James Ski

15+ years of enterprise sales experience.

I’ve built and exited a start-up business and been part of the growth of early-stage British SaaS companies like Huddle as well as the unique environment of hypergrowth companies like Linkedin where I was a top EMEA performer and President Club Winner

I know what it takes to build teams, own territory, build pipeline and win business across multiple functions and geographies with a consultative and strategic approach. Command of the Message and MEDDIC trained.

Over 7 years I have helped companies via Sales Confidence like Salesloft, Zoominfo, Gong, 6Sense, Demandbase, Cognism, SimilarWeb and many others build brand awareness, land sales hires at all levels and grow their revenue in the UK and EMEA. 

Now I am helping sales teams leverage AI and get into more live conversations over the phone with Orum!

I’m also the author of the book “How to Build Sales Confidence” which you can check out on Amazon.

CEO and Founder

Abbas Somji👋🏽

Helping Founders Scale Fast & Create Outbound That Works | Start-Up Advisor 🚀

I'm the co-founder of The Playbook Agency and started the business as we saw so many start-ups & scale ups making avoidable mistakes when it came to their Go-To-Market. 

I managed to become the Head Of Sales of a start-up when I was just 3 years into my career, and have continued to operate as a Fractional Head Of Sales ever since for multiple businesses.

Challenges we solve:

🟣 Your sales team is wasting time on manual research, poor data & not having enough opportunities in pipeline
🟣 You have inconsistent top of funnel resulting in revenue & pipeline spikes 
🟣 You want to instill AI & automation within your process but don’t know where to start
🟣 You’re doing outbound out of a singular domain which is resulting in landing in spam
🟣 Current data providers have “dirty data” which means high bounce rates, leading to blacklisting
🟣 You want to test new markets, before getting sales teams to allocate resource to it

Co-Founder

We help founders get their GTM right, the first time, without having to hire an expensive sales team.

Quiet announcement 🤫

I've been working behind the scenes with Rahul Lakhaney at InboxKit

Today I'm officially joining as a GTM Advisor

Here's why this matters:
I've spent the last 8 years watching cold email evolve. Built 100+ outbound systems. Managed millions of sends for clients from Seed to Pre-IPO

And I kept seeing the same pattern: 
→ Great copy + bad infrastructure = burned domains 
→ Bad copy + great infrastructure = fixable 
→ Bad copy + bad infrastructure = "cold email is dead" 
→ Great copy + great infrastructure = pipeline machine

InboxKit has quietly built to $10M ARR as the one of the only official Google Cloud Partners in cold email infrastructure. No VC money. No hype cycle. Just a product that works.

The team is relentless and the energy is rare and I'm genuinely excited to be part of it.

As you know I've never taken a penny for any of my GTM tooling suggestions, which is why when I back something - you know it's meaningful & I know it works

If you're an agency or GTM platform that would benefit from offering clients tier 1 infrastructure - shoot me a message and let's get something together

More to come.. ✌️

P.S We've been using InboxKit as a core part of our deliverability strategy and have lost 0 customers & 0 pipeline due to poor deliverability this past year

li_at

JSESSIONID

Sales teams struggle, revenues crumble. Built the fix → inboxkit.com

InboxKit

Co Founder | I turn GTM chaos into engineered revenue 🛠️

I moved to Dubai in January. Here's what I actually spend
 
No fluff, just the real numbers (In AED & GBP)
 
I've been here for a while now and people always ask me what it actually costs
 
So here's my full monthly breakdown:
 
🏠 Fixed costs (10,102 AED / £2,173)
→ Rent (Downtown Dubai, as central as it gets): 7,500 AED (£1,613) - split with a flatmate
→ Utilities (DEWA + housing fee): 1,000 AED (£215)
→ Internet: 450 AED (£97)
→ Phone (pay as you go): 60 AED (£13)
→ Gym: 512 AED (£110)
→ Cleaning (weekly, split with flatmate): 300 AED (£65)
→ Laundry: 280 AED (£60)
 
🍔 Variable costs (7,485 AED / £1,610)
→ Food & drink: 2,790 AED (£600) - about £20/day averaged out
→ Weekends out: 3,720 AED (£800) - nice meals + entertainment
→ Transport (Limes & taxis): 465 AED (£100)
→ Haircuts: 510 AED (£110) - every 10 days
 
Monthly total: 17,587 AED (£3,783)
 
A few notes:
❌ This doesn't include setup costs (visa, deposits etc.)
❌ I don't have a car. Limes and taxis work fine for me.
🫃🏽I get at least 1 takeaway a day but nearly always use Careem's 50% off section - hot meal for about 40 AED or £8.
You could cut this significantly cooking at home (I'm starting to cook myself as I go Keto now)
❌I don't drink or go to nightclubs etc
You can find cheaper barbers, but my area isn't very cost effective & I do miss my hood barber shops from the UK
 
Is it cheaper than London? Not for me - but I lived in Barking before this, so if you compare like for like area's then it is cheaper 

_________________________

My name is Abbas Somji, I'm the Founder of The Playbook Agency 

I talk all thing GTM, AI & Entrepreneurship 

Follow along if that's what you're into!

POV: Prospects after receiving your 10+ step sequence

Your cold emails aren't getting replies
 
And it's probably because you're missing AT LEAST one of these 4 things
 
This year we've sent 100,000's worth of cold emails for clients
 
And we've distilled what works into a simple formula
 
1️⃣ Problem - What pain do you think they have and does it really "hurt"?

2️⃣ Fit - Why is YOUR solution right for THEM, what makes them relevant to your current customers?

3️⃣ Timing - Why should they care & act NOW?

4️⃣ Unique Advantage - What makes your approach unique compared to the other ways to solve the problem?
 
If your prospect can't mentally answer these questions by reading your email, then it'll hit the trash can
 
Quick example:
 
❌ "Hi {{firstName}},
I noticed you're the VP of Sales at {{company}}. We help B2B companies generate more pipeline with our outbound platform. Blah blah blah blah blah x 10 more lines
Would you be open to a quick call this week?" (Hits 0 of 4. Deleted.)
 
✅ "Saw you just raised Series B. Most VPs in your seat are firefighting board pressure to scale pipeline without hiring 10 more SDRs. We cut cost-per-meeting 40% for a similar-stage SaaS in 90 days. It's done by using signals custom to {company name} the things you can't find on zoominfo. Worth seeing how the sausage is made?"
 
Problem: Board pressure to scale
Fit: Work with series B businesses
Timing: Due to hire more SDR's
Advantage: Specific result + mechanism
 
Before you run your next campaign, utilise those 4 questions & watch your response rates shoot up
 
_______________________
 
My name's Abbas Somji👋🏽 I run The Playbook Agency - a boutique GTM agency for fast growing SaaS brands
 
We help you speak to better prospects, faster.

4 Easy Fixes for Bad Email Copy

People hate being sold to

But they love shopping with their friends.

The difference? One feels transactional. The other feels personal 

I learned this in my first year of business by meeting as many interesting people as possible 

On paper sometimes they weren’t ICP and I could see how my team, family and even friends thought I’m “wasting time” 

Thing is, my customers and aspirational friends have the exact same qualities 

So I didn’t even try and sell anything 🤷🏾‍♂️

Those “time-wasting” lunches turned into our biggest advocates & customers

They promoted us, introduced us to their networks, and created a “shopping with friends” experience at scale

We closed every single deal through these people - we didn’t have to do a single outbound campaign in our first year 

Here’s the shift that changed everything:

Stop discovering like a salesperson. Start discovering like a friend 🤝🏽

🟣 Take them to lunch
🟣 Meet for coffee
🟣 Visit their office
🟣 Learn about THEM, not just their pain points

Ask what they care about. What they’re working towards. What keeps them up at night beyond work.

Then build your referral engine

When your clients become advocates, they’re literally bringing their friends to shop with you

You recreate that personal experience without being there 🚀

Be human, everyone knows when you’re running through a MEDDICC script 

Your close rate will thank you ✌🏽

I always get asked what's Dubai like? 

Well here's a typical Friday for me 👇🏽

Everyone wants to move to Dubai 

But coming to Dubai won't solve all your problems

It might give you a bit more sunshine and security, but the work still has to get done & it won't fundamentally change you 

Your habits will follow you & so if you're anything like me, Dubai is the same as London is the same as Bali - the surroundings just change ✌️

Happy Friday - let's get after it!🫡

Weekend ritual 

Coffee shop & a book 

Just finished Shoe Dog by Phil Knight 

Really incredible story of how Nike was built and all the twists and turns that come with entrepreneurship 

Highly recommend if you’re sick of all the self help style books..

but still want to learn the behind the scenes of one of the greatest business stories in our generation 

After a crazy 2025 (more on that another day) 

I’m going into 2026 feeling great, lots to be excited about and to execute on 

Happy Sunday to all the Sunday grafters 🫡

I showed this chart to a VP of Sales last week
 
His response: "This is painfully accurate"
 
Look at what salespeople actually do ⤵️
 
Out of 8 daily tasks, only 2 are actual selling
 
The rest is:
 
• Cold Email + Launching Sequences
• LinkedIn Messaging
• Building lists
• Double checking to see if it's been worked on
• Tiering prospects & segmenting them
• Booking meetings
• CRM Admin
• Receiving training
• Getting their email unblocked after sending too many emails
 
No wonder hitting quota feels impossible
 
Your reps are spending 75% of their time on tasks that don't require a human anymore.
 
Here's what I told him:
 
"6/10 of these tasks can be automated using Clay & will outperform your rep doing it manually.
 
Clay + AI + the right workflows = 20 hours/week back per rep"
 
His response: "That's impossible"
 
So I showed him our exact workflow
 
🟣 Mapping out our TAM with live intent signals
🟣 Tiering that TAM & segmenting based on vertical / persona
🟣 Personalising to the pain using AI + human writing
🟣 Sending through rock solid infrastructure
🟣 Handing off the best leads to our fractional BDR to call
 
It's not impossible
 
It's just that most sales leaders don't know these systems exist or just don't trust them yet because of the amount of tools being shoved down everyone's throats right now
 
So sales leaders - what are you doing to ensure your reps time on the phones increases come Q1?
 
P.S. If this chart made you wince, we should talk.

Clay

Your outbound isn't working
 
And it's probably not because you're bad at sales
 
It's because you're missing one (or all) of these 5 things:
 
After 6 years selling to everyone from corner shops "boss men" to biotech CEOs, I've realised most outbound failures come down to the same systematic gaps
 
Here's what's actually breaking:
 
1️⃣ Your ICP is too vague

"We target Series A companies" tells you nothing about why they'd buy.
"We target Series A SaaS with <5% ad conversion and a new in role marketeer" tells you exactly what pain to hit
 
2️⃣ You're not testing hypotheses

Every message should test an assumption about your buyer's pain
But most people just blast the same message & do not pivot when it goes wrong, they change way too late after they've burned through contacts and wonder why it doesn't work
 
3️⃣ You're selling on the wrong channel

You're cold calling developers who live on Discord
You're sending LinkedIn messages to people who never check it
Go where your buyers actually hang out! When we were targeting coffee shops for a previous SaaS venture, we put the phones down, and walked into businesses!
 
4️⃣ Your data doesn't match your channel

You need mobile data but you're using an email tool. Or vice versa. Wrong data provider = doomed campaign
 
You need to find pockets of data that matter, again using the coffee shop example, they aren't on LinkedIn, but you can scrape Google maps to find their contact info instead
 
5️⃣ You have no infrastructure

Single email domain. No proper calling setup. No way to scale and test fast.
YOU CANNOT run experiments without proper infrastructure
 
I've built 100+ GTM systems using this 5-step framework. It works for SaaS, services, agencies, doesn't matter
 
Sales is an art yes, but it's also a science
____________________
 
Abbas Somji👋🏽 | Founder, The Playbook Agency
 
We solve 1 major problem via AI & Automation: Too many of your reps doing too little selling to too few good prospects (Pipeline death!)
 
Supporting $2.4+ billion in SaaS revenue since 2023

You & your sales team are blind to 6 out of 10 prospects

Not because you're bad

Because you're using the same filters as everyone else

Here's how to fix it in under an hour 👇

____________________

Everyone's using the same databases 📊 (Apollo, Cognism, Zoom Info, Sales Nav)

Everyone's applying the same filters 🔍

Everyone's seeing the same 696 prospects (like I did in the video) 

And those prospects?

Getting absolutely hammered by cold outreach 

Here's what nobody's doing:
I'm running a campaign right now for Series A-C SaaS in Europe.
Standard Crunchbase filters showed me 696 companies ❌
But my gut said something was off.

So I pulled ALL the Series A-C data for Europe: 7,600 companies 
Then I self-categorized them in Clay specifically for B2B SaaS

Result: 2,435 qualified prospects ✅
That's 1,739 companies my competitors can't see because they're miscategorized in the database.

A company tagged as "Enterprise Software" or "Technology" instead of "SaaS"?

Your filters miss them completely. 🤦‍♂️

But here's where it gets powerful:
Once you have the full list in Clay, you layer in qualification triggers:
✓ Do they have an SDR team?
✓ Are they actively hiring?
✓ Is there new leadership in role?
✓ Recent funding announcements?

Then you tier your outreach:
🌶️🌶️🌶️ High intent = Manual personalization
 🌶️🌶️ Medium intent = Hybrid approach
 🌶️ Low intent = Automated cadence

___________________

The outcome?
✅ Your SDRs are reaching prospects who aren't drowning in cold emails
✅ Your response rates go up
✅ Your conversations are better quality
✅ Your pipeline is 3X what it could've been

Sales is easy - Build list, sell to list 

But if your list is incomplete, you've already lost 50% 

Full walkthrough in the video below 

P.S. — I'm building this exact workflow for 3 B2B SaaS businesses over the next 4 weeks.

Sales or marketing leaders with real PMF only.

Comment "WORKFLOW" if you want the template + implementation 👇

I just reverse-engineered how ColdIQ scaled to $6M ARR
 
Here's the dirty secret most outbound businesses won't tell you 👇🏽
 
That's not just agencies, it's also outbound tools you know and love
 
Most revenue doesn't come from outbound anymore
 
It comes from content-led systems that turn LinkedIn engagement into booked calls
 
The breakdown:
 
→ Build context engine (understand your market) & uncover bleeding neck problems
→ Connect with Tier 1 ICP prospects using LinkedIn tools
→ Create content using human + AI methods around bleeding neck problems
→ Qualify engaged audience through Clay
→ Create community & goodwill through free value (Penn Frank kills it with the ebooks)
→ Route hot leads to human touch points
 
We use this exact system ourselves - 3 of our top 5 clients came through content we posted
 
The game has changed - buyers are 80% through their decision before they even speak to you
 
Are you going to wait for your competitors to educate your buyers? or do you want them to come to you first?
 
Build the system or get left behind
 
_____________________
 
P.S ColdIQ have been extremely open on their methodologies so do check out their content it's top tier
 
P.P.S I'm taking on 5 businesses in January to take on what I call the Content→Warmbound Revenue system, where I'll build the exact set up that me and all the other businesses who are growing fast today, are utilising
 
Let me know if it's worth a conversation in the DM's ✌️

ColdIQ

It's that time of year 📊

I analysed our 50 best-performing email campaigns from 2025...

They all had one thing in common.

It wasn't the persona ❌
It wasn't the subject lines ❌
It wasn't (at times) even the offer ❌

It was WHO we were reaching out to ✅

The campaigns that performed best all targeted people actively following our clients' competitors on LinkedIn

Think about it:

These aren't cold leads pulled from some database
They're people who've already raised their hand and said "I care about this space." 🙋‍♂️

→ They're monitoring the competition 
→ They're evaluating alternatives 
→ They're staying informed 
→ They're problem AND solution aware

So we tried every single "tool" on the market for this....but response times sucked, people wouldn't deliver on time and the contact data was poor 📉

So we built something to make this repeatable

Our new LinkedIn Follower Finder pulls audiences directly from competitor pages - the exact people showing active interest in your category

Plus, we scan against your ICP requirements
Meaning instead of paying for 100,000 contacts (of which only 5,000 are relevant), we find those 5,000 from the start
✅ Scored 
✅ Qualified
✅ Verified data 
✅ Additional buying signals

This is what we mean by demand engineering - finding people who are already in the market, not trying to create demand from scratch

For our clients running outbound, this has become the highest-converting data source we use

If you're still relying on legacy databases to build your lists, you're missing the people who are actually paying attention 👀

Want to see who's following your competitors? Drop me a message. 
___________________

I'm Abbas Somji, Founder of The Playbook Agency. We turn TAM into pipeline through demand engineering - building GTM automation systems that find high-intent buyers, not just contacts.

Competitor Followers - How to Find Them 

What you do in private will show up in public

The books you read today shape the depth of conversations you'll have

The gym sessions no one sees build the energy everyone notices

The journal entries written at 6am clarify the decisions you'll make at 2pm

The prospects you research thoroughly determine how confident you sound on discovery calls

The sleep hygiene you maintain in private fuels the presence you bring to every meeting

The people you connect behind the scene that further fuels an abundance mindset 

Your invisible disciplines become your visible results.

Most people want public success but resist private sacrifice

What are you doing in private that will show up in public six months from now? 

Happy Sunday let’s get it 👊🏽

Surrounded by about $2M of bonzai tree's right now 

I'm currently sat in a Japanese coffee shop in Dubai 

Every corner has a story - hand carved walls

Staff's passions for chocolate making is now a menu item

The coffee mugs are made by hand and perfectly imperfect 

Founders love for Anime is peppered across the projectors, & his personal collection of items is spread in meeting rooms

Every single thing has been thought of and selected carefully, from the coffee to the couches 

Down to the figurines in the toilets 🤯

I spoke to the founder for a few minutes

You can see it in his eyes - this place isn't a business to him, it's an extension of who he is 

It reminded me of the difference between old buildings and modern ones

Old buildings have soul

They were built by people who cared about the craft itself, not just finishing on time and under budget

You walk into a 100-year-old structure and feel the weight of decisions made by someone who knew their work would outlast them

Modern buildings? Boring bits of glass slapped together for maximum profit in the shortest time 

After I read Ikigai, and also got a little obsessed w Japanese watch making (I bought a 55 year old Grand Seiko a few months back)

I've started to fall in love with their approach & principles - here's 3 I learned: 

1️⃣ Ikigai (生き甲斐) means "reason for being" - the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for

2️⃣ Kodawari (こだわり) - uncompromising attention to detail and commitment to your craft. It's obsessing over every element, not because it's rational, but because anything less would feel wrong

3️⃣ Shokunin - the craftsman's spirit 

A shokunin doesn't just work for money - their craft is an extension of themselves

They know their work will outlast them, so they pour their soul into it.. 

That founder? He's a shokunin

The divide exists everywhere:

Are you building something crap, soul-less and forgettable?

Or are you building something tastefully put together, thoughtful with love 

In a world full of AI - I believe this is the moat 

AI will never have passion, it'll never create the imperfect perfect 

How do your customers feel, are they in love with your service or product? 

Or is it just a transaction to them? 

Sunday thoughts ✌🏽

Most sales leaders have given up on cold email entirely
 
Meanwhile, we just booked 17 meetings last month using it
 
Here's how (my exact method no gate keeping)
 
Revenue leaders are sick of SDRs being "email monkeys."
 
Putting leads into a sequence isn't sales - it's laziness that worked for a while ﻿🥱
 
Some try solving this by buying inboxes - but they burn them as fast as they buy them.
 
My take: Sales people should be on phones. Emails should be handled by experts.
 
This landed us meetings with execs at Binance, Nvidia, HSBC, Casio & 100's more:
 
Step 1️⃣: Infrastructure Design
 
Calculate exact inbox needs, then buy from multiple providers (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, different registrars)

Our go-to's: InboxKit, Zapmail & Hypertide.

The 2x Rule: Buy 2x the domains needed. While Set A is active, Set B warms for 45 days.
 
Step 2️⃣: The 30-Day Warmup
 
Every inbox gets 30 days before touching prospects. 10-25 warmup emails daily with 30-60% reply targets.
 
Week 1-2: Pure warmup
Week 3-4: 10 cold emails daily
Week 5-6: 15-20 cold emails daily
After 45 days: Full campaign
 
Step 3️⃣: Lead List Intelligence
 
We run lists through Clay to score into three tiers:
• Tier 1 (Top 20%): Perfect ICP matches
• Tier 2 (Middle 60%): Good fits
• Tier 3 (Bottom 20%): Difficult providers
 
Then analyze MX records. Gmail inboxes go to the top. Enterprise security (Barracuda, Proofpoint, Mimecast) goes to the bottom.
 
Your domain builds reputation as it sends. First 100 sends should hit the easiest inboxes, not the hardest.
 
Step 4️⃣: Verification
 
Every lead runs through TrueInbox or Millionverifier. Target: <2% bounce rate.

One bad list burns a 45-day warmed domain. Treat verification like domain insurance.
 
Step 5️⃣: Copy That Converts
 
We reverse-engineer a perfect one-to-one email, then use Clay to create that personalization at scale.

The result? Email that sounds individually written, because the foundation was.
 
The math most sales leaders miss:
 
▸ Bad infrastructure + great copy = burned domains
▸ Great infrastructure + bad copy = fixable with A/B testing
▸ Bad infrastructure + bad copy = why you gave up
 
Cold email works if you know what you're doing.
 
 
______
Struggling to get replies? We'll build you the system in 90 days - so you own it forever. DM me.

I'm the founder of The Playbook Agency - GTM operations partner for SaaS brands from Seed to Pre-IPO

Find, contact & own your TAM with us

The Playbook Agency

Saw this Google cold email floating around LinkedIn
 
Everyone's laughing at it
 
But they're missing the real lesson
 
When you work at Google, you can send this and STILL get replies
 
When you work at a startup nobody's heard of? This gets you blocked ⛔
 
Here's what big brand reps don't tell you:
 
Their approach only works because of 20+ years of brand equity
 
When someone sees "Google" in their inbox:

✅ Instant credibility
✅ Assumes legitimacy
✅ Curiosity already built-in
✅ More likely to forgive generic messaging
 
When someone sees "[YourStartup]" they've never heard of:

⚠️ Zero trust
⚠️ Immediate skepticism
⚠️ Generic = spam folder
⚠️ Every word needs to earn attention
 
I see this mistake constantly
 
Founders & sales reps watching LinkedIn content from big tech brands
 
Then copying their sequences word-for-word
 
Then wondering why they get 2 replies from 2000 emails
 
Big brands can afford to be lazy
 
Their name does half the selling
 
You can't
 
But here's your advantage as an unknown:
 
Big tech reps can't do deep personalisation at scale
 
Their brand allows volume approaches
 
You HAVE to be better
 
So you

✅ Research deeper
✅ Personalize harder
✅ Build value BEFORE asking for meetings
✅ Create custom insights they can't get elsewhere
 
This is how I've generated thousands of meetings the past 2 years
 
Not by copying big tech sales playbooks
 
But by building custom playbooks for companies nobody's heard of yet
 
____________

I talk AI, GTM & entrepreneurship - follow along if that's what you're into!

I built my first "app" in 90 mins this weekend

It's really simple, it's a time buyback tracker based on Dan Martell's buy back your time book (Dan's EA if you're reading this make sure he see's it 😉) 

It takes your yearly salary, breaks it down into an hourly rate & then tells you what value of tasks you should be outsourcing 

You then track your activities in 15 min intervals for 1-2 days, to truly factory reset your life

You can then understand where you are wasting time, make changes & get back to grafting 

E.g Client Proposals are high revenue generating, low enjoyment - so I should delegate this task using the 4 C's

- Capital
- Collaboration (Team or partners)
- Code (AI, Tools etc)
- Content (SOP's, Recordings, Trainings)

In this example I set a figure of $100,000 as income just as an easy figure to work with, you can see any tasks that I'm doing that are worth around $12 I can confidently outsource 

If anyone wants to use it feel free just ping me and I'll send you the link

AI is getting incredible 

I recently got rid of my book keeper as Claude makes no mistakes in tagging my expenses properly & actually did my corporate tax filings in Dubai using it

What a world we live in ✌️

Hope everyone is getting after it - Monday's creeping upon us!

📘 Bestselling Author (Buy Back Your Time) 🚀 Building AI startups @Martell Ventures ⚙️ 3x Software Exits • $100M+ HoldCo 💬 DM "COACH" if you're looking to scale

This is how you actually get a VP's attention in 3 ways: 

I just had coffee with Zubair Rana VP of Sales at Omtera

He moved to Dubai recently

Updated his LinkedIn profile... got absolutely bombarded on LI & email more than ever before 

The best way to close & open more deals is to stop trying to close & open more deals.. 

Here's what I mean: 

This is what he got hit with: 

❌ "Can I have 15 minutes?"
❌ "Quick call to discuss..." 
❌ "Interested in learning about..."
❌ "I can guarantee 10-20 appointments for Omtera.." 

Everyone wants to TAKE. Nobody wants to GIVE.

Here's what he said:

"If someone had sent me something actually useful for new VP setting up in the UAE before asking for time, I would've booked a call."

Here's what you need to do: 

1️⃣ Make it their world 

Example: "Zubair, everyone in Dubai loves to meet for coffee, but they rarely turn to pipeline - worked with another new to region VP on....."

2️⃣ Make it free 

Example: "I actually put together a 90 day plan for new VP's in Dubai, can I ping it over it contains...."

3️⃣ Do their homework 

Example: "I can build you a list of 25 companies that are re-evaluating monday()com whilst you get set up, worth pining over?"

This is what we're seeing across the board:
→ The companies that educate first, sell later 
→ The reps that share insights before booking meetings 
→ The agencies that build playbooks before pitching

They're closing at 3-4x the rate of traditional outbound

Why?

Because goodwill compounds

When you give value upfront:
🟣 You demonstrate expertise (not claim it)
🟣 You build trust (not demand it)
🟣 You create reciprocity (not resentment)

The fastest way to get a meeting is to deserve one

Stop optimising for opens and clicks

Start optimising for goodwill

I'm sharing these insights and more in Sales of Dubai, our free community for sales leaders in the region looking to level up with other revenue leaders 

Ping me if you want an invite or sign up via the site! 

____________

I'm Abbas, the co founder of The Playbook Agency - I talk about GTM, AI & Entrepreneurship 

Supporting SaaS brands with finding, contacting & owning their TAM

VP of Sales at Omtera

Omtera

Sales of Dubai

Weird stat but my sauna times are 40% longer when there’s someone else in there

3 things I’ve realised influence this 

1. Having other people around you naturally pushes you to do more, which is why in the new year I want to work with more people in person / co work with more entrepreneurs

You can achieve good things working solo, but greatness is a team sport (not for one second saying sitting in a sauna is greatness 🤣)  

2. Everyone in Dubai has a really interesting story & stories 

By being here you’ve shown you’re a risk taker, and every person has some stories I’ve met some super interesting individuals 

From the person who’s escaping political uncertainty in their home country all the way to someone who supplied the yachts for Jeff Bezos’ wedding 

3. Ego / competitiveness (maybe ties into 1)

I always try and outlast everyone and play a little game in my head 

Maybe I’m a psychopath who knows 

Anyway have a great weekend ✌🏽

19 acquisitions in a 5 year period
 
Not everyone get's front row seats to transactions like that
 
Just spoke with Stephen Howard, we talked all things Channel Sales and M&A, here's 5 things I picked up:
 
1️⃣ Not every target is a whale

Some were one or two person shops. Small businesses with great customers and negotiated leases ready to transfer.
 
2️⃣ The deal is the easy part
 
It's a series of steps similar to purchasing a house, if you can handle a home purchase, you can handle an acquisition

The real work? Customer communication. Making sure they see it as a net positive, not just two people getting richer!
 
3️⃣ You inherit more than revenue

Employees. Leases. Customer relationships. Market access.
All without starting from zero.
 
4️⃣ Channel sales unlocks everything

This one surprised me, how partnerships actually work behind the scenes and the 80/20 rule of channel sales.
 
What was really cool is he saw it all at 27 (I'm 28 now) and he used that experience to negotiate his first business purchases too!
 
Full episode is coming, subscribe so you don't miss it - just search my name on YouTube (Abbas SomjI)
 
What's the first business you'd acquire if you could? 👇
 
__________________________
 
I'm Abbas Somji👋🏽 Somji, I talk all things GTM, AI & Entrepreneurship - follow along if that's what you're into!

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