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

I recently visited a company’s site and got hit with a live cold call from one of their reps a few minutes later. I absolutely loved it.

Every bit of data we have shows that the faster you call your leads after they show any type of intent, the more likely they are to book into an appointment. 

So much so that we call leads that respond to our cold emails as fast as humanly possible to try to capitalize on this. 

But, frankly, I had never seen it done off of a website visitor play. In retrospect, it's quite obvious, though. 

1. Identify website visitor
2. Enrich and get email + phone
3. Assign to rep
4. Have rep call

There's clear alpha in this right now, and I'd love to see more companies take it on. 

The future of GTM belongs to those who pick up the phone fastest.

For the longest time while cold emailing local businesses, I removed “info”, “support”, and “help” @ [company name] emails. Wow, what a mistake that was.

I thought that those were generic emails and nobody checks them. So, I’d of course favor actual people’s (generally the owner) emails. Except over time, I realized how small this made our list.

It became clear that not all SMB business owners actually set up personal email accounts, and sometimes do operate out of the generic names (some friends in the space made this clear to me!).

And, it just…worked (see below for confirmation).

This changes a lot for us. It’s almost like we unlocked new TAM by confidently reaching out to addresses we never would have before, being that we now know they actually may be fruitful.

All that to say: if you’re cold emailing local businesses, don’t shy away from the generic addresses. They might just be exactly what will work.

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

Mark Cuban says the best business opportunity right now is selling AI implementation to businesses. Here’s how I’d do it with cold email:

People that do it wrong will mass-send generic copy about “implementing AI” to a massive list. It will go nowhere, and they’ll claim this “doesn’t work”.

People that do it right will:

1. Find 1 problem that’s solvable with AI for 1 type of business (ex: a specific AI workflow for HVAC businesses' back office).

2. Solve it in a way you can productize/replicate (using AI).

3. Scrape a list of ONLY those types of businesses (smaller, but more targeted).

4. Email a subset of the list offering to do execute this for free in exchange for case studies/testimonals.

5. Run the playbook 3 times for free to land case studies (video customer interviews + written case studies on-site).

6. Email the rest of the list saying:

"{{name}} - want {{problem solved}}?

Asking because we did it for other {{company types}} like {{company 1}}, {{company 1}}, and {{company 3}}.

Worth a chat?"

This has really always been the playbook for getting services businesses off the ground. AI has just increased demand for certain services, and made it faster to deliver for the vendors.

If I were fresh out of college trying to start something, this would likely be it.

It feels like every week, we see people in outbound preach about a new data vendor, infrastructure provider, or even sending platform. 

Even within tools themselves, I feel like I can't scroll the timeline without seeing Smartlead, Clay, or others announce a big new feature.

It's both awesome and exhausting, sometimes.

At the same time, it's indicative of how much this space moves and how fast it does. Every outbound marketer needs to be on their toes constantly to ensure they're not missing something. 

And though I don't want to come across like I'm fear-mongering, it's true. I've seen this in the last year with competitively generated agency owners, unfortunately fizzling out because they were stuck in their ways and didn't adapt. 

You absolutely need to keep your finger on the pulse of all tools and strategies in this space or you will fall behind. 

I like to frame it mentally as being a student of the game. It is ever-evolving, meaning it is quite literally impossible to master it. 

That’s my Tuesday reminder.

I've sent over 3,000,000 cold emails since January 1st. Here are my 25 rules for deliverability every outbound marketer needs to know in 2026:

Infra:

1. Always use Google or Microsoft accounts, never SMTP. SMTP providers consistently fail after a few months when spam filters update.

2. Domain endings don't matter much. Use .com when possible, but .org, .info, .co, and .biz work fine because they're cheaper.

3. Warm up domains for minimum 2 weeks, ideally a month for better performance and longevity.

4. Use an A/B rotation strategy. Buy two sets of infrastructure per client - use set A in month one, set B in month two, then rotate.

5. Keep emergency non-branded domains ready as backups when main infrastructure goes down.

6. Use proper naming conventions: Client_Campaign_Industry_LaunchDate_Group to identify performance issues.

7. All providers will eventually mess up DNS settings at scale. Always send yourself a test email and check headers before launching campaigns.

Campaign setup

8. Don't track opens. Open data is unreliable and hurts deliverability.

9. Plain text only. No fancy formatting.

10. Send Monday-Friday, 9-5, but randomize the exact time daily within a 30-minute window using Smartlead's API. Saturdays work well for SMBs and mid-market targets.Keep campaigns running on holidays because business owners check email every day.

Lead list management

11. Format company names properly, but ideally don't use them at all. Campaigns perform worse when they include company name or title.

12. When using titles, normalize them with AI (e.g., "CEO" not "Chief Executive Officer").

13. Remove all email security from your list. Use Google's DNS endpoint to identify anyone with Proofpoint, Barracuda, Mimecast.If removing security emails makes your list too small, put them at the end instead.

14. Don't isolate ISPs. Mix Google, Outlook, and SMTP recipients or your domain gets flagged.

15. Always validate with any tool right before launch, regardless of what data providers claim.

16. Separate catch-all campaigns from regular campaigns because catch-alls have higher bounce rates.

Copywriting

17. Spintax everything, but review all variants yourself. AI creates variants that sound unnatural.

18. Keep it simple. No images, PDFs, or links in the first email.

19. Two tests for copy: Can a 10-year-old understand what you're selling? Would you actually say this to someone in person?

20. Make copy conversational, not complicated with technical terms and corporate language.

21. Strong offers > personalization. Focus on making the offer better instead of building complex personalization workflows.

Continued in the comments.

Name drop campaigns make 100% automated emails look like warm referrals. But most people execute them wrong and kill credibility. Here's how to do it right:

The concept: You reference a colleague at the prospect's company in your cold email. This makes it look like you sat there, did your research, and wrote the email normally. When done right, these convert 2-3x better than standard cold outreach because you've lowered their automated email guard.

The mechanics:

- Pull colleague names by identifying their senior leadership (Find People → Department → Seniority) within the company.

- Reference the colleague in your first line ("not sure if you're the right person or if I should be speaking with [[ColleagueName]]")

- Optional: Add a PS that ties back to the colleague reference

- End with a soft CTA

The entire email should almost read like someone at their company gave you a warm intro.

Common execution mistakes:

- Generic opening lines that don't reference the colleague
- Formatting that exposes it as automated (inconsistent spacing, broken variables, obvious merge fields)
- Not cleaning your data before sending (colleague left the company, wrong person entirely)

The prospect should almost think a coworker mentioned them. When they open the email and see their colleague's name, their guard drops. That's when your message actually gets read instead of deleted.

We’re seeing incredible results with this right now…let me know if you want to hear more on it.

undefined undefined

Hey, thanks for replying. 

Here's the guide:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ogdq83o7sRMARFopD_t_-nqHF0XIOPsD/view?usp=share_link

Leadbird

P.S. If you’re an established agency or SaaS with a GREAT offer and want leads — Leadbird can help

… and we’ll do it on a Pay-Per-Lead basis.

Book today: https://www.leadbird.io/book-a-call

Spintax Guide

Tool

Article

Message

yuri

For the first time ever, YC included agencies in their request for startups. I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.

Historically, Agencies were rarely considered in venture conversations because of the required human capital. Revenue scaled only with headcount. This made software-like margins impossible to replicate.

YC’s argument is that this is no longer the case, thanks to AI. In a roundabout way, they're saying you can get the same output with less humans, and that all of the salaries you aren't going to pay go right back to your bottom line. 

That's the semi-obvious stuff. The less obvious angle here is that YC realized how fundamentally great the business model is compared to what they typically invest in. 

The venture game is one of moonshots. You pour a bunch of money into an asset that will burn cash for 5-10 years and hope it either turns cash flow positive at scale, gets acquired, or IPO’s.

By no fault of YC, this leads to a lot of failed companies and a lot of burned investor money. 

To me, YC asking for agencies is almost a safer hedge to a lot of the moonshot venture plays they try. Sure, rarely do agencies get acquired for what SaaS companies do or even IPO…but they're much more predictable and easier to spin up and operate than a lot of other companies. 

I say this is someone who's automated and systemized a lot of our fulfillment. We're able to run an extremely lean team for a relatively large client base because of these systems. And I do think this will become the norm moving forward.

Cold email sending schedules should not be the hot topic that they are. Really, the rules for sending are simple (backed by 25M+ cold emails):

1. Send Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. We use Smartlead’s API to randomize start and end time daily (+/- 30 mins of start and end time to increase variability).

2. Saturdays can, in fact, be a good day to hit SMBs or mid-market companies. 

3. Same goes for holidays.

It’s that simple. Stop reading in to data about which days and times perform better. You’ll drive yourself crazy.

There’s a massive business opportunity for someone that wants to use this cold email right now. Let’s walk through why:

I don't need to educate you on the AI opportunity right now for businesses that aren't using it at all. Businesses, especially local ones that operate way outside of our bubble, have arguably more upside than anyone in terms of properly using AI to boost efficiency.

There are huge consulting shops being spun up right now that solely implement this for customers.

And I think there's a huge play to do so locally with this cold email alone. Why?

1. The subject line is relevant enough to a business owner in a given suburb / area.

2. We layer on the local social proof in the first line with an outcome promise as well. 

3. We really play up the local angle by effectively saying “we are going to be in the area upcoming, so let us know if you are interested”. 

4. We of course end with a soft CTA. 

Cold email doesn't need to be that difficult. You just need to have a strong and unique offer presented well. This is a great example of that.

People are taking spintax too far and it's ruining their cold emails. They're trying to spin individual words to increase variance, but this often leads to certain sentences just not making sense or sounding weird when read out loud.

This is not the way. You clearly show your prospect that a human did not write the email.

The right way to run spintax:

1. Identify the right variables to do it with in the first place.

Certain ones are over the top and risk-prone for messing up the email. Especially with certain Clay workflows, people are going overboard.

Easy, less risk-prone ones:

- Case studies (switch out company name and result)
- CTA sentence (spin 4-5 different ways of saying "Can I send you more info?")

2. Instead of spinning specific words, do it with specific phrases all together that still mean the same thing.

This reduces the chance of the email sending platform creating a sentence that just looks weird or doesn't make sense.

This is “boring” stuff but it's important.

My agency has worked with 500+ clients. In the last 5 years, I've learned a TON about how to deal with unhappy customers. My top 3 learnings about doing it:

1. Product <> Fulfillment <> Sales must all be aligned.

All messaging has to be completely aligned at all times and updated frequently across the board if needed.

Customers can and will get confused by what you are saying, pitching, or delivering.

Example:

Our product team built a new way to launch campaigns, and our fulfillment team started leveraging it. But, our sales team is still pitching the prior way (the outcome was the same, but the workflow is different).

This ultimately led to confused customers and was an issue we had to mitigate.

Don't let that happen!

2. Your contract is, literally, the law.

This goes for any B2B company. Everything you put in there on how your service gets delivered is very important. So is the reverse (everything you don't do.)

This will help prevent scope creep and give you clear boundaries on what you do and do not do for clients.

3. Calling mechanisms are crucial.

Similarly, this goes for both lead generation agencies and other B2B companies. Do not let anyone on your team get comfortable with doing the back-and-forth email battle.

The much more efficient, personable, and higher-leverage play is simply calling the client and figuring out the problem.

Broadly, most people are reasonable and somewhat logical, so explaining your stance (as long as it's justified) should work just fine.

Ensure you have a cell phone data/calling mechanism for all clients.

I know this wasn't anything flashy, but I promise you this is what is important at scale.

Almost every day, I get a cold email referencing my engagement on a social post I didn't think twice about. Cold emailers are using this signal the wrong way, and it's ruining their reply rate. Here's how to fix it:

People engaging with content in your space are actively researching the problem you solve right now. These lists convert at 3-4x higher rates than standard cold outreach because of recency and intent.

The wrong way:

"Saw you engaging with [Creator's] content about cold email..."

This feels like surveillance, not relevance. 

The right way:

"Noticed you've been engaging with content about outbound lately..."

Reference the intent and topic, not the creator. The intent matters, but usually the specific creator doesn't.

How to run this properly:

1. Identify 5-10 creators with your ICP audience (look for competitive overlap and high engagement).

2. Build a DNC list before scraping (generate competitor domains and exclude them so you don't email creators directly)

3. Scrape engagement weekly with Apify (pull last 7 days of engagers to keep lists fresh)

4. Deduplicate against a master database (dedupe by LinkedIn URL first, then at ingestion and pre-campaign)

5. Enrich and route channels (email first, if open profile → send InMail, then connection requests)

6. Use intent-based copy, not creator name drops

Common mistakes that kill these campaigns:

- Scraping once instead of weekly (make the campaign evergreen)
- Not excluding competitor domains (you email the creator and other competitors)
- Name dropping creators in copy (feels invasive)
- Not deduplicating (hitting same people repeatedly)

Quantity of prospects usually isn’t high (especially after filtering down), but the quality is solid if hit right. Strongly recommend!

The problem with cold email is that once people figure out what’s working, they overuse it and run it in to the ground…until it no longer works. Let’s fix that.

The perfect example of this is the time-tested campaign copy:

“If we could help generate 1[result] with our [unique mechanism], would you be interested in speaking?”

It worked for a while because it wasn’t intrusive, was relatively low-risk, and promised an outcome (those principles remain, by the way). But, it got overplayed.

The fix to this is not simply different copy, but offering something different altogether.

By this, I mean:

1. Identifying a small set of deliverables everyone in your ICP ideally needs, or could benefit from.

2. Anchoring your cold email around offering that for free.

3. Doing a great job at it, and then opening up the conversation to more services.

There’s a great example of this in the graphic below. Yes, you’ll do some free work. But you have the right to qualify leads up front and only do it if it makes sense.

Like it or not, this will help a lot of outbound teams “win” cold email coming up.

Last week, I posted about being cold called by a rep after I visited their site. I said I loved it, and people were…not happy, to say the least.

I saw tons of comments saying that this was “creepy” and bordering on an “invasion of privacy”.

I’m not here to debate the efficacy of the play. If your company books demos from it, do it. If you don’t, then don’t.

But this privacy point is hilarious to me.

People wrote comments about a company using their online behavior to give them targeted messages at a specific time.

…and then opened Instagram and saw 3 retargeting ads from sites they visited in the last week, and didn’t bat an eye.

My point is that companies do this all day long. We wouldn’t have some of the social media products we do if advertisers couldn’t pay for this ability.

It’s not novel. It’s just being adopted in B2B.

Adding prospects to a Google Doc or sending random calendar invites to stand out in the inbox isn’t new.

Docs, Loom, Canva - people have used these for years because their domain reputation helps deliverability. And yes, you’ll likely land in primary.

But at scale, it’s not the unlock people think it is for two reasons:

1. Enterprises run heavy phishing training. If they don’t recognize the sender, they’re told not to click. That kills the play fast.

2. It carries the same negative sentiment as cold email. Some people will think it’s clever. Others will hate it.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

I used Notion Agents to build a lead gen competitor intelligence agent in maybe 60 minutes. How it works:

1. Discolike grabs the largest B2B lead gen agencies (our competitors).

2. An agent runs via Firecrawl MCP that finds updates on them (new case study, site update, etc.)

3. Sends me a monthly update of all new competitor activity.

No, this isn’t going to change my life and suddenly add $100K of revenue to my agency. But, it’s a dead-simple way to keep me in the loop on our competitors without doing a bunch of research or paying a VA to do it.

Not to mention, there are obvious applications to use this data in a lead gen setting. Ex: Monitor prospects’ competitors’ activity > reference their activity in an email to a prospect.

I don’t think Notion Agents is getting enough love right now, so I thought I’d share.

"We don't chase customers if they don't get back to us after the first reply, mark them as closed lost." That’s a real quote I heard from someone trying to get leads from outbound.

Short take: Some people just don't want it.

Long take: Outbound marketers everywhere are complaining that reply rates are down, deliverability is getting harder, and meetings are scarce, to say the least.

Prospects are fatigued from being hit with the same cold email template variants and are only replying to the emails that are strong, relevant, and have good offers.

So to effectively “waste” a good lead because you had to follow-up with them more than once is simply irresponsible.

In fact, I think the winning outbound teams of the next few years will:

1. Get back to positive replies borderline instantly.
2. Be extremely regimented about maintaining their CRM.
3. Prioritize strong, tasteful, relevant follow-ups until Closed Won or Closed Lost.

People who are disciplined about chasing positive replies will run circles around those that don’t follow up more than once because they “don’t chase leads”.

I can’t believe this is even a take.

The easiest and fastest way to write more relevant, personalized email copy with 0 extra work is to let your list write the copy for you. Let me explain:

I recorded a podcast episode with 🦾Eric Nowoslawski a while back, where he explained this perfectly. He explains that marketers often go too broad with their targeting, making relevance much harder to achieve.

He goes on to share that you can simply tighten up your list with certain filters that make it easier to write copy that’s relevant to everyone on that list.

Perfect example: Let’s say you’re a bookkeeping service.

You can reach out to CEOs of companies in the USA with <20 people, and say something like:

“We help small businesses in the USA close their books within 5 days at the end of each month.”

…OR you can reach out to:

- CEOs of companies in the USA with <20 people
- Who founded their company less than 2 years ago
- Are a first-time founder
- Don’t have a finance and accounting person on their team

And say something like:

“I saw that you guys were recently founded, and congrats, it's your first time running a business like this. 

How are you thinking about your finance operation? Asking because we help…”

Do you see how simply filtering down the list makes it easier to write more relevant copy with no extra work? You of course give up some volume in doing so, but the tradeoff is often there.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that every single company should make a practice of doing this. It's a low-effort, high-reward way to get meetings on the board from outbound.

I'm talking about simply reactivating old leads that never closed or fizzled out from a time in the past. These are people that showed a level of interest in what you were offering, and they were more familiar with you than a true cold lead. 

Not to mention, especially if you're kicking off an outbound motion, these emails are more prone to replies. This will build trust signals early with Google and Microsoft, and overall improve deliverability. 

This is important enough that at onboarding, we ask clients for lists of older leads they want to reactivate. By reaching out to them, we're usually able to get 1-3 wins on the board in the first 7 days of a campaign going live. 

The messaging is fairly simple as well:

"Hey {{name}}, we spoke in the past about {{what you do}}.

Wanted to touch base again because we {{did something new / have new method, etc.}}.

Would it make sense for us to chat later this week?"

If you need any help with this, comment and I can answer as best as possible. I strongly recommend you get it up and running if you haven't already.

I’m convinced every B2B service provider should reach out to churned clients at the 30-day post-churn mark to win them back. As unconventional as it sounds, it’s been working well for us. My thesis:

Clients churn because they think the grass is greener on the other side (another vendor that’s cheaper, running the process in-house, etc.). In our experience (including vendors we’ve churned from) this often isn’t the case. 

Especially with regards to lead generation agencies: if an agency can get you some* leads (even if it’s less than you anticipated), that little bit is better than zero leadflow.

All that to say:

We’ve learned that clients aren’t always happier post-churn. Because they’re familiar with you and your process, you’re ripe to reach out again (unless you ended on bad terms, of course).

There are simple, non-intrusive ways to do so for every B2B service business. For a lead generation agency like us, for example, the messaging might say:

“Hey - noticed you never asked for your domains back. We could spin up infra today and relaunch a campaign if you’re still open to it.”

I’m not saying this has a 100% success rate. I am saying it’s worth doing.

Founder @ Slyleadz | I help startups build cold outbound systems that generate qualified meetings | 💌 slyleadz.us

STRUGGLING TO FILL YOUR PIPELINE WITH QUALIFIED LEADS?

I've been there. After testing 1000+ outreach campaigns, I cracked the code.

Now, I help B2B companies build outbound systems that:
→ Generate 20-30 qualified meetings/month
→ Convert cold prospects into warm conversations
→ Scale predictably without the spam tactics

Our secret?
- Multi-channel outreach that actually works
- AI-powered personalization at scale
- Follow-up sequences with 40%+ response rates
- Data-driven targeting that finds your ideal customers

Recent wins:
→ Helped a SaaS startup book 100+ demos in 60 days
→ Built a 7-figure pipeline for a tech company in 90 days
→ Generated 500+ qualified leads for enterprise clients

Want to stop guessing and start closing?
Book a strategy call: calendly.com/slyleadz/slyleadz-15-minute-meeting-clone

Nick Palasz

People warn you about different substances but no one warns you about choosing sales as a career

Where your entire emotional stability depends on

• A reply that says looks interesting	
• A calendar notification
• Or someone typing…

It can be exhausting at times

But it’s also the kind of challenge that keeps you coming back, and I still wouldn’t trade it for anything else

Send information is all I needed to start believing again

That’s it. Two words

There’s no timeline, no budget, no actual commitment but I closed the laptop like something meaningful just happened

I’ve already replayed the call in my head and decided they liked me.
Now I’m imagining how I’ll structure the follow up
And I’m slightly nicer to everyone for the next 20 minutes.

They didn’t promise anything
But I emotionally adapted to the deal anyway

Now I’m checking my inbox like we’re in a long distance relationship

Sales reps don’t get attached to closed deals
We get attached to the possibility of one

Follow Nick Palasz for more

At some point, waiting becomes a personality trait in sales😅

You’re not even anxious about it anymore
You’ve kind of made peace with it

It’s just part of the routine now
Drink your coffee
Send those emails
Randomly think, huh… whatever happened there?

You don’t talk about it but you know it’s there

Sales doesn’t always humble you in big dramatic ways
Sometimes it just trains you to sit in silence and call it normal

I don’t send a cold email until it passes this check.

Because I’d rather fix it in 60 seconds than lose a week of replies.

I’ve been on the other side of that. You launch something that feels solid. Targeting makes sense. Copy feels tight. The offer is clear.

And then… nothing.

So you start adjusting angles. Rewriting lines. Changing the CTA. Telling yourself, maybe the market’s just slow this week.

Meanwhile, it’s something small. The subject’s slightly off. There are too many links. A quiet spam trigger is pushing you out of primary. Something boring but expensive.

That’s why I test the email before it goes out.

Warmy shows me what I’d otherwise learn the hard way. 
Subject length, word count, spam signals, reading time, link count. If something’s off, I fix it before it ever touches a prospect’s inbox.

Outbound already has enough moving parts.

Deliverability shouldn’t be one of the unknowns.

If you’re about to send a campaign, run it through a check first. It takes a minute, but it might save your next campaign 👉(https://lnkd.in/gHJ3cf5a)

If one hire was supposed to save your pipeline, read this

You made the expensive hire
With a higher salary, higher expectations, and a bigger quota.

This was supposed to change everything.
Finally bring in the deals.

But the targeting didn’t change
The CRM is still half-filled
Handoffs are still unclear
Data is still messy

The name on payroll is different but the friction inside the engine isn’t.

And then the quiet disappointment starts.

“Maybe they’re not as senior as we thought.”

But senior reps aren’t magicians.

They don’t create structure out of thin air
They amplify the environment they walk into

If the inputs are clean, they look elite
If the backend is messy, they look average

Before you question the rep, question the process.

P.S. If your top performer looks stuck, look at what’s sitting behind them not in front of them

Follow Nick Palasz for more

5,000 emails daily… on how many domains exactly?

I’ve learned not to get excited by volume anymore because I’ve burned domains before 😅

Not in one dramatic crash, but in slow fatigue like:

• Replies thinning out
• More emails landing in spam
• Campaigns that used to work suddenly feeling average

And the worst part is you don’t immediately connect it to volume

You think it’s the angle, the copy, or even the market being weird this week.

Meanwhile, the domain’s just tired

There’s too much load on it and not enough support.

That’s why before I scale anything, I check the math.

If I want to send 5,000 emails a day, I want to know exactly how many domains and mailboxes that actually requires.

I’ve been using Warmy’s domain calculator for that.

It shows me the setup I need before I touch the dial

👉 So before you turn the dial up to 5,000, plug your number into the calculator and see what your setup actually needs (https://lnkd.in/gHJ3cf5a)

5000 Emails a Day?

The way you talk to AI says a lot about how you sell

I’ve seen a lot of reps blame AI for average results
But when I look at what they’re typing, it’s this:

 -Give me pain points
 -Write a follow-up to this conversation
 -Help with objections

And then they’re confused when it reads like everyone else’s email

That’s not an AI issue
AI is not here to think for you. It responds to the prompt you give it

So instead of vague requests, here are 8 prompts every seller should actually be using for:

• ICP research
• Personalised icebreakers
• Pain hypotheses
• Objection handling
• Strong CTAs
• Smart follow-ups
• Case study rewrites
• Multi-threading inside accounts

Go through them

♻️ Repost it and audit your prompts today
 Follow Nick Palasz for more tactical outbound breakdowns like this

I’ve heard next quarter more than my own name

And somehow I still act surprised every time 😅

It’s always delivered gently
“Everything looks good but we’ll just push this to next quarter”

You pause for half a second
Not long enough to be noticeable but long enough to recalculate your life

First thought: that’s fine
Second thought: that’s not fine
Third thought: this is actually strategic

By the end of the call, you’ve professionally agreed, emotionally protested, logically justified it and already rebuilt your confidence.

Sales is wild like that
One calm sentence and you’ve already gone through five emotional plot twists while saying it sounds great

If you’ve mastered the art of smiling through a delayed close, you’re officially seasoned

Follow Nick Palasz for more outbound reality checks

There should honestly be a cooling-off period before anyone is allowed to send Quick question

Like a small warning that asks, do you really want to be this person today?

Because nothing good has ever followed these two words

We see it in the subject line every day.
We already know it’s going to ask for something.
Still, we open it 

Just in case this one is relevant.
Maybe this one actually did their homework.

It didn’t

Most of these subject lines aren’t bold. They’re exhausted.
You read the first sentence and your brain is already reaching for the delete button.

Swipe the carousel and tell me the worst subject line that needs to go away.

9 Subject Lines That Should Be Banned From LinkedIN

There’s no confidence like 9:47 PM confidence 👀

All week you were aligned
Clear strategy
Strong angle
Everyone approved

Then you reread it once 
And suddenly you’re convinced this entire sequence is personally responsible for slowing your company's growth 

So, you delete it and rewrite everything:
New positioning
Stronger hook
Different CTA

Launch is in 8 minutes but it feels like the perfect time to reinvent outbound

Because salespeople don’t avoid chaos

We just book it right before it goes live

Follow Nick Palasz for more

P.S. If you’ve ever renamed a doc “FINAL_final_v9,” you’re part of the problem too

I’ve always had a soft spot for movies about sales, business or big deals

There’s something about watching negotiations and pitches play out on screen that is just so entertaining

So, I compiled a list of my top 20 movies that everyone should watch

Some of these are classics, some are a bit chaotic and a few are probably more cautionary tales than inspiration but they’re all fun to rewatch

P.S. Is there any movie I’m missing from this list? 👀

A 15-minute call should not require attachments

Especially when it’s called a discovery call.

You join ready to talk, but instead hear  “Let me share my screen”

Now it’s a presentation, and they walk you through:

• How the company started
• Why is the logo blue
• What makes them different

All while you’re still muted

Then minute 14 arrives and they ask

“So…tell me about your goals.”

Apparently, discovery works best under time pressure

Because nothing says meaningful conversation like squeezing it into the closing credits 😅

Follow Nick Palasz for more outbound reality checks

I spent 4+ years and 1000+ outreach campaigns building what most teams never finish a full outbound strategy system.

Not a template. Not a swipe file. A real system.

📌Today, I'm giving away the entire Outbound Strategy System (2026 Edition) for free.

Built for B2B companies that want predictable meetings, not random spikes.

What's inside:
→ A decision framework to know if outbound is even right for you
→ Unit economics guardrails (where most teams quietly fail)
→ Channel portfolio breakdown cold email, LinkedIn, paid, partnerships
→ Lead demand vs SDR capacity math that actually makes sense
→ The 3 stages of outbound maturity (Chaos → Structure → Infrastructure)
→ Domain scaling model so you stop burning mailboxes
→ Deliverability checklist to run before every single launch
→ Realistic ramp timeline (if you expect full pipeline in 30 days, you're gambling)

I'm keeping this free for the next 7 days only.

Comment "system" below and I'll send it over.
 (Make sure we're connected)

Are you trusting Sales Nav data a little too much?

I did.

If the filters looked right, I assumed the emails were right.
-Good titles.
-Funded companies.
-Recent hiring.

So I’d export it, load it into the sequencer and hit send. It felt quite efficient.

Then bounce rate would creep up by 3%

Not enough to freak me out but enough to slowly mess with deliverability.

And every time replies dipped, I did what everyone else does

Rewrite it with:
-New subject line.
-Stronger opener.
-Different CTA.

I wasn’t fixing the problem. I was just avoiding it

The real issue was the step I barely respected
That middle layer between Sales Nav and send, where emails are enriched, verified, and filtered before they ever touch a sequence.

Once we tightened that using Icypeas, things took a turn for the better

Bounce rate dropped under 2%
Replies started coming from actual decision makers
And I stopped rewriting emails every week.

If you’ve been tweaking copy more than your data process, this might be the reason why

Sales Nav and Send

There’s a version of me that closes deals very fast

Mostly in my head though 👀

I move it to Closed Won
Tell myself the month is saved
And start acting slightly less stressed

Nothing is signed
Nothing is confirmed

But somehow I’m already relaxed about it

Sales really lets you celebrate things that haven’t technically happened yet 

P.S. Do you wait for the signature or just the feeling?

📌 Save this

Most teams think subject lines are all about creativity

They’re not. They’re about timing.

You can have a great offer, clean copy, solid targeting and still get ignored if the subject doesn’t match what’s happening inside the company right now.

That’s why these 25 subject lines are built around real situations companies are already in 
Hiring SDRs
Just raised
Switching tools
Missing targets
Expanding territory.

When the subject reflects something that actually changed inside their world, the email lands differently. It feels connected to what’s going on, and that alone shifts how it’s read

P.S Before sending the next email, ask yourself what actually changed inside that account

If I asked your team to explain exactly where outbound breaks
Would the answer be clear or would it depend on who’s in the room?

I’ve noticed something over the years

Outbound doesn’t fail because people aren’t trying. It struggles because no one can clearly explain how it works end-to-end.

-Who owns what
-Where deals slow down
-What really counts as intent
-Which channels are producing pipeline

That’s why I put together these 10 outbound system questions every team should be able to answer without hesitation

If you’re not fully confident in the answers, send me a message

Follow Nick Palasz for more

I’ve audited enough outbound campaigns to know the breakdown is rarely where people think 

And once you see where it breaks, it becomes painfully obvious

When outbound starts underperforming, the reaction is almost always the same

Rewrite the email
Change the subject line
Test a different opening

But the problem isn’t always sitting inside the message.

It’s happening somewhere earlier

Sometimes the list is never tight enough to begin with.
Sometimes completely different prospects are pushed into the same sequence.
Sometimes the timing is off or the follow-ups stop too early.

None of these mistakes look dramatic when you’re running the campaign but stack a few of them together and your entire system breaks.

That’s exactly what this breakdown shows.

♻️ Repost this so your team can audit their outbound system.

Follow Nick Palasz for more tactical outbound insights.

Here’s the cold email framework I use to generate 20–30 qualified meetings a month.

It’s not complicated.

• Start with a real trigger (funding, hiring, product launch)
• Personalise the first line so it feels relevant
• Keep the email short
• End with a simple CTA

That’s the visible part of outbound but there’s a layer behind it most teams forget.

That’s deliverability. You can write the perfect email and still get zero replies if it never reaches the inbox.

Before launching campaigns now, I check the deliverability layer first.
 -Are the sending domains warmed up?
 -Is the reputation stable?
 -Are emails landing in the inbox?

And for this part I use Warmy. It warms up my domains and monitors inbox placement so I know emails aren’t getting filtered out before they reach the inbox.

I wish I had this when I first started running cold outreach, would’ve saved a few burned domains 😅 
If you’re just getting into it, worth checking out  https://lnkd.in/gHJ3cf5a

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Nick Palasz

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The Battle

Nick Abraham

Nick Palasz

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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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Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance