Roman Hipp

BetterContact

Co-Founder & Growth

Amazon

Business Development

charles

Business Analyst & Expansion

Moss | All-in-one spend management

Customer Success

BlackRock

Spring Week

Building BetterContact | Helping early-stage B2B SaaS companies with insights & ready-to-use templates

Currently building BetterContact, a B2B SaaS that aggregates various data sources to find and verify any email and mobile phone number.

Growth Co-Founder

Last week I had a chat with Enzo from C17 Lab about cold calling, and was *overwhelmed* by how enthusiastic he talked about BetterContact & what role it plays in his team's latest winning streak

Quick context: Enzo is one of the most well-known outbound thought leaders & founder of C17, where he handles outbound strategies for some of the biggest companies out there.  

Just give it a watch yourself 👇

Building BetterContact | Helping B2B companies win outbound through more and better contact data

Here is the allbound engine that helped me bootstrap BetterContact to a 7-figure SaaS as one-man GTM team (inbound-led outbound):

𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 1: GATHERING INTELLIGENCE

The best way to dive deep into my ICP’s workflows (and understanding their pain points) is by having proper 1:1 conversations with them.

Not only does this allow me to dive deep into their specific use case, but also to learn more about our industry, as well as what our competitors do.

This is what I’m using for that:

Call recordings & transcripts: Fathom
Reddit keyword alarms: F5Bot
LinkedIn keyword alarms: Trigify.io

Doing these calls also allows me to re-validate our ICP hypothesis.

I then do company look-a-like searches with Discolike and Ocean, and find the right people through Sales Navigator.

I automatically connect with my ICP leads through HeyReach.io, and make sure to track their posts & activity through Breakcold.

𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 2: CREATING CONTENT

Based on that, I create ICP-relevant content on LinkedIn.

I realized that the less ‘skin in the game’ I have, a.k.a talking to customers and prospects in my market, the worse the content is that I distribute.

That’s why STEP 1 is the foundation for every step that follows.

𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 3: TRACKING ENGAGEMENT

I’m tracking profile views/post engagements etc. with Teamfluence™.

This allows me to see who might be potentially interested in giving our solution a try (and not reaching out blindly to poeple).

𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 4: QUALIFYING ENGAGEMENT

The engagers are being sent to Clay to qualify & enrich the leads.

I’m using Zenrows to scrape the websi & GPT o4-mini to measure ICP fit.

Occasionally I also use Builtwith for a technographic analysis and a potential integration play. 

(P.S. we recently launched our new Hubspot AutoEnrich integration)

For qualified leads I’m enriching the email address with BetterContact, and again GPT o4-mini to write personalized email copy (for ICP Tier 1 & 2).

𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 5: LAUNCHING OUTREACH CAMPAIGNS

The next step is reaching out to the different ICP levels.

The structure & cadence is the same (3 touches), but if there is no reply for ICP Tier 1’s, I try my best to call them. 

For that, I’m using BetterContact again to find the mobile number, and AirCall to dial (depending on geography).

The responses to my outreach (from super excited to angry reactions) are again a big booster for my market/ICP understanding.

Which again allows me to create relevant content, and the whole cycle gets more efficient over time.

Keen on hearing any feedback to my process/any tool recommendations to boost efficiency 👇

Excited to share that BetterContact is now an offical sponsor of my brother's sports team for the 2025/26 season!

Handball was a big part of my life growing up. I spent over 13 years playing competitvely (started at 3 years old).
 
Now it’s my brother who’s still giving it his all on the field, so I'm even more proud to support the team with what we can!

“Wow”. This is what I thought when my friend Mauro showed me a demo of his recruiting SaaS Taleva. Just a few months in, they already closed 5-figure deals.

Before I got to see the product, I was a bit worried I’d need to sugarcoat things (as I remember how *horrendous* our first MVP looked like).
 
But I was genuinely surprised when I saw a super-nice looking UI with a backend that already worked properly.

Basically a ready-to-use solution (and their customers seem to love it).

That’s why I'm even more excited to share that I will be an advisor for Taleva.

A 3-man, bootstrapped & hungry founder team (Mauro, Bruno, Marcos) - excited to see where this goes, and I’ll do my best to help where I can!

In 2024, BetterContact lost hundreds of customers to churn. Since then, we reduced our monthly churn from 26.6% to sub 10%, and we owe a large portion of that to partnering with a bunch of amazing tools.

And to be honest, this is something I would have liked to realize earlier:

As a point-solution that solves a specific problem (finding the right contact details), one of the most powerful ways to grow is to get natively integrated into horizontal solutions.

(I recommend everyone to go this route as early as possible)

Better later than never, in the last 12 months we've built native integrations with tools our customers already love:

- CRMs (Hubspot, Breakcold, CustomerOS)
- Outreach (Instantly, Smartlead, Saleshandy, Lemlist, Salesforge)
- No-code (Clay, Zapier, Make, nRev AI)

…and a lot of other amazing solutions (take a look at the carousel below to see a few more 👇)

That's how, in a bit less than 12 months, BetterContact went from a contact data product nobody knew of, to being natively integrated with +100 of GTM tools.

BetterContact Partner Solutions - Best Tools in Outbound

If your TAM = 5,000 companies, your 'Big TAM' (100,000) outbound playbook just won't work:

Big TAM (e.g. 100,000):

- You can afford a loose ICP definition
- One channel (email) is often enough
- There's room for A/B testing
- 30–50% reachability with Apollo or ZoomInfo is okay
- Good enough data = good enough results
- 2-touch email sequences are fine, move on if no reply
- Benchmark is 1 positive reply per 250–300 sends
- Volume over hyper-personalization is fine
- Campaign success = optimizing output and efficiency

Tiny TAM (e.g. 5,000):

- Gotta maintain a tight ICP definition (no ICP dilution)
- Go multi-channel: cold calling, LinkedIn, gifting
- Every lead matters, treat them accordingly
- Gotta do the 'unscalable' (e.g. custom Loom videos)
- Use multiple data providers, verify every contact
- You cannot afford 1 reply per 300 sends (aim for 10%)
- Stack more signals: firmographics, tech stack, hiring...
- Space out touches, don’t burn your entire list in 2 weeks
- Campaign success = maximizing reachability + response per contact

TAM is the #1 factor in shaping your outbound motion.

Some contact data providers are great in US, but completely useless in EU or UK. Based on our BetterContact data, using a dynamic waterfall vs. a static one yields 17% more valid results. 

It's common sense that every phone number provider has its own strengths and blind spots.

Relying on a static waterfall to enrich data is like trying to charge every device with one outdated cable. A few will connect. Most won’t.

We learned that the hard way at BetterContact:

↳ One provider crushes it in the US. Useless in Germany.
↳ Another works great in the UK. Falls flat everywhere else.
↳ Some are great in SaaS. Others in Finance.

That’s why we ditched the static approach almost more than a year ago.

Instead, we built layers of intelligence into BetterContact’s enrichment engine.

Here’s what happens before we pick a provider:

1) BetterAI analyzes the LinkedIn profile of your lead
2) Scans the company website & page
3) Understands industry, region, and context

Only then does our enrichment engine select the best-fit provider.

Not the cheapest one. Not the default. The right one.

The result is 17% more valid contact data vs. a static waterfall, plus:

↳ Higher data accuracy.
↳ More connections.
↳ Less wasted spend.

The art of waterfall enrichment is not stacking as many providers as possible.

It’s about knowing which one to trust, and when.

What are you using to find valid mobile numbers? 👇

Last week I spoke to a European Series A company founder who told me: ‘Cold calling is not working for us’”. After seeing their targeting, I could see why…

As they raised a lot of money recently, they thought now it’s time to go ‘big’ in outbound & reach out to as many new leads as possible.

So their targeting looked something like this:

‘We offer a payroll solution for B2B companies’

And I’ve seen this too often:
(primarily when I did this mistake myself, which was definitely WAY too often)

A team spends weeks fine-tuning their offer, script, and tech setup…

Only to start cold calling a market that’s way TOO BROAD.

“If you try to be everyone’s cup of tea, you’ll end up being no one’s cup of tea.”

The only way to win is by getting more specific, more niche.

It gets a little better with:

‘We offer a payroll solution for B2B SaaS companies under $5M revenue’

And even better, when getting REALLY specific, targeting should look something like this:

‘We offer a payroll solution for B2B SaaS agencies,
+ with 5-20 employees
+ based in Europe
+ with $1-$3M in annual revenue
+ that do cold calling
+ use Hubspot as their CRM

And all of a sudden, the message really resonates.
Because now it’s relevant.

But here’s the problem…

Most teams will never be able to maximize the outcome for their TAM.

Why?

Because they simply can’t find more than 30–60% of their TAM’s contact info.

So, to hit their goals, they’re forced to widen the targeting, and
…dilute their ICP
…reach out to bad-fit prospects
…build a trashy pipeline with low conversions

This is exactly why we built BetterContact.

Built to find the most amount of contact data to maximize the amount of revenue opportunities in a TAM.

John Karsant started LevelUp Leads as a pure cold email agency, but now runs one of the top 3 largest US cold calling outbound agencies (+60 cold callers, 100s of customers), so I *needed* to talk to him.

My most burning question was:

What does it really take to get there?

Because most agencies never make it past 1-2 reps.

Here's some good advice on how to get there 👇

If you're an outbound agency owner struggling with decreasingly lower outreach reply rates, here's something to think about:

Literally every outbound agency, including yours, is competing over the same contacts...

Because every agency uses the same tools (e.g. Apollo), meaning everyone reaches out to the same prospects.

However, the most-commonly used tools such as Apollo don’t have every contact in your TAM, and even if they do, a good amount of times no valid contact data is available (meaning you can’t reach them).

But those prospects still exist.
↳ They’re real people, working at real companies.
↳ They just can’t be verified by standard methods.

If you stick with this status quo, you have literally zero competitive advantage, as to the prospect, you’re just another person out of many trying to sell the same thing.

That’s why it makes sense to ‘go where others don’t’.

A concept called the ‘blue ocean’ - uncontested spaces (i.e. leads) that don’t get any attention from outbound players.

In practice, this simply means to focus on those contacts Apollo etc. don’t have contact data for.

That’s an important strategy we’ve built BetterContact around.

Facilitating access to those ‘untouched leads’ your competitors are most likely not even aware of.

Meaning:
↳ More leads others can’t reach
↳ Less competition
↳ Higher reply rates
↳ More conversions

If I were an outbound agency founder with $2M ARR ambitions (serving clients with 10,000 - 50,000 TAM), I’d bet big on adding Cold Calling to get there:

Cold calling is hard and scary:

1. Cold calls take more time than sending an email
2. Cold calling isn’t aren’t nearly as scalable as cold email
3. Mobile numbers are more expensive than emails
4. It takes courage to pick up the phone and call someone

And when you finally dial a number and no one picks up, there's no buffer between you and failure like with email.

You immediately feel the failure.

Nothing kills morale faster than:

1. Building & enriching an A+ lead list
2. Overcoming anxiety to pick up the phone
3. Just hearing: “This number is not in service”

And guess what, with mobile numbers that happens a lot, because, compared to emails, mobile numbers are much harder to verify.

------

So, most agencies just avoid cold calling altogether.

At the same time, that's exactly why cold calling is your big opportunity.

I've seen top cold emailing agencies picking it up (again).

Because no one really does it at scale, you can build some serious competitive advantage by being the one outbound agency that does cold calling too.

-----

Starting out, here’s how I’d set up a two-month cold calling pilot:

1. Get a caller or call yourself (I recommend doing the latter at the beginning)
2. Get a (power/parallel) dialer like Aircall, PhoneBurner or Frontspin
3. Focus on high-intent leads for now (e.g. positive reply/lead magnet)
4. Enrich leads with BetterContact to get verified mobile numbers
5. Follow a simple 3-5 call touchpoints structure over 10-14 days

Give this a shot for 2 months and see what happens.

It’s really not rocket science.

With the right stack + data quality, cold calling can become one of your highest-converting outbound channels.

Things I hate to see in outbound:

- personalization based on what school I went to
- constant reinventing of age old concepts
- vendors charging for invalid contact data
- everyone using same data & signals = same message
- when companies need to dilute ICP in order to hit goals
- celebrating the wrong metrics (e.g. open rates)
- weak follow ups with no value-add

Things I love to see in outbound:

- A/B/C testing & iterating quickly
- when sender prioritizes offer over personalization
- laser-focusing on your ICP definition & TAM
- finding data, signals, buyer insights no one else has
- the fact that it went from no barrier to entry to exclusive (again)

There's plenty of things to hate about outbound. But also plenty to love about it.

Most outbound campaigns fail before the first email is even sent.

Not because the copy is bad.
Not because deliverability infra is poorly set up.
But because outbound didn't make sense in the first place.

Here’s when outbound actually works - and when you should think twice:

✅ High ACV (> $10k+)

When you're going for high-value contracts & outbound gives you direct access to decision makers.

But outbound can also work for lower ACVs - if the math checks out.

(Emails Sent × Positive Reply Rate × Meeting Rate × Close Rate × ACV) – (Emails Sent × Cost per Email) = Profit

If the cost per meeting still makes sense at the end of that chain - go for it.

But don’t just guess or hope for it. Base it on maths.

✅ Clearly defined ICP

If your target audience is vague, your messaging will be too.

Outbound works best when your ICP is razor-sharp and exclusionary.
(you win more by saying no to the wrong leads.)

✅ Pain-aware market

If your buyers already know they have a problem, your emails don’t need to educate - they just need to resonate.

✅ Narrow TAM but deep pockets

A small total addressable market isn't a problem. As long as you're willing to invest in high-quality data, personalization and multi-channel outreach.

(Wide TAMs hide weak strategies. Narrow TAMs expose them.)

✅ Strong offer & social proof

If your offer is weak, outbound will tell you quickly.

Outbound amplifies, and NOT fixes, your positioning.

Anything you would add?

taplio

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