Revlyn
REVLYN/WORK/AUSFORMING
PUBLISHED · GREENFIELD GTM BUILD

No CRM. No outbound. No funnel. Six months later, more than 1 in 2 cold replies become discovery calls.
Here is how we built it, in order.

Ausforming is an SAP consulting firm in Sydney. When we started there was no CRM, no marketing tool, no outbound program, and the website needed rebuilding. We designed the go-to-market motion first, then put the stack around it: a tight target list, Smartlead for sending, a new WordPress site, HubSpot Marketing and Sales Hub, and a pipeline where every stage has to be earned.

READ THE NUMBERS ↓
OUTBOUND FUNNEL · AUSFORMING
STEADY STATE
REPLY → DISCOVERY
>50%
SLA ON REPLY
real time
  • EMAILS SENT1,000+/day
  • REPLIES LANDED10–15/day
  • BOOKED DISCOVERY>50% of replies
  • INTO PIPELINEgated stages only
CALLS/MO
20
DEALS
15
STACK
4
THE SCOREBOARD
MEASURED · STEADY STATE
OUTBOUND VOLUME
1,000+
emails/day · Smartlead
REPLY RATE
1–1.5%
senior SAP buyers
REPLIES/DAY
10–15
landing in HubSpot
REPLY → DISCOVERY
>50%
booked, not just answered
DISCOVERY CALLS
20/mo
held with target accounts
DEALS CREATED
15
from outbound alone
STACK · HubSpot Marketing Hub · HubSpot Sales Hub · Smartlead · WordPress
CHAPTER 01

Who Ausforming is

Ausforming (ausforming.com) is a Sydney SAP consulting firm working across Australia and New Zealand. They match SAP customers with vetted global partners for master data, governance, value optimisation and digital transformation.

The buyers are senior and specific: the people who run or fund SAP landscapes at mid-size and large companies. That was useful. A narrow market is easier to reach well than a broad one, if you take the time to define it properly.

CHAPTER 02

Starting from a blank page

Most of our projects start with fixing something. This one started with nothing to fix. No CRM, no automations, no sequences, no forms. That sounds easier. It is not. The order in which you build the pieces decides whether they end up as one system or four disconnected tools.

WHAT WAS ON DAY ONE
FIG.01 · STARTING INVENTORYAUSFORMING / DAY 0
  • 0
    Sales system
    None. No CRM in use, no source of record.
  • 0
    Marketing automation
    None. Newsletters, nurture, lifecycle: on the roadmap, nowhere built.
  • 0
    Outbound motion
    None. No sending infrastructure, no target list, no sequences.
  • rebuild
    Website
    Existed, but needed rebuilding. Not wired into anything.
  • informal
    Buyer definition
    Clear internally, never written down as an operating target.
  • n/a
    Reply workflow
    No inbox, no owner, no SLA. Nothing to route into.
?
A greenfield build has no cleanup and no legacy, but nothing to lean on either. The order you build things in decides whether the pieces connect into one system, or end up as four tools that each hold a different version of the truth.
CHAPTER 03

Decide who you are talking to, first

Before we bought or set up a single tool, we wrote down the answers to three questions. Getting these right is the difference between outbound that books meetings and outbound that burns your sending domain.

TARGETING · v1.0 · AUSFORMING × REVLYN
AGREED · BEFORE ANY TOOL
  1. 01
    Geography
    Australia and New Zealand only. Sending windows, language, and BDR reachability all follow from this.
  2. 02
    Company profile
    Size, industry, and the tell that they run an SAP landscape worth Ausforming's attention.
  3. 03
    Buying titles
    The specific roles worth contacting, from the people who run SAP day to day up to the ones who sign off on the budget to change it.
  4. 04
    Message split
    A message written for the SAP operator reads completely differently from one written for the executive who funds it. Never send the wrong one to either.
Right target, right message, right person→ Target Account List
CHAPTER 04

The list, then two ways of working it

A short list of the right accounts beats a big scraped one on every number that matters: deliverability, reply quality, meetings booked, deals closed. We then split the list in two, because the biggest accounts deserve a different kind of attention.

MASS OUTREACHBroader good-fit accounts
1,000+
emails/day · Smartlead
  • · High volume, sequenced, run through Smartlead.
  • · Reach a large number of the right people, every day.
  • · Inbox rotation protects deliverability at volume.
  • · Every send tied back to a Target Account List row.
1:1 OUTREACHHighest-value accounts
Human
researched · personal · no template
  • · Reserved for the accounts Ausforming most wants to win.
  • · A generic sequence does more damage than no contact.
  • · You only get one first touch. A templated one shows.
  • · Kept off the mass rails from day one.
CHAPTER 05

Four tools, one job each

Smartlead sends. WordPress captures. HubSpot Sales Hub owns the record and routes the work. Marketing Hub nurtures against the same database. No tool holds a version of the customer the others do not see.

FIG.03 · STACK MAPONE SOURCE OF TRUTH · HUBSPOT OWNS THE RECORD
  1. STEP 01
    Smartlead
    Send
    Volume, inbox rotation, deliverability at 1,000+/day. Top of the funnel.
  2. STEP 02
    WordPress
    Capture
    Rebuilt from scratch. HubSpot plugin wires forms and page visits into contact records.
  3. STEP 03
    HubSpot Sales Hub
    Route + own
    Reply assignment, tasks and SLAs, the gated pipeline. Where the business runs.
  4. STEP 04
    HubSpot Marketing Hub
    Nurture
    Email marketing and newsletters against the same database the sales team works from.
A prospect who receives a cold email on Monday, ignores it, visits the site on Wednesday, and fills out a form on Friday shows up in HubSpot as one contact with one connected story. The BDR picking that contact up sees the whole picture and can act on it.
CHAPTER 06

What happens when someone replies

Most teams pour effort into lifting reply rates and almost none into what happens after the reply. That is backwards. A reply from a real buyer is the most valuable thing this whole system produces. We built for the first few minutes after it lands.

REPLY WORKFLOW · REAL TIME
CORE OF THE ENGAGEMENT
  1. T+0s
    Reply lands in Smartlead
    Buyer hits send. Interest is at its peak.
  2. T+seconds
    Sync to HubSpot
    Real-time push. Contact and reply attach to the same record.
  3. T+seconds
    Auto-assign to a BDR
    Named owner. Not a shared inbox. Not a queue nobody checks.
  4. T+SLA
    BDR works the reply
    One job in that window: convert the live reply into a booked discovery call.
  5. Outcome
    Booked or closed lost
    No middle pile. The reply is either a call on the calendar or it is filed.
Nothing leaks between reply and booking>50% of replies become discovery calls
CHAPTER 07

A pipeline where every stage has to be earned

Once a discovery call is done, the deal either moves forward with a clear reason or gets closed lost on the spot. There is no vague middle where deals sit for months pretending to be alive. That is where most forecasts fall apart.

PIPELINE · GATED STAGESEVERY STAGE HAS ENTRY + EXIT CRITERIA
  1. 01
    Discovery held
    ENTRY
    Call took place. Notes captured.
    EXIT
    Real problem identified with buying context.
  2. 02
    Qualified opportunity
    ENTRY
    Named champion, timeline, budget signal.
    EXIT
    Fit and value confirmed on both sides.
  3. 03
    Proposal
    ENTRY
    Scope and commercials agreed in principle.
    EXIT
    Written proposal shared with the buying group.
  4. 04
    Verbal
    ENTRY
    Buyer has said yes. Legal or procurement remains.
    EXIT
    Contract issued.
  5. 05
    Closed won
    ENTRY
    Signed. Kick-off scheduled.
    EXIT
    —
Real forecasts. Stage placement means something concrete.
Visible blockages. Stuck deals surface early, not in the last week of the quarter.
Proactive selling. Support arrives where it is needed, while there is still time to act.
ON THE RECORD
“The first time a cold reply turned into a booked call the same day, it stopped feeling like outbound and started feeling like a system that just runs.”
SN
Sahil Naqvi
Ausforming · named reference on file
WATCH · 2 MIN

Hear it from Ausforming, in their own words

A short conversation on what changed, what surprised them, and what they would tell another founder about to start from zero.

RECORDED · SYDNEY
VIDEO · SAHIL NAQVI · AUSFORMING
YOUTUBE
SPEAKER
Sahil Naqvi
TOPIC
Building GTM from zero
LENGTH
~2 minutes
CHAPTER 08

What Ausforming has now

OUTBOUND AT REAL VOLUME
1,000+/day
The target list feeds Smartlead directly. Volume goes only against accounts worth pursuing, so deliverability holds and reps do not waste time on the wrong replies.
EVERY REPLY GETS TO A CALL
>50%
Replies sync to HubSpot in seconds, land with a named BDR, and get worked against a clock. The most valuable moment in the funnel never sits in an unread inbox.
ONE STORY PER PERSON
One record
Someone who ignores Monday's email, visits the site on Wednesday and fills a form on Friday shows up as one contact with one timeline. WordPress, Smartlead and HubSpot all write to the same record.
A FORECAST YOU CAN TRUST
Honest
Every stage has a clear entry and exit rule. A deal cannot skip ahead to look good in a report, so the number at the top of the pipeline actually means something.
IF YOU ARE STARTING GTM FROM SCRATCH

Buy the tools last, not first.

Decide who you sell to. Build the list. Agree who works what, and when. Then bring in the software to fit the plan you already have. And put your best effort where the money actually is: not in sending more emails, but in making sure a real buyer who raises their hand never has to wait.

Building your GTM engine from zero? We have done this before.

30 minutes, no deck. We walk through your ICP, list, stack, and reply workflow, and tell you the three things we would build first.