A B2B services firm gets pipeline it can see by making sure the checks a referred CTO already runs come back clean, and by putting every source of a lead on one Monday page. Throughline reads the firm’s CRM, calendar, review profiles and site every morning, asks the assistants what a founder hears when they look for a team like this one, and drafts the case studies, review requests and pages that answer it.
This page is for a dev shop, design studio or nearshore engineering team of ten to a hundred people, in Pune, Kraków, Lviv, Medellín or São Paulo, selling to seed-to-Series-B founders and CTOs in the US and Europe. Most work arrives by referral. Some money goes every year to the rest: a featured directory listing, an outbound agency for a quarter, a run of LinkedIn ads, an Upwork profile. Projects are large and slow to close, the founder sells, and nobody can say which of those lines produced a conversation.
What does a referred CTO check before the first call?
A referral starts the conversation; the buyer’s checks decide whether it happens. This is the path a referred founder walks before replying, and what they find at each step for a firm that has not touched its public record in a year.
- 1Searches the firm’s nameThe homepage and a case study from three years agoOut of date
- 2Opens the Clutch profileFour reviews, the newest one two years oldOut of date
- 3Asks an assistant whether the firm is reliableAn answer built from the firm’s own site, with no third-party proofOut of date
- 4Asks for a team like this oneThree other firms named, from two comparison pagesOut of date
- 5Looks for ISO 27001, GDPR and IP termsNamed on the site, with a contact to request the reportCurrent
- 6Books the callA Calendly page that asks where they heard of the firmCurrent
Which tools and places does Throughline read for a services firm?
The firm’s own record comes first. HubSpot or Pipedrive, or the spreadsheet that stands in for a CRM, gives every lead and the stage it reached. Calendly gives every call and the answer to “how did you hear about us”, which is where a referral gets written down. Search Console and Google Analytics show which case study a buyer read before writing, and LinkedIn shows which of the founder’s posts the buyer engaged with.
Then the places the buyer checks: the Clutch and GoodFirms profiles, G2 where the firm has one, and the comparison pages and “top nearshore teams” lists that rank firms by country and stack. And the assistants. Every week Throughline asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity the questions a CTO types before a shortlist, such as which React team in Latin America has shipped fintech products, whether a team in Poland can sign a GDPR data processing agreement, or which firms hold ISO 27001. It records who is named, and which pages each answer was built from.
The scouts watch the buyers’ side: which startups in the firm’s sectors raised this month, and which are posting for engineers, since teams tend to get hired in the weeks after a round.
What does it find in a pipeline that runs on referrals?
The numbers are small, a few conversations a quarter, so every finding carries its count. In the first month the findings are about the checks and the spend: which check a referred buyer fails today, and which line of spend moved with a held call.
Held calls moved with the weeks a delivered project became a case study on the site, not with the months the outbound agency ran.
Branded searches rose after every referral, and every assistant answer about the firm by name says it has no recent third-party reviews.
In the weeks after a run of fintech seed rounds, the assistants name three teams for nearshore fintech work; the firm has shipped four fintech products and is not one of them.
What do the agents draft for the firm?
The work a head of growth at a firm this size would assign, if there were one. Case studies in the shape CTOs read: the problem, the stack, the team, the weeks, the result and a named client quote. Review requests timed to the end of each project. A security and data page that answers the ISO, GDPR and IP questions before the call. A comparison page in the firm’s own words, and a short clip from a delivered demo. It does not run cold outbound; where the firm already pays for outbound, Throughline reads what it produces and puts it on the same Monday page as everything else.
The founder approves the queue in one sitting a week. Nothing goes to a client or a buyer without that yes. Every page is put to the questions buyers ask before it goes live, and read again a week later to see whether the assistants now quote it.
- PageCase study: a fintech product, four engineers, ten weeks$6.40
- EmailReview requests to five clients at project close$4.20
- PageSecurity and data page: ISO 27001, GDPR, IP$6.40
- PageComparison page in the firm’s own words$6.40
- Video45s from a delivered demo$10.80
- SocialTwo founder posts from the case study$1.80
One week of the queue for a firm of thirty. If a draft takes more runs to get right, those runs are on us, never on the bill.
Which numbers move, and by how much?
A firm that lives on referrals rarely sees one number: how many conversations started somewhere other than a client’s recommendation. With Throughline it sits on the Monday brief, next to the line of spend it moved with. Over a quarter the checks a referred buyer runs come back current, the firm is named for the stacks and sectors it is best at, and the inbound that is not a referral grows from a stray email a quarter toward a few conversations a month. How fast depends on how much shipped work can become proof: a firm with twenty delivered projects moves faster than one with five.
| The number | How it moves | What the size of the move depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Conversations that were not a referral | From a stray email a quarter toward a few a month | How many shipped projects can become case studies |
| Named for the stacks and sectors the firm is best at | From absent to named for its strongest two or three | How specific the firm’s pages are about stack, sector and country |
| Reviews a referred buyer can check | From a few old ones to a current profile, one per finished project | How many clients will write one when asked at project close |
| Cost per held call, by line of spend | Known every month for the listing, the outbound and the ads | Whether each line’s leads reach the CRM with a source |
| Days from a funding round to the firm’s first touch | From never to within the week the round is announced | How narrow the firm’s sectors are |
Referrals stay the best channel. The point is that the referred buyer finds something good when they check, and the buyer nobody referred finds the firm at all.
What happens in the first thirty days?
- Week 1Throughline reads the CRM, Calendly, Search Console, Analytics and the founder’s LinkedIn, and pulls the Clutch and GoodFirms profiles. The weekly watch of buyer questions starts.
- Week 2The first briefing: where last quarter’s calls came from, what each line of spend moved with, and which checks a referred buyer fails today.
- Week 3The first case study, the security page and the review requests are drafted and approved in one sitting.
- Week 4The first receipt: what shipped, what it cost, what moved, and the funding rounds worth a note this month.
Questions people ask
We already pay for a directory listing. What changes?
The listing stays. Throughline keeps the profile current with reviews timed to the end of each project, and reads whether the calls that mention the listing become held calls, so it is judged on the pipeline it produces.
Does Throughline run cold outbound for us?
No. It drafts the proof that makes referrals and outbound work, and it reads what any outbound you already run produces. Nothing goes to a buyer without your yes.
We are based outside the US. Does that matter to the assistants?
The assistants name firms from the pages and reviews they can read, wherever the firm is based. Pages that state time-zone overlap, English, certifications and IP terms plainly answer the questions buyers ask most.
Fewer projects are going round. Why invest in being found now?
Buyers still shortlist teams before they call. When there are fewer projects, being on that shortlist for the work you are best at decides who gets the conversation.
Where do we start?
With the Visibility Report: a week of the questions your buyers ask, and who the assistants name. The call after it sets the scope.