Matt Firestone

We did the work, you take the credit.

Helping SDR teams to turn “not interested” into “let’s chat”.

I know because I've been there.

When I’m not helping SDR teams grow or posting on LinkedIn, I’m busy chasing after my three kiddos.

Co-Founder

Helping empower and connect the sales development community of Israel.

Day two of copying LinkedIn influencer selfies.

Who should I do next?

✌️Follow me for more insightful sales tips.



P.S. Thanks zoë hartsfield for the inspo.

Helping SDRs turn cold outreach into booked meetings | Proud Cold Caller | Dad x 3

Day one of copying LinkedIn influencer selfies.

Who should I do next?



✌️Follow me for more insightful sales tips.

I'm calling out Owen Wing of Nooks.

5 minutes after we connected on LinkedIn he cold called me.

Boom.

That's how it's done folks.

No sales pitch.

No feature dumping.

Just an honest conversation, one cold caller to another.

Dan Lee, ya'll got a winner.


P.S. Owen, let's chat after Thanksgiving.

I don't make cold calls in December.

Neither should you.

Everyone is on holiday mode anyway.

Now is the time to focus on your outbound process.

Take a few days to evaluate what works and what doesn't.

Get some new email templates and prospect lists ready for Q1.

Work smarter not harder.

...


See how easy it is to justify not picking up the phone in the holiday season...

Now is the time to crush the phones.

December is tough.

SDRs are tougher.

💪

I just tried Gemini 3 for outreach,

I’m convinced it will replace 90% of SDRs.


It’s beyond anything I’ve seen from any AI I’ve tested for outbound.

The results are outperforming real SDRs,

Including myself.

👇

If I believed every “AI just killed the SDR role” post I see on LinkedIn, I would’ve been dead ages ago.

It’s not a coincidence that the loudest people claiming SDRs are finished are usually the ones selling AI GTM agencies.

Don’t believe the hype.

Us human SDRs aren’t going anywhere.

💪

I have golden rule when interviewing SDRs.

If you're late, you're instantly rejected.

Don't even bother coming in.

​That used to be my mindset. 

I believed lateness spoke volumes about a candidate's commitment and respect for the process.

​But today, my entire philosophy on hiring and character was absolutely redefined.

​This morning, on my way to the office, I saw a limping cat was stranded on the road, facing an oncoming truck.

​In a flash, a dog jumped a fence, grabbed the cat, and pulled it clear. 

The truck barely grazed the dog's back leg, a selfless sacrifice to save a life.

​I rushed inside, got my coffee, and sat down for the first interview. 

The candidate was late. 

The candidate knocked on my door and I told them not to bother coming in.

​But the door opened anyway.

​To my complete shock, it was that same dog, limping into the interview room.

​I dropped my coffee.

The resume was irrelevant. I gave him the job on the spot.

​The Lesson: Nothing shows integrity more than the things you do when you think no one is looking.

I'm calling out the support team at Apollo.io

CEO Tim Zheng, pay attention.

I had a few technical questions while building a new campaign on Apollo.

I spoke with the support bot and asked to speak to a human.

I waited maybe 15 seconds until Gustavo jumped on the chat.

I have been using sales platforms for 7 years and never had such a smooth experience.

He was super easy to understand even filmed video clips on the spot to make sure I understood what needed to be done.

Gustavo, I gave you a 10 rating on the app but you deserve more. If anyone at Apollo can tag him, I'd super appreciate it.

Credit where credit is due.

Just hit 35k followers! 🥳

Allow me to reintroduce myself:

Proud Dad to 3 kiddos 👧👦👶

Grew up in South Florida☀️

Obsessed with Walt Disney World 

Moved to NY for college 🍎

Dropped out and moved to Israel 🇮🇱

Prouldy served in the Israel Defense Forces 💪

Finished Law school ⚖️

Failed the Bar...twice 😅

Now I cold call for living 📞

and create mediocre sales content on the side 😏

Vicki hates permission-based openers.

They trigger defenses and are basically self-sabotage.

If that’s how you feel, you would absolutely hate getting a call from me.

Because I’m all in on permission-based openers.

Here’s why:

You’re never going to hide that it’s a sales call.

Prospects know. 

So instead of tiptoeing around it, I’d rather say the thing everyone is already thinking.

“Hey Vicki, this is a cold call, do you have a minute before you hang up on me?”

What happens next is almost never defensiveness.

It’s usually a laugh or sigh of relief.

followed by “go ahead, what’s up?”

The tension drops and the conversation becomes human.

And once there’s actual permission, there’s room for curiosity.

Permission-based openers aren’t for everyone.

But they’ve consistently made my calls way more honest.

Vicki, if you ever end up as a prospect of mine, I’m definitely telling you it’s a cold call upfront.

Jc Pollard booked a meeting with a CEO by sending them a 29 dollar hourglass.

This is a terrible sales strategy.

No self-respecting person would trade 30 minutes of their time for some novelty gift.

But if you're trying to book a meeting with me anyway...

here is my top 5 Amazon wishlist in the 29 dollar range:

1. Disney Memes Card Game: https://a.co/d/5vgosZj

2. Star Wars Sock Set: https://a.co/d/6v4b3zJ

3. Lilo and Stitch Hawaiian Shirt: https://a.co/d/cUuiHC8

4. Map of Mordor Engraved Whiskey Glass: https://a.co/d/gkxib4h

5. Wooden Baseball Pinball Game: https://a.co/d/cxC7drQ

Shipping address upon request.

An SDR I train just hit over 200% of quota.

​Here are 3 things he does every single day:

​1. He spends the vast majority of his time re-engaging old opps, reviving leads that went cold in the past 90 days.

​2. He time blocks research and personalization before drafting emails.

​3. ​He spends at least 5 minutes reveiwing old opportunities that went sideways or the talk tracks he used in meetings from the past few weeks.


This is just a reminder that volume is not always the cure.

Intentional growth is.

I honestly think leads who interact with your competitors content are the lowest hanging fruit for SDRs.

I booked 12 leads last month by stealing leads from competitors.

Here's how:

- Make a list of your 20 biggest competitors.

- Break that into an excel of the most active LinkedIn users and brand pages for each company.

- Daily check on each of the profiles you map out.

- When people engage, match their profile with your ICP.

- If it's a match go in for the kill (metaphorically speaking).

This workflow isn’t for the faint of heart, the whole process takes a couple hours to set up and monitor daily.

Then Lucas Biarge Sánchez reached out to me. (thankfully)

He told me how they can automate this whole process for me.

You add the names of your competitors, describe your ICP and get alerted when warm leads are ready.

I have been using this tool for months and am blown away by how much money my SDR team was leaving on the table until now.

Comment “access” below and I’ll send you this competitor snatching tool.

Then go enjoy some of that sweet low hanging fruit.

Brand partnership • Helping SDRs turn cold outreach into booked meetings | Proud Cold Caller | Dad x 3

Sean Hurd called me out for using ChatGPT to write my posts.

Not gonna lie…I was pretty offended.

Authenticity is literally my whole brand.

I take pride in writing my own stuff.

So I just wanted to address it clearly:

I absolutely do not use ChatGPT to write my posts.

Using AI tools for content creation would reduce the organic personal expression that is central to my personal brand identity.

Human-generated content allows for deeper emotional connection, increased relatability, and improved audience trust.

Therefore, I can confidently say that every sentence I produce is generated through fully human cognitive processes, not through automated language-model systems that may produce coherent but less emotionally grounded phrasing.

I hope this clarifies the situation in a clear and transparent manner.

Three years ago, there was no community for SDRs in Israel.

Yaalit Pereira and I decided to fix that.

We built something we wished we had when we first got into tech sales.

Today, I’m insanely proud to share that the SDRs of Israel community just passed 600 members!

From In-person meetups, enablement sessions, webinars, and the ongoing conversations, the community has become a home for SDRs and AEs all over Israel.

If your interested in joining, please DM me.

(yes, it's free 🙂)

Christian Krause closed 30k in 48 hours.

Bro, I closed 3 million in 5 minutes.

🫳🎤

Last month the SDR team I trained booked 350+ meetings.
    
Here’s what changed.
   
We built them a killer outbound system.
    
Until I came in it was basically spray and pray.
    
We started to focus on real intent signals (not just softer triggers like "noticed you're hiring”) :
    
  - following the company page

  - viewing team profiles

  - commenting on competitor posts
    
Result?
    
Response rate jumped from 0.8% → 4% in 2 months.
    
In cold outbound, that’s wild.
    
Scaling irrelevant personalization with AI doesn’t work.
    
Scaling intent signals (and layering them) does. Big time.
    
My tech stack is super lean
    
For data, signals and outreach, I use 1 platform.
    
    
Comment “Signals” and I’ll send it your way to check out.

Serious question: if you cold call, why are you not using a parallel dialer?

I made the switch last year I would NEVER go back.

I have the same amount of conversations with prospects in 30 minutes that used to take 2.5 hours of calling.

I don't wait more than a couple minutes between conversations.

I cant go back to the way things were.

Smart parallel dialers like Trellus (YC W22) should be in every SDR tech stack.

Hot take: Raising quota for your top SDRs is punishing them for overperforming.

The top SDRs grind and instead of being rewarded, their quota adjusts upward.

Nothing demotivates a high performer faster than feeling like their success makes more work for them.

I've been there and it sucks.

Top SDRs don’t need higher quotas.

Let them blow past their number and pay them aggressively when they do.

If you won't, I bet your competitors will.

This is the advice I wish I had when I started as an SDR.

Sales leaders are going to hate this.

But here it goes:

Stop chasing leads.

When you chase, you signal that you need them more than they need you.

That creates imbalance.

It makes the prospect pull away.

It shifts the dynamic.

Instead:

Do nothing.

Let the lead come to you.

Allow the conversation to form on its own timeline.

If they’re meant to book, they will book.

Think of the shoreline.

The waves don’t chase the sand.

The sand doesn’t chase the waves.

They meet naturally, at the exact moment they are supposed to.

Your pipeline works the same way.

Don’t dial.

Don’t email.

Don’t follow up.

Just be available.

The right prospects will intuitively know you exist.

When they are ready, they will reach out.

That’s how you create trust,

and trust creates wealth.

taplio

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