The Aditude Playbook: How to Turn Slack Communities into Enterprise Sales Pipeline Without Being ‘That Guy’

Most enterprise sales strategies revolve around cold outreach and formal presentations. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Aditude CEO Jared Siegal revealed a different approach: turning Slack communities into a source of enterprise deals without ever making a direct pitch.

The Power of Slack Communities in Ad Tech

“There’s a tremendous amount of slack communities,” Jared explained. “I’m proud part of like six or seven really large groups where people are asking all types of very specific questions every day.” In an industry where trust is everything, these communities have become crucial networking spaces.

The ad tech world is surprisingly intimate. As Jared notes, “The actual industry of serving ads online is not that big, right. It’s a pretty small community in general, maybe five to 10,000 people, at least here in the United States. And so everyone kind of knows each other.”

The Anti-Pitch Strategy

Jared’s approach in these communities is counterintuitive: “I never actually pitch act. I will, in fact, sometimes go out of my way to answer questions that make it so they don’t need to use us.” Instead of trying to convert every interaction into a sales opportunity, he focuses on being “so friendly and so informative that people do reach out to me, or at least they remember me.”

This strategy creates powerful delayed returns. “I had a call today with a pretty large publisher. Oh, I remember all the questions you were helping me answer on slack a few months ago,” Jared shared. The key is patience – building recognition and trust over time rather than pushing for immediate conversions.

Time Investment vs. ROI

For founders worried about the time investment, Jared’s calculation is straightforward: “It’s not like I’m spending hours and hours a day doing this. Right? My average day is probably 16 17 hours of work. If I spend 20 minutes a day answering random questions on these different slack channels, that’s a good use of my time.”

Building Trust Through Technical Leadership

The strategy works because it demonstrates both expertise and character. By helping potential competitors solve problems, Aditude establishes itself as what Jared calls “the nice company in the space, right. Not a company that’s just out for yourself. Be a company that is trying to protect and fight for the publishers and make money that way.”

This approach has created relationships so deep that some publishers have literally written Aditude into their wills. As Jared explains, “We become very ingrained with these clients day to day businesses and we become almost members of their team as well.”

The Broader Strategy

Community engagement is just one part of Aditude’s relationship-focused GTM strategy. They’re investing $200,000 in experiential events, taking “45 or so publishers” to Disney World for three days of relationship building. It’s all part of the same philosophy: create genuine connections first, let business follow naturally.

For B2B founders, particularly those selling to enterprise customers, Aditude’s community-based approach offers an alternative to traditional sales tactics. The key is to think in terms of relationships rather than transactions, and to measure success not by immediate conversions but by the trust you build over time.

As Jared puts it, sometimes the best way to sell is to help someone not need to buy from you – at least, not yet.