Leading a GTM team

Should my outbound team sit in India while my buyers are in the US?

The short answer

Yes for most of the funnel, and this is a genuine structural advantage rather than a compromise. Indian SaaS companies have built pipeline into the US for years with research, list building, sequencing and first-touch SDR work run from Bengaluru or Chennai at a fraction of US cost, then put a small number of senior closers in market. The parts that genuinely need to be local are late-stage enterprise relationships, on-site executive meetings and anything where a buyer wants someone in the room. Do not split it by seniority alone, split it by which conversations need presence. And fix the working hours honestly: an overlap window with the US is a real cost your team pays, so pay them for it.

Go deeper, your way

5 hand-picked resources, 5 India-specific, 5 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

🎧 Podcast
✓ Link checked India Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Sharath has built two enterprise companies (Observe, Sanas) with engineering in India and buyers in the US, and is direct about founder-led sales being non-negotiable for the first customers. Good on what actually has to move to the US and what does not.

2X SaaS Founder: How To Sell Global Tech Products From India

On The Neon Show by Siddhartha Ahluwalia with Sharath Keshava Narayana 90 min listen

2X SaaS Founder: How To Sell Global Tech Products From India
Watch on YouTube neon.fund →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Built from a masterclass with Mohit Garg, former CRO at MindTickle, and written for cross-border companies selling from India, including how to structure SDR and AE teams for cost efficiency. Covers qualification, MEDDIC scoring, pipeline reviews and loss reviews in one place.

SaaS Playbook: Sales

From SeedToScale by Accel by Rachit Parekh long read

Open seedtoscale.com →

The same ground, at another level

How outbound that works reads from a different seat.

I have never sent a cold email in my life. Where do I even start? Start with twenty companies, not two thousand. Pick people you can describe precisely (job title, company size, the specific problem you think they... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → My cold calls die in the first ten seconds. What do I actually say when they pick up? Stop asking whether you caught them at a bad time, because it hands them an exit and Gong's data across hundreds of millions of calls shows it cuts... Doing the work 4 resources → What are the best outbound teams doing in 2026 that the rest of us are not? They treat outbound as an engineering problem, not a headcount problem. The best teams have someone technical sitting inside GTM (the GTM engineer ... How the best do it 4 resources →

Terms in this answer

Sales Development Rep

People also ask

I have never sent a cold email in my life. Where do I even start? Start with twenty companies, not two thousand. Pick people you can describe precisely (job title, company size, the specific problem you think they... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → I am a founder in India and my buyers are in the US. How do I get a stranger twelve time zones away to reply? Distance is not your problem, credibility is. A US buyer who has never heard of you needs a reason to believe you understand their world, so lead w... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → My cold calls die in the first ten seconds. What do I actually say when they pick up? Stop asking whether you caught them at a bad time, because it hands them an exit and Gong's data across hundreds of millions of calls shows it cuts... Doing the work 4 resources → How do I build a target list that is worth working instead of scraping ten thousand random companies? A list is a hypothesis about who has your problem badly enough to pay, so write the hypothesis down before you open any tool. Start from the accoun... Doing the work 4 resources → When do I hire SDRs, and how many AEs can one SDR feed? Hire SDRs after you can point at a message and a segment that reliably produce meetings, not before. If a founder or AE cannot book meetings from c... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → What are the best outbound teams doing in 2026 that the rest of us are not? They treat outbound as an engineering problem, not a headcount problem. The best teams have someone technical sitting inside GTM (the GTM engineer ... How the best do it 4 resources →

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