Gautam Rishi's Linkedin Analytics

We have 100 people cold calling everyday, making 50,000 calls per week. I’ve become addicted to listening to the calls. One thing I’ve noticed is that tone is huge, plus being peppy and enthusiastic isn’t right for everyone. I’ve heard people with the most monotone voices kill it every week (typically with CISO’s) I’ve also seen the incredibly cheese and cringe work (with Heads of Sales) I’ve always felt cold calling is high energy sport, but the key is mimicking the person you’re calling. Think about who you’re calling, personality, age, experience, role, also experiment, once you crack tone the rest is easy. So without stereotyping bore it up for the techies and cringe it up for business.

If sales films were made for outbound. My favourite - The silence of the leads

Now salespeople have changed their job titles to GTM. Does that mean we no longer have desperate sales guys but desperate GTM guys.

Cold calling is actually really easy, you just need to pick up the phone, you idiot.... Also just take a few of these considerations into account: Cell data accuracy  Not being marked as spam  Person being actually available  Person actually answering the phone  Call opener that resonates  Then a decent pitch (correct pain points) Then, closing for availability Oh yeah, only 5 in 100 people pick up the phone. 2 of those will hang up when they hear your horrible voice 1 would have accidentally answered because they were waiting for a call So for those 2 people please make sure you have a: Kick ass opener (ideally research based) prob 10-15 words Killer pitch that resonates with the persona's pain points (sub 20 seconds) Actually being able to have a real conversation and not sounding like a robot

I speak to 20-30 companies per week, email has died as a channel for them, they always ask why. Here’s my opinion. 1. volume of email has gone sky high 2. It’s so easy to create new domains and mailboxes 3. AI has made personalised email so easy to send 4. Hitting the primary inbox is harder than ever 5. Email filters have got much smarter 6. Filters can pick up on sales emails plus AI generated emails 7. Email was dying pre ChatGPT, sequencing software had put a knife in it, AI killed it 8. Users have just zoned out 9. Decision makers get 20-30 emails per day, they just delete them all All AI tools are scaling a broken process, they don’t actually know it because they’ve never done outbound before. Yes, you can get email to work, it’s all about timing, but it’s not worth the effort, the effort of domains, copy, mailbox rotation, subject lines, data. My suggestion, get an agency $1-2k per month or pay per lead, let them own and manage it, you spend the time on other channels.

Meeting booked from just an opening pitch. Right lead, right time, right message Great work Giulio Smuraglia

Treat failure for what it is. It’s a moment in time. Running a start up for 4 years, I’ve failed over 1,000 times. Lost deals, lost customers, funding rejections, bad feedback. It’s easy to get caught up on failure, it can consume your entire week / month. Or you can reflect, learn, move on. Once you start doing that, the failure turns into a single moment in time, it’s almost refreshing. Your life moves from single moment definition to a entire new way of living. So my point, embrace failure and enjoy it.

Everyone’s still pretending AI agents can replace humans. We tried it. Ran email-only for years. Was fine. Not great. Then inboxes got wrecked and reply rates tanked. Cold calling still works. But a robot doing it? No. Now we use AI to do what it’s actually good at: – Find the right people – Dig up context – Write scripts that don’t suck Then a real human (US or UK) picks up the phone and does the hard part. That combo gets results. Fast. Not magic. Just what works. We got picked up by 20 different news outlets, I've done about another 10 interviews in the last few weeks, its funny as all the journalists were always skeptical of these "Digital Employees"

How do you get a meeting with EA from a cold call? Its in the game.

The best SDRs don’t post content on LinkedIn The best AEs don’t post The best sales leaders don’t post The best CEOs don’t post Spend time with the best people in your business and less time on the content creators selling courses.

3 inbound demos in 5 days, all from ChatGPT, the prospect even let me take a screenshot of his prompt and results. We have been investing into SEO for several years now, its a cheap and effective channel for us. We had to change our entire strategy for the LLM, its taken 4 months to do it, but its paying off. There are some easy tips if anyone's interested but ping.

I’ve spent over $1M on software in the last 10 years. None delivered. Not because it was bad software. It was great software, Salesforce, Outreach, ZoomInfo, Gong. But they all failed for the same reason: They relied on humans to use them. SDR didn’t pick up the phone AE didn’t follow the playbook Manager took a day off Someone just couldn’t be bothered And when that happened, the tool stopped working, value stopped. No one owned the outcome. Now we’ve entered the AI agent era. Agents don’t take days off. They work 24/7. Finally I’m getting my money’s worth. Not really. Because even with agent No one owns the outcome. The agent says: “I ran the workflow.” The platform says: “It executed as designed.” But the lead didn’t convert. The meeting didn’t happen. The hire wasn’t made. So who do I shout at? The agent? The vendor? I keep seeing posts about “outcome-based pricing.” Let’s be real, it’s a myth. If it were real, you’d only pay: When a meeting is booked When employee satisfaction hits 9/10 When the hire is made When your finance stack saves or makes you money But no one prices this way. Because everyone’s still selling tools. Not outcomes. Outcome based pricing = activity based pricing even though thag activity doesn’t deliver the desired outcome. Until someone is bold enough to own the result. It’s just automation with a new interface.

The best folks in growth have zero loyalty, that’s why they are the best. The best growth / marketing people have no care for channel. GTM changes every 12-24 months. SEO Outbound Ads Social Events What worked last year probably won’t work this year. As soon as a channel works. Everyone copies and it becomes saturated. The best growth people assume this, so as one channel is working they are thinking about the next. They don’t continue to invest in a dead channel whilst others remember the good ol days when it worked. If something is working for you right now, double down, it won’t last forever, but also have a minimum of 2-3 experiments running at low cost for new channels. Assume the channel that’s killing it will stop, so what’s your back up.

Founders are too scared to cold call. They think it’s below them. They have never done it before. They dislike receiving them. They want to hire junior people to do this. They don’t realise they will have 20+ real conversations with prospects every week They hear first hand objections about their solution They are the best person to pitch to their ICP They probably have a lot in common with the people they are dialing versus a junior person They single handily can impact pipeline in the shortest possible period of time at zero cost They don’t need any fancy tech, just their mobile and a $99 a month data subscription

2007 we started as SDRs, 15 years later we closed $15m in 1 year. Jon Hodgson and I were #1 AE and #1 Sales leader that year. 15 years earlier we were cold calling setting up meetings. Every year we challenged ourselves to beat last year, whatever the circumstances. More meetings % over target Highest earnings Biggest deal in company Beating the US team ;) Those early relationships you build in your career are the ones the last forever. Find the people that push you every single day.

To be a successful founder, you must work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Utter BS, I have two kids, 2 & 4, that would mean sacrificing my time with them. I do drop off at nursery every day, and read them a bedtime story most nights. It's not about the hours you work, it's about being productive in those hours. Nothing grounds you more than changing a diaper. Nothing makes you forget your stress more than your kids laughing. Setting them an example of balance and enjoying work is incredibly important. I do work in the evenings and weekends but when needed I have been away from my family for a month because I needed to be Its about prioritizing family, but also leaning into work when needed.

We added $1m ARR in the last 5 months with 90% retention. We also decided to KILL email as a channel. Email is a pointless channel, everyone has zoned out. Inboxes are full of rubbish. It's only getting worse. You need hundreds of mailboxes and thousands of mails to see minimal results Its not working for anyone AI has made it worse We went all in with Human in the loop AI outbound with human calling. We added human workflows into AI outbound flows. We got really good at matching elite cold callers to accounts We improved AI enablement for humans (think best-in-class sales training) Out feedback loops on calls got much better (opener, pitch, close) We doubled down on data (better quality leads) Calling enables you to get actual feedback on what works You can speak with real people You can see what pitch resonates People investing in better-quality copy are wasting time. Your time is better spent going door to door, sending letters, maybe even a fax. Imagine a world where we can get actual salespeople to SPEAK with their prospects.

One month in SF, the good the bad. 800k people, but feels like all 800k are all in tech It’s tech on steroids, the billboards, the start ups, the people, every coffee shop, every conversation. An event every night, the free ones are average, mostly kids looking for investment for a company they haven’t started. The good events are harder to get into, need to know a founder or VC. There really is a pay it forward mentality, founders actually help other founders, they actually follow through. The intensity of work is real, headphones on, locked in coding until 4am. The city itself still has its challenges with homelessness and drugs but it’s improving, from the locals “the new mayor is cleaning up” If anything the tech scene can be too intense, almost too much noise, easy to feel like your failing compared to others. If you want your tech company to be successful you probably double chances in SF, the ecosystem is light years ahead of any other city. Oh yeah, the food, unbelievable.

VCs are just cash, they can’t really impact the business. After 15 years building teams, that’s was my honest opinion until we met Seedcamp. Seedcamp have backed us from day 1, they bet on the founders, not product, traction, revenue, roadmaps, but on people. They have supported us through good and bad times, they told us to go hard when things were good and clipped us around the ear when needed. They nurtured community where we met other founders going through the exact same shit at we were, those founder to founder chats are the best relationships you ever build. Good investors give you room when needed and apply pressure when needed, exactly what they should. Revolut, UiPath, Synthesia & Wise just a few of the unicorns they backed from day 1. Now in SF having the best food, wine and laughs you realise the importance of patience and team. Building a company is the hardest thing you will ever do work wise, it will always come down to team. Reshma Sohoni, Tom Wilson, Daniel King & Carlos Eduardo Espinal MBE ❤️ In true Silicon Valley style. LFG 🚀🚀🚀

I really hate working with young people. They all seem to be working remotely They all seem in really good shape They prioritise downtime and traveling I’m pretty sure half of them are bitcoin millionaires They make me resent my 20’s I was hungover in an office in Slough with no windows being physically abused to make more cold calls