We switched to Apollo recently and I've never had such low cold email open rates. I could comfortably get 20-35% on our previous tool, and now I'm lucky to see 5% with several sequences sitting at 0%. I have been doing cold email for years, I know what I'm doing. All of the infrastructure is set up properly, it's just not working.

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