If you’re a founder trying to work out whether The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers is worth reading Multiple readers said basically the same thing “this is the book I wish I’d read years earlier before starting a software company.” And after going through it, I can see exactly why. What makes it different is that it doesn’t read like one of those business books built on fluff or “frameworks stacked on frameworks.” One reviewer called it “the founder sales book that doesn’t read like a sales book,” and that’s probably the best summary of it. Because underneath the stories and humour, there’s real structure. For me, one of the biggest takeaways is that the book is really about putting a system underneath customer finding, instead of treating it like random hustle. On page 74, Collin breaks growth into four stages acquisition, activation, retention, referral and in a lot of ways it mirrors what we’d call cataloguing: understanding the market, where the buyers sit, what moves them, and how to build repeatability into the way you go to market. Then on page 93, there’s a line of thinking I think more founders should pay attention to: if you properly catalogue the market, you can control the number of people you need to speak to by identifying where the best buyers actually work. Instead of spraying outreach everywhere, you can target the employers, the organisations, the ecosystems that house your ideal customers. That’s a very different way of thinking about pipeline creation. There are a heap of moments like that through the book: * the structure of sales and the “code” behind it * why too many reps mistake activity for outcomes * why you can’t really sell in a one way channel and why live, two way interaction matters * why founders should be validating their own product instead of hiding from sales * how to think about the transition from founder-led selling to building an actual growth engine And that’s exactly why the reviews are so strong. One calls it an “invaluable, no-fluff guide to launching a venture.” Another says it turns customer acquisition from “panic into process.” Another says it’s the kind of book that could save founders a decade and six figures in mistakes. So if you’re an early stage founder, building a SaaS company, trying to find product market fit, or trying to work out how to create a real sales capability instead of just winging it, this is why you read it Because it gives you practical founder level guidance on the hardest part of building a business finding customers, structuring sales, and turning go to market into a repeatable system rather than a guessing game. #sales #SalesTips #GTMLeadership #TheTerrifyingArtOfFindingCustomers @CollinYVR

One of the most important things happening in modern GTM right now is not actually AI. It is the rediscovery of account intelligence. What Collin Stewart @CollinYVR is describing here is far bigger than most people realize. sure to those that have become addicted to build and buy the shiny tools instead of doing the work, it sounds like a cheat code...but what he is really saying is reasserting what has been lost to the market. The sheer importance of market intelligence. For those that have been in the seat long enough remember the good old days of PitchBook, Crunchbase expensive research firms OR calling back to multiple departments, with different names to gather as much information as possible to map your market approach. The future GTM organization will not merely store contacts. It will catalogue markets dynamically. That distinction is enormous. Most CRMs today are still being used like digital spreadsheets. Name. Company. Stage. Next step. Close date. But elite revenue systems are evolving into something completely different Commercial memory systems. Systems that understand: market timing capital flows buyer maturity operational readiness product evolution hiring intent funding stages ecosystem relationships expansion probability category movement This is exactly what Closed Circuit Selling™ (CCS™) has been architecting toward for years. Because CCS™ fundamentally understands that revenue is not created by isolated sales conversations. Revenue is created through accumulated market intelligence over time. And this is where most organizations still think far too narrowly. When Collin maps: VC firms portfolio companies investment stages lead vs follow behavior ecosystem patterns …he is not simply building lists. He is building contextual account intelligence. better timing awareness better segmentation better relationship sequencing better strategic positioning better future state prediction He is increasing commercial coherence. This is why AI is going to massively reshape GTM. Not because AI replaces sellers. But because AI dramatically lowers the cost of cataloguing reality. And once reality becomes easier to catalogue: timing improves personalization improves category understanding improves market conditioning improves strategic relevance improves The companies that win in the next decade will not be the companies with the most outbound volume. They will be the companies with the deepest market memory. That is the shift. And this is where Closed Circuit Selling™ becomes category-defining. Because CCS™ was never fundamentally about SDR tactics outbound scripts meeting volume pipeline activity It was about building synchronized commercial intelligence systems capable of understanding: who to speak to when to speak to them why timing matters what conditions change buying behavior and how trust compounds longitudinally We had Collin Stewart on the The B2B Playbook Check out his book The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers

I didn’t grow my LinkedIn following by posting hot takes or selling frameworks. I grew it by doing book reviews. I broke down the ideas that actually shaped modern B2B sales — in plain English — and let the thinking travel. If you’re serious about learning how customers are really found (not just how deals are ‘closed’), you should read The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers by Collin Stewart, the CEO of Predictable Revenue. #sales #SalesTips #PredictableRevenue #ClosedCircuitSelling #RevenueAlignmentArchitecture™