I help B2B companies generate leads.

I've generated over $20M+ in pipeline and $2M+ in revenue for clients. 

Recently helped Alex Hormozi secure 11K leads for his $100M Series book launch, which was a fun project!

How do I do it?

I use data from over 100+ sources to create smart strategies that find the right prospects. 
This helps your sales team connect with people who are already looking for your solution.

I manage the full process: 
➡️ Building targeted lead lists 
➡️ Setting up & warming up inboxes 
➡️ Writing personalized emails and DMs 
➡️ Running and managing the entire campaign

We're constantly testing to find your sweet spot: 
➡️ OFFER-MARKET-FIT 
➡️ TARGET TESTING 
➡️ MESSAGE-MARKET-FIT
➡️ PRODUCT-UNTAPPED MARKET FIT

If you're a B2B company that wants more demos and sales calls, head over to https://www.c17.ai/ 
To see how it works.

Utkarsh Singh Rana

SmartAgents just killed “outbound ops” as a job description.
But not the people behind it.

It killed the manual part 
the repetitive work that slows down creativity and deal flow.

SmartAgents live inside Smartlead as trained AI operators that:
✅ Execute campaigns across email, LinkedIn, CRM, and analytics
✅ Optimize performance in real time
✅ Follow up intelligently and flag replies
✅ Enrich leads and sync data
✅ Learn and improve based on your patterns

They automate what no one loves doing
so humans can focus on strategy, messaging, and closing.

💡 Why this matters
Most GTM teams spend 70% of their time keeping systems running.
SmartAgents turn that effort into leverage.

Build agents using simple prompts - no-code, just “commands.”
Deploy across your team instantly.
Integrate with Hubspot, Pipedrive, HeyReach, Slack, Calendly, Airtable, and more.
Layer multiple agents like a modular workforce - each owning a distinct piece of your outbound engine.

I use one that spots underperforming campaigns.
It tracks reply rates over 30 days and pings me on Slack when something dips
so I can jump in before a problem becomes a pipeline issue.

Utkarsh  Rana 🧲

Head of GTMs @C17 Lab | GTM Systems for B2B Companies

My client research used to stop at “smart enough to present.”
Now it goes so deep my clients ask:
.
.

“Wait… how did you get inside our buyer’s head like this?”

When I do research for enterprise clients, I’ve always had this nagging feeling:
“This is good… but it’s not the full picture.”

I’d pull:
Site + content
ICP docs
Sales conversations
A few internal surveys


Useful. But still two inches deep on a problem that’s ten feet psychological.
So I changed how I work.

Instead of doing another round of manual digging, I messaged my 24/7 AI worker (FlashLabs SuperAgent) and sent it:

 My client’s onboarding form
 Context about their offer & buyer
 A couple rounds of feedback

Then I asked it for one thing:
“Give me an enterprise psychographic profile of their multifamily decision-makers - fears, desires, status games, and real decision triggers.”


The updated research it returned was an 
actual
 deep dive:
Role-specific psyche maps for Regional Managers, Directors, COOs, and Asset Managers
Their unconscious fears (job risk, reputation risk, being seen as outdated)
Their unspoken desires (status, career-defining wins, peer validation, genuine peace of mind)
The exact decision triggers that move them from “this is another vendor” to “I can defend this to the board”
Messaging do’s/don’ts based on loss aversion, social proof, and FOMO


This isn’t a persona slide.
It’s a psychological operating manual for how they actually buy.

The shift for me:

 “Do some research and hope it’s enough.”
 
 “Delegate a full psychographic research & briefing workflow to an AI worker, then refine.”

Same input (onboarding form).
But now my output for the client is:
Sharper positioning
Emotionally accurate messaging
Sales narratives that line up with how their buyers really think


If your work relies on understanding B2B buyers at a deep level, this is where things are heading:

 You message an AI worker.
 It does the deep research.
You focus on strategy and creativity.

I’m using FlashIntel’s SuperAgent for this:
https://lnkd.in/gnSG-ZW4

🚨 Multichannel outreach used to be a mess.

Not because LinkedIn + Email doesn’t work…
But because running both channels at the same time was basically a full-time job.

If you’ve ever tried scaling outbound across LinkedIn + email, you know the workflow:

Too many tabs.
Too many tools.
Too many automations held together with duct tape.

And the worst part?

Leads fall through the cracks every day.

Someone doesn’t reply on LinkedIn?
They never get the email follow-up.

Someone replies in email?
Your LinkedIn flow keeps running like nothing happened.

Your outreach becomes chaotic instead of consistent.

And suddenly your day looks like this:

→ “Did they accept my request?”
→ “Did we already email them?”
→ “Did Aimfox log this?”
→ “Did Smartlead send follow-up #2?”
→ “Did Zapier break again?”

Outbound wasn’t hard.

The workflow was.

That’s why Smartlead's new integration with Aimfox is a big deal.

Because now…

🚀 LinkedIn + Email is one single sequence inside Smartlead.

Powered by SmartAgents.

No switching tools.
No messy zaps.
No manual routing.

Just one continuous multichannel flow.

Here’s what’s insane:

✅ You can build LinkedIn + email touchpoints inside one campaign
✅ If someone doesn’t respond on LinkedIn → they automatically get routed into email follow-ups
✅ Everything stays aligned across both channels
✅ Your team runs outreach from one system, not five

This is what multichannel outreach was always supposed to feel like:

Clean.
Reliable.
Automated.
Scalable.

The real win?

No lead ever slips through the cracks.

Every prospect gets followed up.
Every touchpoint happens on time.
Every campaign runs like a machine.

Multichannel outreach isn’t “more tools.”

It’s one workflow.

And now Smartlead + Aimfox makes that real.

LinkedIn + Email without switching tools? Yes.
And it might be the easiest pipeline unlock I’ve seen in a while.

🔥 Multichannel outreach just became simple.

You can scrape 100+ signals, but only recent pain gets replies.

Most teams still miss this.

They pull role, industry, company size.
Then push the same template to everyone.
Then say "outbound is dead."

I saw the same thing in my own numbers.

Here is C17 Lab's January 2026 cold email stats for clients:

Emails sent: 425,327 (First week of Jan was complete holiday)
Leads (active + inactive): 231,448

Replied: 4,152
Reply rate: 1.79%

Positive reply: 870
Positive reply rate: 20.95%

Bounced: 4,592
Bounce rate: 1.98%

Zero opens.
Still 4,152 replies.
870 positive.

On paper that looks crazy.
In practice it is simple.

I do not chase vanity signals.
I chase fresh pain.

Here is how I think about every list now:

“The ideal prospect shows evidence of [specific behavior/change/problem] because it means they feel [pain] right now.”

Some real plays I use:

→ For outbound tools
“The ideal prospect shows evidence of SDR or BDR hiring or manual research mentions because they scale outbound and feel pipeline pressure.”

→ For product video offers
“The ideal prospect shows evidence of pricing tiers with upgrade paths because they push revenue expansion and need more upgrades.”

→ For reputation offers
“The ideal prospect shows evidence of negative Google reviews because they lose deals from bad online perception.”

I do not care if someone is “VP Sales at 200+ headcount SaaS.”
I care if something changed in the last 30–90 days that hurts today.

Here is my 10 minute research stack for each new campaign:

1️⃣ 3 minutes: Case studies

→ Go to company or customers page
→ Pull who they help, what result, in what time
→ Note language they use to describe wins and pain

2️⃣ 6 minutes: One custom signal

→ Claygent, BuiltWith, job page, review sites
→ Only signals that show change in last 30–90 days
→ One strong signal beats 10 weak firmographics

3️⃣ 1 minute: Backup basics

→ Role
→ Tenure
→ One recent LinkedIn post

If I cannot prove fresh pain with that signal, I do not add them.
I change the list or I change the offer.

The list is not “everyone with a title.”
The list is “people with a live problem my offer solves.”

That is how you get replies even when open tracking says 0.00%.

I was dead wrong about AI personalization in cold email. The real game changer is something else entirely.  

For a long time, I thought the end goal was this:  

“By 2026, AI will write a cold email that feels like I spent 10 minutes researching each prospect.”  

That email is good.  
I now see it as an A tier email.  

The real S tier is different.  

It drops a lot of fluffy personalization.  
It leads with value the prospect can touch without talking to you.  
At scale.  

That is where AI-generated lead magnets come in.  

Across campaigns, the replies with highest intent come from emails that are easy to say yes to.  

Not:  
“Can you jump on a quick call?”  

More:  
“Can I send you X that helps you today?”  

AI makes X very powerful. I see 3 main buckets:  

1) Knowledge lead magnets  
Custom reports, market maps, account intel.  
Example: scrape signals for a prospect, turn it into a short “intel report,” send it as a one-click yes in the email.  
No call ask. Pure value.  

2) Micro apps / micro SaaS  
Tiny tools that solve one clear problem.  
Score their pipeline.  
Audit their site.  
Estimate missed revenue.  
You build once with agents / code, then give it away in every email.  

3) Agentic service trials  
“Let us run a free mini-campaign for you.”  
AI handles list building, enrichment, messaging tests.  
Prospect gets real leads before they pay you.  

The shift I see:  

From “personalize the sentence”  
To “personalize the asset you deliver.”  

I keep testing this with C17 Lab and I am all-in on AI lead magnets now.  

Curious what kind of AI lead magnet you would say yes to in one click.

No alternative text description for this image

Your offer is hot.
But you’re a cold provider. That’s why nobody buys.

Read that again.

You do all the “right” things:

- You change the price
- You change the copy
- You change the funnel

Sales still flat.

You think
“I need a new offer”

I thought the same.

Fast forward a few years…
I saw a pattern.

The offer was not dead.
I was invisible.

Here is what I mean in simple words:

Offer awareness
= people know the solution you sell

Provider awareness
= people know you and trust you

Need both.

Miss one → no sale.

Look at these 3 states:

Cold offer + cold provider
- They do not know the problem
- They do not know you
- No replies, no calls, no cash

Hot offer + cold provider
- Market knows the solution already
- You feel new, risky, “who are you?”
- They buy from the “safe” name instead

Hot offer + hot provider
- They know the problem
- They see you talk about it for weeks
- You feel safe, clear, proven

Then sales start to look “easy”
(from the outside)

The truth is
Most of us skip the warm-up.

We try to close people who:
- Never saw our face
- Never heard our name
- Never read one word from us

Then we blame the offer.

Here is the real work from cold to hot
(this is where people stop reading, but you should not):

1) Show up where buyers already are
LinkedIn, niche groups, events, email.
Same places again and again.

2) Say the same clear thing
Who you help
What problem you solve
What life looks like after

3) Share proof that feels real
Screenshots
Short stories
Before / after moments
Names and numbers when you can

4) Stay long enough
Week after week
Month after month
Till people think
“You again?”
Yes. You again.

You can also speed the warm-up if you:

- Join the conversations your buyers already read
- Comment with smart, simple takes
- Show your work in public
- Help without a pitch first

You stop being a stranger.

One day a DM comes:
“I feel I know you already
We should talk.”

Nothing magic.
Only awareness.

Next time you see no sales, pause:

Before you burn the offer ask:
Do people know the solution?
Do people know me as the safe choice?

Short version:
You do not need ten new offers.
You need one clear offer
plus a warm name.

Curious to hear
Where do you feel colder right now
Your offer or you as the provider?

Our client spends $100k+ on ads every month, 
But cold email brings in 2x ROI. 
Why do they keep buying ads?

Because channels change. Frameworks do not.

Their numbers right now:

→ Cold email ROI: 2x ad spend
→ Cost per meeting: 25% of their other channels
→ Pipeline from cold email: growing every single month

Cold email is not “the hero.”

The real hero is how you think about acquisition:

1️⃣ Start with the market
We map the full TAM
We ask: who should we talk to, in what order, and why now
No random lists
Only accounts that line up with the pain we solve

2️⃣ Build systems, not blasts
We set infra once, then let it run:
→ Multiple warmed inboxes
→ Clean domains and sending limits
→ Smart cadences that touch 100% of the market every 30–60 days
No spam storms
Only steady passes over the same market

3️⃣ Lead with relevance
We write copy for one person with one clear problem
Short, direct, easy to read in 10 seconds
No hard pitch on email one
We focus on “useful and interesting,” not “buy now”

4️⃣ Layer channels later
Cold email proves the offer
Then we add paid, retargeting, LinkedIn, content
Ads sit on top of a working outbound engine
That is why they keep buying ads even when email outperforms them

The exact playbook today will change in a month
The way you think about TAM, infra, and relevance will not

If you are a B2B company and want to test a cold email GTM without burning 6 months,

We can set you live in 1–3 weeks and give you a full no-cost test campaign to see the numbers yourself.

Free campaigns that actually deliver leads-no catch, no BS.

Here is what we do at C17 Lab 

We run your first outbound campaign for free.
One full campaign.
No fee.

You see real leads.
If you get no results, you do not spend money or time on us.

Simple deal.

Here is how the free test works:

• We do strategy call with you
• We study your offer and ICP
• We build the lead list
• We write all emails
• We use pre-warmed inboxes
• We run the campaign like any paid client

No hacks.
No “lite” version.
No automation tricks behind the scenes.

We do the work end to end:

• Prospecting from 100+ data sources
• Copywriting for all touch points
• Inbox setup and warmup already done on our side
• Daily checks on replies and performance

You see the full flow.
You see the leads.
You see how your offer lands in the market.

Here is the message we love to send you during the test:

“Hey, we got you a lead.
Here is what we said.
Here is what they replied.
I am connecting you now.”

If you want this every week, then we talk about a paid plan.
If not, you walk away with data, scripts, and no bill.

Who can get the free campaign?

If you fit that, we can run your no-cost test campaign.

You keep the leads.
You keep the learnings.
You only stay if it prints pipeline.

Curious if your B2B offer would hit with a test like this?
You can see how we run it at https://www.c17.ai/

Most founders ask “email or video?”
They should ask “high-ticket or low-ticket?” first.

If your offer is $10k+
You are not selling to everyone.
You are hunting whales.

For high-ticket, cold outreach prints money when done right.

You can:
→ Build a tiny list of exact buyers
→ Personalize hard
→ Start real 1:1 conversations

You do not need 100,000 views.
You need 10 right people.

If your offer is low-ticket ($20 product, $200 course, etc.)
Cold outreach turns into a grind.

You need to:
→ Hit thousands of people
→ Fight low response rates
→ Do a lot of manual work for very low deal value

For low-ticket, content + ads win.
They reach more people.
The math starts to work.

But even when outreach is the core play, you still need one thing: minimum viable organic.

Because when someone gets your cold email, they click your profile.

If they see:
→ Zero posts
→ No proof
→ No point of view

You look like spam.

If they see:
→ Simple posts with insights
→ A few client wins
→ Clear offer

You look real. You look safe.

Those posts then become sales assets.
Your team can drop them in threads:

→ To answer objections
→ To show how you think
→ To prove you get the problem

My mental model:

Cold outreach → starts the chat
Organic content → builds trust
“Greatest hits” posts → help close

Hunt whales with a harpoon, but make sure they see your campfire burning too.

If you are a B2B company and want a cold outreach system that matches your ticket size, I am happy to walk you through how we build it at C17 Lab .

Cold email never works? 
CEOs reply more than anyone. 
Here’s why:


Most people write to the person with the job title on the website.
I write to the person who feels the pain.

Biggest surprise for many founders:
CEOs reply more than heads of HR, RevOps, IT, or middle managers.

They carry the real weight.

Every single day they think about:
payroll
cash in bank
missed targets
angry customers
legal risk
hiring gaps
pipeline

They do not care about “nice tools”.
They care about “does this fix a real problem fast”.
When I build a campaign, I do three simple things.

1️⃣ I build the list from the outcome back
I start with one clear win.

Example:
save tax
cut SaaS cost
fix billing gaps
get more meetings

Then I go into Clay.

I search for the small group with that exact problem.
Not “all SaaS companies”.
More “US SaaS with 30–300 staff, many remote, 3+ states, hiring finance”.

I use:
➡️ filters
➡️ signals
➡️ niche words
➡️ weird industries

I stop when the list feels like “these 500 people wake up with the same headache”.

2️⃣ I make the pain the first line
I do not write:
“We help companies optimize and streamline…”

I write:
“Saw you hire in 5+ states. Are you dealing with sales tax mess in any of them?”

Short.
Clear.
Easy “yes” or “no”.

For a sales tax firm, this works well.

Every CEO in that group already knows the problem.

They have a folder in their mind called “tax risk I hope does not explode”.

My email walks right into that folder.

3️⃣ I give a tiny, safe next step
I think “what can we do in 15–30 minutes that feels safe and clear”.
Example offer I use:
“Bring three contracts you think you overpay for.
We compare with our data.
You pay only if we find savings.”

No long call.
No deck.
No “discovery”.

The CEO sees:
low risk
clear start
clear end
hard dollars

Now an email from a stranger looks like a small bet, not a big project.

Cold email fails when you:

talk about your stack
tell your life story
try to sell the full platform

Cold email works when you:

pick one pain
talk to the owner of that pain
give one clear, small step

If you are a B2B company and want to test a cold email GTM without burning 6 months,

We can set you live in 1–3 weeks and give you a full no-cost test campaign to see the numbers yourself at C17 Lab

Follow Utkarsh Rana 🧲 for more content around B2B Sales, Outbound, GTMs !

Kellen Casebeer

Helping companies find Message-Market-Fit | Founder @ The Deal Lab

Obsessed with speed to value.

The #1 revenue struggle that most companies face is their inability to consistently & repeatably generate pipeline that converts into stable revenue.

I’ve built a systematic way of dividing a market, identifying where your buyers are within it, and rapidly testing messaging against those segments in the pursuit of Message-Market-Fit.

For less than the cost of an SDR I can run cold outbound campaigns (phone and/or email) on your behalf and establish what works vs what doesn't.

10x the volume, 10x the quality, and 10x the rate of learning vs doing it yourself or hiring a jr sales rep to try.

I do this through my company, The Deal Lab.

We are a proud Smartlead Certified Partner, which means the #1 tool for people building businesses like ours has recognized us for our excellence in the space.

If you’re considering building an outbound program, or have one that isn’t performing like you wish it would - give me 30 minutes to change your perspective & I guarantee you’ll want to find ways we can keep the wins rolling together… people often remark that they're stunned what I'll do for free and confused why I don't paywall my helpfulness.

When I'm not running my business, I also hangout in the free communities that I have built for digital sellers & side hustlers with the goal of being everything I wanted ((and needed)) but didn't have access to earlier in my career.

I'm also really into submission grappling ((BJJ)), holistic health, lifting weights, and taking Lindy walks in the California sunshine with my beautiful family.

If you're a sales rep, sales leader or Founder with questions or looking for support on something - drop me a DM 🤠 I love chopping it up and solving problems with my fellow sellers ❤️

Founder

Message-Market-Fit is when you know exactly what to say in your prospects’ own language to book consistent outbound meetings with them.

We’ll help you find it for less than the cost of an SDR.

Then we’ll either keep running our systems and booking calls for you, or we can build & train your in-house team on exactly how we do it.

Chosen as 1 of 25 Smartlead Certified Partners.

A guiding principle that serves me well is:

It is much more rare to be potently valuable, than it is to be rewarded for being potently valuable

All Enterprise sellers get enterprise OTE, but only a subset hit their number

All companies who raise a seed round aim at revenue targets they believe they can hit, only a subset go on to raise their next round

What this causes, is hesitancy and skepticism in buyers

Humans are wired to survive (attuned to fear // risk) vs survive (focused on max potential and top end outcomes)

It is difficult to overcome this fear, and the best way I have found is approach the world with a big-a*s abundance mindset

"Everything I will ever receive in life is on the other end of something I will do for someone else".

It freed me to seek opportunities to make an impact vs make a dollar

It freed me to seek out challenging opportunities with low assurance, because I knew being asymmetrically useful in these situations would lead to invites into further demand down the line...

It is easy to know what you "want" in life, much harder to figure out "what you are willing to give".

My Dad always said "love what you do, never work a day in your life"

This drives many people to think "What do I, me, love to do?" - which can be confusing

I've seen & lived, that it is hard to feel anything but joy "fighting alongside others" in high stakes environments

That’s the game I like to play; “how do I become undeniable.”

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