My agency serves a very small niche, and our average client is worth $60k+ per year.
We’re considering sending iPads(or other high value gifts) to a handful of highly qualified prospects, purely to get their attention and earn a meeting/call.
Has anyone tried something like this? Did it work, or did it come across as too gimmicky?
Hi guys,
I'm trying to find clients for my ai automation agency. But I struggle to cold call consistently because I keep procrastinating.
If you are a b2b founder or a remote sales rep, you might have the same problem as me.
So I thought about making a (free) online event next week where we cold call together every weekday morning from 9am to 10am (ET) (with cameras on and mics off) to motivate eachother and keep us accountable.
Between 10 and 20 people would be ideal, i think.
If you are interested, respond to this post (or send me a dm if you are shy 😅)
Been thinking about this lately, especially with SaaS and fintech where the product isn’t always something you can explain in one sentence
A prospect can be interested and still hesitate becoz they’re not confident enough about what the product/service does, why it matters to them or what they’re actually getting
So Im curious how much of the sales process ends up being spent just getting prospects to fully understand the product before you can even sell the value?
Do you actually notice a difference when a company makes that part easier from the start??
Hey guys, relatively new to B2B sales myself, was doing SMB marketing most of my life, and have just been tasked with trying to sale this software that is more for secure sharing of documents, but like, tbh I don't see how it differs from its competitors, besides that it's cheaper, and it's newer to the market too.
There are incumbents who have been here for decade(s) and is charging 20x-30x of the price we charge, but like, using a cheaper solution only saves people money, but doesn't make people more money, so I just go on calls and tell people "hey this saves you $xxx" but like, it doesn't feel like people care about it that much? And the people who do care tend to just ask for even more discounts?
Honestly, most products have no feature differentiations neither, it's not like they are better than us or we are exponentially better than them, which makes sales even harder.
Am I looking at how to sale such product the wrong way? Or would there be any lessons/videos that I could watch to learn more about how to sale this thing?
Setting up a sending domain from scratch for cold outreach and putting together the warmup process, and wanted to share what I landed on since most guides stop at warm it up first without ever giving a real volume schedule.
Before any warmup sends, I'd get SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up and verified through something like MXToolbox, because on my first domain I started warmup sends before DMARC was properly configured and spent the whole ramp period essentially invisible to receiving servers.
The ramp itself I'm running through Lemwarm (Lemlist's warmup tool), which handles volume increases automatically through a real inbox network that sends and receives back and forth.
So by the end of the second week I'm around 30 sends a day and by week 4 between 80 and 100, and that back-and-forth is what builds reputation while one-directional sends barely register with ESPs.
Most advice says 4 weeks and you're good to go, but I'm at week 5 and only dripping real prospects in at around 20 a day, because the first domain I ran outreach on I went too fast after the warmup and the deliverability drop took a long time to get out of.
So how long before you pulled the trigger on real sends here? I personally haven't seen anything close to a consensus even across the threads I've gone through.
Most of the deals you've lost had a signal long before you or your team noticed.
I can help you read the room better, understand who’s in front of you, how they buy, and what drives their decisions so you stop misreading signals and wasting time on deals that were never going to happen.
I do this by assessing your ambitions in sales, your current approach and help you improve that is aligned with who you are so can qualify clearer, close more and spend time on the actual clients that have the budget and willingness to work with you.
Comment below - one deal, problem and I will pinpoint one thing that's stopping you to see more.
First of all im trying to sell operation optimization services to help increase productivity,conversion rates and lower the costs so i have absoulty no idea how to find customers and cold calling or emailing doesnt work
Hi everyone! I work for a very large MSP and wondering, how are you getting in the door for introduction conversations. I have the stories from the customers i’ve brought in but my message isn’t landing. what’s working for everyone to bring in new opportunities?
I work in a small B2B environment and I love it. But Im trying to figure out if the pain I deal with daily is normal or if our company is uniquely chaotic.
Here what my day looks like:
CRM is half enriched and full of outdated contact
CRM is full of random companies in my designated vertical (micro to enterprise)
No clear ICP, so prospecting feels like guessing
Adding a new account is a manual process and takes up to 24 hours to get approved
I am responsible to enrich my territory. So I spend my free time on google, co pilot or when I am driving around writing businesses I think would be a good fit.
Huge product portfolio with no real guidance on how to position them. ( I do have a subject matter expert) But its up to me to find the companies
No written processes for sales, ops, or admin. ( I have to go off of memory or wing it)
proposal building takes forever and requires second eyes to look for mistakes (grammar, wording, details, snip its of the customer logo look good)
Route mapping is manually and clunky
Admin communication sucks, they reach out to you about something but provided no actionable or clear next steps or insight. ( Your customer is about to be sent to collection please get ahold of them) ( your credit approval is missing the LLC that on the account name please resubmit once fixed)
Product material dense and hard to translate into customer value. Requiring you to learn product from veteran coworkers
Prioritization is impossible because everything feels equally important
Tools don't talk to each other well
Reporting/ forecasting is feels like guesswork since there no criteria other then what are you going to sell next month. BTW it has to be at least quota
Half my job is working around broken processes/ workflows
Its hard to gauged what good output is since there no written standard. For example I called 100 prospects, and did 40 drop ins this week. Manager thinks that okay, vets think that's solid and green peas ask me how I did it.
I want to be clear I am grateful for the role and love my job. I am in no means complaining. I am trying to figure out if this is a common pain sales org face. If so why don't they just fix it. Seems to me the smoother thing goes the more output a rep would have resulting in more revenue coming in.
Had this happen a few times now and I’m curious how others handle it.
The prospect tests the product, technical side looks good, they get the results they were looking for, and during the calls everything sounds positive.
Then the pace completely changes.
“Need to discuss internally.”
“We’re reviewing.”
“Will get back to you.”
And suddenly a deal that felt pretty real starts moving at 10% of the speed it was moving during the test.
I used to think getting through the technical evaluation was the hard part. Starting to realize that might just be one step of a much longer process.
For people who sell into enterprise, what usually happens after a successful test on your side?
Do you try to get procurement/budget owners involved before the test finishes? Set a clear next step before giving them access? Or is this slowdown just normal and you learn to live with it?
Would be interested to hear what’s worked for people who deal with this regularly.
I've been in B2B sales about eight months and I keep getting told that if I'm the one following up every single time, the deal is already gone and I just haven't admitted it yet. I've got four like that right now, all of them past the date the buyer gave me, all of them still replying eventually. I'm not sure whether that advice is about pipeline hygiene or about not wasting my week.
For the people who've carried a quota for years, how did you learn where that line actually was?
I moved from mid-market into enterprise this year and the cycles are more than twice as long as anything I've run before. I've read maybe five sales books since January and I keep bailing around chapter three, right when the acronym shows up. Want something about how a decision actually gets made when six people on the other side have to agree, written by someone who's sat in those rooms.
Doesn't have to be a sales book at all, just not another named framework. Anything come to mind?
Hey r/b2b_sales
I recently finished a project mapping my IT services company's digital visibility and I’m puzzled: smaller competitors with fewer resources and smaller teams are far more visible online than we are. I want to learn, test, and improve, so I’m asking the community for practical, high-impact advice.
If you’ve grown visibility for a bootstrapped tech/IT services firm (or helped one do it), I’d be grateful for suggestions specifically for these areas:
Service pages: structure, messaging, SEO tactics that actually move the needle.
Review platforms (Clutch, GoodFirms, G2, etc.): how to get quality reviews quickly and ethically.
Search-result competitors: simple research hacks to spot what they’re doing and how to outrank them.
Original research: what type of data/content gets traction for B2B tech firms, and realistic ways to produce it.
Technology partner listings: how to get listed and make those pages convert.
Customer permission & testimonials: how to request them without sounding spammy and how to use them effectively.
What worked for you? Any step-by-step tactics, templates (message scripts), tools, or small experiments that gave outsized results? I’m comfortable with automation and workflows (Clay, HubSpot, etc.), so feel free to get technical.
Thanks I’ll share what we try and the results. Open to DMs for detailed follow-up.
- Daniel Carter
I recently started working with a semiconductor manufacturer and one of the things I’m trying to figure out is how people actually find potential buyers for industrial products.
We sell power semiconductor products like MOSFETs, IGBTs and SiC MOSFETs.
Right now, my idea is to use customs/import data to first figure out which companies in a target country are actually buying these types of products. Then once I have the company names, I would go on LinkedIn Sales Navigator and try to find their procurement/sourcing people and reach out to them directly.
But I’m not sure if this is actually how people in industrial B2B sales do it.
The biggest problem I see is finding the right person.
Even if I know Company X is importing semiconductor components, I still need to figure out who inside the company is actually responsible for buying them. Sometimes I can find procurement people on LinkedIn, sometimes I can’t, and sometimes there are so many people that I have no idea who I should actually be talking to.
So I’m curious... for anyone here who works in industrial/manufacturing B2B sales.
How do you actually find your potential customers?
And once you find a company that could be a customer, how do you find the actual buyer or decision-maker and get their contact information?
Do you guys use customs data + LinkedIn? Trade databases? Apollo/ZoomInfo? Industry directories? Trade shows? Or is there another method that works better for industrial sales?
Would especially love to hear from anyone who has worked in semiconductors, electronic components, manufacturing, automotive, energy, or similar industries.
Just trying to understand how this is actually done in the real world.
I feel like most sales advice is about what you should be doing more of — more calls, more follow-ups, more emails, more meetings.
But sometimes removing something has a bigger impact.
What’s one thing you stopped doing that noticeably improved your results?
Could be a habit, a sales tactic, a type of follow-up, anything.
Sales folks, need a small favour.
I’m looking for about 20 people from B2B sales.
SDRs, BDRs, AEs, Managers, Directors, doesn’t really matter.
We’ve been building AmbiZing for a while now and I want to see how accurately it actually understands a salesperson.
Nothing to buy here. This is completely free.
I’ll spend about 30 mins with you first. I want to understand your ambition in sales, how you learnt sales, where most of your learning came from and generally how you think about your career.
Then you take the baseline. Takes about 20 mins**.**
You get the report.
I get your honest feedback.
Tell me what we got right, what we got wrong, and whether the report actually sounds like you.
That’s pretty much it.
Need about** **20 people for this.
If you’re up for it, DM me. Would really appreciate the help.
Goal is to get you closer to your ambition and product validation and I want to understand if I’m able to solve this gap as a sales coach or not
"We're looking for a real hunter. Good relationship building and negotiation skills. Must be a team player and also customer service oriented."
Which one is it? Are you looking for someone who is good at going out and developing new business, or someone who will hide behind a full calendar of internal calls all day? Do you want someone who will negotiate for the best interest of your business for you, or someone who will bend over backwards for any external stakeholder's request?
Reads to me like you're looking for Schroedinger's sales person. They'd have to be a bipolar combination of two completely opposite personality types. Good luck with that!
By the way if you could tell me how many people there in your sales team and your industry
I have seen a few businesses spend months making lists of potential importers only to find out that most of them are not actually buying anything or they have already found suppliers. Some businesses focus much on big companies and they ignore smaller companies that buy things more often.
This makes me think about what makes some people good at finding importers that they can actually work with while others just make a list of names. Is it better to look at what importers have bought ? Or does looking at what they have bought over a time give us a better idea? How do experienced exporters decide which companies are worth talking to and which ones they should not bother with?
It would be really helpful to know what things have wasted the time, for people who are trying to find importers and what they did that finally started to work for them.
Hi everyone!
I'm the founder of AutomateX Labs, an AI automation agency that helps businesses automate repetitive processes using AI agents, workflow automation, CRM integrations, and custom business systems.
We're growing and looking for a motivated sales partner who can bring in new clients.
If you're interested, send me a DM with:
If you're serious about sales and want to grow with a fast-growing AI automation agency, send me a DM. I'd love to connect.