Charles Tenot

CEO @lemlist & lempire. I share what I learn as the CEO of a profitable SaaS growing to $40M to $100M+. Follow me to learn from the journey.

I'm a business generalist who loves tech & running high-performing businesses.

Happy to meet Sales professionals
If you're:
- An SDR or Sales Rep
- A Sales Manager, Head of Sales, or Head of Sales Development
- A VP Sales or CRO

And you work at a B2B company between 50 and 1000 employees,

I’d love to connect for 30 minutes to chat about outbound strategy, share ideas, and learn from each other.

Don’t hesitate to drop an email on charles@lempire.co

COO / General Manager

Growing lempire from 20M$ to 100M$ while generating 35%+ EBITDA

lempire products: lemlist, lemwarm, Taplio, Tweet Hunter, lemcal - more to come

Outbound is about to change forever.

Today we’re launching the most important feature we’ve ever built.

It’s called Signals.

And I believe it’s going to become a new industry standard.

Because here’s the truth: 

People don’t hate sales reps.

They hate being interrupted for the wrong reason.

But when timing and targeting are perfect...

Sales doesn’t feel like spam. It feels like help.

It feels like:
→ An expert spotting a problem you missed
→ A guide bringing a solution you didn’t know existed

That’s what we’re making possible with Signals.

It tracks buying intent across your accounts.
Or it finds the right ones for you, automatically.

Right now we detect 3 key intents:
→ Website visits
→ Hiring activity
→ LinkedIn engagement

And we’re adding 4 more in the next few weeks.

This is just the beginning.

Our long-term vision is simple:

Make intent-based outreach insanely simple
And partner with the best data providers for every signal

So now in lemlist you get:
→ 450M lead database
→ Email & phone enrichment (80% / 60% find rate)
→ LinkedIn, email, phone, WhatsApp, soon SMS
→ Deliverability tools built-in
→ AI outbound coach
→ And now... real-time signal tracking

We’re building the most complete outbound platform for small & mid-size teams.

CEO @lemlist & lempire | Building the sales operating system teams actually want to use

Here’s a real outbound email that helped an SDR book a meeting with the CPO of a $40M ARR business (us) 👇

Every line was about us.
→ It referenced a product we just acquired.
→ It made a strong connection between that move... and their product.
Overall, it didn’t feel like outreach. It felt like someone already in the loop.

Here’s why it worked:
→ The SDR shows deep industry expertise.
→ They understood our product roadmap and what matters to US
→ The email is sharp, clear, remaining short but with the right level of details.
→ They wrote the email like a real person, not a bot

No fluff, no gimmicks.

Just sharp thinking and human writing.

Most teams do the opposite:
They automate what should feel handcrafted.
That’s why reply rates are so low.

You can of course have templated micro-campaigns (50-150 leads size) for lower tier leads, but for top tier, you should go 100% human.

This is what the best teams do, they go smaller and deeper:
Fewer prospects.
More relevance.
Higher conversion.

Because ultimately it's better to achieve 10% reply rate on 20 leads (2 meetings) than 0.05% on 2000 (1 meeting)

JSESSIONID

Grow | LinkedIn

li_at

Talks about #tech, #sales, #growth, #startup, and #revenueoperations

CEO @lemlist | Building the sales operating system teams actually want to use

We found a way to boost email deliverability by 40%.
And it's now available to all our users 👇

In 2025, deliverability is the #1 blocker for email outreach.

You can write the best copy in the world...but if your emails land in spam, it’s game over.

At lemlist, we track deliverability data from hundreds of thousands of inboxes. 

We optimize every part of the platform to make sure your emails reach the inbox.

And now we’re rolling out something that makes a big difference.

It's called "ESP matching".

Here’s how it works:

Instead of sending an email from your Gmail account to someone using Outlook (or vice versa)...
lemlist automatically detects your prospect’s email provider

Then sends your email from the best-matching inbox on your domain

Simple change but big impact.

We tested it internally. 
Then our partners tested it across dozens of campaigns
+40% improvement in deliverability

This isn’t a hack, it’s just how email systems work

ESP matching is live now for all lemlist users 😍

"Clay might be the most impressive company of the last 5 years".
I said that to Bill over dinner last week. He asked me why.

There are a few reasons:

1️⃣ Resilience
They struggled for years before the so-called overnight success.
Just like Notion.
This is incredible to see Founders fight for their vision for years to ultimately being proven right.

2️⃣ Customer obsession
From day one, they knew they had something.
But they spent years meeting hundreds of growth people before cracking it.
They ended up with one of the deepest market understandings I’ve seen.
And made the most advanced growth techniques accessible to anyone.

3️⃣ GTM playbook
They turned partners into a growth engine.
Thousands of them, at scale. And they grew with them.
Their GTM model will be studied in business schools.

4️⃣ Category creation
When Gainsight created CX tools...
Clay created GTM Engineers.

5️⃣ Corporate decisions
They already gave a $20M secondary option to employees.
Very cool signal to reward people who committed early.

6️⃣ Brand
This one is more subjective, but I really think they nailed it.
The name, the visual identity.
It all feels fresh, clean, and modern, and it sticks.


---
Really excited to welcome Varun Anand, one of Clay’s co-founder, at our office tomorrow.

He is clearly one of the leading minds on where GTM is heading.

With the amazing Bill Stathopoulos from SalesCaptain, we will be talking GTM trends for 2026.

Join us (link in comments), limited spots

Just landed in Paris from Tekpon AI Summit and in 1 hour, I’m going live with Taplio.

I’ll break down everything I’ve learned growing to 34K followers.

→ How I come up with ideas
→ How I organize my content
→ What drives the most engagement
→ What I’d do differently if I had to start from 0
→ How Taplio actually helps me
→ Even the stuff I don’t do (but probably should)

Already 1000+ signed up.

Why not you?

No alternative text description for this image

Ramp, one of the best outbound teams in the world, just shut down their AI SDR program.

That says a lot about where outbound is going.

In the past, this program was driving up to 30% of their pipeline.

But they mentioned 2 things changed:

1/ New tools came out and made what Ramp had... available to everyone
So the edge disappeared.
More teams doing the same thing = fewer results.
Outbound is continuously evolving which is what makes it interesting and creative.

2/ Their Sales team got really good
Ramp now has 500+ reps who are great at storytelling.
So they moved from machines doing the job... to humans doing it better.

Here’s how I read this 👇

→ Innovation is everything in outbound
The more people use the same playbook, the less it works.

→ Good Sales still beats AI
If your reps are junior or don’t understand the market, AI can help.
But when they’re well trained and sharp... humans win.

→ The future of AI is decentralized
AI won’t run outbound.
Sales won’t run tools.
GTM teams will build simple internal tools powered by AI.
And Sales will fine-tune them and use them (hopefully)

→ Quality > Quantity
Ramp did volume for a while and it worked.
But now they’re going all in on: better targeting, better story, multi-channel.

This has been our vision at lemlist. 
Really exciting to see leading companies with similar findings.

Only 20 sales reps got me to reply in 2 years. Tom Greenwood from Paddle is one of them.

He came to our office and broke down his entire approach on camera.

Tom is an Enterprise BDR at Paddle.

He consistently overachieves his quotas. Every quarter.

I wanted to understand what makes him successful.

Because I get hundreds of cold emails every month.
And I ignore almost all of them.
So I asked him.

Here's what he shared with me:
→ Discipline.
→ Enjoy the process.
→ Monitor results.
→ Multi-channel.
→ Multi threading.
→ Hyper personalization with a human touch.

He shared a fun story where his sound didn't work when recording a batch of video and it actually generated great results.

This illustrates well that in our AI-world, people still buy from people and flaws makes outreach look more human.

Tom recognizes outbound has become harder since he started 2.5 years ago.

But when you are creative and continuously improve you can still be very successful.
You can still source large enterprise deals.

Paddle is a living example, they are now over 100M and one of the leading merchant of record globally.

---

I recorded our full conversation, hope you'll like it.

Now my question for you: 

➡️ Who is the next BDR or Business Development Leader I should invite to Paris?

Tell me and I'll interview them to share more tips on how to be successful in outbound in 2026.

---
By the way, if you want an all in one solution to manage billing, payment processing, revenue recognition, taxes, chargebacks, fraud and more, Paddle is a one stop shop for that.

Reach out to Tom so he can have at least a few inbound leads 🤜 🤛

Last minute plans are always the best.

Paris was not even supposed to be part of Varun Anand's Europe tour for Clay.

Thanks to SalesCaptain and TC9, it was added at the last minute.
And it turned out to be an amazing event, my favorite of 2025.

The energy was 🔥

A room filled with insanely talented GTM engineers building best in class systems to make outbound always more precise and targeted.

Varun said that he believes France has some of the top talents in Growth in the world.

He gave the example of our Growth Twins, Edouard and Louis, who are, he said, building GTM engines for Pigment comparable to what exists at Stripe or OpenAI.

My vision for 2026 is unchanged:

We need to keep improving GTM systems to make Sales more targeted and more valuable for buyers.

Spam is the enemy.

GTM Engineers should focus on building small and very targeted lead lists.

Or even better, focus on scoring and helping sales teams prioritize by giving them tools that make all the context available quickly so they can make better decisions on what to do next.

This is why Clay and lemlist work so well together and why so many customers use both.
→ Clay helps source, score and prioritize leads
 → lemlist helps engage across all channels including email, LinkedIn, phone, WhatsApp and SMS, which maximizes the chances to get buyer attention

Thanks to everyone involved yesterday and to everyone who joined.

--

cc Julia Guenier, Bill Stathopoulos, Jérémy Grandillon, Theo Kanellopoulos, Frank Sondors 🥓 Valentin Wallyn, Pierre-Baptiste Landoin

The real reason we bought Claap is 𝐍𝐎𝐓 because it's an invisible note-taker that fills your CRM automatically... It's much more evil 😈

Context is to AI what fuel is to a car.
Or what records are to a CRM.

No context = useless AI.

When you ask for public info like Einstein's birthday, ChatGPT nails it.

But when you ask:
→ When is this prospect planning to buy?
→ Who's the decision-maker in this account?
→ What competitor am I facing in this deal?

ChatGPT doesn’t know.

Because it wasn’t trained on that kind of private context.

That context lives in:
→ Sales calls and meetings (captured by Claap)
→ Emails and LinkedIn messages (soon captured by Claap)
→ CRM notes and fields (captured via Integrations)

Sure, you could connect all these sources yourself.
But good luck building a data architecture that scales across your entire GTM stack.

That’s not plug-and-play. That’s enterprise-level messy.

And even if you do it, there’s another problem:

Generic AI isn’t built for Sales.

It works by looking at "semantic proximity", fancy way to say: finding similar words.

So when you ask for "Competitors", it might surface "Rivals" or even "Enemies"
...instead of your actual competitor in that deal.

That’s why vertical AI beats general-purpose tools.

To make AI work in GTM, the entire chain needs to be built for GTM, not just the prompting layer.

That’s where we’re heading. 

Claap will become the AI context center for lemlist products.

What do you think of this plan? 😈

We did 40% off for Black Friday last year. But, we won't be doing it again this year for a few reasons.

Every year, PLG SaaS tools rush into Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) like it's a must.

We did it for 2 years. It worked "on paper".

But now we're done with it.

There are a few reasons:

1- Time-shift revenue vs. actual revenue

Yes, we got a spike in conversions.

But it just pushed people to convert earlier. 
After the deal... conversion dropped for a while.

This means we just time-shifted revenue.

2- It kills focus.

The team spent days prepping offers, landing pages, emails.

We'd rather have:
• Product & Tech improving the tool
• Marketing working on stuff that brings actual value to Sales teams

3- It impacts Brand perception

It sends the wrong brand message.

We're not a random tool you can find for cheap, and don't want to be.

We're a team of 50+ engineers based in Europe, building something great.

We want to build trust, not urgency.

4- It doesn't really help customers make better buying decisions

Buying software is not a 24h impulsive decision.

It's a choice that should help you for months, ideally years.

But a Black Friday offer puts pressure.

People buy because of the price, not because of the fit.

And that leads to the wrong kind of customers.

Most of the discounted users churned within a year.

---
We're not here to be the cheapest.

We're here to be the most helpful.

To deliver recurring value, over the long term, with an unparalleled product.

---

So this year, no Black Friday. 
No FOMO.
Just focus.

🙌

I was shared over 50 AI use cases by world-class GTM teams.
Only 10% are actually driving positive ROI.


Every team wants to add AI to their GTM stack.

But the "why" and "how" should come before the "what" ; and that part is often forgotten.

AI looks amazing in demos. It creates that "wow" effect.

But when it comes to turning prospects into customers... it often falls flat.

That said, a few use cases are actually working. 
And they all have one thing in common:

They help teams handle large volumes of unstructured data.

Here are use cases I’ve seen deliver results across top GTM orgs:

→ Data cleaning & smart filters
Use Clay, lemlist tables, or even a Gsheet linked to LLMs to streamline data cleansing or enrich your records.

→ Research automation
Clay (Claygents), Firecrawl, and similar tools can automate prep work and save hours.

→ CRM hygiene
Auto-fill CRM fields with tools like Claap to save reps time—and finally get data quality you can trust.

→ Prospect scoring
When you're handling high volumes, AI can score leads by combining structured and unstructured data.

→ Deal & account scoring
Top GTM teams do regular deal and account scoring using all touchpoints—calls, emails, signals—and AI helps scale that.

→ Lookalike identification
If you're still mapping your ICP, AI can help find similar customers so you focus on who’s likely to close next.
Some more advanced use cases are also showing serious ROI:

→ ElevenLabs (cc Jonathan Chemouny) built a voice agent using their own tech to guide inbound leads through their buying journey.

→ HubSpot and Pipedrive are testing AI sales agents to answer product questions.
 It sits between website and sales and from internal feedbacks I could get, it gives pretty interesting results.

I’m sharing more about this today at the Tekpon AI Summit.

I'll walk through what I learned from 20+ GTM leaders at Ramp, Revolut, Paddle, Alan, Pennylane, and more.

And over the next few weeks, I’ll keep posting examples here.

Please help 👇
What AI use cases have you seen deliver ROI ; or fall short?

DM me if you're working in a 5+ people sales team and want to chat use cases.

---
PS: this pic is from the event: great session with Bill Stathopoulos from SalesCaptain and Frank Sondors 🥓 from Salesforge 🔥

GTM Europe at ElevenLabs

Tekpon

CEO, SalesCaptain | Clay London Club Lead 👑 | Top lemlist Partner 📬 | Investor | GTM Advisor for $10M+ B2B SaaS

SalesCaptain

I Make You Bring Home More Bacon | CEO @Forge | Unlimited LinkedIn & Mailbox Senders + AI SDR | Always Hiring AI Agents & A Players

Salesforge.ai 🔥

One of our most successful 2025 features is a pure trojan horse. 
And most companies can steal this GTM strategy to accelerate growth.


When it comes to outbound, companies have 3 options:

1/ Work with a spreadsheet and forget 90% of follow ups

2/ Use their CRM, e.g. an "all-in-one" approach (Hubspot, Salesforce Engage)

3/  Go for the "best-of-breed" and use a tool like lemlist or Outreach

All-in-one tools are convenient but not really best-in-class in terms of features.

On the other hand, best-of-breed tools are the most powerful and give better results. 

But they have one big flaw, they require the team to adopt another tool.

And in 2025, teams want less tools, not more.

So what we did is simple: we decided not to position "against" the CRM.

We embraced it.

We embedded lemlist inside Hubspot and Salesforce.

All key jobs to be done... 100% available in the CRM:
→ Enroll leads in a sequence
→ Pause or remove from campaigns
→ Edit the campaign
→ Find phone, email, LinkedIn
→ Engage via email, phone, LinkedIn, WhatsApp
→ (soon) Find new prospects in target companies

No tab switching. No training needed. No resistance from reps.

We have still people using lemlist in lemlist.

Because our overall strategy is simple:
1️⃣ Build lemlist to be the reference for people who do outbound most of their days (SDRs)
2️⃣ Build lemlist "from CRM" for those who want to only use 1 tool
3️⃣ Build lemlist "for builders", via API, for those who want to build more custom use cases

---
It’s not the first time this strategy worked.

At Botify, we launched in the US selling SEO software.

We positioned it as complementary to the suite people already used.

That’s how we grew from $0 to $10M ARR in under 2 years.

---

If your market is crowded, don't fight for space.

Find the cracks.

You don't need to send 1,000+ emails a month to close $1M in outbound sales.

Actually... the best reps I know send very few messages.

But each one is tailored with care.

Let’s do the math:
→ $1M target with a $40K ACV = 25 deals
→ Let’s say you close 1 in 4 = 100 qualified meetings
→ A good personalized outbound can get 5% reply rate
→ That means you need 2,000 leads
→ That’s just 9 accounts per day

Don’t tell me you can’t do that.

Every day:
→ Pick 9 accounts
→ Do your research
→ Write quality messages
→ Book one meeting every 2 days

Sales is not a spam game. It’s a discipline game.

The lazy shortcut is blasting 10,000 emails.

The smart way is caring enough to make 9 count.

Me in 2020: "Sh** the candidate rejected us, what did we do wrong?"

Also me, in 2025: "Good news, they understood our culture and said no."

And that's actually a win

Because a good culture is not about pleasing everyone.

It's not a one-size-fits-all.  It's a filter.

If you're trying to be for everyone, you end up being for no one.

I’m not saying losing candidates is good.

But losing the wrong candidates can be.

There are bad reasons to lose someone:
→ You were too slow
→ You failed to explain the role properly
→ Hiring manager didn't inspire
→ You didn’t show what’s exciting
→ You lowballed the offer

But here’s a good reason:
→ They felt it wasn’t the right culture or role for them

That’s alignment.
And that’s exactly what you want.

You’re not just hiring skill. You’re building a team that wants to be there.

Last week, I saved 2+ days as a CEO by using a vibe coding tool.

I’m convinced these tools will change how teams collaborate long before they ever replace Software Engineers.

Here are 2 moments where it made a real difference in my CEO role:

1. Pricing Iterations

Normally I’d open Notion or FigmaJam. 
Build a doc no one reads.
Instead, I used Lovable.
I built 5 versions of our pricing page. Using our real UI. In minutes.
Then shared with the team. Got async feedback. Clear and fast.

2. BI Dashboards

I needed specs for 2026 performance dashboards.
The usual way is a long doc, a meeting. 
People misunderstand half of it.

This time, I made a working prototype.
With fake data. Real filters. Actual charts.

The exec team played with it. Commented inside. I updated the prototype.

We had the final version 24h later.

Another example: when we shipped the Calling feature at lemlist, Maël Ezzabdi skipped the doc too.

He used a vibe coding tool to build a live prototype.
The team instantly got the vision. Built v1 in weeks.

So no, I don’t think AI tools will replace engineers anytime soon.
Actually, hiring Software Engineers has never been harder.

But I’m convinced they’ll change how we work together.

One visual beats 100 words.

Curious if others are seeing the same shift?

CPO @lemlist - On a mission to help ambitious businesses become big names!

Most CEOs spend too much time with investors, but that's not how you create value for your business. 
Here’s what I believe a "perfect" CEO week looks like in a 100-300 people company 👇

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to use my time better.

What creates real value? What’s just noise?

Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

What doesn’t work:

→ Spending hours with investors. It’s mostly about optics. A 3-month doc + reaching out when needed is often enough.

→ Jumping into shiny new topics already owned by the team. You’ll probably slow them down more than help.

→ Sharing new ideas and articles every day. I’ve been guilty of this. It’s distracting. Focus beats stimulation.

What works:

→ 5 customer calls per week. Mix of long-term users, new wins, and churned ones. Especially those who fit your ICP.

→ 5 employee 1:1s per week. Not just your execs. Anyone. Just listen and understand what’s working and what’s not.

→ 5–10 hours of deep work on big bets. Future products. Strategic questions. The stuff no one else can do.

→ Use your own product or go through the full buying journey. Spot the frictions.

→ Work with your managers like a coach. 
Not status updates. Real problem-solving. Building trust.

 → Talk with other CEOs and advisors. 
Helps you zoom out and see things differently.

 → Take care of yourself. 
Walk. Exercise. Most good ideas won’t come from checking Slack.

→ Stay in touch with the market. A few newsletters. A few creators. Just enough to stay sharp. Not too much to lose focus.

Really happy to share that we hit a 9.1 eNPS score (+72)

This is another +0.2 improvement from 8.9 earlier this year.

It might not look like much... but to me, it means a lot.

I’m a competitive person. I love chasing growth.

But I’ve learned you don’t fully control success.

You do control the environment you build.
The people you hire.
The ones you keep.
The ones you promote.

So for me, this is the biggest win.
Seeing the team happy and thriving.

Now let’s make sure we keep that level of engagement as we scale.

We're still hiring:
→ Product designer with strong convictions
→ Experienced Software Engineers (🇫🇷 speaker)
→ Sales reps (anywhere 🌍)
→ Product / Content Marketers (sales mindset is a must)

Reach out if that sounds like you.

Advanced Client

Currently, I serve as Co-Founder & COO at Advanced Client, an outbound marketing company. My role involves managing day-to-day operations, overseeing client projects, and ensuring smooth execution across all initiatives.

Co-Founder & COO

NOFU media

Working as a freelance outbound consultant under NOFU Media, I helped over 10 B2B companies implement outbound marketing systems designed to boost revenue and drive sales growth.

Founder

Working as a freelance graphic designer for Youtubers and other gaming brands

Graphic Designer

Team Singularity

Worked alongside Team Singularity on various graphics and media projects

Freelance Graphic Designer

Kiss My Pixel Limited

Work experience at Kiss My Pixel during March 2020

Intern

COO @ advancedclient.io | I help B2B companies build Go-To-Market systems

I'm Louis, the Co-founder & COO at advancedclient.io, a B2B outbound partner.

We've worked with dozens of B2B companies (from agencies to manufacturing) using the latest outbound tech such as Instantly.ai, clay.com, findymail.com, Trigify.io & lot's more to pack our clients calendars with sales qualified leads.

We typically help: 

- B2B services/products companies making over $100k/m
- Have solutions worth over $10k LTV. 
- Want to accelerate your pipeline.

Why do business owners work with us?: 

1. They are too busy working on their product or service to get bogged down in outbound prospecting. 
2. They struggle to execute on outbound campaigns feeling like they are wasting their time. 
3. They are overwhelmed by the sales tech options and want expert advice on how to streamline their efforts. 
4. They've seen some success with outbound but need trusted partners to take it to the next level. 

Quick overview of how we work: 

- We work with you to turn your product/service/solution into an offer that scales with cold traffic. 
- We build proven outbound infrastructure that guarantees inbox placement for your prospecting emails.
- We create lists of prospects auto qualified with AI, scored and personalised
custom to your needs. 
- We write messages that print positive replies. 
- We manage your inbox, follow ups and replies booking sales qualified leads as meetings directly onto your teams calendar.

If you're serious about outbound growth, 

We can help. 

Send a dm and I'll share some info
Visit: advancedclient.io for more info
Or... 
Shoot and email to Louis(at)advancedclient.io

Louis Young

Before you ask your CMO for more Inbound leads 

Take a look at this...

What does a modern outbound engine actually look like?

Here’s the system we install for clients end-to-end:


1. Demand comes first.

You can’t capture interest if there’s no interest to begin with.

So we help clients build awareness and trust before asking for anything.

→ Clear LinkedIn profiles
→ Targeted ICP content (founder-led or team-wide)
→ Daily engagement with decision-makers
→ Sharing useful insights, not fluff

This is the highest ROI way to warm a market.


2. Capture signals ( automatically.)

Trying to do this manually? You’ll miss everything.

Instead, we track key signals across:

→ Ad clicks (Vector 👻 = top performer here)
→ LinkedIn likes/comments (Trigify.io pulls this daily)
→ Website visitors (Vector 👻 + RB2B = strong combo)

This tells us who’s interested even if they haven’t filled in a form.


3. Enrich + qualify every signal.

Most signals are noisy.

That’s why we run everything through Clay:

→ Filter out weak fits
→ Enrich with job titles, company info, tech stack
→ Use tools like Findymail & Prospeo.io to get verified emails and phone numbers
→ Score your TAM and stack signals with BirdDog (coolest tool i've seen in a while) 

This gives us the cleanest possible data to act upon 


4. Route to the right conversion flow.
→ Got SDRs? Push to Slack or CRM in real-time. (best option)
→ Running lean? Auto-add leads to Instantly.ai campaigns.

( a great tool we use is Trellus (YC W22) to call directly from Clay as an embedded solution) 

Every lead ends up in the right place, fast.


5. Book calls + close deals.

→ Book calls within 7 days to increase shows 
→ Use Calendly’s pre-call flows to confirm and remind
→ Use send.co to track who’s involved and what they’ve seen
→ Have a great offer ;)


Nothing fancy just a tight system that works.

This is how modern GTM teams generate consistent pipeline.
It’s not just about emails or calls.

Want this set up for your team?

You know where to find me.

(Cough. cough... we are actually running a 7 day FREE campaign in December - shoot me a DM to get started)

More Pipeline W/O Scaling Headcount Using AI GTM Workflows | Founder & COO @ advancedclient.io

I’m a COO, but I still treat every day like a growth day.

Here’s my daily cadence to keep the business moving forward:

Tom Grainger and me run Advanced Client 

He's head of sales and i head up operations 

But we both drive the business forward in our own way

Here's what my daily cadence looks like:

1. Inbound content →

I spend a big chunk of my day on LinkedIn content.

It’s the easiest lever for inbound leads.

And inbound leads close faster than anything else.

I also connect with ICP-fit contacts and send 20+ DMs daily.

You’re never too senior to do outreach.


2. SDR enablement →

Every day, I work with our SDRs on list quality, targeting, and tooling.

This is a constant improvement system.

If we give them better data, better tech, and better segments. meetings follow.


3. GTM systems & outbound strategy →

I work closely with our GTM engineers to tweak outbound flows, monitor 
reply rates, and hit our KPIs.

It’s not “set and forget.”

Outbound is a living, breathing system and if you leave it, results usually go to zero


4. Client ops & retention →

A big part of my job is making sure clients are happy.

Better ops = lower churn = higher LTV.

I check in with our ops team daily to make sure:
→ We’re focused on the right things
→ The team has what they need
→ Clients are seeing value week to week

Because the only thing harder than closing new business is keeping it.

---

This is the biggest levers i pull day to day 

What do you do to drive results at your company?

I work remotely 95% of the time.

But once a month, me and my co-founder Tom Grainger head to London for a full-day work sprint.

It’s nothing fancy, just a WeWork in central London 

But here’s what I’ve realised →

We get more done in that one day than most weeks combined.

It’s a full reset.

We review sales calls, rework messaging, tighten offers, refocus our attention on what's gonna drive results for our clients and internally, and always walk away with fresh direction.

It’s easy to get stuck in the weeds when you’re remote.

Slack. Calls. Tasks. Repeat.

These monthly in-person days force us to zoom out.

No distractions. No context switching.

Just focus, real conversations, and real progress.

If you're building a remote-first company, I can’t recommend it enough.

You don’t need to go back to the office.

Very beneficial from my experience

Meet Tom Grainger, our Co-Founder & Head of Sales. You’ll find him most days in the cold-calling cave, stacking thousands of dollars into the pipeline. Be honest... is your sales leader really a sales leader if he isn’t doing this?

I've had 187 applications to our SDR job posting so far  

Only 1 cold called us…
—

We’re hiring full-time SDRs right now to support our expanding client base.

So far?

187+ applications.

But here’s what stood out to me 

Only one person actually picked up the phone.

They cold-called Tom Grainger, introduced themselves, pitched their background, and closed the call by asking for an interview.

Tom was impressed.
 
They then had a great chat.

And they got through to the next stage.

The job spec clearly said we’re looking for SDRs who are hungry to pick up the phone and build pipeline.

And yet…

Only 0.53% actually demonstrated that skill.

So if you’re applying for calling first sales roles right now, especially in smaller companies and not getting traction

Try cold calling the founder.
 
Or the hiring manager.

Or the Head of Sales.

It’s not just a shortcut past the pile. 

(and nobody is doing it) 
 
It proves you can do the job.

We notice. 

---

I'm curious to other B2B companies, how many of your SDR applicants actually called you? 🤷

Before you hire more SDRs...

Make sure your current ones aren’t wasting 80% of their day on this stuff...

I’ve seen this play out at dozens of companies:

Reps are drowning in data, logging tasks, checking five tabs just to make a call…

And then you wonder why the phone isn’t being picked up.

But here’s the thing:

Dials → Conversations → Demos → Pipeline → Revenue.

It’s that simple.

If your reps aren’t calling, they’re not selling.

But here's the good news

We don’t need more reps. We need better systems.

Here’s what we do instead:

→ Track high-intent activity like website visits, pricing page views, and product exploration
 
→ Monitor off-site signals: social engagement, hiring, funding, competitor research

→ Stack those signals and push into Clay for auto-qualification & enrichment

→ From there: we hit multichannel
  → Call
  → Text
  → Email
  → LinkedIn

This means our reps only speak to ICP-fit buyers

- They’re not building lists.
- They’re not scraping ZoomInfo.
- They’re not guessing.

They’re booking meetings for your AE's (Keeps them happy)

Give reps the right conversations and they’ll build you a pipeline engine.

----

The tech we use in the graphic is in the description below 👇

Instantly.ai just made it 10x easier to email site visitors and LinkedIn engagers. Here’s how we’re using it to book more meetings...

Here’s the good news:

RB2B and Trigify.io just rolled out integrations with Instantly.ai

Which means your site visitors and LinkedIn engagers can now be pushed directly into cold email campaigns.

Here’s the 3-tool system we’re deploying right now for teams who want to move fast:

1. RB2B - Turn website visitors into leads

Most of your best prospects never fill out a form.

RB2B identifies anonymous website traffic:
 → Company
 → Location
 → Job titles
 → Email (if available)

If RB2B finds a verified email → push straight into Instantly sequence
If not

---

2. Trigify.io - Turn social engagement into conversations

Trigify tracks:
→ Who’s liking/commenting on your team’s LinkedIn content
→ Who’s engaging with competitors
→ Who’s interacting with relevant keywords & hashtag.

In short: it gives you a daily list of warm leads to reach out to.

And now, thanks to its Instantly integration, those leads can go straight into an outbound sequence the same day.

Trigger types we use:
→ Viewed our team’s post
→ Engaged with competitor content
→ Posted about a pain point we solve

Use this to reach warm leads while the signal is still fresh.

---

3. Instantly.ai - Fire up cold (and warm) email sequences

Instantly becomes your home base for outbound.
→ Create separate campaigns for warm vs. cold
→ Personalise based on signal source (site visit, social, job change, etc.)
→ Keep your inboxes clean and your deliverability high

I keep hearing: “How do we automate outbound?”

Wrong question.

The right one is:

“Have we figured it out manually yet?”

Because if you can’t get a rep to book calls manually…

No tech stack is going to magically fix it.

Automation is NOT the silver bullet you're looking for 

Here’s what we see over and over again:

→ Teams spending $1,000s on sequencing tools
→ Fancy lead delivery pipelines
→ AI writers to crank out cold emails
→ Multiple inboxes running 24/7

…all before they’ve booked 5 consistent meetings a week through good old fashioned sales. 

You’re not automating a proven system.

You’re just automating failure, faster.

Here’s what works instead:

Start manual

- Find what offer resonates 
- Validate your messaging live on the phone
- Refine your angles and talk tracks
- Build the outbound system around what converts
- Only then, scale it with automation

This will give you an unfair advantage 

And even before that, automate the lead sourcing, signals and enrichment 

The last step is automation 

Because automation is a multiplier.

Not a miracle.

If it doesn’t work small…

It won’t work big.

---

Spotify Wrapped? More like My GTM Stack Wrapped.

Here’s the tech that helped us generate millions in pipeline this year...

Broken down by what actually gets used daily across cold, calling, content, and signals 👇


Cold Email Tech

The backbone of outbound volume:

→ Instantly.ai - Automated cold email sending tool

→ Hypertide.io - Microsoft & Google inboxes sorted

→ Clay - automated lead workflows

→ Twain - AI editor for messaging that sounds human

→ lemlist - solid for warm-up & multi-step sequences 

→ Octave - internal enablement for reps, playbooks and AI emails


Cold Calling Tech

Where most of the pipeline actually converts:

→ Trellus (YC W22).ai - Embedded power and parallel dialer   

→ Orum 🥇 - great power dialer 

→ FrontSpin - Sales engagement platform 

→ TitanX - 25% More connects with number scoring

→ SureConnect - Pick up likely scoring  

→ BetterContact - Number verification and validation 


LinkedIn Tech

Where trust is built (and leads start lurking):

→ Scribe - AI content based on winning formats

→ LinkedIn Sales Nav - old but gold. great for connection based lists

→ Trigify.io - pulls daily likes, comments & engagement

→ Teamfluence™ - track your teams linkedin content performance
 
→ Fibbler - track linkedin ad engagement and act on it


Enrichment Tech

 To actually find emails, mobiles, and context: all great!

→ Prospeo.io 

→ FullEnrich 

→ LeadMagic 

→ Icypeas 

→ Findymail 

→ Wiza 


Signal Tech

No signals = no strategy. Here’s our radar:

→ RB2B – top for US site visitor tracking

→ Vector 👻 – catches ad clicks that didn’t convert

→ Common Room – goldmine for signal stacking
 
→ BirdDog – stacks intent by account

→ Clay – Job postings, key hires and company news

→ Trigify.io – social intent layered in real time

—


That’s my 2025 stack.

Some AI. Some old-school.

All dialed in to help reps do the real work.

Let me know what tools earned a spot in your wrapped this year👇

GTM Tech Wrapped 2025

I’ve never found a cheaper or faster way to grow than referrals.

But most sales teams treat them like a happy accident instead of a growth channel.

And when done right, they scale without limits.

Think about it for a sec

How did you first hear about Apple? Or Nike?

It wasn’t an ad. (for me anyway)

It was your friends or peers talking about them

Word of mouth. That’s “dark social.”

You can’t track it.

But it moves faster than anything else.

And here’s the part most people miss:

You can influence it.

→ Offer a referral discount.
“If you refer someone and they close, we’ll give you a month free.”

This is a huge incentive for them 

It can essently turn in to a 2 for 1 deal - everytime you close someone, you get 2 customers. and so on

→ Add a referral fee.
Let customers pay off their own subscription by sharing it with peers.

If your product or service is good, this will happen naturally 

It's just about how much you're willing to sacrifice on the frontend 

---

One person tells two. Those two tell four. Then eight. Then sixteen. That’s exponential.

Treat the discount as your marketing spend.

You’re not losing money or undervaluing your product 

You’re acquiring new customers for the price you’re willing to pay. (on demand)

And if your product is great this works even faster.

I got our cold lead show rate to 83%.
Most teams average under 60% - here’s how I fixed it...

We had a real problem with our cold leads 

Inbound was great - super high show rate 

When I dig deeper i found a few issues 

1 - We didn't have a limit on how far our calls were booked 

I found the maximum you should book out is 7 days, anything after that and it's less likely they will show. 

2 - Making sure the lead accepts the call onto their calendar

This is key as it won't show up on their calendar unless they accept it, and busy CRO's are too busy to remember dates

3 - Not doing proper pre call reminders 

We had a few emails that went out before the call, but people don't check emails as often as you think. 

I made the team send a WhatsApp message to re-confirm and if no luck there, we give them another call to check if the time still works for them 

This one was a game changes

----

Go implement if your cold show rate is under 80% 

Are you doing any of these?

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