Lead generation is broken.

Too many companies:

- Try to generate leads themselves, but fail
- Hire a lead gen agency with bloated retainers who can’t deliver

Lead generation as a whole is always changing, so unless you’ve got a dedicated team
on it (that knows what they’re doing) — you can expect to overpay for underwhelming
results.

That said, in 2025 — you don’t need to try to generate leads yourself, or pay an
outsized retainers for subpar work.

With Leadbird, you:

- Don’t pay for overpriced retainers
- Only pay per meeting-ready-lead we deliver
- Get the expertise of career outbound salespeople

We achieve this for you through:

- Targeted lead list building
- Domain + inbox set-up and warm-up
- Proven cold email copywriting principles
- Done-for-you cold email campaign management

Book a free demo from the link in my bio to join over 115 active clients getting
high-quality, meeting-ready-leads every single month.

Talk soon,
Nick

Nick Abraham

Maybe I’m falling for ragebait, but cold email has let me:

(1) Drop out of college.

(2) Grow my own agency to multi 7-figures of revenue.

(3) Employ 30+ people around the world full-time.

(4) Buy my sister and Dad cars.

(5) Rent my dream apartment.

(6) Buy my first 5 properties.

(7) Work with 100s of businesses.

(8) Make lifelong friends.

(9) Give my future family a financial head start.

Just remember, for every one person that dunks on cold outbound, there's another person whose life was changed because of it.

I send 2M+ cold emails and 1M+ LinkedIn DMs per month for 1,000+ active clients across Leadbird and Cleverly

Gemini 3 cannot sell a $10k service package.
GPT 5.1 cannot sell a $10k service package.
Llama 4 cannot sell a $10k service package.
Opus 4.5 cannot sell a $10k service package.
DeepSeek-R1 cannot sell a $10k service package.

A great human seller can.

I posted the below tweet earlier this year. If I could edit it, I would say:

“If I had a son, I would preach that you can either be top 1% in whatever job you have or risk losing it to AI’.”

Because “AI is going to eliminate [insert role]” is surface level thinking, and too broad of a generalization.

It is, of course, going to eliminate roles, but not roles in their entirety. 

Instead, it will eliminate the bottom 99% of certain roles while accelerating the top 1% of others.

Sales is a great example.

AI can handle a lot of the outreach process, even including script writing. What it can’t do is work a deal the way a human would.

The same can be said for a lot of software dev work, in my opinion. Great engineers will never be out of work, but average/mediocre ones likely will.

In short: if you want to AI-proof yourself, become top 1% at what you do. Easier said than done, I know…but very much worth it.

I jokingly posted this and SO many people commented or messaged about Agency 3 and asked for an intro. This is a huge problem.

This post was a joke. No lead gen agency worth their salt would ever take a deal in which they generate leads for clients, and only get paid if/when the client closes them.

We can't control what the client does after we generate the lead.

- What if they simply don’t engage with them?
- What if the lead asks to follow up later, and they don’t?
- What if their sales team just can’t close for their product/service?
- What if their pricing is way off the market norm?
- What if their reviews online are terrible, and the prospects drop out pre-call?
- What if they have no social proof and can't build trust with prospects?

There is so much that is out of the lead generation agency's control. 

Moreover, the client will have no skin in the game and not value the opportunity if they have no risk associated 

The agency can do their job perfectly and even go above and beyond and still make zero dollars because of something on client’s side.

Just a word of warning!

Excited and grateful to share I’ve reached 20,000 followers here on LinkedIn!

Almost 3 years ago, with 3,000 followers, I started posting the most valuable content I could every day (sometimes 2x per day).

Since then, I’ve been able to:

- Meet lots of awesome people I now consider friends.
- Learn a ton about outbound, GTM, and marketing.
- Attract incredible clients we’re extremely grateful for

Whether you were one of the first 3,000 or a part of the next 17,000, I truly want to say thank you. None of it's possible without you.

To that point, I only ask of you is to comment what type of content you want to see more of moving forward!

Super excited to show off our new client portal that makes it far easier for clients to track replies!

Before, we had clients logging into Smartlead to check email replies, then switching to a LinkedIn inbox manager for DM responses, then tracking cold calls elsewhere.

The entire lead gen operation was fragmented across three interfaces that didn't really interconnect.

Clients would miss responses because they forgot to check one of the platforms. They'd get confused about which channel was performing better. 

The biggest sign of this was support tickets kept coming in asking where to find specific replies.

So, we effectively rebuilt our client portal, using MasterInbox as the common thread. Now when clients log in, they see everything in one feed (emails, calls, DMs) that looks completely native to our platform.

Most importantly, clients have commented on how much easier this is for them.

Not to mention, it helps us, too. We've eliminated ~80% of the "where do I find my replies?" support requests. 

As for performance, clients are responding to leads faster because they're not losing track of conversations across multiple tools.

We're rolling this out to all clients because the upgrade is that significant.

Of the 1,000s of client campaigns we've run this year, the best-performer in recent memory was for a yoga studio.

I am big on local lead generation, and this is a perfect example of it. 

This yoga studio hired us to reach out to other businesses to try to get them to book group classes, retreats, off-sites, etc.

So, we scraped lead lists of local businesses and wrote a hyper-local cold email campaign to go with it.

And though you might expect the best performing campaign to be for an agency with a great offer or a hot new SaaS product, this blew others out of the water 

The point is that cold email for local businesses is wildly underrated. If you have or know of a local business interested in generating leads via cold email, feel free to reach out.

We’d love to replicate this.

If you’ve ever pulled leads from Apollo or anything else using “Industry” filters, read this post to make them way more accurate:

They have miscategorized companies in the industry that aren’t relevant to your ICP.

We've been using a new method to get our refined TAM into one list.

See, most lead lists give you name, email, company, LinkedIn URL, and a generic "industry" tag. The problem is that those industry classifications are wrong a lot of the time.

You end up messaging wrong accounts or missing perfect fits.

We found a way to fix this using data already in your lists.

Every company LinkedIn URL comes with an "About Us" section where they describe exactly what they do.

Process:

- Take 3-5 dream clients.
- Go to their LinkedIn About Us sections.
- Pull out every relevant keyword - product terms, customer segments, pain points, industry language. Build a keyword bank.

This takes 20 minutes.

Now layer this on top of broad industry tags. Instead of just "Healthcare," filter for Healthcare companies whose About Us mentions your specific keywords.

Gets you from the neighborhood into the right house.

This is basically advanced semantic filtering without expensive AI tools.

Use the company's own words to qualify them instead of relying on generic industry buckets.

My agency has 283 active clients. If we don't get to 1,000 by the end of 2026, I'll view the year as a failure. There are 3 things we need to do to get there:

LEVER 1 – Churn Reduction

We want to cut our churn in half.

Our sales team don't lie to prospects, but much of the churn does come from misaligned expectations around lead generation, so we are investing a lot in making that extremely clear up front.

LEVER 2 – More Time On Growth

This sounds obvious, but few people do it in practice. It's so easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations and not spend enough time on top of funnel activity.

There's so much more we could be doing (YouTube, ads, events, etc.) here.

LEVER 3 – Make Sure Our Team Levels Up

To serve 1,000 clients, we need to make sure our team is operating at all levels.

We had them at off-sites in Dubai and Cape Town in the past few months, and we'll do another one next year.

More tangibly, we are trying to get them more ingrained in lead gen overall.

We are asking them to go follow other leaders in the space and consume their content on a regular basis.

To me, this is an undeniable way to level up.

This comes off the heels of rebuilding our client portal and making it crystal clear and easy to operate. If you have any questions or want to see more on this, let me know.

One of the most common replies you'll get to cold emails at scale is "how much does it cost".

Generally, you'll either:

A) Give the price. Without further context or sales tactics, people automatically see this as a cost and have a hard time justifying the ROI. This usually makes it harder to get on a call.

B) Give a range. This is a bit better, but depending on budget, it still may be hard to paint ROI via email. You need to give a fairly broad range.

Now, very few businesses selling >$1000 packages are public about pricing.

I think that should change.

Your pricing should be publicly available somewhere, ideally on a dedicated page that does a lot of the selling for you.

This might look like:

1. Landing page with 8-minute VSL, full of social proof, with pricing in the middle.

2. Static pricing page, full of social proof + process walkthrough.

This changes your reply from:

"Sure, our pricing is XYZ"

to

"Sure, feel free to have a look here [link] for more information on that".

This way, instead of your prospect just seeing the amount of money you want them to pay you, they get a much fuller picture of the value you provide.

If I were in charge of business development at a local blue collar business like this and needed to win jobs with cold email, I would:

1. Scrape a list of local businesses with an office location.
2. Write the following email copy:

—

[name], just wanted to touch base. We're an HVAC company in the area at [address].

Curious - do you have a go-to person for any kind of AC/heating repairs?

—

You might get a couple of jobs from this, but that is not really the goal with this kind of work.

The "magic" is what happens after.

3. Enroll all positive replies into a weekly nurture sequence (case studies and value).

Do this locally for 90-120 days.

It's the most surefire way to make sure that when a business' AC/heating breaks, they think of you right away.

Scaled to thousands of businesses across a major metro area, you're looking at serious pipeline.

Plus, a VERY small portion (if any) of your competitors are doing this.

To that point, if your business or someone you know would benefit from a system like this, comment or DM me!

Job titles are lying to you about who actually does the work. 

If you're selling something without a clean buyer title, your targeting is probably broken.

Here's how we fixed ours:

Outbound breaks down when your product is ambiguous. 

Say you sell financial forecasting software. 

Who owns forecasting depends on the company (Finance, FP&A, Operations, Strategy, or even founders, etc.).

A "Finance Manager" could handle AR, AP, Treasury, or actually build forecasts. You can't tell from the title.

So we stopped guessing titles and started targeting the actual work.

Layer 1: Department filtering

Start with departments where your problem sits. For forecasting: Finance, FP&A, Operations, Strategy.

Layer 2: LinkedIn description keywords

Every user writes a description under their title:

- "Own the quarterly forecast"
- "Build headcount forecasts"
- "Drive variance analysis"
- "Maintain the revenue model"

These keywords self-identify who does the work.

Instead of targeting "Finance Manager" and hoping, target "Finance Manager who mentions 'forecast' and 'financial model' in their description."

The process:

1. Pick 1-2 relevant departments
2. Extract 8-20 keywords tied to your product
3. Filter people mentioning those keywords in descriptions
4. Hit people who self-identify as doing the work

Example query:

Department: Finance/FP&A/Operations

Description contains: "forecast" OR "financial model" OR "budget"

This surfaces only people who explicitly manage forecasts.

We've been running this across ambiguous products and have seen both higher reply rates and better conversations.

The perfect cold email has:

- Relevance = Reason for reaching out.
- Personalization = Part that only makes sense to them.
- Offer = Outcome you'll provide.
- Social proof = Proof you've done it.
- CTA = Low-risk ask that puts the ball in their court.

Not complicated!

We've had clients we book 100s of meetings for per month, and others who churned because "cold email doesn't work".

The difference in how they operate:

Ones booking 100s of meetings:

- Willingly give away free value
- Take suggestions on optimizing offer
- Understand it's a volume game
- Don't overanalyze campaigns
- Chase leads we send them religiously

Ones who are convinced cold email doesn't work:

- Refuse to give away free value because it'll bring "bad leads".
- Refuse to optimize their offer to make it cold-ready.
- Want to send to a "targeted" list of 76 accounts.
- Analyze campaigns in relation to "industry standards" they Googled
- Let leads sit dormant for days and weeks after we submit them

It isn't exactly rocket science. This isn't to say we're perfect at what we do with every campaign.

It is to say we operate based on the data we have, and our data shows that this works.

We're doing 60,000 cold calls per month for clients and ourselves right now. Our number 1 learning for what converts to appointments and what doesn't has nothing to do with cold calling tech or set up.

It strictly has to do with the caller's tone.

One of the big pitfalls of outsourced callers is that they come into the call with no tonality.

Typical "Hey, do you have 10 seconds to speak? I'd love to show you how we could..."

Callers will sound robotic because you are grading them on the amount of dials they do per day. So, they speed-run through the list 

The much better play to run is:

1. Ensure your caller has a curious, inquisitive tone.
2. Ensure they don't get into the routine of sounding like a robot.

It sounds like a simple fix, but it's really not.

This is the difference between booking appointments from cold calling and wasting a ton of money.

How it feels when you realize you can just send more cold emails to get more leads:

We’re sending 260k cold emails Thursday-Sunday this week.

So many sellers view holidays and weekends as time to pause campaigns. I just don't see the point in doing this…mainly for a few reasons:

1. Because so many sellers pause their campaigns, inboxes are way less crowded.

2. Often, you’re targeting someone senior with outbound. Senior people, even though less on weekends, are more likely to check email (even once per day) during the holidays.

3. Generally, people are in more relaxed, friendly moods on a Thanksgiving Friday than they are on a random November Tuesday morning. This bodes well for reply rate.

Disclaimer:

You can expect ~50% of your typical campaign performance in terms of positive reply rate during the holidays. Yes it's reduced, but it's not worth stopping sending altogether.

TLDR: Don’t pause campaigns this holiday!

If I had to increase positive reply to meeting booked rate for any B2B business, here are the exact steps I'd take:

(1) Set up an automation that enriches positive replies with all relevant info (LI URL if I don't already have it, phone number, etc)

(2) Send them a LinkedIn connection request post-positive reply.

(3) Cold call them after that as well.

(4) If the meeting still isn't booked, I'd bump the cold email reply, mentioning I called and left a voicemail. Then, I’d follow up one more time after that.

(5) If they STILL haven't booked, I'd set up a weekly nurture newsletter for all prospects that fit this mould. Each email would have a CTA to book a call.

The point is that you reach them on all platforms.

If you need to set this up:

- Find out what data you have available after each list scrape.

- Set up waterfall enrichment to find what you’re missing after a positive reply (phone number, LI profile, etc.)

- Outline a process for you/your sellers to walk through post-positive reply.

- Use your CRM or beehiiv to set up a weekly newsletter nurture sequence (52 emails comprised of social proof + value).

The more you reach them, the better chance you have. It's not that difficult, but a lot of companies struggle with this.

- client with $100,000 LTV

Client: We only got 3 leads this month.

Me: And?

Client: We are going to have to churn.

Me: Why?

Client: We're clearly not getting enough volume for this to work.

Me: Ok, let's run the numbers. Your average LTV is $100,000 right?

Client: Yes.

Me: Okay, so, if we charge you $300 per lead, we can generate 100 leads that you close 0% on, and you'd STILL be at breakeven with us.

Client: Yeah, but we don't close at 0%. We close at 10-15%.

Me: Exactly. Let's even cut that in half and take 5%. If you pay us $300 per lead and close at 5%, you'd pay $6000 in lead generation costs for $100K in rev.

Client: Oh.

Me: Do you see why you don't need a lot of leads for this to work?

Client: Yes.

We have 60,000 monthly cold calls worth of data to show that prospects absolutely still pick up the phone.

Yet, still, deniers will say that it’s not worth their time, or that nobody picks up the phone, or my favorite: “When you pull the list, you’ll end up with office numbers and not personal ones!”.

(for the record: It is incredibly easy to pull personal mobile phone numbers from lead lists).

My point is that you absolutely shouldn’t listen to people who’ve never given a channel a fair shake about whether or not it works.

If you did:

1. You’d never send a DM because “inboxes are crowded”.
2. You’d never send a cold email because “it doesn’t work”.
3. You’d never make a cold call because “nobody picks up the phone”.

In reality, cold calling and quite literally all other channels “work” if executed correctly and for long enough.

Heading into 2026, outbound marketers will have to multi-thread more and more, meaning it’s likely going to be time to pick up the phone.

Just remember: It does work.

"We already emailed them"

That's EXACTLY why you should be emailing them again.

At any given point, roughly 3% of decision makers in your TAM are actively looking for your solution.

That means even if you do everything right with your lead gen efforts, a good portion of your TAM simply won't buy right then and there (see: “email me next year” replies).

From there, you're given two choices:

1. Mark them as permanently "not interested" and move on.
2. Re-market to them with new messaging every 30 days from there on out.

If you mark leads that don't want to buy right now as "permanently not interested," you will eventually run through your TAM.

If you reach out to leads who don't want to buy right now, every 30 days with fresh messaging, you will be top of mind when they do want to buy.

This is also why it's effectively impossible to burn a relatively large TAM. (Taylor Haren does a great job of explaining this).

The point is, don't be scared of holding on to the same leads. Just make sure your offer is strong, and the messaging is unique each time.

Dhruv Patel

Saleshandy

Saleshandy is a cold outreach platform that helps B2B businesses automate and scale their outbound sales efforts. 

» I am the person responsible for
- majority of marketing stuff
- people management
- developing and implementing systems & procedures throughout the organization
- operations

Co-Founder

Appitsimple Infotek Pvt. Ltd. [www.softwaresuggest.com]

- Lead Marketing strategist & enabler, strategic vision, and involved in growth of the marketing team from 1 to 6 
- Grew organic acquisition, leveraging website optimization, SEO, and PR 
- Setting up marketing infrastructure i.e Google analytics, Webmasters, SEO tools, Adwords, Social platforms & paid social media networks.
- Influenced product development within application to increase page on time, no of page view per session, reviews, goal conversions and increase in paid click through rates.
- Coordinated communication amongst team members
- Social Media Management – wrote blog posts & managed corporate Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
- Email Marketing – created and sent industry updates, regulatory notifications, Promotional emails, guides to customers and prospects via MailChimp & Sendy.
- Played a role in team building, recruitment / hiring & data extracting.

Marketing & Operations

Pathnex Technologies

Getting Things Done

Co-founder @ Saleshandy

Hey there,  

I'm a guy who wears many hats, and I like it that way! 

My marketing journey kicked off at a company where I managed a team of over 25 folks as the Marketing Lead and Operations Manager. 

But my itch for something more took me down the road of content and niche marketing. That's how I ended up co-creating Saleshandy, a place where I'm still enjoying the ride and helping the company grow.

I'm a marketing junkie and a business starter, and I get my kicks from companies that encourage teamwork and don't put up roadblocks to success. I live to meet and exceed what customers want. I keep a close eye on the results and always tinkering with my game plan based on what's needed. When things go south, I don't get bent out of shape; I see it as a chance to learn. I take a good, hard look at what went wrong, figure out why, and then cook up solutions based on the facts.

As a growth hacker and digital marketing buff, I thrive on the hustle and meet life with a never-say-die attitude. My constant grin shows my love for creating strong teams and my readiness to lend a hand at the drop of a hat.

So here I am, a Co-founder at Saleshandy, extending an invitation for you to join me on this wild ride as we take over the marketing world, one success story at a time. 

Let's get together and see how we can help each other grow. What do you say?

6 months ago, a SaaS company tried to sell me features.

But today, they sold me a problem I actually care about.

Email 1 said:
→ Pulse surveys
→ Real-time sentiment
→ Easy recognition
→ All product talk.
 
Nothing about me.

So of course, I didn’t buy.

I replied with one suggestion:

“Make your email about the outcome, not the feature.”

And today, I got another email from the same company.

Same company.

Same product.

But a completely different angle:

“Teams miss disengagement until it’s too late.”

That one line did what the features couldn’t.

It made me feel the problem.

The shift they made:
FROM: “Here’s what we do.”
TO: “Here’s what happens if you don’t act.”

That’s the real game in outbound.

✅ If you send cold emails, use this framework:
1️⃣ Start with a pain your prospect already feels.
 2️⃣ Connect your product to a clear outcome (save, prevent, improve).
 3️⃣ Make the prospect the hero—not your software.
 4️⃣ End with a small ask, not a big pitch.

Before you send, do a quick check:

Count the words “we” vs. “you.”

If “we” wins, your email loses.

Outbound isn’t about explaining your product.

It’s about diagnosing their problem.

If you get that right, you’ve already won half the game.

Co-founder @ Saleshandy | Automating cold emails to drive lead generation & sales

We started Saleshandy in 2015 with handful folks.

Here’s what a decade taught us:

10 Years → 10 Big Learnings

2015: Start even if you’re unsure.
2016: A little demand is enough to move.
2017: Go where things grow.
2018: Users show the real direction.
2019: Small steps compound.
2020: Fix what’s breaking.
2021: Focus speeds everything up.
2022: Big bets change your path.
2023: Growth exposes hidden gaps.
2024: Systems > features.
2025: Evolve fast or fall behind.

What should the 2026 upgrade be?

I got this cold email yesterday — and it irritated me before I even finished the first line.

 Why?

 Because it followed every “internet sales hack”… and ignored the only thing that actually matters: the prospect.

And here’s the funny part:

 Not only did I not reply,
 Not only did I not consider their service,
  I’m never buying from them.

That’s the part most people forget about cold outreach:

👉 Your prospect may not love you from the first email.

But if you’re wrong, arrogant, or assumptive…

They might hate you instantly.

Here’s where the email went completely off-track:

“You’ve been trying to fill that senior role for too long.”

 → Pretending to personalize
They don’t know that. 
They guessed (and guessed wrong)

 → Too many “we” statements.
 The email was a monologue about themselves.
 As a prospect, none of it connected to my reality.

→ A pushy CTA
 Requesting a 20-minute call with the co-founder in the very first email… with 

→ Zero trust built?
 Bad move.

→ Triggering: but in the wrong direction.
 Emails should evoke curiosity or relief. 
This one evoked annoyance.

→ Confidence:the kind no one asked for.
 There’s confidence that builds trust.
 And there’s confidence that feels like an attack.
 
This one was the second kind.

So…

How much confidence is too much?

Exactly this much.

A terrible personal life with a great professional life is not success at all.

Some take years to figure this out.

Looks like you are “winning”:

 → Revenue growing
 → Team expanding
 → Users are happy

But you might not have taken a real vacation in 3 years.

Missed a loved one’s birthday.

Stopped working out. Gained 15 kg.

Result?

 In the grind of building a successful company, you’re becoming a person you didn’t plan to.

That will hit different.

Here’s what nobody tells you about building:

The business will always need more.

 → More features
 → More meetings
 → More growth
 → More problems to solve

There’s no finish line where it suddenly gets easier.

If you don’t draw boundaries, the business will consume everything (including your life).

Hard rules I don’t break:

 → No work after 7 p.m. (unless emergency)
 → One full day off per week (Sunday, phone off)
 → Go for a run two times a week, non-negotiable

Remember: The best version of your company needs the best version of you.

And the best version of you doesn’t come from 80-hour weeks and no life outside work.

Business 101: Get an office near a good tea café. (Trust me, it works.)

Every founder thinks big decisions happen in perfectly air-conditioned boardrooms with 15-slide presentations.

Wrong.

They happen over a slow-boiled chai with just the right amount of sugar.

Ten years in, I can tell you where my best decisions were actually made:

At a café, over chai, near our office.

Not because we planned it that way, but because that’s where the ideas actually show up.

Here is why: 

→ Big decisions need space to breathe.
In a meeting, there’s pressure to conclude.
Over chai, you can sit with confusion. You can let an idea take its time.

→ The formality kills honesty.
Brutal truth: In meetings, not everyone says what they think.
Over chai? People speak their mind.
Because it’s not a meeting. It’s a conversation.

→ Decisions don’t have clean answers.
When it come to taking big decisions, you need to think of every possible contradictions, think through the uncertainty. 
That doesn’t happen in 60-minute meetings. 

I am not saying, don’t take meetings. 

I am saying: 

If a decision feels forced in a meeting: 
  ➡️ Get out.
  ➡️ Go to a café. Order a chai.
  ➡️ Start talking about it. 
  
You’ll thank me later. 


Made any big decisions over chai? Share in the comments, I’m reading all.

I used to think product-market fit was everything.

But building Saleshandy showed me that founder-product fit matters even more.

Back in 2024, working with Piyush, I had this realization:

Our product isn’t just something we built.
 
It’s an extension of who we are.

And honestly? I had no clue about this when we started.

We didn’t sit down and plan, “let’s infuse our personality into the company.”
It just… happened.

When you’re genuinely passionate about what you’re solving, your personality naturally leaks into everything:

→ How your team operates
→ How they interact with customers
→ The language in your product
→ The decisions you make when no one’s watching

Now, with 50+ people on the team, it’s obvious: our belief system has become the company’s belief system.

We’re calm, empathetic leaders. 
We’re competitive, but we care deeply about helping people.

And that’s exactly what Saleshandy feels like: friendly and approachable.

When customers feel like they’re talking to a friend not a vendor trying to extract money—they:

✅ Come back
✅ Refer others
✅ Give you the benefit of the doubt

Goodwill compounds.

You can’t fake this.

You can’t engineer authenticity with better messaging or slicker branding.

So the real question isn’t just:
 "Does my product fit the market?"

It’s:
 "Am I building something that’s truly an extension of me?"

Because if you’re not, you’re just competing on features.

 And that’s a race to the bottom.

What’s one way your personality shows up in what you’re building?

I’ve started judging people by ONE thing:


How they act when they’re confused.

Because everyone gets confused.

It’s normal. It happens daily.

But what people do next tells you everything.

Here’s what I’ve seen:

1) The Asker
Says, “Hey, I didn’t understand that.”
Gets clarity in minutes.

2) The Googler
Quietly searches, watches, reads.
Figures it out on their own.

3) The Pretender
Nods like they get it…
but you can see the panic behind the smile.

4) The Blamer
“The instructions weren’t clear.”
“Someone should’ve told me.”
Nothing is ever their fault.

Same confusion.

Very different futures.

If you want to grow faster:
• Ask when you don’t get it.
• Learn whatever you can yourself.
• Don’t fake it.
• Don’t blame.


The people who grow are the ones okay with saying,

“I don’t understand this yet — but I want to.”

I don’t read emails. I scan my inbox. And trust me your prospects do the same.

I have seen people jump to guess why a campaign underperformed. 

→ Open rates dip? “Must be the subject line.”
→ Replies drop? “The offer isn’t strong enough.”
→ No meetings? “The copy failed.”

But the real cause was almost never what they blamed.

Because when you look closely at how people actually behave in an inbox, the pattern is predictable and brutally simple.

Most teams keep rewriting emails, testing variations, tweaking copy… trying to fix what prospects barely pay attention to.

What I’ve seen consistently is this:

Emails don’t fail because the content is bad.

They fail because the inbox experience is weak.

It’s not about writing better.

It’s about showing up in a way that earns attention before the email is even opened.

So, remember: It’s not the email. It’s how you appear in the inbox.

Most outbound emails fail for one reason:

We write them the way we think… not the way prospects read.

Your prospect is busy. Distracted. Trying to protect their time.

So when your message sounds heavy, unclear, or sales-driven, they skip it instantly.

The good news?

Replies go up the moment you switch from “selling” to “helping.”

That’s what this framework is built around.

Three simple approaches that make outreach feel natural.

1. Empathy
2. Educate
3. Engage

When you mix these three, your email stops feeling like “another sales message.”

It becomes a conversation starter.

And in outbound, conversations are the real win.

So, the best way to stand out in outbound? simply be a human.

Which of these 3 approaches do you personally use the most? And why?

Cold emails don't sugar coat & that's what i like the most about it.

Cold email tells you the truth faster than anything else.

When I was getting started, I tried everything to avoid the uncomfortable stuff.

→ Ads gave me hope.
→ SEO gave me patience.
→ Product gave me ideas.

But none of them told me what I actually needed to know.

Cold email did.

The moment you start sending 50 cold emails a week, you learn things no dashboard will show you:

→ You’ll know instantly if your offer is weak
→ You’ll know if your ICP is wrong
→ You’ll know if your value prop is confusing
→ You’ll know if anyone even cares enough to reply


And trust me, as a founder, these are the answers you can’t afford to delay.

Cold email forces you to face the reality you’ve been avoiding:

 If someone opened but didn’t reply — your message was boring.
 If someone replied with confusion — your offer wasn’t clear.
 If someone replied angrily — your targeting was off.
 If someone booked a call — your direction was right.

No investor, no advisor, no book gave me that level of clarity.

Cold email didn’t give me the answers I wanted.

It gave me the answers I needed. And that’s why it worked.

If you’re a founder and you’re not sending at least 50 cold emails a week, you’re building in the dark.

Your market is talking every single day. The question is, are you listening?

I work in a space where user education can’t be avoided. 

But here is the catch: Teaching alone isn’t enough.

Most SaaS products assume users will follow best practices if you give them:

• Documentation
 • Checklists
 • Recommended routines

Reality is different. 

Users only follow best practices if the product makes it Inevitable .

We saw this clearly with deliverability. 

Founders often say, “Our deliverability suddenly crashed.” 

It doesn’t crash — it declines slowly:

• A few replies drop
 • Inbox placement shifts
 • Opens fall
 • Eventually, everything collapses

It’s predictable, if you notice early. Most teams don’t.

The real gap? 

People weren’t failing at outreach. They were failing to spot problems early.

Saleshandy's Inbox Radar solves this. 

Not with more education. Not with dashboards. Not with more tasks.

It shifts responsibility from the user to the product. 

Quiet, recurring inbox checks catch trends before they become failures:

• Domain health drifting
 • Warmup issues
 • Misconfigured inboxes
 • Early placement decline

This isn’t new. But it’s the kind of product behavior more tools should have.

Every SaaS founder eventually realizes: If outcomes depend on users, the product doesn’t own the outcome.

Real leverage comes when:

• The product sees problems before the user
 • The product corrects or alerts early
 • Users don’t need to stay hyper-vigilant

For our users, this shifted the mindset: From reacting to damage to anticipating it.

Great products don’t just educate. 

➡️ They take responsibility. 
➡️ They reduce vigilance. 
➡️ They protect outcomes.

Inbox Radar is one example, quietly doing what users shouldn’t have to remember.

In the series of “bad cold emails,” here’s another one I got 👇.

Yes, it was simple.
Yes, it was polite.
But totally empty.

From the subject line alone, I already knew it wouldn’t bring any value.

Still, I opened it… and I was totally right.

Here’s what went wrong:

➡️ No understanding of my team — we don’t even have a Founder’s Office team at Saleshandy.
➡️ No icebreaker, just “I’m the CEO, we helped 500 businesses” — exaggerated claim, started a year ago.
➡️ CTA: “Let’s set up a call” in the very first email.

Here’s the thing:

Sometimes, not personalizing is better than pretending to personalize.

If your email doesn’t make me feel like you actually know me, it’s dead before I hit reply.

What’s worse: fake personalization or generic templates?

Tell me your thoughts in the comments.

The best routine isn’t the one you post online; it’s the one you keep.

A friend of mine was very inspired by a 5 AM morning routine video… and he started it.

Meditation. Journaling. Workout. Cold shower. Green smoothie.

Thumbs up for the effort…

But it only lasted 12 days.

Then back to the usual routine:

Wake up. Coffee. Start working.

I asked him,

"What’s wrong now? What felt good then?"

His answer?

"Nothing much, Dhruv. It just felt… nice."

Don’t build a routine for the sake of an Insta story or a few snaps.

Your routine should serve your energy, not your digital presence.

You don’t have to buy everything the internet sells. 

Follow what suits you.

→ I don’t meditate in the morning. I think better at night with music on.
→ I don’t journal daily. I process by talking things through.
→ I don’t work out in the evening. I prefer to play with my kid.

The best routine is the one you’ll actually stick to.

Not the one that looks good on screen.

I’m the opposite of what people expect from a founder.

Unlike most, I stay grounded: but it has nothing to do with humility or being “nice.”

 For me, it’s about staying real.

Even after years of building Saleshandy, I still:
→ Read support tickets myself
→ Listen to lost sales calls
→ Scroll through the harshest reviews

Not because I have to.

Because I want to.

The higher you climb, the easier it is to lose touch.
 → Your calendar fills with strategy meetings.
 → Your team filters the information for you.
 → Your users become just numbers.
 → Your competitors fade into charts and reports.

Being grounded keeps me honest.
 
It reminds me why I started.

It keeps me connected to real problems, real people, and real risks.

Staying grounded isn’t optional 
 
It’s the only way to make sure you’re building the right things.

Epic outbound fails happen for 2 reasons and believe me, they’re easy to overlook:
 
Either your timing is wrong, or your context is wrong. 

Yes, people don’t buy because your product is good.

If they buy, it means your timing is good.

Here’s what many people do:

→ We talk features to someone who doesn’t even know there's a problem.
→ We pitch pricing to someone still comparing options.
→We push demos to someone scared of choosing wrong.


The huge mistake we all make?
 
We blindly assume all prospects are ready to buy.

But they’re not.

Understanding these 5 stages helps you know:

 → When to educate
 → When to compare
 → When to position
 → When to convert
 → When to just… wait

Because users don’t jump from “unaware” to “decision-ready” in one email.

They move through layers.

Your job isn’t to push them faster.

Your job is to guide them smarter.

Once you talk to them at the level they’re thinking, everything feels easy:

 → Your email sounds human.
 → Your demo feels useful.
 → Your offer looks fair.
 → Your close becomes natural.

Master these 5 stages, and your outbound stops being a chase…
 … and starts becoming a conversation.

I don’t speak much and I would say that is my advantage. 

I don’t speak much in meetings. 

People misread it as disinterest. But it’s the opposite.

Where I use silence strategically:

 → Customer calls: I ask one question: "What's not working?" Then I stay quiet for 90 seconds. They tell me everything.
 → Team debates: I let them argue it out. I only step in when I see a blind spot. Otherwise, they figure it out.
 → Hiring interviews: I ask a hard question, then wait. The silence separates candidates who think deeply from those who fill the air.

There is a mistake that founders who want to be loud make but don’t realize: 

They think presence = talking. 

It doesn’t. 

Presence = knowing when to speak and when to let the moment breathe.

Some of the most powerful leaders I know are the quietest. 

Because they’ve learned: You don’t need to fill every silence. 

You need to know which silences are worth breaking.

So far what i have learned are:

 → The person talking the most is usually the least certain.
 → The person asking questions controls the conversation more than the person answering.
 → Silence is a tool. Use it deliberately.

Here’s the truth:
 Most people are so uncomfortable with silence that they’ll say anything to fill it. 

I’m comfortable with silence. 

Remember: Being quiet isn’t a weakness. It’s a weapon.

Do you control the room by talking, or by staying silent?

Which is the best cold email framework?

It’s the one that works for you.

Every framework works differently and hits a different stage of the funnel. 

The frameworks I use? 

They help me shape personal emails that actually get read.

Here’s the truth nobody tells you:

You don’t need 10 new frameworks. You need to master the 3 you already have.

Most reps treat a framework like a shortcut. But it’s not. 

It’s a tool. And a tool only works when you know:

→ Why you’re using it
→ When to use it
→ How to use it the right way

Without that, even the best framework is just a copy-paste script.

At Saleshandy, we tested dozens of formulas across millions of outbound emails. 

Here’s what we learned:

The framework doesn’t win. The fit wins.

➡️ Prospect shared a pain on LinkedIn → BAB works
➡️ Setup is good but not great → 3Ps works
➡️ They know the problem and just need a nudge → PAS works

Right framework + right moment = email that feels natural.
 
Wrong combination = email that feels forced… and gets ignored.

Outbound isn’t about being clever. 

It’s about choosing the right lever.

If you want the exact frameworks my team uses at Saleshandy, comment “frameworks” and I’ll send the full sheet your way.

I often get asked how much money I actually take home. I wish I could give a number, but I can't.

I've seen founders make two extreme mistakes:

The first ones:

They pay themselves nothing for years.

→ "I'll take a salary when we're profitable."
→ "The business comes first."
→ "I can survive on savings."

Sounds noble, but it’s dangerous.

Here’s what happens:

➡️ Month 18: Stress about rent.
➡️ Month 24: Burning through savings. Desperate decisions.
➡️ Month 30: Resentment toward the business.

And believe me — a broke founder makes bad decisions.

You can’t think long-term when you're worried about next month's rent.

The second:

They pay themselves like they're still at their corporate job.

→ "I worked at Google, I’m worth this much."
→ "I need to maintain my lifestyle."
→ "The business should support me."

Here’s what happens:

➡️ Quarter 1: Comfortable salary, tight runway.
➡️ Quarter 2: Can’t afford to hire.
➡️ Quarter 3: Can’t invest in marketing.
➡️ Quarter 4: Business stalls because all cash went to salary.

You're bleeding the company to fund your life.

So, what's the right approach?

After 10 years of building Saleshandy, here's what I’ve learned:

Your founder salary has one job:

Keep you functional, without choking growth. That’s it.

Not fair. Not market rate. Not what you “deserve.”

Functional means:

☑️ You’re not stressed about basic expenses.
☑️ You’re not making decisions out of desperation.
☑️ You can focus on building, not surviving.

But also:

☑️ The business has enough runway to grow.
☑️ You can hire when needed.
☑️ You can invest in things that compound.

There’s no magic number for a founder's salary.

It’s about balance, not excess.

Where do you think the sweet spot is for a founder's salary? I'd love to hear your take.

There are 14 billion videos on YouTube . But only 5 earned a permanent spot on my “watch again” list.

Not because they were popular.

But because they changed how I think, build, and operate.

If you're looking for perspectives that actually move the needle, start here:

➡️ Alex Hormozi: https://lnkd.in/dPeB7CfW 
➡️ Dan Martell: https://lnkd.in/d9wehENt
➡️ Ali Abdaal: https://lnkd.in/dQKbsrmm 
➡️ Joey Schweitzer in Better Ideas: https://lnkd.in/dFATx4ty
➡️ Shaan Puri in My First Million: https://lnkd.in/ddDkFafS 

Which one stood out the most to you?
 
Drop your thoughts in the comments! I’d love to hear your take on these.

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