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At AIsisted, we build custom growth systems that combine cold outbound strategies, AI, and automation to accelerate your business.

Gartner found that 30% of CRM data is outdated within 12 months, which means your CRM is quietly bleeding pipeline.

and most teams do nothing about it.

It doesn’t happen all at once.

There’s no warning.

Just a slow decay that eats away at your sales efficiency, accuracy, and trust.

Bad data leads to:

– Reps calling numbers that no longer work
– Sequences firing at people who left months ago
– Forecasts based on accounts that don’t even exist
– Sales and marketing arguing over what’s “real”

To make things worse, most teams don’t realise it’s happening until deals start slipping.

They don’t question the CRM.
They question the SDR.
They question the messaging.
They question the channel.

Not the fact that the data driving all those activities is rotting silently in the background.

CRM decay isn’t a back-office issue.

It’s a revenue issue.

And ignoring it means you’re building pipeline on a broken foundation.

Clean data isn’t optional anymore.

It’s the baseline for any serious go-to-market motion.

Don't sleep on this

David Walker-Dobson 

Founder @ Tentt | Buying Signals, CRM Automation, Lead Enrichment and Outbound

90% of CEOs and CROs forget this:

The ‘when’ you reach out is just as important as ‘who’ you reach out to.

But still...

They have no signal strategy.

Instead, their outbound team:

– Blasts cold emails based on static lists
– Waits days (sometimes days) to follow up
– Ignores buying intent signals completely
– Acts like timing doesn’t affect outcomes

And then they wonder why reply rates are under 5%...

Why CAC keeps climbing...

Why pipeline is bone dry.

Here’s the truth:

- Cold outreach doesn’t fail because of bad writing.
-  It’s not always your offer either.
-  It’s usually timing.

If you reach out the same day a prospect:

– Posts a hiring announcement
– Engages with competitor content
– Gets new funding
– Visits your pricing page
– Their Head of Marketing leaves

…you’re 10x more likely to get a reply.

Timing is leverage.

And signal-driven timing? That’s your edge.

Here’s how to build a simple signal strategy:

Define the signals that matter for your ICP (hiring, growth, engagement, churn risk, etc.)

Track them in real-time using tools like Clay, LinkedIn, or with our custom signal data 

Route signals to reps or automation platforms like Smartlead with context + urgency

Automate first-touch outreach the moment a fresh signal hits

Follow up like a human, not a bot

Outbound isn’t just about activity anymore.

It’s about precision.

How are you currently using signals?

Sales Leaders, please understand this:

Your SDRs are wasting 5+ hours on research that AI can now do in 10 seconds.

Let me show you the difference between how most teams still do outbound and how the top 1% do it now

The Old SDR Workflow (Still used by 90% of teams)

You’ve got a list of target accounts.

Now your SDR has to:

 • Manually check LinkedIn profiles for job changes
 • Dig through press releases for funding or growth updates
 • Scan the company’s careers page for hiring trends
 • Has "intent" based data that doesn't actually drive revenue
 • Look up tech stack info using browser extensions
 • Search for any “angle” to justify a cold email
 • Write a message from scratch, one by one
 • Send it out, probably too late

Sound familiar?

It’s slow.
It’s inconsistent.
It depends on luck.

And it’s already outdated by the time you hit “send.”

Best case, you catch a good signal by chance.

Worst case, someone else already reached out with a better pitch days before you did.

The Modern Outbound Workflow (Signal-Driven and Automated)

Here’s what today’s high-performing teams do:

- Track signals at scale across thousands of accounts:

Funding rounds
Hiring for key roles
Job changes
Tech installs
Website activity
Mentions on social
CRM reactivation tracking (old opps, churn risk, etc.)

- Build an ICP engine inside Clay

 Clay helps to scrape the data, enriches every lead, and qualifies them based on your custom criteria.

- Let the system do the research for you

Each signal is enriched with contact info, past work history, tech stack, relevant headlines, and more - all auto-generated.

- Route the right signal to the right place instantly

 High-value signals trigger Slack alerts.
 CRM tasks are auto-created for AEs.
 SDRs get personalised outreach tasks.
 Or Smartlead sends pre-built, personalised messages instantly.

- Track what works, improve and scale it 

Signals that lead to booked meetings or closed deals feed back into your ICP engine, constantly improving over time.

What used to take 5+ hours per SDR per day now takes seconds and delivers 10x better results.

This is no longer a “nice to have.”

It’s the new baseline.

You’re sitting on a goldmine of signals,  ignoring them is costing you 100s of thousands in pipeline.

Everyone’s chasing high-volume strategies:

- Spray-and-pray outbound
- Generic LinkedIn DMs
- Cold email blasts pulled from static lead lists

But here’s the thing…

You don’t need a machine gun.

You need a sniper.

Buying signals are your scope.

They tell you:

- Who’s hiring
- Who just raised
- Who’s visiting your site
- Who interested in your solution on linkedIn


These aren’t just “nice to know.”

They’re your unfair advantage -  if you know how to act on them.

Here’s how to start:

Track external (news, hiring, intent) signals

Score and prioritise based on recency and intent

Automate list updates so your SDRs aren’t chasing ghosts

Use tools like Clay  to enrich signals and write hyper-relevant emails

Use Smartlead to automate your emails  

Focus on fewer, better-targeted messages

Volume isn't dead, but timing and relevance always win.

Shoot me a DM if you want a signal system like this

Your SDRs aren’t hitting quota because they're lazy.

They’re just buried in manual tasks that shouldn’t exist in 2025.

Ask any sales leader why pipeline is slow, and you’ll hear:

“Reps aren’t sending enough emails.”
“They’re not booking enough meetings.”
“They need more urgency.”

But zoom in, and here’s what most SDRs are actually doing all day:

– Copy-pasting LinkedIn info into CRMs
– Jumping between Apollo, LinkedIn, Google Sheets
– Manually verifying job titles and domains
– Searching for context that barely moves the needle
– Spending 70% of their day preparing instead of prospecting

This isn’t a talent issue.
It’s a systems issue.

It’s a workflow design problem that’s killing efficiency and morale.

If your reps need 10 tabs open just to write one personalised message,

You don’t have a lead gen problem.

You have a process problem.

Get yourself a GTM engineer.

Let them automate the research, validation, and enrichment workflows.

Take the grunt work off your reps’ plates.

Modern SDR workflows should be:

✅ Automated
✅ Centralised
✅ Context-rich
✅ Seamlessly integrated

The future of outbound isn’t more hustle.

It’s smarter systems that let humans do what they’re best at: building relationships.

If your team is still bouncing between tools, it’s time to rethink the SDR role 

Not replace it. Redesign it.

If I were building a signal-based LinkedIn outreach system from scratch, here’s exactly what I’d do:

I’d track just 2 main signal types:

1. Social Signals using Trigify.io

I’d go deep + wide in my niche.

Deep - for example, I would go hyper-targeted and track creators like GTM engineers and lead generation experts.

Wide - anyone talking about B2B growth: ads, SEO, outbound, funnels, demand gen.

This gives me focus and volume.

Every like and comment becomes a potential trigger.

2. External Account Signals

I’d build a list of ICP accounts and track external events like:

→ Product launches
→ New funding rounds
→ Hiring sprees
→ Budget cuts/layoffs
→ Tech stack changes

We can help you track 20+ triggers across the web with our data. 

Then I’d plug everything into Clay for enrichment + scoring.

Next, I’d send a connection request via Aimfox.

Why Aimfox?

- Automated outreach across search, post, event, group & Sales Nav campaigns
- Unified inbox (Unibox) for conversations across unlimited LinkedIn accounts and manual outreach
- In-depth analytics to track and optimise campaigns

And here’s the secret sauce:

Every signal → 1 connection request

With one simple, signal-driven question to start the convo

Then I send an alert to Slack, my SDR, or email…

…to take over the convo manually with high-effort, non-robotic follow-up.

This isn’t spray-and-pray automation.

It’s precision-based outbound - powered by relevance, timing, and intent.

And it’s how I’d turn LinkedIn into a conversion machine in 2025.

Most companies are sleeping on their #1 growth channel: their own customers.

Here’s how to turn your entire customer base into a referral machine using Clay 

Most referral strategies are broken.

They rely on:

- Hope
- Random NPS surveys
- “Let us know if you think of anyone…”

Meanwhile, your happiest customers have warm, high-fit connections at companies you'd kill to close.

So why not engineer those referrals?

Here’s how you can do it with Clay + Smartlead:

Step 1: Upload your customer base into Clay

List your key decision-makers - ideally, those who love your product.

Step 2: Enrich with previous work history

Clay can pull past companies

Step 3: Cross-check against your ICP

Filter past companies based on size, industry, or tech stack, only keep the ones who match your ideal customer profile.

Step 4: Ask for intros to ex-colleagues

Most execs stay connected to people they used to work with. 

A simple line like:

“Hey [Name], hope you’re enjoy [product/service] 

noticed you used to work at [Company]. 

Would you be open to intro’ing me to their [relevenat title.]?”

Step 5: Automate with Smartlead

Set up personalised outreach campaigns with dynamic fields for:

Their past companies

Suggested contacts to intro you to

A light, non-salesy CTA

Step 6: repeat twice a year

Track who you've asked, who said yes, and rotate in new champions as you grow your base.

✅ Warm intros
✅ High-converting leads
✅ No ad spend
✅ Fully automated

Your customers are sitting on a goldmine of trust and connections.

You just need to tap into it - strategically.

CRM Hygiene 101:

Bad data doesn’t just hurt reporting.

It kills the pipeline before your reps even start selling.

and often is the unlock for your next stage of growth

But here’s the thing:

Most B2B teams think their CRM is clean...

Until they try to:

→ Build outbound lists
→ Run automations
→ Attribute leads to revenue

Then they find:

❌ Duplicate accounts
❌ Outdated contacts
❌ Incomplete fields
❌ Conflicting lead statuses

If that sounds familiar, here’s what you need to fix it 👇

1. Define what "clean" actually means

→ What fields matter?
→ What statuses should exist?
→ What lifecycle stages are allowed?
→ What account or contact signals are we tracking?


If you don’t define it, your team will guess.

2. Set strict entry rules

→ No manual CSV uploads without formatting.
→ Enrich via tools like Clay before it hits your CRM.
→ Standardise sources of truth (no rogue Google Sheets).

3. Automate field validation & deduping

→ Use Clay + n8n to auto-detect missing or mismatched data.
→ Flag leads that don’t meet criteria.
→ Merge duplicates before they clutter your pipeline.

4. Create feedback loops with reps

→ Let reps mark fields as outdated or wrong.
→ Sync updates automatically, don’t rely on manual CRM edits.
→ Incentivise data accuracy, not just deal velocity.

5. Audit monthly (or you’ll pay for it quarterly)

→ Review conversion paths.
→ Check for dead leads stuck in limbo.
→ Update segments and filters based on actual buyer behaviour.

CRM hygiene isn't "ops busywork" - 

It’s the foundation for scalable GTM execution.

If your data’s messy, your GTM motion is too.

Founder @ AIsisted | Modern Intent-based GTM systems

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