How Guru delivered $3M in closed won without an SDR team

Moving upmarket with no SDR function

After growing for nearly a decade with a product-led motion, Guru moved to a sales-led GTM strategy as the product got more complex and the best-fit customers trended upmarket. They were targeting buyers in the mid-market and above range, with especially strong traction in regulated industries.

Reaching those buyers at scale required a level of targeting Guru didn't have. Outbound was limited to whatever outreach AEs could fit between strategic deals. There was no BDR function and no way to run targeted campaigns tied to the moments that mattered to ICP buyers.

"Our account executives were doing manual outbound which took focus away from strategic, enterprise deals."
— Devon O'Dwyer, Business Operations Analyst, Guru

The gaps were more pronounced as the company moved upmarket:

• Web and account-level signals weren't fueling outreach: Site visits, new hires at target accounts, and champion job changes happened daily, but Guru had no system to convert them into pipeline.
• Closed-lost prospects had no path back into the funnel: Guru ships monthly product releases, so prospects who might now be a fit weren’t being re-engaged 
• LinkedIn engagement wasn't translating to pipeline: Guru's CEO consistently drew strong ICP engagement, but the interactions never made it into outbound.
• Content moments weren't paired with targeted outreach: Workshops, webinars, white papers, and product launches created a clear reason to reach out, but actual engagement was limited.

Without a structured way to identify ICP buyers, deliver targeted messaging, and act on buying signals, Guru’s up-market push had a ceiling.

A full outbound motion run by one analyst backed by Unify professional services

While Guru initially brought Unify on to capture website signals, they quickly expanded the scope to leverage Unify for holistic, signal-driven outbound. This initiative was championed by Devon O'Dwyer, Guru’s Lead Business Operations Analyst. While she was one of the team’s sharpest operator’s, Devon had no prior background in marketing or outbound operations.

Unify’s Professional Services team, led by Cole Courson, came on-site to run a strategic session around Guru's goals and translate those into a play library Devon could operate, extend, and build on. Cole has stayed close since, running weekly standups alongside working sessions for messaging reviews, ROI syncs, and Salesforce integration work.

"Cole has been hands-on in building workflows, creating net-new messaging from scratch, and keeping our deliverability as strong as it should be. It's like having an accountability partner who's ahead of the metrics every day."
— Devon O'Dwyer, Business Operations Analyst, Guru

With Unify in place, Guru built a mix of always-on plays and content-tied campaigns to:

• Run web intent plays: When an ICP company hits Guru's site, a play automatically enrolls the visitor and other relevant personas at that account into a sequence.
• Systematically re-engage closed-lost opportunities: Monthly product releases flow into plays that re-surface prospects whose needs are now addressed by Guru's latest product capabilities. 
• Act on engagement with founder content: When prospects interact with content from Guru's CEO, sequences fire automatically with follow-up tied to the content theme.
• Expand reach with industry-specific lookalikes: When sales flags a recent win in a vertical, lookalike plays go live to find similar companies.

What really made this program sing was Unify's Professional Services team. They brought expertise & best practices from high-performing outbound programs, and translated them into plays tailored to Guru's ICP, verticals, and product cadence. That meant Devon wasn't building from scratch. She was refining a world-class outbound playbook to match Guru's business.

$3.17M in closed won from a net-new outbound motion

The combination of Devon with Unify and their Professional Services team let Guru stand up an outbound motion that didn't require an SDR hire nor consume Devon's full focus. Within months, the motion was producing pipeline from accounts Guru had never reached, giving the team confidence in their system as the ICP moved further upmarket.

"We're sending over 200,000 emails a month, without a full-time SDR." — Devon O'Dwyer, Business Operations Analyst, Guru

• $3.17M in Closed Won from Unify-influenced accounts: 132 opportunities were won after Unify activity kicked off the cycle, with 83% being first time engagements. 
• 200K+ emails sent per month at a 50%+ open rate: Guru achieved volume that would require a full SDR team to produce, with open rates well above industry benchmarks.
• 266 positive replies over 12 months: Averaging 22 positive responses per month feeding directly into the sales pipeline.
• 18 demo-link opportunities in 45 days: Roughly one opportunity every 2.5 days created from demo CTAs in emails.
• 81 sequences and 96 plays managed part-time: A full outbound motion is run alongside Devon's broader GTM operations work, instead of dominating it.

What started as filling an outbound gap is now one of Guru's core growth channels, owned by one person without becoming a full-time job.

Recommendation for Others

Guru's experience shows that a small team moving upmarket doesn't have to hire an SDR function to run a serious outbound motion. Unify scales execution, while their Professional Services team fills the strategic and hands-on gaps a lean operator can't cover alone.

For Devon, the case for Unify’s Professional Services comes down to two things: access to best practices from high-performing companies, and an execution partner willing to get into the platform and build alongside you.

Looking Ahead

The team is rolling out Unify to account executives for one-to-one outbound. Those plays will layer on top of the scalable always-on motion already running.

Guru also plans to use Unify for customer outbound tied to product signals. When a customer isn't adopting a specific feature, the team wants to send help, resources, or a personalized call offer before the gap becomes a churn risk. Unify’s new product analytics integrations and API-driven path from Guru's Hightouch and Redshift stack will let Guru act on product signals the same way they act on web intent today.

When a customer is struggling to adopt a feature, we want to get ahead of it with automatic resources or a personalized call offer. That's where I'd love to take this next."
— Devon O'Dwyer, Business Operations Analyst, Guru