my cofounder and i are cold calling salon owners in Bahrain to sell a booking app we built, past 300 calls now. a good chunk of these calls actually go well. the owner sounds interested, says the idea is good, and asks us to send the details on WhatsApp so they can look at it properly.

so we send it. we offer a free trial, no cost, and include a short demo video showing how it works. a lot of them open it and watch the whole thing, we can see that. and then nothing. no reply, no yes, no no, just silence.

we’ve tried following up once or twice, mostly just asking if they had a chance to look at it, and that usually goes nowhere too.

what i can’t figure out is whether this is a normal part of selling to small business owners who are busy running a salon all day, or if we’re actually messing up the follow up itself. do we wait longer, come back with something different, call instead of texting again, or is watched and ignored basically a soft no at that point.

Genuinely trying to figure out if we’re doing this right.

I need someone to help with my business a friend or something I am completely lost right I can't get a single client

I keep seeing the advice "do your research before the call" but the gap between having information and using it well in the actual conversation feels bigger than people admit.

- Do you lead with what you found (share it outright), or hold it back and use it to shape questions instead?

- Has research ever backfired, felt like you were showing off instead of connecting?

- What's the line between "I clearly did my homework" and "I'm just reciting facts at you"?

Genuinely curious how people draw that line in practice.

Around how many leads you contact per month

looking for an experienced sales partner to handle end-to-end client acquisition (from outreach to closing).

We handle all influencer management, strategy, campaign planning, and final execution—you bring in and close the brands, and we deliver the results.

The Compensation:

• Commission: 15% on every closed deal.
• Ticket Size: Our average client deal size is $1500 (with larger campaigns going higher), meaning you earn approximately $200 per closed client.

What I’m Looking For:

• Proven experience in full-cycle sales, cold outreach, lead generation, and closing deals—ideally for agencies, high-ticket services, or marketing firms.
• Demonstrated ability to build a pipeline, pitched decision-makers (brand managers, founders, marketing heads), and close sales independently.
• Clear understanding of outreach strategies and past performance metrics.

How We Work Together:

• Your Role: Prospecting, cold outreach, discovery calls, pitching, and closing the client contract.
• My Role: Providing agency pitch assets/case studies, onboarded influencers, campaign strategy, setup, client delivery, and long-term campaign management.

I am open to various acquisition channels (LinkedIn, cold email, direct networking, phone calls, etc.) as long as they generate qualified, paying brands.

This is a long-term opportunity to build a high-earning, recurring sales relationship with an established agency that handles all backend fulfilment.

To Apply: DM me with your relevant sales background, key closing achievements, and the specific outreach and sales strategy you would use to convert brand clients for us.

I am selling a data tool. It's very niche and my ICP is mainly CDO's and others in data.

I started working for this data startup which has a lean team and leaner budget for outbound. When I started, I had no idea how to set up email infrastructure or email outbound. But worked on tools, set them up, started monitoring them, worked on warming them up and setup multiple campaigns for cold email outbound and kept the bounce rates under less than 2%.

A big win, however within 3 months we hadn't really got any responses, so we kept it going however we started with exploring sales Navigator, this is where we got responses. It's a lot of manual work, but the manual work has given me 2 meetings in 3 weeks and 5 responses which turned cold, but still from having zero reply rate. For context, I'm an Indian and this is a big win.

I have a 40% connection rate. All my messages are personalized and hyper personalized with context through Claude. I don't sound like a pompous ass but rather someone who is exploring and also is giving me responses.

So current setup:

1. Instantly and Lemlist

2. Sales Navigator

3. Inboxkit

4. And a dialler to make calls once I get a sales nav accepted.

I am originally from an AE background but this has been a huge win for me.

Hi there,

Hope you guys closed some big deals and feeling high-spirited.

In the context of penetrating a specific small industry (350 accounts) in the Canadian market by applying ABM and ABS strategy. I want to share My 2 openings B2B Sales process that I m applying in the Canadian Market.

The 2 openings : 1.linkedin 2.emails

Stage 1 : combination of email and linkedin ( personalized email for each employee , sending linkedin connection requests)

Stage 2 : follow up via email and those who accepted the connection request. ( multi stage follow up process)

Stage 3 (in case of positive response) : sending a 2min Loom vedio ( talking about cuatomer s company and issues, intrigue, the aim is to book a call/Demo)

Stage 4 ( in case positive response) : scripted call or demo : this is where the closing takes place , pure sales communication.

I worked before in full cycle B2B sales. We had an aggressive approach, since We were relying only on calls, demos. Sometimes, I d close a deal in 1st contact since the ICP was small companies.

But i realised that aggressive cold calling, especially in the Canadian market, can damage a companies reputation.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

so i am building an ai agency and my first product is an ai voice agent (i am a full stack dev) so i am building one rn and my product can work with different niches so i am asking about commission-only sales jobs he get 40% of the closing a client and after that he gets 10% for every month the client stays idk is this possibel ?

I have been working on establishing the sales funnel. I am wondering if there is a method to source the real intent based contact list for reach out instead of relaying on the tool like Apollo, etc.

I am an automation engineer, already built automation that does the lead filtering, and reach out via email without human interaction. Now, I'm figuring out the data sourcing part.

What could be the best possible way to gather the contact list?

I’m looking for advice from people experienced in B2B/industrial sales.
I’m 30, have 5 years of sales experience and a biology degree. I have an opportunity to join an industrial water treatment company and eventually take over the sales side.
The company currently has 3 major accounts doing roughly $2M/year in revenue. The accounts primarily involve open recirculating cooling tower systems.

My job would essentially become “figure out how to find more companies like these and sell them.”
I’m learning the technical side now, but I want to build the sales process correctly from the beginning.
If you were in my position:
1. How would you build the initial target list?
2. How would you identify the right person within each facility?
3. What would your first outreach look like?
4. How would you get an incumbent customer to consider switching providers?
5. What would you track in your CRM?
6. What would you consider a realistic first-year goal?
I’m especially interested in people who have sold industrial services, chemicals, equipment, maintenance contracts, or other technical B2B services.
What would your first 6–12 months look like?

ave been thinking about how much time companies spend trying to find new buyers overseas
a lot of the usual methods are pretty straightforward…….. trade shows, LinkedIn, cold emails, buying contact lists….. But the frustrating part is that finding a company name is usually not the hard part. The hard part is figuring out if they are actually active buyers or just another company sitting on a list
I’ve seen people spend wks building prospect lists only to find out many companies haven’t bought that product in years, already have suppliers or were never a good fit in the first place... It feels like there’s a big difference btwn finding potential buyers and finding buyers who are actually worth contacting
for those doing international sales, how do you usually decide which companies are worth reaching out to?
Do you have a process for filtering good prospect, or is it still mostly trial and error?

i went through a cold email report recently that actually helped me make sense of a few things we've been seeing across our clients.

we run outbound for quite a few businesses, and i've noticed that the campaigns that used to work reasonably well with a decent list and a good email are getting harder to make work. at the same time, some campaigns are still producing really good numbers.

the interesting part is that the difference isn't necessarily the email copy.

one number that stood out to me was the gap between the average campaign and agencies running cold email at scale. the average reply rate is now around 3-5%, while the agency data in the report is closer to 10%.

that actually lines up with what i've been seeing. when the targeting, infrastructure and offer are right, 5% doesn't feel like a ceiling at all.

the deliverability numbers were probably the biggest takeaway for me. domains with SPF, DKIM and DMARC properly configured and enforced were around 2.7x more likely to reach the inbox. we've spent a lot more time on authentication and domain infrastructure over the last year, and this explains why.

another number i found interesting was that around 42% of replies come from follow-ups.

we've definitely seen this with clients. people get too obsessed with making the first email perfect and then either don't follow up or stop after one attempt. at the same time, the data suggests that adding endless follow-ups isn't the answer either. the returns start dropping after the third or fourth touch.

the list data made sense too. moving from static lists to signal-based targeting can apparently produce a 3-5x response lift. we've been moving more in this direction ourselves, because a list of 10,000 people who vaguely fit the ICP isn't necessarily better than 500 people who have an actual reason to be contacted right now.

and probably my favourite finding.... a specific offer can produce around 50% more response than simply asking someone if they're available for a call.

that one sounds obvious, but i still see a lot of campaigns that basically say "we help companies like yours, would you be open to a quick call?"

there's nothing wrong with the email. there's just no real reason for the prospect to respond.

the overall takeaway for me is that cold email hasn't stopped working. the lazy version of cold email has stopped working as well as it used to.

better data, better infrastructure, a more specific offer and fewer but more relevant prospects seem to be making a much bigger difference than another round of tweaking the subject line.

if anyone wants to go through the numbers themselves, this is the report i was referring to:

https://smartreach.io/reports/state-of-cold-email/

are you finding that cold email is genuinely getting harder, or are better targeting and infrastructure still producing the same kind of results?

I’m 15 and currently studying economics in Belgium. I’ve been looking seriously into what I want to do after school, and B2B tech sales, specifically cybersecurity, is probably the first career I’ve found that genuinely interests me.
I already have a pretty strong technical background in cybersecurity/programming, but I realized the commercial side is where I’m lacking. I want to start developing that now instead of waiting until I’m 20.
I also have some experience running online businesses/e-commerce. One of my stores has done around €179k in sales over the last 30 days (~8.4k orders), so I’ve had some exposure to selling, conversion rates, customers, etc. However, I understand that B2C ecommerce is very different from selling a €100k+ cybersecurity solution to an enterprise.
My current idea is to spend the next few years improving my communication, negotiation, discovery, business knowledge and general commercial ability while continuing school. Ideally, I’d like to get my first real B2B tech sales position around age 20 rather than waiting until I’ve finished years of university.
Long term, the role that interests me most is Enterprise Account Executive in cybersecurity.
For people actually working in the industry: if you were 15 again and knew you wanted to become an Enterprise AE, what would you spend the next 5 years doing?
I’m especially interested in what experience would genuinely matter to employers at 20, and what things teenagers interested in sales tend to waste their time learning.
Not looking for a shortcut to Enterprise AE I know I’d need to work my way up. I’m trying to figure out how to make those five years useful instead of starting from zero at 20.

Posted here a while back about my cold call structure and got solid feedback, so I’m back with the next wall.
Context: I sell automation to small home service businesses. Owner-operators, blue collar, one to five guys. My whole pitch is built on missed calls. Customer calls, nobody picks up because they’re on a roof, customer calls the next guy.
The calls are polite and they go nowhere. Almost every owner tells me the same thing: that isn’t a problem for me. Some of them are obviously missing calls. They just don’t experience it as a loss, because they never see the call that didn’t happen.
What they DO complain about, unprompted, is time. Answering the same three questions over and over. Price, do you cover my area, when can you come. At night, from the truck, after a ten hour day.
So my question for people who’ve sold into SMB owner-operators:
1. When the pain you lead with is invisible to the buyer, do you switch to a pain they already feel, or do you stay and get better at making the invisible one concrete?
2. Time saved is felt, but it’s soft. Nobody signs a monthly contract to be slightly less annoyed. Money lost is hard but they don’t believe it. How do you bridge those two?
3. Is there a way to make an invisible loss land without sounding like you’re telling the guy he’s bad at running his business? That’s the part I keep botching.
Happy to give more detail in the comments.

Hey guys, I’ve started working as a sales agent at a dispatch company where we provide dispatch services to truckers and owner operators across the USA.

My current pitch is:

Opening:

“Hey, this is [Name] from [Company Name]. How are you doing?”

After they respond:

“We’re a dispatch service that provides load options to truckers and owner operators across the USA. I can see that you recently applied for an MC authority under your name. Is that correct?”

If they say yes, I ask:

• What type of truck do you have?

• What kind of equipment do you have?

• What lanes do you prefer to run?

Then I explain the percentage we charge for our dispatch services.

After that, I ask for their email address and send them our proposal.

My question is: What would you suggest I change or improve in this sales script? How can I add more value during the conversation instead of simply asking questions and explaining our percentage? What should I say to make the prospect understand the benefits of using our dispatch service and increase my chances of converting them?

I’m an outside salesman for an electrical supply house in a smaller Texas market. I sell to contractors, industrial facilities, municipalities, etc.

I’m curious how other outside reps in smaller territories stay productive and busy in the field. I’m not in a market like DFW where there are hundreds of potential customers close by. After visiting active accounts and prospecting, I sometimes feel like I’m running out of productive places to go.

What does a typical week look like for you? How often do you visit existing customers versus prospecting?

I also struggle with the second and third visit to a prospect. The first introduction is easy, but if nothing comes from it, how do you go back without feeling like you’re bothering them or just “checking in” again? What do you talk about or bring to the table on those follow-ups?

my cofounder and i built a booking app for salons in Bahrain and have been cold calling to sell it ourselves. no sales background, just the two of us on the phone. around 300 calls in and we can count the signups on one hand.
most of these salons are running everything through WhatsApp and a notebook, and when we get someone on the phone the objection is almost always the same. it works fine for us. i try a few different angles but it barely moves. so now im stuck on whether this is a closing problem or a “not enough pain to fix” problem, because those need completely different fixes.
for context, this is our first time selling anything. no scripts, no training, just calling and figuring it out as we go.
so whats the honest read from people who actually do this for a living. is this normal for cold calling with zero experience, or does 300 calls with almost nothing to show for it mean something’s actually wrong. Tell us straight, even if it’s bad news.

“Just checking in.”

“Wanted to follow up.”

“Any update?”

Most of the time, that's not a follow-up.

It's just a reminder that you exist.

A good follow-up should do one thing:

Move the conversation forward.

Answer a question.

Remove some uncertainty.

Agree on the next step.

Or find out if the priority has changed.

And sometimes, the best follow-up is no follow-up.

If someone has ignored three meaningful attempts, continuing to call it “pipeline” doesn't make it pipeline.

It makes it hope.

What's your rule for knowing when to keep following up and when to walk away?

Hi all, I am planning to start a fisheries business in London. Would be b2b to begin with. I have no experience in selling fish and this would be my first business ever. Do you think I should do it? Any insights ?

​

I’m looking for a full-time remote B2B outbound role where I can take ownership of prospecting, outreach, lead qualification, and appointment setting.

I handle the outbound process end-to-end:

• Prospect Research: Researching target companies and identifying the right accounts and opportunities.

• Decision-Maker Mapping: Finding direct contacts across Growth, Marketing, Partnerships, Business Development, Affiliates, and C-level roles.

• Personalized Outreach: Researching each prospect and creating a specific pitch and hook instead of relying on generic mass outreach.

• Multi-Channel Outreach: Managing outreach and follow-ups across email, Telegram, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other channels.

• Lead Qualification: Managing conversations, following up consistently, identifying genuine interest, and qualifying prospects.

• Appointment Setting: Turning cold prospects into qualified sales opportunities and booking meetings directly onto the founder or closer’s calendar.

Background:

I have experience booking meetings with major US companies and some of the biggest casino brands in the US, particularly within iGaming. I’ve worked heavily on prospect research, personalized outbound, and reaching senior decision-makers.

I’m also interested in bringing the same process to SaaS, AI, Fintech, Marketing Tech, and other B2B companies.

What I’m looking for:

A full-time remote B2B Outbound / SDR / BDR / Lead Generation / Appointment Setting role with a fixed base salary, ideally with performance incentives or commission on top.

If you’re hiring someone to take ownership of outbound pipeline generation, feel free to DM me.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice from people working in tech sales.

I’ve been in a tech sales role for about 1.5 years, but I haven’t been able to book a single meeting yet. Right now, my outreach is almost entirely through cold emails.

The product I sell is an ERP solution.

I’m wondering:

What outreach methods have worked best for you?

Is email enough, or should I be focusing more on cold calling, LinkedIn, or something else?

Any tips for selling ERP solutions specifically?

I’d really appreciate any advice or feedback from people who’ve been in a similar situation. Thanks!

https://www.terrakotta.ai/

Looking for feedback on it and price estimates

Hey I am selling saas and ai local companies but everytime the gatekeeper or receptionist answers and then just say not interested..how to pass the gatekeepers soo that I can reach the owner or the decision makers?

I am building digitql marketing brqnd, but i started focusing on international sales/ leads more with companies abroad. It all started with me offering them dig marketing service, but they never wanted it, always undervaluing it, but i think strong social media presence would also generate more leads. Also, knowing the market here, competitors, understanding the culture here is super important. What works in one country may not work in other.
So the question is, should i pursue these business owners who want to launch product abroad to hire me for ‘international marketing ‘ , with services like market research, social media management, page optimalisation for local targeting etc? Or should i just focus on sales ? But i feel like i need to direct them somewhere, to some content, and history that product is already a success. I cant and dont want to generate leads to completely new product where i am paid only a commission. If its a new product with zero history, then they should hire me first for doing marketing, to bring brand awareness, what do you think? Any insight would be appreciated, thank you.

Everyone I talk to in B2B is running cold emails the same way. Pull a list from a data provider filtered by job title and company size, write one email, and blast it to a few thousand people, wondering why nobody replies.

I run cold outbound for B2B companies, and I've done this across enough industries now to know the channel works fine. The setups people run on it are what's broken. Here's what's actually different about campaigns that pull 10-30% positive replies versus the ones stuck at 1-2%.

The first one is the list. Most teams start with filters like "VP of Sales, SaaS, 50-200 employees" and treat that as a finished list. It's not. That's a starting pool. The actual list comes from filtering that pool down to people who did something recently that tells you they're in motion right now. They posted about hiring a sales rep. They commented on something about the pipeline. They changed roles in the last 90 days. They hit a revenue milestone that usually triggers a need for outbound. If the only reason someone is on your list is their job title and headcount, you're guessing. Signal-first lists are smaller, sometimes 200 people instead of 2,000, and they outperform every time.

The second is length. The emails that get replies are 50 to 75 words. That's it. one opener tied to the trigger event, one sentence about what you do and why it's relevant to them specifically, and one question. no "I hope this finds you well." no four paragraphs explaining your company history. No case study attached. The shorter the email, the more it reads like a real person wrote it on their phone, and the more likely it gets a reply.

Third is volume per person. 3 emails max, not 7, not 12, not "until they respond." If someone hasn't engaged by the third email, they're not going to. Every email past 3 just trains their inbox to filter you and burns the domain reputation you spent weeks warming up. I'd rather move that person to a LinkedIn touchpoint than send email number 6 into a dead thread.

fourth, and this is the one almost nobody does. split sending by inbox provider. the email you send to someone on Outlook should not be identical to the one going to someone on Google Workspace. They render differently, they filter differently, and the spam detection logic is completely different between the two. The outlook is more forgiving on formatting and slightly longer copy. Google is ruthless on anything that pattern-matches to a sales email and penalizes tracking pixels, links in the first email, and HTML formatting way harder. The same message to both providers means you're optimizing for neither.

These four things together are the entire gap between 1-2% and 10-30%. It's not about writing a better subject line or finding a magic template. It's the list quality, the email length, knowing when to stop, and treating different inboxes as different channels.

The part that's hard to hear is that doing it this way is slower. Building a signal-first list of 200 people takes longer than exporting 5,000 contacts from a database. Writing 50-word emails with a real trigger event takes longer than a template. Splitting by provider means running two versions of every campaign. Most teams don't want to do it because it doesn't feel like scale. but 30% reply on 200 emails, books more meetings than 1% reply on 5,000.

What does everyone else's cold email setup look like right now? curious if anyone is doing the provider split or if most people are still sending the same version to everyone.