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GTM plays don't die in the market. They die in the ticket queue.
I watched a competitor close an account we'd worked for two months. Not because their product was better, but because they moved in 48 hours and we were waiting on a sprint. The signal was real. The strategy was ready. But our system wasn't built for it.
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Nine months ago, I started learning how to play poker.
I host a home game every Friday with my uncles, dad-in-law, and friends. It's nothing serious. $10 buy-in, no-limit Texas Hold'em.
But that's not where our story begins.
After losing a few weeks in a row, my competitive nature showed through. Yes, "it's all good fun." But I also wanted to win.
So I started watching YouTube videos of professional high-stakes players like Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu to learn the game. You've probably never heard of them. That's fine. Their names are not important. What is important is what I noticed in their videos.
My favorite videos are when Daniel talks through different hands. Why he bets, why he checks, and how he plays certain players to exploit their weaknesses.
And that's when I noticed words and phrases I've never heard before.
He's tilted — He's playing emotionally and making bad decisions
I got coolered — I lost despite playing correctly
It's a flip — You have roughly 50/50 chance of winning
The list goes on and on and on.
These are phrases that never come up unless you're in the poker world. A "normal" person would not understand them.
The same goes for SaaS. Specifically, the people in the industries we sell to.
I was reminded of this in my recent work with Orum, a calling system for sales pros. We were working on some new messaging and homepage copy.
I wanted to know how their prospects are currently operating. How do they make calls today?
They think that ripping dials still works. That they can use the volume approach... then hope for the best.
My sales ear perked up. It's been years since I heard "ripping dials." I was instantly dropped back into my AE days, where I was in the sales pit with my team dialing as many leads in a 60-block area as we could. It wasn't just an activity — it was part of our identity.
We're not "making calls." We were ripping dials. Hustling was part of our sales DNA.
Here's the thing...
Every profession and industry has a "secret code" they use without even thinking.
It's ingrained into their identity.
I'm not talking jargon like "supercharge" or "10x". Those are meaningless phrases anyone could write.
If you want to become an elite marketer, it's not enough to just "know your audience." You must infiltrate their world.
Fail to do so, and you'll hear feedback like "this sounds like marketing." That really means: I sense an outsider.
When that happens, you're screwed. Credibility and trust drop to the floor. And they're not going to keep watching, reading, listening to your stuff to see if you redeem yourself. They'll just bounce and find something else.
But once you crack this secret code, marketing becomes easier than you can imagine.
Because once you understand how they talk and why, you understand how they think. Then ideas, topics, and copy flow out of you like a broken fire hydrant.
I know firsthand because when I was at Gong, I was a salesperson selling to sales pros.
And even though today I'm a marketer marketing to marketers, I still do certain things to make sure I keep tabs on where my market is at. I need to know what problems they're running into today, how they're verbalizing it, and the emotions behind it.
How I find it:
I work with clients way outside GTM tech, so I built a repeatable system for gathering these insights without being in the trenches myself:
1. Reddit
Find the subreddits where your buyers actually hang out — not the polished LinkedIn version of themselves. This is where they vent, ask dumb questions, and say the quiet part loud. The language is raw and unfiltered. That's exactly what you want.
2. G2 Reviews
Specifically the 3-star reviews. They're the most honest. People describe their actual problem, in their own words, with the emotional charge still intact. You can almost lift the phrases directly into your copy.
3. Operator Content
The niche newsletters and podcasts your buyers subscribe to (not the mainstream stuff). The ones with 3,000 subscribers where the host is knee-deep in the work. Don't sleep on the comment sections either — that's where practitioners react in real time, unfiltered. Their vocabulary is your vocabulary.
Once you find it, write it down somewhere, anywhere. Notes app, Notion, a napkin. Doesn't matter.
Start collecting it.
Because the goal isn't just to sound like your market.
It's to think like them.
Do that, and you're writing becomes un-ignorable to the people who matter most.
Pen by Devin Reed
Founder, The Reeder
Follow me on LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok | Instagram
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