The #1 channel for revenue teams? Network and intros.

Go-To-Network (GTN) is a growth strategy built on the relationships your company already has. Instead of starting cold, you map the connections of your employees, investors, advisors, customers and partners, then reach target buyers, candidates or investors through people they already know and trust.

It sits alongside Go-To-Market: GTM decides who to sell to and what to say, while GTN decides how you get in the door.

AI has made outreach almost free to produce, so inboxes are flooded and reply rates keep falling. Buyers respond to people they trust, not to volume.

Recent research backs this up: network and intros rank as the number one B2B GTM channel, with 62% of companies calling it core, while digital ads and cold outreach are described as oversaturated.

Referrals are one result of GTN, but GTN is a repeatable system rather than luck. It means knowing every relationship across your company, scoring how strong each one is, and deliberately using them for every priority account, not waiting for a happy customer to mention you.

No. Most teams run GTN first on their highest-value accounts, then fall back to outbound when no warm path exists. Inbound still matters too, and a warm intro often converts inbound interest faster.

It works best wherever trust matters and deals are significant: B2B companies with larger contracts, founders doing early sales, VCs and angels sourcing deals, and recruiters hiring senior people.

The research shows 51% of companies selling deals above $50k a year put network and intros in their top three channels.

A warm intro borrows trust that already exists. The buyer gives you attention because someone they respect vouched for you, so meetings happen faster, conversations start further along, and fewer deals stall on credibility.

That's also why founder-led sales (a relationship-driven motion) is the primary GTM motion for 26% of companies, ahead of both inbound and outbound.

Founders usually start it because their networks open the first doors. As the company grows, sales leaders, RevOps and partnerships teams make it repeatable: they build the process, track intro requests and make sure every rep can use the whole company's network, not just their own.

Make it specific and easy. Explain who you want to meet and why it's relevant to them, write a short forwardable note the connector can send as-is, and always give the connector an easy way to say no.

Give before you ask: share help, intros and useful insight with your network so the relationship isn't one-way.

Track the number of intro requests, how many turn into meetings, and pipeline and revenue sourced or influenced by a warm path. Compare win rate, deal size and sales cycle against cold-sourced deals, that comparison is usually what convinces leadership.

1. Pick your top target accounts. 2. Collect connections from your team, investors and advisors. 3. Find overlaps between those networks and your target list. 4. Rank the strongest paths and start asking for intros.

Doing this by hand works for a few accounts. Tools like The Swarm map your whole network automatically and show the warmest path into any company.