I build an AI-native CRM for Swiss and DACH SMEs, firms that have run the same accounting software for fifteen years. After a year of selling into this market, here's the uncomfortable GTM summary: almost nothing from the standard SaaS playbook works.

Product-led growth assumes people try things. Our buyers don't try things. Cold outreach assumes people respond to strangers. Our buyers, almost by definition, don't buy from strangers. Virality assumes users share tools. Nobody here has ever shared a tool.

What's left is one mechanism: borrowed trust. These firms buy through people who already have access their Accountant, their IT partner, the agency that built their website, a peer at an industry event. So our entire GTM reduces to a single question: how do we become the thing trusted people recommend?

In practice that means the "channels" look strange on a dashboard. Partner relationships instead of ad spend. Content written to be found when a consultant researches on a client's behalf, not when an end user browses. Being findable and credible at the exact moment someone is about to spend their own reputation on us, because that's what a recommendation is.

It's slow. Painfully slow compared to any funnel chart I've seen at a SaaS meetup. But it compounds, and once a trusted advisor recommends you twice, you're not a vendor anymore, you're part of how they do their job.

Curious how others sell into markets where the buyer only buys through existing relationships. What actually moved the needle for you?

(Disclosure: I'm the founder of Uliasti, the team behind the product: Advanzo. Happy to go deeper in the comments.)