Amy Volas

I help SaaS startups hire executive Sales and CS leaders without the cringe ⋆ Personally closed $100MM+ ⋆ 2 Exits ⋆ LP ⋆ Strategic Advisor ⋆ Speaker ⋆ Writing My First Book

I don’t believe in guesswork hiring. And I don’t do transactional anything.

I work with founders, CEOs, and investors who are tired of wasting time, money, and trust on Sales and CS executive hires that don’t stick... or worse, do damage.

Because here's the thing:

A bad executive hire isn’t just a hiccup.
It’s a domino effect that fractures teams, tanks morale, stalls growth, and erodes boardroom credibility.

I’ve seen it all:

▸ CEOs and founders covering for a Sales leader who’s lost the room
▸ Execs spending more time firefighting than scaling
▸ Boards questioning if you can hire while the burn rate screams you can't
▸ Reacting to noise, chasing titles, and hiring before knowing what you’re actually solving for
▸ Watching progress stall, targets slip, and the trust in your decision-making fade

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. 
And, there’s a better way.

I'm Amy Volas, founder of Avenue Talent Partners (ATP).

Since 2015, I’ve helped tech founders and CEOs get executive GTM hiring right the first time, without the fluff, without the guesswork, and without the cleanup later.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗧𝗣:

𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵

Intentional, high-impact GTM hires that drive growth while sidestepping expensive missteps. 

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗢𝗦™ 𝗯𝘆 𝗔𝗧𝗣

When a search isn’t needed, but clarity is. Our proven hiring system that structures hiring for scale, eliminates guesswork, and arms you with the clarity, data, and process your board expects.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲? 20%
𝗔𝗧𝗣 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀? 80%+ and a 98% interview-to-hire success rate

Because it’s not just about who you hire.
It’s about why the hire is happening, how the process is run, and whether it fuels the kind of team that scales, not stalls.

I’m not for everyone, and that’s okay.
The founders, CEOs, and investors who get the best results with me:

▸ Prioritize hiring as a core strategy
▸ Embrace real, open communication
▸ Value people over transactions
▸ Think beyond the next quarter
▸ Know asking for help is a strength, not a weakness

Hiring is hard.
It’s supposed to be.

But it’s also the highest-leverage move you’ll ever make.

Let’s make people strategy your secret weapon.

We partner with focused executives who know the best products don’t always win, but the best teams do.

Ready to build one? So are we.

Founder & CEO

Great executives aren't hired on guesswork.

And starting + scaling a business is no joke.

The odds are against you and the people you hire to grow your business can make or break your ability to defy those odds.

The dynamic world of sales in early- stage startups is complex, busy, and ever-changing.

Trying to uncover, engage, and hire the cream of the crop is challenging when your plate is already full and the average tenure is 19 months for a VP of Sales.

That's why Avenue Talent Partners was built…

We help startups hire the right executive revenue leaders to defy the turnover odds to truly grow and scale.

The best part? We do it without the cringe!

With a collective sales experience of 40+ years and $100MM+ in deals closed, ATP's team knows what it takes to win at startup sales.

We're the recruiting firm you should be working with if you...

▹ Want to defy the odds of hiring the right sales leader who will stick around for more than 19 months

▹ Want to hire a high-growth sales leader who will build/lead a team to drive growth for the long haul

▹ Want a recruiting partner who speaks the sales language fluently, knows how to vet the right person for your stage of business, and has the experience to back it up

▹ Want a recruiting partner who truly cares about your success, takes the time to understand what you need, and knows exactly how to help

▹ Want a recruiting partner that celebrates candidate experience while representing your brand well throughout the recruiting process regardless of the outcome

The depth and breadth of our sales and startup experience coupled with our second to none people-centric, process-driven approach is here to help you get sales hiring right the first time to avoid the painful effects of a mishire.

Nothing you do is more important than finding and hiring the right people; we work tirelessly to help you do just that.

If you’re here, you’ve already built something valuable.

Now the question is: can it scale predictably in 2026?

Hi, I’m Harinie, founder of Leadle - a B2B GTM firm that’s helped over 500+ tech companies generate predictable, profitable pipeline without hiring large sales teams.

Here’s the reality most founders are facing: 

Revenue predictability is more volatile than ever.
And no, AI alone won’t fix it.

What works now is human strategy powered by smart systems. 

Predictable growth comes from:

→ Clean visibility across the funnel
→ Tight execution across teams
→ GTM workflows that remove friction instead of adding noise

That’s where we come in.

What we build: 

Allbound OS: a repeatable pipeline motion across LinkedIn, email, calling, and partners, built around ICP and triggers.

Fix Your CRM: fields, stages, reporting, and handoffs cleaned so pipeline numbers match reality.

Founder-on-Call: hands-on GTM partner for ICP, messaging, sequencing, and operating rhythm. 

The impact:

→ 100s of qualified meetings booked
→ 30%+ shorter sales cycles
→ Up to 20% profitability gains, without expanding headcount

If you want generic growth advice, we will not be a fit.

If you want a system your team can run without chaos: 

📅 Book your transformation → [https://www.leadlehq.com/contact]
🔗 Explore more → www.leadlehq.com

Harinie Sekaran

Big milestone for us - Leadle is now an official HubSpot Solutions Partner. 🎉

Most of our work over the past two years has centered around HubSpot - building signal-led GTM infrastructure on top of it that actually drives pipeline, not just tracks it.

This partnership formalizes that and unlocks more capability for the work we're already doing.

✅Faster path from implementation to material pipeline impact
✅Better system design across sales + marketing
✅Deeper technical access and priority support channels for complex builds

If you want HubSpot to behave like a revenue system, not a database, this is for you. 

Big thanks to Anshul Asija for guiding us through the process and getting us onboarded smoothly.

To learn more about how our partnership can help your business, click here: https://lnkd.in/g5ahkqy2  

More partnerships coming soon. 🚀

#RevOps #GTM #HubSpotPartner HubSpot

Helping B2B SaaS Founders Fix Broken Pipelines with RevOps Systems | HubSpot Solutions Partner | Founder @ Leadle

There's a moment in every long-term relationship that no one prepares you for.

It's not a fight or a betrayal. Not even a loss of love.

It's worse.

It's sitting across from someone you chose, and feeling like you're talking to a stranger.

Your instinct will tell you this means it's over.

Your instinct is probably wrong.

Counterintuitively, here’s the reality most people miss: 

Two people don’t evolve at the same pace, at the same time, forever. That’s unrealistic. 

One hits a growth phase while the other's consolidating. 
One's introspective, the other's external. Interests drift, energy dips. 

But we don't have language for that anymore.

We call it "falling out of love" or "losing alignment" because those sound like conclusions.

What if it's just the natural friction of two people changing at different speeds?

The real problem is we now live in an era built for exits.

A rough patch in a relationship?
Swipe.
A tough phase with a co-founder?
Split.
A few bad months at work?
Resign.

Somehow, discomfort has become proof that something is irreparably broken.

In 13 years married, Suraj and I have had stretches where we felt completely out of sync.

What saved those phases wasn’t forcing closeness or rushing fixes.

It was giving each other the space to process the situation knowing that we are going to find our way back to each other eventually, and that it's okay.

Earlier generations understood this instinctively. They didn't assume every dip was a signal to leave.

We do.

We've been taught to optimize everything, including relationships.

If it's uncomfortable, fix it or exit.

But long-term anything requires something we've stopped practicing: 

Giving space without calling it abandonment.
Letting things breathe instead of rushing to conclusions.

We don’t fall out of love as often as we fall out of patience.

And patience, unlike chemistry or timing, is something you actually have to choose.

What’s your stand on this? Do you think we give up on relationships too easily?

🚀 We’re hiring: Outbound Executive
 
Full-time | In-office | Chennai

The role is straightforward. 

You run outbound for B2B SaaS founders.

LinkedIn. Email. Cold calls.

You write messages that don’t sound like AI brain rot.

You speak to senior decision-makers.

You track your numbers, keep your CRM clean.

You adjust when something isn’t landing.

You book meetings. 

That’s the job.

Some days, you’ll book three before lunch. Some days, you’ll wonder if the internet is broken. Both are normal. 

If you’ve done 0–1 year in IT or SaaS sales, you probably know whether this kind of work makes you feel alive or dead inside.

We don’t care about your past titles. We pay for what you actually do here.

We’re a small team with high standards. No babysitting. No fluff. Just results.

If you like starting from zero and turning it into meetings, you’ll fit right in.

📩 DM Divya Sridharan or email divya@leadle.in 

Let’s build something fun. 😊 
#SalesCareers #hiring #outboundexecutive

Nobody on your revenue team can explain why deals actually close. They just know when they do.

Your top rep closes at 40%. Your newest at 12%.

You ask what the difference is. They shrug. "I just listen better, I guess."

Cool. Now teach that to the rest of the team.

You can't. Because it's not written down anywhere.

🟥Marketing guesses what Sales needs. 
🟥Sales guesses what the buyer cares about. 
🟥New hires guess their way through calls and lose deals they should've won.

You can't scale what you can't explain. And you can't explain what you never documented.

Guesswork is expensive. Here's how to stop paying for it.

Showed up again. Told you I would. 😄

The average demo‑to‑close conversion rate in B2B is only about 25%. 

How many of your demos end with "we'll get back to you" and never do?

The reason is simple: you’re showing the product before understanding the problem.

Most reps jump straight to screen-sharing, walk through features, and show what it can do. The prospect nods along, seems engaged… then nothing.

Why? They can’t make the case internally because you never helped them clarify their own problem.

Reps who spend the first half of the call asking questions - what’s broken, what’s been tried, who else cares, convert 3x more than those who lead with the product.

Rule of thumb: problem understanding first, product understanding second. Every time.

Don't hire us to run your outbound.

Weird thing for an agency owner to say, right?

But what we learned after building outbound systems for hundreds of B2B companies: 

The problem isn't your campaigns. It's that outbound can't operate in a vacuum anymore.

Here’s why conventional outbound doesn’t work anymore and what actually moves the needle now.
#outboundsales #outboundagency

3 simple things you can do daily to keep your health & sanity as a founder. 
(I wish someone had told me this when I first started out)

1️⃣ Sleep 7+ hours.

I used to think 5 hours was fine. It's not.

One bad night wrecks your memory, kills your immunity, makes you crave sugar like a maniac.

You can't "catch up" on weekends. That's not how bodies work.

So sleep well to work better and make better decisions every day.

2️⃣ Move. Doesn't matter how. 

As a founder, the variables in your life are endless. It can feel overwhelming fast. 

That’s why consistent physical exercise - running, lifting, walking, yoga matters a lot. It’s one area fully in your control. 

Those 30-45 mins gives me a win when everything else feels like a mess. 

3️⃣ Meditate: 

Meditation sounded like self-help fluff to me until I tried it myself and saw the benefits.

Now I'm calmer. Less reactive and more aware of what's happening in my own mind. 

Some people I coach even say their memory got better. 

I use Headspace to meditate, but you can use anything. Just give it a shot. 

Now, it might seem like all of this will add up and take too much of your time daily. 

But in reality, if you work out for 45 minutes and meditate for 10 minutes, it’s less than an hour of your time daily. 

I’m reasonably sure you doomscroll X or Instagram for a lot longer than that. 😅

What do you do to take care of yourself?

If you can't explain why you won your last three deals, you can't replicate it.

Most teams close deals and hope it happens again.

The ones that scale? They document everything and build a system around it.

Here's how. 

Want to see the full system? I’ve shared it in the comments.

User meetings aren't the problem. Stopping there is.

Reps get on calls with engaged contacts. Ask good questions. 

They show teal interest. And then three months later... nothing's moved.

The contact didn't ghost because they lost interest. 

They can't get it approved. And you never figured out who could.

First call should answer: who actually owns this? 
Not just who feels the pain, but who controls whether it gets fixed?

Then there's the other thing. 

Decision-makers at different levels care about completely different problems. 

IT wants efficiency without adding headcount. 
Analytics wants their team doing actual analysis instead of cleaning data.

You pitch cost savings to someone whose job you're automating? Deal's dead.

User calls work when you use them to map upward. Not when you mistake them for the buyer.

Watch the reel for what that actually looks like in practice.

Stop blaming SDRs - your strategy is why outbound is failing. 

Here’s the real problem with outbound today:

AI made it easy to send messages. Tools made it easy to find people.

Your buyer now wakes up to 500+ messages that are technically relevant… but completely useless in context.

So with better tools and bigger lists, the question becomes:

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝘂𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵?

Across the 50+ clients we have worked with last year, here’s what stood out: 

Campaigns that get replies happen when buyers are:

⇢ Already in motion (they’ve raised their hand somewhere)
⇢ Familiar with the brand
⇢ Dealing with a real, current problem

Not when you “increase volume.”
Not when you “optimize sequences.”

That pattern is what led us to change how we run outbound at Leadle and for our clients: 

1) Classify accounts by ICP - then be ruthless about readiness.

If an account is low-fit or low-readiness, push them into marketing, not outbound:

• ads
• newsletters
• educational content
• light LinkedIn engagement

Low-fit doesn’t mean ignore. It means don’t waste SDR cycles on them yet, when they could be nurtured until there’s real intent.

2) Reserve outbound for high-fit + high-intent

This is where outbound earns the right to exist:

• a written-for-them email
• a relevant angle
• a value add / opinion on how you can help

Most outbound collapses at the same point: we confuse fit with readiness.

Fit answers: “Could they buy?”

Readiness answers: “Is there a strong reason to care right now?”

𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗲.

--------------------------------------------------------------

In the next post, I’ll break down the exact workflow we use internally to decide:

• who gets outbound
• who stays in marketing
• and how signals change the level of effort

This changes how outbound is run and why it’s no longer about copy or tools you use, but relevance and how your system optimizes for it. 

#outbound #signalsled

What happens when an outbound agency has an existential crisis? 

They throw out the old way of doing things and start doing something that actually works in 2026. 

Most outbound fails for one boring reason.

Teams confuse fit with readiness.

They’re not the same thing. And treating them as the same kills conversion.

Here’s the system we follow at Leadle to ensure outbound works without burning SDR time or wasting resources.

📌 STEP 1 - Decide who you’re willing to be wrong about.

Fit comes first. Always.

→ Industry
→ Company size
→ Geo
→ Tech stack

If an account is low-fit, it does not go into outbound.
It goes into the marketing lane.

→ Ads.
→ Content.
→ Light LinkedIn.
→ Low-fit doesn’t mean “bad lead”.

It means “don’t waste SDR effort yet”.

Most teams ignore this. They send outbound anyway and then blame the channel.

📌 STEP 2 - For fit accounts, stop asking “who”. Ask “what changed?”.

Outbound works when something shifts.

That’s readiness.

→ New leadership hire
→ Product launch
→ Pricing or case study page visits
→ Repeat engagement with your content

Signals aren’t magic. They’re just proof that timing moved.
No change = no urgency.
No urgency = no reply.

📌 STEP 3 - Shrink the list until it hurts.

If your outbound list still feels “big”, you’re not done.

High-priority accounts should be rare.

Fit is right
Timing makes sense
There’s visible movement

These accounts earn outbound. 
Not templates. Not sequences.

They earn:

→ A message written for them
→ A relevant POV
→ A reason to respond now

This is where most teams quit.

They choose volume because effort feels risky. And then wonder why nothing converts.

If your outbound feels busy but empty, this is usually why.

If you want the exact set up we use to build this end-to-end, 
Comment “SIGNALS”, I’ll send it over.

I’ve sat through 1,000s of client review calls across 200+ B2B SaaS accounts. 

The difference between accounts that renew and those that churn? 

It’s simple: the quality of the conversation. 

🚨Bad calls = dashboards with commentary.
✅Good calls = strategic check-ins that pressure-test fit and uncover opportunity.

Here are 5 ways to make every client review call actually worth their time.

5 ways to make client review calls useful

We pivoted a client's entire GTM strategy mid-campaign. Turned out, their product wasn't the problem, their market was.

The client builds tech for e-commerce companies in the US market. Had a few customers already. 

They wanted to expand and they approached Leadle for outbound.

We launched signal-based campaigns: 

Tracking hiring spikes, funding rounds, tech stack changes, any sign an account was in motion.

30 days in, the pattern was obvious:

The pain point wasn't landing. 

E-commerce buyers didn't care about what they were solving.

So we pivoted.

Instead of forcing it, we tested a new market: AEC (architecture, engineering, construction).

But we didn’t roll out another full campaign and “hope.”

We ran micro GTM sprints.

Small, controlled tests. Validate → refine → scale.

📍Test 1: Hatchback segment.
Pain point didn't land. Killed it. Moved on.

📍Test 2: Steel fabricators.
Pain point landed. Buyers acknowledged the problem. But their current tech was good enough. Our solution wasn't better yet.

📍Test 3: HVAC companies dealing with proposal and bidding processes.
This one hit.

End users responded. The pain point was real and they wanted to talk.

That’s when we layered in ABM.

Instead of treating accounts like a list, we mapped them like a territory:

→ End users
→ Business stakeholders
→ Decision-makers

We tracked signals across all three.

When an account showed movement - new hire in operations, leadership change, etc., we activated outreach tailored to each persona.

→ End users got tactical pain point messaging.
→ Business stakeholders got process efficiency angles.
→ Decision-makers got ROI and competitive positioning.

For prospects who couldn't jump on calls, we deployed a questionnaire to validate the pain point asynchronously. That worked too.

📍The numbers so far:

362 accounts reached
15-20 responses
8-9 live conversations

Though the engagement started as an outbound setup, it became a discovery GTM sprint.

✅They now know: 

→ Which segment actually needs their product
→ What pain point resonates at each level of the buying committee
→ How to talk to end users vs decision-makers
→ When accounts are ready to engage (signals told us)

Outbound isn't just for booking meetings.

When you layer in signals and run it ABM-style, it becomes market research that pays for itself.

If your GTM feels like guesswork and you're not sure if you're even talking to the right market, let's talk. 
#clientsuccess #GTM

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Amy Volas

Harinie Sekaran

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