4 months of cold outreach, maybe 3 real replies - genuinely cant tell what i'm doing wrong
so i've been at this since february and the results are pretty rough.
started with cold email. 250 emails total to real estate agencies - mix of mass market and high-end, US, Dubai, Switzerland. all personalized, short, no walls of text. I ran a/b tests in batches of 20 to see what landed better. tracked open rates - they were actually decent, 40-60% on some batches. got exactly 1 reply that showed real interest, they agreed to a call. then i fumbled the follow-ups and they went cold after the third one. never got to actually show the product.
after that i switched to instagram and whatsapp dms. Targeted solo realtors in the US from RealTrends - framed it as one colleague asking another a genuine question, nothing salesy. Sent around 50 messages. got 2 replies. both were polite, answered my question, then slowly ghosted when i tried to warm up the conversation. never got close to even mentioning what i built
now i'm testing home service businesses - HVAC, roofing, water damage. same approach, early days, similar pattern so far.
the product is a voice ai that calls back inbound leads within 15s of a form submission, qualifies them, books appointments. it works, demo is solid. no case studies yet because i can't get anyone through the door long enough to try it
what i genuinely cant figure out: is the problem the channel, the ICP, the follow-up, or something in my approach that kills it before it even starts. open rates say people are seeing the emails. But something between "opened" and "replied" is just not happening
if you've sold to small business owners or real estate people - what would you look at first