Grady Teske 🌊

Reintroducing myself.. - 20 years in B2B sales. Started in the field selling MRO and OEM supplies into manufacturing plants - Took over a business unit in one of the worst-performing regions in the company. 8 months later it was one of the fastest-growing locations - Turned a weekend of missing safety supplies at a power plant into one of the biggest account expansions of my career - Principal @ Rising Tides. 250+ GTM launches for B2B teams Before all that, years of feast and famine. Slammed with work, then nothing in the pipeline because I was too busy delivering to sell. Now I'm a fractional revenue leader for busy B2B sales teams. Multi-channel outreach, content from real customer conversations, clean handoffs between sales and delivery. Will share every process and playbook along the way. Come along for the next chapter.

your linkedin DM gets judged in the notification preview. that's the first line or so. nobody opens it to find your pitch. so write the preview, not the pitch: > line 1: something specific about them or their business > line 2: one yes/no question > proof only after they say yes > two time options in the thread, not a calendar link > context in the invite, so whoever it gets forwarded to knows why they're there example: "saw you're hiring your second sales rep. are you writing down what you hear on calls before they start?" same as field sales. you don't open the maintenance office door with a brochure. you earn the second sentence.

no SDR? you don't need a dashboard. you need 20 minutes on monday. the review i'd run: 0–5 min → everyone who replied last week, including the "no thanks." a no tells you something about your list. 5–10 → who engaged without replying. accepted, viewed, commented. that's this week's warm list. 10–15 → who went quiet after a first call. one short follow-up each, written by you. 15–20 → pick ONE change for the week. the list or the message, never both, or you won't know what worked. a spreadsheet is enough. adapted from a good one by @bazfurby

want 20 meetings next month? don't start with 5,000 cold messages. start at the meeting and work backwards: 1/ meeting ← a positive reply someone actually owned. who books it, and how fast? a "yes" isn't a meeting until somebody acts on it. 2/ positive reply ← a message that felt relevant. split your list by situation (just hired a sales lead, opened a location, launched something), not just title. 3/ relevant message ← one reason to respond per group. different situation, different reason. 4/ test each group on a small sample before you scale the list. 5/ then use your own numbers. meetings ÷ positive replies. positive replies ÷ sends. fix the weakest one first. most teams try to fix step 5 with volume. the leak is usually in step 1.

linkedin is a plant walk. in the field i'd never go straight to purchasing. i'd talk to the maintenance guys first, learn who actually used what and what kept breaking. then i'd go see the person who signs. same order online: → engage with what the users are posting → learn the words they use → then message the buyer most people skip straight to purchasing and wonder why nobody answers.

if you only sell when it's slow, you're scheduling your next slow month.

most B2B sales teams don't need more leads. they need the work to keep happening when everyone's busy. the cycle i've watched for ~20 years, in the field and now as a fractional revenue leader: work comes in → delivery takes over → prospecting stops → pipeline goes quiet a couple months later → scramble → repeat how i'd break it, in this order: 1/ work the opportunities you already have before buying more leads 2/ one conversation across email, linkedin and phone, with one owner 3/ a recap with a next step + date after every meeting 4/ a handoff so delivery knows exactly what sales promised 5/ content pulled from real sales calls, so buyers hear from you between conversations none of it is fancy. it just has to run every week, including the busy ones. DM me if: > your pipeline swings quarter to quarter > follow-up depends on whoever remembers > marketing, sales and delivery each tell a different story happy to look at how yours works today.

quick intro since my bio changed: i'm a fractional revenue leader. ~20 years in sales. most of it in the field selling MRO and OEM supplies, walking plants, job sites and maintenance offices. now i help busy B2B sales teams stay consistent: > outreach across email, linkedin and phone that runs every week > authority content built from real sales calls > clean handoffs between marketing, sales and delivery day to day that work runs through rising tides, where i'm principal. if your team works hard and the numbers still swing, that's the thing i fix.

i advise a handful of B2B sales teams at once. the hard part was never knowing what to tell them. it was remembering what each of them told me. here's exactly what i hand grok bot now: > every call recording → one running page per company > who was there, what they care about, what we agreed, next step + date > before my next call with that team → a short brief > after every meeting → recap + follow-ups sitting in my drafts > nothing goes to a customer until i've read it for years this lived in a notebook and my head. first time the documenting has kept up with the selling.

i'd add one to the forgive list: moving follow-up, call notes and pipeline review to agents. that's the work that disappears in a busy month anyway. what i wouldn't hand over yet: the conversation itself. customers can tell when nobody's listening.

if every interaction disappears after it happens, you're not compounding. you're restarting. the sales call taught you something. the onboarding taught you something. the reply to a post taught you something. if none of that reaches messaging next week, you didn't build distribution. you built more places to be busy. distribution should create memory. customer conversation → insight → better messaging → stronger next conversation. bookmark the week if any of it was useful. and if you want the fuller pass, save "Build Distribution That Compounds (Not More Places to Be Busy)" for monday.

i'm using grok bot for pipeline follow-up drafts that still sound like the last call. not more emails. better continuity. the last conversation had a phrase, a hesitation, a next step they actually agreed to. most follow-ups forget all three and start from a template. i keep those pieces in a note, then draft the follow-up from that note. same language. same thread. less "just checking in." volume without continuity is noise. continuity is what makes follow-up feel like a conversation that continued. steal this if your pipeline emails still sound like they never met the buyer.

stay close to sales longer than you think. the bigger the company gets, the easier it becomes to know more about the dashboard and less about the customer. hesitation language changes. proof asks change. the alternatives they compare you to change. if the founder only hears polished win stories, messaging drifts. if the founder still hears the raw phrases, distribution stays honest. you don't need to run every call forever. you need a short path from the call to the people who write the words. stay close enough that the language doesn't get washed out before it reaches the page.

6 signals that an objection is a system problem, not a one-off: 1. sales, marketing, and delivery all hear a version of it 2. it shows up in won deals and lost deals 3. a better script doesn't make it go away for long 4. the buyer phrase matches a gap in your website or deck 5. onboarding recreates the same hesitation after the close 6. three teams each "handled it" without updating the shared messaging one objection is feedback. the pattern is a signal. fix the positioning, the promise, or the handoff. the talk track gets easier after that. bookmark this for the next time someone asks for "better objection handling" and nothing else.

i'm using grok bot to turn call notes into messaging drafts the same week. not a new brainstorm. the conversation we already had, still usable. after a call i keep: the problem phrase the hesitation the proof ask the outcome they named then that note becomes a draft for a post, an email line, or a talk track before the week ends. call notes → content. same language. shorter path. less invention. steal this loop if your best insights still wait for a quarterly content meeting.

a simple performance loop for B2B content (and where grok bot sits in it): 1. post something grounded in a real conversation 2. watch for signal: reply, save, sales forward, quiet ignore 3. note what landed and what didn't, same day 4. feed that note into the next draft grok bot helps me keep step 3 from disappearing into a screenshot folder. the loop is still the hero. the tool just holds the residue. no quarterly "content rethink" required. just a short path from what happened to what you say next. bookmark this if your content still starts from a blank page every week.

7 questions that force sales, marketing, and product onto the same reality: 1. what exact phrase did the last serious buyer use for the problem? 2. what hesitation almost killed that deal? 3. what proof did they ask for that we didn't have ready? 4. what does marketing say we sell, in one sentence? 5. what does sales say we sell, in one sentence? 6. what does product think the buyer is hiring us to do? 7. where do those three answers diverge? put the answers on one page. argue about priority if you want. don't argue about what the customer said. bookmark this for monday. paste it into the meeting before anyone opens a slide deck.

good delivery should make the next sale easier. not by manufacturing testimonials. by leaving residue sales can actually use. after a clean engagement you should walk away with: the outcome language the customer used the friction that almost slowed onboarding the proof a future buyer will ask for the story that doesn't need a stretch if delivery and sales speak different dialects, every new deal starts from zero. delivery is not just "doing the work." it is the proof engine for whatever you claim upstream. save this if your handoffs still lose the language that closed the last deal.

the most expensive sentence in a growing company: “we already learned that.” it sounds like wisdom. it usually means the lesson never made it into the system. someone paid for the insight on a call, in onboarding, or in a lost deal. someone else is about to pay for it again because the note lived in one person's head. you don't need more workshops. you need fewer lessons that vanish after the meeting ends. memory is cheaper than rediscovery. most companies keep choosing rediscovery by accident.

channels that don't teach each other aren't distribution. they're just more places to be busy. linkedin learns something from a comment. the sales call never hears it. email gets a reply that clarifies the offer. the website still talks like last quarter. each channel gets smarter in isolation. the company does not. distribution is when one conversation leaves residue the next channel can use. until that loop exists, you're managing activity. not building an asset.