked by real buyer triggers and intelligence, not just cold volume 

and the payoff.

If you do all this, the sources are pretty clear on that too. 

Yeah. A pipeline that's actually filled with buyers who get the problem. Are genuinely considering solutions like yours, 

sales teams having fewer but way better conversations that actually lead somewhere, 

and marketing that feels precise, intentional, and actually aligned with what buyers need.

Driving the right conversations, every touch point from that first ad impression to the final sales negotiation feels connected and relevant to the buyer. 

It definitely sounds like more upfront effort. The research, the testing, the coordination. 

It is no doubt, but by truly focusing on the buyer's world and letting those insights drive how you're advertising, email and sales teams work together, you build the kind of trust that leads to sustainable growth.

I. Way more sustainable than hoping the old machine magically starts working again. This playbook gives you the map. 

So as you digest everything we've covered in this deep dive, here's something to chew on. What is just one specific thing, maybe small, maybe big, that you could change in how your marketing or sales teams operate today based on what we've discussed to make things feel just a little bit more buyer-centric For your enterprise SaaS audience, something to think about. 

Thanks for listening to the SaaS Backwards podcast, brought to you by Austin Lawrence Group. We are a growth marketing agency that helps SaaS firms reduce churn, accelerate sales, and generate demand. Learn more about us at www.austinlawrence.com. You can email Ken Lempit at kl@austinlawrence.com about any SaaS marketing or customer retention subject.

We hope you'll subscribe and thanks again for listening.