The client
A Series A European SaaS company selling workflow software to mid-market operations teams (50–500 employees). Product-market fit confirmed, founder-led sales working, but scaling pipeline beyond the founder’s network wasn’t happening.
The problem
The founder was the only person closing deals and the only person generating opportunities. Every month was a scramble — inbound leads were inconsistent, and there was no predictable way to add new logos to the pipeline.
Previous attempts: hired one SDR who quit after 4 months. Tried a generic outbound agency that burned the main domain with high-volume template emails. Bought Apollo and Lemlist licenses nobody had time to configure.
What we built
A fully-managed outbound engine:
- Defined a sharp ICP: Operations Directors at European services companies (50–500 employees) using legacy tools the client displaces
- Built sourcing pipelines pulling from 4 data sources with cross-validation
- Set up 3 dedicated sending domains (warmed over 2 weeks) to protect the main domain
- Wrote 5 sequence variants targeting different buyer personas and trigger events (new role, funding, tech stack signals)
- Ran inbox management and reply handling from our team — qualification happens before the founder sees anything
- Weekly reporting on open rates, reply rates, meetings booked, and testing decisions
Stack: Smartlead, Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Clay for enrichment, HubSpot for CRM sync, internal n8n for orchestration.
The result
- 14 qualified meetings per month within 6 weeks of kickoff
- 41% average open rate (industry avg: 15–20%)
- 6.8% positive reply rate
- 3 closed deals in the first 4 months, ACV €24K average
- Founder time on prospecting: from 15 hrs/week to 0
The founder focuses entirely on discovery calls and closing. Pipeline is now predictable enough to hire a first internal AE with confidence.