How David Books 20 Sales Calls per Month With Cold Email Outreach

What's going on, guys? Andre Haykel Jr. Here from client Ascension. Back with another student spotlight interview here with the homie David. What's going on, bro?

Hey, Andre, how you doing?

Good, good, good, man. I'm pumped for this, dude. I mean, I know you've been in the program for a little while now, consistently winning, consistently signing new clients and getting results, working with Jod, your student success coach. And so we'll dive into the full story and just hear what's been working for you so that the guys listening who are also running agencies or maybe they're in the program or not in the program, thinking about joining, can get more insights as to, you know, what a successful agency owner like you is doing on the day to day and by joining a coaching program like Client Ascension. So excited to dive in. But the place we'll start is if you could just let the audience know a little bit about who you are and what you're currently working on and then we'll dive more in.

Yeah. So my name is David Holmes. I run an Amazon marketing agency. We predominantly work with 6 to 8 figure E commerce brands who want to sell on Amazon or have an Amazon presence and just want to grow.

That's awesome, bro. Yeah, that's awesome. And I would say, and maybe I'm wrong, but maybe it's just the echo chamber that I'm in, but that's a pretty common agency model, right? There's other people that are doing Amazon growth for people on Amazon or getting e commerce brands on Amazon. But again, you're the most successful one that I've seen so far. And so I guess, but this is like not even where I plan to start, but just for the audience. I think it's really important like when you're running an agency that is in a competitive market which most agencies are like SEO, there's tons of SEO agencies, cold email. There's tons of cold email agencies, Ads. There's tons of ads agencies. So I don't think there is an agency niche that exists that is not competitive. And so how do you stand out amongst other agency owners in your niche?

I think it's really just kind of like about the quality of your skills. Like my expertise in the niche like kind of comes off very clear when I'm kind of engaging with prospective and current clients. I also used to own my own Amazon FBA brand. I successfully exited it two years ago. So that gives me a lot of credence and credibility.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think it's the most obvious answer that most people don't want to hear, it's just like, be good at what you do, like actually provide a good service. Right. And it's so funny, we were talking about this on a podcast yesterday. People forget that it's called a service based business. People forget that they actually have to deliver a service and they don't just have to market and advertise and sell. Like you actually have to deliver a service. And so easy way to stand out, provide a really good service. Another question that I had, just based on what you said there, that was not planned, but I think would be valuable to know is like, how do you become good at the service you're selling? Like, what are some things you actually do to become really good at what you do? It sounds like running an Amazon FBA brand, you probably learned a lot of the ins and outs of what these other brands should be doing. But like day to day, like, how do you sharpen your skill set and get really good at what you do?

Yeah, I mean, I think a big part of it is just like putting some of your own money, like you don't scan the game. Running my brand definitely gave me the experience, like managing the entire P and L of an Amazon brand, especially with all the new fees. And then throughout the year, what I've been doing is just kind of like reinvesting in different courses, stuff like that for me and my team.

Yep, yep. I love that, bro. That's awesome. So let's kind of backtrack a little bit. How did you hear about Client Ascension? Right. Because there's always. There's been some funny stories on this one. I just interviewed a guy that heard about Client Ascension because he met Christian in the locker room of the gym. I heard another one where the kid was literally in school, like in college, and his professor told him about Client Ascension, which is like, that might have been the craziest one. So where have you heard about Client Ascension originally and kind of what was the lead up to you eventually making the decision to actually join?

Yeah, so it's definitely not anything as crazy as that. I mean, I've known of Daniel since like he released like Cold Email Mastery back in like 2019, 2020. And then I got into the Twitter funnel and then what led me to finally joining was like just realizing I needed to make a change from being a solo freelancer over work. And I really need to like, help build out my team. And to do that, I thought Client Sentient was the vehicle to get me there.

That's awesome, bro. Yeah, because it's so interesting. Like most people, actually everyone I've ever talked to, I think for the most part I asked them like, when did they hear about client attention? And it's never the same time that they joined client attention.

Right.

So like you heard about it, you've seen it on Twitter, but you didn't join right away until you came to the point of realization that something needed to change. And a big part of that change probably, and correct me if I'm wrong, but was making a big investment.

Right.

Because that kind of gets you off your ass and gets you thinking of like, okay, now like, I need to do something because I just put money on the line. You're almost betting on yourself by joining or making that big of a financial commitment. And then like you said, it's going from, okay, I'm running this thing as kind of like a solopreneur freelancer. Let's turn this thing into an actual agency similar to like how the client ascension guys are doing it with multiple people involved, team members, hiring systems, all that great stuff. So that, that's awesome to hear. So was it just you when you joined the program? Like you didn't have anyone else working at the agency?

Yeah, so it was just me when I joined the program. I had like experimented with overseas help a little bit, but like nothing had stuck formally.

Got it. And then like, I know you're still in the process of hiring, but what are some of the hires you've made or are currently making to so get further out of?

So now I have three people overseas and now I'm hiring like a US based hire in the next two weeks. Job post is live, like just filtering through applications, everything now.

That's awesome. So what are all these people helping you with?

So really they kind of helped me with like the day to day management of like Amazon. Right. So I have a graphic designer who handles all the graphic design design needs on Amazon, a PPC manager who helps manage all the Amazon advertising, and then a virtual assistant to handle outreach.

That's awesome, man. Yeah. And one thing I've noticed about you, like I said at the start of the interview, like you've just like consistently shown up at the Winds channel, like you're consistently signing new clients. So maybe talk a little bit about that process and like when you join the program, did you set up cold email campaigns? Was that something you did that you go through the sales training? Like what are some things you did that has allowed you to, to consistently be signing clients down for the agency. And I'm sure a big part of it too is the fact that you have more help on fulfillment so you can actually serve more clients. But what are some of the other things you've done that have actually worked?

Before I joined the program, I was pretty much just relying on long term client relationships and then some small like referrals here and there. So joining the program allowed me to like really implement like cold email infrastructure that really helped kind of like supercharge in terms of increased discovery calls, increased audits, increased closing these clients. The sales training definitely helped like significantly. Talking with David, like super valuable.

Getting yelled at by David.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, exactly. Got yelled at by him numerous times, but it's always good.

Yeah, dude. He definitely takes a more rough approach to coaching, but it's effective and it's what students need, like you said. So that's awesome to hear. Yeah. The cold email system is, is huge, bro. Especially when you're relying on inbound. It's very inconsistent. And so like, again, I, I point out the consistency of, of your wins and, and your ability to sign clients. And it's cool to hear that a lot of it is coming from cold email. I guess for the audience, what would be helpful is like, what are some of those KPIs that you have with cold email? Like how many emails or, or new leads are you reaching out to every single month? How many calls are you looking to schedule? Like, what is what goes into running a successful cold email campaign?

So I was actually, I was just messaging my VA about this literally last night because I was like, we need to get better about metric tracking and all this stuff. But really, I mean, like, I think we're reaching out to like 2,000 unique leads a month. Booking 15, 20 discovery calls, closing one or two clients every single month.

That's huge. I mean the call booking rate on that is pretty massive. 2,000 leads to 20 calls booked.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's been working fairly well for us. I think it's just come back the whole like expertise. If you can just show that you actually know what you're talking about, people will hop on call.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's one of the things we talk about in our new offers training. Right. It's like you have to make a dramatic presentation to get someone interested or hooked into whatever it is you're offering. And I think earlier in this interview you mentioned like, you do audits, you do discovery calls. And so how do you use something like an audit to make the dramatic presentation that you are like an expert in whatever service it is that you're providing. Like, what goes into that and how does that strategy play into signing clients?

Yeah, so I just went through an audit yesterday with a potential client, and I basically just point out, like, here, you're losing exactly, like, $9,600 in the last 30 days because you didn't do A, B and C. Now, that's something we fix in the first two weeks. I mean, just like, right there, like, you're gonna see an roi. And then I point out potential kind of like sales based on other market estimates, and then we just kind of go from there. We come in, we eliminate the waste, we get you more efficient, and then we also help you grow. All at the same time.

Yeah. So it's hard to say no once they. They see the audit and actually take the time to go through it with you.

Yep, exactly.

That's awesome. Yeah. It goes back again to what Daniel always talks about, traumatic presentation. Because most people, or let's just even say most of your competitors, are probably not willing to go through a full audit with someone that hasn't actually committed financially to working with them, or even if they are willing to do it, they don't have the skill sets to put together as good of an audit or report or game plan as someone like, you can. So it's a great way to really leverage your. Your uniqueness and your skills and your experience. So it's great to hear that you're. You're leveraging that. One of the questions I had as well is, like, when you join a coaching program, obviously, like, there's things that you can go through and implement. Like, for you, you implemented the cold email system. You got sales training. You obviously also started to go through the process of, like, hiring. What has it been like working with student Success coach, we call them, they're really like account managers or people there to hold. Hold you accountable. What has that experience been like? Has that helped with actually keeping you on track and holding you accountable to doing certain things or at least letting you know, like, the roadmap or what's ahead? What's been the experience working with student Success Coach? I'm always interested to hear that.

So that's been absolutely amazing. Jad, if you're watching this, I love you. Really? I think that was the thing that actually pushed me over the edge to join Client Ascension, because I think when you're just like a freelancer, you really don't have a ton of pressure externally. Like, as long as you're at a Decent income level, you don't have a lot ton of pressure to like achieve the next level. And that's kind of like what the student success coach helped me with. And then as I started scaling, he was just always there, just being like, yeah, you just gotta get through this week, things are gonna be okay, things will calm down. And just having that kind of like external pressure and then the whole community of CA has been really, really helpful. I don't think there's really anything quite like it.

Definitely bro. So when you say the community of CA being helpful, is that like connecting with other students or what does that look like for you on like a day to day when you open up Slack or just log into the community?

Yeah, I mean it's like browsing through like the WINS channel. Seeing everybody like post new client Wins is amazing. And then just like being around like a ton of people who have the same goals and who are building similar businesses, even if they're in different niches, connected with other Amazon agency owners in CA as well, that's been really helpful. Where we just share tactics and tricks and then yeah, just being around that kind of like shared vision has been really helpful.

Absolutely, bro. I love to hear that. I love to hear that. It's kind of by design is when you put together a group of people that are willing to bet on themselves. Right. Because again like joining the coaching program, it's not a small decision by any means. And so naturally you filter in just the people that you know you really should be spending time connecting with because they put their money on the line and because of that they probably have similar goals and ambitious. And you can learn from a lot of the guys that are in similar spaces or niches even if they're doing Amazon or E commerce or email marketing. Like there's so much to learn from guys that are really in the same space as usual. What have been some of your favorite coaching calls to attend? So I know with Client Ascension we have like over 20 weekly coaching calls that talk about cold email sales, ads, sales assets, offers, operations. What are some of your favorite calls to go to?

Yeah, probably David Jacobs just with like overall sales, his chain of thinking, how he like analyzes and how he breaks down other people's questions on the call. I find that really interesting. Connors call like seven figure agency is really good as well. Getting the exact behind the scenes of how to build out account managers. What does the structure of the agency look like in like the E commerce space, like pricing, all that stuff. It's all the Stuff that would like take me three or four months to make mistakes and then I can just ask him every single week and I'm like, oh great, I just saved myself six months of time. Love that.

Yeah, Connor's great dude. Originally he was the sales coach alongside David. But like David obviously does an amazing job with sales coaching. So he took Connor and put him into this seven figure agency coaching call because he runs one of the most successful email marketing agencies out there. And so I just told him like, show these guys the behind the scenes of what you're doing to run the agency. And it sounds like, yeah, it's been super helpful for you. So I'm happy to hear that. I guess one of the questions I love to ask is like a successful student like yourself, there are certain things that you've done while you're in the program that have led to your success and the consistent wins that you have compared to students that join and don't see traction either right away or even at all for the length of the program that they're in there for. What advice would you have to students who are not seeing the results like you are given that they are inclined attention, like what are some things you do or leverage in the program to quickly see the results that you've seen?

I think I would kind of start at like a base level and just be like one. Are you actually good at this service?

Tough question to answer.

Literally just like objectively, either you've done it for yourself, you've done it for other people, or if you're just getting started, then make sure your first like three clients are big wins. And then if that is true, then really you just need to get more people seeing you. So like for me, cold email was like the best that I found to kind of like scale out. My outbound for other people might be LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, like those are in the pipeline. They're just like not necessary at the moment. So like, then it's just like, how can I get as many people as possible to see me? But like, first just make sure you can show results.

Yeah, I think the formula that you've just laid out for people is really simple. It's one, get really good at whatever it is you're doing or offering.

Right.

And ways you can do that is by taking on clients for free. Because now you have the opportunity to learn in an actual real environment or just going the route that you want, which is like figuring out what are you good at, what have you done in the past, what have you helped Other people do. What have you done yourself in capitalizing on those skill sets? So like, I love your emphasis on service in itself, like actually being good at the service you're providing, number one before anything else. And then number two is super important as well. I think a lot of people get overwhelmed when they see, you know, in client ascension that you can do ads, you can do social media, you could do YouTube, you could do Twitter, you could do LinkedIn, you could do appointment setting through like cold calling, you could do cold email.

Right.

And so they feel the need to do all of these things. Thinking logically, like if I do all these things, it just increase. The more I do, the more attention that comes to me. But really what I found is, is exactly what you've just laid out, which is focus in on just one channel and get really freaking good at just that and then start to scale into other channels. So like for us, when we grew our cold email agency, it was primarily through sending cold emails. We also had a little bit going through Twitter and I think it does help to have one inbound like through Twitter and one outbound through cold email. But you don't need to do it all at once. And so I love how you've just focused in on cold email. You've really got that working for you now consistently. And now it's time to start to scale into some other channels. So it's a great two punch roadmap of like get really good at your service and then dial in just one outreach channel to let people know you're really good at the surface and that they should work with you.

Yeah, no, yeah, I completely agree. I think I've had trouble over complicating everything.

Yeah. And what about on the team side?

Right.

You talked about when you joined, the goal of joining was to get out of this like freelancer structure and get more into the agency structure. So I know you have some team members now and you're going through the hiring process. What are some other things that you've done on the operations side, maybe with your onboarding or hiring process or maybe some things that you plan on doing that the audience might also benefit from doing or learning about.

Yeah. So I follow your operations videos in Client Ascension. So for current team members, implement kind of like end of day forms, which really helped me give visibility on what they're actually working on day to day because like with remote work it's just so hard. Right. And then also just in terms of onboarding, like implementing onboarding forms and then just like a really clear process for at least the first 14 days and that's really helped streamline things. Like I've seen how you set up everything with client ascension where you come into this program and everything is just laid out A to Z. It's actually one of the most impressive onboarding experiences I've seen. I think the whole program as a whole is pretty good.

Yeah, I appreciate that, dude. Yeah, I love going through a program or even through an agency service. Not just for the service itself, but to see how the service is delivered. Because like as other agency providers like you can learn from the experience that you get from someone else, whether it's a good experience or a bad experience. So like I'll do that too. Like we join coaching programs and a lot of it is because we want to get the coaching from the coach. But I also get a hidden benefit and more value because I can analyze like how did this coaching program onboard us, how do they check in with us, what that they use for their community and for their actual course, like where is it hosted, how does it look, who's involved, what is their team structure? So I'm super analytical the same way. It sounds like you are going through programs like this and also just seeing how other agencies operate. So that's cool to see, bro. What's the big goal for this year? Is it just to continue to build out the team or do you have what's the wildly important goal for you that you're working towards?

So I achieved the wild and foreign goal that I set kind of coming into CA this month actually. So like yeah, literally like right on time. So I think by the end of this year probably like two to three US based team members and then I have certain revenue goals and like margin goals as well. But really I just want to be working with like amazing E commerce brands and really just helping them grow. Awesome, bro.

Yeah, it's really, it's just the goal is. I love that too. Like I'm not too big of a like a specific number goal person. I kind of like have an idea of where I want to be and knowing like if I do those things, if I serve people at the highest level, if I work with the best team members and have these different systems and processes built out, like those are the inputs, the outputs. Like yeah, maybe I'll hit the output goal that I can think in my head, but maybe it's 10 times better or who knows, right? I like to kind of keep that part of it for a surprise in a good way. So I love where you're at with that as well. Last question, bro, is where can our audience find you and follow you? I know you're doing great work on the Amazon side and just in general, like other agency owners that are wanting to see similar results that you're seeing. Like, where can people connect with you if you're inclined attention, by the way. Shoot. David, A dm I'm sure you're open to connecting with those guys there and are connecting with people already there, but I'm interested to hear where else they can find you.

Yeah, so my agency is called Redview Ventures, so that's available@redviewventures.com and then Twitter is probably easiest way. So dholmes94 on Twitter. And then if you think about joining Client Ascension, I mean, I would say, like, it's exceed every single expectation I've had. I was on the fence, I think I actually took a call with one of his setters maybe like twice, and then it took finally the third call before I finally signed the contract. And everything monetarily wise has been like, hugely positive. Roi. Community is amazing. The coaches are amazing. Happy to do this interview with you, Andre.

Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm just happy to hear that you had positive experience and you're getting the results and you're growing towards what you wanted when you originally joined, which is to get out of that freelancer space. So I'm excited to see some of these new people that you're able to onboard and how they, you know, impact you and. And are able to serve your clients as well. So, yeah, I appreciate the kind words about the community and the program, dude, that's, you know, why we do what we do. And yeah, I'm sure too, like, even outside of the community, in the program, like, just through doing this interview, you're able to serve people that are maybe on the fence like you were, or maybe they're already in the program and this was the motivation they needed to, you know, do some of the things that you've done while you're in there to get the results. So we can help a lot of people by doing stuff like this. And so I appreciate you making the time for it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Awesome, David. All right, peace for now. Keep crushing it, bro.

All right, see you.