Mark's posts, Nov 13 – Nov 27

3 positive replies in the first two weeks. 34 in a two-week stretch a month later.

Same M&A advisory client. Same team. Here's what happened in between.

At the first check-in, email was already at a 2.6% reply rate. That's more than double the ~1% average.

LinkedIn had 0 leads.

The real constraint was list size. We were running out of the right people to email.

So the client gave us new industries to target, we left LinkedIn alone to do its thing, and we checked back in two weeks later.

→ 50+ positive replies in October
→ 34 positive replies in the next two weeks
→ LinkedIn acceptance rate went from 7.8% to 36%

If anyone had judged this campaign at week 2, LinkedIn gets cut and the volume never grows.

When do you decide if a campaign is working? 👇

$1,000 a month on LinkedIn ads. 0 conversions.

That's what a prospect showed me on a strategy call last week. Plenty of impressions. Zero leads.

My advice was to move that budget somewhere else for now.

LinkedIn's algorithm needs room to learn. Somewhere around $5,000 a month it starts finding the right people. At $1,000 it mostly shows your ad to whoever is cheapest to reach.

I like paid ads. We run them for clients and for ourselves. They just work best as phase two.

Here's how I decide:

→ Run ads now if you have real website traffic to retarget, a budget the platform can learn on, and a message you already know works.

→ Wait if your site barely gets visitors, your budget is under what the platform needs, or you're still looking for the message.

For most companies I talk to, phase one is cold email and LinkedIn outreach. That's where you find the message that gets replies. Around day 60, phase two puts ad money behind it.

What did your last $1,000 in LinkedIn ads get you?

2 days. 1 test campaign. A reply from a COO.

That happened before the prospect had signed anything.

The company sells software into logistics, and their sales process was already in great shape:
→ 62% of discovery calls turn into intent to buy
→ 42% of those go on to a trial

The leak was further up. They were landing 2 to 3 new customers a month and needed 7.

A strong close rate can't fix an empty top of funnel.

So before the strategy review, we ran a small test campaign at their exact buyers. Two days later, a COO at one of those companies replied.

That one reply did more work than any slide in the deck. It proved the list was right and the angle landed.

If your close rate is strong and you're still missing targets, count how many new conversations go in at the top each week.

What's that number for your team right now?

$60K to $70K base. Plus commission, benefits, and months of ramp before the first real meeting.

That's the in-house SDR math a founder walked me through last week. Their words: "I don't think we'd want to pay $150,000... then have to onboard."

A different founder put it another way the same week: "Am I building a company, or do I need this working tool?"

Two very different businesses. Same problem.

Outbound needs someone running it every single day. Neither of them wanted to become a full-time outbound manager.

There's no one right answer here. Some teams should hire. Some should outsource. Some founders should keep doing it themselves until there's a pattern worth handing off.

Where is your team leaning for 2027? 👇

4 tools. No Clay. That's the outbound stack I gave a solo founder last week.

They told me upfront they weren't a buyer right now. They wanted to learn to run outbound themselves first, and I respect that.

So I gave them the setup I'd use if I were starting from zero:

1. ScaledMail (our sister product) for domains, inboxes, authentication and warmup
2. A sequencer like PlusVibe, around $77 a month, to send
3. LeadMagic for enrichment once you're past ~20,000 emails
4. Claude Code for research and personalization logic

What I told them to skip for now: Clay and Bitscale. Great tools. Overkill before you've proven a single campaign.

What to expect: a 1 to 4% reply rate, with around 12% of those replies being positive. Anyone promising more on day one is guessing.

When managing it starts eating your week, that's when you hand it off.

What's in your stack right now?

3 things I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving. All 3 are people.

1. A client who didn't panic at week 2.
Their first check-in showed 0 leads from LinkedIn. A month later we were at 34 positive replies in two weeks. That kind of patience is rare, and it's the reason the campaign got to work.

2. A founder who told me upfront, "I'm probably not your likely buyer right now," and stayed on the call anyway.
No pitch, just two people comparing notes on outbound. I left that call having learned as much as they did.

3. My team.
Josh, Savannah, and everyone behind the scenes working the inbox so I can spend my day on the phone. Sales gets easier when the people around you make it look easy.

None of these show up on a revenue report. All of them make the job worth doing.

Happy Thanksgiving. Who made your list this year? 🦃

10,000 leads for $99. Unlimited sends. Lifetime AI SDR.

Black Friday deals in outbound I'd walk right past:

→ "10,000 leads for $99"
Half of them bounce. The other half have never heard of you and never will.

→ "Unlimited sends from your main domain"
Great deal until your invoices start landing in spam too.

→ "Lifetime AI SDR, one payment"
It will email people who already said no. Forever. Lifetime means lifetime.

→ "Hyper-personalized at scale"
"Loved your recent post about Q3!" They posted about their dog.

The only things worth stocking up on: warmed inboxes on domains that aren't your main one, a list you've actually verified, and copy short enough to read on a phone.

No doorbusters required.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend. What's the worst "deal" you've ever been pitched in outbound? 🦃