Inside the Minds of B2B Growth Leaders: Lessons from GrowthRise Mastermind #8

Every Tuesday, I get to drop into one of my favorite hours of the week—the GrowthRise Mastermind. It’s a live, interactive jam session with brilliant B2B marketers, founders, fractional CMOs, SaaS CEOs, and growth-hungry teams from around the world.

This week’s session was packed. We tackled everything from the role of cold email in ABM campaigns to click-to-WhatsApp ads in emerging markets, SEO strategy for B2B SaaS, and creative ways to validate messaging before you even hit product-market fit.

What follows are the biggest lessons, strategies, and takeaways that came out of this call. If you're leading go-to-market at a SaaS company—or really any B2B venture—this is the stuff you want in your playbook.

1. Cold Email Isn’t Dead—It’s Just Lonely Without ABM

One of our members this week raised a question I hear all the time: Can cold outbound still work if you’ve only got 5,600 contacts in a niche market like K-12 superintendents?

Here’s the punchline: Cold email works, but only if it’s part of a full-court press.

• Cold alone won’t get you to 5% market share.
• Cold + matched audience ads + LinkedIn outreach + retargeting + paid search = fire.
• Don’t just track reply rates—track influence over time across touchpoints.
• 12–18 months is the real horizon for ABM. Play the long game.

Your job isn’t just to send emails. Your job is to influence a list of humans using every channel at your disposal until you get the deals.

2. Target Market Size Dictates Strategy

This client’s ACV is ~$20k/year. With 2,600 school districts in her ICP, 5% penetration equals $2.6M in ARR.

• If your TAM is small, your ACV better be high.
• Reverse-engineer your model: TAM × Win Rate × ACV = your ceiling.
• If your ceiling is $3M and your goal is $10M, you need either:
  • A bigger market
  • A more expensive product
  • Or a new adjacent ICP

3. Click-to-WhatsApp Ads? Underrated.

Another GrowthRise member is testing WhatsApp click-to-message ads for B2B SaaS. Sounds weird? Not in South Asia.

• Email? Ignored. Slack? Unheard of. WhatsApp? Dominates.
• Leads click ads → open WhatsApp → interact with a chatbot → get nurtured.
• No need to separate campaigns by country if the persona + language are consistent.
• Biggest warning: Only use matched audiences. Avoid lookalikes or junk traffic.

If your buyers live in WhatsApp, meet them there.

4. SEO Still Matters—If You’re Smart About It

Another GrowthRise member asked if reciprocal backlink exchanges hurt SEO. Here’s the quick scoop:

• Backlinks still matter for PageRank and AI summaries.
• Spammy or irrelevant backlinks can hurt. Quality > quantity.
• Reposting newsletters to your blog = content multiplier.
• Tools we like: SEMrush, Ranking Raccoon, KarmaLinks.

At SaaS Rise, just moving our 87 past newsletters from Beehive to our main blog tripled traffic in 30 days. Content compounds.

5. Validate Before You Build (Claude’s Gold)

Another GrowthRise member brought up a question every product marketer should ask: How do you validate ICP and messaging before you even build?

Here’s the play:

• Build multiple landing pages for different ICPs.
• Use paid ads to drive traffic.
• Track CTR, CPL, and conversion rate (3%+ = promising).
• Don’t build anything until you’ve got signal.

Want to go deeper? Pair this with outbound to test messaging at scale via Instantly or Clay.

6. Enterprise Cold Email? Go Faster, Not Slower

Another GrowthRise member is selling Microsoft ERP to companies with $100M+ in revenue. One deal = $250k. His question: Are we sending too slowly?

• Instead of 1 email/week for 4 weeks, try 5 emails in 12 days (0, 3, 6, 9, 12).
• Cold email is a volume + frequency game. But respect deliverability.
• Re-sequence 90 days later with new messaging.
• Goal: Touch every prospect once per quarter.

Remember: Whale hunting takes time. But whales don’t swim toward you—you’ve got to go find them.

7. Content Strategy: Personal Brand vs Product Story

One member asked, “Should I do reels about my journey, or videos about the product?”

• If you’re building a personal brand or community: go personal.
• If you’re selling enterprise infrastructure: go product.
• Case studies, before/after stories, and ROI metrics convert.
• Feature videos should show value—not just features.

Pick the angle your buyers care about. Lead with their story, not yours.

8. Unit Economics Still Rule

Another member who is getting all his leads via the HubSpot app marketplace, and asked how to model CAC and LTV.

• If you’re break-even and want to grow, app store referrals are gold.
• But if ads aren’t converting, your targeting or messaging is off.
• Use Apollo to build a list of Shopify + HubSpot users and run cold + ad campaigns.
• With a $2.5k ACV, you’ll need 400+ new customers/year for real scale.

Math doesn’t lie. Build your funnel to match your goals.

9. Cold Email Domain Setup (Yes, This Matters)

One member asked about domain structure for high-volume cold email.

• Don’t send cold emails from your main domain. Use other domains.
• Forwarding cold domains to your main domain is usually fine.
• Some say Google connects them—so use a unique LP domain if paranoid.
• Never use catch-all inboxes if you’re worried about deliverability.

We’re sending 150k+ cold emails/month. Infrastructure matters. Deliverability is everything.

10. Creative Lead Gen for Local SMBs

Another member was wonder wondering how to generate lists of local small businesses.

• Use Clay Google Maps scraper, LeadScrape, or D7 Lead Finder to build lists.
• Bonus: Combine with direct mail campaigns to drive multi-touch influence.

That’s a lot to cover in 60 minutes. Hope to see you next week!