Lead generation is broken.

Too many companies:

- Try to generate leads themselves, but fail
- Hire a lead gen agency with bloated retainers who can’t deliver

Lead generation as a whole is always changing, so unless you’ve got a dedicated team
on it (that knows what they’re doing) — you can expect to overpay for underwhelming
results.

That said, in 2025 — you don’t need to try to generate leads yourself, or pay an
outsized retainers for subpar work.

With Leadbird, you:

- Don’t pay for overpriced retainers
- Only pay per meeting-ready-lead we deliver
- Get the expertise of career outbound salespeople

We achieve this for you through:

- Targeted lead list building
- Domain + inbox set-up and warm-up
- Proven cold email copywriting principles
- Done-for-you cold email campaign management

Book a free demo from the link in my bio to join over 115 active clients getting
high-quality, meeting-ready-leads every single month.

Talk soon,
Nick

Nick Abraham

Maybe I’m falling for ragebait, but cold email has let me:

(1) Drop out of college.

(2) Grow my own agency to multi 7-figures of revenue.

(3) Employ 30+ people around the world full-time.

(4) Buy my sister and Dad cars.

(5) Rent my dream apartment.

(6) Buy my first 5 properties.

(7) Work with 100s of businesses.

(8) Make lifelong friends.

(9) Give my future family a financial head start.

Just remember, for every one person that dunks on cold outbound, there's another person whose life was changed because of it.

I send 2M+ cold emails and 1M+ LinkedIn DMs per month for 1,000+ active clients across Leadbird and Cleverly

Gemini 3 cannot sell a $10k service package.
GPT 5.1 cannot sell a $10k service package.
Llama 4 cannot sell a $10k service package.
Opus 4.5 cannot sell a $10k service package.
DeepSeek-R1 cannot sell a $10k service package.

A great human seller can.

I posted the below tweet earlier this year. If I could edit it, I would say:

“If I had a son, I would preach that you can either be top 1% in whatever job you have or risk losing it to AI’.”

Because “AI is going to eliminate [insert role]” is surface level thinking, and too broad of a generalization.

It is, of course, going to eliminate roles, but not roles in their entirety. 

Instead, it will eliminate the bottom 99% of certain roles while accelerating the top 1% of others.

Sales is a great example.

AI can handle a lot of the outreach process, even including script writing. What it can’t do is work a deal the way a human would.

The same can be said for a lot of software dev work, in my opinion. Great engineers will never be out of work, but average/mediocre ones likely will.

In short: if you want to AI-proof yourself, become top 1% at what you do. Easier said than done, I know…but very much worth it.

I jokingly posted this and SO many people commented or messaged about Agency 3 and asked for an intro. This is a huge problem.

This post was a joke. No lead gen agency worth their salt would ever take a deal in which they generate leads for clients, and only get paid if/when the client closes them.

We can't control what the client does after we generate the lead.

- What if they simply don’t engage with them?
- What if the lead asks to follow up later, and they don’t?
- What if their sales team just can’t close for their product/service?
- What if their pricing is way off the market norm?
- What if their reviews online are terrible, and the prospects drop out pre-call?
- What if they have no social proof and can't build trust with prospects?

There is so much that is out of the lead generation agency's control. 

Moreover, the client will have no skin in the game and not value the opportunity if they have no risk associated 

The agency can do their job perfectly and even go above and beyond and still make zero dollars because of something on client’s side.

Just a word of warning!

Excited and grateful to share I’ve reached 20,000 followers here on LinkedIn!

Almost 3 years ago, with 3,000 followers, I started posting the most valuable content I could every day (sometimes 2x per day).

Since then, I’ve been able to:

- Meet lots of awesome people I now consider friends.
- Learn a ton about outbound, GTM, and marketing.
- Attract incredible clients we’re extremely grateful for

Whether you were one of the first 3,000 or a part of the next 17,000, I truly want to say thank you. None of it's possible without you.

To that point, I only ask of you is to comment what type of content you want to see more of moving forward!

Super excited to show off our new client portal that makes it far easier for clients to track replies!

Before, we had clients logging into Smartlead to check email replies, then switching to a LinkedIn inbox manager for DM responses, then tracking cold calls elsewhere.

The entire lead gen operation was fragmented across three interfaces that didn't really interconnect.

Clients would miss responses because they forgot to check one of the platforms. They'd get confused about which channel was performing better. 

The biggest sign of this was support tickets kept coming in asking where to find specific replies.

So, we effectively rebuilt our client portal, using MasterInbox as the common thread. Now when clients log in, they see everything in one feed (emails, calls, DMs) that looks completely native to our platform.

Most importantly, clients have commented on how much easier this is for them.

Not to mention, it helps us, too. We've eliminated ~80% of the "where do I find my replies?" support requests. 

As for performance, clients are responding to leads faster because they're not losing track of conversations across multiple tools.

We're rolling this out to all clients because the upgrade is that significant.

Of the 1,000s of client campaigns we've run this year, the best-performer in recent memory was for a yoga studio.

I am big on local lead generation, and this is a perfect example of it. 

This yoga studio hired us to reach out to other businesses to try to get them to book group classes, retreats, off-sites, etc.

So, we scraped lead lists of local businesses and wrote a hyper-local cold email campaign to go with it.

And though you might expect the best performing campaign to be for an agency with a great offer or a hot new SaaS product, this blew others out of the water 

The point is that cold email for local businesses is wildly underrated. If you have or know of a local business interested in generating leads via cold email, feel free to reach out.

We’d love to replicate this.

If you’ve ever pulled leads from Apollo or anything else using “Industry” filters, read this post to make them way more accurate:

They have miscategorized companies in the industry that aren’t relevant to your ICP.

We've been using a new method to get our refined TAM into one list.

See, most lead lists give you name, email, company, LinkedIn URL, and a generic "industry" tag. The problem is that those industry classifications are wrong a lot of the time.

You end up messaging wrong accounts or missing perfect fits.

We found a way to fix this using data already in your lists.

Every company LinkedIn URL comes with an "About Us" section where they describe exactly what they do.

Process:

- Take 3-5 dream clients.
- Go to their LinkedIn About Us sections.
- Pull out every relevant keyword - product terms, customer segments, pain points, industry language. Build a keyword bank.

This takes 20 minutes.

Now layer this on top of broad industry tags. Instead of just "Healthcare," filter for Healthcare companies whose About Us mentions your specific keywords.

Gets you from the neighborhood into the right house.

This is basically advanced semantic filtering without expensive AI tools.

Use the company's own words to qualify them instead of relying on generic industry buckets.

My agency has 283 active clients. If we don't get to 1,000 by the end of 2026, I'll view the year as a failure. There are 3 things we need to do to get there:

LEVER 1 – Churn Reduction

We want to cut our churn in half.

Our sales team don't lie to prospects, but much of the churn does come from misaligned expectations around lead generation, so we are investing a lot in making that extremely clear up front.

LEVER 2 – More Time On Growth

This sounds obvious, but few people do it in practice. It's so easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations and not spend enough time on top of funnel activity.

There's so much more we could be doing (YouTube, ads, events, etc.) here.

LEVER 3 – Make Sure Our Team Levels Up

To serve 1,000 clients, we need to make sure our team is operating at all levels.

We had them at off-sites in Dubai and Cape Town in the past few months, and we'll do another one next year.

More tangibly, we are trying to get them more ingrained in lead gen overall.

We are asking them to go follow other leaders in the space and consume their content on a regular basis.

To me, this is an undeniable way to level up.

This comes off the heels of rebuilding our client portal and making it crystal clear and easy to operate. If you have any questions or want to see more on this, let me know.

Every time my family or friends came over and used my washroom, they'd come out laughing at me.

Not because of something in the washroom, but because of something they saw in my shower.

See, back then I used to write the most important goals in my life down and stick them on the wall in my shower.

This way, I would quite literally be forced to stare at them day in and day out.

I've always been of the belief that seeing these types of things written out on a repetitive basis just makes your brain tick different.

And my shower notes were the perfect example.

Years ago, doing $1M of ARR was a complete pipe dream.

Today, doing $1M of ARR means something went horribly wrong.

I'm extremely proud of this and urge you to write down your goals in a place you'll be forced to read them daily (shower, desk, phone background, etc.)

One of the most common replies you'll get to cold emails at scale is "how much does it cost".

Generally, you'll either:

A) Give the price. Without further context or sales tactics, people automatically see this as a cost and have a hard time justifying the ROI. This usually makes it harder to get on a call.

B) Give a range. This is a bit better, but depending on budget, it still may be hard to paint ROI via email. You need to give a fairly broad range.

Now, very few businesses selling >$1000 packages are public about pricing.

I think that should change.

Your pricing should be publicly available somewhere, ideally on a dedicated page that does a lot of the selling for you.

This might look like:

1. Landing page with 8-minute VSL, full of social proof, with pricing in the middle.

2. Static pricing page, full of social proof + process walkthrough.

This changes your reply from:

"Sure, our pricing is XYZ"

to

"Sure, feel free to have a look here [link] for more information on that".

This way, instead of your prospect just seeing the amount of money you want them to pay you, they get a much fuller picture of the value you provide.

If I were in charge of business development at a local blue collar business like this and needed to win jobs with cold email, I would:

1. Scrape a list of local businesses with an office location.
2. Write the following email copy:

—

[name], just wanted to touch base. We're an HVAC company in the area at [address].

Curious - do you have a go-to person for any kind of AC/heating repairs?

—

You might get a couple of jobs from this, but that is not really the goal with this kind of work.

The "magic" is what happens after.

3. Enroll all positive replies into a weekly nurture sequence (case studies and value).

Do this locally for 90-120 days.

It's the most surefire way to make sure that when a business' AC/heating breaks, they think of you right away.

Scaled to thousands of businesses across a major metro area, you're looking at serious pipeline.

Plus, a VERY small portion (if any) of your competitors are doing this.

To that point, if your business or someone you know would benefit from a system like this, comment or DM me!

Job titles are lying to you about who actually does the work. 

If you're selling something without a clean buyer title, your targeting is probably broken.

Here's how we fixed ours:

Outbound breaks down when your product is ambiguous. 

Say you sell financial forecasting software. 

Who owns forecasting depends on the company (Finance, FP&A, Operations, Strategy, or even founders, etc.).

A "Finance Manager" could handle AR, AP, Treasury, or actually build forecasts. You can't tell from the title.

So we stopped guessing titles and started targeting the actual work.

Layer 1: Department filtering

Start with departments where your problem sits. For forecasting: Finance, FP&A, Operations, Strategy.

Layer 2: LinkedIn description keywords

Every user writes a description under their title:

- "Own the quarterly forecast"
- "Build headcount forecasts"
- "Drive variance analysis"
- "Maintain the revenue model"

These keywords self-identify who does the work.

Instead of targeting "Finance Manager" and hoping, target "Finance Manager who mentions 'forecast' and 'financial model' in their description."

The process:

1. Pick 1-2 relevant departments
2. Extract 8-20 keywords tied to your product
3. Filter people mentioning those keywords in descriptions
4. Hit people who self-identify as doing the work

Example query:

Department: Finance/FP&A/Operations

Description contains: "forecast" OR "financial model" OR "budget"

This surfaces only people who explicitly manage forecasts.

We've been running this across ambiguous products and have seen both higher reply rates and better conversations.

The perfect cold email has:

- Relevance = Reason for reaching out.
- Personalization = Part that only makes sense to them.
- Offer = Outcome you'll provide.
- Social proof = Proof you've done it.
- CTA = Low-risk ask that puts the ball in their court.

Not complicated!

We've had clients we book 100s of meetings for per month, and others who churned because "cold email doesn't work".

The difference in how they operate:

Ones booking 100s of meetings:

- Willingly give away free value
- Take suggestions on optimizing offer
- Understand it's a volume game
- Don't overanalyze campaigns
- Chase leads we send them religiously

Ones who are convinced cold email doesn't work:

- Refuse to give away free value because it'll bring "bad leads".
- Refuse to optimize their offer to make it cold-ready.
- Want to send to a "targeted" list of 76 accounts.
- Analyze campaigns in relation to "industry standards" they Googled
- Let leads sit dormant for days and weeks after we submit them

It isn't exactly rocket science. This isn't to say we're perfect at what we do with every campaign.

It is to say we operate based on the data we have, and our data shows that this works.

We're doing 60,000 cold calls per month for clients and ourselves right now. Our number 1 learning for what converts to appointments and what doesn't has nothing to do with cold calling tech or set up.

It strictly has to do with the caller's tone.

One of the big pitfalls of outsourced callers is that they come into the call with no tonality.

Typical "Hey, do you have 10 seconds to speak? I'd love to show you how we could..."

Callers will sound robotic because you are grading them on the amount of dials they do per day. So, they speed-run through the list 

The much better play to run is:

1. Ensure your caller has a curious, inquisitive tone.
2. Ensure they don't get into the routine of sounding like a robot.

It sounds like a simple fix, but it's really not.

This is the difference between booking appointments from cold calling and wasting a ton of money.

How it feels when you realize you can just send more cold emails to get more leads:

We’re sending 260k cold emails Thursday-Sunday this week.

So many sellers view holidays and weekends as time to pause campaigns. I just don't see the point in doing this…mainly for a few reasons:

1. Because so many sellers pause their campaigns, inboxes are way less crowded.

2. Often, you’re targeting someone senior with outbound. Senior people, even though less on weekends, are more likely to check email (even once per day) during the holidays.

3. Generally, people are in more relaxed, friendly moods on a Thanksgiving Friday than they are on a random November Tuesday morning. This bodes well for reply rate.

Disclaimer:

You can expect ~50% of your typical campaign performance in terms of positive reply rate during the holidays. Yes it's reduced, but it's not worth stopping sending altogether.

TLDR: Don’t pause campaigns this holiday!

If I had to increase positive reply to meeting booked rate for any B2B business, here are the exact steps I'd take:

(1) Set up an automation that enriches positive replies with all relevant info (LI URL if I don't already have it, phone number, etc)

(2) Send them a LinkedIn connection request post-positive reply.

(3) Cold call them after that as well.

(4) If the meeting still isn't booked, I'd bump the cold email reply, mentioning I called and left a voicemail. Then, I’d follow up one more time after that.

(5) If they STILL haven't booked, I'd set up a weekly nurture newsletter for all prospects that fit this mould. Each email would have a CTA to book a call.

The point is that you reach them on all platforms.

If you need to set this up:

- Find out what data you have available after each list scrape.

- Set up waterfall enrichment to find what you’re missing after a positive reply (phone number, LI profile, etc.)

- Outline a process for you/your sellers to walk through post-positive reply.

- Use your CRM or beehiiv to set up a weekly newsletter nurture sequence (52 emails comprised of social proof + value).

The more you reach them, the better chance you have. It's not that difficult, but a lot of companies struggle with this.

- client with $100,000 LTV

Client: We only got 3 leads this month.

Me: And?

Client: We are going to have to churn.

Me: Why?

Client: We're clearly not getting enough volume for this to work.

Me: Ok, let's run the numbers. Your average LTV is $100,000 right?

Client: Yes.

Me: Okay, so, if we charge you $300 per lead, we can generate 100 leads that you close 0% on, and you'd STILL be at breakeven with us.

Client: Yeah, but we don't close at 0%. We close at 10-15%.

Me: Exactly. Let's even cut that in half and take 5%. If you pay us $300 per lead and close at 5%, you'd pay $6000 in lead generation costs for $100K in rev.

Client: Oh.

Me: Do you see why you don't need a lot of leads for this to work?

Client: Yes.

We have 60,000 monthly cold calls worth of data to show that prospects absolutely still pick up the phone.

Yet, still, deniers will say that it’s not worth their time, or that nobody picks up the phone, or my favorite: “When you pull the list, you’ll end up with office numbers and not personal ones!”.

(for the record: It is incredibly easy to pull personal mobile phone numbers from lead lists).

My point is that you absolutely shouldn’t listen to people who’ve never given a channel a fair shake about whether or not it works.

If you did:

1. You’d never send a DM because “inboxes are crowded”.
2. You’d never send a cold email because “it doesn’t work”.
3. You’d never make a cold call because “nobody picks up the phone”.

In reality, cold calling and quite literally all other channels “work” if executed correctly and for long enough.

Heading into 2026, outbound marketers will have to multi-thread more and more, meaning it’s likely going to be time to pick up the phone.

Just remember: It does work.

Denis Acia

Co-Founder at SaasFluence | B2B Influencer Marketing for SaaS Brands

I’m Denis, Co-Founder of SaasFluence

We’re an influencer marketing agency helping B2B tech brands drive demand and visibility by partnering with LinkedIn influencers.

Currently — with over 200 influencers, we manage influencer marketing programs for B2B sales tech companies like Maildoso, Icypeas, Saleshandy, Fowla, and others.

Why We Started SaasFluence

Before SaasFluence, I ran an outbound agency, Applus Leads. Through that experience, we worked with some incredible B2B tech brands — companies with fantastic products and real value to offer. But despite outbound efforts (cold calls and cold emails), they weren’t getting the traction they deserved.

A big reason?

Their LinkedIn presence and engagement were minimal. Most had only a few hundred page followers and very little visibility in the market.

That lack of recognition made it hard to convert cold leads. Without social proof or brand mentions, prospects were hesitant to engage — especially in the highly competitive sales tech space.
What they really needed was a new approach — one that would:

1. Build credibility
2. Earn trust
3. And drive demand by establishing them as trusted solutions in the market.

That’s where SaasFluence comes in.

Our mission;
To help B2B tech brands leverage influencer marketing to drive demand, increase sales, and grow.

How We Can Help

☑ If you’re a B2B tech founder or business leader with an influencer marketing budget of at least $10K/month,
 ☑ And you don’t have the time to run campaigns or manage influencer partnerships,
We’ll handle it for you.

We’ve launched thousands of LinkedIn-sponsored campaigns, and our clients are seeing exceptional ROI.

If you’re curious, DM me and I’ll share a few of our client case studies so you can learn more about our systems and results.

Or, visit our website to explore further:
 👉 www.saasfluence.co

Lead Generation Partner - Outbound

Here are 5 Linkedin comment frameworks I use to get more profile clicks:

(You won't like these if you think LinkedIn is a resume)

1. "Yes And"

Don't just agree - agree and add one smart thing.

Example: "Fr! And I think people also forget that you need to fix your offer first. Good point."

2. "Friendly Fight"

Disagreement gets attention but don't be rude. Be nice about it.

Example: "Hmmm I see where you are coming from. But in my experience small creators convert better than big ones. 

Maybe it depends on the niche?"

3. "Mirror"

Tell them a quick story about how this happened to you.

Example: "Lol this happened to me last week. I sent the wrong link to a client and I wanted to disappear haha!”

4. "Specific Hype"

If you want to compliment, point out exactly what you liked.

Example: "Thisssss 💯. Especially the part about the onboarding email that is genius man!"

5. "Curious Cat"

Ask a question that shows you read the whole thing. The creator will answer you.

Example: "Wait… does this strategy work if you have zero budget? Or do you need ads?"

Do you notice something? These 5 templates all have one thing in common:

They are human.

Which style do you use the most?

Commenting Frameworks

I visited a SaaS website today and I instantly got a headache. 

It said: 

“Empowering teams to elevate operational excellence through intelligent workflows.”

I read the headline and I stared at my screen for a full minute trying to figure it out.

What does that even mean?

Do you sell a project management tool? Do you sell a chat app? A CRM?

I have zero clue.

It hurts to watch because I know this company spends thousands of dollars on ads and influencers. They send humans to this page every single day.

And I'm pretty sure most people leave in five seconds because nobody has time to solve a riddle.

Of course I am not an A-list copywriter. 

But you don't have to be an expert to see why this is killing their business.

Now compare that to the website headline from Aimfox.

"Supercharge Your LinkedIn Pipeline. At Scale."

And then the subhead says:

"Reach thousands of leads per day with an end-to-end tool that gives you access to unlimited LinkedIn profiles for scale."

You read that and you instantly understand what you get.

The #1 rule of marketing is that you need to be understood.

Did AI make us forget that?

I stalk my prospects after I send them a proposal…

(but not in a creepy way)

Sending a file attached to an email is the worst feeling in sales because you are just throwing your PDF into a black hole.

You never know if they opened it or if they hated the price and deleted it immediately…

So I started using send.co

It gives me a specific link I can share with a specific prospect. 

And I get a notification on my phone the exact second they open it.

Maybe I see they spent 30 seconds on the 'Offer' page but they spent 5 minutes staring at the 'Pricing' page.

“Hmm… they like the offer but they are worried about the money.”

Now, I do not call them and say "Hey I saw you looking at the price!"

That is weird, don't do that.

I just wait a day or two and I send an email asking if they have any questions about the budget.

It helps me know who is serious and who is just window shopping.

Do you track your proposals or hope for the best?

Please don't replace yourself with AI if you care about your followers.

(I see people do this every day…)

They go to ChatGPT and ask it to "write a post on 5 ways to boost email reply rates."

And the AI spits out the same generic advice that thousands of other people have already posted.

So here is how I use a tool called MagicPost without repeating the same redundant ideas.

1. I hunt for the winning topic.

I go into the "Inspiration" tab in MagicPost. Maybe I see that a post about "Why Cold Emails Fail" is going viral.

I don't do cold email. I do LinkedIn.

So I think "Okay, I will write about Why LinkedIn DMs Fail." The logic is the same.

2. I copy the structure.

I click "Generate Draft" based on that topic… but I don't post what it gives me. I look at the structure. It uses a list of 3 examples? Good structure.

3. I inject "pain."

The AI writes: "Don't be too salesy in your message."

I delete that immediately.

I replace it with: "I sent 500 DMs last month. The ones where I pitched in the first line got X replies. The ones where I asked a question got a X reply rate."

That is how you use these tools. 

You let them build the skeleton because they are fast but you have to put the meat on the bones.

If you want to try this workflow, magicpost.in has a free trial.

Replace yourself or clone yourself?

I sell B2B influencer marketing services.

Here are 5 reasons you should not hire me:

1. Your product is not ready yet.

If your current users are confused, or they are not happy, you have a product problem. 

Marketing a confusing product will just make more people confused faster. 

2. You need sales today.

Influencer marketing is for building trust and being seen over time. It is not a "get demos now" button. 

If you need to sign five clients to make payroll next week, you should run ads or do aggressive outbound instead.

3. It's hard to understand what your product does.

If it takes you a 30-minute demo to explain what your tool does... a creator cannot explain it in a one-minute video. 

You need to simplify your message first. 

4. You just want to test it out with a tiny budget.

This one is tough but I've seen it a lot. A founder wants to "dip their toe in" with one creator but this never works.

It's like doing a single exercise and expecting to be fit. More creators in your industry = more reach.

5. Everyone in your market already knows who you are.

If you are already the big, famous name in your space, like a HubSpot or a Slack, a big campaign to spread awareness wouldn't be as effective.

Influencer marketing is a great tool but you have to use the right tool for the right job.

Can you explain what your SaaS does in one simple sentence?

I think most SaaS marketing teams are sitting on a goldmine and they don't even know it.

I see marketing teams locked in a room trying to brainstorm the perfect headline for their next campaign.

Meanwhile, down the hall, your sales team is on a Zoom call and they are hearing the exact words your customers use to talk about their problems.

They hear:

→ Honest frustrations. 
→ Honest objections.
→ Moments when a prospect goes from confused to "aha, now I get it."

And yes, I know an AI can give you a summary of the call. But it cannot grasp the excitement when they finally understand your solution.

Give your marketing people the headphones and let them listen to one call a week.

The angles they will find are a thousand times more valuable than anything they could brainstorm on their own.

Now, would you rather guess what your customers are thinking or hear from them?

You are the most valuable asset on LinkedIn if you fit this description.

We call this the "Golden Creator."

Brands are desperate to find people who look exactly like this:

1. You held a job title in the industry.

A former VP of Sales with 8,000 followers is gold to us. A generic "business coach" with 200,000 followers is often a gamble.

The VP speaks the specific language of the buyer while the coach usually shares general advice that appeals to everyone. There is a big difference in trust.

2. You teach specifics instead of motivation.

We love creators who teach. They share how-to guides and specific playbooks on how to solve a problem.

3. Your comment section is full of buyers

If the comments are full of random fans saying "Great!" that is okay.

But the Golden Creator has comments from potential buyers. You see other VPs asking specific questions about the tool.

4. You post enough to be part of a daily routine.

Posting once a month is not enough to build a relationship. They show up 3 or 4 times a week and become part of their audience's daily routine.

Which one of these is the hardest to build?

SaaS founders… please stop trying to turn a creator into your sales rep.

(I see this happen in so many campaigns.)

As a founder you probably love your product so much. I get it. You spent a lot of money on the dashboard and the reporting and the mobile app.

So you want the creator to mention all ten features in a sixty-second video.

But this kills the campaign.

It makes the post feel like a sales demo…

And nobody goes to TikTok or LinkedIn to watch a sales demo.

Here is how I look at this:

Maybe your software has Feature X and Feature Y. And maybe you love Feature Y because a lot of effort was put into it.

But the creator runs their whole business using Feature X. They use it every single day. They don't even touch the other one.

And that is okay!

If you force them to talk about Feature Y, they will sound fake. They will look like they are reading a script. 

But if you let them just talk about Feature X…

They will speak with passion. They will show how it saved them time. They will sound like a friend recommending a tool they love.

It is better to be remembered for one thing than forgotten for ten things.

Explain everything or the “relevant” thing?

I want to tell you why sending a PDF as a lead magnet is a mistake in 2025…

I see so many people doing this. A prospect asks for your guide or your case study.

And you attach a PDF to the email or you send a generic Google Drive link.

Here's what happens:

The prospect opens it on their phone. The text is too small. They have to pinch and zoom. They get annoyed. They close it and they forget about you forever.

We stopped doing that. Now we use a tool called Flowla.

It lets us create a "Deal Room" which is basically a personalized webpage for that one prospect.

Here is exactly how we do it when a SaaS founder asks for our list of top influencers:

→ We go into Flowla and duplicate our template.

→ We change the room name. We name it "Influencer List For [Company Name]."

→ We customize the list. If they sell a sales tool we filter our database and only put sales-focused creators in there.

→ We add our simple process next to the list so they see how we work.

→ We put our Cal.com, Inc. booking page inside the same window.

They open a single link. They see a list made exactly for them. 

And if they like what they see, they can book a meeting with us without even closing the tab.

We give this away for free.

Maybe they take the list and run the campaign themselves. That is fine.

Maybe they see how organized we are and they hire us. That is also fine.

But we never send a PDF anymore.

Send a file or send an experience?

4 reasons why your LinkedIn DMs might not be booking meetings…

(I am not going to say it's because you are too salesy)

I have sent over 5,000 LinkedIn DMs and I booked I don't know how many meetings. But it is a lot.

Here are the 4 biggest lessons I have learned…

1. Don't try to be their friend.

They know why you are in their inbox. You know why you are there. They don’t want to hear empty compliments.

Can you help them? Can they help you? Good. Just say what you offer.

2. I book meetings months after the first message.

People who say you should disappear after 3 follow-ups aren't booking any meetings. 

Send a few follow-ups. If you don't hear back, set a reminder for a few months from now. 

Then follow up respectfully. 

A lot of prospects are too busy or the timing is off. They don't want you to give up on them.

3. Stop sending 100% AI messages.

This is cliche but it has gotten so bad. People just want to chat with other people here without talking to robots. 

Everyone has used so much AI that they can spot a bot instantly.

You can use AI for help, but please edit your message so you look like a human at least.

4. Use multiple touch points.

Don't just reach out to a single person in the company. Reach out to several of them. 

Even non decision makers because they will direct you to the right person. 

It is common sense but the more people you reach out to the higher your chances of booking a call.

What is your #1 linkedin advice? Tell us below 👇

Linkedin DM tips

If you want a brand to never want to fire you, keep shuffling between these 4 content formats…

1. "My Problem" Story

→ You talk about a struggle you had.
→ You do not talk about the tool yet.
→ You make the reader feel the pain.
→ The tool is the happy ending.

2. Screen Share

→ Record your screen.
→ Show exactly how you do one specific task.
→ Do not just talk about features.
→ Show the work happening.
→ This builds massive trust.

3. The Old Way vs The New Way

→ Show how hard you worked before.
→ Show how fast it is now.
→ Put them side by side.
→ People love to see the difference.

4. The Trojan Horse

→ You give a piece of amazing advice.
→ The tool is just the vehicle for the advice.
→ Example: "How to write better emails."
→ You show your strategy using the tool.
→ This gets the most shares.

Try one of these next time.

Which format do you like to use the most?

Content Formats

If you are a LinkedIn creator, can I ask you something?

I see a creator's list of past brand deals and sometimes it makes me a little sad.

They show us this long, long list of all the brands they've worked with and it is impressive.

Then I look closer at the list and I see their audience is full of sales leaders. 

But they did a post for a tool that helps Shopify stores. Or a post for some crypto thing.

And this is the part that breaks my heart a little bit.

Because I know the best creators protect their audience like a fortress. 

They know their audience's trust is the only thing they have and it’s not surprising…

I think you would agree that a single bad recommendation can burn down years of work.

So when a creator who has only ever worked with sales tools for a sales audience... it tells me they have a deep understanding of one world.

And I’m 100% sure their followers trust them with their recommendations.

What's the one red flag that makes you run from a brand deal?

I want to show you the simple tech stack we use to manage a live campaign.

We have 150+ creators, different post dates, and a lot of money moving around.

And it can get really messy if you're not organized. 

Here's how we keep it from turning into a nightmare:

Airtable → This is our command center. It holds posting schedules, creator's payment info, and everything else. 

Slack → This is where we talk to the creators. It's so much faster than email. A quick message, a quick reply. 

Wise, Stripe & Deel → Getting creators paid on time is the most important thing. We use these to send money to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Google Docs → This is where we write the campaign brief. 

Favikon → Helps us track the performance of the posts after they go live. We can see the likes, the comments, and who is engaging.

Make → Sends automatic reminders to creators for invoices or sharing their post impressions. It saves us a ton of time.

What's the one tool you use to stay organized?

Why I scroll past 4K videos but watch the guy recording in his car on Linkedin…

I noticed something while scrolling my feed today. There are these creators who have a perfect studio setup. 

They have nice lights and an expensive microphone and the video is so crisp.

But I catch myself scrolling past them often.

It is not their fault. But my brain has this weird filter. In fact most of our brains have this filter…

When I see a video that looks too perfect, my brain immediately thinks "This is a commercial."

Unfortunately, we have been trained to think professional quality = corporate marketing. 

And nobody comes to Linkedin because they want to watch a commercial.

We try to avoid ads.

But then I see a creator recording a video in his car. The lighting is bad and the camera is shaking a little bit.

And I stop to watch and I can’t help it. It feels like he just Facetimed me to tell me an idea he had lol.

If you are Toyota or Apple, sure. It would be weird if a car company filmed a commercial on an old iphone.

But for the rest of us here, studio quality is just building a wall between you and the person watching.

Imperfection builds trust because it shows you are not hiding behind an edit.

Do you prefer watching studio videos or raw phone videos?

Should SaaS companies pause their influencer campaigns for the holidays?

I have been thinking about this a lot today…

A lot of people say B2B slows down now. They say decision makers are on vacation or they locked their budget until next year.

And they are right.

If you need to close a deal this week, December is tough. It is hard to get a sign when the CFO is skiing.

But think about what happens when work slows down.

People have more time. They scroll on LinkedIn and watch cat videos.

They are paying attention more because their boss is not bothering them every five minutes.

So here’s what I think:

Do not run a campaign if you need immediate revenue right now. You will be disappointed.

But if you want to be the first product they call in Jan/Feb... then you should definitely keep going.

Basically you are preparing for Q1.

What is your plan for this month? Pause or push?

We said no to a prospect with a $5k marketing budget…

If you are a sensible human, you know it feels weird to turn away money.

But I looked at the math and it did not make sense.

If they pay our agency fee, they have almost nothing left for the creators. 

They would be paying us to manage a tiny budget and that is a bad deal for them.

So I told them to keep the money and run it in-house.

At $5k you can manage a few creators yourself using a spreadsheet. You do not need us yet. It is easy enough for you to handle.

I told them to come back when they are ready to spend $10k…

Because that’s when you need a team to manage the madness.

They were shocked we turned them away but they thanked us for the advice.

This is how B2B agencies work. We help you win even if it means we do not get paid today.

Honest advice or a quick sale?

taplio

The Battle

Nick Abraham

Denis Acia

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taplio

The Battle

Nick Abraham

Denis Acia

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance