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

friEND
girlfriEND
boyfriEND

You know what doesn't END?

A well-run campaign with a great offer targeting 5,000 net new prospects per month.

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

As expected, outbound marketers are freaking out about Google's AI Inbox update, with some calling it the death of cold email. I’m here to tell you not to panic.

Here’s why this won’t kill cold email as long as you’re half-decent at it, and willing to put the work in:

(1) First of all, this isn’t currently being deployed on Workspace emails (only personal). That means you literally don’t need to worry for the time being.

(2) For when that roll out does happen, Google will not have it easy. Enterprises don't want AI to read or index their data.

This has been why enterprise AI adoption has been so slow, and Google isn't exempt.

(3) Even if SOMEHOW, this got deployed to every Workspace inbox, people will find workarounds and loopholes within 7 days (just like we did for every other infrastructure change).

The ONLY people who can potentially suffer here are people who are weak at cold email and want a low-effort, high-results motion.

And they shouldn't be sending cold emails anyway.

If I told you to pick all AI-written emails out of your inbox, I bet you could do so with 90% accuracy. It brings up an interesting point:

AI in outbound is great, but so many people are going way too overboard.

People will use Claygent + another prompt to come up with crazy, “human-looking” lines that sound great on paper but rarely get executed well against an entire lead list.

You might get some right on the nose, but the majority of them will certainly sound a little “off”, thereby killing your campaign altogether.

The variance, even with quality checks, is a little too high (as of Jan 2026…because this will certainly change).

The “right” way to handle this right now is using it to find super simple variables (i.e. company case study name) and entering those variables into human-written sentences.

If you have any other use cases that actually* work, drop them below.

There is no bigger waste of time in outbound than the debate over warm-up pools and which ones to use.

Take it from someone who bought into the hype before (I literally tried to build a company solely focused on this, promising the same stuff a ton of vendors do today): Just use Smartlead’s warm-up pool and move on.

In fact, private warm-up pools can be even riskier than public ones, considering that Seeds can burn out (ask me how I know 🙄).

At the time of writing this, we have ~130,000 inboxes in the Smartlead pool and will continue to add as we need them.

In short: There are a million other things you should spend time worrying about regarding outbound. Your warm-up pool isn’t one of them.

PS - This was a part of Smartlead’s roundtable from last week. It was an awesome time, and I highly recommend watching the replay on YouTube if you couldn’t make it. Thanks to Vaibhav Namburi for having us!

90% of the time someone asks me about cold email infrastructure, I tell them to take a step back and consider what actually matters.

Yes, at scale and at the highest level of outbound, the infrastructure you use has a material impact on performance.

But (and I don’t mean to come off as arrogant in saying this), most of the time people ask this, they have issues with the fundamentals of their outbound operation that render the infrastructure question irrelevant.

Things like:

1. Company names not being formatted properly (ex: still having “LLC” or “Inc.” in the name).

2. Having emojis / special symbols in contacts’ first names.

3. Not properly cleaning and formatting prospects’ job titles.

4. Having a lead list that isn’t well-targeted.

5. Not having basic copy variance set up.

These are things that come much before advanced infrastructure, yet people seem to overlook.

My advice: Get all of the above and the rest of the cold email fundamentals down first before even starting to worry about advanced infrastructure.

You’ll save time, money, and headaches.

Something to keep in mind when you see lead generation agency owners flexing crazy Smartlead / Instantly screenshots on the timeline:

Anyone with half a brain knows how to get a campaign to a 10% reply rate and 60% positive reply rate.

It doesn’t come from being some type of cold email wizard.

It’s simply putting an extremely low-friction CTA in with some type of money-back guarantee.

And to be clear, nothing is wrong with that. We still do it for certain clients, where it makes sense for the offer.

But, flexing this to try to show prospects that these are typical results is just silly.

Sure, there may be some people that aren't super familiar with outbound that are impressed by this.

But, there's also a cohort of people who are very familiar with it and know exactly what led to that performance, thereby degrading your credibility instead of adding to it.

You’re better off showing “worse” results for a much harder campaign!

You, not a $32B company: I might burn my TAM!

Ramp, a $32B company: We must email every decision-maker on earth 10 times per year.

As silly as it sounds, it’s true: If you play your cards right, it’s impossible to burn your TAM with outbound.

Playing your cards right, in this regard, means coming up with fresh and unique angles to re-market to the same prospects.

Ramp has mastered this.

They have different reps reach out at different times with overall solid emails.

Though it feels like they’re always in my inbox, I’ve never once felt pestered, spammed, or annoyed.

They’re doing this tastefully, with personalization and relevance.

And if Ramp isn’t worried about burning their TAM, there’s a great chance you shouldn’t be either.

My advice to you: Figure out ways to reach out to the same prospects that weren’t interested or didn’t respond prior in unique ways, and you’ll never worry about TAM burn again.

I would love to tell you that the solution to all your lead gen problems is the intricate Clay workflow I spent 43 hours building, but that’s not true. For 90% of teams struggling to generate leads, the problem is much simpler:

A bad offer.

Your offer, above all else, has the biggest impact on whether or not you book calls from cold email.

To that point, I can’t tell you the amount of conversations we’ve had with clients that amounted to us trying to convince them to improve their offer and make it more suitable for outbound.

Because so many of them simply don’t say anything special or that peaks the prospect’s interest.

Here’s a real example we dealt with:

The client sold CRM implementation services.

They wanted to run with messaging along the lines of: “We help HubSpot users market better and get the full use of their CRM.”

…so can every other company in their inbox.

The right way to think about this (and how we did so for this client) was to instead sell an outcome.

So, we transitioned the offer to strictly companies that used HubSpot, and saying:

“{name] - most HubSpot users don’t have a nurture re-engagement flow. I’d love to help re-book 10-15 appointments onto your calendar by building you one.

Interested in speaking?”

This email has a much higher likelihood of being responded to than the prior one, because you directly promise an outcome instead of using vague corporate messaging.

Let me know if you have any questions on doing this successfully.

Alex Hormozi says he books 4x more appointments when he calls his leads immediately after showing interest.

If you’re sending outbound and want to systemize this so that you can do it at scale, follow this process:

Tech / vendors you’ll need:

- Masterinbox.com
- LeadMagic
- Salesfinity
- No Accent Callers

—

1. Build correct tagging within Master Inbox to identify positive replies.

2. Set up an automation to automatically enrich positive replies to pull those leads’ phone numbers via LeadMagic.

3. Build the simple automation to update the contact within Master Inbox and set two tag: “interested” and “phone number found”.

4. Set up the automation to push to a call list in Salesfinity for your rep (via No Accent Callers) to call immediately.

I can’t put the same “4x improvement” tag on this, but we have seen a much better appointment set rate after implementing a flow to call our leads faster.

Comment if you want me to make a video on building these automations / setting up the system.

If someone tells you they can get you consistent leadflow from outbound in 30 days or less, don’t listen.

We send over 2 million cold emails per month for almost 300 clients… trust me, it takes 60-90 days to properly get consistent lead flow coming from outbound if you’re starting from zero.

BUT

There are some things you can do to speed up the process that we are implementing across the client base.

Namely, there are 7 types of campaigns you can keep always on and running in the background, additional to your actual campaign copy. 

Though these won't put a hundred calls per month on your calendar, they are certainly worth running and do not take much input or upkeep at all.

I break down each of them in detail in the carousel below, so be sure to save it:

Always-On Campaigns

Google your name right now. What comes up?

Does your website show up?

If so, does it have a VSL?

Is it full of case studies and customer interviews?

What about your LinkedIn and X profiles?

Are they optimized and active?

Are you showing off your expertise?

This might sound overboard, but this is exactly what goes through a prospect’s head when you email them.

The first thing 90% of them do is Google your name.

If you can’t show that you’re a real person with a real business that solves real problems for real clients, you’re dead in the water.

Really, cold outbound is nothing more than a trust game.

You need to make it so that someone who doesn’t know you one bit automatically trusts you. And you do so by optimizing everything I talked about above.

If you don’t have those things in check, much of your outbound is just a waste of time.

Alex Hormozi famously says that if you want more leads, you should dedicate the first half of your day to getting in front of more people.

Whether that’s content, paid ads, or however else, you need to be getting in front of people.

Outbound, generally, will be both the cheapest and easiest to generate results from immediately.

And let me tell you after doing this first-hand: Alex Hormozi is right about this.

In college, I started an Instagram growth agency.

I did everything I thought I needed to do:

- Make a logo
- Put up website
- Form LLC
- Post blogs

And when all of that was done, I looked up and still had zero people paying me.

That’s when I started dedicating my entire day to messaging prospects and seeing if they’d get on a call.

The business hit $10,000/mo of revenue in the months that followed.

The point:

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of sales ops and revenue tech out there, but most of the time, all you need to do is get yourself in front of more prospects.

undefined undefined

Hey, thanks for replying. 

Here's the guide:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ogdq83o7sRMARFopD_t_-nqHF0XIOPsD/view?usp=share_link

Leadbird

P.S. If you’re an established agency or SaaS with a GREAT offer and want leads — Leadbird can help

… and we’ll do it on a Pay-Per-Lead basis.

Book today: https://www.leadbird.io/book-a-call

Spintax Guide

Tool

Article

Message

yuri

Shreya Batra

We manage deliverability for 130,000+ inboxes with Hypertide.io. At that volume, you can't afford to baby underperforming domains. Our 4-step process for handling deliverability issues:

Step 1: Flag problems early

We monitor inbox performance daily. If a domain is underperforming by 40%+ vs that client's average, it gets flagged automatically.

Step 2: Kill it without losing capacity

We delete the domain using Hypertide Layover. The domain gets removed from billing immediately, but sending still works for 18 days. This gives us breathing room without sudden volume drops.

Step 3: Replace while the old one's still running

During those 18 days, new infrastructure gets spun up and warmed properly. This works so that there’s loss in total sending capacity.

Step 4: Protect the replies

Once the old domain shuts off completely, Hypertide Relay kicks in. All replies from the deleted domain automatically forward to the new infrastructure. Importantly, there are no leads missed and no broken threads.

Quite importantly, we don't try to save domains that are already burnt.

A lot of agencies waste weeks trying to nurse underperforming infrastructure back to health. Using this system, we just assume domains will fail and build systems that swap them out seamlessly.

As a result, capacity never drops and your deliverability stays clean. Let me know if you have any questions on this.

Local lead generation is so underrated that we started asking all clients (not just ones with local businesses) if they’re open to it on the onboarding form, so that we can run this campaign.

No matter what anyone tells you, cold email is most definitely getting harder. Each day, we have to think harder about the best way to get in front of prospects in a way that stands out.

This local lead generation play is exactly it.

We:

1. Call out that we’re in the area.

2. Casually mention what we do and share how we did so.

3. Use a soft, casual CTA to gauge interest.

Yes, this is of course harder to scale in that there are finite local businesses you can sell to. But, in most cases and for most offers, this is worth trying.

If I were a local general contractor, for example, I know I’d be inclined to work with an SEO agency in my area as opposed to one on the other side of the country. There’s a local preference there that you can tap into.

If you have anecdotes on local lead generation working well for you, leave them below.

After spending $2M to send 30,000,000+ cold emails for 500+ clients, this is my number one learning about outbound:

Offer. Is. King.

You hear everyone say it, but nobody really internalizes it.

You can have:

- 3-4 blocky paragraphs
- 2-3 links
- Images
- OK-but-not-great targeting
- Basic infrastructure

…and still outperform the “best” outbound teams who spend thousands of dollars trying to optimize all of the above, as long as your offer is strong.

Strong offer = more replies.

More replies = less spam risk.

Less spam risk = more replies.

The cycle repeats.

Before you try to optimize for anything else, make sure your offer is strong to begin with.

I mean this diplomatically, but if you can’t get cold email responses from your ICP, it is not because inboxes are crowded. It’s likely one or more of the following factors:

1. Bad offer
2. Weak email
3. No social proof
4. All of the above

The simplest way to get responses is following this workflow, which attacks all of the above issues:

1. Come up with a no-brainer offer that the prospect would feel stupid saying no to (i.e. performance, money-back guarantee, etc.)

2. Use Apollo to find the email of the right job title to sell to at the company (might be CEO, might not be).

3. Do a baseline level of research (or use Clay) to write a line personal enough to the decision-maker.

4. Put it all together with a template like this:

{{name}} - saw {{personalized line}}.

Just curious, if I could {{generate result}}, would you be interested in speaking?

Only asking because we helped {{company}} do exactly that, and figured {{their company}} might want something similar.

Worth a chat?

If you do this right, you will get responses. Period.

I uploaded this video on November 18, 2024 saying the only 3 channels you need to get 50 calls/month and blow past $1M in revenue are:

- Cold email
- Cold calling
- LinkedIn

It was true back then, but is far more true just 13 months later.

The truth is, as much as nobody likes to admit it, cold email is getting harder. We’re no longer in the 2021 glory days, where seemingly anyone with a few inboxes could book calls from the channel.

Yes, it’s still viable (and still our bread and butter), but you’d be foolish not to diversify into cold calling and LinkedIn DMs (the right way) as you solidify cold email.

After working with 500+ clients and having 283 active right now, there are 3 things I wish I did on Day 1 of my agency.

(they would've made me much wealthier today)

1. Become an expert on my financials early.

This is so easy to overlook but ridiculously important.

At any point when asked, you should know your numbers to a T.

- What was last month's revenue?
- What was last month's gross margin?
- What was last month's net margin?
- What was last month's profit?

The more you can get in the routine of checking and understanding this, the better.

2. Make demos booked your north star.

You should wake up every day trying to improve that metric.

Every single day. Forget "marketing" and "growth" and "building the brand".

Every day, wake up and figure out how to put more meetings on your calendar, and you will grow.

3. Keep fulfillment as simple as possible while still being able to get the results you promise.

The more complex, the harder it gets to maintain.

Once you have these in place, and you can communicate your offer + results in a non-gimmicky way, you're on the right path.

If you have any questions on this, let me know.

We got to 0-10 clients with outbound, but what took us from 10-30 clients was something completely different: Referrals.

How we did it:

1. Put a question on onboarding form: "Is there anyone in your network that you think could benefit from this service?"

2. Client would often think of someone and put their name/email.

3. We would manually reach out saying "[name] is a customer of ours and said you might be a fit for out services - worth a chat?"

This worked because it was easy for our client to think of someone, and the person they thought of would likely think "well if they're using this service, there's likely something to it".

NOTE: This is far easier when you have a strong offer + social proof to lean on!

Me: I want to add cheesy openers to your cold emails.

Client: Absolutely not. That's way too unprofessional for our brand.

Me: What's unprofessional about it?

Client: Lines like 'I'm sure your inbox is busier than a bee in a flower shop'? That sounds ridiculous. What will prospects think of us?

Me: They'll think you're human instead of another boring corporate email.

Client: But we're a serious B2B company. We can't sound like we're joking around.

Me: How many meetings are you booking per week right now?

Client: Maybe 2 or 3.

Me: From how many emails sent?

Client: We're sending about 1,000 per week.

Me: So your professional emails that barely get any meetings are protecting your brand better than emails that actually get responses?

Client: Well, when you put it like that...

Me: Look, I get it. It feels weird. But these openers work because they cut through the noise.

Everyone else is sending the same I hope this email finds you well garbage.

Client: What if prospects think we're not serious?

Me: The prospects who judge you for a cheesy opener weren't going to buy from you anyway.

The ones who reply are the ones who appreciate authenticity.

Client: I just don't want to hurt our reputation.

Me: Your reputation is already being hurt by emails that get ignored.

Let's test it for two weeks. If it doesn't work, we'll go back to boring.

Client: Fine. But if my CEO sees this...

Me: He'll see the meeting bookings.

Zakir Shaikh - YourEmailGuy

Senior Engineer - Customer Support

[Get your Cold Emails & Marketing Emails delivered to INBOX & not Spam] + [FIX Your Email Deliverability] + [STOP hackers from impersonating your business to send phishing emails to your customers] ==> #YourEmailGuy

Email Marketing + Cold Emails + Email Deliverability + Email Impersonation Protection ==> #YourEmailGuy

>> “ Breathing Email since 2007”
More than 17+ years of experience in building email platforms, custom solutions & email channel strategies for organisations ranging from BFSI to Startups.

Email Deliverability is the one thing that still excites me every morning & gives me a kick when I solve the customer's complex email delivery problems.

>> "Email is in my DNA"
Expertise in setting up:
- Inbound Email Hosting Platforms.
- Outbound SMTP/Email Delivery Platform for Bulk & Promotional Emails sending millions of emails on a daily basis.
- Outbound Email Delivery Platform for Transactional Emails especially for BFSI & eCommerce Clients.
- Email Deliverability & Email Strategies.
- Deploying Email Authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, DMARC & BIMI.
- Implementing the Email Anti-Fraud and Anti-Phishing Solution.
- Crafting email campaign strategies to deliver good lift in terms of Opens, Clicks, CTOR, etc
- Focusing on more rich metrics like RPE (Revenue Per Email). RPE is the most important KPI for me.

>> "I Love Email"
I'm very passionate about anything and everything around Email.
I've worked hard for years with the solution-driven approach and spent countless sleepless nights working on solving Email problems and developing Email solutions for various type of clients and projects.
I consider myself as a student of the ever-evolving Technology with a focus on Email Specialisation.

My aim is to become the go-to guy for solving any problems related to Email.
Still learning every passing day…
I treat myself as a lifelong student of Email Deliverability field.

Strongly believe in this:
“A single person can make difference but with great TEAM can create MAGIC"

Founder

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Here's my cold outreach "very simple" framework for getting Qualified LEADS:

1. Every message should read like a text from a colleague and not like a sales pitch.
This is the one of the most important thing for me.

2. I spend 70-80% of my time on the Subject Line && I'm not exaggerating this...
If the email doesn't get opened, nothing else really matters.
I have to SELL the "Open" first because everything else does not matter if the recipient person does NOT open my email. Period.

3. The entire message answers one question: WIIFM?
"What's in it for me?"

4. People don't care about your agency or company.
They care about their own growth problem.
That's why the Subject Line of our email should be something that makes "ignoring it" feel impossible.

5. I write the copy & spend a decent amount of time thinking about it as a reader.
If I realise I wouldn't respond to it myself, 90% of the time I'll delete it and restart with something fresh and unique.

6. Normally it takes 2-5 iterations before I'm properly satisfied.

7. For any new client or any new campaign, I test in small batches first.
10-15 emails are sent in the batch 0 purely for testing purpose.
Manually or using any email automation sending tool.

8. What if I get No response?
I'm back to the drawing board. Simple.

9. If there is decent response, I'll scale immediately...

10. Plain text only.
No formatting, no images, no tracking pixels.
Just raw text like an SMS.
Don't experiment here.
Trust me on this.

11. No links in the first email.
Links trigger SPAM filters.
Anyone from Email industry knows this by heart and it's in their DNA to avoid this sinner's practice  ;)
Obviously we have to send the call/meeting booking links, website links or doc links AFTER they've replied.

12. Our goal is to have a CONVERSATION and not an instant sale.
Once they engage & are warmed enough, I'll ask if they know anyone else who'd benefit.

13. I normally aim for 15-20%+ reply rates.
Anything lower means the email content/copy needs a rework.

14. I use automation tools to build lists and manage email sending but the strategy stays completely HUMAN for sure.

Still refining this daily.
Still learning...

BTW, what's working for you in your cold outreach?



P.S
I forgot to mention 1 critical point... the timing.
Email Send Time matters a lot for high Email Deliverability overall.

Zakir Shaikh - YourMarketingBhai

​>​> Helping Companies Build Their REVENUE Engines using {AFOS Method} with “LinkedIn Content & Outreach | Cold Emails | WhatsApp & SMS Funnels | Lead Generation | Email Marketing | Email Deliverability”

i love BDSM   (public announcement)
you can like this or hate this but you can’t ignore this...

And no, this is not about what your creative mind is jumping to.
This is about Email Inboxing.

Because in the Email Universe, successful inboxing depends on BDSM.

In Email Marketing + Cold Emails, BDSM rules everything.

where BDSM means:
B = Bounce Rate
D = Domain Reputation
S = Subject Line
M = Message Copy

If your emails don’t land in the INBOX,
it’s game over before it even begins.

Master these 4  & 
you don’t become a spammer.
you don’t become a volume junkie.
you become a real inbox whisperer...

Because inboxing isn’t luck.
It’s BDSM done right !!

BTW, if you liked how this post started,
share it with your most corrupt-minded friends...

here BDSM means:
B = Bounce Rate
D = Domain Reputation
S = Subject Line
M = Message Copy
Email Marketing
Email Deliverability
Cold Emails
Email Inboxing

R.I.P. email marketing
R.I.P. copywriters
R.I.P. cold emails
R.I.P. ghostwriters
R.I.P. media teams

In marketing, attention is currency.
We all know that.
But right now, it feels like everyone is playing headline SPAM game on LinkedIn.

Have you thought that if you shout louder in today's world, people just might NOT listen any more...

I’m seeing these exaggerated "R.I.P." hooks everywhere.
They’re trying so hard to shock, spark curiosity & grab eyeballs
that they forget one very simple thing:

attention WITHOUT value is just noise. <<====

>> Stay with me guys ... and let me explain more on this <<

Yes, hooks are important.
A strong first line gets someone to stop scrolling.

But headlines like “This will kill your marketing team” or “R.I.P. email forever” often have no genuine substance behind them.
They’re designed to lure you in, not to inform you.
I think that's essentially a clickbait --> attention‑grabbing without real content behind it.

Let’s be honest here:
Clickbait worked well for BuzzFeed and Upworthy when content itself was entertaining.
But most people writing these dramatic hooks today are just repeating a formula without thinking about what comes after the hook.

Here’s the thing most marketers forget:
A great hook is not about what shocks you.
It’s about what delivers on the PROMISE of the hook.

There’s a huge difference...

Clickbait WORKS when the headline teases curiosity but the content actually delivers value.
Clickbait FAILS when the headline over-promises and under-delivers .

And trust me, the audience remembers the disappointment.
Humans hate feeling tricked.
One bait‑and‑switch click is enough for a user to scroll past you forever...

Algorithms & even Humans/Users themselves are telling us very clearly:
- Sensationalism can temporarily increase clicks.
- But long‑term engagement comes from content that delivers.
- Trust matters more than a ticking engagement counter.

So yes, we ALL should use hooks.
But let's try to make them as honest as possible.
Make them relevant.
Make them actually worth clicking and staying with the content.

A good hook doesn’t just grab attention.
It sets up what comes next.
It opens a conversation.
It earns your reader’s respect.

Copywriters and brands should ask themselves before posting:
is this clickbait that tricks people??
or
is this a hook that leads to real insight??

Because one builds short‑term NOISE,
and the other builds long‑term AUTHORITY.

Lesson:
Attention gets people to read.
Value gets them to stay.
Trust gets them to come back.

Let’s use hooks responsibly. And this goes for me too obviously :)
Let’s not confuse shock‑value noise for thoughtful content marketing.

Let’s bring back meaning behind the message.

At least we all can try in a right way, right? 



P.S.
If you've truly stayed with me and read the complete post, then comment your opinion about it.
Tell me whether you agree or disagree with my perspective & understanding...

taplio

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Nick Abraham

Zakir Shaikh - YourEmailGuy

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Performance ScoreZakir Shaikh - YourEmailGuy's LinkedIn Performance

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Nick Abraham

Zakir Shaikh - YourEmailGuy

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreZakir Shaikh - YourEmailGuy's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance