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1,000 LinkedIn Newsletter Subscribers in 2 Months: Sayanta Goswami on Buyer Perception
Jun 16, 2026
What if your biggest sales problem isn't your pitch — it's how buyers already perceive you before the conversation starts? In this episode of Build With What You Know, I sit down with Sayanta Goswami, B2B positioning strategist and founder of The Buyer Perception Brief, a LinkedIn newsletter that hit 1,000+ subscribers in under two months.
We dig into the concept of the "silent evaluation window" — the weeks and months enterprise buyers spend forming opinions about you before any sales interaction — and why most B2B firms are losing deals they don't even know they're in.
We also get into the nuts and bolts of why he chose LinkedIn newsletter over a website, how he gets cited by LLMs, and how he sources quotes from former Accenture, HSBC, and LinkedIn executives to build a consortium of knowledge his audience actually pays attention to.
🔗 Sayanta on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/sayanta-goswami/
📰 The Buyer Perception Brief → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-buyer-perception-brief-7438850449853546496/
Subscribe for more conversations on online business, enterprise technology, and digital expertise.
#B2BMarketing #BuyerPerception #LinkedInNewsletter #B2BSales #ContentMarketing #BuildWithWhatYouKnow #ThoughtLeadership #Positioning #DigitalMarketing #B2BStrategy
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0:02
All right. Hello
0:04
Sha Sha Yuantu. Sorry, I I don't think I
0:07
can pronounce your name correctly. You
0:09
also have have a difficult one like me
0:12
and you have a LinkedIn newsletter.
0:16
>> Yes. As a First of all, thank you for
0:18
having me here and obviously you are
0:20
very close to pronouncing my name right
0:22
and it's Nobuki. Uh so
0:26
Yeah. So, you asked me about my
0:29
newsletter. Uh before that I think it
0:31
will be just a bit
0:33
it will be better to just give the
0:35
audience a bit of context about what I
0:37
do.
0:38
It's uh
0:39
What I do is basically I am a B2B
0:42
positioning strategist specializing in
0:44
buyer perception.
0:46
So, when you see buyer perception, that
0:48
means how your
0:51
buyer ideal buyers view you
0:54
or perceive you
0:56
as
0:57
before there is any kind of sales
1:00
conversation.
1:03
So
1:04
that's what I do mostly for eight and
1:07
nine-figure B2B firms, but I also work
1:09
with other B2B firms, smaller ones,
1:12
bigger ones as well.
1:14
And about the LinkedIn newsletter that
1:17
you were sharing, it's a LinkedIn
1:19
newsletter that I write on the the topic
1:22
of buyer perception.
1:24
And it is this one.
1:27
Uh let's let it scroll.
1:29
>> How How did you get into LinkedIn
1:31
newsletter? How did you start?
1:34
>> Uh so, the LinkedIn newsletter came from
1:37
an idea that
1:40
the entire world of buyer perception
1:42
that I'm sharing
1:44
LinkedIn posts while very effective
1:47
>> [clears throat]
1:48
>> it is not enough to go deep into it due
1:51
to the character limits.
1:54
Sorry.
1:55
So, I decided to start it something long
1:57
form.
1:59
And being from a background where I used
2:01
to write a lot of content, I started as
2:03
a content marketer, content strategist.
2:05
So, I used to write a lot of long-form
2:07
articles for different brands and
2:08
different and companies. So, it is
2:10
always uh piece of first love for me.
2:14
So, that was the reason why why I
2:16
started the newsletter to go deeper and
2:18
also because this is my first love as
2:20
well.
2:21
I started it on April 3rd.
2:25
And till now it has as you can see 1,343
2:28
subscribers right now.
2:29
I have so far published
2:31
Yeah, go ahead.
2:32
>> You started it 2 months ago?
2:34
>> Yeah, about 2 months ago, yeah.
2:36
>> months you scaled already to more than
2:38
1,000 subscribers. That's quite a lot.
2:40
>> Yeah. It is so yeah, it's been
2:43
very fun journey and a very exciting
2:46
journey as well.
2:47
And my goal with all the editions is
2:50
basically
2:51
I ask myself, will I
2:54
pay to read this article or not?
2:57
That's the standard I'm holding myself
2:59
to.
3:00
And that's why
3:02
the everything that I do is you can see
3:04
it's quite
3:06
uh
3:07
I would say quite
3:09
uh
3:10
tier one in all its
3:12
uh sources, all its citations, and the
3:16
topic we are talking about. I'm going
3:18
really deep here. So, if I just show you
3:20
one, the launch the first edition of the
3:22
newsletter,
3:23
it goes like
3:25
this. I just want to show you the
3:26
quality of it.
3:28
Just so our audience have a idea of what
3:31
I talked about and how I go about it.
3:33
So, here the first thing I talked about
3:35
is the silent evaluation window. It is
3:37
the time frame, the months and weeks
3:40
that I call the silent evaluation window
3:42
where the enterprise buyers
3:45
form the perception of the B2B firm or
3:48
of the B2B founder or the senior
3:50
decision maker.
3:52
And you can see here uh uh if I go right
3:56
into the bottom,
3:59
here are the sources that I'm citing.
4:03
It's all tier one. 6sense, data from
4:05
6sense, data from Gartner,
4:08
data from Edelman and LinkedIn, data
4:10
from Forrester and World Economic Forum.
4:13
So, you see this is
4:16
not just theory, it's not just a concept
4:19
that I have invented somehow or just ask
4:22
AI to invent and then I'm writing about
4:24
it. It has got real-world data backed
4:28
it backing it.
4:30
It is something that uh
4:32
Gartner is talking about, Edelman and
4:33
LinkedIn is talking about, World
4:35
Economic Forum is talking about. So, it
4:37
is very, very relevant and very
4:40
urgent right now.
4:42
If you
4:44
go back and see on Google Trends, the
4:47
buyer perception the the term "provider
4:50
heated
4:52
which is at number 100 on April 19th.
4:56
And I started talking about it in back
4:58
in January.
5:00
So,
5:02
I started way ahead of the market before
5:05
the market realized, "Okay, this is
5:06
something that really exists and this is
5:08
something that we should really pay
5:09
attention to."
5:10
And that
5:12
uh
5:13
showed on the April 19th data.
5:16
So, that's in a nutshell my newsletter
5:19
and what I do and how it operates.
5:23
>> Wow.
5:24
How did you decide to start uh
5:27
uh LinkedIn newsletter
5:28
uh instead of a website?
5:32
>> Ah, it's a great question.
5:34
First of all, uh there are multiple
5:37
reasons.
5:39
Number one was what I am very good at is
5:43
strategy and writing.
5:45
So, obviously writing a long-form
5:47
article
5:50
came naturally to me. So, that was
5:52
immediately a choice where I did not
5:54
have to go
5:55
too far away and learn a lot of things
5:57
and then come back to it.
6:00
About the website, why a LinkedIn
6:02
newsletter and not a website is
6:06
First of all, website obviously will
6:07
need an external
6:10
uh help. I can't do it on my own and I
6:12
don't want to do it on my own because my
6:16
uh my perspective in life is to work
6:18
with what you're good at and then hire
6:19
help for the other stuff that you're not
6:21
so good at. Just hire help, get let them
6:24
do it. Let the other smart people help
6:26
you.
6:26
Uh
6:28
on the other hand, LinkedIn newsletter
6:30
because it gets indexed
6:33
by the LLMs. It gets indexed by Google.
6:37
It shows up on the search searches. You
6:40
know, if you go by the data, it's second
6:42
most cited. You know, LinkedIn is the
6:45
second most cited domain in the LLM
6:47
searches and for that, what is the one
6:51
element of LinkedIn that the LLMs
6:54
index the most of? It's the LinkedIn
6:57
articles, which is come in the form of
7:00
LinkedIn newsletter.
7:01
So, it gave me a lot of things in one
7:05
uh package. It made me It helped me go
7:10
deeper
7:11
in terms of the topic.
7:14
It helped me get seen by the LLMs better
7:18
that I could not have
7:20
with LinkedIn posts or a completely new
7:23
website.
7:25
Then, it also is helping me showing up
7:28
on Google searches as well because
7:30
Google also crawls it.
7:31
And
7:33
I can
7:38
build relationships through it
7:40
because the serious people that are on
7:42
LinkedIn to actually get business
7:44
insights or work with the experts, they
7:47
are all here. The B2B
7:49
decision makers are here. So, when they
7:51
see that, it helps me in my client
7:53
acquisition as well because I get better
7:56
quality leads in my, you know, world.
7:59
Another thing
8:01
that I love about this newsletter is
8:05
from edition three, I think that from
8:07
the third edition I started
8:09
reaching out to quotes
8:11
to external experts who can bring the
8:15
value that I don't have.
8:17
And then I can mix it with my own
8:19
expertise and share what's best for the
8:22
audience.
8:24
So, in that way I have gotten former
8:27
HSBC employees, former Accenture
8:30
employees, former LinkedIn employees to
8:33
contribute to my newsletter. Thought
8:34
leaders like Richard Moore has
8:36
contributed to it. He's an incoming
8:38
author at Wiley.
8:40
And so, in a way it also becomes a place
8:43
for me to learn as well.
8:46
When I'm reaching to out to my peers and
8:47
saying, "Okay, what do you think about
8:49
this? From my perspective, I'm seeing
8:52
this, but you being a former global
8:55
corporate sales trainer at Accenture,
8:57
what do you think?"
8:59
They share their expertise.
9:01
Then I reach out to another peer,
9:03
another friend that, "Hey,
9:05
from my my perception perspective, from
9:07
positioning perspective, this is what I
9:08
see.
9:09
From your perspective as a former VP at
9:12
HSBC, what do you see?" They are sharing
9:14
their perspective. So, it's becoming a
9:16
sort of a consortium of knowledge where
9:19
I am learning, the audience is learning,
9:22
and we are both winning while we are
9:23
doing it.
9:24
So, that's why LinkedIn newsletter.
9:28
>> And also website isn't in the plans, but
9:30
it will come later. Yeah, yeah.
9:32
Yeah, actually I am a former Accenture
9:34
employee. Uh
9:35
>> Oh, love that. I just
9:37
>> Anyway, so this is kind of SEO hack,
9:41
uh right? Because if you start your
9:42
website from scratch, you get no
9:43
visibility at all. It takes a lot of
9:45
time to rank. Maybe you never rank on
9:48
search engines. And here you already
9:50
That's what how you reached already more
9:52
than 1,000 subscribers in only a few
9:54
months.
9:55
>> Yes. Uh one Yes, that is definitely one
9:58
part of it. SEO hack is definitely one
10:00
part of it that it really helps a lot
10:02
with SEO. But the bigger goal is again
10:05
to go deeper on the topic and to
10:07
actually show that, okay, this is what's
10:09
going on. This is what you're missing
10:11
for my ideal buyer. And this is what you
10:14
need to fix.
10:15
Because again, another motto of mine is
10:18
in business
10:19
it's first about your
10:22
right buyers. Are you helping them
10:24
enough? Are you serving them enough? If
10:26
that's not going on well, anything else
10:29
would not matter.
10:30
Because then you wouldn't have a
10:32
business going forward because they
10:33
don't trust you.
10:35
So, yeah. SEO hack definitely one part
10:37
of it, but there are obviously other
10:39
multiple and more important facets to it
10:40
as well.
10:42
>> All right. Uh
10:44
Do you think we can have a look at the
10:46
the statistics of your newsletter?
10:49
>> Uh yeah, sure. Uh let me just react to
10:53
it.
10:55
>> So,
10:56
how do you actually get subscribers?
10:58
Like do you share your news let your
10:59
newsletter? Do you share the articles
11:02
once they are published? Do you uh do
11:04
you share them on your profile? Do you
11:06
actually you reach out directly to
11:07
people?
11:09
>> Uh so, I don't reach out directly to
11:11
people for this. What I do is I publish
11:14
this every Thursday at 8:00 p.m. in my
11:18
time, IST, Indian Standard Time.
11:20
And what I do is obviously on the day it
11:24
gets launched, I share one post about
11:26
what this newsletter is is about. Other
11:29
than that,
11:30
uh
11:32
there are what I do is in some of the
11:35
posts that I post on LinkedIn
11:37
when the topic is aligned to an edition
11:40
of the newsletter that I've already
11:42
covered in
11:43
I can share it in the PS or in the
11:45
comments that I have discussed this
11:47
topic in detail here and you can go
11:50
check it without there.
11:51
Also, it's in my banner where we can
11:54
they can see that you know people from
11:57
Amazon, people from IBM, people from
11:58
Gartner
12:00
senior decision makers, you are from
12:02
people from EY, PwC, they're all reading
12:04
it. That create automatically creates an
12:07
intrigue that okay, if these people are
12:09
reading it, of course I have to read it
12:10
as well. So, I get a lot of organic
12:12
followers that way.
12:14
And it's also in my featured section as
12:16
you just saw.
12:17
So, yeah, these are the ways that I
12:19
currently am you know uh
12:22
getting the subscribers. It's quite
12:24
organic. I don't have to do much to
12:26
actually gather the subscribers.
12:28
And now that I've started featuring the
12:30
media like you will last week, I got
12:32
interviewed by Connectively which is
12:34
owned by the parent company of Arrow
12:36
which is Help a Reporter out.
12:39
And
12:40
I also got featured by another
12:43
piece by the CEO of Featured that he
12:46
published on another platform
12:48
uh called TechBullion. So, there also I
12:50
get a follow back link
12:52
which then again
12:54
takes the readers to my LinkedIn and
12:58
sequentially into my newsletter as well.
13:00
So, that also helps.
13:02
And yeah, about the analytics
13:05
So, again like everything that I do on
13:08
LinkedIn online, with my newsletter, my
13:10
goal
13:11
always is to get quality over quantity.
13:15
So, I am if you check my posts, if you
13:17
check my newsletter articles, it's all
13:19
about you need the right people, not
13:21
more people.
13:23
Because I know people with 100k
13:24
followers that
13:26
cannot sell.
13:28
I also know people with less than 1,000
13:30
followers who like
13:32
are killing it in the market. They are
13:34
six-figure owners, seven-figure owners.
13:37
And with that, let's check the entire
13:41
>> Yeah, I totally resonate with that. It's
13:43
better to have a few views, subscribers,
13:46
or whatever.
13:48
But
13:50
good potential clients to whatever you
13:52
are talking about than millions of
13:54
viewers
13:56
that will not interact at the end
13:58
with your sales funnel.
14:00
>> Exactly. Clients, thought leaders,
14:03
peers, what you need to figure out is
14:06
all right, am I actually getting the
14:07
right people interested in me or not? Is
14:10
the buyer perception that I'm talking
14:11
about? Is it working for me as well?
14:14
Are they seeing me as the expert or not?
14:17
So, here's the uh
14:19
preview. I started, as you can see, in
14:20
April.
14:22
And then it went on off. So, obviously
14:24
there's this launch spike when I
14:25
launched it for the first time.
14:27
And so, till now it has 896 views and
14:31
it's yet to update. It says
14:34
1,337, but it was as you saw it, six
14:37
more now.
14:39
Uh
14:40
Sorry, what did you say? I did not catch
14:42
>> Leetspeak 1337 is how you write, you
14:45
know, a leet in numbers.
14:47
It's a coder's joke.
14:50
>> Oh, okay.
14:52
And here's the like article totals uh
14:55
for the past 365 days. It's these
14:58
impressions.
14:59
>> And and here is actually the most
15:01
interesting part of
15:04
running having content on LinkedIn
15:07
instead of your own platform. This kind
15:09
of analytics you only have on LinkedIn.
15:12
>> Exactly.
15:14
Yeah, exactly exactly.
15:16
Also, you see the subscriber
15:17
demographics. It's exactly the person
15:19
I'm targeting. They're founder,
15:21
they're CEO,
15:23
their co-founder.
15:26
So, you see five of the three top exact
15:29
people I target, and the other two are
15:33
people who live in the world that I talk
15:35
about.
15:36
>> Mhm.
15:37
>> These are the decision-makers, and these
15:38
are the practitioners of what I do.
15:42
So, it's you know, right on target, you
15:45
could say.
15:46
>> Yes.
15:48
Oh, yeah, this is so interesting. And
15:49
what other demographics can you access
15:51
if you uh if you uh press the
15:54
drop-down? Oh, yeah, the
15:57
industries
15:59
Yes.
16:00
Because I know
16:01
location you can get on
16:03
Google Analytics or whatever website
16:05
analytics, but this
16:06
this kind of demographics, industries,
16:08
know which industries your readers are
16:10
in, IT services, IT consulting, business
16:13
consulting, software development,
16:14
technology, advertising services. Yeah,
16:16
this you only have on LinkedIn.
16:19
>> Yeah, exactly. LinkedIn is
16:20
>> pretty good about it. It's so
16:21
interesting. Oh, and the seniority
16:22
>> Yeah, you get you get seniority. Yeah,
16:24
you can get seniority here. For me, I
16:27
what
16:28
Yeah, I target seniors.
16:30
Yeah, I target seniors, so you can see
16:32
it's 33% at the top.
16:34
>> And it shows.
16:35
>> And there's owners, there's directors,
16:37
>> managers. Yes. Wow, that's so
16:39
interesting.
16:41
>> And also you can get company size.
16:44
>> Yes, but this is the same company size
16:47
you can only
16:50
>> Exactly. You can only get on LinkedIn on
16:52
company size, companies that you that
16:55
are coming in, etc.
16:56
>> Can we have any sample company size?
16:59
>> Uh yes, sure.
17:01
Yeah, it's again, I target the bigger
17:02
ones, so 10,000 plus.
17:06
>> Oh, so it's
17:06
>> there's a very good data.
17:08
>> big companies looking at your
17:09
newsletter. That's so interesting.
17:11
>> Exactly, exactly.
17:15
Yes, so these are the people to target
17:17
and they are pretty bang on. So,
17:20
LinkedIn has also done a very good job
17:21
at, you know, distributing it to the
17:23
right people as well. So, I would say
17:25
their new algorithm that whatever they
17:28
it's I think called 360 view, but I'm
17:29
not an algorithm expert, so I wouldn't I
17:32
know I wouldn't really comment on that,
17:34
but they are absolutely doing a great
17:36
job of, you know, distributing it to the
17:37
right people.
17:39
>> Wow.
17:40
So, regarding your newsletter goals, at
17:43
least in the mid-term, like where are
17:45
you heading next?
17:48
>> Uh
17:49
great question again. The goal is
17:52
essentially
17:53
to obviously continue serving my
17:56
audience with it and go much deeper and
17:58
get more collaborations with it like
18:01
right now I have one co-authored piece
18:04
in process which I'm writing with our
18:07
M&A leader from Kaiser Permanente, which
18:09
is uh
18:11
I think which is uh one of the biggest I
18:14
know farm I think in the head in the
18:16
head
18:17
in the in pharmaceutical. And then
18:20
the longer play is actually to build a
18:24
body of work
18:26
that I can
18:28
then
18:29
show and
18:31
expand my
18:33
uh
18:35
expand my
18:36
knowledge base you can say and also
18:38
expand my reach to platforms other than
18:42
LinkedIn as well. So, I'm say I can buy
18:45
it it can be article bylines, it can be
18:47
media features which I've already
18:49
started. I am writing an exclusive
18:51
article for LinkedIn right now.
18:53
So, that's the a bigger goal is to reach
18:57
other platforms as well so that more and
18:59
more people know what buyer perception
19:01
actually is and how it can actually help
19:04
their business.
19:05
And that they are really missing out if
19:08
they are not paying paying to it.
19:11
Because in 2026, now that AI is at, you
19:14
know, at its peak, it's very, very
19:17
important to build the right signals,
19:19
the right perception to actually grow
19:21
your business. The old model of just
19:24
selling or just posting content in the
19:27
void won't really work anymore. You need
19:29
to build the right signals first.
19:31
So, that's the goal to expand this
19:34
knowledge to all the, you know, readers
19:37
and the buyers out there.
19:39
>> You mentioned AI. Are you actually
19:41
actually using AI for your newsletter?
19:45
>> So, I use AI to research.
19:49
Uh so, the, you know, material for the
19:52
newsletter. If I want the, you know,
19:54
say, a particular scientific paper,
19:56
because I even cite Nobel Prize winning
19:59
research on my uh newsletter as well.
20:02
So, AI really helps me get to the bottom
20:04
of them, then
20:06
actually where to find that information,
20:08
then double-check it with and you know,
20:10
cross-reference it. And obviously,
20:12
everything goes through me. I use it for
20:14
research, but then I go
20:16
go out and double-check that whatever
20:18
the the information that it has given
20:19
me, is it correct? Because sometimes AI
20:21
can hallucinate and make up the numbers
20:23
and make up the data.
20:25
>> Yes.
20:25
>> So, obviously, it's always better to
20:27
actually
20:29
gather it, so it saves you time, but
20:31
then go out and check it. That is it the
20:34
right number? Is it the right data? Is
20:35
it the right interpretation?
20:37
That's something I definitely do. So, I
20:39
do use AI,
20:40
but in uh
20:42
in a way that I am its master. It is not
20:45
my master. It's not doing it for me.
20:46
It's gathering data for me.
20:49
>> Okay. Wow.
20:51
Uh very interesting. What is the the
20:53
next uh topic of your upcoming
20:56
uh newsletter episode?
20:59
>> Uh next probably is I I have not yet
21:03
scheduled the next one. So, next one
21:06
probably could be the co-authored piece
21:08
that I'm working on with the M&A leader
21:11
at Kaiser Permanente. So, that would be
21:13
on, you know, M&A and that version of
21:16
how buyer perception works in when two
21:19
companies merge or one company acquires
21:21
another. That can be one topic. The
21:24
other topic I'm still
21:26
still, you know,
21:27
discussing with myself, let's say, in a
21:30
way and trying to figure out, okay, what
21:33
more
21:34
What is the unique angle I can deliver
21:36
here? So, that one is yet to decide.
21:40
Uh but
21:41
it's either going to be that where I
21:44
write the solo article as I write with
21:46
maybe an external contributor.
21:49
Which is the usual format of the my
21:52
newsletter or it will be the co-authored
21:54
piece.
21:56
>> Okay.
21:59
Uh well, all right. Do
22:01
Is there anything else you can show us
22:02
about your newsletter?
22:05
>> Uh newsletter, I don't know. I think
22:07
this
22:08
uh should suffice because there's
22:11
The rest of it, obviously, people can
22:12
probably read because I won't bore the
22:15
readers with a very long 1,500 2,000
22:18
word article and to see every nook and
22:21
cranny of it. That that's for them to
22:23
consume in their own time. That would be
22:25
a much better use. And so, yeah, about
22:28
the newsletter, it's quite
22:30
uh this is the crux of it.
22:33
>> Okay. So, maybe to conclude, can you
22:35
show us how to actually subscribe to
22:37
your newsletter?
22:38
I didn't know even there was newsletters
22:40
on LinkedIn.
22:42
>> Oh, yeah, there is. There is.
22:44
So, you just can come to my LinkedIn
22:47
profile, which is linkedin.com/in/
22:51
Saimto
22:52
I think it's Saimto in slash, which is
22:54
my another method domain name.
22:56
>> Yeah, we'll put the link in the
22:57
description.
22:59
>> Absolutely. And there you can go to my
23:02
featured section and here it is, the
23:03
Buyer Perception Deep, which is the name
23:05
of the newsletter. You can just go in
23:07
here,
23:08
or you can subscribe from
23:11
any of the places. It shows up on on the
23:14
Google searches, so you can
23:16
subscribe from there. It I regularly
23:19
talk I
23:20
quite frequently talk about it in my
23:22
posts, so there I also share a link.
23:25
They can subscribe from there.
23:27
I share one post dedicated post on its
23:30
launch every Thursday when a new issue
23:33
launches. They can subscribe from there
23:35
as well.
23:38
>> All right. Well, thanks a lot for
23:40
showing us your newsletter, and of
23:41
course, I encourage everyone uh watching
23:44
this video to
23:46
go to your profile and subscribe to your
23:49
newsletter. Thanks a lot for sharing
23:50
your insights.
23:51
>> Thank you, sir.
23:52
Thank you so much for having me.
#Science