- SaaS Weekly
- Posts
- 🙅♂️ Avoiding AI slop
🙅♂️ Avoiding AI slop
Where AI tooling works in GTM and where it doesn't
Ian Ito
March 01, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
ISSUE #282
B2B SaaS growth plays, right in your inbox
Happy Sunday 👋
Three reads to think about this week:
The “AI mode” vs “AI slop” quadrant
How Brex grew signups 3x
8 Clay plays every marketer should run
Plus, the top reads from last month!
Let's dive in!
Ian at SaaS Weekly
THIS WEEK IN SAAS
Interesting LinkedIn posts and industry news
39% of top AI companies with open GTM roles are hiring SDRs or SDR leaders – and most are building the function for the first time. Frontier model providers are hiring sales development leads to build and scale teams of 8-12+ BDRs. Clay brought on a Head of BDR. The companies most likely to automate this role are the ones investing in it.
From my experience, I get why – I’ve tried automating outbound with informed signals (intent data, firmographics), and even when the sequences are thoughtful, these emails still didn’t convert (better for awareness, not conversions). The best results come when the outreach feels personal, and that personalization still comes from people connecting with people.
Almost everyone is using AI tooling across GTM functions. But two groups are emerging: those using it to produce more output, and those using it to produce more value. The difference between the two is domain expertise. Kieran Flanagan frames this as a 2x2: AI output on one axis, domain expertise on the other. Top-right is "AI mode" – people who know what good looks like before they prompt. Top-left is "AI slop" – high volume, low value output.
In my opinion, the best place to start using AI tools is within the workflows you're already familiar with – that's where your expertise lives, and where you'll naturally validate whether the output is right.
For example, this past week, I started using an agent to pull GTM analyses – something I would have pulled from Salesforce and built out in Excel. Instead of doing the work of writing formulas myself (which I kind of miss...kind of), I was prompting to get the results I wanted. But my judgment and experience led me to the right problem to isolate, the context to understand if the output made sense, and the instinct to use different cross-cuts to validate the data. Without my broader context, the work would have likely landed in the AI-slop camp.
HOW COMPANIES GROW
Examples of growth plays and GTM Agent usecases
How Brex grew signups 3x
Demand Generation | Henry Berry, B2B Growth Insights
Not every growth play needs to be sophisticated. Some of the highest-ROI plays are the ones that feel obvious in hindsight – like matching the customer proof on your homepage to the segment you're selling to.
Brex is a good example of this. They sell a corporate card platform across software, life sciences, and e-commerce companies – each with different buying priorities. Rather than running one homepage for all three, they personalized the messaging, CTAs, and social proof by visitor segment. Life sciences buyers saw life sciences logos. E-commerce buyers saw interest-free financing and e-comm brands. Software buyers got the AI-forward product story. Same product, different messaging.
They used tooling to dynamically swap headline copy, CTAs, and customer logos based on who was visiting. Each ICP landed on a page that reflected their priorities – not a one-size-fits-all pitch. The result was 3x more signups with personalized outreach.
You don't need dynamic tooling to start, though. Segment your top 2-3 ICPs and tailor proof points on your highest-traffic pages.
ARTICLES TO BOOKMARK
Resources to build your next growth play
8 Clay plays every marketer should run
Marketing ops | Maja Voje, GTM Strategist
Bookmark this for when: You want your marketing team running the same enrichment and signal workflows your RevOps team already uses.
Why this matters: In my experience, one of the fastest ways to improve GTM execution is to democratize tool access across functions. When marketing teams stop waiting on RevOps for bespoke enrichment (and get hands-on with tools like Clay), they start designing better processes and campaigns on their own.
Maja walks through 8 workflows that show what that looks like in practice, each following the same pattern: enrich the data you already have, score it against signals that matter, activate with specificity instead of volume.
Two plays to try today:
1) Competitive ad intelligence: Build a Clay table with 50 competitors and pull structured ad data through native integrations (Adbeat for display/video, Semrush for paid search). Then use an AI column to classify messaging themes across the landscape. The output: a positioning brief with real spend data, pattern analysis, and specific recommendations on where to differentiate.
2) Event and conference intelligence: Before running an event, import the attendee list into Clay, enrich with company data, and define your trigger signals and scoring priorities. After, score attendees by interaction depth and match follow-up to engagement level. Badge scan gets a nurture. Demo request gets same-day AE handoff.
How to diagnose your paid media before you spend another dollar
Paid Acquisition | Ben Dankiw, Foundation
Bookmark this for when: Sales is pushing for more lead volume, and your instinct is to increase budget.
Why this matters: From what I've seen, GTM motions go through lifecycle stages: experimentation, where you're spending to learn what works and generate volume. Then refinement, where you're trying to get more from that spend.
Paid media is no different. When sales is pushing for more leads, the default ask is to increase budget. But in refinement mode, the better question is whether you're getting more out of what you're already spending. This piece walks through a three-step process to find where things are actually breaking before you add budget.
Key takeaways:
Check the logging first: Before your team diagnoses anything, have them verify the tracking is clean. Broken events, duplicate conversions, CRM sync issues – any of these can make a healthy campaign look like it's underperforming.
Map the funnel in order and find the drop-off: Trace the buyer's path from ad to closed deal – clicks, conversions, then revenue. The key here is sequence. If the ad isn't earning clicks, there's no reason to rebuild the landing page. If clicks are strong but the page isn't converting, don't jump to the nurture sequence.
Check message-match across the full journey: When performance drops at any stage, ask whether the promise carries through. Does the ad match the landing page? Does the landing page match the follow-up? Does the nurture align with the offer they converted on?
FROM THE TRENCHES
Perspectives from industry operators
The buyer’s orbit: why you should approach messaging as a cycle, not a funnel
Messaging & Positioning | Mike Northfield, Artifacts of Influence
The marketing funnel has done a lot of damage to the marketing profession.
It says buyers start uninformed at the top, work their way down through stages you define for them, then drop out the bottom as revenue.
While it's useful for codifying and reporting on the volume of buyer behaviors to stakeholders, the stages don't always accurately describe how buyers move through the world. Many see information presented in a funnel and assume it's how buyers actually move — that we have control over a sequential process that, in reality, depends on a lot of things that are out of our hands.
But buying doesn't happen in a straight line. It happens in cycles. Buyers orbit around problems, pulled back into consideration whenever the heat of that problem gets too strong to ignore.
At any given moment, only about 35% of your market is actively evaluating solutions. The other 60% are in the Dead Zone in a state of inattention. They’re not actively looking for solutions, but they are forming the brand preferences that will determine their Day-1 shortlist when they eventually come back around.
Most budgets chase the 35%. But the most durable growth is built in the Dead Zone. The orbit will bring buyers around eventually. The question then becomes whether you've done enough work to be the first name they think of when it does.
TOP READS FROM LAST MONTH
The most clicked-on links
The SaaSacre of 2026 [Next Big Teng]
Running Ads in Clay [Everett Berry]
100 Unicorns: 12 different GTM Motions [First 1000]
I've audited 100+ funnels. Here's what I found [Marketing Meditation]
Why events are one of the most effective GTM channels in 2026 [GTM Strategist]
The Great SaaS Crash of 2026 [Infinite Runway]
Was this worth reading this week? |
Thank you for reading this Sunday’s SaaS Weekly Roundup!