audience & revenue growth tips for B2B startups and creators

My mission is to build predictable pipelines for B2B startups. I share what I learn along the way. 

Read more if you are ready to build your pipeline 👇

💡 I am super relevant if you are:

→ Indie Hacker
→ Freelancer
→ Early Startup Founder
→ B2B Sales Person
→ Creator (any profession)

✍️ I write about:

→ B2B sales
→ Go to market strategies
→ Signal-based prospecting

Little more about me:

Cryptocurrency Investor. SaaS Enthusiast. Agriculture Business Owner. 

Lived in 3 countries.

I'm a T-shaped growth person who has experience in sales, content marketing, and growth.

Drop me a LinkedIn message if you need any help.

We will keep it simple.

Twitter: @sehaokudan

https://calendly.com/sehaokudan/30min

Seha Okudan

Helping B2B founders turn LinkedIn into deals | GTM Strategist

5 worst discovery questions:

5 difficult scenarios for salespeople:
(Even for the top ones.)

5 difficult scenarios for salespeople:

Stop trying to fake urgency in B2B. 
(it doesn't work)

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁:

→ Knowing pain
→ Understanding the impact of pain

𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝟮 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀:

1️⃣ Not every problem is worth solving

Trying to create an urgency won't work if they don't have something that is worth solving.

Nobody will buy a strong painkiller for a mild headache, even if it’s the last day of a 20% discount.

If the impact of the pain is close to zero, no urgency will stick.

2️⃣ A problem can have different solutions

Even if the pain is real, buyers still have options.

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗻:

•⁠ ⁠Build in-house
•⁠ ⁠Pick a cheaper workaround
•⁠ ⁠Wait until the budget frees up

Both a raincoat and an umbrella protect you from rain.

If you don’t show why your path is better, faster, or safer;

Urgency dies.

𝗧𝗟;𝗗𝗥

𝗧𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆:

-⁠ ⁠Find the pain that matters most
- ⁠Show the true cost of doing nothing
- ⁠Prove why solving it now beats later
- ⁠Position your solution as the safest path

Deals move when urgency is real. 

Not when it’s forced.

How do you create urgency without sounding pushy?

5 Unexpected Things in Sales
(hope they happen to you today)

5 Unexpected things in sales:

Contact data is out of control.
(for real)

Don't get me wrong.

I don't mind people pitching me.

I do it every day, too.

BUT

Every single week, some people:

- Add me to lists I never joined.
- Drop me into random waitlists.
- Email me again after I unsubscribe.
- Promise what no one can deliver.
- Sends emails written with poor prompts.
- Message me on WhatsApp out of nowhere.

I block them. They switch mailboxes.
I say, “I’m not a fit,” they keep texting.
I say it on the phone, they keep selling.

“I want to tell you about a promo…”
 “There’s a new offer…”

I don't want to click on report Spam.
I don't want to be rude.
I get it, we all try to make a living.

But this is not outreach.
This is not marketing.

This is SPAM.

Are some people ruining the industry?

Bad contact data can kill your business.
(real examples)

Your data provider is the most important part of your tech stack.
It is non-negotiable.

If your data is bad, you lose.
Simple as that.

𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝟭:
Picked the best provider, tested ICP coverage.
Checked accuracy and verified test emails.
Only had HubSpot + the data provider (not ideal).

𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀:
Hit targets.
Scaled the team.
Added new tools later.

𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝟮:
Paid for expensive tool stacks for sequencing, etc.
Then, they selected the most cost effective data provider.

𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀:
High bounce rates.
Burned mailboxes.
Low call connect rates.
The team missed targets.
The company started downsizing the sales team.

𝗠𝘆 𝘁𝗶𝗽𝘀:
1.  Build a sample list. Verify it.
2. Check coverage across your ICP + regions.
3. Choose tools that use waterfall enrichment.

If your data provider is wrong, nothing you do will work.
You cannot afford bad data.

How do you choose your contact data provider?

12 mistakes that cost you deals:

Mohan ‎Muthoo 💬 🇬🇧 🌍

Spring Drive

Founder

Instantly.ai

Instantly Certified Expert 🏅

Smartlead

Smartlead Certified Expert 🏅

Clay

Certified Clay Expert 🏅

Apollo.io

Official Partner 🏅

automate rev.ops.

Program Mentor

Timely

Full-cycle outbound account executive, selling CRM SaaS to small businesses.

Outbound Account Executive

INFUSEmedia

- Managed a team of BDRs across the EMEA region.
- Built and led training and development for individual reps 
- Built cold outbound strategies and tactics to execute effective campaigns across the team

EMEA BDR Team Lead (Manager)

- Refined and executed cold outbound sales development focusing more heavily on Enterprise accounts.
- Fastest ever firm promotion from BDR to Senior BDR
- Only BDR published on company website

Senior Business Development Representative

- Managed and executed cold outbound campaigns across a range of industries in the EMEA region, from SMB to Enterprise accounts.
- Focus on cold calling, emailing and social selling
- Broke the firm record for most meetings booked in a first month as a BDR

Business Development Representative

doovice

- Wrote copy for cold outbound social sales messages landing a 50%+ conversion rate for UGC
- Recruited and led a team of 10+ volunteer marketing and sales reps at universities across the UK
- Used outbound selling strategies and tactics to generate organic promotion that led to 5,000+ unique monthly visitors within 4 months (no paid marketing)
- Managed back-end CMS and content editing

Founder @ Spring Drive | Driving Growth for B2B SaaS/AI | Multi-Award Nominated | 4th Ever Official UK Clay Expert | 👉 springdrive.co

Hey there 👋 

I'm the Founder at Spring Drive - we Book You B2B Sales Meetings so you can Scale your Business without Hiring More Reps 🛠️

We've worked with B2B service agencies, Y-Combinator backed startups, globally recognized SaaS brands featured in Forbes and the Apple Store, B2B ecommerce companies, and everything in between.

We have a ton of case studies and accolades, having been nominated twice for our work (Finalist in the Standout Use of AI category at the UK Digital Excellence Awards, and for the GTM10 Awards), plus been recognized as Official Expert Partners by numerous top companies in GTM and Outbound.

Head to 👉 springdrive.co 

OR

DM me, I will reply 💬

Mohan ‎Muthoo 🇬🇧

I am looking for a GTM Engineer to join Spring Drive. 

Could that be you?!


You'll be trained by me personally getting the inside scoop on how to create successful campaigns as a Smartlead, Instantly.ai, & Clay Official Expert.

If you have experience using Clay, are meticulous and organized with an eye for detail, and are looking to build a career as a GTM Engineer, this could be for you.



Interested?

Find the application link in the comments.

Mohan Muthoo

I had a chat with Kellen Casebeer, Founder at The Deal Lab, a few weeks ago to discuss the future of personalization in outbound.

When it comes to this subject, Kellen is one of those people I just listen to really carefully.

He thinks about this in a deeper way than most who are following 'classic' structures.

He made some really interesting points I think everyone can learn from:


- Markets cluster themselves around beliefs and its always easier to sell someone what they already believe in.

- Thinking not just about using personalization but WHAT personalization you're using


There's a few more v interesting insights from him in the video below.

I think real operators who want to stand out need to think in a more sophisticated way about messaging and Kellen is one of those people to follow for exactly that.

Thanks Kellen was great to talk as always.

B2B SaaS companies - listen up.

Here's how Spring Drive is different to Apollo/Zoominfo/Clay/Lemlist.


I get this question a lot and it's actually quite concerning because it reveals something deeply interesting about the market.


Apollo, Zoominfo, Clay, Lemlist etc - these are TOOLS.

They provide YOU with the ability via a platform to DO certain tasks.

They're superb.

But they can't do those tasks for you.

They aren't actually *building* campaigns and delivering you real pipeline.


Apollo and Zoominfo provide data.

Clay allows you to work data (enriching etc)

Lemlist allows you to send emails.


But these tools cannot:

Find the right leads, pull them, do the segmenting, come up with creative outreach strategies, write the copy, manage the inbox, reply to queries, book onto your calendar, strategically iterate on the A/Z tests, etc etc


Spring Drive is an agency offering an end to end service where we do the work of delivering you pipeline, using such tools in the process.

I get companies complaining that these tools 'aren't delivering results'.

Like what...they are tools, you have to deliver the results with them.


This is like buying a frying pan and a kitchen knife and then being shocked when you come home that evening to find they haven't cooked you a fried egg.

You good?


You need a chef.

We are the chef.

Anyone tested out SmartProspect yet?

With data sourcing changing all the time, this is interesting.


Smartlead just released SmartProspect which basically means we could get tons of verified leads already in our sequencer without having to pay for the usual databases.


I'm looking at it now and it's very promising, but wanted to test coverage given that ultimately we want to ensure we aren't going to miss any part of our TAM if we use it.


I did a test of CEO:

SmartProspect - 2.1M people

Apollo - 1.9M people


Then I did a test of HR Director:

SmartProspect - 225,753 people

Apollo - 203,156


Then I did a final test of Head of Sales:

SmartProspect - 152,147

Apollo - 174,555



This is not to say that SP is *better* than Apollo - Apollo is a great database.


But I'm very pleasantly surprised at the coverage SmartProspect has - and of course the added benefit that it's right inside the sequencer is pretty neat.

Great work Vaibhav and team.

Increase B2B SaaS sales by 25% with one cold email trick.

CTA Framing. Here's the guide:

Most CTAs are lazy and generic (and smelly): 

Want to see a demo?
Interested in learning more?
Are you hearing me you owl?

Not ideal.

These feel like copy-paste. Your prospect knows it.

Here's some examples of reframes for you:

a) Do you want to see a case study?
b) Do you want to see the case study that outdid every other client we've ever worked with?

It's curiosity ladsssss.

Here's another:

Let's say you're contacting a Marketing lead at a Data Analytics SaaS.

a) Would you like a PDF on the top ways to get leads with Google Ads?
b) Would you like our PDF on how the 3 biggest data analytics companies in North America generate 50-100 leads each month with Google Ads?

Specific.

Curious.

A little bit arousing.

You get it.

The difference is stark.

This can genuinely make the difference between a 15% positive reply rate and a 30% positive reply rate.

Which would double your pipeline.

Double is pronounced "doobleh" btw.


DO YOU DO THIS OR NOT THEN GUYS?

Booking meetings every day for a B2B SaaS at Spring Drive

And it's cold outreachhhhhh


Yes that's right, it's not dead - despite what you might hear on the radio!

If anyone got that joke i'd love to know.


Anyway, the right Resonance Strategy can mean massive pipeline value - daily, weekly, monthly.

Just pick the right partner and give it time to cook.

You shouldn't offer your SaaS's free trial to leads.

Here's why (and it's not because they won't pay later)...


Many SaaS companies use their free trial as the lever to bring in leads.

The problem with this is that it puts the cart before the horse.

I.E. You're suggesting they're already interested in your product, which is why it being free is such a great offer.



But this isn't true for cold audiences (outbound, ads)

They don't even know if they care - the fact its free doesn't matter.

The average SaaS buyer has signed up for 12+ free trials in the past 6 months and actually used maybe 2 of them.



B2B SaaS companies need to create offers that actually convert on the strength of the offer itself.

When they come further down the sales funnel and are clearly interested, a free trial makes it a no brainer to commit card details.


With tools like Lovable and Replit, it's super easy to create phenomenally unique magnets and GTM assets that you can utilize to attract leads with a number of different kinds of offers:

- interactive landing pages
- calculators and quizzes
- simple games that are built around the prospect's pain

You can also create micro services like custom setups and audits that are valuable by themselves.


But most companies I see don't do this - they say:

'here's what our tool does...we have a free trial, fancy a chat?'


The landscape is far too competitive now.

Level up.

Your lead magnets suck - if they're not getting tons of positive replies.

Here's the 4 tenets to transform them into ones that people love.

In a lil video.

Just a lil vid.

I guess we're presidential now

Sc of us booking a Director at the Obama Foundation for a client.


Sure, it wasn't Barrack himself...

Or was it...

okay no it wasn't

But it's a big strategic account to send through the pipeline.


No personalization except for using Clay to abbreviate the role and insert it strategically into the email.


*fair warning*:

Cold email is dead guys please stop sending immediately or you might book meetings.

We 'compel' prospects to book meetings with our B2B SaaS clients.

Their words, not mine. Here's how:


Balance theory.

You need to assess your assets in the context of your market to understand how to become compelling.

Assets
- Social proof
- Lead magnets
- Offers
- Pain data
- Personalization

You need to cross reference these and ask yourself, do any of our assets here STAND OUT in the CONTEXT of our market?

Genuinely though.

If you think your ebook on how to improve ad performance is stand out to ecom founders in the US, you don't understand your market at all.

Most people do not build stand out assets at all.

They simply do what they think LinkedIn is telling them will work.

"let's use this trigger and add pErSoNaLiZaTiOn'

seriously...?

If have genuinely intelligent personalization that hardly anyone else is likely to be using and its relevant...

Then yes, hammer it son.

9/10 - this is not the case.

At Spring Drive we use our messaging strategy framework and experience to spend a lot of time ideating insanely stand out ideas for our clients that we can A/Z test heavily.

That's how we get results whilst everyone else is testing personalization and triggers and getting confused as to why nobody cares.

Don't believe the hype.

Balance theory.

Screenshot below from a client campaign at Spring Drive.

Okay guys I'm going to share this one because it's very decent even though I don't normally do these posts.

Smartlead are doing a Black Friday Flash Sale for both Smartlead and Non-Smartlead users:

 - 100% free Admin Google & Outlook mailboxes for the first month.

- No Minimum order size

- The email infrastructure setup is done for you.

- US IP Mailboxes

Doing outbound properly means a robust infrastructure and that can add up, so this is pretty neat.

Also btw, this is absolutely the time to stock up on a ton of inboxes too because everybody should be warming up infra over december to launch hard at the start of Q1.

Cart time.

To convert a lead to a booked meeting, you need a Pipeline Variant.

Here how to do it in 3 steps:


When a lead replies positively, there's still work to be done to book them to a meeting.

But most companies just follow up asking them for a meeting.

Hounding them like, like a, a, hOUnd dog.


The issue with this is you're not making them *want* a meeting.

Which should be your goal.


Nobody wants to give you their time - you have to convince them.

The prospect will think: 'well i'll just check them out online and gauge if I care based on that'


So you need a distinct strategy in place for why they should attend a meeting.

I call this the Pipeline Variant.

And I expect royalties.


Ask yourself:

'What can you give/show them in a virtual meeting that they cannot reasonably expect to find online?'


This dramatically increases booked meeting numbers.


The concept is maintain some balance - don't give everything away in the email, precisely so you can hold something back to book the meeting.


Ideas include:
- audits (have to be framed correctly)
- building their custom setup together on a call
- showing them proprietary data unavailable anywhere publicly

Get creative and you can really get people wanting to put time aside for you.

About to tell prospects about your B2B SaaS's features?

 WAIT - read this first.


I think we've moved passed generalized outcome statements in outreach.

Focusing on the end result, in many cases, leads to trite messaging like:

'10x your revenue' or 'saves you 15 hours per week'.


The market is too mature for that now (in 90% of cases).

But the fallback for many companies is to say, well, let's tell everyone about our amazing features.

This is even more common in complex SaaS tools where summarizing its core value is actually quite difficult because there's just so many ways it can help.

The issue there of course is that, guess what - nobody actually cares about features, inherently.

They do, in fact, care about outcomes.

hmm, tricky.


So what do you do to book prospects into more sales meetings?


Specificity.


You should still focus on outcomes and results, but they HAVE to be framed with specificity.

Look at these examples:


"Our tool saves you 10 hours per week manually sending invoices" - 2/10 (Bad).


"Our tool saves you 10 hours p/w sending invoices with our AI sequence generator" - 4/10 (still pretty bad, just AI washing)


"Our tool uses AI to cross-reference your clients with the right retainer values and puts together a 7-step email sequence to chase payment with easy-pay links embedded, reducing payment time to under 5 days and boosting cashflow".

Now we're talking.

It cuts through both features and outcomes with far more sophistication.

It visceralizes for the prospect precisely what outcome they're getting.

And how it does that, at the same time.

The outcome. The experience. The opportunity cost. The time saved.

All embedded in a line built around specificity.

Will you book sales meetings with AI-led B2B SaaS outreach messaging?

It depends on this 1 question:


A lot of B2B SaaS companies are, understandably, integrating AI into their tools as part of their product offering.

Makes sense.

I'm talking front-end customer use, not back-end for the company.

But, the wave of AI washing over the market is gaining pace rapidly.

And the messaging will get trite if it hasn't already.



So, to know if adding that AI feature into your messaging will work

Ask yourself this:


Does the AI function you've added solve something which was not possible or feasible before, or which was possible but costly (time or money) 

AND 

which customers were trying to do anyway because it was that necessary to them?


The final part is really crucial.

I see a lot of AI functionality which is really adding negligible value.

"Here's something you didn't truly care about, but you can do it now really quickly and cheaply with AI"

Day 1: omg that's so cool

Day 2: yeah it works decently

Day 3: i really need to get back to focusing on what matters to running the business


It's fun to play around with, and then nobody truly cares about it.


These can be great lead magnet use cases - don't get me wrong.

But pipeline conversions will likely suffer without a robust strategy behind the feature.



Just something to think about.

Earlier this year we were selected as a Finalist at the UK Digital Excellence Awards.

For a cold email campaign. This was it:


We were shortlisted as a Finalist along with 2 other companies for the 2025 UK Digital Excellence Awards under the category Standout Use of AI.

This was for one of our outbound campaigns that generated over 130 leads and 2 closed deals for a client in the first 4 weeks.

Part of the reason we were selected was a conditional logic workflow using AI to find relevant information on prospect websites, scoring them, and then using AI to format the wording so they could be inserted seamlessly into an email and sound completely human.

We did this with Clay.

And we continue to run great campaigns that generate pipeline for clients at  Spring Drive.

But here's something you should know - not every offer is built for cold email.

If you're targeting IT decision makers? Forget about it.
Only targeting Enterprise domains? Use is manually with multi-channel.
Got no social proof for a results-based service? Forget about it.

And ALWAYS A/Z test.

Booking sales meetings for B2B SaaS daily at Spring Drive.

With Resonance Strategy.



Want to know how? DM me.

(screenshot chat with a client of ours below)

You should not use cold email to grow your B2B SaaS/AI.

IF this is true:


Cold email is still in my opinion of the most powerful ways to scale revenue fast.

For many companies, cold email is the difference between 5 closed deals a month and nothing.



But if any of the following are true, you might not be a good match:


1. Your ICP is IT focused

IT generally hate sales outreach - we turn down companies that mostly target them.


2. Your TAM is small.

It's just harder to create sustainable pipeline from.

Fancy workflows you see getting 20 leads from 280 contacts looks great - but these campaigns usually do not replicate at scale month over month.

You might have a great month or two - then you're lost.

We like to work with companies that have at least 80k prospects minimum in their TAM.



3. You're afraid of rejection

Being told 'don't contact me again' in sales is like getting a bruise in sport.

If you're scared of getting a bruise, sport isn't for you.

Giants like Salesforce built billion dollar companies off the back of sales teams getting rejected constantly.

They just built systems to close the deals that did come through...

And didn't get shaken when someone said no.



4. You're not committed to A/Z test and be creative

If you haven't tested something in the market, you don't know what will happen.

The best results are usually the most recent - because you only getting better from a/z testing and iterating over time.

Companies that want to see amazing stuff from day 1 usually suffer because they never give themselves the opportunity to reach pipeline momentum.


But, if these don't apply, you could be getting 10-30 meetings every month and closing deals, scaling your B2B SaaS easily just with cold email.

Leads vs Meetings - do you know the difference?

A warning to B2B SaaS companies:


If you're considering hiring an agency to deliver you 'leads' - be sure you know what that means.


I once told a company I'd expect we'd deliver around 10-15 meetings a month for them, and they replied:

"But the other agency said they would deliver 30 at around the same cost?!"


I asked them...'Meetings? Or leads?'

Them: 'what do you mean? They said 30 leads.'

Me: 'A lead is someone who has replied with interest - they haven't yet agreed to a date and time to meet with you. They may not agree at all. How many meetings are people agreeing to from those leads?'

Them: 'Oh right yeah, I think its positive replies. Leads.'


Nothing wrong with leads as value btw - but you should always ask an agency you're considering working with: 

'what do you mean by a lead?'

Different agencies use the word leads in different contexts, but the value can be massively different.

Just a gentle notice.

Very gentle.

Cold email rewrite time...

How a simple offer got complicated.

Here's how Spring Drive helps B2B SaaS & AI companies drive growth.

In a nutshell:


We run outbound email and LinkedIn campaigns for you that drive growth, either via sales pipeline or PLG motions.

We do this with best-in-class GTM Engineering and our own Resonance Strategy framework that we constantly iterate on.


We've got a ton of case studies, reviews & testimonials, expert badges, award nominations, and global recognition for our work.


We work on a retainer but you can start with us on a pilot first.


We work with both Founder-led teams as well as sales and marketing teams, supporting Founders, reps, and AEs, by delivering pipeline for them to close.


If you're a B2B SaaS or AI company that wants to drive revenue without spending more on ads or hiring and managing more reps, you can find out more at springdrive(dot)co.

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The Battle

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Mohan ‎Muthoo 🇬🇧

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The Battle

Seha Okudan

Mohan ‎Muthoo 🇬🇧

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Seha Okudan's LinkedIn Performance

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