7 GTM Lessons from Building a $150M Recycling Marketplace Without a Traditional Sales Team

7 GTM Lessons from Building a $150M Recycling Marketplace Without a Traditional Sales Team

The best GTM strategies don’t come from playbooks—they come from solving real friction in broken markets. Preston Bryant proved this by building Momentum into a nine-figure business using tactics that would make most sales leaders uncomfortable.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Preston Bryant, Founder and CEO of Momentum, shared how he scaled a recycling marketplace by systematically breaking conventional B2B sales rules. Here are seven lessons that transfer far beyond the recycling industry.

1. Build Physical Infrastructure Before Software When Markets Demand Trust

Most marketplace founders obsess over network effects and two-sided liquidity. Preston took the opposite approach: he built physical assets first, software second.

“We built out all the logistics infrastructure, all the processing infrastructure. We have locations in like 30 different states across the country,” Preston explains. This wasn’t a detour from building a tech company—it was the foundation that made the tech valuable.

The insight: in industries where quality and reliability matter more than speed and convenience, controlling physical infrastructure creates defensibility that software alone cannot. Momentum’s processing facilities don’t just fulfill orders—they guarantee quality in a market where inconsistency kills deals.

For B2B founders, the principle scales: identify the hard, unsexy infrastructure your market needs but nobody wants to build. That’s often where the real moat lives.

2. Use Consulting as Market Research and Relationship Building

Before Momentum had a product to sell, Preston ran a consulting business. “We started a consulting business helping recycling companies get set up on all these different marketplaces,” he shares.

This wasn’t revenue diversification—it was strategic intelligence gathering. By helping recyclers establish digital presences, Momentum learned exactly what suppliers needed, what they struggled with, and how they made decisions. When Momentum eventually launched its own marketplace, these same companies became early supply partners.

The lesson transfers: if you’re entering an industry you don’t deeply understand, sell services before you sell software. You’ll build relationships, earn trust, and learn what actually matters—not what you assume matters from outside the industry.

3. Treat Payment Terms as Customer Acquisition Cost

Most B2B companies view payment terms as a necessary evil. Preston weaponized them as a competitive advantage.

“We offer net 120 day payment terms to some of our larger customers,” Preston reveals. Four months of float for customers means significant working capital pressure for Momentum—but it solves a critical customer problem that competitors won’t touch.

The strategic logic: “They’re collecting and sorting and baling material. They’re putting it into an intermodal container or into the back of a truck, shipping it to us. That’s like a 60 day process. And then once we get it, we have to process it, we have to sort it, we have to sell it. That’s another 30 to 60 days.”

By aligning payment terms with actual customer cash flow cycles rather than vendor preferences, Momentum removes a major friction point. The cost of extending terms becomes customer acquisition cost with better unit economics than traditional marketing spend.

For founders: map your customer’s actual cash conversion cycle, not their invoice processing timeline. Then structure terms that align with their reality, even if it strains yours.

4. Absorb Costs That Create Decision Friction

Where most marketplaces nickel-and-dime customers with fees, Preston eliminated charges strategically.

“We don’t charge for shipping. We just eat all the shipping costs,” Preston says. For a business moving Momentums and recyclables across the country, this seems financially unsustainable. But the calculus makes sense: “If you’re offering net 60 terms and free shipping and really easy online checkout and really good customer service, it’s just really hard for people not to switch.”

The insight isn’t “give everything away free”—it’s “identify which costs create cognitive friction in the buying decision and eliminate them, even at expense to margin.”

Shipping charges don’t just cost money—they require customers to calculate, compare, and justify. By absorbing shipping, Momentum removes a comparison point that slows deals and empowers competitors.

5. Collapse Sales and Success Into Single Accountable Roles

Most B2B companies separate hunters from farmers. Momentum combined them.

“Our account managers are also our salespeople,” Preston explains. “They’re really incentivized on net new revenue.” There’s no handoff from sales to customer success, no organizational boundary for customers to navigate.

This creates powerful incentives: account managers can’t just chase new logos and abandon implementation. They own the full relationship and full revenue expansion. Poor onboarding means no expansion revenue. Great service means natural growth.

The model works because complexity lives in the product and logistics, not the sales process. “We really try to make our product easy to use, easy to onboard,” Preston notes. When products are genuinely self-service, combined sales-success roles outperform specialized teams.

6. Position Against Weak Competitors, Not Strong Ones

Momentum could position as a marketplace competing against other digital platforms. Instead, Preston positions against traditional recyclers.

“We don’t really position ourselves necessarily as a marketplace,” Preston says. “We’re a recycling company that buys recyclables from corporate America.”

This reframes the competitive comparison entirely. Against traditional recyclers, Momentum’s technology creates insurmountable advantages in ease of use, transparency, and service quality. Against other marketplaces, Momentum would compete on fee structure and liquidity—much harder battles.

The lesson: you get to choose your competitive set. Position against competitors where your advantages are overwhelming, even if they’re not the obvious comparison.

7. Build Content Authority in Adjacent Categories

Momentum’s content strategy ignores the recycling marketplace category entirely.

“We have one person that works on content full time,” Preston explains. “He’s really focused on anything and everything sustainability and ESG related.” The content doesn’t pitch Momentum directly—it builds authority in the categories that drive customer decisions.

“He’s creating content that sits at the intersection of what people care about with ESG and sustainability, but like tangentially introduces Momentum as a mechanism to help them achieve those outcomes,” Preston shares.

This works because Momentum’s buyers aren’t Googling “best recycling marketplace.” They’re navigating corporate sustainability mandates, ESG reporting requirements, and waste reduction goals. By building authority in these adjacent categories, Momentum becomes the obvious answer when companies finally need a recycling solution.

For B2B founders: map the organizational priorities that lead to your category, not just the category itself. Build content authority there.

The Unifying Principle

These seven lessons share a common thread: Preston optimized for customer ease of doing business rather than internal operational efficiency. Free shipping strains logistics. Net 120 terms strain working capital. Combined sales-success roles strain organizational simplicity.

But each makes it radically easier for customers to choose Momentum and stay with Momentum. In fragmented markets with entrenched incumbents, that matters more than perfect unit economics on day one.

The sophisticated move isn’t copying these specific tactics—it’s adopting the framework. Map every point of friction in your customer’s journey. Then systematically remove friction, even when it creates internal complexity or short-term cost.

Markets reward companies that are easiest to do business with, not companies with the best internal processes. Preston built Momentum by internalizing complexity that competitors forced onto customers. The result: a category leadership position built on systematic friction removal rather than technological superiority.