Maahir Bhatia — business development & GTM — Lille, France

Most of a market is noise. I get paid to find the signal.

I'm an MIB candidate at IESEG applying for business development and GTM roles. Rather than write about how I'd prospect, I ran a compressed version of week one at three companies — a real ICP, a real target list, real sequence copy, and the objections I'd expect. Each build is below, including what I'd change about it now.

03Companies
30Accounts researched
00Asked me to

Open a build

The builds

Three accounts — expand any row

I keep my own applications the way I'd keep a pipeline. Each one expands into the thesis behind the build, what's inside the document, and the part I'd revise today. Target lists were pulled from live job boards and public listings — accurate to the week they were made, which is the point of a signal and also its shelf life.

The thesis

Carbon Maps' own client list is the ICP. Leclerc, Coopérative U, Żabka, Sodiaal, Andros — all EU food businesses carrying hundreds of SKUs, all being asked to prove carbon per product rather than one company-wide number.

So I reverse-engineered that shape and went looking for it elsewhere: large-volume retailers, dairy co-operatives, branded manufacturers. Then I ranked them by which regulation was about to land on whose desk.

Signal-led, not calendar-led The lead email isn't timed to my sending schedule. It's timed to PPWR's first obligations — because that's the week the problem becomes someone's job.

What I'd change now

That PPWR hook had a shelf life of days — deliberately, but it means the document expires. Rebuilding today, I'd run the same accounts off CSRD filing cycles, which stay live for months. The other honest gap: I built the list by hand. I haven't run Clay in production, and closing that is the first thing I'd want from week one.

Read the build Download the tracker

What's inside

  • An ICP reverse-engineered from the public client roster — company type, SKU footprint, regulatory exposure
  • A four-signal framework: CSRD, SBTi, PPWR and SKU change, each ranked by urgency
  • 12 EU target accounts with a written signal thesis for each
  • Three-email sequence, LinkedIn note, cold-call opener, objection handling
  • A companion Excel tracker in the columns I'd keep in a live CRM

Why this one first

It's the only build with a framework underneath the list rather than a list on its own — and the only one that ships with a working artifact attached.

The thesis

The buyer isn't "tech companies." It's a team with an on-call rotation that's already understaffed for the reliability load it carries — and that is publicly visible.

A live SRE req is a company admitting, in writing, that the pain has outgrown the team. So every account on the list had one open the week I built it. The pain isn't theoretical; it's the reason the job posting exists.

One variable per test Every A/B variant has its hypothesis written down before the copy. Rewrite the whole message when replies are low and you never learn which line fixed it.

What I'd change now

The list came from live boards, so it's sharp the week it was made and stale after — I'd date-stamp it visibly rather than say "researched today." I'd also cut one of the two caveats about not having Clay or Sales Navigator. Saying it once is honest. Saying it twice reads as apologising before anyone objected.

Read the build

What's inside

  • A deliberately narrow ICP: Series A–B, 50–500 people, observability stack already running
  • 8 companies with a live SRE, DevOps or platform req, each with the reason it qualifies
  • A three-touch LinkedIn sequence with two competing opener hooks
  • A three-touch email sequence with an A/B subject line test
  • A Monday–Wednesday–Friday testing loop matching the cadence in their own job post

The line I'd lead with

An AI teammate that catches and triages production incidents before your engineers have to — so on-call stops burning hours on noise.

The thesis

The gym pays nothing. That single fact rewrites the whole call — there's no budget objection to overcome, so the resistance isn't how much, it's why another app.

Which means the job isn't pushing through cost. It's making the yes feel small. And it means calling independents, not chains: at a boutique studio, the person who picks up the phone is the person who can say yes.

I've been on the other side of this call A year running my own freelance coaching business, working in and with gyms, handling real objections about price and time. Most people calling into this market have never stood in a gym owner's shoes.

What I'd change now

I'd cut Third Space. I flagged it in the document as a stretch call — but a target list you've already argued against is a short list pretending to be longer. I'd also drop "ten" as a goal. The number was doing work the accounts should have been doing.

Read the build

What's inside

  • An ICP built around who can decide on the spot: independents and boutiques, one to five sites
  • 10 real London gyms and studios, each with the reason it fits
  • A full cold-call script — opener, pitch, discovery question, and the ask
  • Five objections I expect, answered without going defensive
  • Pipeline stages, a fixed follow-up cadence, and what I'd report weekly

The number I'd watch

Calls-to-meeting conversion. It tells you whether the pitch needs fixing, not just whether you're dialling enough.

How I work

Three rules I hold to
01 / Narrow beats big

Eight accounts you can write a true sentence about

A vague ICP produces a list that looks impressive and converts nowhere, because the message can never get specific enough to land. I'd rather defend eight names than pad forty.

02 / Hypothesis first

Write what you expect before you write the copy

Otherwise a result is just a number. Change one variable per test, call the winner only when the sample is big enough to trust, then make it the new default.

03 / Name the gap

Say what you haven't done before someone finds it

I haven't run Clay in production. These scripts haven't been tested on a live call. Naming that costs nothing and makes everything around it credible.

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