Most founder-led teams commit to a motion nobody has validated: an ICP nobody tested, a message nobody scored, a first hire who inherits the guesswork. Stage 1, a six-week Sprint, proves who buys, what message lands, and which channel reaches them. Stage 2 runs that proven motion every week. You stay the closer.
No pitch. The teardown is yours either way.
See how the Sprint worksProve the ICP, message, and channel with real replies. Produces the playbook.
Run that exact playbook every week, in your stack. Produces the pipeline.
Already getting replies from a motion that works? Start at Stage 2. Never proven it in market? Start at Stage 1.
First 100 demos. First paying customers. Investors in the next round. What an earlier Congruity outbound system produced, before it was a productized offer. In both cases the founder stayed the closer, and Congruity built and ran the motion behind the numbers.
The Sales Engine is designed and run by Michael McAtavey: former enterprise sales leader with PE and VC investing experience, MBA in corporate finance from UNC. Every list, sequence, and reply is his work, not a delivery team's. That is why he takes on a limited number of clients at a time.
More about MichaelYou don't have a sales problem. You have an unproven motion.
A customer escalates, a board doc is due, a live deal needs you on the call. Outbound gets bumped, because it's the one thing only you can decide to do and the one thing no one is waiting on today. So the pipeline that should be filling six months out goes quiet, and you feel it a quarter later when there is nothing in the funnel and you're the reason. The usual fix is to hire your way out of it. But a failed VP Sales hire runs roughly $300K fully loaded, plus about $100K in pipeline that never got built, and the average VP Sales lasts 19 months, hired to discover the very things you should know first: who actually buys, what message lands, and which channel reaches them. You're being asked to staff a motion nobody has confirmed exists yet.
The motion only moves when you personally move it, and you're the most expensive, most constrained resource in the building.
A VP Sales hired to find your ICP is a six-figure research project with a title, and the meter starts the day they sign, not the day the motion works.
An SDR is a 3-to-6 month bet to recruit, ramp, and manage, $120K to $180K all-in before you know it works, and a junior rep who can't write in your voice.
Most Sprints run six weeks, timeboxed; the entry tier compresses to 3 to 4 weeks, and extended multi-segment scopes run 10 to 12.
The Sprint replaces a year of expensive guessing with a few weeks of evidence. You walk away knowing what works, not guessing, with warm pipeline already in motion and the asset that proves it, for a fraction of one quarter of a VP Sales salary.
Hypothesis workshop and ground-truth buyer interviews
Infrastructure build
Live tests in two waves, scored against real replies
Synthesis and handoff
Locked as the single source of truth before any send.
Separate sending domain, warmed inboxes, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC verified before volume.
Apollo lists refreshed monthly and bounce-checked before load.
Peer-toned, written by Michael, with deep research, analysis, and structured A/B testing.
Enrollment, suppression, pipeline stages, and reporting in your instance.
Positive replies routed to you same-day, plus weekly reporting and a working call.
The proven motion, in your stack and yours to keep.
Once the motion is validated, the Engine runs it, operated by the same senior person who built it, not a junior rep. It runs on your Apollo and HubSpot stack, so the work lives in your instance and stays yours. Roughly two weeks from signature to live volume, because deliverability is done right rather than fast: inboxes warmed over 10 to 14 days, and a stop-and-fix protocol with named thresholds that auto-pauses volume rather than push through and burn your reputation. Michael takes on a limited number of Engines at a time, so the copy and the judgment stay his.
Knowing what the Engine is not is how you know it'll do what it says.
The real competition isn't another agency. It's the job rec you were about to open.
An agency takes the ICP you hand it and gets paid to send volume against it, right or wrong. Here, no motion runs at volume until it survives a live validation test, and there are no meeting-count promises we'd have to spam your market to keep.
A 3-to-6 month bet to recruit, ramp, and manage, $120K to $180K all-in before you know it works, and a junior rep who can't write in your voice. Or de-risk it: run a Sprint first, and the hire you do make ramps against a validated segment.
They execute the playbook you hand them, so if the playbook is wrong they execute the wrong one at impressive scale. The Sprint is how you get a right playbook first.
No fractional-CXO theater, no quota, no title to manage, just the motion operated.
Ex enterprise sales leader, ex PE and VC, MBA in corporate finance from UNC. An operator-plus-investor lens applied to your pipeline.
Founder-led B2B companies selling into established businesses, with no formal outbound motion built yet. If it's not you, I'll say so on the call rather than sell you the wrong thing.
Validate at a fixed scope. Operate on a monthly retainer. Sprints credit into the Engine.
The range tracks how much you test: account volume, message variants, and personas. Most Sprints run six weeks, timeboxed; the entry tier compresses to 3 to 4 weeks, and extended multi-segment scopes run 10 to 12.
Start here if the motion isn't validated anywhere yet. You graduate into the Engine with its setup fee credited 50 percent.
Scaled to segments, personas, and, for portfolios, the number of companies operated, plus a one-time setup.
Founding rate: the first two engagements run at a reduced monthly rate in exchange for a referenceable case study. Two slots.
Compare either rung to getting the first sales hire wrong: roughly $300K fully loaded plus about $100K of pipeline lost while you find out, across an average VP Sales tenure of 19 months.
A first sales hire is a six-figure bet on a motion nobody has validated yet. Validate it first and the hire inherits a segment, a message, and a channel that already work. If you'd rather not carry the headcount, the Engine runs the proven motion for you. Tell me where your motion stands. If it's proven, we start operating it. If it's not, we validate it first. And if neither is a fit, I'll tell you straight rather than sell you the wrong thing.
No pitch. The teardown is yours either way. If it is not a fit, I'll tell you in the first ten minutes.