Forward deployed AI engineering for growth
The output of a ten-person growth team. One person, one system.
Tugam builds and runs the sales, marketing and market-entry systems companies usually hire a department for: AI does the volume, an operator who has done this in 13 countries makes the calls.
No pitch. You leave with the first three things we would change.
Companies we've worked with
Why this exists
Most companies do not need a bigger team. They need a system that a small one can run.
In 2025 I was running marketing and partnerships for a tourism group with more than sixty offices in thirty countries. The plans, the targets, the CRM and the weekly reporting sat with a team you could count on one hand, because the work that used to need a floor of people had quietly become software plus judgement.
That is the model Tugam sells. An engineer who sits inside your company, builds the outbound, the CRM, the automations and the reporting with AI, and stays to run them until your people can. It costs a fraction of a department, it ships in weeks, and everything built stays yours.
Hire a team, brief an agency, or deploy one engineer.
| In-house team of ten | Agency retainer | Tugam | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first output | 3 to 6 months of hiring and ramp | 4 to 8 weeks after onboarding | Week two |
| Monthly cost | Salaries, social charges, tools, management | Retainer plus media and tool mark-ups | One fee, tools at cost |
| Who does the work | Whoever you managed to hire | A rotating account team | The person you spoke to |
| What you keep | The people, if they stay | Reports and decks | The system, the data and the playbook |
| Scaling down | Redundancies | Notice period | Pause when the system runs itself |
Use the calculator to compare the real cost for your company.
I am Tunahan.
For six years my job has been opening markets and building the systems that keep them open: partner networks in India and Southeast Asia, CRM and loyalty programmes for enterprises in the Gulf, and most recently the marketing operation of a sixty-office tourism group, run from Istanbul and New Delhi.
I started Tugam because the same operation kept getting rebuilt by people who could not afford a department. With today's tools one operator can carry it, provided that person has actually done the work before. That is the condition I bring.
I take few clients at a time. The person on your first call is the person building the system.
I think in target lists and ninety-day plans, not slide decks.
Sabancı UniversityFoundations & SUper Program
Istanbul UniversityBA Business Administration
Amity UniversityMBA, Travel & Tourism
Seven things, one operating system.
Most engagements use three or four. You do not pay for the ones you already have.
Forward Deployed AI Engineering
An engineer inside your team who builds the CRM, the website, the mobile app, the AI agents and the automations your people will actually use, then runs them until handover.
You get: a working system in weeks, in your stack and your name.
Sales & Business Development
Signal-based outbound where AI does the research and the drafting and a person approves every message that leaves in your name.
You get: a live pipeline, the messages that earned replies, a weekly one-page report.
Market Entry
The segment, the decision chain and the local sponsors who make the first deals in a new country possible.
You get: a named target list, a decision map, first meetings booked.
B2B Partnerships
Agents, distributors, resellers and institutions recruited, onboarded and grown as a revenue line of their own.
You get: signed partners, an onboarding flow, a tier structure that survives growth.
Search Engine Optimization
Technical, content and international search work that builds organic demand in every market you target.
You get: a keyword map by market, a content system, rankings that compound.
Generative Engine Optimization
Visibility inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, where buyers now start their research.
You get: an entity and citation strategy, answer-first content, monthly mention tracking.
Digital Marketing
Demand generation, account-based campaigns and paid media measured against pipeline rather than impressions.
You get: campaigns tied to revenue, clean attribution, a marketing-to-sales handoff that holds.
The Tugam Growth Engine
The same four-stage loop runs under every engagement. AI carries the volume; people make the decisions.
Enrich
Target accounts, the people who decide, and the signals that show who is ready to talk now.
Personalize
Every message is written for one person, one context and one reason to act. AI drafts, you approve.
Branch
Sequences change with the role, the reply and the engagement, so nobody receives the same third message.
Deliver
Email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and partner channels as one system, measured weekly and refined weekly.
From a cold market to a system that runs.
- Days 1–14
Map
Who buys, who has to vouch for you, why deals stall today. Output: a written map and a target list with names on it.
- Days 14–45
Open
The stack goes live: data, sequences, CRM, approvals. First conversations through warm routes; cold outreach only where nothing warmer exists.
- Days 45–90
Build
Conversations into signed partners and customers; automations and reporting so all of it is visible to you. Output: pipeline, partners, a weekly report.
- Day 90 on
Keep
Account care, the month-three check nobody schedules, expansion. Either we keep running it or your team takes it with the playbook written.
Tools we run this on.
All of it lives in your accounts, not ours. If you already have a stack, we work in yours.
- Apollo
- Clay
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- PredictLeads
- Apify
- Serper
- Exa
- Clay
- LeadMagic
- Prospeo
- BetterContact
- Findymail
- Claude
- OpenAI
- Instantly
- Smartlead
- Lemlist
- HeyReach
- GetSales
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Attio
- Pipedrive
- Notion
- n8n
- Meta Ads
- Google Ads
- TikTok Ads
- Google Analytics 4
- Search Console
- Semrush
- Claude API
- n8n
- Make
- Cloudflare
- Supabase
- WhatsApp Business API
Worldwide, with a network in 45 countries.
Dark blue: countries where the founder has worked on the ground. Light blue: countries in the office and partner network we have run marketing and partnerships for.
United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, all EU member states, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Albania, Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Numbers with a story behind each one.
Marketing operations, one CRM and partner programmes for the whole network, run from Istanbul and New Delhi.
Outbound built from zero for CRM and loyalty implementations in retail, hospitality and financial services.
A documented high-volume partnership programme, named Sales Champion of the year.
We would rather say no early.
Good fit
- B2B or high-ticket services, where a deal is worth a relationship
- You want a system, not a slide deck
- Someone senior can take the calls we book
- You want the data, the CRM and the playbook to stay yours
Probably not
- Low-ticket self-serve where volume beats relationships
- You want leads delivered without anyone building a relationship
- The product has not closed a customer anywhere yet
- You are looking for a vendor to blame rather than a partner to work with
What we have learned running this.
What a 10-person marketing and sales team really costs vs an AI growth system
Salaries are the visible half of the cost of hiring a sales team. Benefits, recruiting, ramp, tools and management take it 35 to 45 percent higher; an operator with an AI stack changes the equation for six of the ten roles.
Read the articleFDE vs agency vs in-house: how to choose an AI implementation partner
Most AI projects fail on integration and ownership rather than on the model. A framework for choosing between a forward deployed engineer, an agency and an in-house hire, with the questions to ask in the first call and a scoring table.
Read the article
How to build an AI-powered outbound system in 30 days
Five connected tools, one operator and a rule that nothing sends without a person reading it. The plan below builds the system in four weeks and sizes the domains, inboxes and sequence from 2026 benchmarks.
Read the articleBook a 30-minute call.
Pick a slot. We confirm on WhatsApp or email within a few hours. Available Monday to Saturday, 09:00–18:00 Istanbul time (GMT+3), which overlaps London, the Gulf and most of Europe.
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