Hector Perez Arenas

If you're still running the same growth model at $10MM in ARR that you were at $1MM in ARR, ask yourself this: Is it really possible to generate 10,000 MQLs in a month to hit your ever-growing bookings targets? Is that even smart? Oftentimes, growth models break down as you continue to grow. Teams will often try to remedy this by making incremental gains, like improving conversion rates on landing pages or decreasing CPL with little to no material impact on the financial performance of the business. The way out? Add more compounding growth systems segmented by buying intent and market sophistication level. You need a system to generate awareness of the problem. You need a system to educate your market on solutions to that problem. You need a system to sell why your solution is the best. And you need a system to answer the question, "why now?" This requires shifting your mindset and measurement of your GTM org... moving away from solely relying on software based attribution and regularly identifying core themes and narratives that move your market forward in the buying process. Then focus on 80/20ing your distribution.

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This guy bootstrapped his B2B company from 0 to $1M ARR in 16 WEEKS using LinkedIn. After 11 hours of studying him, here are 4 reasons why I think he’s crushing it like nobody else: 𝗕𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗚𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 Adam Robinson has bootstrapped 3 startups from $0-$1M ARR: Robly Email Marketing • 17 months to $1M • Team of 25 • Sales-led Retention(dot)com • 6.2 months to $1M • Team of 6 • Paid ads-led RB2B • 3.6 months to $1M • Team of 5 • LinkedIn founder-led Adam said himself that his founder brand has unlocked growth he’d never seen before. Now the question is: What makes him so successful vs. many others trying to do the same? I spent a week devouring his content and have found 4 reasons why he’s winning: ____ 𝟭. 𝗛𝗲 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 Adam shares EVERYTHING. He’s one of the realest & rawest founders on the platform - he posts things like: • his revenue dropping 4 months in a row • the biggest mistakes he made launching RB2B • things he did that made him feel like a major idiot On a platform where everybody acts like they figured it all out, authenticity & vulnerability go a long way. ____ 𝟮. 𝗛𝗲 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 Some of Adam’s core content topics are: • B2B growth bottlenecks • the decline of the SDR model • decreasing outbound response rates All of which are topics highly relevant to his ideal customer. Bootstrapping his startup Retention(dot)com to $22M ARR in 4 years, gives him enough authority to build an audience that is eager to listen to him. In doing so, he built a community around the problems he presents regarding B2B sales. And here’s the kicker: These are problems he solves with RB2B. In his own words: “We had 2000 people on the waitlist before the product even launched and we could talk to anybody. It was phenomenal.” ____ 𝟯. 𝗛𝗲’𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 According to Adam, it took him 12 months to find ‘content/market fit’. Once he did, he saw astronomical growth. Today, Adam has: 101,595 followers a HIGHLY engaged audience hit $3M ARR with @RB2B (just 8 weeks after hitting $2M) Imagine he’d given up after 3 months, like most founders. ____ 𝟰. 𝗔𝗱𝗮𝗺 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝟭 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹: The decisions we make are influenced by the people we trust and the content we consume. He calls it the “Influencer-Led Model”. The mechanism here is the same that has allowed the Kardashians to become billionaires selling lipstick: Creating a highly visible, highly trusted personal brand that dominates an entire category. Only that it’s not B2C, it’s B2B SaaS. For Adam, that means: • LinkedIn posts every day • 25 hours/week creating content (!) • guest spots at as many podcasts as possible • sharing the ENTIRE journey + revenue numbers publicly Adam is the perfect example of a founder who recognized LinkedIn as a long-term play. Now, he’s starting to reap the rewards. ___ PS: Which other founder brands do you want me to cover?

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B2B GTM Infrastructure Tech + People + Processes B2B SaaS Selling to E-commerces Huge TAM (100+ companies) Already sucessfull in other regions We started with mapping all spanish ecommerces. I set-up an Outbound email stack + 1 Full Cycle AE. They already have an amazing lead magnet (free trial). Every week I plug 3000 URL and totally automatically: > Claygent find if the ecommerce is in 1 of the 17 verticals in target > For every vertical I created 3 different Smartlead sequence > Every sequence is focused on 1 value proposition URL Find if in target Scrape the email Verify the email with debounce Insert in 1 of the 17 sequences on Smartlead The inbox is managed directly by the Full Cycle AE. If someone open an email 3+ times I am figuring out how to directly send the phone number to a dialer so the AE can cold call him. It took me a huge Miro to figure out the process. What I really want to prove is that 1 AE with world class technology can beat 3-5 old school SDRs. Wish me good luck 😅 # Do you want to stay ahead of the saletech world? Subscribe to Masters Of Clay in the comments.

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How we went from $0 to $1XX,000 ARR growth in the first year of PLG Launch Upselling can be very difficult… not going to sugarcoat this But not the way you think, where you have to hard*** convince customers That's why I want to dedicate my next journey to make upselling easier I want to share a quick personal career story 👨🏻‍💼 I am not a good salesperson … I studied engineering I got a job as a cold caller 📞 for a logistics company when I was in college But it energized me to love sales… B/c I thought something about sales is so sleazy and inefficient There gotta be a more efficient way to do this I read all the #sales books out there Definitely, I remember reading The Challenger Sale by or ideas about it So I went the other way… I applied for a Sales Engineering job at Cisco They said I was too salesy…  Yikes… 😅 The more I learned about true sales mindset, the more wrong I was No tricks if you know what you are talking about Back to PLG… Upselling for PLG was the exactly*** the type of sales I was good at I wrote in my past posts, how we deploy the superhuman onboarding calls (link in the comment below) Each superhuman onboarding call, we gave the product to our free customers to test-drive ☞ Watching them test-drive (delights the engineer in me) 😊 ☞ Teaching them to use the product (delights the maker in me) 😊 ☞ When it came time to talk about pricing (triggering my sales hat) It was easy… "You get this and that on the Free Starter tier" "And if you need this or that, that's on the Premium tier" It just felt easier… It felt efficient… It felt like its sales… but it wasn't I was a guide… I was able to give first… lead… and show the way… And that guidance was appreciated It was not sleazy It was not super difficult Because The customer can see the value I was the messenger with the pricing plan I was also the customer success rep, enabling them to continue using (delights the product person in me) PLG transforms how I approach upselling The difficult part is maintaining that confidence, and start optimizing, testing pitches, putting up paywalls, and scaling success… you have to do along the way… I write about #PLG and #productledsales daily. Please follow me or subscribe to my newsletter growthwithgary(.)com. Cheers!

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I started an outbound motion for SCALIS less than 7 weeks ago - here's how I've booked more than 50 demos already, testing two different outreach platforms, Apollo.io and 11x. System 1: Apollo.io 1️⃣ Buying Additional Domains: To avoid hurting the email deliverability of our main domain (scalis.ai), I purchased 10 additional domains like getscalis.ai and tryscalis.ai via GoDaddy and set up redirects to the main domain scalis.ai in case a prospect were to click through on the email signature link or google it. This allowed me to diversify my outbound campaigns across multiple domains without risking our core domain’s reputation. 2️⃣ Email Creation: I added these extra domains in GSuite and created email addresses like [email protected] for outreach. This gave me multiple sending addresses to avoid overloading any one inbox. 3️⃣ Using MailReach for Deliverability: It warmed up the emails by sending/receiving mail from high-reputation accounts, ensuring my outreach emails didn’t end up in spam. 4️⃣ Creating Targeted Searches in Apollo.io: The next step was to define my Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). I created lists of prospects, like People Ops Managers at US-based companies using Lever, who were hiring for 4+ roles. 5️⃣ Personalized Copy Using AI: I wrote highly personalized outreach sequences using ChatGPT to generate messages focusing on the pain points these hiring managers were likely experiencing with Lever. My sequences typically had 5-6 emails, included a LinkedIn connection request, and always had an unsubscribe link to stay compliant. 6️⃣ Local Targeting for In-Person Meetings: When I traveled to specific cities for investor meetings or networking, I adjusted my outreach to offer coffee, lunch, or drinks rather than a demo. These in-person meetings were incredibly effective, often leading to more in-depth conversations, insights into their current tech stack, and referrals to others. 7️⃣ Managing Outreach and Responses: Once the email campaigns were live, I used Apollo’s sequencing to rotate mailboxes and control the number of emails sent daily to avoid spam traps. If a prospect responded or booked a meeting, I immediately synced their contact with HubSpot and tagged them as "Hubspot Engaged Prospects" to ensure they wouldn’t receive any more cold outreach. 8️⃣ Once they've engaged, they're managed entirely through HubSpot, with a deal automatically created and pushed into our pipeline with 8 stages from meeting booked all the way through closed won. I use Fathom - AI Meeting Assistant to auto-record, summarize, and analyze each meeting. With its HubSpot integration, all of the notes automatically get appened to the contact and deal record. 🚀 Apollo.io was far more effective for outreach when I was visiting a certain city and gave me more control over the messaging, but check back next week for the process I implemented with 11x to a broader audience!

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This free solution will allow HubSpot admins to create HubSpot properties for contacts, deals or companies in bulk using a Google sheet (I was told this would be useful by HubSpot admins so I built it in between session at INBOUND :) - Enjoy! Click to signup for a free APIANT account for HubSpot admins to use it: https://lnkd.in/eZRfj23p Kyle Jepson useful?

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//THE PROCESS OF BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS HAS FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED THE OLD WAY: TREND >IDEA > BUILD PRODUCT > MARKET IT > SELL This took 15-18 Months, and on average, a 1-2 million investment with a failure rate somewhere around 90% It's crazy, but many people still build a new product without testing the product-market fit up front. Even if it is crystal clear by now that this is the number one reason for failing products. THE NEW WAY: NO TREND RESEARCH > IDEA > NOT BUILDING THE PRODUCT > NOT MARKETING IT > BUT SELLING THE VISION! Instead of building the full product, we just create the product vision and test it with real buying customers. That means instead of doing one or two lighthouse projects per year, we focus on 10-20 small innovation experiments. The result? Let's do the math! 1. The classic lighthouse innovation project approach: - Budget: 1 million euros - Failure rate: 90% - Probability of success: 100% - 90% = 10% 2. 20 smaller experiments: - Budget per experiment: €50,000 - Total budget: €50,000 x 20 = €1 million (same as the large project) - We assume that each experiment is independent and is tested directly with customers The probability that all 20 experiments will fail would be (failure rate of an experiment)^20 Even if each individual experiment had a failure rate of 80%, the probability of all of them failing would be 0.8^20 ≈ 0.0115 or about 1.15% This means that the probability of success (at least one success) would be 100% - 1.15% = 98.85% Comparison: - Large project: 90% failure rate - 20 small experiments: 1.15% failure rate (with 80% failure rate per experiment) Reduction of the failure rate: (90% - 1.15%) / 90% * 100 ≈ 98.72% Therefore, you would reduce the failure rate by around 98.72%, even if each individual small experiment had a relatively high failure rate of 80%. In reality, the failure rate of the small experiments could be even lower as they are tested directly with customers. If we assume that this reduces the failure rate per experiment to 70%, the result would be even more impressive: 0.7^20 ≈ 0.0000798 or about 0.00798% This would reduce the overall failure rate by 99.99%! This calculation clearly shows how conducting many smaller, customer-oriented experiments can significantly reduce your risk and increase your chances of success. P.S. What do you think? Isn't it about time for a change? ——— This is how we de-risk innovations and investments in one week only: https://lnkd.in/eq4TvNC4 #innovation #creativity #future #whatinspiresme #innoweek #venturestudio #companybuilder #vc All rights and credits are reserved to the respective owner(s). Contact me to add you as a reference or content removal. ♻️ Repost to help your network to bring their ideas to market. And follow Dipl.-Ing. Lars Behrendt for more posts like this.

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"AI is a threat to humanity" No. 𝐀𝐈 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 & 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 ↓ You probably heard it. Open AI launched a new model ✨ >> It’s called GPT-4o “Ok, Enzo, yet another model?” Not really ❌ With 4o, AI is becoming more human. It can respond to audio inputs with an average of 320ms.  Precisely the average human response time 😉 It can access images, text & audio. Like your eyes and ears do 💋👂 It also speaks multiple languages. Like that friend who can speak 6 🇬🇧 🇪🇸 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇨🇳 🇯🇵 Many people are scared about AI... replacing humans. Or think AI is limited to completing 'basic tasks'. And in some sort it is. But what if AI was the opposite? What if AI could get humans & computers closer? 😱 And close the gap that has existed. Since the first computers were created 👾 If you're a techno-optimistic, then it's hard not to see that. It's hard to see how AI can't be a step forward. Towards natural human-computer interaction 🤝 It's also hard not to see the use cases for those who need it most. Like for the blind, as shown in the video below. 2025 will see a whole new level of applications for AI. Way beyond the basics we've already adopted. I'm SO excited to see this future ahead! What am I missing? take care 💜 Enzo #ai #gpt4o #startups

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How I built a 1m ARR product in one afternoon: 1️⃣ I got my customer involved from the get go. We sketched out a concept together so I knew exactly what the customer wanted. 2️⃣ We bootstrapped the build using assets from a previously dismantled project.  Cost: £0. 3️⃣ I got straight into building a foundational layer, then used the same basic components to parallel-process the front end. All that remained was to integrate the two. 4️⃣ Not having to work to a fixed design specification gave serendipity free reign, like using snippets from the main platform to fast-track the security layer without having to cut any new components. 5️⃣ The result: a multi-tier product that offers stickiness for the serious subscriber and open freemium offering for passing traffic. 6️⃣ The customer is delighted and expects to reach an ARR* of 1m** by spring. *ARR = Annual Rate of Robins **m = migrant(s) Job done! User testing results to follow. And I can’t wait to ship enhancements over the next months. #startuplife #mvp #seriousinvestorsonly

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Chasing ‘unicorn status’ can feel like a pipe dream. If you don’t become a unicorn… You’re not failing! Chances are you’re VERY successful... Incredibly successful! Companies earning $1-$5M ARR are killing it, but you wouldn’t know it given our addiction to massive VC funding rounds and multi-billion dollar valuations. Less than 1% of SaaS companies get to $10M in ARR. The vast majority of companies outside of tech are nowhere close. They’re chasing $1M ARR as a reach goal. It’s time that we all reset our expectations of what success means. And celebrate profitability of companies hitting $1M ARR plus. These ‘small’ businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and provide real, lasting value. What are your thoughts on chasing ‘unicorn’ status? Tell me about it in the comments below.

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>>>Don't focus on LinkedIn company pages if you have not built your network and personal brand first. I had a 1:1 with two early-stage bootstrapped B2B founders who were just a few weeks before the big launch. LinkedIn is their main traction channel. Here are some insights and tips on the LinkedIn strategy conversation we had: 1. Build your personal LinkedIn account as a founder first. 🚫 Don't re-share the company posts on your personal account. ✅ Post as a founder instead to get more reach. 2. Repost the same or similar content on the company account a few weeks later. 🚫 Don't produce two types of content for your personal and company brands at this stage. ✅ Tweak the existing content from the personal account and reuse it on the company page. 3. Optimize your company page as a landing page and add a clear tagline to your company brand. 🚫 Don't assume people will scroll down and click 3 times to learn about your company. ✅ Adding a tagline or an explanation statement is essential since it sits at the top of your LinkedIn account. 4. There is one type of company content I would bet on, and that is LinkedIn events. 🚫 Don't push only the company brand without the founders. ✅ Build your audience by creating an evergreen LinkedIn event where you can speak. An evergreen event is one that you reschedule and take your audience with you. 5. Launch early and often. 🚫 Don't put all eggs in one basket with a single launch. ✅ Launch often to learn what works and build on that. 6. Build in public. 🚫 Don't hide behind your company's brand if you're an early-stage B2B founder. ✅ Create content and share your company's story as it unfolds from your account. 7. LinkedIn is a two-way street. 🚫 Don't just post and expect miracles to happen. ✅ Comment on the posts from others to grow and engage with comments on your post ASAP. 8. You need connections and followers on your personal LinkedIn account to get going. 🚫 Don't neglect to build your network with active people on the platform. ✅ Among other things, you need 1st-degree connections to invite people to follow your company page and invite them to any LinkedIn event you're organizing. LinkedIn is still the #1 traction channel for B2B, and personal profiles matter, especially when you're starting. Here are some stats: → 𝟵𝟮% 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗱𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 (even if they don't know them) over brands. → 𝟴𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 vs. 13% on Twitter & 7% on Facebook. → 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗖𝗘𝗢𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝟮𝟬% 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗶f they have a huge LinkedIn following. People buy from people. No company page and content can replace that. #B2BLinkedIn #strategy #launch === What's next? + Follow me for more e-networking & positioning tips + Join a waitlist for "LinkedIn EVERGREEN EVENT" Workshop in September

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4 upsell motions that helped us add $600k ARR per month: 1. Expand account usage‍ Probably the most obvious of upsell plays. When a customer expands their usage of your product, you should increase the price. Structure your pricing in such a way that a customer needs to pay more money to use more of the product. The value metric that your price is based on should signal the relationship between price paid and value delivered. ‍ 2. Convert from legacy to modern price‍ Update your pricing regularly. At least once a year, if not more. Most companies let existing customers stay on legacy pricing after a price change/increase. They do this out of fear that the customer will churn because the price went up or the packaging changed. The customers that will churn over a pricing change are not likely to stay around anyway. Don’t let the disloyal customers dictate how you run your business. ‍ 3. Price increase at renewal‍ When the price for milk goes up at the grocery store, do you decide to stop buying milk? No. Prices go up over time, for many reasons. The same should apply to your product.

This is another play that seems obvious but so many companies don’t do it. They let customers renew year-after-year at the same price the customer initially paid. This despite the company investing in the product to make it better and more user friendly. Companies should increase prices every time a customer renews, even if the increase is 5% or less. ‍ 4. Cross-sell‍ The final upsell motion requires that your company have more than one feature-set or product. I recommend a “good, better, best” pricing model whereby the feature-set is more complete as you move up in packaging. Many customers start out with the lowest packaging level because they aren’t sure about the value of the product. When you are 6 months into a customer relationship, the relationship value is clear and it is time to lean into the full value of the product. Most customers will not volunteer their desire, we have to work the relationship and ask the customer for the business. ——- Read the full post here: https://lnkd.in/gNPZMVfH

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The SaaS Graveyard - a cruel place… I've posted this before - but I keep running into companies with this exact issue. A SaaS CCO even called it “The quadrant of death”, which makes it sound even crueler… How do you end up there? It’s quite simple, there are 3 working sales methods. 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 You sell a high-priced product and can allow yourself to have long sales cycles and many touchpoints Think: Salesforce, Oracle, Zuora 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 You sell a low-priced product and have to keep a very low acquisition cost, meaning you can’t afford human-to-human interactions. Think: Canva, Figma, ChatGPT 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 Sellers can use scripts, be trained easily and sales are done in 1 or 2 meetings Think: SaaS SME selling. Seems easy right - Why in the world would anyone choose to to go with another model? Especially one with high acquisition costs and low prices? Because they forget to transition. Before SaaS companies close their first sale the founders will spend an enormous amount of time with potential customers, not only to sell, but to understand pain points, the problems they need to solve, and not least the value they provide equalling how much they can charge. That is how any B2B SaaS gets its first clients. • If they can charge a lot, they can allow themselves to pivot towards a higher acquisition cost. (especially if they have their backpacks filled with VC money) • If they can charge very little they will have to look towards models with low acquisition costs. • Or, they can try to solve bigger problems, deliver more value, and raise prices. But what often happens, especially with VC money in the back, Is that the only focus is that the product can be sold - not that the cost of acquisition, in the long run, will be way too high, and then a model transition never happens or might happen too late.

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Yesterday I shared the 4 must-have email templates with 3800 SaaS leaders in my newsletter 👇 In case you missed it, you will find the link in the comments. In includes 4x email templates: 1️⃣ Post Initial contact 2️⃣ Post Discovery Call 3️⃣ Post Disco-Demo 4️⃣ Post Sales Demo 👉 Share your best email template in the comments.

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I helped a SaaS company increase reply rates from 0.5% to 2.4% with these 9 steps 👇 They already had a solid setup and warm-up. But they missed key deliverability optimizations. Here’s what we implemented: (we used Instantly.ai for the whole process) 1. Disable open rate tracking. ↳ Google and Outlook flag tracking pixels in 2024. ↳ Prevents emails from being marked as spam. ↳ Improves deliverability. 2. Use Spintax to vary your email content. ↳ Creates unique email versions. ↳ Evades spam filters targeting duplicates. ↳ Scales personalization effectively. 3. Send emails as text-only. ↳ Eliminates images and links that trigger spam filters. ↳ Also feels less promotional and salesy. ↳ Increases reply rates. 4. Enable provider matching in Instantly. ↳ Matches your provider with the recipient's. ↳ (e.g., Gmail to Gmail). ↳ Providers trust emails sent from their own domains. 5. Balance sending volume with warm-up emails. ↳ Maintains steady sending activity per account. ↳ Protects your sender reputation. ↳ Avoids spam filter triggers. 6. Vary your sending times daily. ↳ Prevents emails from appearing automated. ↳ Mimics natural sending behavior. ↳ Reduces spam flagging. 7. Randomize time gaps between emails. ↳ Avoids fixed sending intervals. ↳ Makes your pattern look natural. ↳ Improves deliverability. 8. Use Instantly's spam checker before sending. ↳ Detects potential spam issues. ↳ Fixes problems before sending. ↳ Ensures inbox optimization. 9. Limit to 15 emails per account per day. ↳ Prevents account overload. ↳ Maintains sender reputation. ↳ Focuses on quality outreach. Case Study: After a one-hour consultation, the SaaS company saw reply rates jump from 0.5% to 2.4%. Just with deliverability optimization. Key takeaway: In 2024, spam filters are smarter. They analyze patterns, behaviors, and content. You need to do everything right to land in the inbox. And remember, an unread email can't convert. P.S. What's your biggest challenge with cold emails?

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54% of buyers start with a category in mind when searching for a SaaS solution. e.g. they head to Google and search for: "best project management software" But that number hides a trap. Most companies do this: • Optimise for SEO • Race to top G2 rankings • Try influence Gartner quadrant They're fighting for visibility in a moment that's already too late. By the time someone searches "best project management software" their mental shortlist was already formed. The other 42% ask peers first rather than start by searching a category. Some are starting their search as an alternative to Google. But many are validating their existing preferences. • Category presence is a hygiene factor • Category influence is the game changer If you're not influencing category selection, you're competing for 54% of the attention in a market you didn't help define. That's not a growth strategy. That's a recipe for commoditization. The solution is to invest in building your brand while showing up for category searches. But relying on existing category searches is dicey. Say you went all in on G2. Did you know they have lost 80% of their SEO traffic since 2023? Thus a a fair chunk of your investment has ended up in the New Year resolution cemetery (with my beach bod dreams). But if you invested in building a brand directly with your audience, you've mitigated that risk. As a CEO, you need to decide: do you want a risky but quick exit, or are you willing to build a valuable company over the long term? Another consideration is that effective marketing impacts preferences. This overlooked function is one of marketing's most powerful effects. When a buyer rocks up to a category search or asks a peer, being in the consideration set as a preferred option is how you win. Category leaders show up in search results. Category winners show up in buying decisions. p.s. Breaking down B2B SaaS marketing for CEOs in my newsletter. Link in bio.

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Companies pay me anywhere between $30.000-100.000 per year for this Protocol. Having spoken to hundreds of B2B companies, they all have the same problem. Lead generation. To all, I recommend the B2B Protocol. A protocol and system I’ve perfected since 2016, to achieve: ✅ Generates quality leads and conversations directly with decision-makers (skipping the gatekeepers) ✅ Grows your network and allows you to build relationships with your audience for sustainable growth long-term ✅ Increases the efficiency of each salesperson and ensures higher profitability You will have rock-solid conviction and leads will come your way. I am now sharing this protocol as part of our Christmas Calendar. This protocol has been responsible for: Starting more than 1900 conversations for a SaaS firm (which got acquired). Booked 150+ guests for a podcast in less than 60 days. Achieved 650.000 impressions on LinkedIn in 4 weeks. Want me to send it to you on DM? 1️⃣ Follow & connect with me. 2️⃣ Comment "B2B" below. (We need to be connected on LinkedIn for me to send it to you) ♻️ BONUS: Repost this post and I’ll personally set aside 30 minutes to talk 1-1 and help you set up this for your business.

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I bootstrapped ColdIQ from 0 to $2.5M+ in ARR in 19 months. Here’s what I’d do if I had to do it all over again: 1️⃣ Start creating content, ASAP Ironic since I run an outbound agency. But I promise every person you contact who’s considering doing business with you… will check you out. You’re not Coca-Cola (yet!), and I found that the fastest way to build trust is to share high-quality thoughts online. I’d start with, at least, 3x per week for 3 months. Without letting yourself slip. Content is a long-term game. In the beginning, consistency matters more than creating the best possible post every time. Quantity breeds quality. You’ll know what a great post looks like once you hit the publish button 50 times. (PS: Check that your audience is on LinkedIn first) 2️⃣ Connect with my ICP on LinkedIn In the beginning, your content will likely be exposed to very few people. Thus, you need to see it as a ‘trust mechanism’ as opposed to a ‘lead generation mechanism’. Content will attract inbound leads. Just not from day 1. What it’ll do, however, is improve your conversion rates when you reach out to people. Whenever you send a connection request, a DM, or drop a comment under someone’s post… they might check out. If they see 20+ pieces of your content on your topic of expertise, they’ll trust you know a thing or 2. (PS: You can use lemlist or HeyReach for connection requests) 3️⃣ Leverage signals to decide when to reach out As you ramp up your lead generation activities (cold emails, LinkedIn DMs, social posts, comments), you increase your exposure to potential clients. They’ll start interacting in various ways—for example, by: A. Visiting your LinkedIn profile ↳ Use Sales Navigator & Prospeo to extract your profile viewers' contact information. B. Liking or commenting on your posts ↳ Use Common Room to extract engagers & have a 360° overview of all the ways prospects interacted with you. C. Visit your website ↳ Use a lead magnet to capture email addresses & a tool such as RB2B to identify your website visitors. For all the above instances, you can reach out in a non-pushy way with a message such as “Hey- looks like you were {looking at my profile}. Curious if something caught your interest? I’m available if you have any questions. Cheers” The more conversations you have → the more chances you have to sell. ☝️ Do all the above long enough. Improve a little bit every day. And I’ll promise you’ll start closing clients. Curious… what would you add or do differently?

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