In our last lesson, we talked about how AI is reshaping go-to-market strategies and the importance of approaching AI implementation the right way. Today, we're introducing a framework that will help you organize your thinking around AI in your GTM strategy.
If you've been using Clay, you're probably already familiar with our FETE framework – Find, Enrich, Transform, Export. It's the foundation of how we think about workflows in Clay.
But as AI becomes more central to GTM, we need an evolution of this framework.
Enter FETC ("Fetch"): Find, Enrich, Transform, and Create.
🔄 From FETE to FETC: The Evolution
For those who might need a quick refresher, the FETE framework breaks down every workflow into four straightforward steps:
- Find your initial data, whether from your CRM, prospecting tools, or Clay's database
- Enrich that data with additional information like contact details and firmographics
- Transform the data by cleaning, structuring, or summarizing it
- Export the results to your CRM, sequencing tools, or other platforms
FETC keeps most of this structure but with one major change: We replace "Export" with "Create."
With AI, you can do more than just move data between systems. You can create targeted deliverables like:
- Personalized sales sequences
- Custom proposal decks
- Account-specific battle cards
- Data-driven territory plans
- Tailored competitive analyses
- Industry-specific value propositions
That's what makes this approach with AI different. In traditional workflows, you're concerned with getting data from point A to point B.
In AI-powered workflows, you're using that data to create something entirely new: whether that's personalized messaging, custom landing pages, or strategic insights.
🎪 Breaking Down the FETC Framework
Find: Discovering High-Value Prospects
In the AI context, Finding goes beyond simple database queries or list building. AI allows you to discover prospects based on subtle signals and complex combinations of attributes that would be impossible to filter for manually.
For example, instead of just targeting "SaaS companies with 100+ employees," AI can help you identify "SaaS companies that recently changed their pricing model, are actively hiring customer success roles, and have mentioned compliance challenges in their quarterly reports."
This level of precision targeting is only possible with AI analyzing multiple data sources and recognizing specific patterns.
Enrich: Adding Depth and Context
Traditional enrichment might add standard firmographics or contact details. AI-powered enrichment creates custom data points that don't exist in any database.
For instance, Claygent can visit a company's website, analyze their product pages, and determine whether they offer a free trial, what their pricing tiers look like, or whether they highlight specific features – all custom attributes you can use to tailor your approach.
This type of enrichment gives you insight into what makes each prospect unique, rather than just categorizing them by firmographics.
Transform: Making Data Actionable
This step focuses on cleaning, structuring, and segmenting your existing data to make it more useful.
In traditional workflows, this meant basic data cleanup. But with AI-powered transformation, you can do so much more. You can:
- Clean and format data automatically using AI formulas
- Generate structured insights from unstructured text (like company descriptions)
- Segment companies into B2B/B2C categories using AI analysis
The power of Transform is it can take raw data and turn it into something immediately actionable. Whether you're cleaning up job titles, generating outreach snippets, or creating structured outputs from multiple data sources, Transform helps you prepare your data for the next step in your workflow.
Create: From Data to Compelling Outreach
Finally, Create – the evolution of Export – focuses on using AI to turn raw data into compelling outreach.
The best salespeople take prospect information and find creative ways to make meaningful connections - whether that's translating a subject line into the prospect's native language, referencing their recent podcast appearance, or noticing they're hiring for relevant roles. AI helps automate this process of turning insights into personalized outreach at scale.
While Create can do much more than just generate copy, like producing sales documents, video content, or presentation decks, we'll focus first on copy and messaging since it's where most teams start and see immediate value.
AI handles the manual work of crafting personalized snippets that reference specific data points about each prospect in a natural, engaging way.
🎨 FETC in Action: A Real-World Example
Let's see how FETC might work in a real scenario:
Imagine you sell a compliance software solution:
- First, you Find companies that have recently expanded internationally using AI to analyze job postings, office locations, and news mentions.
- Then, you Enrich these companies with data on their regulatory filings and any compliance issues they've faced, using Claygent to research public records.
- Next, you Transform this data by scoring each company based on risk factors, expansion velocity, and current compliance solutions.
- Finally, you Create personalized outreach that references their specific international markets and compliance challenges, positioning your solution as the answer to their unique situation.
Companies using this approach have seen response rates double or even triple compared to traditional outbound methods because the outreach is precisely targeted and deeply personalized – all made possible by applying AI throughout the FETC framework.
🌟 Conclusion
The FETC framework – Find, Enrich, Transform, Create – gives you a structured way to think about implementing AI across your go-to-market strategy.
This is just a high-level introduction to get you familiar with the framework. In the upcoming lessons, we'll dive much deeper into each component, exploring specific techniques, tools, and real-world examples.
FETC will serve as our roadmap throughout the rest of this course, helping you organize your thinking and implementation of AI in your GTM strategy.
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