In today's episode, I chat with Imran Adam, Lead GTM Engineer at Patrick Burns, about running outbound for B2B SaaS companies in data analytics and AI—booking meetings on the calendar while building the full GTM infrastructure underneath.
We explore his onboarding process that goes way deeper than standard ICP definition: instead of just firmographics, his team digs into what was happening internally at a company right before they decided to buy, using that to pre-identify the exact signals that predict purchase readiness and cutting the time to a winning sequence from 4-5 weeks down to 2-3. Imran shares his Clay playbook for LinkedIn outbound: filtering strictly for active LinkedIn users (posted in the last 30 days) so connection quota never gets burned on ghost accounts, then scraping competitor and thought leader posts to find ICP prospects who engaged with that content, pulling the post into Clay, using a mini AI agent to generate one sharp question from the content, and opening with that question so the prospect immediately has something real to respond to. His prediction: within one to two years nearly every B2B company will have an internal GTM team, and the GTM engineers who survive the commoditization wave will be the ones who layer n8n automation on top of their Clay and outbound tool workflows—and eventually Claude Code and cursor to build custom tooling nobody else has. Imran shares his path from B2C marketing roles he never enjoyed, to a recruiting firm where he first encountered Clay in its early confusing days, to rejoining the tool in early 2024 when communities had formed around it and the whole GTM engineering ecosystem had clicked into place. His advice: stop sending CVs—build a workflow, post it on LinkedIn, show people exactly what you can do, join GTM communities, and let your portfolio do the talking.
Enjoy 🙂
(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards
(00:21) What Patrick Burns Does: Meeting Booking and GTM Infrastructure for B2B SaaS
(01:27) The Onboarding Process: Digging Into Internal Buying Signals Beyond Firmographics
(03:35) The Clay Playbook: Active LinkedIn Users and Competitor Engagement Targeting
(05:48) Using AI to Extract One Question from Engaged Content to Start Conversations
(07:03) Why LinkedIn Outperforms Email Right Now and the Voice Note Frontier
(08:30) Imran's Journey: B2C Marketing to Recruiting Firm to GTM Engineering
(10:22) Why GTM Engineering Forces Constant Upskilling to Maintain Reply Rates
(11:07) Future Predictions: Every B2B Company Builds Internal GTM, n8n Becomes Essential
(12:25) Claude Code and Cursor: Building Custom Tooling No One Else Has
(13:37) Advice for New GTM Engineers: Portfolio Over CV, Communities Over Applications
🔗 CONNECT WITH IMRAN
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📧 Email - saurabh@salesrobot.co
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