Founder | Belkins 🐿️ - #1 Ranked Appointment Setting Agency | TOP-10 Service Companies Globally 2023 by Clutch | Creator 'From Zero to Agency Hero' - Newsletter for Agency Owners

Founder of Belkins, the #1 ranked B2B Appointment-Setting Agency by Clutch, G2, UpCity, Inc. Regionals, and National Excellence for five consecutive years, I have spent over a decade building Belkins into the powerhouse it is today. I specialize in creating budget-smart strategies that deliver impactful growth solutions for clients.

In addition to Belkins, I have pioneered multiple proprietary SaaS solutions, including Folderly, an email optimization platform, and buyWords, a subscription-based copywriting agency.

I am also the driving force behind the newsletter "From Zero to Agency Hero" and the voice of the popular Belkins Podcast, where my guests and I share our expertise and insights on scaling businesses and navigating the ever-changing marketing landscape.

Traditionally, #fullfunnel marketing strategies have been designed by marketers. But what if outreach guys, like Belkins, built them instead?

Below is my take on designing a full-funnel marketing strategy from the perspective of someone who represents the three core functions of every business: sales, marketing, and client service. I've done all three successfully. 

Over the last 12 months, I’ve implemented these playbooks for 20 clients, achieving a 90% success rate. Every one of them saw consistent growth in #qualifiedmeetings quarter over quarter, lower #acquisition costs, and faster #pipeline velocity.

It’s not flashy. It’s not AI SDRs or “automated workflows.” But it works.

Because 90% of the companies I work with aren’t VC-backed startups. They’re real businesses in manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, plastics, or software that simply want to invest their hard-earned dollars into something that drives ROI.

👉 Read the article below, it has all the answers.

Michael Maximoff

Founder | Belkins 🐿️ - #1 Ranked Appointment Setting Agency | TOP-4 Service Companies Globally 2024 by Clutch

Open article: B2B Lead Generation Strategy for 2026 & Beyond by belkins.io

B2B Lead Generation Strategy for 2026 & Beyond

I can share the market temperature based on Belkins’ traffic. Here’s how:


1,000 new businesses talk to Belkins each month. US, EU, APAC, across 20+ industries, from mom-and-pop shops to large enterprises.

Depending on interest level and engagement, I can see the trends of how well the market is doing.

For instance, #October was a crazy business month, this year it showed the delayed effect after September: up 30% compared to the previous month.

#November is about 25% slower than October, so we’re in line with the usual pre-holiday slowdown. 

Companies are playing it safe, planning for 2026, shortlisting vendors, but not making final decisions yet, most likely waiting until December or January.

Personally, I have hoped that increase of October will continue in November, but business is as usual, unfortunately.

Is anyone seeing different stats? Prove me wrong or confirm if you’re seeing the same.

It took me 1.5 months to write this newsletter — one of the most difficult topics I’m still debating internally.

I could have done a better job with this newsletter.

I feel like my arguments are all over the place. 

But since the topic is so complex and has many moving parts, I decided to go ahead and publish this version.

I’ll continue digging into full-cycle sales and refining this newsletter.

Feel free to give it a read and share your critical feedback. 

Do you agree or disagree with what I wrote here? 👇 

https://lnkd.in/ejpMsTGE

I'll share our growth playbook on the webinar organized by Mole Street, focused on how Belkins is using HubSpot + Apollo to drive deals. 

Join us on December 10th at 12 pm EST, with Brendan Walsh, Co-founder at Mole Street, Chris DiPietro, Solution Architecture and Ex-HubSpot, and Eric Quanstrom, VP of GTM Engineering at Apollo. 

Make sure you save a seat to join us for Q&A.

Outbound teams are being asked to do more with less, cleaner data, better alignment, and more pipeline.

So on 10 December, Mole Street, Belkins Inc., and Apollo are teaming up to show how top performers run Apollo + HubSpot together.

In one hour, we’ll break down the exact workflows Belkins uses, list-building, enrichment, sequencing, AI workflows, lifecycle stages, and reporting.

Speakers: Brendan Walsh, Chris DiPietro, Michael Maximoff, Eric Quanstrom

🗓 10 December
⏰ 12:00–13:00 ET / 17:00–18:00 UK
📍 Zoom

Register using the link below.

Inna Muzychenko, Michael Maximoff and 1 other connection attending

View event: How Belkins Combines Apollo + HubSpot As Part of Their Growth System

How Belkins Combines Apollo + HubSpot As Part of Their Growth System

SEO > GEO > AEO > LLMO > LMAO 

👆 
it's a joke from my SEO lead. 

Funny enough he said that GEO is used only by agencies who provide it as a service. 

Why don't we stop following the hype and just do good marketing?

Reason #1 to embed SDRs in Marketing 👇 

𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲:
SDRs used to source new leads every month, expand the TAM endlessly, convert maybe 1%, and then move on leaving 90% of the database cold and not nurtured enough.

𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆:
Your sweet spot market is your most valuable one. You can’t keep expanding your TAM; instead, you must nurture the 90%: track engagement signals, buying intent, and timing.

The only way to win now is to embed SDRs into marketing, using them as the human extension of your nurture engine, creating touchpoints and building relationships over time.

𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀:
 1. Optimized cost per acquisition over time.
 2. Higher buying intent from nurtured prospects.
 3. Easier to plan pipeline growth ahead of time.

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀:
 1. Budgets must include marketing spend, not just the SDR/BDR function (even when outsourced).

 2. Longer ramp-up period since you can’t just “add more leads” every month.

 3. Requires a complex, full-funnel approach, not every team or agency can handle that.

Nancy Chou spoke to CMOs at MOps-Apalooza in October to drive this exact point home. The image below is taken from her deck.

An amazing CMO joined the Belkins Growth Podcast recently, Dr. Amy Osmond Cook, PhD in Organizational Rhetoric and CMO at Fullcast.

We sat down to talk about AI, RevOps, B2B Marketing, and the art of founder-led growth, plus a few unplanned topics that surfaced along the way (as they always do).

Every guest on the Belkins podcast gets a special treatment, we never script the conversation, and we never know where it’ll take us. 

But with Amy, I knew one thing for sure: it would be packed with insights 💣 

Listen to Dr. Amy Cook on the Belkins Growth Podcast — link below. 👇 

https://lnkd.in/efNWgYU9

Open video: What Marketers Lost When AI Took Over | Belkins Podcast Episode #18 on youtu.be

What Marketers Lost When AI Took Over | Belkins Podcast Episode #18

The 7 sins of B2B Marketing - my personal list

1. Generic blog posts that recycle the same surface-level ideas, just copywriting of copywriting.
 
2. Case studies with no real “case”, no insights, no lessons learned.
 
3. No industry or persona pages on the website, nothing that shows vertical expertise or depth of understanding.
 
4. Outdated HubSpot lists, no lifecycle stages, no lead status updates.
 
5. Zero thought leadership, no consistent presence, no voice, no original perspective.

6. Not having your top 200 prospects in your LinkedIn network.

7. The biggest sin of all: not following through on collaborations: delays, half-effort, or no time invested to make content partnerships actually work.

taplio

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