Scalantec co-founder Nicolas Schell joined The GTM Engineer Podcast, hosted by Saurav Gupta of SalesRobot. In 24 minutes they cover what a go-to-market automation agency actually builds, a conference campaign that turned a stage talk into 3,000 personalized landing pages, and where cold outreach and GTM engineering are heading.
"As long as a person has an email address, there's a way to contact that person. And as long as the person has a way to be contacted, we'll find a way to land in the inbox and not in the spam."
What a GTM automation agency builds
Nicolas describes Scalantec as a go-to-market automation agency that builds GTM operating systems for B2B companies. The team started as a classic lead gen agency sending outbound email and LinkedIn messages, and learned that not every company can become a commercial success through cold outreach. In his words, they did not qualify well enough in the beginning.
The criteria they arrived at over the last two years: B2B companies with real product-market fit, typically more than 50 employees, ideally five to ten salespeople, and for venture-funded companies Series A and above. Every engagement now starts with an in-depth strategy session on the client's status quo: systems, processes and tools. Only then do they decide which use cases make sense.
Typical use cases, as Nicolas lists them:
- Mapping the total addressable market and enriching the CRM with data points that help salespeople do a better job.
- Signal monitoring to improve the timing of outreach and to qualify better.
- Lead scoring that combines a fit score (right ICP, right persona) with an engagement score built from website visits, webinar signups, LinkedIn engagement and other touchpoints.
- Inbound lead enrichment and outbound.
- Sales enablement, for example automated reports that prepare salespeople for each meeting.
We automate everything that makes sense to automate and that can be automated within the go-to-market team.
The OMR campaign: cassettes, a QR code and 3,000 landing pages
Asked for the most creative Clay table the team built recently, Nicolas picks a campaign at OMR, the largest marketing conference in Germany. His co-founder Moritz Heininger, who has worked in B2B sales for about 20 years, spoke on stage in front of around 5,000 people together with AI influencer Jens Polomski.
During the talk, and on green cassettes with an AI-generated song handed out at the booth, they showed a QR code. Visitors entered their name and LinkedIn profile. A Clay table then researched everything relevant about each person across Google, LinkedIn, company websites, forums and social media, and generated a personalized landing page with offers tailored to them and their company, styled like an old Windows desktop from the early 2010s for a touch of nostalgia.
The result, according to Nicolas: around 3,000 scans, and with them 3,000 email addresses of potential clients.
From McKinsey to 150 cold calls a day
Nicolas studied computer science and business at a technical university in Munich and planned a career in professional services. He joined McKinsey, but did not see the value he was creating. His reasoning for leaving: if he was going to work those hours, he wanted to do it for something of his own that he believes in.
Sales had been there all along. During and after his studies he worked through the whole cycle, from SDR work to closing, as a full-cycle sales manager: 150 cold calls a day, manual prospecting, hand-built lead lists, and manual outreach where he searched LinkedIn for an angle to get the meeting. That is where he saw the pain of manual sales work first hand. He later met Moritz at a sales conference and founded Scalantec with him.
Why Clay took off
While freelancing in recruiting outreach, Nicolas tested more than 50 sales tools. Clay stood out for two reasons: native integrations where you only pay credits for the data you actually need, since no single database has it all, and Claygent, which made a web research agent easy to use.
His take is that Clay did not revolutionize the technology, but it did revolutionize community building and accessibility for non-engineers. Nicolas is the Clay community lead for Berlin and also organizes events in Munich, once a quarter, with around 100 attendees, many of whom had never built an automation before. He also credits Clay's solution partner program, similar to what Salesforce and other CRM vendors do, for making sure partners in the ecosystem get business too.
Why cold outreach won't die
People have been calling outbound dead for years. Nicolas agrees that reply rates have dropped and bounce rates have risen compared with his first campaigns about eight years ago, but he does not believe cold outreach will disappear. Even when AI assistants sit in front of every inbox and sort incoming mail, emails that are genuinely relevant will still get through.
The fundamental mistake, in his view, is trying to sell something that does not solve a real pain and hoping volume fixes it. Volume does fix a lot, he admits, but agencies should focus on companies with a good offer. LinkedIn is the channel he sees growing: Scalantec gets much higher reply rates there, especially for senders who post content and have a strong profile, and when the outreach is conversational and simply starts a conversation.
GTM engineers will become architects
Nicolas expects the fulfillment side of GTM engineering to become a commodity. MCP servers and tools like Sculptor from Clay already let you describe what you want and have it built for you. What gains importance is the architecture behind it: the logic of the system, and the ability to understand a business, its ICP and its strategy, and to translate those needs into good automated workflows.
"Most important in the future will be that you really understand, like listen to people, understand them, understand their problems, and come up with really good strategies."
That is also how Scalantec hires. With a team of around ten people, Nicolas says they look for team members with good social skills who listen and understand clients, not only people who know the tools.
Advice for new GTM engineers
- Get your hands dirty. Try things and break things. Videos help, but you learn it by doing it.
- Join an agency as a shortcut. You see many companies and problems and learn from people who solve them every day.
- Think before you build. Work out the system, strategy and logic first. Don't automate for the sake of automating.
- Think like the client. Nicolas has interviewed candidates who look good on paper and can build in Clay, but do not deliver value because they lack business understanding. An agency should be a sparring partner, not just a builder executing instructions.
FAQ: GTM engineering and cold outreach
Which companies does Scalantec work with?
B2B companies with real product-market fit, typically more than 50 employees and ideally five to ten salespeople. Venture-funded companies are usually Series A and above.
Is cold outreach dead?
Not according to Nicolas. Reply rates have dropped and bounce rates have risen, but as long as people have an email address they can be reached, and relevant messages still get replies. LinkedIn outreach currently gets much higher reply rates, especially when it is conversational.
What made Clay take off?
Native integrations where you only pay credits for the data you need, the Claygent web research agent, and above all its community building, which made GTM automation accessible to people who are not engineers.
What should a new GTM engineer focus on?
Learning by doing, ideally at an agency where you see many different problems, and thinking about system, strategy and logic before building. Business understanding is what separates a great GTM engineer from a mediocre one.
How would this work in your team?
In a free 30-minute call we look at what it would look like on your stack.
This article grew out of a podcast appearance by Nicolas Schell, co-founder and CEO of Scalantec. Before Scalantec he worked at McKinsey and Celonis. Today he and his team build outbound and RevOps systems for B2B companies.