50M Client Pipeline Generated From Cold Outreach in 2026. Founder @ Ironpeak Marketing (B2B Cold Email) and Spotlight BD (UK Focused B2B Cold Calling).
London, England
Joined September 2022
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Charlie Bennett retweeted
It's no secret that the internet is a cesspool of bad advice…
Everywhere you look are 17-year-olds flexing rented luxury cars from their "coaching businesses"
Alpha male gurus fresh outta the clink are poisoning our youth with testosterone-filled lies…
And of course my new favorite:
Smacking your cheeks with a hammer to strengthen your bone density via the hottest trend called "looksmaxxing," founded by a kid who openly admits using crystal meth and steroids to help you achieve peak physical status…
But there's one piece of advice that's been floating around for at least a decade.
In fact, when a prospect spat this nonsensical lie at me, I dang near went Medusa mode, hoping to turn this poor fool to stone with my raging glare!
Ok ok, jokes aside, the advice:
"Cold Email is DEAD"
Now let me pull up my sleeves and show you why this advice may actually be reversing your business progress (and the hidden campaign split test that's getting my client 20 calls a week):
There are 5 reasons why cold email campaigns fail:
1. Bad data
2. Poor infrastructure
3. Shyte offer
4. Not enough volume
5. Too small of a market
That's really it.
The funny thing is people give cold email a shot, only send like 1,000–2,000 emails…
…Then go crying to their grandma and the internet saying:
"Waah, cold email doesn't work."
Ok, enough complaining and more solutionizing (that's not a word but it sounds cool). Look, to help you solve the big 5 mistakes I mentioned earlier, you'd need an entire course. But if you want to book 10–20 highly qualified sales calls a month, on a pay per result basis, book a call here.
Otherwise, here's the hidden campaign split test.
In Smartlead, our email CRM, you can split test multiple emails at once. If you ever want to be successful in marketing, then you need to test.
Test 1: The offer with a crazy guarantee
Test 2: The lead magnet
Test 3: The case study
Test 4: Humor
Test 5: The loom
Depending on offers, markets, sophistication, and other factors…
When we start a campaign in a new field, we really don't know which one of these wins. But these 5 emails cover a wide net, and after 1 week we find the clear winner and scale.
Right hands up…
Who’s the retard teaching people to send cold webinar invites.
Clearly converts or they wouldn’t do it but fuck me it’s annoying. Getting 3 a day at this point.
49 days to work out how to run my entire cold email agency using AI agents.
The drums of war are calling me back.
I have zero issue firing clients.
usually within 2-3 days of working together the red flags will show and it's time to cut them loose.
NOTHING good will come from 'trying to make it work' when you know deep down they're a bad fit client.
will only waste your time, cost you money, and sanity.
How to close more sales meetings from cold traffic:
1. Ask what made them take the call (diagnose their pain)
2. What are they currently doing to solve that/what have they done so far
3. introduce your solution and explain why it's different from what they've done before (unique mechanism, tons of case studies/testimonials)
4. pricing convo - don't undervalue yourself
5. Ask: "is there anything stopping you from saying yes today"
follow that general structure and you'll close way more meetings booked from cold traffic.
I'm hiring several SDRs for my sales agency.
Ideal candidate:
- Looking to break into tech sales.
- Good at talking to people.
- Not scared to pick up the phone.
- Hungry to make a lot of money.
- Experience in sales good but not req.
This is a commission only role and you will earn as you learn.
You'll be trained by the former Global SDR Manager for the worlds largest sales agency.
Hate out of offices. imagine having the gaul to take holiday when I'm cold emailing you... unacceptable
I haven't touched Apollo in months.
for our list building my primary tools now are:
GetLeads (strong all rounder)
QuickEnrich (great for US, but limited elsewhere)
Blitz API (adds about 10% extra, but a nice to have)
MoltSets (waterfall enrichment on crack)
lead quality has gone up noticeable amount.
.coms will always be the king of cold email domains.
but they're expensive unless you can get them on offer, especially if you're buying in bulk which we do.
I've been using .co's for the last couple of months and i've seen very little difference in deliverability. Hardly noticeable across my sample size.
i'm sure if you're sending millions a month you'll notice, but for most people .co's are more than enough.
just don't be tempted to touch .info or you can kiss half your leads goodbye because deliverability absolutely tanks.
Spent most of my Saturday haggling with a Hyundai dealer because we're looking for a new car.
three things struck me:
1. Good salesmen are wasted in car sales, could make way more money in another industry
2. I am a complete sucker for good sales tactics.
3. My wife is the most brutal gatekeeper of all time (one of us has to be)
p.s. the Tucson is a lovely car if you're interested
I know it's fashionable to bash on Linkedin on here but don't sleep on it from a lead gen standpoint.
@parkerworth and I have a VA sat in our DMs sending 20 cold messages a day and we're getting probably 4-5 more discovery calls a week from it.
very little effort for the result, and the quality of those leads seems to be really high
The cold email campaigns that print vs the one's that don't have one major difference.
the winners are almost always built on a signal.
examples:
• new hire into a certain role
• recent tech stack change
• recent funding
• advertising for open jobs
• stagnant headcount growth
if you're just scraping a massive list from apollo and blasting volume then you may stumble across a few leads.
but signal led, smaller lists will get you way more leads in total.
Been playing around with Moltsets (@retentionadam) the last day or so in the beta and results are very promising.
I use several other unlimited data api's to put lists together but was alway losing 1-2k contacts where the other tools couldn't find their emails.
moltsets has found ~40% of those 'unfindable' emails which is pretty damn good.
going to be adding it to all my list building workflows and excited to see how it gets even better over the next few months of testing.
How to generate 20 new leads per day for your business this week:
1. Buy 50 secondary domains through Porkbun
2. Set up Gmail 100 mailboxes through ScaledMail
3. Find lookalikes of your best clients with Ocean io
4. Pull unlimited contact & email data with Getleads io
5. Verify leads with MillionVerifier
6. Verify catch-alls with Bounce Ban
7. Upload cleaned lead list to Smartlead
8. Use Claude to build an ICP map
9. Use that map to build targeted email copy
10. Send using Smartlead
11. Profit
If I was setting cold email up for my business from scratch this is exactly what I'd do.
I used to hate cold outreach.
not because I thought it didn't work but because I was scared of coming across as 'spammy' and ruining the personal brand I'd spent years building.
the reality is - it's only seen as spammy if you're sending a bad offer to the wrong people.
"AI agents are going to kill cold email"
1. no-one is going to trust AI to have free range in their emails
2. ESPs won't blanket block outreach because that will take out almost every business client of theirs.
3. if your outreach is super targeted (offer + list) it's seen as helpful, not annoying.
4. real AI uptake outside of the X bubble is minimal to say the least.
it's going to get harder of course, but that's an opportunity for the best operators to get really rich.
still think we've got a few years yet until that happens.