01 · The starting point: prospecting that runs on the founder
When we met Minary, the company was already a great story: first customers signed in May 2024, €1M ARR reached in 18 months, with a team of two, fully bootstrapped. The product was working, inbound was flowing. But the prospecting machine rested entirely on Julien, the CEO.
"Prospecting used to be a real grind. I was working with a freelance SDR, and I had to build the lists myself so he'd have the right people to call. And building lists was a grind."
The three classic symptoms of manual prospecting
The founder is the bottleneck. Every list is a mini-project: extract, enrich, import, verify. Every hour spent on data is an hour not spent on the product, the customers, or the vision.
Knowledge that doesn't survive the day-to-day. Which segments have already been enriched? Which are up to date? Who has already been contacted? Without process, everything lives in one person's memory.
A CRM that piles up debt from day one. Manual imports, stale data, an inbound and outbound history that was never cleaned: the longer you wait, the more expensive the catch-up.
"Things pile up over time. And if you're not properly processed, your CRM turns into a mess."
Minary's setup before our intervention
- Contact extraction via a browser extension plugged into Pronto
- Manual enrichment in FullEnrich
- Manual imports into HubSpot
- A CRM history (outbound + a lot of inbound) never cleaned or enriched
- No foundational work on positioning, messaging, or process
→ Result: lists trickling in, a CRM getting less reliable by the week, and a CEO doing data work instead of growing his company.
Why an agency and not a hire
"First, there's the flexibility of working with an agency, a much more flexible model. Then the skills: on our topics, marketing and go-to-market, it felt like the perfect combination. I'd heard a lot about Clay. What convinced me is that Malo is a true specialist of the tool."
02 · The mission: three workstreams to build the machine
Rather than stacking tools or pushing volume, we structured the mission into three workstreams, in this order, because each one conditions the next.
Workstream 1 · Marketing foundations
Before industrializing anything: who are we really targeting, with what message, and how do we want to be perceived? We defined Minary's ICP, positioning, and messaging: the foundation that determines the quality of everything else. Industrializing without foundations means industrializing noise.
"Who are we really targeting? What should the pitch be? How do we want to be perceived? There was this whole marketing side to build."
Workstream 2 · Process and CRM
Minary had just structured its sales team: one sales rep hired, one freelance SDR. Exactly the moment when bad habits turn into debt. We cleaned and enriched the existing HubSpot data (outbound and inbound history) and structured pipelines, properties, and processes, so the team could start on a healthy base.
"We have an SDR, we have a sales rep: it was important that everything was properly set up from day one. No technical debt."
Workstream 3 · Go-to-market and lead generation
The engine itself: list building, cold calling, emailing, content. Using Clay, we built highly segmented, highly specialized account and contact bases, enriched with custom data points that go far beyond the standard filters of traditional databases.
"Today, for every account we go after, we know the size of their sales team, the CRM they use, how often they cold call. It directly increases our conversion rate."
03 · The new machine, day to day
The new Minary setup
- Account and contact bases built and maintained via Clay, beyond standard filters
- Systematic pre-qualification with custom data points: sales team size, CRM in place, cold calling habits
- Automatic push into a cleaned, structured, correctly formatted HubSpot
- Tasks assigned directly to the SDR, by list or by HubSpot task: all he has to do is call
- Content and emailing orchestrated in parallel to feed the rest of the pipeline
Théo's day-to-day, freelance cold caller
"It's pretty simple: the lists are built on your side. Théo just logs in, works through his tasks, makes his calls and books his meetings."
A nice detail on top: Théo makes his calls through Minary. The product powers its own prospecting.
→ Concrete result: 20 to 25 meetings booked per month, in 4 days of calling. That's 4 to 6 meetings per calling day.
"Théo works with us four days a month and typically books between 20 and 25 meetings. It depends on his performance, and above all on the quality of the lists you provide."
A smooth collaboration
"Communication was super smooth: monthly check-ins, lots of exchanges on Slack and WhatsApp, both live and async. You delivered what was planned in the mission. We were happy."
04 · Why you should structure your GTM machine early (without hiring an army)
If you run a lean SaaS that has found its market, the question isn't "how do I hire more salespeople?" It's "how do I generate more pipeline with the same team?"
The hidden cost of founder-led prospecting. Every hour spent building lists is a CEO hour, the most expensive hourly rate in the company, spent on the most automatable task. And the accumulated knowledge (segments covered, accounts contacted) doesn't survive scaling.
Foundations before volume. Without a clear ICP and message, industrializing prospecting just means sending more of the wrong messages to the wrong targets. Order matters: targets → message → process → volume.
CRM debt always gets repaid, with interest. The right time to structure your CRM is before the team grows. After that, every new hire stacks their own approximations on top of the previous ones.
The lever isn't call volume: it's input quality. With lists pre-qualified down to the signal level, 4 calling days a month are enough to fill a calendar. The pitch doesn't change, the effort doesn't change: the probability of each call changes.
Staying lean, by choice. A structured GTM machine lets you grow without turning growth into a headcount race.
"The goal isn't to be the next centaur: it's to keep growing, in a healthy way."
Minary's goal this year: double ARR, with a near-constant headcount.
Who this is for, and who it isn't
"Early-stage companies with no product or no product-market fit: don't do it. Companies that already have customers, revenue, and a clear segment: that's when you need to add process, move much faster, and generate more pipeline and revenue."
The end goal: a machine that never stops
"A growth machine is a combination: content that generates leads, outbound, cold calling, emailing, all consolidated so the machine runs continuously and keeps feeding the team."
05 · The practical takeaway
For a lean SaaS that has validated its market, building a GTM machine comes down to three decisions:
- Lay the foundations (ICP, positioning, messaging) before industrializing anything
- Structure the CRM and processes before the team grows: debt you avoid never has to be repaid
- Outsource data and list building so salespeople do only one thing: sell
When those conditions are met, pipeline becomes a byproduct of the process, not something forced through volume or pressure.
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