Clay

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Aisisted

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Professional Genius

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The RealTalk Blog

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At AIsisted, we build custom growth systems that combine cold outbound strategies, AI, and automation to accelerate your business.

Cursor just raised $2.3B.
Yes… raised. That’s not a valuation. 

That’s actual capital😭

A few things worth noting:

- Backed by Accel, a16z, Coatue, Thrive, Nvidia, and Google.

- Already at $1B+ in annualised revenue.

- Producing more code than any other AI agent in the world.

This isn’t hype - it’s the clearest signal yet that AI engineering isn’t the future… it’s the present.

But even with that being said, what dos this mean for junior developer roles and the industry all together?

David Walker-Dobson 

Founder @ Tentt | Buying Signals, CRM Automation, Lead Enrichment and Outbound

Most founders think they need a big team, a $20k ZoomInfo license, and a full-time SDR to scale outbound.

But that’s outdated thinking.

You can build a fully automated, signal-driven lead gen machine on a startup budget.

Here’s the exact stack:

Smartlead  – $94/month

The sequencer. Cold email campaigns with up to 30K active contacts. Easily scale outreach without burning domains.

Porkbun - $155/year

Porkbun are a great provider for domains for cold email infra, this is a yearly cost and they sometimes run flash deals too

ScaledMail  - $269/month

A 50/50 Outlook + Gmail split lets you safely send almost 2K+ emails/day. 

This gives you serious volume without sacrificing deliverability.

BirdDog  - (Contact them for price)

Build powerful signal-based audiences using buyer intent and trigger events. 

Birddog’s coverage has been known to outperforms Clay, ZoomInfo, and others - it’s elite.

Their pricing isn’t public but I’ve spoken to them, for what they offer they are worth it

Clay  - $349/month

Your data command center. Scrape, enrich, dedupe, and filter your ICP in one place. 

Clay turns messy lists into gold.

LeadMagic  - $259/month

The enrichment layer. Email validation, direct dials, company research—it plugs into anything and gives you full context on your prospects.

n8n - self hosted $50

Connects all the dots, your workflow automation layer, this will allow you to connect you your tools together and route leads to your CRM, SDRs etc 
 
Total = Under $2K/month

For less than the cost of one freelancer or SDR, you can build a scalable, targeted, outbound engine that:

✅ Tracks buyer signals
✅ Enriches contacts in real-time
✅ Sends thousands of personalized emails
✅ Books calls

If you’re trying to grow pipeline without blowing your budget, this is your playbook.

Want something like this? Just shoot me a DM

Your buyer read 10 cold emails before yours.
And they’ll read 10 more after it.

So here’s the hard truth:

If your email looks like a sales email, it’s already ignored.

Today’s inbox is a battlefield.

Same subject lines.
Same intros.
Same “quick question” openers.
You blend in, you lose.

Here’s how we break pattern and win attention:

Use weird, human subject lines - not “Quick intro,” but “Need your 2 cents on this”

Lead like a friend, not a pitch - e.g. “Saw something that made me think of you…”

Keep it messy, casual, and curious - ditch the bullet points and “per my last email” tone

Make it feel like a 1:1 convo - not a marketing blast disguised as outreach

You should be writing cold emails in a way so that:

- They don’t feel like cold emails.
- They feel like a smart, relevant nudge from someone worth replying to.

In a crowded inbox, different beats perfect.

 Write like a human.

86% of LinkedIn outreach fails before the message is even opened.

 Why?

 Because people treat LinkedIn like a cold email inbox.

They pitch on the first message.
 Drop Calendly links.
 And send sales scripts disguised as intros.

But here’s the thing:

LinkedIn is not email. It’s social media.
So treat it like a conversation.

Your first message shouldn’t be a pitch.

 Ask a question.

 Start a real conversation.

 Keep it casual, open-ended, and not salesy.

But here’s what most people miss:

It's not just what you say.

It's who you say it to.

That’s where everything changed for me.

I used to blast generic outreach and got basically 0 replies.

Then I switched to focusing only on people who were already showing interest in topics relevant to what I sell.

And instead of building complex Clay workflows, I kept it simple.

I use Aimfox to automatically connect and message:

People who liked or commented on posts in my industry

Attendees of specific LinkedIn events

Members of niche, relevant groups

These people already have context - they’ve engaged, they care, and they’re active.

 My acceptance rates shot up, replies doubled. And I booked 4 meetings last week from this alone.

If you’re doing LinkedIn outreach, targeting warm signals beats cold lists every time.

PS: Aimfox just launched their Black Friday deal (50% off). 

If you want to try the same targeting method I use, check the link in the comments

It doesn't matter if you're at $100m firm or a scale-up, every top-performing sales team should be:

Not just score your leads.

But your signals too.

Let me explain:

First-party Signals:

These signals are gold.

These come from your own ecosystem:

Website visits
Email clicks
LinkedIn engagement
Product usage (for PLG teams)

They're warm. They're specific. And most teams are ignoring them or treating them equally.

You should score them dynamically based on:

✅ Recency (last 24 hours > last 30 days)
✅ Frequency (one page view ≠ multiple return visits)
✅ Intent (pricing page > blog post)

Second-party signals:

Context you can track, but don’t control.

 → Hiring for roles tied to your solution
 → Raised funding (aka budget unlocked)
 → Tech stack changes
 → Competitor product launches
 → Data breaches, layoffs, restructures
 → Competitor social engagement

These signals give you insight to whats ghoing on within your market

Great teams use Clay and similar tools to detect and score:

Timing (how fresh is this signal?)
Relevance (is this tied to your pain point?)
Intensity (is it a strong or soft signal?)

Signal Scoring = Sales Timing.

You’re not just asking who’s a fit, you’re asking:

 → Who’s warm?
 → Who’s vulnerable to change?
 → Who’s showing movement worth reacting to?

If you’re still relying on job titles + industries to build lists…

You’re flying blind.

Thoughts?

“We generated 20 leads from just 2000 emails.”

You’ll see posts like this all over LinkedIn.

But what they don’t talk about?

0 of those leads actually booked a call.

I want to be super clear...

There’s a massive difference between marketing for leads

 vs. 

Marketing for booked calls.

Most campaigns are built to get replies and not conversations.

They throw out CRAZY offers, and yeah, it gets attention.

But it also attracts time-wasters.

People who want something for nothing.

That’s marketing for leads.

When marketing for leads, the copy is focused.

→ You speak to pain
 → You qualify with your messaging
 → You attract people ready to solve

It’s not about how many leads hit your inbox.

It’s about how many show up ready to buy.

Big difference.

Who agrees?

There are 100,000s of cold email tools to use out there…

…and most of them are a waste of time 

 So here’s my no BS cold email stack after testing dozens of tools:

Infrastructure

Smartlead → Keeps your deliverability high with warmup and smart inbox rotation.

ScaledMail (50/50 GSuite/Outlook) → A serious sending setup to scale outreach safely.

EmailGuard → Monitors and protects your sending domains to keep you out of spam.

Data & Enrichment

Clay → Your nice, warm home for the whole tech stack

BirdDog → So you can track your highest value accounts for real buying signals(not the fake stuff you see over linkedin)

LeadMagic → One of the most targeted enrichment tools I’ve used.

AI & Automation

OpenAI  → Powers smart, contextual outreach content at scale.

Make → No-code automation to link everything together—Clay, CRM, inboxes, and more.

This is everything you need to make it work in my opinion, what am I missing?

We ran two outbound campaigns. One crushed the other by 3x. 

Guess what made the difference?

Not the subject line.
Not the CTA.
Not even the offer.

It was the relevance of our targeting.

You can use tools like Trigify.io for topic-based intent.

And they are great - letting you trigger outreach based on what your ICP is engaging with.

But here’s the kicker:

You can achieve similar results without the high cost.

Here’s what we did instead:

Used ScrapeLi to pull LinkedIn company pages where our ideal buyers already hang out:

Competitor company pages
Complementary tools or integration partners
Niche communities relevant to our industry

Then we enriched the leads using Clay:

Job titles, tech stack, hiring signals
Filtered for decision-makers
Contextual data to personalise our messaging

This way, the cold emails didn’t feel cold because they were hyper-relevant from the start.

Why it works:

→ Topical relevance creates natural intent
→ No tracking and tools
→ Campaigns feel tailored, not templated

ScrapeLi + Clay = a deadly combo for precise, affordable outbound that converts.

We ran one internally by scraping HubSpot, and it was one of our best performers

Who else has done this?

taplio

David Walker-Dobson 's Linkedin Analytics

David Walker-Dobson

Performance ScoreDavid Walker-Dobson's LinkedIn Performance

David Walker-Dobson's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

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David Walker-Dobson

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);}David Walker-Dobson's LinkedIn Performance

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Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

David Walker-Dobson 's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScoreDavid Walker-Dobson's LinkedIn Performance

David Walker-Dobson's Best Posts (last 30 days)