Where they started
Six meetings a month, all inbound or referral. A founder doing outreach between customer calls. No system, no forecast.
Week one to two: infrastructure
Three secondary domains, nine inboxes, DNS records set correctly, and fourteen days of warmup before a single prospect was contacted. This step is boring and non-negotiable.
Week two to three: the list
A tight ICP — 50 to 500 staff, specific industries, three job titles. 2,400 verified contacts, enriched with a real reason to reach out.
Week three: the copy
Short. Specific. One ask. No paragraph about how excited we are. Personalisation that references something true about the account, not a merge tag.
The part everyone skips
Replies were worked by a human within business hours, every day. That single discipline turned a 8.4% reply rate into 32 booked meetings a month.