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.

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.

"We already emailed them"

That's EXACTLY why you should be emailing them again.

At any given point, roughly 3% of decision makers in your TAM are actively looking for your solution.

That means even if you do everything right with your lead gen efforts, a good portion of your TAM simply won't buy right then and there (see: “email me next year” replies).

From there, you're given two choices:

1. Mark them as permanently "not interested" and move on.
2. Re-market to them with new messaging every 30 days from there on out.

If you mark leads that don't want to buy right now as "permanently not interested," you will eventually run through your TAM.

If you reach out to leads who don't want to buy right now, every 30 days with fresh messaging, you will be top of mind when they do want to buy.

This is also why it's effectively impossible to burn a relatively large TAM. (Taylor Haren does a great job of explaining this).

The point is, don't be scared of holding on to the same leads. Just make sure your offer is strong, and the messaging is unique each time.

SlyLeadz

Sly Leadz - Your Partner in B2B Sales Growth

TIRED OF SLUGGISH SALES GROWTH?

At Sly Leadz, we help B2B businesses like yours THRIVE by crafting compelling outreach systems that LAND ideal clients and FILL your sales pipeline!

OUR MISSION:
We're on a mission to revolutionize B2B sales by providing a personalized, results-driven approach to outreach and lead generation.

Founder

Konecte

Sales Director

Keeper Security, Inc.

Account Executive - SMB

Business Development Representative

BlueGrace Logistics

Carrier Sales Representative

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

Some cold email openers deserve jail time and not the minimum sentence 😂

Every day I see lines so painful, so overused, so spiritually illegal that I’m convinced we need a special outbound correctional facility

“Quick question…”
“Hope this finds you well…”
“Following up on my last 8 emails…”

Swipe to see the 10 openers that should be locked up immediately

If you’ve used them, it’s okay consider this your probation

Follow Nick Palasz  for more sales honesty in a world full of questionable choices

10 cold email openers that deserve jail time

Every day in sales feels like its own Stranger Things episode:

A disappearing prospect.
A terrifying demo.
A sudden burst of superpowers.
Vecna soundtrack during pricing.
Dustin-mode when replies get weird.

And we call this… a career 😂

Ever feel like you're in Hawkins? 

Swipe the carousel to see why sales is a real-life Stranger Things episode!

5 times sales feels like stranger things edition

30 outbound experiments you can run in the next 30 days

Save this post; these are the tests most teams don’t run but should

Inside you’ll find →
– ICP & targeting audits
– Trigger-based prospecting
– Deliverability reset sprints
– Messaging clarity rewrites
– Personalization depth tests
– Cadence density + velocity checks
– Human-first follow-up systems
– Sequence drift & hygiene audits

Plus 20+ more experiments to help you tighten your system, sharpen your messaging, and build predictable pipeline in 2025 and 2026

Comment “OUTBOUND” and I’ll send the full resource

Make sure we are connected 🙌

Some reps unplug for the holidays

Some spend time with family

And then there’s the Christmas Eve Outbound Assassin
600 emails
1 sequence
0 self-awareness

Fully convinced “holiday inbox energy” is a real intent signal 😂

We all know that rep

Some of us are that rep

But truth is, the leads aren’t going anywhere

Your quota isn’t Santa

And you’re allowed to actually take those days off

Follow Nick Palasz for more moments that prove sellers are unintentionally hilarious

Why do agencies with $50K MRR feel more chaotic than startups at $500K ARR?

It's simple… startups build infrastructure before they scale

Agencies duct-tape tools together while juggling clients 🤷

And then reality looks like this 

→ Switching between 5+ platforms per client 
→ Managing dozens of logins 
→ Hunting for reports across different dashboards 
→ Triple checking you're in the right inbox before hitting send

This is not growth, this is pure survival

You don’t need more tools, you need better ones

One platform to manage leads, send cold emails, warm up inboxes, track performance, and handle multiple clients

And I prefer Saleshandy for it

No tool-switching problem 

No per-seat pricing nightmares

Just centralized client management that actually scales because clients don't care how many tools you use

They care about results

Swipe the carousel to learn more about it 👇

Saleshandy

If you're managing clients in 5 diff tools 

AI is about to break outbound in 2026 unless you use it the right way

Most teams use AI to write emails but the winning teams use it to read the moment

Here’s the difference 👇

AI should:
 – translate signals into buying intent
 – cluster prospects by real-time movement
 – route replies based on intent
 – personalize to what’s happening now
 – keep sequences from going stale

AI should NOT:
 – choose your ICP
 – set your strategy
 – replace human judgment
 – write unchecked copy
 – pretend it understands relationships

Here’s the 2026 rule:

AI is the engine. Humans are the driver

If you want my full AI Outbound Playbook 2026 

Comment “AI” and I’ll send the resource in pdf version

Have you ever noticed how LinkedIn outreach works great… until the moment you try to scale it?

I didn’t think much of it until recently.

I was reviewing one of our client’s outbound setup 

Nothing fancy, just a routine check and something felt… off.

They were doing all the ‘right’ things, but the system still felt like it was fighting for survival

That’s when I realized something I should’ve seen earlier

LinkedIn breaks not because of the outreach but people treating it like a single user platform while trying to run a multi-user operation 🤷

I kept seeing this over and over …
– Multiple profiles doing outreach but all in separate silos
– Conversations scattered everywhere

Every problem was related to infrastructure

And the moment they stopped trying to push harder, everything changed

So, lemme share a better way

➡️ Add pre-warmed outreach profiles so you’re not risking the main accounts
➡️ Distribute campaigns across multiple profiles, the same way we scale cold email
➡️ Centralize every conversation in one place so nothing slips
➡️ Make LinkedIn an extension of the outbound engine

We use Aimfox because it helps outreach behave the way it should behave
• Multi-profile campaigns
• One unified inbox for every conversation
• Clean automation with Clay/Make
• Human-feeling outreach at scale

Once you fix the foundation, the scale follows naturally.

P.S. Have you run into the same scaling problems on LinkedIn? What did you notice first?

Same product. Same training. Same sequences.

But only one rep was consistently closing deals. Here's why →

Last year I was reviewing an outbound team for a client.
But one rep kept coming up in conversation.

"Yeah, Jenna is different."
"She just runs cleaner calls."

I wanted to see what was actually happening.
Because 9 out of 10 times the rep is not the problem.
The system is.

Turns out Jenna was not magically more talented.
She was not born with some special discovery gene.
She just delivered a consistent experience on every call.

Every single one had clear notes, clear next steps, and fast follow up.
No repetitive questions.
No missing info on handoff.

Meanwhile the rest of the team was working at the mercy of their workflow.
Some typed notes. Some relied on memory. Some forgot key details.

Buyers feel that instantly.

Your top rep is not different.
Your process is different.
You cannot coach consistency if the infrastructure is broken.

So here is what we changed.

We added an AI call layer with Aircall that handled the note taking for them.
One shift that fixed the foundation."

Right when the call ended the AI created a clean summary with key points and next steps.
Everyone worked from the same version of the truth.
Follow ups finally matched what buyers actually said.
Hand offs felt smooth for the first time.

From the buyer side it felt like every rep suddenly became Jenna.
No repeating their story. No confusion. No drop in momentum.

Most people still think Aircall is just a phone system.
For this team it became the AI engine that made every call feel like the top rep was running it.

If you want your whole team performing like your best rep
fix the system first.

If you want your whole team performing like your best rep, fix the system first.

You can try Aircall's AI for free here: https://bit.ly/4oDKRTh

December is funny 🎅 

Everyone’s talking about slowing down,
being present,
logging off early

Meanwhile sellers are deeply focused,
typing at unsafe speeds
emailing people who are mentally checked out until January

Because Christmas is optional
Quota is not 😂

Follow Nick Palasz for more Christmas outbound content 🎄

And if December chaos made you realize you need a real outbound system DM me “2026” and we'll talk

If you’ve ever questioned your career after a cold email this carousel is for you

Because let’s be honest outbound has a way of humbling even the most confident rep 😅

One minute you’re convinced today’s the day
the next you’re staring at a lead list that looks like it survived a hurricane,
refreshing your inbox like it owes you money,
and sending follow-ups you’ll definitely think about at 2AM.

These are the 7 stages of outbound we ALL go through
(even if we pretend we don’t) 👇

If it stings a little, that’s how you know it’s real 

Follow Nick Palasz for more

7 stages of cold outreach nobody warns you about

I stopped hating rejection when I saw the pattern

Every “No” used to sting

Now it’s just another metric to study

Because not all No’s mean the same thing

Here’s how 👇

“Not right now” → timing data
“Not relevant” → ICP feedback
“We already use X” → positioning clue

Every rejection leaves a breadcrumb

You just have to be smart enough to trace it back to the system

The more I studied the No’s, the faster I fixed what actually mattered 
-Offer
-Targeting
-And message

The Yes’s came later

They always do

👉 Swipe the carousel to see the full breakdown

Follow Nick Palasz for more

rejection that pays you back

There's a 72-hour window when a buyer is 8x more likely to take your meeting.

Miss it, and you're back to cold outreach.

I didn't believe this until I saw it myself.
- A prospect changing jobs
- Company raises funding
- A team starts hiring SDRs

These aren't random events, they're buying windows.

And the reps who catch them early? They win early.

Here are the 5 buyer signals I track in real time using Lusha 👇

1: Job Changes
A buyer who just entered a new role, track job changes the minute they happen.

2: Funding Events
Teams that raise capital hire fast, build fast, and fix bottlenecks fast. Perfect timing for outbound.

3: Tech Stack Changes
Whenever a company adds or removes a tool, something is breaking. This is the most overlooked signal in outbound.

4: Team or Territory Expansion
Expansion means demand for new tools, data, workflows, and pipeline

5: Pipeline Activity
Teams already active in your category are the warmest 'cold' prospects.
The best way is to send better timed messages instead of sending more messages

The reps who see the signals early… win early.

I have explained all 5 signals in the carousel below. Swipe through to see how each one works

P.S. What's one buyer signal you wish you could track in real time?
#Lushapartner

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

5 buyer signals that predict a meeting

AI took the excuses personally

Now it’s just you, the system and accountability 😬

And honestly, we weren’t avoiding the work before

It just took forever to get stuff done

Research dragged
Personalization dragged even more
Writing one email felt like a whole shift

So yeah the “no time” excuse used to make sense

But then AI showed up and suddenly all the slow stuff wasn’t slow anymore

Which means if outbound still feels inconsistent…

It’s not because of AI, it's because of your system

Swipe through the carousel to see what actually changed and DM me "AI" if your outbound needs help

Follow Nick Palasz for more

the moment ai removed all excuses

Did your voice crack on your first call too?

Because mine definitely did 💀

And honestly, that’s the part nobody tells you

Cold calling doesn’t start with confidence

It starts with sweaty palms, shaky intros, and questioning every life choice you’ve ever made

But give it a few months?

You go from “Uh… is this a bad time?”
To “Hey John, quick one got a sec?”

The work stays the same

But you don’t

You get better at the awkward pauses, the messy intros, the fast pivots all the stuff that felt like chaos on day one

P.S. Comment your first cold call memory let’s laugh or cry together 😂

Outbound changed the moment AI joined the team

But are you actually using it correctly?

Most teams plug AI into the copy but ignore the parts of outbound where AI creates the real lift.

Here are 3 simple ways to fix that 👇

1️⃣ HPS
You pick the angle, and AI turns it into a few strong message options you can test and scale.

2️⃣ DTT
Outbound gets easier when your messaging reacts to real movement. New roles, new funding, new tools. AI turns those shifts into relevant openers so every message is timely.

3️⃣ SRI
Once the sequence starts, AI reads the signals your prospects send and recommends the next best step so nothing goes stale. 

Outbound isn’t about using more AI

It’s about using it where it actually matters.

P.S Which framework is your fav? Let's talk

Follow Nick Palasz for more

Warning⚠️  

This list may cause emotional damage

Because every seller pretends they’re built different until you realize we all operate the same way under pressure

The mid-call Google searches
The enthusiastic intro no one asked for
The 11-day “I’ll follow up tomorrow” delay
The CRM blame-game Olympics

We’ve all done it

We just don’t admit it publicly

Drop the number that hurt your soul the most 👇

Follow Nick Palasz for more honesty in a world of sales delusion

The breakthrough wasn’t a tool… it was cleaning up the mess

And that’s when everything started working again

We didn’t try to “build a stack”

We just fixed what kept breaking until the pipeline finally stopped fighting us

Here’s what stayed 👇

PhantomBuster- Scrapes real buyers not random titles
LeadMagic - Finds the hidden visitors already showing intent
Clay - Turns raw signals into clean, usable lead intelligence
Icypeas - Verified emails + enrichment that doesn’t fall apart
Prospeo.io - Find business email addresses for outreach.  
Aimfox- Personalization at scale that still feels human
Writesonic - Context-aware copy that doesn’t sound robotic
Smartlead -Safe sending + consistent outbound volume
Instantly.ai - Sales Engagement & Lead Intelligence  
Saleshandy - Follow-ups that land naturally
Inframail - Protects deliverability from collapsing
MailReach -Keeps inboxes warm, clean, and trusted

P.S. Which tool are you keeping in your stack this year?

Repost ♻️ to inspire your network and 🔔

Follow Nick Palasz for more

PhantomBuster

LeadMagic

Clay

Icypeas

Prospeo.io

Aimfox

Writesonic

Smartlead

Instantly.ai

Inframail

MailReach

This is me explaining to my family what I do for a living and somehow it gets more confusing the longer I talk.

It always starts simple:

“I help startups book more meetings.”

Then someone asks, “So… you just send emails?”

 And suddenly I’m 10 minutes deep explaining:

 – inbox warmups
 – deliverability
 – intent signals
 – ICP accuracy
 – and why one wrong domain setting can ruin your entire week

This is the point when my whole family just gives me that Thanksgiving look
 
The one where they’re not sure if I’m explaining my job or about to impersonate the turkey

But hey it pays the bills, fixes pipelines, and keeps founders from panicking every Monday morning 😂

Late on the post but Happy Thanksgiving everyone 🦃

Hope you all had an amazing one

Follow Nick Palasz for more

Not every deal’s meant to close and it's okay

When I first got into outbound, I thought every ‘no’ was a reflection of me

Every Closed Lost felt like failure

I’d overthink the follow-ups, rewrite the emails, and convince myself I should’ve done more

But over time, I learned something that completely flipped my mindset 

A lost deal doesn’t mean you did something wrong

Sometimes it means timing’s off
Sometimes the fit isn’t right 
And sometimes it’s just not your deal to win 🤷

Those moments taught me more than any course or sales hack ever could

What worked? What didn’t?

Why did some people lean in while others ghosted?

That’s how growth happens, quietly, between all the no’s and not yets.

So if you’re just getting started, remember

You don’t need to close every deal

You just need to learn from the ones you lose

That’s how you stop taking rejection personally 

And start taking it professionally

Repost ♻️ to inspire your network and 🔔

Follow Nick Palasz for more

Your people notice the damage long before the numbers expose it

And once the numbers react, the damage has already spread

Because bad sales cultures don’t blow up your numbers first they blow up your team

And it starts quietly

Reps stop asking real questions
Managers start obsessing over quota
Buyers feel sold instead of helped
And suddenly every call feels like a pitch instead of a conversation

That’s when performance drops

Not because the reps don’t care but because the culture is working against them

I’ve watched teams with insane potential fall apart this way
Great product.
Great talent
But the environment kept breaking them long before the metrics showed anything was wrong

And here’s the part nobody likes admitting:

The fix isn’t a new script, a new cadence, or a new tool

It’s the environment
→ help the buyer
→ coach curiosity
→ reward doing it right not rushing the close

Because when a team actually believes in how they sell?

Everything else becomes easier

The results always follow

Follow Nick Palasz for more

taplio

The Battle

Nick Abraham

Nick Palasz

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreNick Palasz's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Nick Abraham

Nick Palasz

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

Performance ScoreNick Palasz's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance