Aha! Research

I lead Aha! Research, where I help companies uncover why they win and lose deals (at scale).

With 9+ years of research experience, I conducted 150+ in-depth interviews in 2024 alone, gathering direct buyer feedback to uncover actionable insights. 

Last year I partnered with clients like Procore, Shopmonkey, and HSI Donesafe to identify clear opportunities to improve win rates.

In my role, I:

- Design and execute win-loss and churn research tailored to each client’s needs.
- Analyse feedback to pinpoint why deals are won, and lost.
- Deliver practical recommendations that align product, customer success, sales and marketing efforts for measurable results.

It’s all about giving sales leaders the clarity they need to make informed, data-driven decisions—and drive sustainable growth.

Director and Principal Consultant

Headway

Fractional Product Marketing & Competitive Intelligence | Entrepreneur in Residence

Led engagements for a world-class product growth studio, working with SME founders to launch and grow software products.

Always focused on understanding the market and competition to help businesses find and keep the right customers.

Product Marketing Lead

Beyond

Helped clients like Google, Facebook, Just Eat, Novartis, HeartFlow, and Artrya bring new products to market through a research-led GTM approach.

Product Marketing Manager

Australia Post

Competitive Intelligence Specialist

Market Researcher

Most win-loss programs only analyse a small percentage of total deals. Here's why that's killing your insights:

You're a (Product) Marketing, RevOps, or Sales leader trying to understand why you win and lose deals.

You know win-loss analysis is important, but you're stuck.

Expensive platforms lock you into analysing just small deal samples, while doing it internally means your already-stretched team can only handle a handful of interviews.

Either way, you end up analysing tiny slices of your pipeline.

Leadership dismisses your insights as "just a few vocal buyers"

No one acts on your findings because there's not enough proof behind them.

And you're back to making decisions based on gut feel and whoever speaks loudest in the room.

I built Aha! Research to solve exactly this problem.

I spent years watching teams struggle with the same constraints - whether they were paying enterprise prices for limited coverage or burning out their internal teams trying to do more interviews.

The impossible choice was everywhere: either stretch your budget and still get limited coverage, or exhaust your team's bandwidth for the same result.

That's when I developed a hybrid approach using conversational survey technology combined with strategic interviews.

Now my clients get meaningful insights from much broader coverage of their pipeline without the traditional resource drain or enterprise price tags.

"It's made a real difference - we're now much more confident about our positioning and GTM decisions. We're making choices based on actual evidence that everyone in our business can get behind." - Joanna, Former APAC Lead Product Marketing Manager at Procore

Aha! Research combines conversational surveys with targeted interviews to give you comprehensive deal coverage AND detailed insights without breaking your budget or overwhelming your team.

Ready to stop analysing just a small slice of your pipeline?

Send me a DM or book a 30-minute strategy call: https://calendly.com/jfryszer/discovery-call

I can't believe I actually did this.

Look at this beauty. Mobile wood-fired sauna + ice plunge that comes to your door. 

Melbourne's about to get very hot and very cold.

Okay okay... plot twist. 

I didn't actually buy it. That's Google Nano Banana doing its thing. (Pretty convincing though, right? Minus it being on sand 😆)

Here's what I'm ACTUALLY doing:

Running Facebook ads for this concept to test if Melburnians would actually book a mobile sauna/cold plunge experience. 

Spending <$100  on ads beats dropping $20k+ on equipment I'm not sure people want.

Results coming soon.

Josh Fryszer

I help vertical SaaS identify exactly who needs them right now → and what to say to get their attention.

Traditional ICPs are dead.

Pain-qualified segments are the future.

Here’s why I think this shift matters...

The old way: sales teams chase companies by size, revenue, or industry.

You know, the standard ZoomInfo filters:

↳ 100-500 employees.
↳ $10-50M in revenue.
↳ SaaS, manufacturing, or tech.
↳ North America.
↳ Salesforce or HubSpot users.

But these numbers only tell you who *could* buy. They say nothing about who MUST buy, or who feels pain right NOW.

That’s the fatal flaw.

Cold email response rates dropped 27% in 2024. SDR conversations are down 55% since 2014. The average cost per meeting is now $700+.

The world changed. The old ICP is blind to urgency and pain.

Pain-qualified segments flip the script.

You stop guessing who might care. You start finding who NEEDS you...right now.

How? You use real-world data to spot pain.

Every industry has a metric that signals pain:

• Equipment rental: utilisation rate below 60% means lost money.
• Restaurants: high % of revenue lost to delivery apps.
• Construction: idle equipment near active projects.

You layer data sources to find these signals.

And guess what?! AI made this much easier to do.

Example: Instead of “target construction companies with $10M+ revenue,” you combine:

↳ Building permit data (active projects).
↳ Equipment tracking (idle cranes).
↳ Match idle cranes to new projects needing them.

The message: “Your Liebherr crane is idle. Maxwell Construction just filed permits for wind turbines needing that crane for 3-6 days. That’s $45-180K in rental revenue.”

This is not a cold pitch. It’s a lifeline.

Another example: Small business financing.

You combine:

↳ Restaurants without liquor licenses (huge missed revenue).
↳ Recent material cost spikes (15-300%).
↳ Major equipment purchases.
↳ 18-24 month business age with cash flow gaps.

Each data layer reveals a business with an existential need for financing.

The key insight: The best growth teams don’t filter by demographics. They hunt for urgent business pain. They target the right moment, not just the right profile.

I'm such a strong believer that the future belongs to those who find pain they're uniquely positioned to solve—and reach it before anyone else.

2 outreach emails. 95% response rate difference.

The first uses standard outreach tools. 
The second finds unique tension points.

The difference isn't better personalisation (or tools) - it's targeting philosophy:

Most teams focus downstream on message optimisation when the real leverage is upstream in the precision of your targeting.

Email #1 uses surface-level personalisation layered onto generic assumptions. 

It's the same commodity data everyone has access to through ZoomInfo, Apollo, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Email #2 combines 2 opposing data points (expansion + compliance issues) that create obvious tension. It's not about clever copywriting - it's about finding specific situations that signal urgent need.

The strategic shift:

When you identify prospects experiencing verifiable tension points based on unique data combinations, your message becomes *inherently relevant*.

You're not personalising your way into relevance - you're starting with relevance.

This is what separates insight-driven GTM from commodity outreach.

While competitors waste time with "{first_name}" tokens and ChatGPT templates, winners build data recipes that uncover real business tension.

The uncomfortable truth is, your "personalised" sequences feel robotic because your targeting is built on the same data everyone else uses.

Fix the list. The message fixes itself.

Or as Jordan Crawford says "The list IS the message".

I didn't expect this so soon. 

Cold outreach works. 

But only if you do it right. 

Here’s what I’ve learned after sending just 15 emails (not 1,382,849): 

→ You don’t need a huge list. You need a targeted list & sharp message. 

I sent a short, focused email to a CEO at a HealthTech company that recently raised a Series B round. I showed them real data. I named the exact facilities with urgent problems. I explained the risk in plain English. I made it clear how their product could help—right now. 

That’s the value-first approach. Give before you ask. Show you’ve done the work. Make it about them, not you.

→ Personalisation beats volume every time. 

I didn’t blast a generic pitch. I did the research. I found 78 skilled nursing facilities with major staffing and documentation issues their product could help. I shared specific details. I made it real. 

→ Results come from relevance. 

The CEO replied. They liked the email—even though I didn’t get every detail right. They saw the value. They asked if I could do the same for assisted living, which is a slightly different market. That’s the power of a good cold email. It opens doors, even if you miss the mark a little. 

→ Quality over quantity. 

Out of 15 emails, I got 2 positive replies in 7 days. That’s not luck. That’s focus. That’s targeting. That’s clarity. 

→ Show, don’t tell. 

I didn’t just say I could help. I showed how. I gave them a taste of what I do for my clients—finding the right targets, with the right message, at the right time. 

→ The right outreach changes everything. 

You don’t need to be perfect. You need to be specific. You need to be useful. 

This is what’s possible with good cold outreach. 

It’s not about sending more emails. 

It’s about sending better ones. To the right people.

That’s how I get results.

In 60 minutes, I built a campaign-ready list of 1,003 qualified rural hospitals with zero specialist coverage AND negative margins—plus pain-qualified messaging for each—representing $1.2B+ in addressable revenue for AmplifyMD.

Most sales teams would spend weeks building a target list, starting with demographics.

I started with pain.

Here's the exact 6 step process I took:

Step 1️⃣: Understand the business problem

Rural hospitals face a specialist shortage crisis. 91% of rural counties have physician shortages. Hospitals lose $17B annually from preventable transfers.

AmplifyMD provides an EHR-integrated virtual specialty care platform that combines AI-enabled technology with an on-demand physician network across 15+ specialties—including TeleStroke, TeleHospitalist, and emergency consultations. 

They help rural hospitals provide 24/7 specialist coverage when recruiting is impossible.

The pain isn't "we need telehealth." It's "we can't provide 24/7 coverage and we're hemorrhaging revenue from transfers."

Step 2️⃣: Define the pain-qualified segment

Not "25-250 bed rural hospitals" (demographics).

Instead: "Hospitals below critical specialist coverage thresholds."

Criteria:
- Zero hospitalists in their county
- Negative operating margins
- Critical Access Hospital designation

Step 3️⃣: Query for pain signals

Queried NPPES (National Provider database) for active hospitalists, matched to 5,273 target hospitals.

ZIP code matching showed 43.8% with zero hospitalists. Too high—data artifact.

Pivot: County-level matching. Result: 25.2% with zero hospitalists. Defensible.

Step 4️⃣: Layer financial distress

Queried FY 2024 hospital cost reports for operating margins.

Priority tiers:
- Tier 1A: Zero coverage + margins <-20% = 222 hospitals
- Tier 1B: Zero coverage + any negative margin = 781 hospitals
- Total: 1,003 hospitals in dual crisis.

Step 5️⃣: Validate with examples

Top facilities:

→ Cochran Memorial (TX): 18 beds, zero hospitalists, -194.9% margin
→ Quitman Community (MS): 25 beds, zero hospitalists, -194.8% margin

These aren't prospects. They're facilities facing closure.

Step 6️⃣: Draft pain-qualified messaging

Not: "AmplifyMD helps rural hospitals improve specialist access."

Instead: "It looks like your county has zero hospitalists and you're operating at -40% margins. That would make 24/7 emergency coverage nearly impossible. Is this what you're experiencing?"

Mirror their situation and ask for validation.

-------

What I learned:

Data quality > data quantity. County-level matching reduced false positives by 43%.

Financial distress + operational crisis = urgent. Either alone is interesting. Both together demands action.

Tight pain definition = simple messaging. The targeting does the personalization work.

The result:

1,003 hospitals where I can open with their specific pain and ask "is this your reality?" instead of pitching assumed problems.

That's campaign-ready.

Everyone's rushing to kill "talk to sales" on their homepage.

But they're missing the real opportunity.

It's not about ungating your product. It's about making your outreach itself the product experience.

I'm seeing the shift happening right now:

While companies scramble to add sandbox demos and free trials, the real disruption is happening in the inbox. Clients I work with are delivering their product's core value before anyone asks for it.

Old model: Prospect → Qualify → Demo → Value → Maybe buy 
New model: Value → Response → Conversation → Already sold

What this actually looks like:

Instead of: "We help retailers optimize pricing" 
Send: "Your competitor dropped prices 15% on these 7 SKUs yesterday. You're now overpriced on your top sellers. Here's the breakdown."

Instead of: "We provide competitive intelligence" 
Send: "Your rival just posted 12 engineering jobs with AWS migration skills. They're building what looks like your core product. Here are the job IDs and what they reveal."

Instead of: "We help with equipment utilization" 
Send: "Your crane at the Sacramento site has been idle for 3 weeks. There's a project 4 miles away that needs that equipment Monday. Here's the project manager's contact."

Why this *destroys* traditional sales:

Traditional sales asks for permission to be helpful. 
This approach proves you're already helping.

Traditional sales talks about value propositions. 
This approach delivers the actual proposition.

Traditional sales qualifies before providing insights. 
This approach uses insights to qualify themselves.

The framework:

1. Find signals others miss. Public data is everywhere. Permits, filings, job posts, reviews. The combinations create intelligence your competitors don't have.

2. Generate insights, not reports. Don't tell them what happened. Tell them what it means and what to do about it.

3. Lead with complete value. Not a teaser or gating. The actual actionable intelligence they can use immediately.

4. Make response effortless. "Want the other 3 opportunities?" beats "Do you have 30 minutes next week?"

IMO the companies still doing traditional sales are already obsolete.
They just don't know it yet.

Your outreach should be so valuable that prospects would pay for it.

Then give it away free.

Because when you deliver $10,000 of value in an email, the response rate takes care of itself.

Thanks to Harshit Jain who inspired this post after reading his latest QBack newsletter. If you're a PMM who's into AI, you should check it out.

How do you know you have an outreach "personalisation" problem? 
Here are 5 telltale signs 👇🏻

1) You're adding {first_name} tokens everywhere, but response rates keep dropping

This is by far the most common delusion in B2B sales today.

You've got all the tools. You're mentioning their funding round, their LinkedIn posts, maybe even where they went to college. But it's not working because you're decorating irrelevant messages with surface-level details.

It's like putting premium petrol in a car with a broken engine. Getting your targeting right makes it so your ideal prospects will actually care without feeling manipulated.

2) Your messages talk more about YOUR product than THEIR situation

This is a problem with self-centred outreach disguised as personalisation.

I see this constantly: "Hi {first_name}, saw you're a {title} at {company}... anyway, here's what WE do." You're using personal details as window dressing for a generic pitch.

The truth is that if you're reaching out at the wrong time, to the wrong companies, for the wrong reasons, no amount of clever customisation will save you.

3) You're relying on the same data points everyone else has

This is where genuine relevance separates from surface personalisation.
Effective cold outreach requires UNDERSTANDING specific business triggers and timing. The best performers focus on uncovering non-obvious signals... not just mentioning the same LinkedIn updates everyone else saw.

Companies that refuse to go beyond publicly available data will always struggle. Their outreach will always feel templated, predictable, and easy to ignore.

4) Different SDRs are "personalising" in wildly different ways with no consistent results

This speaks to the failure of personalisation-first thinking.

When you don't have clear targeting criteria based on real business signals, every rep invents their own approach. Some mention hobbies, others mention posts, others mention mutual connections.

If you haven't done the work to identify REAL buying signals and timing, your team will spray and pray with decorated templates, which leads to terrible efficiency.

5) You're "personalising at scale" but it feels more robotic than ever

This usually follows implementing the latest AI tool that promises to solve everything.

The potential seems limitless, and the urge to automate everything becomes overwhelming.

But nobody actually writes to friends saying "Hey {first_name}, I noticed you posted about {topic} last week..." Real conversations don't use merge tags. You've built a system that produces messages no human would ever naturally write.

#GTM #saas #sales #b2b #demandgen

Taplio

Josh Fryszer's Linkedin Analytics

What is Josh talking about?

's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Taplio

.css-1jgreyo{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39,43,72,1) 0%, rgba(33,47,183,1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Josh Fryszer's Linkedin Analytics

What is Josh talking about?

's Best Posts .css-qqfgvy{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);}(last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Josh Fryszer's Linkedin Analytics

's Best Posts (last 30 days)