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 !

Roman Hipp

Building BetterContact | Helping early-stage B2B SaaS companies with insights & ready-to-use templates

Currently building BetterContact, a B2B SaaS that aggregates various data sources to find and verify any email and mobile phone number.

Growth Co-Founder

I convert 12% of BetterContact free signups into paying customers with a simple message like: 'Hey, saw you tried BetterContact'

But this isn’t really about PLG.

It’s about how we’ve over-engineered outbound into something people instinctively ignore.

A bit of context first:

BetterContact runs mostly self-serve.
People sign up for free, try it out, and some never return.

Initially, I used to reach out with this message:

💬
'Hello [First Name],

Thank you for signing up for BetterContact - we’re excited to have you on board. You can now log in and start using the platform.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

Thanks,
Roman'

Reply rates were bad. Around 3%.

And these weren’t random cold leads - they signed up themselves, and played around with the product.

And still… only 3% replied.

So I started thinking:

Maybe it’s not that most people hate those messages.
Maybe they just hate messages that sound automated.

So I stripped everything away and now send something like this:
“Hey, saw you tried BetterContact, is it working like you expected it to?”

That’s it. On average, almost every third person replies.

Outbound isn’t broken. We’ve just optimized it so hard… that we removed the human touch.

Building BetterContact | Helping B2B companies win outbound through more and better contact data

🚨 We just launched multi-source profile enrichment at BetterContact!

It was one of our most requested features, and the reason is quite simple:

If essential data like the job title or the current company is outdated/wrong, the whole lead might not be relevant anymore if he works in a completely different industry/role.

As we have waterfalling/multi-source as part of our DNA, we do not only source from 1 provider, but from multiple, and validate the data through live web crawling.

This includes fresh data like:
- person role data (current company, current job title etc.)
- person skills, education, languages etc.
- company industry
- company technographics
(and many others + more to come)

The best thing: for file uploads inside the app, it’s a new option that comes at no extra cost!

The API is a few days away from being publicly released, and the feedback from beta testers has been great so far (shoot me a quick DM if you want to play around with it)

$2.5M ARR outbound agency founder reached out. They're doing 20.000 cold calls/month, averaging a 56% enrichment rate. I thought 'solid', until we ran the math:

1. Using Apollo & Lusha, they average 56% match rate
2. Their costs average $0.36/enriched number
3. BUT, 32% end up being landline, VoIP, or invalid
4. Their dial to connect rate is 4% 
5. They make 20.000 cold calls/month
6. Turns out, they're wasting ~$2,300/month on invalid numbers

We quickly went from 'solid' (56% match rate, $0.36/number) to 'ouch' (4% connect rate, $9/conversation).

Now it was clear why this founder reached out, so we ran the same sample list through BetterContact and got:

✅ 71% match rate
✅ 2.8x higher connect rates
✅ Only 7% wrong numbers

Redoing the maths, that’s $2.5/conversation, meaning a 75% cost decrease.

PS. We haven’t even factored in the hours his SDRs are burning by dialing dead numbers. At the very least, that's in the mid-/high 4 digits, every month.

If you're doing 1000s of cold calls every month, BetterContact can make a big difference in your cost efficiency + total connects, and we should probably talk!

More than happy to do a free data test for everyone unhappy with their mobile phone data provider.

8 weeks ago, we launched the first Waterfall Lead Finder - and immediately realized building the best one in the market is way harder than we initially thought.

Here’s what’s working - and what still needs *serious* improvement:

(+) 9/10 times we hear: “we found x% more AND fresher contacts with you vs. what we currently use”

(+) We got highly-requested filters such as max. people/company, skills, and keywords to finally work

(+) Some competitors suddenly also launched a waterfall lead finder now

(+) We did a complete UI overhaul that people seem to really like

(+) We launched an API which is currently being implemented in some of the biggest GTM platforms

But building a best-in-class lead finder is hard - we are currently struggling with things we didn’t expect were *that* hard to get right: 

(-) Job title matching → identifying real synonyms (e.g. that “Managing Director” in the UK usually equals “CEO” in the US - but not “Director” in the US), which gets tricky fast across countries and languages.

(-) Industry standardization → deciding how broad is too broad (e.g. if someone types “Finance”, should we expand it to “FinTech”, “Private Equity”, “Asset Management" etc., or keep it narrow and risk them missing half their market?)

(-) Some filters are hard to implement, such as headcount growth/leads per department etc. (though we’re making good progress there)

(-) Determining someone’s main, decision-making role — instead of surfacing a side project or secondary title first

There is still a lot of work to be done, so more than keen on every additional feedback!

I just had an eye-opening feedback call with a RevOps manager at a Series A company who used BetterContact for inbound leads. He was genuinely excited, but *not* for the reason I typically hear.

Before joining our call, I assumed it would be the usual:
“you found more mobile numbers”
“connect rates went up”
“data quality improved”

Instead, he said the biggest impact of using us was their speed-to-lead improvement.

They’re now calling inbound leads immediately again.

Why this matters:

There’s well-known sales research showing that contacting inbound leads within the first ~60 seconds massively increases the likelihood of converting them (some studies say 3-5x).

However, they stopped calling inbound leads altogether before.

With their previous data provider, phone numbers were often wrong.

So reps tried calling → didn't connect → lost confidence → defaulted to email-only follow-ups.

The issue with email outreach is that their speed-to-lead got significantly worse.

After running an extensive pilot with our numbers, they were confident again to pick up the phone.

Results we got so far: +41% more inbound leads closed compared to their old email-only workflow.

Months ago, an AE from Hubspot asked me “How can BetterContact
improve my current contact data enrichments?” I’ve been getting the same question in my inbox ever since, so here is my most detailed answer:

(1) 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡
		
We don’t pull our data from 1 big database, but are connected to all the relevant providers on the market via API.

The reason why we launched waterfall enrichment years ago was that databases are complementary - database A has data that database B doesn’t, and vice versa.

Aggregation isn’t just about finding more data, it’s about selecting the best data point available on the market right now.

(2) 𝐖𝐡𝐲 “𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐢𝐬 100% 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐝” 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐦𝐲𝐭𝐡

“Our database only has valid data” is probably the biggest hoax in the data industry.

Based on millions of enrichments so far, 27% of the data we receive from providers is actually invalid & unusable.	

How do we do it?

Just like with data providers, we aggregate multiple real-time validation layers in-between our providers.

(3) 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞 (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭)
	
We only use external validation layers that are specialized on deep verification, and only do that.

It’s common for one provider to return a number we deem invalid, while another sends the exact same number again.

Sometimes, we need to request 4+ providers to finally get to a valid output (and yes, even with that method it's never 100% valid)

However, we only charge IF a valid number has been found - and only once, no matter how many tries it took to get there.

(4) 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤-𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬

Many data providers (especially the legacy ones), require large upfront investments for (multi-)yearly subscriptions.

Once in, it’s often hard to get out, because cancellation processes are tiresome.

We made it possible to test within minutes, start small, and adjust plan sizes at any time.

(5) 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐏𝐈-𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐝-𝐨𝐧

Legacy providers often don’t offer an API - if they do, it’s either very restrictive, or one needs to buy it as an ‘add-on’ for hefty amounts.

We started buiding API-first, with no add-ons and rate limits that enable every workflow imaginable.

Happy to cover any other point I missed 👇

The last few weeks have been wild since we released our waterfall lead finder at BetterContact. It’s already getting integrated into some of the biggest GTM tools - and users are building some seriously cool plays with it.

Here are a few of them: 

(1) The 60-Second Website Visitor Play

One team identifies anonymous website visitors, pipes the company domain into our API, pulls the Head of Sales, enriches the mobile… and calls within 60 seconds.

They showed me their conversion rates and they are insane.

(2) The “Waterfall on Top of a Waterfall” Play

Another team built a cascade of job searches with our lead finder. 

For example: if no CRO is found, they automatically look for a VP RevOps. If none, a RevOps Manager, and so on.

They don’t accept “no result", but keep going until someone relevant shows up.

(3) The Conference Pre-Booking Play

One team collects attendee company names before a conference, runs the domains through the lead finder, pulls the most likely decision-maker… and emails them before the event.

They don’t even know who’s attending - they make a smart guess and usually get forwarded to the right person.

By day one, meetings are already booked.

Pre-event pipeline > booth roulette.

Would love to hear about more of these! 👇

The most valuable sales training I ever had came from my first job at a call center selling shady Google Ads packages - a lesson that later helped me bootstrap BetterContact to 7-figure ARR as the only salesperson

I just turned 17 that summer, and was quite excited to earn my first money in a ‘real’ job.

My onboarding was kind of straightforward - they put a script on my desk and said:

“Just read this when you call.”

20 seconds into my first call, I realized I was trying to sell an overpriced
Google Ads package built on generic keywords.

What made things even harder was that my calling list was a random mix of all sorts of industries, company sizes, and locations.

I hated my time there (3 months), but looking back, it was a masterclass.

Not in how to do great cold calls.

But in how *not* do them, and:

1. What it feels like to sell something I think is a bad offering
2. How painful it is trying to sell to anyone and everyone
3. How quickly I lose people without a clear and specific value proposition

That job didn’t make me a great seller, but it gave me a clear blueprint of what not to do, which allowed me to reverse-engineer everything.

Fast forward to building BetterContact, and I found myself back on the phone in the early days.

This time, I was selling something I genuinely liked and believed in.

To a very specific persona I understood deeply.

Solving a real, painful problem with an effective solution.

That’s when I realized that selling doesn’t need to feel forced, but can actually be natural.

A *conversation* where the person on the other end actually wants (or even needs) to talk to me.

“It’s safe to say you guys are the reason I’m hitting my quotas” has been one of the nicest messages I got this year.

The guy who sent me this is a sales rep at a big software company.

And they just signed a big contract with a legacy data provider.

But he’s not even really using it, and neither is half his team.

Instead, they’re running their prospects through BetterContact to get better mobile numbers and actually connect.

Hearing things like that genuinely means a lot to me.

Because behind every “connect rate” or “hit rate” metric… there’s a real person trying to hit targets, earn commission, and build a career.

If we can make that even a little easier - that’s all we're looking for.

After talking to over 200+ cold email experts over the last 3 years, I realized that most outbound campaigns fail before the first email is ever sent.

I still remember when I launched my first cold email campaign as a working student:

It went *bad* - some of the things I blamed back then:

→  my emails weren’t ‘personalized enough’
→  my copy was bad and no one wanted to read it
→  our social proof was not strong enough with the case study we put
→  our domains weren’t warmed up properly, so most likely we landed in spam

Today, after building a fast-growing company in that space, I realized it didn’t fail because of execution - it failed because outbound was the wrong growth motion from the start.

Yes, outbound can work - sometimes insanely well - but only if the fundamentals are in place.

Here’s when it actually makes a powerful play:

✅ High ACV (> $10k+)

High ACV deals grant margins for error. They allow to spend more per account, follow up longer, personalize deeper, and still have the economics make sense.

Outbound can also work for lower ACVs (we’re living proof of that), but only if the math checks out.

This is a formula that helps to determine exactly that:
(Emails Sent × Positive Reply Rate × Meeting Rate × Close Rate × ACV) – (Emails Sent × Cost per Email) = Profit

If the cost per meeting still makes sense at the end of that chain - great!

✅ Clearly defined ICP

If your target audience is broad, your message will be diluted.
Because ultimately, outbound rewards precision, and not primarily volume.
The more specific and exclusionary the ICP, the stronger the resonance.

Not the highest volume campaigns win, but those with the best offer & relevancy (having both is of course optimal).

✅ Pain-aware market

Outbound works when you’re speaking to people who already know something isn’t working.

If the pain is obvious to them, then you don’t need a 5-paragraph explanation.

You just need to articulate what they’re already experiencing - better than they can themselves.

If you first have to convince them that the problem exists, your reply rate will show it.

✅ Strong offer & social proof

Outbound is brutally honest.

If your offer is weak, unclear, or “nice to have,” you’ll feel it immediately in the outcome.

Because ultimately, outbound doesn’t fix bad positioning. It magnifies whatever is already there.

If the offer is strong and backed by real proof, there will be (almost) nothing holding it back.

Anything you would add? 👇

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