Remember When GTM Was Handcrafted?

Somewhere between my 10th bowl of ramen and my 14th mile of walking, I ducked into a tiny denim shop off a side street in Tokyo. And it kind of broke my brain. 

A man was hunched over a sewing machine, carefully threading indigo denim under his needle. He was making the very jeans he was selling in the shop, a sight thats rare (if not impossible) to find most places these days.

I didn’t expect to find a GTM lesson 5,500 miles from home. But watching him work, it hit me: We’ve lost all sense of craft in B2B.

So this newsletter’s not our usual playbook breakdown - no firm tactics, no AI hot takes. Just a mindset shift we desperately need before we automate the soul out of sales.

Here it is.

Mass-Produced vs. Hand-Stitched

You’ve heard of fast fashion, right?

Where clothing brands like H&M and Zara pump out products at lightning speed to chase the latest trend. Low-cost materials, templated designs, mass production on overdrive.

The margins are made in volume. And the clothes are regularly worn once and tossed.

Night and day from my denim guy in Tokyo.

He’s making something to last. 

He runs his hands over every seam → Fast fashion runs it all through automation

He builds for timeless wear → Fast fashion builds for what’s trending

He knows every buyer → Fast fashion knows their credit card number

In 20 years, I’ll still be wearing the jeans I bought from him.

The fast fashion clothing? Replaced by whatever’s cheaper and faster.

And here’s the thing:

We’re not so different.

The Fast Fashion-ification of GTM

The new culture in B2B looks an awful lot like fast fashion. 

➡️ We crank out content that’s optimized for algorithms instead of resonance.
➡️ We build outbound sequences with more tokens than thought.
➡️ We chase what’s trending on LinkedIn. Not what’s true to our buyers.

The result is an endless race to the bottom. 

Now, it’d be one thing if the fast fashion-ification of GTM was delivering eye-watering results for sales teams, like the $5.5 billion in revenue H&M posted this quarter. But it’s not. 

📉 Reply rates are sinking.
📉 Trust in vendors is near all-time lows.
📉 Sales burnout is up, and tenure is down.

It’s one thing to sell $15 t-shirts that get worn once and tossed. 

But when you’re selling a $50K platform with a 12-month contract and multi-threaded buying process? This is a losing strategy.

Still, most B2B teams I see are sprinting full speed on a GTM treadmill.
Faster sequences, more automation, one more AI plugin.

And the wild part? It feels like they’re getting ahead.

If any of this sounds familiar, there’s a good chance you’re stuck in the fast fashion GTM trap. Here’s what that looks like up close:

Signs You’re in the Fast Fashion GTM Trap

You’re measuring what’s easy, not what matters.
Open rates, calls made, meetings booked. Sure, they’re tidy, but they don’t fully capture the stuff that actually builds pipeline: trust, resonance, momentum.

You’re copying playbooks instead of studying the craft.
There’s a difference between “this worked” and “here’s why it worked.” One helps you learn. The other just adds noise.

Your tool stack’s growing faster than your strategy.
AI, enrichment, sequencing, automation... these tools can be helpful. But when every problem looks like a prompt, we forget how to think.

Every motion feels like a checklist.
You’re hitting your numbers. But nothing feels human. Nothing feels like it matters.

You’re moving fast, but not getting anywhere.
It’s possible to be high-output and low-impact at the same time. That’s the quiet trap of fast GTM.

Craft Doesn’t Scale? I Don’t Believe It

We’ve got to talk about the 35-ton brontosaurus in the room: scale. 

The denim guy in Tokyo is one person. One shop. One needle.

His model works because he knows every customer. He cares about every stitch. He’s not optimizing for margin, he’s building something that matters.

But what if you’re running a sales org with 50 reps? You can’t put our highly-skilled denim guy on every account. But you can give every seller a system that lets them sell like him.

That’s what GTN does.

A solid Go-To-Network motion doesn’t just unlock warm intros. It turns reps into relationship artists. It replaces “spray and pray” with “connect and compound.”

It’s like opening up a shop in London, New York, Berlin… and still keeping the hand-tagged jeans, the intentionality, the pride. Think Hermès selling $10,000 bespoke handbags around the world.

GTN is a sales motion that takes advantage of everything automation can’t touch. Trust. Context. Human connection.

As a result, you get: 

• Higher response rates (because intros beat cold emails every time)

• Lower no-show rates (because buyers actually want to show up)

• Stronger close rates (because trust is baked in from the start)

(I break down the GTN numbers here)

You don’t need to choose between scale and soul. 

You can have both. 

The Future of GTM…

I’m betting it’s slower, smarter, and more human.

To deliver this, sales teams need to shift from playbooks built for efficiency to motions built for trust. From obsessing over reply rates to obsessing over relevance. 

With Go-To-Network:

✅ Sellers treat their network like a pipeline channel, not an afterthought
✅ Conversations compound because they’re rooted in real relationships
✅ Connections scale because trust is built in, not bolted on

Good craft never goes out of style. Let’s remember that.

Until next time,

Mac 🦕

P.S. Found this helpful? Forward it to someone who appreciates GTM thoughts that are hand-crafted.